Do not expect any coherence to this post.
My spouse is out of town on a family birding trip.
I have done a variety of things today, and in part while driving to and from several events spent some time letting my mind go where it would…
I have a welter of thoughts rattling around, and I will will ramble my way through them…
whether anything I offer has any value??? Well, that is for others to decide
I have not posted on my teaching this year. I am in a school with its share of problems. Perhaps one way of expressing that is to note that in one week the fire alarm went off 7 times, including twice in one period, only one of which was a fire drill. The following week we had a fire set in a bathroom. We have had students roaming the halls. We have had an acting principal who had to step down — she was one of two administrators with full authority (we have two retired principals filling in) when we should have a principal and four assistant principals. It was simply too much. Central administration is going to provide administrative support and we saw some evidence of that when they announced any student in the hallway without a pass would be suspended for 3 days. I am told by someone who was given a radio and told to act as a quasi-administrator that more than 50 students were suspended that first day. This is in a school with about 1300 on the rolls, and that has a 35% turnover of students during the school year.
Meanwhile, with about 300 listed as seniors, we already have 33 who after half a year will not graduate, unless via credit recovery they can somehow make up stuff. That includes at least three seniors who cannot now mathematically pass the mandatory government class with me: perhaps if they ever showed up to class …..
If you get the sense that I have not been writing about my teaching because of my frustration with where I am, you would be corrected. Most of my students in my two AP classes cannot or will not function at a level where they have any chance of passing the AP test in May. It is not even clear that I would have even one section of AP Govt next year should I return.
As bad as that is, here’s what is worse: five of my six classes are government, and as anyone who frequents this site knows given our current national administration it is not clear that what I must teach them for either the state test or the AP test is in anyway relevant to what is actually going on in Washington DC. But perhaps it does not matter — almost none of them watch or read any news. A few of my Latino students pay attention because either they or their parents are concerned with what might happen with respect to what ICE can do to them.
I went to an event this afternoon where I had a conversation with an Army officer who serves in a policy position at the Pentagon. S/he said that s/he did know of anyone who wanted to do the parade Trump wants. All are worried that we will be in a war in Korea within a few months after the Olympics. Others in the conversation, who included people who are strong conservatives and Republican, including at least two people with political appointment in the current national administration, wondered if the military might refuse orders to launch an attack on Korea. Apparently a lot of political types around Mattis are like him former Marines, which means they would follow his lead. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is also a Marine. While some here might wonder about uniformed military resisting the civilian authority over them, technically Mattis is now a civilian. Were he to refuse/resist on the grounds of loyalty to the Constitution, were he forced to resign or to be fired, a couple of people in the conversation, including the serving Army officer, wondered if the military might well back Mattis against Trump.
What might that mean to our country?
Other democracies have had the military rise up against what they saw as despotism, but it has rarely turned out well in the long term — look at Turkey, for example.
I am 71. We have taken some actions that might make it possible for me to work only part-time and our being able to stay afloat financially.
I am torn — a part of me wants to teach in an independent school setting where I can get away from all the bullshit with which I have to deal in any public school setting. On the other hand, even in the mess in which I now teach, there are students who do respond to me, for whom I make a difference, and were I to leave, either in the middle of this year or not to return, it is highly unlikely they will get anyone close to what I give them, even with all the disruptions with which I have to deal.
I have a wife with an incurable but manageable cancer, with which we have now lived for more than 5 years since we found out. We consider ourselves lucky to still be together. As a result of needing a tooth extracted I discovered I had an aortic aneurysm which therefore got addressed. Absent that I might well have died of a heart attack shoveling snow during the winter of 2016-17.
We have two older cats with health issues that we have to regularly address, but they are still both with us and very loving.
I still have my hearing and can immerse myself in music. I even teach one course in music.
I seem not to have the time or energy to do the reading — or writing — that has been so much of a part of my recent life.
For most of my life I have been an extrovert, albeit shy and socially awkward, which has at time made things difficult.
I may be turning into an introvert as I approach my dotage. I even find myself less inclined to go and plant myself in my local Starbucks to be around others. I am perhaps more comfortable sitting at home, where I can be with my cats. And when I am in Starbucks, I almost wall myself off with earphones in, either being on my computer, or immersed in a book, or jotting reflections/observation in the pocket notebooks I have carried with me for most of the time the past half-century. What I write in those is probably of even less import or value than the dreck I post here.
Not that all of what I post is dreck. Don’t get me wrong. I know that a fair amount of what I offer is of value to at least a few people.
But as my life begins to wind down, I am confronted constantly with the question of what difference I am making.
I had a recent exchange of emails with a young lady now in college whom I taught a few years back in a high school near Baltimore. She reached out to me because I made a difference in her life. She emphasized to me that I had for a good number of her classmates as well.
But does anything I do make a difference now?
Does that still have to matter, or have I reached a point where I can let go of that?
IF I let go of that impulse, to make a difference, am I letting go of life?
I feel my body beginning to betray me. I have lost some teeth. I have lost most of my hair. My energy levels seem to be fading I need more sleep According to my opthamologist, my eyesight has now improved to the point that I could legally drive without glasses, even though I do have trouble with smaller print. My hearing, while still at least normal, is not as acute as it used to be, and I occasionally have to ask people to repeat things.
I know I am not dead yet. I can still get passionate about injustice. I can still be moved to tears by things I read, by music I listen to, by things I see.
I remember my mother’s father telling me near the end of his life that the first part of the paper to which he turned was the obituaries to see whom else he knew that he had outlived.
I am now used to learning of those with whom I went to school or college passing, some slightly older (I was ahead of myself), increasingly those who were younger. I have acquaintances who have lost children and spouses. While we used to expect that I would predecease Leaves on the Current (I am more than a decade older) now we don’t know who will go first. In a sense that is a bit scary. When I had to have some relatively minor surgery recently, because it involved full anaesthesia I went through the process of preparing full paperwork — a will, a medical power of attorney, a durable legal power of attorney (yes, I know as my spouse Leaves would have most of the authority anyhow, but these things make things easier). It was also making sure she had passwords to my email and any other accounts she might need. It was making sure there was enough $$ in her account to address bills in the short term just in case. Perhaps all of these are things we should have done long ago…
What is left of life? I don’t know.
And despite this post, I don’t really obsess about when I might pass, or when she might.
From time to time I step back and wonder — about the path I have traveled, about the many mistakes I have made, about what might still lie ahead of me.
About the only thing know comes from my wandering through various religious traditions, especially my time in the Orthodox Church, where I used to go Mount Athos in Greece (the abbot of one of the monasteries was my spiritual father for a number of years). I usually chose to walk from monastery to monastery via the old footpaths, rather than hitching a ride on the logging and other roads, because it seemed to me that how I traveled was at least as important as the destination to which I traveled. Later I read from Kallistos Ware that he did the same, because in pilgrimage our traveling was as important as our destination.
So what I can say is this… I am on a pilgrimage, only I do not know the final destination. At some point my consciousness may cease, even though technically I might still be alive. It is not that I need to make amends for all of my past misdeeds before then — in a sense that is not possible. What I can do is to live with a certain consciousness of now, and to try to minimize the harm that I now do, in word or deed or thought.
I may have learned some things during more than 7 decades. Hopefully in the time left to me I will continue to learn. Of equal importance, hopefully I will continue to open up and not worry about the possible hurt or disappointment that so often restricts me — and perhaps others — by fear.
And maybe in the process I will finally figure out what I want to do and be when I grow up.
If I ever do.…..
peace