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Posts Tagged ‘Education’

Banning Books and Things

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 9, 2025| Leave a Comment »

I invited the Love Bug to our local artsy cinema this past weekend to see the documentary, “The Librarians.” Book bans are nothing new, Ray Bradbury wrote about burning books in Fahrenheit 451 during the McCarthy era. But in this movie, in 2025, we learn how an ‘anti-woke’ cabal of parents is trying to criminalize school librarians!

 The film “…focuses on actions in Florida, New Jersey, Louisiana and Texas, where a list of 850 titles compiled in 2021 by State Representative Matt Krause, Republican of Texas, was used to cull the stacks. Nationwide, the group Moms for Liberty packs school boards with candidates who wield Scripture in the name of child safety. In one dumbfounding instance, the Bible is cited as the ultimate standard for nonfiction writing.” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/movies/the-librarians-review.html?unlocked_article_code=1.7E8.a3Nf.WoFe1YRfvEHw&smid=url-share

When I first started covering school board meetings for our local newspaper in NJ, I was disillusioned. The meetings were public, yet our community didn’t show up. The school board members had been there for a very long time, in fact not one had a child in the school system. Granted the meetings ran late and parents in this NYC suburb didn’t have time to sit through lengthy discussions on curriculum. But this indifference prompted me to run in the next election for the board, and surprise surprise I won.

Some states appoint their members, while others leave it up to the people. Several states, including Tennessee, use a mix of appointed and elected members. The Bug asked me who appoints these people, which got me thinking. Obviously, if your Governor and or legislators are appointing school board members, the process is inherently political. I had never thought about this before; after all, why dig deeply into our bedrock educational system?

In NJ, school board members are not compensated for their time – in TN they are. I considered my time on the board as public service.

The Constitution doesn’t exactly guarantee a free K-12 education but the 14th Amendment requires “equal protection of the laws” with a due process clause. It’s why Title IX was passed giving girls’ sports programs parity with the boys! This piecemeal approach however, requiring equal protection and due process laws to every citizen, gets chopped up depending on a number of variables: your state and specific school district; and your rural (white) vs urban (brown) tax revenue. Does this sound like an equal or efficient system?

“An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.” If Tom Jefferson didn’t say this exactly, he should have!

The Bride asked her daughter what she thought of The Librarians. Her answer – they banned the graphic novel of Anne Frank because of a picture of her in a garden with statues! And Maus, because the mice were naked! Even the Pumpkin was appalled. We talked about my time working with the school librarian at her Mother’s high school after 9/11, and how much I enjoyed it. But that was before Moms for Liberty stormed sleepy school board meetings demanding certain books be pulled from shelves.

What is most troubling, many school districts are pulling books in anticipation of an edict. This is the very essence of Totalitarianism. Create fear, harbor doubt. “Since July 2021, our Index records 22,810 cases of book bans across 45 states and 451 public school districts.” https://pen.org/report/the-normalization-of-book-banning/

This school year alone has seen 6,870 instances of school book bans. If you don’t want your child to have access to age-appropriate books dealing with LGBTQ subjects, like two male penguins who adopted a chick, then let your kids’ teachers know. You can opt them out of sex education right? Keep them in the dark about our country’s history of racism and sexism. Or send them to private Christian schools, or homeschool.

But don’t bring your White Christian Nationalism into the public arena, your MAGA ideology into our school system and act like Joan of Arc. This is me at my drag queen hairstylist’s salon.

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Laborious

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on September 1, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Hip hip hooray, it’s Labor Day! A day of sales, and grilling outside, and saying a final farewell to summer. As I was pulling on my white pants, I had to thank all my coal-mining, union-creating Irish ancestors. All the farmers, and mill workers, the women who cleaned rich people’s homes, the women who washed their clothes. We Americans are an industrious lot.

I mean why hire someone to string a gym full of streamers for a BatMitzvah when we could do it ourselves?

