A polarized glimpse of Sunny Florida education

In case you missed this recent news item, publishers of a textbook used in Florida have removed all mention as to why Rosa Parks was told to leave her seat at the front of the bus and go to the back on December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama. In other states, students attending institutions of genuine education learn that the reason was that she was…

Well, I can’t tell you why she was ordered to change seats, because as I write this, I am in the Free State of Florida, as the governor calls it without a hint of irony.

Making Do: The Food of Discovery

Every household probably has a go-to meal they whip up when there’s “no food in the house.” Maybe for you it’s a pb&j. A bowl of cereal can be nice. Some pasta with a little olive oil, garlic, and lemon, perhaps?

For our family it’s egg bread. When you’re just about out of everything, hopefully you can at least scrounge up an egg and a slice of bread. We heat up our favorite tiny cast iron skillet, dab it with a bit of butter or oil, then crack an egg and drop it onto the hot skillet.

Being just one chapter of someone else’s Great Loop

A couple weeks ago I was in the tiny town of Goodland, at the eastern tip of Marco Island in Southwest Florida. Goodland is a quirky little town, and you never know what oddball adventure you’ll encounter there. And this visit didn’t disappoint.

It was a Saturday, and a small art fair and music festival was under way. I strolled past the booths of ceramics, paintings, and nature photography as John Prine lyrics echoed through the park. Savory scents of burgers and brats wafted on the air, and I ambled down to a small aluminum floating pier rocking in the salty backwaters between the mangroves and sea grapes.

Head for the trees when it’s all too much

The immediate neighborhood serves as a satisfactory landscape on weekdays for morning and evening walks with the dog, but on the weekend, the forest calls. As soon as I step onto a curved path winding through the trees, my lungs begin to tingle; I gulp the air laced with the perfume of soil and wood and leaves in various stages of birth, life, and decay. I can’t get enough of it! Even bare branches teem with life.

I’m one of those people who struggle to keep up with the business of being human.

Does social media really impact mental health? A Professional’s View

Social media is a must. Teens all over the country rely on social media as a form of communication, and the recently popularized platform TikTok has begun to be questioned in regards to its impact on mental health. As mental health conversations have become more normalized, social media use has begun to be correlated with the assumed increase in depression, anxiety, eating disorders and more. Oftentimes, social media is looked at as the cause for these issues, but is this truly the case?

This is 22

Looking at my son’s face, it is easy for me to see him as he was when he was an infant, with silken hair kissed with just a touch of blonde. Or as a toddler, the way his cheeks would jiggle when he took halting, determined steps across the living room. I was there for all those little moments as he grew up: the birthday parties, the book reports, and the Band-Aids.

But that little toddler with the blonde hair is no longer around.

Valentine’s Day scar-kissed memories

The table where I eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner each day is a fine piece of furniture. Made of pecan wood with wood-peg construction, it has four craftsman-style drop leaves, held in place by sliding wooden bolts under each leaf. It is one of my favorite pieces of furniture—but not only because of the features that attracted me to it when I bought it new 13 years ago.

It took two accidental scar-kisses upon that table to remind me daily of how blessed I have been in love.

Date Night in the Glow of the Silver Screen

It was my favorite kind of date night. My Gentleman Friend asked me if I wanted to go out to see a movie, A Man Called Otto. It was Sunday night, which made going out feel a little rebellious. We were going to squeeze just a little bit more “us time” out of the weekend.

Plans for dinner beforehand were quickly abandoned, in favor of having popcorn for dinner. Popcorn and a beer, since our local movie house now sells cans of beer placed subtly on the side of the concessions area.

Heaven — at the end of the path, or the path itself?

Not long ago, I did something nice for a lady who was a total stranger, and my friend said to me: “That was very Christian of you.”

I don’t remember what I did for that stranger — it was some little kindness any thoughtful person would do for another. Maybe she dropped a dollar and I called out to her. Or maybe she struggled with an armful of groceries and I offered to carry some out to her car. It was some kindness so small and commonplace, I don’t recall it.

Delight is Everywhere, If You Look

My word of the year for 2022 was Delight. Instead of traditional New Year’s resolutions, I’ve tried to focus on one word to shape how I approach another year of life. So this year was about finding delight in the ordinary: being more spontaneous, tuning in to the world around me, searching for good things that might go unnoticed.

The subtext of this word, for me, instructed me on what I was not to do: I was not to let my anxiety take over moments that were otherwise beautiful.

Did Santa just say, “On Billy, On Nanny…”?

Once upon a Christmastime, almost a half-century ago, a hundred heads swiveled in our direction to cast angry stares at us, with that “what kind of a monster are you?” look that no parent ever wants to see. And all because our cute little daughter picked just the wrong time to get it all wrong.

We had taken little Jenny to the Woodfield Mall to see Santa Claus so she could sit on his lap and tell him about all the toys that were on her Christmas list.

Scenes from the Big House

It was about 26 degrees the day I went with my daughter, son, and best friend to watch a football game at the University of Michigan, where my son is a freshman. This was my first football game watching the Wolverines at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor. Nicknamed “The Big House,” the stadium is the largest stadium in the United States; the third largest in the world. It boasts over 107,000 seats. I only know this because my friend, the ticket holder, was kindly sharing her knowledge of sports trivia with me.

When a Supreme Court decision hits home

Like everyone else, I had strong feelings about the Supreme Court’s controversial decision regarding abortion, even though there was no way it would ever affect my body directly, for reasons too obvious to mention. But the Supremes are currently mulling over a decision that could strike to the very heart of my identity.

I refer, of course, to the suit filed by the Jack Daniel’s Whiskey company against an Arizona company named VIP Products, which makes doggy chew toys.

The toy at the heart of the case is a rubber squeak toy shaped and decorated like a Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey bottle.

