Tonight, at the end of this busy night during student orientation, I am thinking about a woman named Nanette who attended the church where I went in New York City. Nanette was one of those wizened women who told stories and imparted the wisdom of life, in an almost off-handed manner. I got to know Nanette at Advent Lutheran on the Upper West Side through a small group discussion. I remember vividly Nanette describing how she loved to bake bread. It was more of an obsession handed down from her father, as she relayed the story.
She spoke of growing up in New Hampshire, and delighted filling in the story with marvelous details about her World War II era neighborhood of saltbox cape cod houses with white clapboard siding. She spoke about the kitchen and that warm, ferment-y aroma emanating from the oven, that smell that makes your mouth water and your heart soften.
As is often the case with these older-women-in-a-church, she shared her story deliberately and at a leisurely pace. She explained that her dad was the chief bread-baker in their family, and he approached the task with scientific precision. Nanette said her father had a basic recipe that worked pretty well, but he was always experimenting, tweaking this and that to see how it would change. He carefully measured the flour and the yeast, the salt and the water and the honey, and he kept meticulous notes on what he had done. As the silver-tongued Nanette relayed, he loved the experimenting: one time, a half-cup more whole-wheat flour; next time, a half-teaspoon less yeast. Another time, two tablespoons of oil. Extra kneading. Let it rise in the oven. Let it rise by the wood stove. Bake it hotter and shorter. Bake it cooler and longer.
Nanette’s father kept track of what he put into the dough, and he kept track of how he handled it, and he kept track of how it turned out. This time, too dry. Next time, too sticky. Another time, it didn’t rise nearly enough, and it came out of the oven like a dense, solid brick. He kept track of all these things—he even kept track of the weather conditions, she said, the humidity and the temperature and the precipitation. And yet, no matter how meticulous his notes were, no matter how many factors he tried to track, the bread was never quite predictable. All those experiments let him come closer to the results he wanted, but he never pinned it down entirely. There always remained some element of wildness, of unpredictability.
Let’s think about the mystery and magic of yeast: just a couple of teaspoons is enough to leaven several cups of flour! There are things you can do to help it along—you can feed it and keep it warm and give it time to grow—but you can’t control it entirely. As Nanette told her story of her bread-baking father, she helped us understand the point she wanted to make. Again, there are things you can do to help the yeast along—you can feed it and keep it warm and give it time to grow—but you can’t control it entirely. Hmmmm…Nanette reminded us, you might set it to rise and go off to do an errand, thinking you have plenty of time, only to return and find your counter overrun by sticky dough. Or maybe you’ve scheduled a dinner party, and you have everything carefully planned. The bread will come out at 6:45; the guests will arrive at 7:00; you will sit down to piping hot bowls of soup and fresh, warm, crusty slices of bread ... And then you might find that the yeast is taking its sweet time and the bread won’t be ready for another hour, and you and your guests are just going to have to wait. The yeast does not grow on your time frame, her dad cautioned her. It is not concerned about being convenient. It has a pace of its own, as living things do, and although you can help it or hinder it, there always remains some element of mystery, of wildness, of unpredictability.
Just like my good friend Doris Jackson is able to do, and like my grandmothers, Nanette brought her story of daily life back to something relating to church interest. Nanette taught me something I did not know: in Bible times, good as it might smell in the baking of bread, yeast was a symbol of impurity, of uncleanness. At Passover, when they commemorated the Israelites’ hasty flight out of Egypt, all traces of leaven had to be removed from the house—the dishes scoured, the cupboards swept, and any leavened bread consumed or disposed of. Just the littlest bit of yeast was enough to contaminate a whole barrel of flour, because it was alive and unpredictable, and it might start growing and spreading like an invasive species. No matter how carefully you measure or how meticulously you experiment with the yeast, you can’t quite control it!
You may begin to see why Nanette and her wonderful story of yeast, of unpredictability come to mind tonight. Tomorrow we end student orientation and we begin teaching classes here at KA! Teaching adolescents is remarkably similar to baking bread. You can experiment, you can tweak, you can take meticulous notes, and yet these magnificent adolescents evolve at their own pace. There is certainly more than a bit of mystery and wildness and unpredictability to this very measured maturation. And like the baking of bread, teaching is a thrilling and nourishing way to spend a life.
Because the aisle full of Pepperidge Farm and Wonderbread makes it easy to forget the mysterious unpredictability of yeast, I don’t marvel enough at this process that requires patience, craft, skill, experience, and will. Tomorrow as I begin my 22nd year of teaching high school I am thrilled to see our own “invasive species” back on campus, the young historians I will encounter in Room 125 in the King Hussein Humanities Wing in the Academy Building at KA.
Who knows what this year will bring? I do know I am excited to begin year four with some of the most invigorating students I have ever taught. I have a feeling that Nanette’s story, and its promise of that the sweet and pungent aroma of the unpredictable, mysterious, alive and growing invasive species will thrill me yet again.
Can you smell it?
Friday, September 17, 2010
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Chortled for Days
Yes, I know—not every blog entry needs to be a 1500-word sermon! There are actually days when I don’t think one heavy-handed thought…in fact, there are some days as I look back on them marked simply by laughter.
Last weekend my new neighbors in the Nihal dormitory (my home in Jordan since I arrived in 2007) invited me over to their apartment for the evening. Win and Jennie are newlyweds, and newly arrived in Jordan, and are the kind of people when you meet them, you just stop and say, “You are my instant great friend!”
Over appetizers, then dinner, then dessert, we discussed books we loved (actually the way I found out about their book-loves was nosing around the apartment and checking out what was available in the bathroom) and how to best get across town in New York (they are just from New York, my favorite city in the world) by subway or bus.
Old KA friends Arthur and Tristan joined us for dinner, and the mood was relaxed and exuberant, but not laid-back (meaning that these are interesting, intense people!) Win and Jennie, excellent hosts and brilliant conversationalists, kept us zinging on topics from opera and Wagner and Mozart to sports cars to philosophy in Arabic to sunsets in Vermont. It was clear that this was more than just a fun evening—this was the birth of a new friendship.
At some point I did an imitation of someone near and dear to many at KA, and I used the verb, “titter” to describe the kind of laugh emerging from Tristan. Win seized on that verb and said, “That is a great verb—such a precise way to describe that laugh, much better than just saying laugh.” From there our dining table jumped into the nature of the many verbs that mean laugh. It was exactly what I loved about this evening, and what I can tell is one of the exciting things about these new friends: they are both high brow and low brow. So Tristan decided he loved the verb “chortle” as his go-to fave verb about laughing. In his brilliant way Tristan explained why he thought chortle was such a great kind of laugh and the subtleties of “chortle.” In my strange encyclopedic way I said, “You know Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber used the verb chortle in a line in their show, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and I sang the line, “If he cracked a joke, then you chortled for days.” Of course I needed to explain the context that at the top of Act II the Narrator explained in song to the audience:
Pharaoh, he was a powerful man
with the ancient world in the palm of his hands.
To all intents and purposes he was Egypt with a capital E.
Whatever he did, he was showered with praise.
If he cracked a joke, then you chortled for days.
No one had rights or a vote but the king;
in fact you might say he was fairly right wing.
When Pharaoh's around, than you get down, on the ground.
If you ever find yourself near Ramases, get down on your knees.
This was a great crowd—no one thought this was the least bit weird that I could command a line of musical theater about “chortle.” I said, “Of course I can cite that line, but I really can’t change a tire on car very well.”
As we come to the end of orientation (yes, KA has the longest orientation process of any school on the planet. I have been showing up for work for two weeks and two days and finally we are about to embark on the teaching school year!) I am quite pleased with the beginning vibes of this school year. I am working with the youngest faculty members, the seven recently graduated college students who will be teaching art, biology, chemistry, physics, world history (two of them) and Chinese. They are green, of course, but how fun to meet them and work with them in this first year of teaching. I have enjoyed the new members of the History Department—we have 12 members and an exciting, invigorating group of educators they are. And I have greeted dear, old KA friends Tessa and Nancy and sat down for chats and hugs and laughter. And if you know my inimitable friend Gary, well, I will surely have to do a blog entry on this Klein Meets the Middle East experience. My father said over the summer numerous times, “Every time I think of Gary joining you in Jordan, well, I just smile.”
So in and out of the 2 or 3 hour meetings during orientation have been these exquisite moments of laughter. It has been a very risible reunion with old friends and healthy guffaws with new friends.
One of the best cachinnations of the last two weeks came when Gary and I went to the grocery for his first time in Jordan. We got some staple goods, and as went through the check-out line, and I said in greeting, “Marhaba,” to the clerk, and the man spoke to Gary a greeting in Arabic. Gary didn’t understand, and the clerk, apologized, saying, “Oh, I am sorry. I thought you were Arabia. You look like Arabic.”
As my dear New York friend Gary Klein then said as he smiled, “Well, I am a little bit Arabia.”
About that exchange, well, I chortled for days!
Last weekend my new neighbors in the Nihal dormitory (my home in Jordan since I arrived in 2007) invited me over to their apartment for the evening. Win and Jennie are newlyweds, and newly arrived in Jordan, and are the kind of people when you meet them, you just stop and say, “You are my instant great friend!”
Over appetizers, then dinner, then dessert, we discussed books we loved (actually the way I found out about their book-loves was nosing around the apartment and checking out what was available in the bathroom) and how to best get across town in New York (they are just from New York, my favorite city in the world) by subway or bus.
Old KA friends Arthur and Tristan joined us for dinner, and the mood was relaxed and exuberant, but not laid-back (meaning that these are interesting, intense people!) Win and Jennie, excellent hosts and brilliant conversationalists, kept us zinging on topics from opera and Wagner and Mozart to sports cars to philosophy in Arabic to sunsets in Vermont. It was clear that this was more than just a fun evening—this was the birth of a new friendship.