The good news is Bob and I received our flu shots, and we have an appointment to get the new Covid booster. It’s almost like the government was reading my mind, except they thought in a very Trumpian way to restrict its distribution:

“The new shots from Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax are approved for all seniors. But the Food and Drug Administration narrowed their use for younger adults and children to those with at least one high-risk health condition, such as asthma or obesity. That presents new barriers to access for millions of Americans who would have to prove their risk — and millions more who may want to get vaccinated and suddenly no longer qualify.” https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/fda-approves-updated-covid-19-shots-with-some-restrictions-for-kids-and-adults

After hearing about the latest school shooting in MN, the week after a bomb threat at the Grands’ school, I had a thought. What if ALL the teachers in America went on strike? Public school, Catholic school, private school teachers; what if they all said sorry but we refuse to come into your school buildings with your metal detectors and locked doors, we refuse to carry guns ourselves, we cannot in good faith put your children at risk. What if their one simple demand was to ban assault weapons?

Hell, I would support them. I’d go to every single picket line in town and bring brownies and coffee. How did we get stuck in this gun culture when a majority of Americans do not even own guns? It’s sad to just shrug our shoulders, to think that nothing will change, to chalk up our children’s lives as the cost of doing business. We’ve raised a generation of schoolchildren who have learned to run and hide for active shooter drills, in the same way we had to line up and walk outside for fire drills or crawl under our desks in case of atomic bomb attack.

Last night we had dinner with cousin Peg and Paul. In Bob’s inimitable way, he said he’d like to make the argument to any 2nd Amendment zealot that he thinks he should own an RPG! I mean, if it’s OK to own a military-style assault weapon… If you’ve never watched the movie Red, an RPG is a huge Rocket Propelled Grenade! “This is a shoulder-fired weapon that launches a rocket with a shaped-charge warhead to destroy targets, often tanks.” So of course, Peg asked how a MAGA person would respond to that, which led us into arguing with ChatGP about military uses and individual rights.

Today we celebrate workers’ rights – an 8 hour workday, child labor laws, protections against discrimination, and in light of school shootings most importantly of all, THE RIGHT TO A SAFE WORKPLACE! 

Oh and about not wearing white after Labor Day? I looked it up, and that custom came from the aspiring middle class. Since only the wealthy could afford to leave the city for a summer of cooler air and beaches, we wanted to emulate their wardrobe choices which switched from lots of whites and pale colors, “resort wear” if you will, to darker tones after Labor Day. I’ll let you in on a little secret, beige is the new white!

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Well, Well

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on January 28, 2025| 1 Comment »

When I was in high school in the 60s, we walked out to protest the dress code. The girls wanted their skirts shorter and the boys wanted to wear jeans. This morning the students at Antioch High School in TN returned to school after last week’s shooting only to promptly walk out to protest gun violence. They carried home made signs saying “Ban Guns, Not Books,” “Safety and peace should not be privileges,” and “I want to attend graduation not funerals” …

and they chanted “Not one more” on the street.

I was thinking in the shower – I do some of my best thinking in the shower – what will it take for us as a country to ban assault rifles? We did it once before. What if we could repeal Citizens United? Delete insider trading in Congress? Just get gun money and all the money out of legislators’ hands, abolish the electoral college! Is this a pipe dream? This should be a bipartisan issue; no parent wants their child’s school to turn into a war zone.

They closed the cafeteria at Antioch High School; students that remained in class should be eating lunch in their homerooms today, because the cafeteria is where 16 year old Josselin Corea Escalante was murdered. Would it surprise you to learn that the 17 year old male shooter had extreme-right and antisemitic writings in his social media?

Escalante’s family set up a GoFundMe to help with costs associated with the funeral and with sending her body back to Guatemala. Meanwhile, the owner of Middle Tennessee Caskets donated a casket for Escalante, which was filled with medals of her accomplishments and a pair of soccer cleats.” https://www.cbsnews.com/news/antioch-high-school-shooting-tennessee/

A pair of soccer cleats.

What will it take? Maybe if we asked every parent who lost a child to gun violence – inside and outside of school – to donate a pair of their son or daughters’ sneakers and we built an exhibit outside Congress, a see-through monument of footwear, and we installed a rotating camera that streamed live views around the world. It would be like an eagle cam, only this nest would represent death instead of new life.

