This is the first time I have posted here in more than 2 weeks. I have read some of what others have offered, but have not, before today, felt moved enough to sit down and offer anything, thoughts, observations. Today is the 6th of 10 days away from teaching my more than 100 students. I am almost caught up with grading, know what I plan to do in the first week (4 days) back, and so have some time to breathe, reflect, and therefore write.
This posting will not have a singular focus, but will ramble across multiple topics, an inevitable product of not having written recently. It will contain observations about where we are as a nation, on personal issues, on wondering about things that have not yet happened, and offering reflections and reactions on recent events.
I am not sure of what interest or value it will be to anyone else, but I offer it on the chance that at least some of it may speak to some who encounter it.
Continue reading or not — that is your choice and I totally respect whatever it might be.
I watch as COVID begins to explode again, only now it is becoming increasingly personal. I have had multiple folks with whom I have connections who have gotten the disease, including neighbors,, current and former students and their families, but until recently that circle did not include any deaths. Now it does, someone to whom we are connected through extended family. We also have another extended family member who may have been infected (we are awaiting a test). As both my wife and I are in the high risk category (her from her blood cancer and me by age, cardiovascular issues and the stroke I had just over a year ago), at times we wonder if it is possible to totally protect ourselves. We are grateful that there are apparently now effective vaccines, but wonder when we will have access thereto. In the meantime our lives are very constrained, although the positive side affect therefrom is that it has given us the occasion to work on things that have at times been irritants in our relationship. So maybe thereby our semi-isolation is helping us both become better persons.
The pandemic is also part of the reason why I have reluctantly withdrawn from the program on which I had embarked which would have led to my receiving my doctorate in August 2022. I was doing well, knew where I was going and how to get through it. But even though I have been assured that my school wants to keep me, there is no guarantee of employment beyond this year. My wife might have to retire if required to return to work in person before we were able to be vaccinated. If I were not continuing in education completing a doctorate even with a dissertation on a topic about which I greatly care did not seem to make sense (at age 74 were I not to continue in my current position I have accepted that my teaching career would be over). And the uncertainty of the future led me to recognize that I could not justify what it would cost — I want to be sure that I do not jeopardize what passes for our financial security.
There is also our reaction to the political situation in this country. While I am glad to see that the formal transition has now started, the mixed results of the election and the willingness of Trump to poison the waters on what is clear is his way out the door are more than upsetting — it is absolutely frightening. The unwillingness of Republican leaders to speak out forcefully against what Trump is saying and doing is making it increasingly hard to see how Biden and Harris will be able to undo all of the damage of the past four years. I will not be surprised to see military action against Iran before Trump leaves office, nor would I be shocked if one of the forthcoming executions of Federal prisoners (something that is not normally done during a transition) is by firing squad. Actions like issuing oil leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Mnuchin pulling back and effectively sequestering almost half a trilling dollars in relief funds, McConnell trying as a price for any other relief getting immunity for corporations who force their workers into unsafe employment situations during a pandemic, attempting to burrow in to key positions ideologues such as those who came from the staff of Devin Nunes … all of these are serious issues that may be only the visible part of the much larger iceberg of what Trump and his allies are doing beneath the surface.
All of which leads me to a basic concern — America is badly broken. When one of two major political parties does not believe in attempting to win elections by persuading a majority of voters but rather by suppressing or diluting (through gerrymandering) the votes of those who oppose them, are we still a democratic republic? With the Federal courts being stacked with unqualified ideologues, when trying to fix that by expanding the number of judges on appellate courts and Justices on the Supreme Court cannot be fixed before 2023 because even if we win both Georgia runoffs Manchin and probably Feinstein would not vote for such expansion, how much more damage will be done?
I have taught government for most of the approaching three decades I have been in the classroom. At this point, from day to day, I cannot be sure of what I am teaching. How is it that an administration can with regularity violate laws, ignore legitimate subpoenas, ignore valid court orders, and there are no consequences?
I have wondered what I might do were I asked to assume a role in the new administration. While it is unlikely it is not entirely out of the question, as I know fairly well a number of people whose names are being mentioned for high positions and I have some relevant skills and knowledge. I know that age is not considered a bar — after all, the President-Elect is 3 ½ years older than me, and his nominee for Secretary of the Treasury is almost my exact contemporary. Would I feel called to do my part to try to make this a better country going forward? Would I be willing to give up my public voice to try to make the administration succeed? In the past my answer would have been negative. I am reminded of words spoken by Dirty Harry - a man’s gotta know his limitations. I have at least been considered for such opportunities in the past both by people I know on the Hill and high ranking folks in the Obama administration. I chose to stay in or return to teaching, both with respect to those opportunities, and another with what was to become the successful campaign of a candidate for statewide office in Virginia. For better or worse, it seemed like the biggest difference I could make was to continue as a teacher, as long as I felt I was effective.