At some point I did an imitation of someone near and dear to many at KA, and I used the verb, “titter” to describe the kind of laugh emerging from Tristan. Win seized on that verb and said, “That is a great verb—such a precise way to describe that laugh, much better than just saying laugh.” From there our dining table jumped into the nature of the many verbs that mean laugh. It was exactly what I loved about this evening, and what I can tell is one of the exciting things about these new friends: they are both high brow and low brow. So Tristan decided he loved the verb “chortle” as his go-to fave verb about laughing. In his brilliant way Tristan explained why he thought chortle was such a great kind of laugh and the subtleties of “chortle.” In my strange encyclopedic way I said, “You know Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber used the verb chortle in a line in their show, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and I sang the line, “If he cracked a joke, then you chortled for days.” Of course I needed to explain the context that at the top of Act II the Narrator explained in song to the audience:
Pharaoh, he was a powerful man
with the ancient world in the palm of his hands.
To all intents and purposes he was Egypt with a capital E.
Whatever he did, he was showered with praise.
If he cracked a joke, then you chortled for days.
No one had rights or a vote but the king;
in fact you might say he was fairly right wing.
When Pharaoh's around, than you get down, on the ground.
If you ever find yourself near Ramases, get down on your knees.
This was a great crowd—no one thought this was the least bit weird that I could command a line of musical theater about “chortle.” I said, “Of course I can cite that line, but I really can’t change a tire on car very well.”
As we come to the end of orientation (yes, KA has the longest orientation process of any school on the planet. I have been showing up for work for two weeks and two days and finally we are about to embark on the teaching school year!) I am quite pleased with the beginning vibes of this school year. I am working with the youngest faculty members, the seven recently graduated college students who will be teaching art, biology, chemistry, physics, world history (two of them) and Chinese. They are green, of course, but how fun to meet them and work with them in this first year of teaching. I have enjoyed the new members of the History Department—we have 12 members and an exciting, invigorating group of educators they are. And I have greeted dear, old KA friends Tessa and Nancy and sat down for chats and hugs and laughter. And if you know my inimitable friend Gary, well, I will surely have to do a blog entry on this Klein Meets the Middle East experience. My father said over the summer numerous times, “Every time I think of Gary joining you in Jordan, well, I just smile.”
So in and out of the 2 or 3 hour meetings during orientation have been these exquisite moments of laughter. It has been a very risible reunion with old friends and healthy guffaws with new friends.
One of the best cachinnations of the last two weeks came when Gary and I went to the grocery for his first time in Jordan. We got some staple goods, and as went through the check-out line, and I said in greeting, “Marhaba,” to the clerk, and the man spoke to Gary a greeting in Arabic. Gary didn’t understand, and the clerk, apologized, saying, “Oh, I am sorry. I thought you were Arabia. You look like Arabic.”
As my dear New York friend Gary Klein then said as he smiled, “Well, I am a little bit Arabia.”
About that exchange, well, I chortled for days!
Friday, September 10, 2010
Bright September Mornings
On a bright September morning in downtown Manhattan, at an address that symbolized the vigorous beating heart of American capitalism, a terrorist explosion ripped through buildings, shattering glass and ending lives.
It was ninety years ago this next week, on September 16th, that the 1920 Wall Street blast killed 38 and injured hundreds. It was, at that time, the most deadly act of terrorism on American soil in American history. Among the victims were employees of the J.P. Morgan bank, whose iconic limestone headquarters at 23 Wall Street was pockmarked by shrapnel from the dynamite. The explosion was widely presumed to be the work of anarchists lashing out against the financial elite, of which the “House of Morgan” was pre-eminent. The perpetrators were never identified. But Jack Morgan, son of the late renowned J. Pierpont Morgan, and arguably the age’s most powerful financier, had his own pre-determined ideas about who was responsible: “the Jews.”
There’s no mystery about the terrorist attack that struck downtown Manhattan 81 Septembers later. Self-avowed Islamic extremists giddily claimed credit.
In the last month, as arguments raged over the location of a mosque in New York and Rev. Terry Jones of Florida announcement of a Koran-burning parade on this September 11th, I thought of Jack Morgan’s pronouncement. Most of us find Morgan’s accusations heinous today, but there were many times in the last 350 years when Americans hurled such insults at Baptists, Catholics, and Mormons, among others. This summer there did seem to be a growing fear that America’s 2.6 million Muslims are preparing to impose sharia law on their 348 million fellow citizens. Speaking within sight of the Statue of Liberty, Mayor Michael Bloomberg last month asserted that the right of Americans to practice their religion could not be bounded or constrained.
I wondered what Jack Morgan would have made of this occasion. Like us, he was a creature of his time, so it’s doubtful he gave much thought to Muslims or mosques ninety years ago. But a Jewish mayor? Jack may be spinning in his gilded grave.
To New Yorkers and to Americans in 1920, the death toll from the Wall Street blast seemed incomprehensible. “The horrible slaughter and maiming of men and women,” wrote the New York Call, “was a calamity that almost stills the beating of the heart of the people.” That those numbers now seem paltry -- statistics from a past when we counted civilian deaths in dozens instead of thousands -- underscores just how violently our own world has changed.
The destruction of the World Trade Center now stands alone in the annals of horror. But despite the difference in scale, the Wall Street explosion forced upon New York and the nation many of the same questions that we have confronted over the last nine years: How should we respond to violence on this new scale? What is the proper balance between freedom and security? Who, exactly, is responsible for the destruction? How should they pay for it? Is there such a thing as closure?
Maureen Dowd wrote in her column recently, “Some critics have said the ultimate victory for Osama and the 9/11 hijackers would be to allow a mosque to be built near ground zero. Actually, the ultimate victory for Osama and the 9/11 hijackers is the moral timidity that would ban a mosque from that neighborhood. Our enemies struck at our heart, but did they also warp our identity? “
Have any of the screaming critics noticed that there already are two mosques in the same neighborhood — one four blocks away and one 12 blocks away. Should they be dismantled? And what about the liquor stores and strip clubs in the periphery of the sacred ground? Criticizing his fellow Republicans, New Jersey Governor Christie said that while he understood the pain and sorrow of family members who lost loved ones on 9/11, “we cannot paint all of Islam with that brush.”
Governor Christie charged President Barack Obama with trying to turn the issue into a “political football.” As Maureen Dowd said, “But that is not quite right. It already was a political football and the president fumbled it.”
Tomorrow our country commemorates the ninth anniversary of the terrorist’s attacks on 9/11. Once again our nation will come together to remember those who died on that horrible day, that bright September morning. Partisan politics will be set aside, if but for a little while, as all across America we honor those who died needless deaths, the bravery and courage of those who fought to resist the attack, and those who gave their lives in the attempt to save others.
I am sure the media will interview Americans for their responses to 9/11 and the proposed mosque. Someone will say, “I think it’s absurd. I don’t think we should forgive the people who did this to us.” Another will say, “I think that these families need some closure, and the only way they’re going to get closure is to see justice done.” Someone, probably older, will say, “I think it’s overdue. Forgiveness is what we’re supposed to do.” Hopefully someone will say, “I think if we don’t show a little forgiveness then we’re no better than the terrorists that acted upon it in the first place.”
And then we can debate, ponder, volley-ball the nuances and nature of forgiveness.
It is true that in the face of such violent tragedy our instincts take us to a place where retribution, vengeance, and reciprocal violence rules our emotions. We should “give as much as we get!” “Never forget!” “… if you’re against us you’ll feel our wrath!” It is human nature to react in such ways. But vengeance always begets vengeance. Human history bears the scars of the pattern of violent action, followed by violent response, followed by violent action, followed by violent response—an unbroken, unending pattern of vengeance and violence.
Forgiveness??? How hard it is to forgive!
Forgiveness requires that we let go of the past in order to live a future in peace. How hard it is. But it is possible. Let us look at some examples from the recent past, the lifetime of my students here in Jordan:
In 1994 Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as the first black president of South Africa. During the violent years of apartheid preceding his election, Mandela had engaged in armed resistance to the government. As a result he was arrested and spent 27 years in prison. While there he re‐committed himself to non‐violent action. Upon his release he led the negotiations that resulted in South Africa’s first multi‐racial elections and the end to apartheid. While many expected the new government to become the new oppressors, Mandela amazed everyone and set the tone for reconciliation by inviting his former white jailer to be a VIP guest standing with him at his inauguration.
In the year 2000, Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Nazi concentrations camps, spoke to the German Parliament on the commemoration of the holocaust. On behalf of those murdered and those imprisoned he said to the assembled German leaders, “You have been helpful to Israel after the war, with reparations and financial assistance. But you have never asked the Jewish people to forgive you for what the Nazis did.” Two weeks later, the German parliamentary president, Johannes Rau, went to the Israeli Knesset and did just that.
A man named Andrew Rice lost his brother, David, in the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11. In the months to follow, as he worked through his grief, he became convinced that retribution was not the best way to honor his brother’s memory. He joined with groups of other families who had lost loved ones on 9/11 to seek reconciliation personally and nationally. A few months later one of those groups was contacted by the mother of the alleged 20th hijacker, Zacharias Moussaoui, who wanted to meet with some of the families and ask for their forgiveness. In 2002 a small group met secretly to meet Moussaoui’s mother. Mother embraced Mother and Andrew’s tears were added to the huddle as forgiveness was asked for and extended.
In 2006 in a small Amish community in Pennsylvania, a deeply troubled milk truck driver killed five girls and wounded five more in shooting spree that shocked Americans. Even more shocking was the response of the Amish community to the family of the shooter. Amish mothers visited the shooter’s wife and children to offer their condolences and some days later members of the Amish community surrounded the family at the killer’s funeral.
