We Have Met The Enemy...

A few weeks ago, I mused with great cynicism about how closing all the schools had eliminated school shootings. Sadly, nothing has been done to curb systemic racism since the outbreak of the global pandemic.
I wrote here recently about the murder of Ahmaud Arbery. The three men who have been arrested for the killing are white. Mister Arbery was black.
George Floyd died while being taken into custody by Minneapolis police. No. George Floyd was killed by a white man who knelt on Floyd's neck until he died. Mister Floyd was black.
And these are the most high-profile cases of just how far we have not come. One thing that can be said about COVID-19 is that it doesn't discriminate.
The woman in Central Park who called 911 to report a black man threatening her. The man, Christian Cooper is black, and he asked Amy Cooper to please put her dog on a leash. That was the threat. She called the police, "There's an African-American man threatening my life." Horribly ironic, since it would seem much more likely that seems as though it would be Christian who has more to fear than Amy out of these two Coopers. Still, Mister Cooper said later that he was uncomfortable with all the negative attention that Ms. Cooper was receiving.
Uncomfortable? I am impressed by Christian living up to his name, but I do wonder why there isn't more discomfort being felt among white people about any or all of this ugliness. Taking to the streets and demanding that these unfortunate representatives of our race be called out for their abuse of their skin color. To be clear: These are white people doing awful things, and we should be more than embarrassed. We should be enraged.
There is no justice for any one of these men. They were put in untenable situations because of their skin, and this never should have happened. Murdered or harassed or simply looked on with suspicion. It's not "them." It's us.
And sadly there is currently no known cure.

Veronica

"These days I'm not even sure if her name was Veronica" - Elvis Costello
Veronica came to us in the first week of March. When I say she came to us, the proper description would be more like her mother came to our office and registered her. As a third grader. Veronica was not with her on this trip. Neither was the proper documentation to get her properly enrolled. Veronica's mom had what we like to describe as a "hissy fit" and stormed out of the office without completing the process. We did not see her again, but we did talk about her around the office. Not Veronica, whom we had not met, but her very impatient mother.
Then, later that week, a few terse phone calls were exchanged from the student enrollment office on behalf of this distraught mother and we were advised to go ahead and let Veronica become a part of our third grade just as soon as we could make it happen. This kind of thing is not uncommon, since parents have a great deal to say about how our district gets things done. Our district is also very fond of setting up procedures for us to follow that don't allow us to be the nice guys in that equation. We winced in anticipation of our next face to face with Veronica's mom. And getting to meet Veronica at last.
This did not happen since, as history will remind us, students were sent home to continue the last part of their year to avoid exposure to the historic virus. Veronica did not attend a day of "regular" class. Once we had cobbled together our school's distance learning plan, we sent out a phone message and emails describing how students could pick up a work packet and instructions about how to connect with their class on Al Gore's Internet.
Veronica's mom came to pick up the packet, and asked questions about how this whole thing might shake down. We told her what we knew: We were making it up as we went along, according to the district guidelines. This seemed to satisfy her and off she went to quarantine for more weeks.
This past week, we closed up school for this year, still without that clue about what and how we may be doing things. Veronica's mom showed up without her daughter, asking for a report card. Given that we had never actually seen Veronica or any of her work, it was decided that there was no way to give her a report card. We tensed for the reaction.
"Oh, I can bring by her work. She's finished it. She's very bright. She said that it was easy. At her old school her teacher called her 'a scholar.'"
We breathed a collective sigh of relief and told her that would be fine, and we looked forward to seeing her, and Veronica, in the coming year.
Veronica will be in fourth grade next year. At least that's the way we imagine it.