Pictures of Josselin’s quinceanera are all over her bedroom. Her family fled the violence in Guatemala, only to lose her here, in the middle of the country, in her high school outside of Nashville. Here, where the Bride is planning a Bat Mitzvah this year. Here, where we scrubbed swastikas off a neighbor’s home. Here, where I picked up an hate package on the street in a zip-lock bag telling me which representatives were Jewish.

Yesterday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day. An emotional King Charles paid a visit to Auschwitz, 80 years after its liberation – 6 Million Jews perished. When I see video on the news of ICE agents rounding up undocumented people, putting them in handcuffs outside their churches and schools, I think of Jews wearing yellow Stars of David and cattle cars. I think of internment camps full of Japanese people who were herded onto buses on the West Coast.

I am not surprised that Elon Musk told a group of right-wing Germans to leave their guilt behind them and ended with a straight-arm salute! Our country has a long history of racist, restrictive immigration policy. The only question I have, is what are we going to do about it?

Here are some high school prom pictures Bob unearthed. We thought we knew everything.

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Onward XYZ Soldiers

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , on August 8, 2023| Leave a Comment »

If this headline doesn’t scare you, well, please read the article.

One of our democracy’s founding principles is the separation of church and state. History has taught us that once a religion dominates public policy, the outcome is terror. Look at Henry VIII, or Sharia Law, or for that matter Ireland back in the day. Thomas Jefferson even wrote his own version of the Bible – seems he took out all the miracles and outrageous stuff:

“…In 1786, he wrote a Virginia law forbidding the state from compelling anyone to attend a certain church or persecuting them for their religious beliefs. The law unseated the Anglican Church as the official church of Virginia. Jefferson was so proud of his accomplishment that he told his heirs he wanted it inscribed on his tombstone, along with his authorship of the Declaration of Independence and his founding of the University of Virginia.”

https://www.history.com/news/thomas-jefferson-bible-religious-beliefs

But all the talk about freedom of religion and the arc of our democracy shifted in 1947. That was the year the SCOTUS voted to allow public school busses to ferry Catholic school students “Everson vs Board of Education.” Everson lived in NJ and figured taxpayers should not have to pay for the transportation of parochial schools. He lost and the country been losing that battle ever since with a thousand small cuts, like praying on a football field.

I always liked being the one Mom to introduce Judaism to my kids’ friends in public school. After all, I brought the M&Ms along with a dreidel for a little lesson in gambling! And what child doesn’t love the idea of one present a day for EIGHT crazy nights! And when students get a small taste of different cultures and yes religions, it only helps to expand their horizon. We Americans can teach and celebrate any religion we choose, so long as we don’t just push ONE religion. At least that’s my understanding of the First Amendment.

But the state of Oklahoma is choosing a dangerous path. To fund a “charter” school, a Christian school, with taxpayer money will set a precedent for any other religion to decide they too need to get into the education business and indoctrinate young minds with public money. At Sacred Heart School I spent every morning memorizing catechism. Every Morning. What if I’d actually been introduced to science at such an impressionable age? How about art?

While three quarters of the US population is Christian, the second largest religious group varies according to state. Believe it or not, Buddhism comes in second for most of the west, while the northeast is mostly Jewish. Surprisingly, Islam covers most of the south! Should a Mosque open a secondary charter school and accept tax dollars in Texas? How about a Yeshiva public school in Maine?

Or maybe we just approve more Christian charter schools? After all, this is the dominant religion in the world as well. Here is the rabbit hole that would lead us down:

“Catholicism dominates the Northeast and the Southwest, and Southern Baptists have a strong foothold in the South. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dominates Utah and surrounding counties in Idaho, Wyoming and parts of Nevada. Lutheranism has a strong following in Minnesota and the Dakotas, while Methodists make their presence felt in parts of West Virginia, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas.”

https://geolabinstitute.org/en/reppublic/16/

Oh wait a minute, that already happened! “The Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa were given permission to open St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School in August 2024.” We cannot continue to eviscerate public schools in our country – holding lotteries in inner cities for charter schools is a crime. A child’s future should not depend on a roll of the dice or their zip code. Thomas Jefferson called for a well educated public to ensure democracy’s survival; “Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.”

Here we are with my beautiful niece, in front of the house we were building in Albemarle County, VA. My aviary sits on top, a tribute to Monticello!