On this bright September morning, let us step back and imagine reconciliation and harmony. How may we better answer the questions that pained Americans in 1920 and 2001 as wisely as possible in 2010?
It was ninety years ago this next week, on September 16th, that the 1920 Wall Street blast killed 38 and injured hundreds. It was, at that time, the most deadly act of terrorism on American soil in American history. Among the victims were employees of the J.P. Morgan bank, whose iconic limestone headquarters at 23 Wall Street was pockmarked by shrapnel from the dynamite. The explosion was widely presumed to be the work of anarchists lashing out against the financial elite, of which the “House of Morgan” was pre-eminent. The perpetrators were never identified. But Jack Morgan, son of the late renowned J. Pierpont Morgan, and arguably the age’s most powerful financier, had his own pre-determined ideas about who was responsible: “the Jews.”
There’s no mystery about the terrorist attack that struck downtown Manhattan 81 Septembers later. Self-avowed Islamic extremists giddily claimed credit.
In the last month, as arguments raged over the location of a mosque in New York and Rev. Terry Jones of Florida announcement of a Koran-burning parade on this September 11th, I thought of Jack Morgan’s pronouncement. Most of us find Morgan’s accusations heinous today, but there were many times in the last 350 years when Americans hurled such insults at Baptists, Catholics, and Mormons, among others. This summer there did seem to be a growing fear that America’s 2.6 million Muslims are preparing to impose sharia law on their 348 million fellow citizens. Speaking within sight of the Statue of Liberty, Mayor Michael Bloomberg last month asserted that the right of Americans to practice their religion could not be bounded or constrained.
I wondered what Jack Morgan would have made of this occasion. Like us, he was a creature of his time, so it’s doubtful he gave much thought to Muslims or mosques ninety years ago. But a Jewish mayor? Jack may be spinning in his gilded grave.
To New Yorkers and to Americans in 1920, the death toll from the Wall Street blast seemed incomprehensible. “The horrible slaughter and maiming of men and women,” wrote the New York Call, “was a calamity that almost stills the beating of the heart of the people.” That those numbers now seem paltry -- statistics from a past when we counted civilian deaths in dozens instead of thousands -- underscores just how violently our own world has changed.
The destruction of the World Trade Center now stands alone in the annals of horror. But despite the difference in scale, the Wall Street explosion forced upon New York and the nation many of the same questions that we have confronted over the last nine years: How should we respond to violence on this new scale? What is the proper balance between freedom and security? Who, exactly, is responsible for the destruction? How should they pay for it? Is there such a thing as closure?
Maureen Dowd wrote in her column recently, “Some critics have said the ultimate victory for Osama and the 9/11 hijackers would be to allow a mosque to be built near ground zero. Actually, the ultimate victory for Osama and the 9/11 hijackers is the moral timidity that would ban a mosque from that neighborhood. Our enemies struck at our heart, but did they also warp our identity? “
Have any of the screaming critics noticed that there already are two mosques in the same neighborhood — one four blocks away and one 12 blocks away. Should they be dismantled? And what about the liquor stores and strip clubs in the periphery of the sacred ground? Criticizing his fellow Republicans, New Jersey Governor Christie said that while he understood the pain and sorrow of family members who lost loved ones on 9/11, “we cannot paint all of Islam with that brush.”
Governor Christie charged President Barack Obama with trying to turn the issue into a “political football.” As Maureen Dowd said, “But that is not quite right. It already was a political football and the president fumbled it.”
Tomorrow our country commemorates the ninth anniversary of the terrorist’s attacks on 9/11. Once again our nation will come together to remember those who died on that horrible day, that bright September morning. Partisan politics will be set aside, if but for a little while, as all across America we honor those who died needless deaths, the bravery and courage of those who fought to resist the attack, and those who gave their lives in the attempt to save others.
I am sure the media will interview Americans for their responses to 9/11 and the proposed mosque. Someone will say, “I think it’s absurd. I don’t think we should forgive the people who did this to us.” Another will say, “I think that these families need some closure, and the only way they’re going to get closure is to see justice done.” Someone, probably older, will say, “I think it’s overdue. Forgiveness is what we’re supposed to do.” Hopefully someone will say, “I think if we don’t show a little forgiveness then we’re no better than the terrorists that acted upon it in the first place.”
And then we can debate, ponder, volley-ball the nuances and nature of forgiveness.
It is true that in the face of such violent tragedy our instincts take us to a place where retribution, vengeance, and reciprocal violence rules our emotions. We should “give as much as we get!” “Never forget!” “… if you’re against us you’ll feel our wrath!” It is human nature to react in such ways. But vengeance always begets vengeance. Human history bears the scars of the pattern of violent action, followed by violent response, followed by violent action, followed by violent response—an unbroken, unending pattern of vengeance and violence.
Forgiveness??? How hard it is to forgive!
Forgiveness requires that we let go of the past in order to live a future in peace. How hard it is. But it is possible. Let us look at some examples from the recent past, the lifetime of my students here in Jordan:
In 1994 Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as the first black president of South Africa. During the violent years of apartheid preceding his election, Mandela had engaged in armed resistance to the government. As a result he was arrested and spent 27 years in prison. While there he re‐committed himself to non‐violent action. Upon his release he led the negotiations that resulted in South Africa’s first multi‐racial elections and the end to apartheid. While many expected the new government to become the new oppressors, Mandela amazed everyone and set the tone for reconciliation by inviting his former white jailer to be a VIP guest standing with him at his inauguration.
In the year 2000, Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Nazi concentrations camps, spoke to the German Parliament on the commemoration of the holocaust. On behalf of those murdered and those imprisoned he said to the assembled German leaders, “You have been helpful to Israel after the war, with reparations and financial assistance. But you have never asked the Jewish people to forgive you for what the Nazis did.” Two weeks later, the German parliamentary president, Johannes Rau, went to the Israeli Knesset and did just that.
A man named Andrew Rice lost his brother, David, in the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11. In the months to follow, as he worked through his grief, he became convinced that retribution was not the best way to honor his brother’s memory. He joined with groups of other families who had lost loved ones on 9/11 to seek reconciliation personally and nationally. A few months later one of those groups was contacted by the mother of the alleged 20th hijacker, Zacharias Moussaoui, who wanted to meet with some of the families and ask for their forgiveness. In 2002 a small group met secretly to meet Moussaoui’s mother. Mother embraced Mother and Andrew’s tears were added to the huddle as forgiveness was asked for and extended.
In 2006 in a small Amish community in Pennsylvania, a deeply troubled milk truck driver killed five girls and wounded five more in shooting spree that shocked Americans. Even more shocking was the response of the Amish community to the family of the shooter. Amish mothers visited the shooter’s wife and children to offer their condolences and some days later members of the Amish community surrounded the family at the killer’s funeral.
On this bright September morning, let us step back and imagine reconciliation and harmony. How may we better answer the questions that pained Americans in 1920 and 2001 as wisely as possible in 2010?
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Dreaming Big
It is now 10 days since I have landed in Jordan—hitting the ground running with a spate of meetings and dinners and brainstorming sessions and counseling and help sessions. Ten days and no blog entry! Hey, I was busy dreaming big!
Today is when I finally unpacked even though I had been back at KA for 10 days…again, I have been busy dreaming big!
Last week I arrived on Tuesday after a perfectly easy flight to JFK and then Amman. Since this is Year Four, this flight is almost old hat after numerous trans-Atlantic flights. In New York I met up with old KA colleague Tristan, who was coming back after a year of graduate work at Teachers College in New York. He had left the summer before, dreaming big of grad work and the possible career change to college professor. We regaled each other with stories of last year, catching him up on what all had transpired (I guess he doesn’t read the blog!) and then I heard that he hadn’t loved his experience at TC as much as he had imagined he would. He was thrilled to be coming back to KA—he felt he belonged here. Good! He kinda felt he hadn’t had the right dream…au contraire Tristan! He had dreamed big and decided that one place wasn’t right and another was right…how great to figure that out. The dream had taken him to where he needs to be.
Not that one needs reminders of how time flies, but 20 years ago exactly I had dreamed those same big dreams too—a chance to study at an Ivy League Institution and work on a Phd and probably teach at a prestigious college. Tristan had such a similar experience to mine, but in the end, 20 years ago, as I started at Charlotte Latin School, in the fall of 1990, I knew I was in the right place. I was where I needed to be. The ivy league thing had disappointed me, but not the field of education. I dreamed big and found it was a different dream. And I have loved the secondary school world ever since.
In these last 10 days we have not even had the old faculty return yet. In the last 10 days it has been department heads and senior staff working with the new faculty. Just them! Soon the returning faculty will join us, and then student leader proctors, and finally the rest of the student body. Besides the new faculty and new students, we have a new headmaster. So much dreaming big going on around here!
John Austin is our new head and as another reminder that I am not twenty-something anymore as I was at Latin 20 years ago, now the head of the school is just a couple of years older than I am. And the exciting mood on campus is palpable. Remember in the last blog entry I spoke of the hopes that infuse teachers in August every year, and the seal on my diploma from Brown offering the appeal, In Deo Speramus, In God We Hope…well that vibe is apparent around campus. There is a refreshed excitement about school, with all the newbie teachers, and new veterans, and a new head.
I miss our old head, the venerable Eric Widmer. There are so many things about him that I admire, namely his insistence that schools are only successful when the school community cherishes one another. It is in the mission statement of the school. He has codified this wish, this urgent hope, this big dream. He told me once of a discussion with a trustee who disagreed on the language of that phrase. The other man had suggested the word, “respect,” but Eric said that the quality of “cherish” is deeper and different and more challenging and more rewarding. He is right. I wrote to Eric the other day, expressing how I missed seeing him. I got a response that he is off for a trip to China, but that for the first time in 65 years he was not preparing to go to school. He turned 70 this past January, so he looked back over his career, and then way back to when he started school, and as he remembered, for the first time in his life since 1945, he wasn’t heading off to school. I will miss this wise man.