Second Look

So let's get this out of the way right up front: I believe there are very few things wrong with this planet that cannot somehow be linked back to our current "president." So very much of what is vile and bilious can be followed upstream to his gaping maw. He positively emanates negativity. It is his very nature.
But I draw the line at Ghostbusters.
Recently, director Paul Feig has been insisting that it was the pro-Trump and anti-Hillary forces that was the undoing of his 2016 reboot of the 1984 original. The reaction at that time was a loud and misogynistic one. Feig's version, you see, had a cast of women taking over for Bill Murray and his crew. Those voices were pretty loud and pretty vicious. Then-candidate Donald "Rotten Tomato" Trump had his opinion: "And now they’re making Ghostbusters with only women! What’s going on?!” A pretty cranky old man thing to say, but compared to his typical anti-woman rants it doesn't hold a lot of weight. The third American president to be impeached has said much, much worse things about women. He has certainly had more awful things to say about the relative state of cinema since he became president. 
And please understand that I am in complete agreement with anyone who suggests that women have a much more difficult path in any industry, and Hollywood may be the nastiest place to find that out. A liberal sanctuary, with all the same testosteroni underpinnings as the rest of the country, often disguised as a more accepting and welcome landing spot. One need only to look at the relative salaries of women in the motion picture business and read just one essay on the objectification of women on screen to feel the need to wash your hands for more than twenty seconds. 
But maybe the 2016 Ghostbusters just wasn't that great. It was a remake, after all. Sorry, reboot. A reboot of an established classic of its genre. Getting past the obvious comparisons is a terrible chore for anyone, and if you don't deliver something profoundly unique then it will probably suffer by comparison. My quick review goes like this: It was pretty funny. There were not a lot of surprises, and I would imagine that if you had never seen the original this would do in a pinch. 
The trouble is when you start pitching an all-female cast as a gimmick. This would be a dividing line between a film like Bridesmaids, which brought its strength from story and characters not just a bunch of women acting just as gross as a bunch of men. Part of my reaction to the 2016 version of Ghostbusters hinged on the idea that "it can't be that bad." And it wasn't. 
It just wasn't that good. 
And that's probably the "president's" fault anyway. 

Write When You Get Work

Tom Hanks came to the Skyline High School graduation this year. It makes a lot of sense, considering he is an alum and he probably didn't have a lot of other pressing engagements. And he lived through his exposure to the virus that kept the affair a stay-at-home experience. And he is a mensch. John Krazinski crowded a bunch of A-listers into his online graduation, including appearances by Steven Spielberg, Jon Stewart, Malala, and Oprah. Not that it would have been any more memorable if the guy who played Jim on The Office Zoom-bombed your online ceremony.
But these are interesting times. Times that are heightened by the shared experience of a global pandemic. We are all in this together, so each of these events become heightened in ways we might not have expected.
So let me grouse here for a moment. I don't remember who my high school graduation speaker was. I had the terrible misfortune of living through high school in the late seventies in Boulder, Colorado. I suppose I might have held out hope for Dan Fogelberg or Scott Carpenter. Nope. I would have remembered either one of them. For that matter, I have a vivid memory of the following year's commencement speaker: Mo Siegel. The hippie dippy herbal tea maker that became a millionaire in that little college town at the foot of the Rocky Mountains.
Am I bitter?
Maybe a little.
Kind of like the way you find out a few days later that the person who was just a few people behind you in line at the grocery store was the one millionth customer and they got a lifetime supply of Pop Tarts. A fuss has to be made, from time to time, and we cannot always be part of that fuss. Being honored for your place in line seems like a bit of a cheat, like the mild antagonism I hold for the tenth caller on those radio contests. You don't have to answer a question or anything? You just happen to be in a certain place at a certain time and place. Congratulations on taking up space at that moment. We really couldn't be more proud.
But back here in a land that is a tad more forgiving, I will say that occupying this particular time and space isn't so much an honor but a chore. The lights that shine right now will come back over and over across the years as "The Class Of Covid" makes its way in the world. College graduates face a particularly tough row to hoe as they are being let out into the world in the midst of a crippling recession. I'm not sure even Tom Hanks can make that okay.

I Want

My wife asked me what I wanted to do this summer.
I want to go to Disneyland.
I want to visit my family in Colorado.
I want to see the new James Bond movie.
I want to see the new Black Widow movie.
I want to see any movie in a movie theater.
I want to see my son.
I want to sit down in a restaurant and be handed a menu.
I want to stop thinking about social distance.
I want to stop worrying that I haven't washed my hands enough.
I want to drop by the store to pick up a few things without having to stand in line for an hour.
I want to use the Pearl Jam tickets I bought last December.
I want to use the Green Day tickets I bought last January.
I want to sit on the couch and watch sports that didn't take place a decade or more ago.
I want to leave my house without checking first to be sure I have my mask.
I want to see people's chins.
I want to go a week without Zoom.
I want to binge-watch TV shows as a choice, not an avocation.
I want to go to Best Buy and just wander around looking at stuff.
I want to have a week or two to stop worrying about what school will look like in August.
I want to go to a park without feeling like a desperado.
I want to go on an airplane without having to wear a hazmat suit.
I want to go to a baseball game.
I want to watch old movies and not flinch when I see crowds of people.
I want to shake hands.
I want to high five.
I want to fist bump.
I want to stand uncomfortably close to strangers.
I want to hug.
I want to stop referring to this as "the new normal."

