With almost all of your posts I find myself near tears. I think it's because you're able to articulate things that many of us feel but fumble to shape words around.
I was catching up with a nurse friend yesterday, who's finally quit the hospital after working in the Covid unit from the very beginning, and she was struggling with the understanding that the kind of "take care of your community" and "do things to make others' lives better" ethos she grew up with is so deeply lacking in others. I've been reading The Dawn of Everything (let's talk about that at some point!) and thinking about what it says about the old philosophical struggle of "freedom to" versus "freedom from." The way that "personal responsibility" has come to mean "I get to do anything I feel like doing and everything has to cope with the consequences" aka entitlement.
Bravo, amigo. "Across all the classes, these are overwhelmingly the answers: Family. Friends. Pets. Art. Music. The earth."
All of that, the CAVE PAINTINGS, the story quotation from Wagamese...
I went to junior & half of senior high school in Abilene, TX. The place was "founded," or grew up really, around the site of one of those huge piles of buffalo skulls in West Texas. A railroad siding, actually, for loading up the skulls for shipment to factories in the North where they were reduced to carbon for use in refining sugar, among other things. I doubt many living there now know anything about this but instead celebrate their whiteness in bringing Jesus to the plains and prairies.
You're telling the true story. My parents taught me false ones. Now that I'm older and a widower, I'm intensely focused on living my own true story. It's all about the Earth, the art, and situating myself to tell that story in the few decades I may have left. Carry on, and thanks again.
"... We see the true colors of the ruling class best at times like this. We can mobilize a war effort in weeks..."
A story:
In June 1989, when I was 39 years old, I was working on a painting in which I wrote down the numbers 49, 50, 51 up to 89. As I painted each number I thought about what was happening in the world in that year. The Korean War began during my first year of life. In 1989, the Soviet War in Afghanistan was still going. All the years in between there were people being silenced and there was war somewhere -- Vietnam most notably for my generation. On June 4, while I was working on the painting, the Tiananmen Square Massacre was happening, which left me stunned.
People silenced. Wars without end. My commitment to speaking through my art work was made.
Sad to say, I did not expect much to change when Joe Biden was elected. Just because he was "electable" did not mean that he was a good candidate. What you've written speaks for me. That Joe Biden is considering sending U.S. troops to war again is horrifying and yet I'm beyond being surprised.
Cry Heart, But Never Break is a Danish (?) children's book on death and grief that has stuck with me. About letting kids experience the whole world and not just the talking around these hard things. And also for allowing the darkness to be felt and acknowledged. I’m so grateful you’re giving those kids a chance to think about that, as perilous and frustrating as it is. Because you are out there throwing a lifeline to someone, or many someones, there’s a chance we might be able to reach each other.
your paragraph that starts "the more i know the harder it is to hang in there" describes exactly how i felt during my entire teaching career--1979-2014--high school then community college. i used to call it "3rd world missionary work," although i realize now this terminology is problematic in a way i did not see then. still, the realities of amerikan education on the margins, like the "healthcare" system, have always been inequitable. of course, the pandemic has stripped away the façade and definitely heightened the inequities. from the inside, it's clear that so much of the system (education, healthcare, gov't) ARE DESIGNED to benefit a few and to INSURE the rest fail. So why teach? you said it: "Showing up to stand with and for these children..." Teaching, the Real Deal kind, is a life of resistance. see bell hooks, and critical pedagogy, and parker j. palmer's "the courage to teach." i hope you stand in, but i also understand that's not always possible, and one must be careful of their own health and well-being, too.
We (mostly) know the toll this has taken on our elders but we still haven't reckoned with the impacts this has had on our children coming of age in this time. Glad you're out there reaching them!
Thank you for expressing your thoughts and feelings and ideas.
I am counting on the fact that you will always be compassionate and I know that you will never abandon those children. You may never know just how important your presence in their lives has been. I assure you that it is profound. Keep the faith.
I have been cleaning up a problem I encountered this week. I fell for a scam. Hard. Can’t believe I
created such a mess for myself. Part of the resolution process demanded that I destroy some paperwork. Went out to our local Staples to do some shredding. While I and all of the store employees were masked, there was a lady mailing packages who was not wearing one and who appeared to me to have a very defiant demeanor. I wanted to punch her in the nose. One of my friends almost died this week and I read in our local paper tonight that a 34 year old mother of three kids did. Died. Covid. What is it going to take?