Besides my 20th anniversary of beginning of my teaching at Latin, I noted that this is also the 10th anniversary of the trip I made to Mississippi in 2000. That trip is significant for a number of reasons—it was my first trip with God’s Gift Anne Siviglia, but also the memorable trip with a few students where we really dug into the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi. It was a life-changing trip as we met among others, Unita Blackwell, a mover and shaker in the 1960s, and then mayor of her town for 25 years. Back during the Civil Rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s an old African-American spiritual became popular with those who engaged in the battle: “Keep Your Eyes On The Prize.” One of the most humbling and exciting elements of that trip was an up close audience of those who had dreamed big, dreamed so big for themselves and the United States. The source of that song is the Bible verse from Philippians 3:4-14, about the inner prize to which Paul urged the fledgling church in Philippi to hold onto. The meaning of the spiritual is clear: Don’t get distracted by the obstacles along the way! Don’t get depressed by the failures of the past! Don’t be consumed with the opposition that comes in the present! Find out where you need to be! Dream Big! And keep your eyes on the prize, hold on, hold on!
The prize that Unita Blackwell and countless other foot soldiers in that movement sought was equality, justice, freedom, access, and respect for all people—not just a privileged ethnic majority. The prize for Paul is coming to the end of the race and being called up by the highest judge and told, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”
“Eyes on the Prize” means focusing on what you want in life. “Dreaming Big” involves figuring out what road you need to travel to get to what you have deemed so important.
This is a good beginning of the year here. The new guy, the new head honcho John, is a good listener. He asks questions. He pays attention. He seeks out insights. He also commands a meeting well. He is very activist but not in a reckless manner. I can tell he will be a strong leader. In his first speech with the new faculty he explained the origins of the school. When Eric offered this speech every year, of course, he was one of the big dreamers about the school a decade ago after His Majesty first proposed the idea. But John wisely took another path: he created for us a context of the history of private education in the United States in the last 200-some years. He explained how the newest dreams propelled the private school world into the future. He did a marvelous job of showing how this school is at the forefront of something new. He did not do, as some others have done, the old propaganda of announcing that we are, or just about to be, one of the best schools in the world. No, what John did so well was encourage us to see how exciting it is to be at this school at this moment in history. If we keep our eyes on the prize our hopes and energy will transform this school, maybe even the world.
A child once reported to Archbishop Desmond Tutu that her prayer in life was simply this: “I pray for all of God’s dreams to come true.” A simple, faithful and straightforward prayer that contains within it a fascinating question—what exactly are God’s dreams? Archbishop Tutu has an idea. He writes that the dreams of God are full of amazing transformations. God’s dreams include the transformation of the ugliness, squalor and poverty of this world into laughter, joy and peace. God’s dreams include the transformation of war and hostility, greed and disharmony into justice and goodness, compassion and love, caring and sharing. It is a powerful and big dream.
Transformations. That is the stuff about which teachers dream big for their students.
Of course the reality of our world is that those who dream these big dreams will be confronted by others who do not share the same dream. Breaking down barriers is dangerous and contentious work. Conflict is part of the faithful journey, but it is not the destination, it is not God’s ultimate dream for us.
It has been an exciting beginning of the year. I am sure I will tell you about the new teachers as I get to know them. I am in charge of the youngest of the new faculty, the ones just sprung from college and these seven who dared to come to the Middle East and try teaching at this school.
I also spent time this summer dreaming big for me---where am I supposed to be? Oh my, weighty thoughts and dreams. But for right now, it is plain to me—I am where I need to be. I have my eyes on the prize!
Today is when I finally unpacked even though I had been back at KA for 10 days…again, I have been busy dreaming big!
Last week I arrived on Tuesday after a perfectly easy flight to JFK and then Amman. Since this is Year Four, this flight is almost old hat after numerous trans-Atlantic flights. In New York I met up with old KA colleague Tristan, who was coming back after a year of graduate work at Teachers College in New York. He had left the summer before, dreaming big of grad work and the possible career change to college professor. We regaled each other with stories of last year, catching him up on what all had transpired (I guess he doesn’t read the blog!) and then I heard that he hadn’t loved his experience at TC as much as he had imagined he would. He was thrilled to be coming back to KA—he felt he belonged here. Good! He kinda felt he hadn’t had the right dream…au contraire Tristan! He had dreamed big and decided that one place wasn’t right and another was right…how great to figure that out. The dream had taken him to where he needs to be.
Not that one needs reminders of how time flies, but 20 years ago exactly I had dreamed those same big dreams too—a chance to study at an Ivy League Institution and work on a Phd and probably teach at a prestigious college. Tristan had such a similar experience to mine, but in the end, 20 years ago, as I started at Charlotte Latin School, in the fall of 1990, I knew I was in the right place. I was where I needed to be. The ivy league thing had disappointed me, but not the field of education. I dreamed big and found it was a different dream. And I have loved the secondary school world ever since.
In these last 10 days we have not even had the old faculty return yet. In the last 10 days it has been department heads and senior staff working with the new faculty. Just them! Soon the returning faculty will join us, and then student leader proctors, and finally the rest of the student body. Besides the new faculty and new students, we have a new headmaster. So much dreaming big going on around here!
John Austin is our new head and as another reminder that I am not twenty-something anymore as I was at Latin 20 years ago, now the head of the school is just a couple of years older than I am. And the exciting mood on campus is palpable. Remember in the last blog entry I spoke of the hopes that infuse teachers in August every year, and the seal on my diploma from Brown offering the appeal, In Deo Speramus, In God We Hope…well that vibe is apparent around campus. There is a refreshed excitement about school, with all the newbie teachers, and new veterans, and a new head.
I miss our old head, the venerable Eric Widmer. There are so many things about him that I admire, namely his insistence that schools are only successful when the school community cherishes one another. It is in the mission statement of the school. He has codified this wish, this urgent hope, this big dream. He told me once of a discussion with a trustee who disagreed on the language of that phrase. The other man had suggested the word, “respect,” but Eric said that the quality of “cherish” is deeper and different and more challenging and more rewarding. He is right. I wrote to Eric the other day, expressing how I missed seeing him. I got a response that he is off for a trip to China, but that for the first time in 65 years he was not preparing to go to school. He turned 70 this past January, so he looked back over his career, and then way back to when he started school, and as he remembered, for the first time in his life since 1945, he wasn’t heading off to school. I will miss this wise man.
Besides my 20th anniversary of beginning of my teaching at Latin, I noted that this is also the 10th anniversary of the trip I made to Mississippi in 2000. That trip is significant for a number of reasons—it was my first trip with God’s Gift Anne Siviglia, but also the memorable trip with a few students where we really dug into the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi. It was a life-changing trip as we met among others, Unita Blackwell, a mover and shaker in the 1960s, and then mayor of her town for 25 years. Back during the Civil Rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s an old African-American spiritual became popular with those who engaged in the battle: “Keep Your Eyes On The Prize.” One of the most humbling and exciting elements of that trip was an up close audience of those who had dreamed big, dreamed so big for themselves and the United States. The source of that song is the Bible verse from Philippians 3:4-14, about the inner prize to which Paul urged the fledgling church in Philippi to hold onto. The meaning of the spiritual is clear: Don’t get distracted by the obstacles along the way! Don’t get depressed by the failures of the past! Don’t be consumed with the opposition that comes in the present! Find out where you need to be! Dream Big! And keep your eyes on the prize, hold on, hold on!
The prize that Unita Blackwell and countless other foot soldiers in that movement sought was equality, justice, freedom, access, and respect for all people—not just a privileged ethnic majority. The prize for Paul is coming to the end of the race and being called up by the highest judge and told, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”
“Eyes on the Prize” means focusing on what you want in life. “Dreaming Big” involves figuring out what road you need to travel to get to what you have deemed so important.
This is a good beginning of the year here. The new guy, the new head honcho John, is a good listener. He asks questions. He pays attention. He seeks out insights. He also commands a meeting well. He is very activist but not in a reckless manner. I can tell he will be a strong leader. In his first speech with the new faculty he explained the origins of the school. When Eric offered this speech every year, of course, he was one of the big dreamers about the school a decade ago after His Majesty first proposed the idea. But John wisely took another path: he created for us a context of the history of private education in the United States in the last 200-some years. He explained how the newest dreams propelled the private school world into the future. He did a marvelous job of showing how this school is at the forefront of something new. He did not do, as some others have done, the old propaganda of announcing that we are, or just about to be, one of the best schools in the world. No, what John did so well was encourage us to see how exciting it is to be at this school at this moment in history. If we keep our eyes on the prize our hopes and energy will transform this school, maybe even the world.
A child once reported to Archbishop Desmond Tutu that her prayer in life was simply this: “I pray for all of God’s dreams to come true.” A simple, faithful and straightforward prayer that contains within it a fascinating question—what exactly are God’s dreams? Archbishop Tutu has an idea. He writes that the dreams of God are full of amazing transformations. God’s dreams include the transformation of the ugliness, squalor and poverty of this world into laughter, joy and peace. God’s dreams include the transformation of war and hostility, greed and disharmony into justice and goodness, compassion and love, caring and sharing. It is a powerful and big dream.
Transformations. That is the stuff about which teachers dream big for their students.
Of course the reality of our world is that those who dream these big dreams will be confronted by others who do not share the same dream. Breaking down barriers is dangerous and contentious work. Conflict is part of the faithful journey, but it is not the destination, it is not God’s ultimate dream for us.