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Curricularity

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , on January 28, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Yes, I just made up a word, take note Merriam Webster. Curricularity is a noun – a state of mind expressing “… extreme amusement” of any school board member that has been criticized, harassed or generally polarized by parents wishing to be partners in their child’s education.

When I sat on a school board in NJ, I learned quite a lot about the Business of Education.

I got a crash course on marketing when the superintendent wanted to upgrade the track that ran around the football field. I learned more about the composite materials of running tracks than I ever wanted to know. It seems the age-old clay and ash track (or was it asphalt and rubber?) didn’t cut it with the coaches and football parents; we needed to allocate multiple thousands of dollars for a new age synthetic track.

In this country, “… building a 400 meter polyurethane track from scratch typically costs around $1 million. Resurfacing an existing track usually costs about $300 thousand.” https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-it-cost-to-build-a-400-meter-track

We needed the other tax-paying-parents to buy in to the scheme, and we needed to convince the Borough Council it was necessary. As a newspaper reporter, I knew the economics of any new building project for a public school meant the money had to come out of some other fund, or you had to get a loan in the form of a bond. It was basic “Guns and Butter.” And most of a school’s budget is spent on… can you guess?

Teacher and Administrator salaries.

In an ideal world, public school board members should not be politically biased. Their mission should be to want only the best for their students; but in reality, many states have members that are elected and bring their own unique overt or covert bias right along with them. Unfortunately for TN, we are in the news AGAIN, for all the wrong reasons!

Parents yelling at and threatening public school board members in Franklin was bad enough. Now in a vote of 10-0, McMinn County members voted to ban an 8th Grade book on the Holocaust … on Holocaust Remembrance Day. But at least we’re not alone in our book banning.

“GOP politicians across the country have sought to emulate Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s successful campaign focus last year on “parental control” of education, which revived calls to ban Toni Morrison’s Nobel Prize-winning “Beloved.” In November, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) ordered a statewide probe of potential “criminal activity” into “pornography” in schools after two LGBTQ memoirs were pulled from some districts in his state. Around the same time in Kansas, a school board near Wichita announced it was removing 29 books from circulation, including Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” and “They Called Themselves the K.K.K.,” a history of the white supremacist group.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/01/27/maus-ban-tennessee-mcminn-county-holocaust/

The Rocker was in 8th Grade when he wrote a compelling essay on censorship. Thirteen year olds are smarter than we think, and in NJ, teaching middle-schoolers about the Holocaust is a requirement in the curriculum. Like teaching Math, there are actually right and wrong answers and parents mostly left that up to the teachers. I was never asked to opine about books that were purchased at my son’s school, not as a parent or a board member.

The banning of books in our public schools sets a dangerous precedent. At its best, It’s unfortunate that todays’ conservatives think it’s better not to discomfort our children; didn’t they accuse us of being soft, snowflakes? There is nothing humorous about what’s going on in certain states.

I’m going to buy the Pulitzer Prize winning book Maus, and donate it to our local free library so children can read it. Maybe we can start something? https://www.parnassusbooks.net/book/9780394747231

The Rocker’s 8th grade school picture on my desk

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Memory Laws

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , on July 10, 2021| Leave a Comment »

I’m lucky if I can remember where I left my phone.

And I admit I sometimes have trouble finding my car in a bustling parking lot. Once I couldn’t understand why my hand didn’t immediately unlock my car, until I looked inside and realized it wasn’t mine… it was my make, color and model Subaru and it was parked right next to mine! I know, you are supposed to worry when you forget how a thing works, not what it is called, but I’m more worried about our collective memory, and what our children are taught about history in school.

All of a sudden school board meetings are ending in chaos in one of the toniest districts in Northern Virginia. So being an ex-school board member, I wanted to dig deeper into “Critical Race Theory” CRT, to understand the current climate. Is it just another rube from the GOP to get our heads turned that way, instead of noticing all their cute little voter suppression laws? Inquiring minds…

CRT is a graduate level thesis that originated with Columbia law School Professor Kimberly Crenshaw:

“Critical Race Theory asks why discrimination did not end with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and recommends critical scrutiny of laws focusing on their consequences rather than upon the avowed intentions of their authors.”

