Raise the youth to never believe in dictated declarations of legitimacy. No dress code, no code of conduct, implicit nor explicit politeness are needed when a person is anchored in a deep sense of empathy and truth.
what could be a bigger downer than “failure”
I had started this blog with just my name, but it is not about me as a person, my writing here is meant to be me as a thinking, observing participant in our world. Collective failure was going to be my first entry, which seemed like a terribly depressing notion. I’d pondered, “will I simply be…
yell in the face of treacherous, ugly underwater hidden beasts that rule our society
What strikes me on a daily basis is how much I relied on my role as a teacher to cement my sense of a purpose in this world; that is what I miss the most about teaching. Under the blanket of paperwork, bureaucracy, media criticism, district policies obeyed or ignored, I could always point to…
things you could do instead of watching the presidential debates
It may seem odd for a history teachers to advocate abstinence from watching a historic event, but the value of such mainstay political events has become diluted. Radio hosts, college professors, authors. pundits, historians, past and present politicians dissect every word said and unsaid. The lives of the candidates is no longer kept under wraps,…
OITNB – Season 4 – how may we repent
I postponed watching this latest season of Orange is the New Black because at the end of last season the plot established the role of private prisons, taking over the establishment where the women live in the series, the last scene has the women exuberant in a brief freedom facilitated through a hole in the…
new visual landscapes
I love to wander, to arrive somewhere I don’t know and will never know again. I find deep relief in being amongst complete and total strangers. I don’t need any novelty or surprise site, I’m happy with the oddity of just that paint job, the houses and who might live in them, the rare shocks…
the only certainty is uncertainty
This will sound outlandish, but the 9/11 attacks occurred at the perfect time in my life. I did not profit nor truly suffer from that tragedy, but it did help to frame my world view. I had already come to understand true poverty by seeing children with distended bellies and victims of leprosy in the…
“I’m taking the year off…to…um…write”
I am embarking on a strange new way of living, one that is structured only by my own self-discipline, rewarded in a currency of my own making, and with a high possibility of some type of failure. After ten years of teaching in a formal high school classroom, I am leaving behind that structure to live amongst…
from the desk of Marlon James
The author posted this note on FaceBook and it instantaneously illuminated for me a sensation I hadn’t been able to completely define. Marlon James Yesterday at 7:50pm · So I’m on a panel last night and somebody asks, how does one write when overcome with emotion, mostly grief I’m assuming. How does one get words…
[up from slobbery]
one of my favorite poets; we all need more poetry [up from slobbery] BY HARRYETTE MULLEN up from slobbery hip hyperbole the soles of black feet beat down back streets a Yankee porkchop for your knife and fork your fill of freedom in Philmeyork never trouble rupture urban space fluctuates gentrify the infrastructure feel up…
When I Think of Tamir Rice While Driving
in the backseat of my car are my own sons, still not yet Tamir’s age, already having heard me warn them against playing with toy pistols, though my rhetoric is always about what I don’t like, not what I fear, because sometimes I think of Tamir Rice & shed tears, Source: When I Think of…
contained
In the 80s, and perhaps for decades before, pantyhose were sold at the local Woolsworth packed in a plastic egg. Just like those brightly colored plastic easter eggs that parents buy and fill with candy because actual dyed hard-boiled eggs that have been sitting in the yard for a few hours are gross to eat….