It has been an exciting beginning of the year. I am sure I will tell you about the new teachers as I get to know them. I am in charge of the youngest of the new faculty, the ones just sprung from college and these seven who dared to come to the Middle East and try teaching at this school.
I also spent time this summer dreaming big for me---where am I supposed to be? Oh my, weighty thoughts and dreams. But for right now, it is plain to me—I am where I need to be. I have my eyes on the prize!
Monday, August 30, 2010
Well, maybe next year…
It is just after midnight, and by the end of the next 24 hours I will be on the plane flying back to Jordan to begin year four of this chapter of my life at KA. This day was the usual mish-mash of doing a million things, trying to see and enjoy as much of summer life, and American life, and Cincinnati life as I could.
In between categories on the Emmy Awards tonight I worked at packing up all the things (files, books, new clothes, American food products) for the suitcases for tomorrow’s flights. And as usual, there were some regrets about not cleaning more this summer.
Every time I come home, I envision devoting a couple hours a day to really cleaning and going through things in my old bedroom and my storage unit in Cincinnati. If you read the above paragraphs, you might get the idea that those expectations never are met. And so there is always a tinge of regret that I just didn’t take the cleaning seriously enough. In my defense, though, you should know that in the last week, I did spend about 8 hours going through some files from the storage unit, but still there is a residue of regret.
Maybe it’s the midnight hour, but those thoughts of regret remind me of one of the joys of the summer of 2010: Bernadette Peters’ performance in A Little Night Music on Broadway. I was there for her first performance of the replacement cast, Ms. Peters, along with 85-year old Broadway legend Elaine Stritch. I became a convert to Bernadette Peters’ charisma in December, 1985 when I saw her in Song and Dance (and maybe sometime I will tell you the story of how I ended up going to her dressing room that evening and actually meeting her…well maybe now is the time…I was with my college friend Sarah, who knew all the doormen at the Broadway theaters. We went to the stage door to meet one of her dancer friends in the show, and the doorman asked us if we wanted to meet Ms. Peters. Sarah declined, but I quickly interjected, “I would,” and so this man took me to her dressing room. She was gracious. I was a bit star-struck and incoherent.)
Part of what was thrilling that night in July was enjoying the audience reaction to these two stars in A Little Night Music. Each time one of these actresses appeared you could feel the love of the crowd for these veterans. You might be wondering how any of this relates to the “regret” I mentioned earlier…Okay: in the last verse of her quietly heart-breaking rendition of Stephen Sondheim’s anthem of regret, “Send in the Clowns,” Bernadette Peters asks us to ponder with her the cruelty of missed opportunity. “Isn’t it rich?” she asks as the actress Desiree Armfeldt in A Little Night Music, her sarcasm dampened by deep sorrow at the realization that in life and love, timing is everything.
This is one of those songs that is overplayed in our pop culture, and so it can become tedious. But in the hands of a master interpreter, like Ms. Peters, it is revelatory and allows you to reflect on the regrets of your own life and, well, maybe through all of history! One of the famous lines of the song sighs, “Well, maybe next year…”
So yeah, I have a hint of regret over not getting more cleaning accomplished this summer, but regret in August is simply not one of things in which most teachers indulge. Indeed, as I set about packing tonight, my quickly-vanishing regrets-over-not-organizing some-piles-a-bit-more pale in comparison to that heady August feeling most teachers feel about returning to the classroom. While there certainly will likely be some Desiree Armfeldt expressions of “Well, maybe next year…” for every teacher in every June, this is the time for unbridled enthusiasm about the coming year.
As August ripens into September we teachers get a little intoxicated with the possibilities of the year…the possibilities, the opportunities, the blank slates of it all—this will be the year it all works! Attendance! Relationships! Curriculum! Mentoring! Accreditation! Apathy! Success! It is like New Year’s Eve for teachers as we await the beginning of the new school year, the perfect year in our minds!
Ahhhh…I am savoring this feeling I get every year at this time…
So while I was doing a wee bit of cleaning yesterday in that bedroom upstairs (see? I did do a little work around all the fun visiting of the summer!) I came upon my diploma from Brown University. It has stood on a bookshelf for a long, long time, but I picked up the diploma perhaps because I realized it had been 20 years since I received my master’s degree from Brown. I opened it up—yep my name is still there with all the Latin explaining that I had an AM (again, because of Latin) in European History. I looked at the seal of the university and the motto beneath the seal. In Latin, the motto reads: “In Deo Speramus.” At Brown one of the disasters-of-courses I took involved studying medieval documents in Latin. My paltry Latin knowledge wasn’t enough to soar in that class. But this Latin I could do! “In Deo Speramus.” Those words do not mean in God we trust. Those words do not mean in God we believe. Those words mean in God we hope.
That’s it—that’s my stock in trade as a teacher in August! It is not a giddiness over grading (my, my, no, no, no) or a naivete about how some relationships will sour, or an immaturity about how a perfect accreditation report or lesson plan signals perfection in teaching, no it is that feeling/vibe/mindset that hope will activate us, energize us, and set us off down that urgent path to train and inspire our young charges.
Hope. Sometimes it just doesn’t make sense to hope, does it? And certainly in a world where hopes are dashed so easily or ideals tarnished or discarded, it seems a remnant of an earlier, quainter era. But we never regret hope, do we?
Emily Dickinson once wrote that, “Hope is the thing with feathers.” Feathers. Flight. Soaring. Planes. Airport. Tomorrow. Return to Jordan. No Regrets. Hope for the New Year.
In a nice bit of serendipity, the scripture in church this morning was from Jeremiah 29:11 that reminds us about the future and that God’s plans “give hope.”
The funny thing about my experience at Brown was that it showed me clearly that the college world was not my destination. And it wasn’t timing or missed opportunities, it was the actual revelation that I belong in secondary education. At the time I clutched that diploma for the first time, of course I had no idea where the next 20 years would take me. At the time I focused on my upcoming trip to the USSR and Baltic States with the Brown Chorus and an upcoming visit to cousin Susan in San Diego. But I had a new job coming up that fall, in Charlotte, and I knew, I knew that that was the place for me. I sailed on that hope that summer.
While Desiree Armfeldt is consumed with the mistakes she has made and finds cold comfort in her web of regret. “In Deo Speramus” can not be next year. No, it’s today.
In between categories on the Emmy Awards tonight I worked at packing up all the things (files, books, new clothes, American food products) for the suitcases for tomorrow’s flights. And as usual, there were some regrets about not cleaning more this summer.
Every time I come home, I envision devoting a couple hours a day to really cleaning and going through things in my old bedroom and my storage unit in Cincinnati. If you read the above paragraphs, you might get the idea that those expectations never are met. And so there is always a tinge of regret that I just didn’t take the cleaning seriously enough. In my defense, though, you should know that in the last week, I did spend about 8 hours going through some files from the storage unit, but still there is a residue of regret.
Maybe it’s the midnight hour, but those thoughts of regret remind me of one of the joys of the summer of 2010: Bernadette Peters’ performance in A Little Night Music on Broadway. I was there for her first performance of the replacement cast, Ms. Peters, along with 85-year old Broadway legend Elaine Stritch. I became a convert to Bernadette Peters’ charisma in December, 1985 when I saw her in Song and Dance (and maybe sometime I will tell you the story of how I ended up going to her dressing room that evening and actually meeting her…well maybe now is the time…I was with my college friend Sarah, who knew all the doormen at the Broadway theaters. We went to the stage door to meet one of her dancer friends in the show, and the doorman asked us if we wanted to meet Ms. Peters. Sarah declined, but I quickly interjected, “I would,” and so this man took me to her dressing room. She was gracious. I was a bit star-struck and incoherent.)
Part of what was thrilling that night in July was enjoying the audience reaction to these two stars in A Little Night Music. Each time one of these actresses appeared you could feel the love of the crowd for these veterans. You might be wondering how any of this relates to the “regret” I mentioned earlier…Okay: in the last verse of her quietly heart-breaking rendition of Stephen Sondheim’s anthem of regret, “Send in the Clowns,” Bernadette Peters asks us to ponder with her the cruelty of missed opportunity. “Isn’t it rich?” she asks as the actress Desiree Armfeldt in A Little Night Music, her sarcasm dampened by deep sorrow at the realization that in life and love, timing is everything.
This is one of those songs that is overplayed in our pop culture, and so it can become tedious. But in the hands of a master interpreter, like Ms. Peters, it is revelatory and allows you to reflect on the regrets of your own life and, well, maybe through all of history! One of the famous lines of the song sighs, “Well, maybe next year…”
So yeah, I have a hint of regret over not getting more cleaning accomplished this summer, but regret in August is simply not one of things in which most teachers indulge. Indeed, as I set about packing tonight, my quickly-vanishing regrets-over-not-organizing some-piles-a-bit-more pale in comparison to that heady August feeling most teachers feel about returning to the classroom. While there certainly will likely be some Desiree Armfeldt expressions of “Well, maybe next year…” for every teacher in every June, this is the time for unbridled enthusiasm about the coming year.
As August ripens into September we teachers get a little intoxicated with the possibilities of the year…the possibilities, the opportunities, the blank slates of it all—this will be the year it all works! Attendance! Relationships! Curriculum! Mentoring! Accreditation! Apathy! Success! It is like New Year’s Eve for teachers as we await the beginning of the new school year, the perfect year in our minds!