This sounds like a “Law 101” course – just because one didn’t intend to murder someone, doesn’t mean it’s not murder. Critical thinking skills are always part of a school’s curriculum, unless you went to Catholic school like I did – back then memorizing and repeating dogma was (and may still be) a good strategy.

The 1619 Project, first published in The New York Times just two years ago, helped to explain how racism was endemic from the very beginning in our country, and that angered certain Republicans. So they published their very own, white-washed, slavery-wasn’t-so-bad version of history called the 1776 Report:

“The 1776 Report fixates upon the related scourge of “identity politics” — a “creed” by which “supposed oppressors” must “atone and even be punished in perpetuity for their sins and those of their ancestors.” These ideas received more attention in the 1776 Report than slavery did.” Which actually has very little to do with critical race theory!

Hmmm, so the Right would rather teach about sins in public school! So far five states have passed laws trying to direct or restrict what is taught in the classroom – Idaho, Iowa, Tennessee, Texas, Oklahoma, and soon to be followed by Florida of course. And there are more states gearing up for this fight; it’s like a modern day Scopes Monkey Trial. The problem with government re-writing history to fit their own narrative is nothing new, the Soviet Union has been passing what are colloquially called “memory laws” since WWII.

A Revisionist in Russia is someone who openly criticizes Stalin; in America, Revisionism usually refers to race. Holocaust deniers are just as revisionist as Southern White “heritage” nationalists. Today, the General Robert E Lee statue was escorted out of a public park in Historic Downtown Charlottesville, VA and I’m proud to say I was there in 2016 when a whole bunch of White people at the Paramount Theatre were informed by Bryan Stevenson that Black people didn’t really like that General Lee statue! https://mountainmornings.net/2016/03/20/being-brave/

“But the most common feature among the laws, and the one most familiar to a student of repressive memory laws elsewhere in the world, is their attention to feelings. Four of five of them, in almost identical language, proscribe any curricular activities that would give rise to “discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of the individual’s race or sex.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/29/magazine/memory-laws.html

As an ex-school board member, I hate to inform everyone but keeping our children pleasantly uninformed so that they feel good about themselves is not our job in a free democracy. Protecting children from thoughts they might find uncomfortable reminds me of Orwell’s 1984. Our schools need to continue to teach critical thinking skills along with reading, writing and math. I certainly learned nothing about our treatment of Native tribes in Sacred Heart School. And it wasn’t until college in the 60s that I was exposed to anyone of another race!

So yes, run for school board if you like. Print out posters and pins! But if our voting and civil rights are continually challenged, state by state incrementally, what kind of country will be left for our children? Here are a couple of future scientists.

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Free Grace

Posted in an expository essay, Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, criminal justice, Memoir, Public Policy, racism, tagged , , , , , , , on July 17, 2020| 3 Comments »

Can you remember what you were like at 15? Great Grandma Ada’s mother, Ettie, was preparing to set sail for America from Russia, alone. My sister Kay was taking care of her invalid mother and her brothers; she had accompanied me to my foster parents house in NJ. She hated to leave me there, but school was about to start. The Flapper still couldn’t walk.

At 15 I was so full of myself. Kay was a glamorous stewardess and my brothers were in college. I already had a boyfriend, and a part in the school play. The guidance counselor hadn’t yet told me my “B” average wasn’t good enough for college. I could walk downtown after school with friends and get a cheeseburger and fries at White’s Drugstore any day of the week. The worst thing I ever did was to tell my history teacher I didn’t like history. He actually looked pained.

Today, a 15 year old Black girl named Grace is sitting in a juvenile detention facility in Detroit. It’s a long story of entanglement with social services and her single mom, but the reason why she’s being held? She didn’t do her online homework after her school shut down because of the coronavirus! Her story was published on Pro Publica:

“Across the country, teachers, parents and students have struggled with the upheaval caused by months long school closures. School districts have documented tens of thousands of students who failed to log in or complete their schoolwork: 15,000 high school students in Los Angeles, one-third of the students in Minneapolis Public Schools and about a quarter of Chicago Public Schools students.