More important, where I now teach is very much a community, one with whose values I am very much in accord. They took a chance on me 18+ months ago, and I feel a responsibility to them, to my students.
And yet — what if there were a chance to make a difference on a larger stage? Might that opportunity not itself be an obligation that I would have to consider?
In all likelihood I will not be faced with that choice, which is fine. But to think about the opportunity also means I have to think more broadly about all of the aspects of my life.
What are my obligations/responsibilities to the various communities of which I am, perhaps however tenuously, a part? That includes my neighborhood (where I served on the board of the community association), my faith community (where I have held leadership positions), the college of which I am an alumnus, my marriage, our extended families, my profession, Arlington County (for whom I worked for more than 8 years and where I served on school board advisory committees), Commonwealth of Virginia where I have lived for approaching 40 years, the nation which I served by enlisting in the Marines (and which compensated me by paying for part of my education and underwriting my buying and refinancing our home), and also — and not to be ignored — the wider world of which we are all inevitably a part.
Think of the last of these, and think not only of the environmental issues that threaten ALL of us, but also of dangers we face because of nationalism, sectarianism, political ideologies. authoritarianism, and so on.
What are my responsibilities in each of the actions I do or those I do NOT do? What about the words I speak or those I fail to utter when speaking out might make a difference (and yes, I know it might not, but will I know if I do not try)?
Elsa, our last rescued cat, is now more than 19 ½ years old. Three times weekly I take her to the vet to get fluids injected under her skin because her kidneys are slowly failing (and she will fight us if we try to hydrate her). Increasingly we both find that we need to forego other things because she needs our attention, and she has given us such joy that we cannot deny her — although when she catches a mouse, jumps up on the dining room table where my wife is working and starts to eat it (because she has seen us eat there) I do have to intervene at take it away from her! We do have SOME limits.
I mention Elsa because our relationship with her is emblematic of some of the decisions we have to make. We will not, so long as we can afford it, move from this house while she is alive. It has been her home for 18 years. Nor will we bring in another pet — she is now used to being the center of our attention, and our last such attempt did not work out well. We have learned.
But I also mention Elsa because that relationship indicates something else — the priorities we each set will not be the same. Others may not understand our ranking of possibly conflicting choices. They may not understand why we forego some things and how in God’s name we put time and energy into others.
This is relevant to this meandering essay on a political website — I think far too often we are too quickly judgmental of the choices with which we disagree made by others, whether those others be ostensible allies or presumed opponents on most issues. Perhaps we all could use a little more patience and willingness to try to understand the other. If we lack that, then the kind of vitriol that has clearly debased our political comity over the last four years — and which was clearly building up for several decades before that — will continue to poison the society in which we live.
Perhaps it is because I am older. Perhaps it is because not having biological children I ponder about what my legacy will be, what I will leave behind. Perhaps it is because for going on 30 years I have spent much of my work effort trying to make a difference for the offspring of others, as a teacher who challenges, supports, encourages, chastise, congratulates — and tries to learn from — my students
Lincoln said of his own great speech that “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.”
The first part of that sentence is applicable to most of what appears on this website, and certainly to what I offer, especially in this post.
What we do — here in our blogging and commenting — and for most of us in the rest of our lives, may not seem like the kind of sacrifices to which Lincoln referred in the 2nd part of that sentence. And yet we never know what word or action that comes from us has an impact, positive or negative, far beyond what we imagine. Henry Adams wrote “A teacher affects eternity, he can never tell where his influence stops.” As a teacher those are the scariest words I have ever encountered, for it reminds me that a negative action or word on my part can have lasting damage on students, even students who were not the target thereof.
I would posit that we are all teachers in the meaning of those words from Adams. We never know where our influence ends.
So perhaps the point of this rambling reflection is this — we need the humility to know we can be wrong, the willingness to listen to and try to understand others, the kindness to assuage pain and hurt, the courage to speak out at things that hurt others and are wrong, the willingness to see beyond the needs of us and “ours”, and the strength to NEVER give up.
Not easy.
Perhaps we need models.
We should model for one another.
I would argue that for whatever flaws he may have as human (as we as humans we all have flaws), our President-Elect provides a very strong model for all of this.
And because he does, I do not yet give up hope. I still try to teach my students. I try to use the semi-isolation of the pandemic to deepen our marriage. I am willing to start down paths like the doctorate that I may not complete because I realize that my priorities need to change.
It is Thanksgiving. The origin of the holiday does not now matter to me. It is an occasion to reflect, and to realize how lucky I am, even if only to be loved by an aging feline who still thinks she is a kitten. It is to accept that I will never accomplish all I would want, but that is not an excuse not to keep trying, to make myself a better person and the world a better place.
So here I end this meditation. For once I will not cook — we supported a good restaurant by running into DC and picking up a nice meal for tonight.
I will now finish grading my students’ papers, and then give myself some more time to reflect and be grateful.
Peace.