Ahhhh…I am savoring this feeling I get every year at this time…
So while I was doing a wee bit of cleaning yesterday in that bedroom upstairs (see? I did do a little work around all the fun visiting of the summer!) I came upon my diploma from Brown University. It has stood on a bookshelf for a long, long time, but I picked up the diploma perhaps because I realized it had been 20 years since I received my master’s degree from Brown. I opened it up—yep my name is still there with all the Latin explaining that I had an AM (again, because of Latin) in European History. I looked at the seal of the university and the motto beneath the seal. In Latin, the motto reads: “In Deo Speramus.” At Brown one of the disasters-of-courses I took involved studying medieval documents in Latin. My paltry Latin knowledge wasn’t enough to soar in that class. But this Latin I could do! “In Deo Speramus.” Those words do not mean in God we trust. Those words do not mean in God we believe. Those words mean in God we hope.
That’s it—that’s my stock in trade as a teacher in August! It is not a giddiness over grading (my, my, no, no, no) or a naivete about how some relationships will sour, or an immaturity about how a perfect accreditation report or lesson plan signals perfection in teaching, no it is that feeling/vibe/mindset that hope will activate us, energize us, and set us off down that urgent path to train and inspire our young charges.
Hope. Sometimes it just doesn’t make sense to hope, does it? And certainly in a world where hopes are dashed so easily or ideals tarnished or discarded, it seems a remnant of an earlier, quainter era. But we never regret hope, do we?
Emily Dickinson once wrote that, “Hope is the thing with feathers.” Feathers. Flight. Soaring. Planes. Airport. Tomorrow. Return to Jordan. No Regrets. Hope for the New Year.
In a nice bit of serendipity, the scripture in church this morning was from Jeremiah 29:11 that reminds us about the future and that God’s plans “give hope.”
The funny thing about my experience at Brown was that it showed me clearly that the college world was not my destination. And it wasn’t timing or missed opportunities, it was the actual revelation that I belong in secondary education. At the time I clutched that diploma for the first time, of course I had no idea where the next 20 years would take me. At the time I focused on my upcoming trip to the USSR and Baltic States with the Brown Chorus and an upcoming visit to cousin Susan in San Diego. But I had a new job coming up that fall, in Charlotte, and I knew, I knew that that was the place for me. I sailed on that hope that summer.
While Desiree Armfeldt is consumed with the mistakes she has made and finds cold comfort in her web of regret. “In Deo Speramus” can not be next year. No, it’s today.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Happy 90th to the 19th!
Tomorrow, August 26th, is the official 90th birthday of the 19th constitutional amendment to the United States Constitution guaranteeing the extension of suffrage to women. You may have seen other articles trumpeting this fact in the last week, but tomorrow is the day that it actually became an official part of the Constitution. But getting the right day is not the important thing for me. Highlighting this turning point in history allows us to think about some of the joys and frustrations of studying history in general. Whether or not one “celebrates” this day on August 18 or August 26, or just in 2010 is not the point. One of the poor ways many teachers teach history is through the “done-deal” approach of history. “All right everyone, in 1920 women secured the right to vote. It is called the 19th amendment. It will be on the quiz on Friday.” ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!! While those facts are very pretty on the proverbial shelf (and correct) we need to take these dates off the shelf and remember the mess of how this fact got born. It’s like teaching about World War I and announcing to class, “Okay, boys and girls, remember that World War I began in 1914 and then concluded in 1918. Now we know everything about the war!” I have seen some history classes nearly that pat about the past.
Remembering this particular moment in history allows us to marvel at the 70+ year slog towards this moment when a female U.S. citizen could cast a vote in a federal election. It is a reminder of the frustrations that mount as supporters pursue something that seems to us today so mainstream and logical. In 1848 a little over 100 representatives gathered in Seneca Falls, New York to discuss how to press lawmakers for an amendment to the Constitution that would guarantee women the right to vote. What else do you wonder about this meeting besides the place and the date? Who attended? Did any men attend? (Actually nearly 40 men attended) Did they argue? How did the press cover this event? Did lawmakers feel a sense of urgency about this? How come it took so long? And we’re just getting started at the wondering about the rocky road to the 19th amendment! It was a slog. It was frustrating. It probably felt as if it would never happen.
Over those 70+ years there were 277 referendum campaigns for states to include women in the enfranchisement. And that was after hundreds of campaigns to get legislatures to submit suffrage amendments. For 19 successive Congresses there were campaigns every session to secure this right.
It seems the U.S. Senate was the roadblock for several generations. So the women’s rights supporters went state by state, through all 48 states eventually, to amend state constitutions to allow women to vote in state elections. The redoubtable Susan B. Anthony spent months and months in South Dakota alone, urging the men in this new state to extend the right to vote to their womenfolk. Finally they voted in favor of this bill. Anthony rejoiced, declaring, “It’s coming sooner than most people think!” She pronounced this in 1895, just 25 years before it finally became the law of the land.
Finally in the summer of 1920 it was winding down to just a few state assemblies left to vote. There are stories of some representatives who left hospital beds for the chance to cast their vote supporting women’s suffrage. By August it came down to one state left to decide, the state of Tennessee. It all hung in the balance with the vote of Tennessee. Supporters knew it was going to be close—they figured they had one vote in the margin of support. But then one Tennessee lawmaker up and changed his mind, changed his yes to a no! If you go back and look at the editorials of the day, most men who opposed the amendment did so because they worried what women would do with the vote.
On the day of the vote, August 18th, one of the Tennessee men who had announced he would vote no changed his mind. The story goes that his mother told him “to be a good boy” and vote so women could vote. Twenty-something state assemblyman Harry Burn cast the deciding vote in support and announced publicly, “I know that a mother’s advice is always the safest for a boy to follow” switching sides. How interesting how narrowly this amendment passed, how so many people still voted against it. It would be intriguing to learn more about Mrs. Burn and if she had been a suffragette, or just had an eye toward the arc of history. What happened to young Harry Burns’ career? Don’t forget that this is Tennessee, and just five later a young twenty-something teacher named John Scopes would be fired for teaching his biology class about scientific evolution.
Anyway, I celebrate the 19th amendment tomorrow not just as a marker on the path toward voter freedom in the United States, but as a reminder of how to dig into history, and marvel at how messy History is. There are so many voices to hear, all clamoring to point the way toward progress and stability and truth, and facts that eventually seem so simple were born out of a process that would have been frustrating and probably frightening. I like to think of my grandmothers, the amazing Martha and Alta—both born in the first decade of the 20th century. Imagine that as little girls they did not probably entertain the prospect that they might vote, could be an actual citizen in the USA and CHOOSE the leaders to guide the country. But with the passage of this 19th amendment this all changed. As soon as they turned 21, young Alta and Martha could cast votes equal with the votes of male citizens.
I will be having breakfast tomorrow with a family friend named Edna, born in 1917. By most standards Edna is old (albeit a very healthy and peripatetic nonagenarian) but not so old that she was born within the confines of the 19th amendment. When she was born (in the same year as Leonard Bernstein and John F. Kennedy) that push for women’s rights had still not yet secured that right to vote. Maybe I will ask Edna when she first voted and if she was excited by that prospect to help America tick.
This may be in the category of “does it really fit the topic?” but on Monday as my father and sister and I played the game “Apples to Apples” with nephew Jack and niece Emma, the category was “Elderly.” You have to put down a word/phrase card from your hand with the hope that your word/phrase choice is the winning choice the leader might select. The leader then reads the choices aloud and goes through the selection/evaluation process. One card seemed a little strange for the choice. Jack had put down the card with the word, “Flag.” When we asked him why that had been his choice, he said logically: “Simple. Betty White made the first flag and she’s old!” Betty White is indeed old, and she is ubiquitous! But as a history teacher, it does remind us how many facts are out there in the History Jungle, and how confusing that mess is!
Remembering this particular moment in history allows us to marvel at the 70+ year slog towards this moment when a female U.S. citizen could cast a vote in a federal election. It is a reminder of the frustrations that mount as supporters pursue something that seems to us today so mainstream and logical. In 1848 a little over 100 representatives gathered in Seneca Falls, New York to discuss how to press lawmakers for an amendment to the Constitution that would guarantee women the right to vote. What else do you wonder about this meeting besides the place and the date? Who attended? Did any men attend? (Actually nearly 40 men attended) Did they argue? How did the press cover this event? Did lawmakers feel a sense of urgency about this? How come it took so long? And we’re just getting started at the wondering about the rocky road to the 19th amendment! It was a slog. It was frustrating. It probably felt as if it would never happen.
Over those 70+ years there were 277 referendum campaigns for states to include women in the enfranchisement. And that was after hundreds of campaigns to get legislatures to submit suffrage amendments. For 19 successive Congresses there were campaigns every session to secure this right.
It seems the U.S. Senate was the roadblock for several generations. So the women’s rights supporters went state by state, through all 48 states eventually, to amend state constitutions to allow women to vote in state elections. The redoubtable Susan B. Anthony spent months and months in South Dakota alone, urging the men in this new state to extend the right to vote to their womenfolk. Finally they voted in favor of this bill. Anthony rejoiced, declaring, “It’s coming sooner than most people think!” She pronounced this in 1895, just 25 years before it finally became the law of the land.
Finally in the summer of 1920 it was winding down to just a few state assemblies left to vote. There are stories of some representatives who left hospital beds for the chance to cast their vote supporting women’s suffrage. By August it came down to one state left to decide, the state of Tennessee. It all hung in the balance with the vote of Tennessee. Supporters knew it was going to be close—they figured they had one vote in the margin of support. But then one Tennessee lawmaker up and changed his mind, changed his yes to a no! If you go back and look at the editorials of the day, most men who opposed the amendment did so because they worried what women would do with the vote.
On the day of the vote, August 18th, one of the Tennessee men who had announced he would vote no changed his mind. The story goes that his mother told him “to be a good boy” and vote so women could vote. Twenty-something state assemblyman Harry Burn cast the deciding vote in support and announced publicly, “I know that a mother’s advice is always the safest for a boy to follow” switching sides. How interesting how narrowly this amendment passed, how so many people still voted against it. It would be intriguing to learn more about Mrs. Burn and if she had been a suffragette, or just had an eye toward the arc of history. What happened to young Harry Burns’ career? Don’t forget that this is Tennessee, and just five later a young twenty-something teacher named John Scopes would be fired for teaching his biology class about scientific evolution.
