Lessons Learned

Back around the time the earth was still cooling and my son was beginning to walk, he was left with his hapless father and new dog. Not for a week. Not for a day. Just a couple of hours. This was just long enough for the dad (me) to set up the Rube Goldberg machine designed for putting a great big bump on the son's head (big head) and the black hole of trust from which there was no escape. Begin with the wobbling toddler on the front porch. Dog inside. Dad in the doorway. Dad can see all and is in control. Then he needs to step back inside to get his keys. All is calm. All is well. On the way back to the front door, dad's movement causes dog to bolt for the opening. Wobbly toddler has moved to an even more precarious position on the top step. Dog upsets the delicate balance of head over toes and wobbly toddler tips forward. Dog continues down the stairs to run enthusiastic circles in the yard. Dog's portion of this exercise is now complete. Wobbly toddler begins to tumble head over little round heels, making contact with each step as he goes. Dad stands at the top of the stairs with all kinds of thoughts in his head. One of these is "I really wish I would have prepared myself and my son better for this situation." Another is "If I run fast enough I could actually turn back time and catch him before he ever leaves the porch." And inevitably "I am such a horrible father."
Now that the earth is getting hotter again, and my son survived that incident, albeit with a knot on his head that had to be explained to his very disappointed mother. He lives in a house hundreds of miles away. Pays his bills. Makes his own meals. Has a job. Goes to school. Wakes himself up. He lives a life of a proto-adult. There is still an implied safety net offered by his parents, supported by frequent and often amusing calls to his childhood home. Still, the moment to moment existence that used to be so carefully monitored has become more of a need-to-know system of accountability. We do get a running report about the salads that he has consumed between texts or calls. His parents don't always hear about the things we might wonder most about, but that's because we respect his privacy. Or something like that. Mostly, we know that he is safe. And generally pretty happy. It should be noted at this point that he is considering getting a dog. A Corgi, whose low center of gravity might not pose the same threat to his balance that his childhood pet posed. And the house where he is currently living has no front steps.
I guess I taught him something.

What Master Race?

Chris Cantwell. Does the name ring a bell? No? How about if I said, "The Nazi who spouted off on HBO's Vice News?" 
Yes. I know. "Neo-Nazi." I have a hard time with that. Like somehow it's a new and improved Nazi. Now with twenty percent more White Power!
Nope. This is a guy who yearns for confrontation. He went to jail in Charlottesville on  two counts of illegal use of tear gas and one count of unlawful release of gas causing injury. Mister Cantwell admits that he had pepper sprayed a counter-protester on August 11, but he only did so in "self-defense."
A lot of what Chris Cantwell does seems to be in self-defense. Like the video he released days after the ugly mess in Virginia, when he tearfully recounts the struggles he's had to endure since hearing that he had a warrant out for his arrest.
He said he feared for his life.
I'm not a big fan of suffering on anyone's part, but I suppose I can make an exception here. This is a guy who spouts stuff like, “I’m here to spread my ideas, talk, in the hopes that somebody more capable will come along and do that. Somebody like Donald Trump who does not give his daughter to a Jew.”
Hello? Where do you think the safe place for this guy would be? It's not OKCupd, the dating site. They said they banned Mister Cantwell on principle, but it the straight/gay/other categorization allowed in their classification system probably wouldn't have covered whatever profile that might have been necessary to put Chris in the best possible light. "Ultra-Straight Nazi looking for Aryan Bride for taking long walks by torchlight. Must love the smell of pepper spray."
Do I hope they keep Chris Cantwell safe as he awaits his next encounter with the justice system? Very much so, yes. What this crowd does not need is any kind of a martyr.
Just a Nazi with intimacy issues. 