Meanwhile I endeavor to continue on with the story of my time here on Earth, loving my family, my friends, and the wondrous creatures among us as I go.
I've been feeling this too, the wearying anger at the worship of the white male capitalist god. Of what can be done, the why of it, how to change it. I love the exercise you did with the students--and the quote, which I've shared with many since you shared it last week. Stories are so important--they bear witness, they say what is wrong and what is right, and it honors the individual as part of a broader community. It's vital. It reminds us we are never truly alone.
Thanks Chris. Stay safe. Story is about all I've got to hang onto. I'm trying my best to tell stories that might help others. And reading all that I can to keep my own head from exploding.
I feel palpably--in your writing, in myself--this struggle between rage-despair and needing to show up, needing to continue to try--somehow--to keep your compassion--which is your humanity--alive. I feel the sadness of having to hold so much tragedy, and the senselessness of it. I am sitting here and holding you in my heart, and holding those children--for whom offering a place to write and tell and hear and HONOR stories is such an incredible service. Thank you for continuing to show up, continuing to serve, and to write about it. I share your anger with the dysfunctional systems which seem to worship only money; in which no voice of reason, if it doesn't have its own lobby or several billion dollars, can't seem to make itself heard. And I am also thinking of how there have been other times like this, even worse times--and somehow people managed to survive and pass their stories on, and be moral agents and wise elders and defenders of the vulnerable. I read that many of the earliest colonial accounts of the Americas in which the recorders described sparse native settlements were observing a world in which a vast genocide by European diseases had already occurred--that by some estimates, 90% of the population had already been wiped out. How they had the will to go on, I don't know; except that sometimes it's the only thing one feels they can do.
I hope this doesn't all sound grandiose and entitled; I know we white people can do that. I felt a resonance and a connection--hearing you today on 1A and reading your post here--and I wanted to make a connection, and just say, "yes, yes, yes" and also, "please don't give up!" I hope desperately that we may find some ways, all of us but especially white people, to be in a different kind of relationship with this earth and with each other. And I'm not terribly optimistic that we can, but what else can I do, even if it's just in my tiny sphere of influence, but keep trying?
Chris, I read this yesterday and have been thinking about it ever since. I can't get over how foreign your experience is, even from my similar spot on the other side of the country. I'm also returning to school, but the experience is worlds apart. I can't imagine going back without the rules we have in place--we never stopped masking in classroom buildings, and people take that *seriously* and now we also have a requirement of anyone returning to campus showing proof of their booster shot and a negative test. None of those things are going to keep us completely safe, but something about my students and peers caring and taking it seriously makes such a difference. It must be so mentally exhausting and isolating to keep showing up and taking risks and also proper precautions and essentially doing it on your own. I'm sorry you have to carry so much, and for anyone else in your spot living in a community not actively respectful around such hard issues.
More and more it feels to me like we're immersed in a great spiritual battle. On one side, (not even being histrionic) is Moloch -- urging us to feed everyone: our children, teachers, grandparents, doctors, nurses -- anyone who believes that life is a collective endeavor -- into the maw of the money god. They keep raising the stakes. Forests. Wolves. Water. Air. Anything we love, or perhaps Love itself, is their enemy. Stamping out Love wherever they find it.
I've been mulling over and over this quote from Amitav Ghosh in the Guardian: “Why has this crisis come about?” said Ghosh. “Because for two centuries, European colonists tore across the world, viewing nature and land as something inert to be conquered and consumed without limits and the indigenous people as savages whose knowledge of nature was worthless and who needed to be erased. It was this settler colonial worldview – of just accumulate, accumulate, accumulate, consume, consume, consume – that has got us where we are now.”
With almost all of your posts I find myself near tears. I think it's because you're able to articulate things that many of us feel but fumble to shape words around.
I was catching up with a nurse friend yesterday, who's finally quit the hospital after working in the Covid unit from the very beginning, and she was struggling with the understanding that the kind of "take care of your community" and "do things to make others' lives better" ethos she grew up with is so deeply lacking in others. I've been reading The Dawn of Everything (let's talk about that at some point!) and thinking about what it says about the old philosophical struggle of "freedom to" versus "freedom from." The way that "personal responsibility" has come to mean "I get to do anything I feel like doing and everything has to cope with the consequences" aka entitlement.
