Renewal

 At one point, I felt compelled to take my wife's phone from her. She was driving. Not fast, but she was driving. She was driving through the Habitrail maze of road cones in the parking lot of the Alameda County Coliseum. The Oakland A's were playing baseball inside the stadium, but that's not why we were there. The path we were on took us through what would have been prime spots for parking if we had been there to catch a game, or a concert. What made this trip to our local sports complex so worthy of documentation was not a spectator activity. This was an interactive event. 

We were there to get my wife vaccinated. The Federal Emergency Management Agency had taken over the area where fans have been tailgating ahead of Raiders and Athletics games for decades and turned it into a vaccination destination. My wife had become eligible for her citizen over a certain age shot just a couple days before, and after getting a hot tip from a friend of hers, she was able to score an appointment. Actually, she bagged three, in various locations and at different times. Cleverly, she chose the most expeditious opportunity. It was also a place that was serving up the one-shot Johnsons and Johnson mix that meant she would be one and done. No return trips. No worries about scheduling that second appointment thirty days later.

I tried not to be jealous. I had been fully vaccinated for more than two weeks at that point, and probably should have simply been happy for my patient wife. She was being rewarded for that patience with an experience that, from door to done, lasted just under an hour. My experience had been quite different. After weeks of trying to catch an appointment from the online system, I chose to walk over to the nearby high school from my own school. Where I stood for three hours in the will-call line, hoping that the extra doses didn't run out before I was ushered inside. 

This was not the experience my wife had. When I was waiting in my line, I had a chance to get familiar with those in front and behind me. I made more than a couple witty remarks about standing in line for Space Mountain, appreciating the potential that all of this standing around might eventually allow me to get in a great many other lines. Not just Space Mountain, but the line to buy tickets at a movie theater, or to get a seat inside the Alameda County Coliseum to watch some baseball. 

Patience. 

When my wife pulled our car around the last cone-described curve and we were ushered into a line where she would shortly be given that same chance to become invulnerable, I offered to hold her phone while she documented the process. When it came time to get her shot, she rolled up her sleeve to show the tech the smiling sun she had drawn on her shoulder to mark the target. It was a nice moment. 

And just like that, it was over. We pulled forward and waited the required fifteen minutes without ever having to leave the comfort of our car. I watched and listened to the wave of relief wash over her. As we drove out of the parking lot, we were leaving her fear of COVID behind. She had survived and come out the other side. We drove over to Home Depot and brought plants for our garden. It was time for renewal. 

Opining

 I filled out the opinion survey as I often do, feeling that it is my obligation as a bleeding hearted liberal to voice my opinions on behalf of the struggling masses and the planet we have ignored for so long. When asked to define my positions, I tend to paint them as very strongly held. Even when the survey wants to tempt me with other viewpoints, or considerations, I hold tightly to my convictions. I understand that this is a test for me as much as it is for them. What if cleaning up the rivers and lakes and beaches ended up costing nine billion dollars instead of six billion, and we asked you to pay for it? What about then? Huh? So here's my response: It has to be paid for, eventually. The good news is that we can still do it while there is a price tag on it, rather than sacrificing an entire generation. 

That last bit wasn't one of the check boxes. It was something that I thought, and since I have this place to sound off beyond clicking. Then it was time to finish up, and I was asked a final series of questions for "statistical purposes." Age, family income, and whether I consider myself to be a moderate, conservative or liberal, though the "bleeding heart" would probably only be discerned from my responses. Then I was asked if I was "a member of a labor union or a teacher's union." 

I stopped clicking. Now I really did want to have a discussion with the people who wanted my opinions. The first part of that discussion would probably be about how I came to be part of a union. How I had been teaching at the school where I had been hired for about a month when one of my mentor teachers stopped by my classrooms after the kids had gone for the day and handed me a binder. "What's this?" I asked.

"Your contract," she told me. "You should read it. Get familiar with it."

"Will there be a quiz?" I made a little teacher joke. But at the time I did not have the full understanding that I had become a member of a union by signing on as a teacher for the Oakland Unified School District. A week or so later, I asked my mentor teacher if I had to be a union member to be a teacher. To which she replied, "Pretty much." 