Lost And Found

Today is the day that families are invited to drop by our school and stand six feet apart. While they are there, they will pick up report cards and drop off any work that their children may have completed during the weeks that they have been locked away. They are also encouraged to take a trip through the wonderland of jackets and coats that were left in classrooms or on the playground over the course of six months when we were all in school.
When I was busied with the task of taking the boxes and bags full of outerwear and laying them out on our cafeteria tables, it did not occur to me that I should count them. I was careful to give each one enough space to be visible without a lot of pawing and additional sorting. I also tried to separate the myriad of black sweatshirts by putting a pink or red or blue something in between. I would be willing to make my guess at more than two hundred.
I am also willing to guess that we will still have a great many jackets, coats and sweatshirts left when all is said and done. We will also have a number of leftover report cards. Try as we might, we simply have not made contact with every family, every student. I will continue to laud our school's efforts in distance learning and the commitment our staff has to the community we serve, but I know that we aren't able to make the difference that we used to.
I also know that there will be a sea of anxious faces, young and old, asking what will happen in the fall. I wish that we had answers to all the questions they will have. One of our third grade teachers suggested that our job currently was like flying an airplane as we were still in the process of building that airplane. So far we have avoided impact. That doesn't mean we haven't had any casualties. We know that when we all come together again in whatever shape public education takes in the next few months, there will be gaps. Progress that had been made over the first two trimesters will be mitigated by a lack of practice and reminders. To be sure, there are kids who have used this opportunity to soar. Independent study and online learning suits them. These are the ones who have parents who are there to answer questions, or help them find an answer. These are not the ones we have been looking for.
They are also not the ones, for the most part, who have jackets laying on our cafeteria tables. The close of a school year is often looked upon as an ending, but after all these years I can't bring myself to think of it that way. Instead I see a tide going out. It will come back again soon enough, and when it does all that bare sand will be covered for a while. When it goes out again, there will be things washed on the shore by the waves: shells, driftwood, and probably a great many black sweatshirts.

Every Day

John Prine.
Adam Schleshinger. 
Terrence McNally. 
I could go on and on.
But at this moment I would rather not.
Today is Memorial Day, and the history of the holiday suggests that we should honor our war dead. Our "president" recently declared that we are all warriors. I'm not sure how his vision of conscientious objection figures in here, but I am not sure how I feel about going into battle without a vaccine. Or a mask.
As we creep ever closer to one hundred thousand Americans who have died in just a few months, I feel it is vital that we take more than a moment to reflect on lives lost. Not just the musicians and the playwrights. Not just the celebrities. Mothers. Fathers. Sisters. Brothers. Family and friends. Acquaintances and colleagues. And yes, we are currently talking about a tiny percentage of Americans who have succumbed to the virus we call by so many names. More American lives than we lost in two decades in Vietnam. When all is said and done, we will most likely double that total in less than six months. Vietnam was a shooting war, by the way. Combatants were armed.
We are not.
Sure, we have our defenses, but the powers that be seem to be anxious to see how we could do without them. Not many days pass without a thousand people dying here in the United States. Sometimes more. Funerals and memorial services are being held virtually as we continue to keep our distance from the disease and each other. Families are saying goodbye to their loved ones on Zoom. The "president" announced that he would lower flags at all federal buildings and national monuments to half staff over the next three days in the memory of Americans lost to corona-Covid-Sars-flu. Monday the flags will remain at half staff in tribute to the veterans who have lost their lives. No word yet about what to do about the folks who died from the virus in veterans hospitals. Maybe the flag just goes down all the way.
Meanwhile, good people across the globe are dying.
Remember them every day.