Seen And Not Seen

I have always maintained that if you walk into a situation expecting a confrontation, you will probably get your wish.I put forth as evidence of this assertion, the "President" of the United States. 
Tuesday evening, Orange Julius appeared in Phoenix, Arizona. He was there for a rally. A rally that was intended to boost those good feelings about our Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Or maybe it was to soothe his wounded ego after a couple weeks of abuse by the real bad guys.
ISIS?
MS-13?
Justin Trudeau?
Nope. The focus of the "President's" ire was his favorite target. His punching bag. His white whale. The media. Fake news. “Really bad people” who “foment divisions” because they “don’t like our country.” He rambled on for an hour and fifteen minutes, and twenty of those were devoted to jabs at these bad people. He predicted that the dreaded MSM (mainstream media) would not cover his every utterance, but yet here they were, dutifully reporting back to the world the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) style oration. He also took wide swings at Arizona's senators, Flake and McCain, who have not been falling into line. And he danced on the edge of his rumored pardon of Sheriff Joe Arpaio. “I won’t do it tonight because I don’t want to cause any controversy,” Trump explained. “But Sheriff Joe can feel good.” Meaning that Sheriff Joe won't have to worry about that conviction for criminal contempt of court stemming from a 2007 racial profiling case. 
And he kept hammering on how unfair the media is to him. All the time. He wanted us all to know that he was always saying the right thing about what happened in Charlottesville. “I hit ’em with neo-Nazi, I hit ’em with everything. KKK? We have KKK. I got ’em all. The only people giving a platform to these hate groups,” the "President" insisted, “is the media itself.”
So here we are, in the middle of a grand experiment in the Heisenberg Principle. Every time we stare into the abyss that is Donald Trump, we are surprised to find that there is nothing there. And yet we keep going back to look. 
Because of the sound. That horrible, horrible sound. 

The Good News

The wheels of justice are supposed to turn more slowly than this. Last Monday, Joseph Bruzzese Jr was headed to work when he was ambushed by a gunman waiting outside his place of employment: The Jefferson County Courthouse. Mister Bruzzese is a judge. It is alarming to think about what sort of concealed weapons permit a guy who wears a big black robe might have. Rocket launcher. Anti-tank weapons. T-shirt cannon.
So, as it turns out, Judge Joseph pulled up to work on Monday morning and a gentleman who had been witnessed waiting in a car outside for some time opened fire. The judge was wounded, hit in the stomach and chest, but still managed to return fire with his own weapon. 
A nearby probation officer, seeing this attack, started firing too. The suspect was shot and killed. Another man who was also in the car with the assailant was not wounded. Or charged. He's the guy who will spend the next few years trying to figure out what went wrong.
So we have a real and true "good guy with a gun story." This should make our friends at the Second Amendment Headquarters very happy. The fact that a civil servant could be attacked in broad daylight in front of a courthouse makes everyone nervous. 
For some, it will make them want to have more guns. It will legitimize the well-armed militia of civilians we feel should have the right to protect themselves from all those bad guys who also seem to have guns. Which brings us back to the other guy in the car. "Hey Brad, I've got to stop by the courthouse to drop some things off. You mind stopping by there before I drive you to work?"
"Sure. No problem."
Except for that little annoyance we always forget in these situations: Crossfire. The good news would be that this took place at eight in the morning. Passersby are fewer and far between. A couple of hours later and this would be a different story. 
In this version, two people got shot. Two people were wounded. The good guy lived. No innocent bystanders were maimed or killed. Bad guy dead? Okay. People walking by lived? Better. 
Maybe this whole thing would be better if there had been no guns at all involved.
But I guess that's not a discussion we'll be having anytime soon. 

Smug Versus Proud

I could say that I don't remember exactly whose idea it was to pick up a bag and start stuffing it with trash as my wife and I made our walk around the neighborhood. I could, but I know it was me. And I'm proud of that. Does that make me smug?
Opinions, as the philosopher once said, vary.
As we made our way along the streets and sidewalks around our house, we found more and more garbage. My wife picked up another bag and began to separate recycling from landfill. I could tell how clever she felt with this advancement. Maybe a little smug?
Opinions vary.
The mental shove I got to start picking up trash in the first place came from seeing Al Gore's Inconvenient Sequel over the weekend. Here I was, strolling through other people's rubbish, reflecting on all those high-minded ideals about global warming and carbon footprints and having opposable thumbs and the ability to bend at the waist. I was not helpless. I could make this one corner of the planet just a little more habitable by removing the fast food detritus that cluttered the gutters of my street.
Gutter clutter.
I'm proud of that one.
Or am I smug?
When we arrived back at our house, bags full and overflowing with the neighborhood's litter, my wife and I opened the gate to our driveway. The driveway that had a Prius parked on it. The driveway that ran in front of a house upon which had recently been mounted solar panels. This made us proud.
And a little smug. When we shoved all that trash into their respective bins, we had a moment to reflect on just how quickly the streets we had walked would be littered again, we became less smug. When we thought about all the ways that we could still be doing more to keep our planet from becoming uninhabitable, we realized that we still had so much left to do.
We stopped being smug, and got back to work.