And so I have spent most of my twenty plus years with a mild ambivalence to this membership, sometimes finding myself at odds with decisions made by union leadership. Especially those that seemed to clash with what I understood my commitment to the community I was serving. I have held different positions when it came to work actions, trying hard to maintain that ideal in my heart and mind of being a public servant, while appreciating the protections that the union provided me. A couple years ago when there was a strike, I walked the picket line with the rest of my colleagues. Union members. We carried signs and chanted, and attended rallies and created food banks and strike funds to help defray the cost for those members who were struggling the most. 

And I kept an ear to the ground when it came to the noises made by the families to whom I was connected. 

It sure felt like being in a labor union. But I also understood that the rest of the world, including myself at times, had a hard time seeing the job I was doing on a continuum with ditch-digging or welding or coal mining. Was teaching really labor? 

Well, after a month of being on strike, and listening to all the rhetoric from both sides of the fence, I was glad to be able to settle back into my job once again. To get back to work. To heal those divisions. The ones in my own mind, especially. 

Am I a member of a labor union? Yes. And I am a teacher. Thanks for asking. 

Sleep Sound

 I woke up with a start when I heard the first three shots. There are always a few moments when I try to rationalize the sound I have just heard as fireworks. Before I could check in with my wife who runs the same system check, there were three more shots. These sounded just a little further away. Up the street? Down the street? Then the screeching of tires. 

"I'm going to call it in," said my wife who sleeps next to her phone for just such an emergency. That and listening to podcasts when sleep is slow to come. She dialed 911 and described what we had just heard. What she did not hear was, "We'll send a car right out." 

We live in Oakland, after all, and all these late night noises were de rigueur. From downstairs, our son texted not only that he had heard those same noises, but he had tuned into police chatter and noted that several others had made the same report. He wanted to go outside and see if there was anything to see. Without hearing any broken glass or ricochets, I was content to roll over and try to get back to sleep. 

Try.

My mind tugged at threads. The story I had read the day before about the shooting in southern California. A nine year old boy was shot and killed in Orange County along with three others. Guy with a gun. From there I hopped to a story about a mother of six who was shot and killed by a man who felt her husband had cut him off on the highway. The road rage was not specifically directed at the mother of six. The gun was. Guy with a gun.

Later in the day I was listening to a report on the Biden administration's challenge to create executive orders on guns that cannot simply be repealed by whoever shows up in the office next. How to put some sort of control on a culture that seems to have given up on gun control. The promise to control always comes with the insistence that we will not come and take your guns. Not when there are so many god-fearing Constitutionally endowed gun owners who are not killing co-workers. Not shooting other drivers. Not popping caps around Oakland neighborhoods. It's those responsible gun owners that we feel the need to respond to and protect. 

One of the leftover threads from the murders in Boulder a couple of weeks ago was the story about two of the victims of that rampage who were supporters of gun rights. The youngest of the ten, and the officer who was killed in the line of duty. It suggested that the families of those men might have different feelings after their loved ones had been killed by a guy with a gun he had purchased just six days before. After having passed a background check, with a history of violence and a family who openly discussed his separation from reality. Guy with a gun. 

Like the guy down the street in the middle of the night. With a gun. It took me a while to get back to sleep, but I did. 

God help me, I went back to sleep. 

Listening To The Boss

 So two of my favorite human beings decided to make a podcast. Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama host Renegades: Born In The USA, available wherever you find your podcasts. If you don't happen to be one of those "pod people," let me assure you that you get a heaping helping of conventional wisdom from these two gentlemen, who just happen to be very good friends. 

Okay, end of advertisement. The reason for the mention was that on a recent episode this unlikely pair met at another interesting crossroad: Fatherhood. They discussed their challenges finding their way in that strange void where no one had given them an easy to follow diagram. Both men had distant and challenging relationships with their own fathers, and the way was never clear. I benefitted greatly from a map supplied by my own father, with whom I shared a sometimes tricky but loving relationship. I feel as though I would still have appreciated a little more guidance, but the circumstances of my son's birth were such that my dad was gone before I became a dad. So I started off imagining that I would simply follow the path plowed by my father as I started on my own journey, a generation later. 

Unfortunately, I didn't spend a lot of time talking with my dad about how he wrangled that nearly instantaneous change from husband to father. Though I was sure that bringing another life into the world that I could help support and nurture was something for which I was on the cusp of being capable, I had no idea what skills I would actively need. Another neat coincidence in my life was that I had plunged into a new career and bought a house at virtually the same moment that my son arrived on the scene. The only good change is a sea change. 