Regrets, I’ve Had a Few

Elon Musk, the Tesla billionaire, recently bought Twitter for $44 billion. Since the beginning of the year, Musk began purchasing shares of the publicly-owned social network, Monopoly-style, before announcing he would buy the company outright and privatize it. By May, the deal was put on hold. By summer, Musk hinted that he might abandon the deal to buy Twitter altogether. But in October, Musk finished the deal: $44 billion for the purchase of the platform.
Folks are leaving Twitter in droves, and many who remain are mercilessly trolling Musk with fake accounts impersonating him.

The nest just out of reach

A long time ago — maybe 1978 or so — my Brittany Spaniel puppy, Dandy, was obsessed with a robin’s nest.

The nest was tucked six or seven feet up into the crook of a maple tree, and Dandy, filled with puppy curiosity, enthusiasm, and energy, would leap into the air to go nose-to-nest. Then she would sprint around the yard and do it again.

The nest was just inches higher than she could leap, so I didn’t worry that she would turn the yard into some grisly horror show of flesh and feathers.

Just My Type

It was as though the chocolate brown typewriter had a spotlight on it. There was no chance of passing by without admiring its beauty. I was drawn to it like a moth to a flame.

This particular typewriter, an electric model, sat on a lower shelf at the local thrift store. I knew right away that I wouldn’t buy it; I’m a purist, more interested in manual typewriters. Still, this model was gorgeous, and I brushed my fingertips across its keys.

Jumping to the top of the banned book list

As a retired high school English teacher who taught the classic Ray Bradbury novel “Fahrenheit 451” several times, I cringe every time I read of efforts to ban books in our present-day America.

And the news has been pretty cringe-worthy lately.

All over America, most notably in Texas and Florida, over-zealous authoritarian governors have passed state laws banning books not only from classroom curricula, but also from school libraries. While these laws are framed as being responsive to a parent’s right to have a say in what their child reads in school, in fact the laws give restrictive powers to a small handful of small-minded parents, elbowing aside the rights of all other parents who want open-minded books on school bookshelves for their children to experience.

Pomp(adour) and Circumstance

It was just 30 minutes before we had to go to the high school for the graduation ceremony, and it suddenly got quiet in the house. I couldn’t imagine where everyone had gone. Just a few minutes before, my son was frantically asking, “Where’s my tie?” “Has anyone seen my tassel?”

Now? I heard nothing.

I noticed a soothing yellow shaft of light coming through the barely-open bathroom door in our dark hallway, and I approached with utmost caution: Mommy-ing 101 has taught me the important lesson that bathroom doors that are slightly ajar could spell trouble: I listened carefully for sounds of trouble, and by trouble, I mean vomiting.

Happiest sad man, or saddest happy man

“You’re either the happiest sad man in the world,” my buddy Bill told me recently with sorrow in his voice, “or the saddest happy man.”

The occasion was the sudden death by stroke of the love of my life, Carol Felvey, a death that came completely out of the blue on Labor Day weekend this year.

Carol and I have been happily together for four years. I first met her a few months after I lost the other love of my life, Gail, to whom I had been married for more than 48 years.

Living up to — or down to — expectations

As a schoolteacher for more than 35 years, I found it important to keep a key principle in mind at all times, and the principle is this:

How much — or how little — a student achieves is directly proportional to a teacher’s trust in their ability to master difficult lessons. Students will usually live up to — or down to — your expectations of them.

Buoyed by your trust in them, students will usually reach a level of achievement far higher than even they imagined they could reach.

Something’s Afoot

My right foot looks like an overstuffed sausage in my black flats. Yesterday, a faint, kiwi-green bruise was on the top of my foot, casting a shadow on the bulging portion of my foot, which in turn spilled over the edges of the shoe, reminiscent of a muffin top. Today, the bruise has migrated closer to my toes—concealed by my shoe, at least — but angry and purple.

Ugh. I was trying to help out my Gentleman Friend, who is a band teacher at our local high school.

Letting Go

There’s expectation in the air. It’s my daughter laying out different outfits on her bed, deciding on the perfect thing to wear to high school. It’s my husband, giving himself a smart haircut early in the morning before heading out to his teaching job. It’s the expanding stash of dorm room supplies growing in a corner, in anticipation of my son heading off to his freshman year at the university.

Even the dog has taken to sitting and staring at us, ears on high alert, playing some type of staring contest where only he knows the rules.

The wisdom in wearing someone else’s sensible shoes

I haven’t seen my old friend Quitman Sullins in close to thirty years, but his name came up at a dinner party with old friends last night, and this morning I spent a lot of time thinking about him.

Quitman was the legendary high school basketball coach who led Maine South High School to an Illinois state championship in 1979, beating powerhouse schools like De La Salle with a smallish bunch of suburban boys. Team after powerful team they beat, and each team went away knowing that they were not outplayed; they were outcoached.

Yay-cation’s Top Five

Our annual family vacation took us more than 1,400 miles away to Utah: Our brand of vacation typically involves lots of driving, camping, and at least one National Park. This year, we visited Capitol Reef National Park and camped beneath a breathtaking view of a huge red cliff that took on ever-changing light and shadows from sunrise to sunset.

Even after being home for a couple days, I’m still feeling mellow and happy in my post-vacation glow. Here are my top five takeaways from vacation:

1.You’ve

Dreams of trained raccoons fade in August

Can it really be August already? It seems like the snow has just melted, and summer is already almost gone.

Oh, I know that there’s plenty of warm weather left before the air chills and the leaves tremble orange and red, but when you’ve spent your life hopping from square to square on a school calendar, the start of August means the beginning of the end of summer.

Once I entered kindergarten in 1953, I didn’t leave school for more than a half-century.

THE DOORWAY TO OUR COMMUNITY

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