Bravo, amigo. "Across all the classes, these are overwhelmingly the answers: Family. Friends. Pets. Art. Music. The earth."
All of that, the CAVE PAINTINGS, the story quotation from Wagamese...
I went to junior & half of senior high school in Abilene, TX. The place was "founded," or grew up really, around the site of one of those huge piles of buffalo skulls in West Texas. A railroad siding, actually, for loading up the skulls for shipment to factories in the North where they were reduced to carbon for use in refining sugar, among other things. I doubt many living there now know anything about this but instead celebrate their whiteness in bringing Jesus to the plains and prairies.
You're telling the true story. My parents taught me false ones. Now that I'm older and a widower, I'm intensely focused on living my own true story. It's all about the Earth, the art, and situating myself to tell that story in the few decades I may have left. Carry on, and thanks again.
Three Things: 1. Robert Reich has always said voting is only step one. Participating in a democracy is a daily practice. 2. I heard Dave Eggers on the Ted Radio Hour talking about teaching kids storytelling. Echos of what you’ve been saying. https://www.npr.org/2022/01/21/1074450649/dave-eggers-how-can-kids-learn-human-skills-in-a-tech-dominated-world
3. Thanks again for sharing your world which helps me cope with my struggles.
Some real grim "The patient died but the operation was a success" vibes from that fuckin' tweet.
"... We see the true colors of the ruling class best at times like this. We can mobilize a war effort in weeks..."
A story:
In June 1989, when I was 39 years old, I was working on a painting in which I wrote down the numbers 49, 50, 51 up to 89. As I painted each number I thought about what was happening in the world in that year. The Korean War began during my first year of life. In 1989, the Soviet War in Afghanistan was still going. All the years in between there were people being silenced and there was war somewhere -- Vietnam most notably for my generation. On June 4, while I was working on the painting, the Tiananmen Square Massacre was happening, which left me stunned.
People silenced. Wars without end. My commitment to speaking through my art work was made.
https://www.talking37thdream.com.37thdream.com/2007/03/calendar-series-52nd-month-speaking.html
Sad to say, I did not expect much to change when Joe Biden was elected. Just because he was "electable" did not mean that he was a good candidate. What you've written speaks for me. That Joe Biden is considering sending U.S. troops to war again is horrifying and yet I'm beyond being surprised.
"... I am hopeful in my rage ..."
(Ferron)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVXq76emXDk
"... we recognize our kinship -- we change the world, one story at a time."
(Richard Wagamese)
Thank you for teaching the children well. Against all odds.
Cry Heart, But Never Break is a Danish (?) children's book on death and grief that has stuck with me. About letting kids experience the whole world and not just the talking around these hard things. And also for allowing the darkness to be felt and acknowledged. I’m so grateful you’re giving those kids a chance to think about that, as perilous and frustrating as it is. Because you are out there throwing a lifeline to someone, or many someones, there’s a chance we might be able to reach each other.
your paragraph that starts "the more i know the harder it is to hang in there" describes exactly how i felt during my entire teaching career--1979-2014--high school then community college. i used to call it "3rd world missionary work," although i realize now this terminology is problematic in a way i did not see then. still, the realities of amerikan education on the margins, like the "healthcare" system, have always been inequitable. of course, the pandemic has stripped away the façade and definitely heightened the inequities. from the inside, it's clear that so much of the system (education, healthcare, gov't) ARE DESIGNED to benefit a few and to INSURE the rest fail. So why teach? you said it: "Showing up to stand with and for these children..." Teaching, the Real Deal kind, is a life of resistance. see bell hooks, and critical pedagogy, and parker j. palmer's "the courage to teach." i hope you stand in, but i also understand that's not always possible, and one must be careful of their own health and well-being, too.
We (mostly) know the toll this has taken on our elders but we still haven't reckoned with the impacts this has had on our children coming of age in this time. Glad you're out there reaching them!
Hi Chris,
Thank you for expressing your thoughts and feelings and ideas.
I am counting on the fact that you will always be compassionate and I know that you will never abandon those children. You may never know just how important your presence in their lives has been. I assure you that it is profound. Keep the faith.