In my mind, I felt I was setting up as the helpmate, the Late Night Guy. I could see the mother of my child struggling, so I chose to fill in whenever I could sense her powers lagging. I chose a support role, and that seemed to be right, even if at times I had no idea what I was doing. Hindsight suggests that I probably would have had more success if I hadn't been hanging around waiting for my wife to tell me how to help. I took such pride in being the person who changed my son's first diaper, it didn't occur to me that there would be thousands more in that first year. Assembling the Tomy tractor on his first birthday, I finally felt like I had arrived at my station: Put-together guy.

Looking back on that first year, I recall those late night strolls around the house with my son in my arms. Swaddled in a blanket, I held him close and played the home version of Goodnight Moon. I was anxious to impress upon him just how asleep the rest of the world was, and how it would be a really great idea for him to follow suit. Sometimes he would not be convinced. Sometimes his mother would come to the rescue for a late-night drive. Twenty-three years later, she and my son still enjoy the open road, together and apart. 

I stayed home and looked for things to put together. I have built my share of Hot Wheels garages and supervised many Lego assemblages. I pushed my son around the neighborhood in a jogging stroller until he was old enough to tell me to knock it off. Some of his first words. I rushed his first Lionel train set once I was convinced of his love for locomotives. I put that together too. I was looking for that bonding moment that would make me feel as though I had stuck the Fatherhood landing. 

Turns out I was looking in the wrong places. It wasn't the toys. It wasn't the torturous games of catch. It was in the laughter we shared. From the pull-off-the-blanket-peekaboo to the Looney Toons on Saturday morning. And the movies. All those movies. Walks in the park, up the street or in Anaheim. Carrying him until I couldn't anymore. We have yet to laugh until we couldn't anymore. Twenty-three years into the game, I'm starting to catch on. Being a father is being there. As much as you can. 

The mother of Bruce Springsteen's children gave him some advice. She said that their kids were at their most gorgeous in the morning, they were most alive. She suggested that he didn't want to miss it. I got a similar suggestion from my wife. She wasn't wrong. Thank goodness fathers have mothers to clue them in on the parenthood gig. 

Watch

 My wife was marking the time we have spent in COVID isolation by referring to "when you changed your name to Black Lives Matter David Caven." This was the moment when I changed my social media tag to reflect my state of mind. My state of being. I felt that I could never do enough to raise this idea up to the degree it needed to be raised. So I put it out there as an introduction of sorts. "Hi, my name is David Caven, and I would like to talk to you about all manner of things serious and not so serious, but first: Black Lives Matter."

This was true six months ago, and it's true now. Moving forward and going back, Black Lives Matter. 

That being said, over and over, I would like to address the trial of Derek Chauvin. Ten months ago, this was the guy whose knee was on George Floyd's neck for nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds. On May 25, 2020, Black Lives Mattered. Mister Chauvin is on trial for the murder of George Floyd. Because after more than nine minutes of having his airway compressed by Chauvin's knee, George Floyd died. 

At this point, I would like to zoom out for a moment and address once again the word "alleged." Until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, most of the reports that you will read about this trial will include that word around Derek Chauvin's name or his crime. This convention will continue until conviction, even though there is video evidence, from several angles and sources, of the murder taking place. There will be a parade of witnesses brought to the stand to describe the scene that we have all been witness over the past year. Meanwhile, the crime that George Floyd allegedly committed which brought such swift and terrible retribution was trying to pass a counterfeit twenty dollar bill. This alleged crime is punishable, under Minnesota state law, of a one thousand dollar fine or one year in prison. The prosecution of this particular case will not be continued because the alleged perpetrator was killed. The twenty dollar bill is now just a curiosity piece. Discussion of the hows and whys of George Floyd's alleged crime fall into the category of pure speculation at this point. 

While we watch that video again. And again. And again.

The most serious charge facing Derek Chauvin a sentence of up to forty years in prison. He is currently enjoying his right to trial by jury. George Floyd is dead. It has taken nearly a year for the process that might put Mister Chauvin in jail. It took nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds for Chauvin to render his verdict on George Floyd. Recent history has told us not to be surprised by any verdict handed down in Chauvin's trial. While acquittal seems outrageous under the circumstances and the evidence that exists, we have all witnessed confusing and confounding decisions in similar cases. Each of these has served to rub an already inflamed sense of injustice raw. 