Anyway, I celebrate the 19th amendment tomorrow not just as a marker on the path toward voter freedom in the United States, but as a reminder of how to dig into history, and marvel at how messy History is. There are so many voices to hear, all clamoring to point the way toward progress and stability and truth, and facts that eventually seem so simple were born out of a process that would have been frustrating and probably frightening. I like to think of my grandmothers, the amazing Martha and Alta—both born in the first decade of the 20th century. Imagine that as little girls they did not probably entertain the prospect that they might vote, could be an actual citizen in the USA and CHOOSE the leaders to guide the country. But with the passage of this 19th amendment this all changed. As soon as they turned 21, young Alta and Martha could cast votes equal with the votes of male citizens.
I will be having breakfast tomorrow with a family friend named Edna, born in 1917. By most standards Edna is old (albeit a very healthy and peripatetic nonagenarian) but not so old that she was born within the confines of the 19th amendment. When she was born (in the same year as Leonard Bernstein and John F. Kennedy) that push for women’s rights had still not yet secured that right to vote. Maybe I will ask Edna when she first voted and if she was excited by that prospect to help America tick.
This may be in the category of “does it really fit the topic?” but on Monday as my father and sister and I played the game “Apples to Apples” with nephew Jack and niece Emma, the category was “Elderly.” You have to put down a word/phrase card from your hand with the hope that your word/phrase choice is the winning choice the leader might select. The leader then reads the choices aloud and goes through the selection/evaluation process. One card seemed a little strange for the choice. Jack had put down the card with the word, “Flag.” When we asked him why that had been his choice, he said logically: “Simple. Betty White made the first flag and she’s old!” Betty White is indeed old, and she is ubiquitous! But as a history teacher, it does remind us how many facts are out there in the History Jungle, and how confusing that mess is!
Monday, August 23, 2010
24/7
From where I am sitting right now, at the kitchen table in the home where I grew up in Cincinnati, I very plainly can see some cracks in the fading ivory paint on the doorway that leads to the living room. And on both sides of the posts of this home that my mother and father lovingly restored in the early 1960s are visible pencil markings. Since my father never thought of selling this house he wasn’t terribly interested in how these pencil markings would affect the re-sale value of the house. And although my mother, in her heyday, was an inveterate cleaner, she never attempted to wipe these very visible marks off these posts. If you stare closely, you notice the writing beside the horizontal scrawls. They denote birthdays. On the left post are markings with the birthday of October 4, and on the right post markings with the birthday of October 30. Every year on our respective birthdays, October 4 and October 30, my sister and I would stand and get measured at the post, and the thick pencil marking would denote our height at that moment in our lives. I think the markings began around 1972 and continued up until the mid-1980s when both of us were out of high school and into college. As I stare at the left post the biggest spread comes between ages 12 and 13; uh-oh, the difference between ages 13 and 14 is the greatest! Did I really grow that much in one year? We walk by these posts all the time when we are in this house at 2460 Montana and it is one of my favorite features of the house. These markings on our birthday become a concrete and sentimental way to mark the passage of time and the changes in our lives. Since it is in a doorway, the traditional post-and-lintel way of supporting a structure, it is also a metaphor of how we have supported our family over the years (or maybe vice versa). We families do it all the time—we use different things, different ways to commemorate the passages of time and reflect on the changes in our lives.
Yes, I am still on summer vacation! This has been the longest summer vacation I have enjoyed in four years (I am not complaining!). In 2007 I went back to school on July 30th, and in 2008 and 2009 I left around August 14. This year is longer because the officials at KA decided that we should try and start school after the holy month of Ramadan since it would afford families a better way to celebrate the fasts and iftars (breaking of the fast) without the nuisance of school. So I will go back to Jordan a week from right now. I will have two weeks to work with the new teachers coming to KA (cue the excitement and the nervousness akin to what I felt three years ago!) Then the students will come for orientation and the school year will finally get underway. But before I head back to Jordan and get back in the routines and structures of school life, it is time to end my summer vacation from the blog.
A few weeks ago I came back from a trip with my family where I was literally with them for 24 hours a day for seven days…hence the blog entry title of 24/7…Now I am not going to spend much time on such commonplace observations such as, “Can you believe six people really spent 24 hours a day for seven days? What would you do? Is that a vacation? What happens to a family on a trip like that???” It was what you would imagine. It was marvelous. It was close quarters. It was exceptionally planned (by my sister). It was hot. Occasionally it was tense. It was magical. It was memorable. There. See—you thought you would read an invective of “Can you believe he/she did this all week?????”
So for 24 hours a day for seven days we communed in Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. (Now do you see why I noted the heat? August in Florida??? Yes, it was hot and humid. ‘Nuff said.)
This was not our first time to enjoy the luxuries of Disney World. Oh, no. Since my sister “re-discovered” Disney World in 2004, lo just a few years ago, we have been there…ahem…five times! She loves it. We love it. I went to Disney World once as a child, at age 9, and I did not go again until age 39. But this year, as we packed up again for our seven days at the Polynesian (my sister loves that property so much, we have stayed there each of the five times at Disney since 2004. They practically know her by name—yes ma’am, we will try and accommodate you in the Fiji building!.) I became a bit more reflective about these trips to Disney World. Since we have gone there in 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, and now 2010, these trips have become like the pencil markings on the post in our family kitchen. (Well, more expensive pencil markings.) These trips to Disney, in retrospect at least, offer us a chance to think about the changes in our lives, both personally, and as a family.
In 2004, our first trip, Jack and Emma were younger, obviously. Jack was just about 26 months and Emma was about to turn 6. She was in full-blown princess mode (meaning the Disney princesses). Steve and I were very settled in our professions—he having been at his company for 15 successful years, and I having been at Hackley in New York for 8 years. As I look back on it, 2004 was a year for me of being very settled and comfortable. I had been department head for six years, my routine in New York was well-established, I conducted exciting trips abroad with students (that spring a memorable one to Vietnam), I had stumbled into the AP Art History that had become such an exciting course, and I had just graduated a senior class that had been at the cutting edge of all the changes I had made in the history curriculum for the previous five years. Truth be told, I had recently confessed to a friend’s wife that I had actually met all the goals I had set for my tenure at Hackley. I had just come back from a trip out west with my veteran and dear travel companions Anne and Diane (imagine a summer with both Las Vegas and Disney World!! Jeez! What a summer of kitschy extravaganzas!). Jack did not speak in many full sentences yet, although he delighted in telling people that “Snow White kissed me on the forehead!” Emma’s priceless expression as we entered Main Street USA on that first day as she beheld Cinderella’s castle made the entire trip worthwhile. “It’s real,” she sighed, and her eyes sparkled. Our mother and father did not come on this trip. My mother’s MS had progressed so that traveling was simply too hard. We never considered that we should all 7 go. The MS did not claim her humor or her spunk, but the MS did win over traveling. But Elizabeth made sure they did not totally miss out: we took hundreds of pictures and I narrated a video of our discoveries for them to see. Elizabeth also purchased mouse ears for everyone in the family and when we returned home we took a great family photo of all 7 of us with Mickey Mouse ears and huge smiles. We reminisced about our trip in the 1970s as a family and compared the changes we had seen that summer since our 70s childhood visit. We knew we would go back to Disney World, but since it had taken us 30 years to return we had no idea when.
By the time we made our return trip, two summers later, in 2006, more had changed than just the height and verbal abilities of Emma and Jack. For those in the know, 2005 was the year when (how does one describe it in a phrase?) some student bad behavior altered my status at Hackley and I was not exactly on top of the world anymore. But much more importantly, about two months before our return trip to Disney World in 2006, our mother had passed away, and we all were still affected by that loss. We asked our father to join us, but he demurred. I suppose it would only have served to remind us all why he had been able to join us. So this trip was one in which we looked at the trip and reflected on how my mother would have commented on it, how she would have been moved by the creativity and beauty of the parks, and how her grandchildren enjoyed the spectacle and wonder of the attractions.
Lo and behold we returned the next summer and two things stand out for us on the 2007 odyssey to Disney: my father joined us and I was about to move to Jordan a week after the trip. We enjoyed hearing our father’s impressions of the Disney beast and how it had grown and morphed since the 1970s and we looked for as many benches as possible, his favorite ride as we have joked. Underlying the trip for me at least, was this nervous bubble that I was about to move to Jordan. Just a month before we had packed everything up in New York, put 90% of my life in storage in Cincinnati, and I was about to set out for the Middle Eastern unknown. Jack was 5 and Emma almost 9, and a perfect age to enjoy all of the Disney narratives.
Since you have found the blog, you have dozens upon dozens of entries commenting on how that move went to Jordan in 2007! In the middle of my second year in Jordan we found ourselves with a longer December break than usual (a reflection of the Muslim holidays and how they move with the moon). We decided to take advantage of that long break and headed to Disney World at a non-hot, non-humid time of the year, in December, 2008. It was such an exciting change to see what they do for the Christmas holidays in what they call “the happiest place on earth,” with the incredible decorations. The six of us went—no one new this time, and it was a time of almost solace for our family.