Students with special needs are especially vulnerable without the face-to-face guidance from teachers, social workers and others. Grace, who has ADHD, said she felt unmotivated and overwhelmed when online learning began April 15, about a month after schools closed. Without much live instruction or structure, she got easily distracted and had difficulty keeping herself on track, she said.”

https://www.propublica.org/article/a-teenager-didnt-do-her-online-schoolwork-so-a-judge-sent-her-to-juvenile-detention

We thought the Rocker might have ADHD at that age, we even tried a few months course of medication. When I asked him if he noticed any difference in school, he said he wasn’t looking at the clock as much. 

He wasn’t looking at the clock waiting for a class to be over; he wasn’t counting down the minutes. In other words, as Bob likes to say, his environment wasn’t sufficiently stimulating! We stopped the meds. All he wanted to do was play guitar with his band buddies. In middle school he was making websites for his friends – he could focus for hours on a task IF he wanted to do.

Very much like his father, who had to sit alone in a diner one day to finish a year’s worth of homework! His teacher called him on it – she told him he would stay behind a year if he didn’t hand in his missed homework. Bob was that kid everybody hated, he never had to study. Learning came easy, too easy. Good for Ada, for not bailing him out of that school situation.

I wonder if Grace’s teacher gave her a chance to hand in her homework late? She had violated her probation in April over a Zoom juvenile court hearing, by not getting up for online classes and not doing her homework. Just like many other children of all different colors who were not on probation. I wonder if she were White, would she still be sitting in a detention cell? Would her mother have had the resources she needed to help her daughter?

Try to imagine what two months in jail would do for your fifteen year old self. Now add in a pandemic.

This virus has so many crippling effects on our children. Marginalized kids, who were barely hanging on in school, who may not have a computer in the home, or decent WiFi, or parents with the time and energy to supervise home schooling because they are essential workers, will be suffering if schools don’t reopen. And looking at the statistics in Israel, it would be completely insane to reopen schools as virus cases are rising. https://www.wsj.com/articles/israelis-fear-schools-reopened-too-soon-as-covid-19-cases-climb-11594760001

I live in a leaderless country, with states that decided to put opening bars ahead of opening schools. Mayors who are asking parents to choose between face-to-face and online schooling. Our lives have become a balancing act.

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Reigning In

Posted in an expository essay, Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, Memoir, tagged , , , , , , , , , on June 30, 2020| 3 Comments »

The rain has started, now the beach is just a memory.

All last week, I sounded like a stereotypical old person: “We didn’t have sunscreen when we were young;” or “We only had black and white TV, no Internet!” I could have told the Grands that I had to walk 10 miles uphill to school, but that would be a lie. I did have to get dressed up in a snowsuit, hat and gloves to wait for the school bus…with other kids … because parents hadn’t heard about random kidnappings yet. Before Climate Change.

No helicopter parents back in the day, I would just stand outside in my playpen watching the activity on our street in Victory Gardens, while Nell did her daily cleaning inside. Once I started school, I’d be shooed out the door after tearing off my Sacred Heart uniform, and hanging it up, to ride my bike renegade around the neighborhood. School was a dull, dreary day full of sitting at my desk with my hands crossed into a ball, gazing at the brick building across the street through the window.

Today Metro Nashville schools have decided to reopen in the Fall. But in true Trumpian fashion, they are passing the buck to the parents in this Time of Coronavirus. It’s up to each and every family, you have a choice – 1) send your child to school, or 2) continue learning online with a remote curriculum. The American Academy of Pediatrics has weighed in – they want every child to get back to school!

“…the AAP argues that based on the nation’s experience this spring, remote learning is likely to result in severe learning loss and increased social isolation. Social isolation, in turn, can breed serious social, emotional and health issues: “child and adolescent physical or sexual abuse, substance use, depression, and suicidal ideation.” Furthermore, these impacts will be visited more severely on Black and brown children, as well as low-income children and those with learning disabilities.”  https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/06/29/884638999/u-s-pediatricians-call-for-in-person-school-this-fall

Would you send your child to school if he had an auto-immune disease? Would you send your child to school if she had a grandparent living at home? Will the poor go back to school, while the wealthy buy their kids iPads and tutors?