Hey Lady!

Riboflavin.
Go ahead. Say it.
Then say it really loud.
I'll wait.
Now. Don't you feel better? That's your best, easiest path to a Jerry Lewis impression. The Jerry we loved. The Jerry we laughed at. Wacky. Nuts.
Riboflavin.
Jerry passed on over the weekend, and when I read the news, I was surprised just how hard it hit me. I had made a point of sneering at most of what Jerry Lewis had become over the past half century. For some, the breakup with Dean Martin was the point where they drew the line. For others it was The Day The Clown Cried. For me, it was all about the hair. Once the crew cut was gone and the Vitalis showed up, it was over for me. This was no longer some goofy kid making fun. He was the comic genius adored in France and the guy who made Hardly Working. He was the guy who said, "A woman doing comedy doesn't offend me, but sets me back a bit. I, as a viewer, have trouble with it. I think of her as a producing machine that brings babies in the world."
Okay. So not very funny. But he is also the guy who showed up in Martin Scorsese's King of Comedy and went toe to toe with both Robert De Niro and Sandra Bernhard in a performance that announced that, in spite of the hair tonic, he was to be reckoned with. He invented video playback for directors. He taught film making at USC. 
And he ran that telethon. I was able, as I grew older, to understand that this man in the rumpled tuxedo was also responsible for a formidable amount of physical comedy the likes of which we will most likely never see again. Unfortunately, when I was young I encountered Jerry Lewis in fully introspective mode. He was always trying to prove what a serious artist he was. 
It's okay. I know Jerry Lewis was an artist. And a clown. 
He stomped on the Terra. I won't say "Aloha." I'll just say Riboflavin. 

The Vacuum

One of the advantages of starting a new school year is that I have been so immersed in the moving and stapling and carrying and copying and assorted miscellaneous other preparations is that I have been all but cut off from the steady barrage of news. The ugliness and horrors of Charlottesville seem like a distant memory as I help get classrooms ready for children to return from their summer sojourn and the rhythm of Autumn replaces that wandering attention. The first day of school will be followed by the second and third. Updates to this progression will be noted as they become available.
But now my vacation starts. I will no longer be able to sit by and take in each new gaffe or disturbing statement. I will rely on others to distill them for my later consumption. A lot of this will be done by Fake News organizations, my only trusted point of reference. I will also keep world events in my mind to help our students navigate the quickly changing planet which will be left to them when we have finished doing our damage to it. There have been budget cuts that don't allows us to have access to certain programs or resources. We will continue to do the best we can with what we have, and making sure that we show up to do our best work no matter what the bookkeepers tell us. Or politicians.
I work for the Oakland Unified School District. We are a Sanctuary District, which means we are here to serve kids without checking their papers or asking them to put themselves or families in danger. The first thing they taught me in teacher school was that kids can't learn unless they feel safe, so that's what we're going to do. And we're going to try and make that learning fun. There will be plenty of time for all of us to be reminded just how awful things are everywhere else, but our school has brightly decorated bulletin boards and a devoted staff who will help every kid reach their potential.
And later, when I get home and catch my breath, I'll check out my news feed to read about the tragedy in Barcelona or the firing of Steve Bannon. Huge and important events, but it will take a while for their significance to trickle down to our third graders. In the meantime we've got to learn how to read. Once that's done, they'll be able to figure some of this out for themselves.
When they do, I hope they can explain it to me.