I know it's horrible to look at. But we all need to watch. 

Black Lives Matter. 

Enough Is Enough

 "Did you know Amazon starts its full-time employees at $15 per hour?" This is an essentially rhetorical question asked by Amazon themselves. Itself. It's part of an ad campaign promoting the just and kind robot overlords, Minions of Bezos. It has become increasingly invested in letting us all know that they care about us and they or it or whatever Amazon is or might be that they are not evil. Amazon is not just a river in South America. Amazon is our savior.

So please don't make them allow unions in their shop. They're already paying the princely sum of fifteen dollars an hour to their full-time employees. Okay, so nobody's getting rich, but at least you can afford to live on what you make for dragging other people's value-paks of Crest and the like around their warehouses and loading them into cardboard boxes so they can get it the very next day.

Nobody except Jeff Bezos. Jeff is making more than thirteen million dollars an hour. More than two hundred thousand dollars a second. The folks at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama are voting on whether or not to unionize. However that vote turns out, there are likely to be protracted legal battles to determine just how, when or whether that group of workers will ever be allowed to unionize. Which means that there will be some large billable hours for some law firms operating on both sides of the courtroom. Meanwhile, full-time employees of Amazon will continue to earn fifteen dollars an hour. If you happen to be a software engineer who is fortunate enough to catch on with the world's largest retailer, you can expect to drop in around one hundred twenty thousand dollars a year. These are not the folks who want to unionize. If you made fifteen dollars an hour, your salary would be about a quarter of that.

Amazon has doubled its profits since the onset of COVID-19. If you needed toothpaste and didn't want to take a chance on visiting your local Rite-Aid, click on Amazon. And stream their movies while your local theater is closed. If you needed a job because yours had disappeared?

Amazon is paying their full-time employees fifteen dollars an hour.

Isn't that enough?

What's The Good News?

 The title of the article is what caught me: Oakland Teachers Refuse To Return To School.

I let it sit there, staring back at me from my screen while I tried to avoid clicking on it. I tried not to let the second part of the title "Despite Getting COVID Vaccine Priority." The article, a short one, quoted a letter from an unnamed "school official" from Cleveland Elementary and Oakland School Board Director Shanthi Gonzales. Both described their disappointment and frustration over the situation. The piece mentions parents who are "frustrated with the district and union’s inability to force teachers to return for in-person teaching," finding the situation "laughable." 

Which is interesting for a couple of reasons: Number one, I have been at my school site nearly every single day since the initial shelter-in-place order was lifted a year ago. My principal and I have been there to coordinate material distribution, fix tech problems, and solve any issues that we can by being there in person. A few of our staff have made it their practice to teach their Zoom classes from their classrooms to connect kids with the place that they know. And they didn't want to stray to far from the work that they do: Teaching. That didn't stop a year ago, and nobody with whom I work has been refusing to do their job. On the contrary. The past year has been full of stories of colleagues going above and beyond the limitations put in place by COVID-19. Delivering books to students' homes, bringing kids one at a time to the campus to give a socially distanced tutorial, going that extra mile to make sure that families in our community were safe and sound during this extraordinary time. 

Number two: When our parents were surveyed, just over a third of them asked that their kids be returned to some form of in-person instruction. Another third replied that they would rather stick out the pandemic in distance learning. And more than a quarter of our parents did not respond to repeated attempts to ask them what they preferred. When the district and the teachers' union finally came to an understanding, there were still plenty of loose threads in this sweater. How do we...? What will it look like when...? What if...? There were "what ifs" by the tractor trailer full. I am grateful that we will be taking it slow to begin with, and we won't be endangering anyone with our best guesses. Our site has two committed and fully vaccinated volunteers to bring part of their classes back to the building we all left before Spring Break a year ago. 

And now might be a good time to point out that the byline for this particular news story was that of a Caitlin McFall, from Fox News. Which probably explains why no teachers were interviewed for this expose. That might have promoted a second side of the argument, because there really needs to be an argument about this, doesn't there? 

See you around the schoolyard.