We’ve all been socially isolated these last few months – 16 weeks to be exact. Bars and beaches are starting to close, again, because our infection rate is going up. For anyone paying attention this is not a surprise given our glorious lack of leadership. The rate of infection and hospital admissions and ultimately deaths are directly related to the rate of noncompliance with SOCIAL DISTANCING, MASKS and HAND WASHING.

Yesterday, the Bride went back to the ER, the Groom returned to his ICU, and we had our last day of unlimited hugs with the Grands. We brought yellow, Rainier cherries over to Great Grandma Ada and Hudson. The Love Bug put her hand on Ada’s through the glass – Hudson showed the L’il Pumpkin he had the same Star Wars pattern on the inside of his mask! We all made heart signs through the vestibule window. Our eyes were tearing up as we left.

We are back in the Land of Breaking News – grieving our collective losses, reigning in our emotions after hearing Mr T did nothing, absolutely nothing when he learned our soldiers had a Russian bounty on their heads. If SCOTUS allows us to see Mr T’s taxes, his adoration of Putin will become obvious. SCOTUS is on a roll!

We desperately need something to look forward to, baseball or ballet? Today at least will be a good day. T’ai Chi Tuesday has become Pilates Zoom Tuesday and I have a loaf of Bob’s sourdough sitting on the counter! And at least the rain is dampening the Saharan dust cloud.

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Desperate Motherhood

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, criminal justice, racism, tagged , , , , , , , , on September 17, 2019| Leave a Comment »

“In my desperation to be a good mother I talked myself into believing that all I was doing was giving my daughter a fair shot.” Felicity Huffman

I know, I know. GM is out on strike and we just might start a new war with Iran, but I’m still obsessing over Felicity Huffman’s college admission scandal.

Every single parent can relate to this; single moms I met in the Jersey City projects, where I was teaching Head Start ages ago, wanted the best education for their children. Education is supposed to lift you out of poverty.

But those young moms could not pay to endow a chair (the legal equivalent of a bribe) at an elite school. Today they live with luck; will an arbitrary lottery number mean their child gets to go to a charter school? And then, if they make the grades and stay out of trouble, will they even be able to afford a state college without sinking themselves into debt?

And what about suburban desperate housewives? Every single one of us knows of someone, or maybe IS that someone, who twisted the rules a little for their child. I knew moms who had their sons diagnosed with ADHD just so they could have their SAT time lengthened. I heard about moms who didn’t live in our tony district, so they submitted the grandmother’s address. I knew moms who hired college counselors just because everyone else was doing it!

We would pay for SAT prep courses and then pray for the best. Of course most of that was a “legal” attempt at gaming the system. The difference being, in suburban school districts like Rumson-Fair Haven, parents had the money to grease the wheels of the college admission process. In Jersey City, parents could barely survive on food stamps. What does this say about a public school system that is funded with property taxes? What does this say about our country?

WE ARE ALL GUILTY of wanting the very best education for our children! But comparing Felicity Huffman’s sentence of a $30,000 fine, 2 weeks in jail and parole to Tanya McDowell’s 5 year sentence for falsifying her address to get her son into a better school district and taking a plea deal on drug charges is misleading. Sure one mom is white with an infinity pool and one mom is brown living in a homeless shelter, but both of them were guilty and desperate to give their child a “fair” shot at success.

McDowell served 3 years of her sentence and said she would do it again if she had the chance because her son started Kindergarten in his grandmother’s district, and he is now on the Honor Roll.  https://www.oxygen.com/crime-time/tanya-mcdowell-homeless-mom-stealing-education-jail-felicity-huffman-college-scandal

Huffman, on the other hand, may have learned her lesson. She seems remorseful and pleaded guilty. Her daughter will now be identified with this scandal for the rest of her life, whether she actually attends college or not. Bob agrees with John legend, who posted on Twitter that women should NOT go to jail for these non-violent offenses. In a twist of the social media world, men seem to be more feminist and empathic than women who declare themselves feminist!