I have been cleaning up a problem I encountered this week. I fell for a scam. Hard. Can’t believe I
created such a mess for myself. Part of the resolution process demanded that I destroy some paperwork. Went out to our local Staples to do some shredding. While I and all of the store employees were masked, there was a lady mailing packages who was not wearing one and who appeared to me to have a very defiant demeanor. I wanted to punch her in the nose. One of my friends almost died this week and I read in our local paper tonight that a 34 year old mother of three kids did. Died. Covid. What is it going to take?
Meanwhile I endeavor to continue on with the story of my time here on Earth, loving my family, my friends, and the wondrous creatures among us as I go.
Sincerely,
Melissa
I've been feeling this too, the wearying anger at the worship of the white male capitalist god. Of what can be done, the why of it, how to change it. I love the exercise you did with the students--and the quote, which I've shared with many since you shared it last week. Stories are so important--they bear witness, they say what is wrong and what is right, and it honors the individual as part of a broader community. It's vital. It reminds us we are never truly alone.
Thanks Chris. Stay safe. Story is about all I've got to hang onto. I'm trying my best to tell stories that might help others. And reading all that I can to keep my own head from exploding.
My coteacher pairs 13 Ways at Looking at A Blackbird with Raymond Patterson and asks students to write 13 Ways at Looking at The Coronvirus.
I feel palpably--in your writing, in myself--this struggle between rage-despair and needing to show up, needing to continue to try--somehow--to keep your compassion--which is your humanity--alive. I feel the sadness of having to hold so much tragedy, and the senselessness of it. I am sitting here and holding you in my heart, and holding those children--for whom offering a place to write and tell and hear and HONOR stories is such an incredible service. Thank you for continuing to show up, continuing to serve, and to write about it. I share your anger with the dysfunctional systems which seem to worship only money; in which no voice of reason, if it doesn't have its own lobby or several billion dollars, can't seem to make itself heard. And I am also thinking of how there have been other times like this, even worse times--and somehow people managed to survive and pass their stories on, and be moral agents and wise elders and defenders of the vulnerable. I read that many of the earliest colonial accounts of the Americas in which the recorders described sparse native settlements were observing a world in which a vast genocide by European diseases had already occurred--that by some estimates, 90% of the population had already been wiped out. How they had the will to go on, I don't know; except that sometimes it's the only thing one feels they can do.
I hope this doesn't all sound grandiose and entitled; I know we white people can do that. I felt a resonance and a connection--hearing you today on 1A and reading your post here--and I wanted to make a connection, and just say, "yes, yes, yes" and also, "please don't give up!" I hope desperately that we may find some ways, all of us but especially white people, to be in a different kind of relationship with this earth and with each other. And I'm not terribly optimistic that we can, but what else can I do, even if it's just in my tiny sphere of influence, but keep trying?
Chris, I read this yesterday and have been thinking about it ever since. I can't get over how foreign your experience is, even from my similar spot on the other side of the country. I'm also returning to school, but the experience is worlds apart. I can't imagine going back without the rules we have in place--we never stopped masking in classroom buildings, and people take that *seriously* and now we also have a requirement of anyone returning to campus showing proof of their booster shot and a negative test. None of those things are going to keep us completely safe, but something about my students and peers caring and taking it seriously makes such a difference. It must be so mentally exhausting and isolating to keep showing up and taking risks and also proper precautions and essentially doing it on your own. I'm sorry you have to carry so much, and for anyone else in your spot living in a community not actively respectful around such hard issues.
More and more it feels to me like we're immersed in a great spiritual battle. On one side, (not even being histrionic) is Moloch -- urging us to feed everyone: our children, teachers, grandparents, doctors, nurses -- anyone who believes that life is a collective endeavor -- into the maw of the money god. They keep raising the stakes. Forests. Wolves. Water. Air. Anything we love, or perhaps Love itself, is their enemy. Stamping out Love wherever they find it.
I've been mulling over and over this quote from Amitav Ghosh in the Guardian: “Why has this crisis come about?” said Ghosh. “Because for two centuries, European colonists tore across the world, viewing nature and land as something inert to be conquered and consumed without limits and the indigenous people as savages whose knowledge of nature was worthless and who needed to be erased. It was this settler colonial worldview – of just accumulate, accumulate, accumulate, consume, consume, consume – that has got us where we are now.”
Thanks. Again. ❤️