So this time, August 2010, we are back again at the Polynesian. Emma is nearly 12, and decidedly in the full flowering of tween-dom. Jack is saying things like, “But we have to preserve her dignity,” which is more articulate than in 2004! None of us has a major move impending, but the children are on the cusp of major changes in their lives (Emma has already made those great leaps in height that would cause a major yawn on the post in our kitchen!). Since nothing was incredibly new to us, and since we are old-hands at the rides and everything there, I spent time marveling at the creative power of the Disney authorities. The rides and attractions are breathtaking, and their greatness rests in their narrative power. The rides, or at least the ones we visited, are not just thrill-seeking, speedy amusement park rides. They are testaments to the narratives of the stories Disney has peddled these 80-some years. Everything from the Peter Pan ride in Magic Kingdom to Expedition Everest in Animal Kingdom to Toy Story 3 in Hollywood Studios, it is about the details of taking the participant through a story, checking the details, infusing it with the wonder of a great journey and the thrill of discovery. I have nothing but praise for the parks. The hotels and food are expensive, sure, but those parks are a testament to ingenuity and wonder. One of my favorite attractions was in Disney Quest, off the beaten track, where you can design your own roller-coaster and then ride in a simulator taking you on your very own ride. Eight-year old Jack chose the highest level of “thrills and speed” and he very carefully worked on the design and then got to enjoy a simulation of his own invention. That is a far cry from Jack's excitement over the Dumbo Ride in 2004. But really, I guess it is not. In 2004, Dumbo was full of discovery and smiles and excitement for a two-year old..
Our family can mark the passage and maturation of the discoveries and insights through our trips to the Disney capitalist machine. As we left, I wondered, where will we be at the next time we visit? It is inevitable now that there will be a next time. But how long away? How tall will Emma and Jack be? Will I still be in Jordan? Where will I live? What will I do? How will the teen years affect the family? Will the bench warmer be up for climbing the 10 stories up to the inner-tube slide as he did so gamely this summer? What will we be thinking about? Worrying about? Loving? What will cause us wonder?
Well, for right now, I will focus on my last week of summer. Enjoying the family and looking toward getting on the plane a week from right now and beginning year four in Jordan.
Yes, I am still on summer vacation! This has been the longest summer vacation I have enjoyed in four years (I am not complaining!). In 2007 I went back to school on July 30th, and in 2008 and 2009 I left around August 14. This year is longer because the officials at KA decided that we should try and start school after the holy month of Ramadan since it would afford families a better way to celebrate the fasts and iftars (breaking of the fast) without the nuisance of school. So I will go back to Jordan a week from right now. I will have two weeks to work with the new teachers coming to KA (cue the excitement and the nervousness akin to what I felt three years ago!) Then the students will come for orientation and the school year will finally get underway. But before I head back to Jordan and get back in the routines and structures of school life, it is time to end my summer vacation from the blog.
A few weeks ago I came back from a trip with my family where I was literally with them for 24 hours a day for seven days…hence the blog entry title of 24/7…Now I am not going to spend much time on such commonplace observations such as, “Can you believe six people really spent 24 hours a day for seven days? What would you do? Is that a vacation? What happens to a family on a trip like that???” It was what you would imagine. It was marvelous. It was close quarters. It was exceptionally planned (by my sister). It was hot. Occasionally it was tense. It was magical. It was memorable. There. See—you thought you would read an invective of “Can you believe he/she did this all week?????”
So for 24 hours a day for seven days we communed in Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. (Now do you see why I noted the heat? August in Florida??? Yes, it was hot and humid. ‘Nuff said.)
This was not our first time to enjoy the luxuries of Disney World. Oh, no. Since my sister “re-discovered” Disney World in 2004, lo just a few years ago, we have been there…ahem…five times! She loves it. We love it. I went to Disney World once as a child, at age 9, and I did not go again until age 39. But this year, as we packed up again for our seven days at the Polynesian (my sister loves that property so much, we have stayed there each of the five times at Disney since 2004. They practically know her by name—yes ma’am, we will try and accommodate you in the Fiji building!.) I became a bit more reflective about these trips to Disney World. Since we have gone there in 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, and now 2010, these trips have become like the pencil markings on the post in our family kitchen. (Well, more expensive pencil markings.) These trips to Disney, in retrospect at least, offer us a chance to think about the changes in our lives, both personally, and as a family.
In 2004, our first trip, Jack and Emma were younger, obviously. Jack was just about 26 months and Emma was about to turn 6. She was in full-blown princess mode (meaning the Disney princesses). Steve and I were very settled in our professions—he having been at his company for 15 successful years, and I having been at Hackley in New York for 8 years. As I look back on it, 2004 was a year for me of being very settled and comfortable. I had been department head for six years, my routine in New York was well-established, I conducted exciting trips abroad with students (that spring a memorable one to Vietnam), I had stumbled into the AP Art History that had become such an exciting course, and I had just graduated a senior class that had been at the cutting edge of all the changes I had made in the history curriculum for the previous five years. Truth be told, I had recently confessed to a friend’s wife that I had actually met all the goals I had set for my tenure at Hackley. I had just come back from a trip out west with my veteran and dear travel companions Anne and Diane (imagine a summer with both Las Vegas and Disney World!! Jeez! What a summer of kitschy extravaganzas!). Jack did not speak in many full sentences yet, although he delighted in telling people that “Snow White kissed me on the forehead!” Emma’s priceless expression as we entered Main Street USA on that first day as she beheld Cinderella’s castle made the entire trip worthwhile. “It’s real,” she sighed, and her eyes sparkled. Our mother and father did not come on this trip. My mother’s MS had progressed so that traveling was simply too hard. We never considered that we should all 7 go. The MS did not claim her humor or her spunk, but the MS did win over traveling. But Elizabeth made sure they did not totally miss out: we took hundreds of pictures and I narrated a video of our discoveries for them to see. Elizabeth also purchased mouse ears for everyone in the family and when we returned home we took a great family photo of all 7 of us with Mickey Mouse ears and huge smiles. We reminisced about our trip in the 1970s as a family and compared the changes we had seen that summer since our 70s childhood visit. We knew we would go back to Disney World, but since it had taken us 30 years to return we had no idea when.
By the time we made our return trip, two summers later, in 2006, more had changed than just the height and verbal abilities of Emma and Jack. For those in the know, 2005 was the year when (how does one describe it in a phrase?) some student bad behavior altered my status at Hackley and I was not exactly on top of the world anymore. But much more importantly, about two months before our return trip to Disney World in 2006, our mother had passed away, and we all were still affected by that loss. We asked our father to join us, but he demurred. I suppose it would only have served to remind us all why he had been able to join us. So this trip was one in which we looked at the trip and reflected on how my mother would have commented on it, how she would have been moved by the creativity and beauty of the parks, and how her grandchildren enjoyed the spectacle and wonder of the attractions.
Lo and behold we returned the next summer and two things stand out for us on the 2007 odyssey to Disney: my father joined us and I was about to move to Jordan a week after the trip. We enjoyed hearing our father’s impressions of the Disney beast and how it had grown and morphed since the 1970s and we looked for as many benches as possible, his favorite ride as we have joked. Underlying the trip for me at least, was this nervous bubble that I was about to move to Jordan. Just a month before we had packed everything up in New York, put 90% of my life in storage in Cincinnati, and I was about to set out for the Middle Eastern unknown. Jack was 5 and Emma almost 9, and a perfect age to enjoy all of the Disney narratives.
Since you have found the blog, you have dozens upon dozens of entries commenting on how that move went to Jordan in 2007! In the middle of my second year in Jordan we found ourselves with a longer December break than usual (a reflection of the Muslim holidays and how they move with the moon). We decided to take advantage of that long break and headed to Disney World at a non-hot, non-humid time of the year, in December, 2008. It was such an exciting change to see what they do for the Christmas holidays in what they call “the happiest place on earth,” with the incredible decorations. The six of us went—no one new this time, and it was a time of almost solace for our family.
So this time, August 2010, we are back again at the Polynesian. Emma is nearly 12, and decidedly in the full flowering of tween-dom. Jack is saying things like, “But we have to preserve her dignity,” which is more articulate than in 2004! None of us has a major move impending, but the children are on the cusp of major changes in their lives (Emma has already made those great leaps in height that would cause a major yawn on the post in our kitchen!). Since nothing was incredibly new to us, and since we are old-hands at the rides and everything there, I spent time marveling at the creative power of the Disney authorities. The rides and attractions are breathtaking, and their greatness rests in their narrative power. The rides, or at least the ones we visited, are not just thrill-seeking, speedy amusement park rides. They are testaments to the narratives of the stories Disney has peddled these 80-some years. Everything from the Peter Pan ride in Magic Kingdom to Expedition Everest in Animal Kingdom to Toy Story 3 in Hollywood Studios, it is about the details of taking the participant through a story, checking the details, infusing it with the wonder of a great journey and the thrill of discovery. I have nothing but praise for the parks. The hotels and food are expensive, sure, but those parks are a testament to ingenuity and wonder. One of my favorite attractions was in Disney Quest, off the beaten track, where you can design your own roller-coaster and then ride in a simulator taking you on your very own ride. Eight-year old Jack chose the highest level of “thrills and speed” and he very carefully worked on the design and then got to enjoy a simulation of his own invention. That is a far cry from Jack's excitement over the Dumbo Ride in 2004. But really, I guess it is not. In 2004, Dumbo was full of discovery and smiles and excitement for a two-year old..
Our family can mark the passage and maturation of the discoveries and insights through our trips to the Disney capitalist machine. As we left, I wondered, where will we be at the next time we visit? It is inevitable now that there will be a next time. But how long away? How tall will Emma and Jack be? Will I still be in Jordan? Where will I live? What will I do? How will the teen years affect the family? Will the bench warmer be up for climbing the 10 stories up to the inner-tube slide as he did so gamely this summer? What will we be thinking about? Worrying about? Loving? What will cause us wonder?
Well, for right now, I will focus on my last week of summer. Enjoying the family and looking toward getting on the plane a week from right now and beginning year four in Jordan.
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