The questions raised this week about racism and social justice are not new. We are running private-for-profit prisons in order to maintain the illusion that our rule of law is fair. We pay more to incarcerate our citizens than we do for pre-schools and elementary education where more brown boys are labeled “special ed,” or end up suspended for disciplinary problems. Our system is broken, and calling out Felicity Huffman or comparing her with Tanya McDowell misses the point.

Over the summer, I downloaded a first level reader book about owls on my iPad for the Love Bug and caught her reading it to her brother. On her 7th birthday last month I explained the “age of reason” to her, about knowing right from wrong. Her brother starts Kindergarten next year and wants to learn how to play the drums! Our children are modeling our behavior – good, bad and indifferent.

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Teach Your Children Well

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 9, 2018| Leave a Comment »

One of Nashville’s favorite Hockey players, Predator’s Viktor Arvidsson, was recently signed to a seven year contract for 29.75 MILLION dollars! All he’s got to do is show up and have fun. https://www.nashvillescene.com/news/cover-story/article/20999248/viktor-victorious-an-interview-with-viktor-arvidsson

You don’t have to attend college to play hockey, you just have to be born with some natural talent and determination. And the juxtaposition of that almost 30 million contract next to the starting salary of 30 thousand a year for our teachers (the same educators some think we should train in firearms) says volumes.

In many states across the country, public school teachers are organizing for a living wage and better conditions for their students after years of funding cuts.

” For K-12 expenditures, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities showed that in 29 states, total state funding per student was lower in the 2015 school year than in the 2008 school year in real terms. In Arizona, spending per student was down an astonishing 36.6 percent; in Oklahoma, it had dropped 15.6 percent; in Kentucky, 5.9 percent.”

Why is this union walk-out different? Because teachers aren’t just looking for a pay hike; they want well-maintained, not crumbling buildings, they want a smaller student-teacher ratio, they want every student to have up-to-date textbooks. This did not just happen overnight or after our 2008 “recession;” I recall outsourcing janitorial staff in the 90s to save money. Property taxes were funding everything from an increasing need for special education staff and transportation, to maintaining teachers’ rising pensions and medical benefits.

In TN, teachers can expect a starting salary of $36,402. Of course you don’t risk loosing your teeth due to pedagogy, and you don’t have quite as much down time as say a hockey player. But you are expected to furnish the ever-present supply of tissues and Purell, pencils and paper, and the patience of a saint. It’s no wonder there’s a teaching shortage – even when both partners are working, it’s nearly impossible to provide for a family of four on a teacher’s salary.

“Inherit the Wind” was playing down the road at the Nashville Repertory Theater, so Bob and I braved the cold and Lyfted over to see a play about a man who was trying to teach evolution to his high school science students. Based on the real “Scopes Monkey Trial” that took place in 1925 just east of here in Dayton, TN, the courtroom battle between science and religion ran in almost every newspaper in the country and around the world.

The ACLU was challenging passage of the Butler Act earlier that year; “The Butler Act forbid the teaching of any theory that denied the biblical story of Creationism. By teaching that man had descended from apes, the theory of evolution, Scopes was charged with breaking the law.”

The play was turned into a famous movie in the 50s in partial reaction to the McCarthy hearings. But the playwrights were more concerned with our “right to think,” rather than a battle between evangelicalism and facts. Still, this anti-intellectualism is alive and well today at a time when almost 40% of the American people still believe in Creationism.

On the brighter side, since the election there’s been a growing resistance to Trumpist ideology; red states are electing their first blue legislators in years, students are leading the country fighting gun violence and the NRA, and the #MeToo movement has ushered in a new wave of feminism.

The more Mr T chips away at fundamental human rights in the name of personal and corporate greed, the more WOKE our citizens are becoming; it would seem that critical-thinking skills are thankfully still being taught in our schools. My generation started a sea change in the fabric of American society, now it’s up to our children’s generation to repair some of this past year’s damage. And young voters are registering in record numbers!

After all, who doesn’t want to save the polar bear’s ice? Or is ice hockey more important than the Antarctic? Granted, the 24 year old “R-V” Predator seems like a great guy, and who doesn’t love a good hockey game? Are they both mutually exclusive?

Meanwhile, remember our cherry tree the Love Bug was climbing? It’s in full pink pom-pom bloom despite freezing temperatures.

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