Let me explain the context in which I am writing this post.
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At 6 AM on Friday I got in my car to drive 400 miles to Grundy, in Buchanan County, in Southwest Virginia, where I was going to volunteer yet again for a free medical and dental health fair, as I have been doing since 2009 (although I missed last year for medical reasons of my own).
As I drove I reflected on many things: my school year so far, the political environment in which we now live, and as I got further southwest the incredible beauty of the Appalachians in Virginia. I reflected back to Jeff Davis wanting Robert E. Lee to retreat to these mountains to continue to resist the Union Army. One wonders what Lee might have done had the train he met in Ameilia had weapons. This is very rugged country, and my 6 speed manual Honda CR-Z got quite the workout, including at times having to drop into second gear as I drove along the narrow road between 460 (the Virginia Coal Heritage trail) and the Lodge at Breaks Insterstate Park where I was staying.
I had no cell or internet connection while I was on the site of the fairs, a school outside of Grundy, where I was from Noon until around 6 on Friday as we set up and did triage, andfrom 5 until I left at 1:30 yesterday (we had stopped accepting patients for treatment because we were out of forms, and also because we had a backlog of patients waiting to be treated that would carry over until this morning). I could while driving listen to MS-NBC on my satellite radio, so I was not totally disconnected from the larger world, but I was in a very different place than my politically active, aware, and liberal Arlington County Virginia, just across the Potomac from the nation’s Capital: Arlington voted 77-16.9 for Clinton over Trump, while in Buchanan it was Trup 79.1-18.7. The 9th Congressional District, which covers all of the Southwestern portion of the state and which had been heavily dependent upon the coal industry, went for Trump 68.444-27.16, whereas my own ith CD (which includes Alexandria, Falls Church, and part of Fairfax County) went for Clinton 72.42-20.58. As I said, a very different world.
It is also an area that is heavily White — in fact the only patients I saw in dental who were Black were a batch of kids bused in as part of a project (we were running a special juvenile dental program in dental at this fair). Given that Thursday I taught in a school that was more than 80% African-American (and almost all the rest Latino) it was in another way a place that was very different. Had I not had the time to transition as I traveled, the contrast between my home and the fair, or the world of my school and the fair, would have been very jarring, almost as if I were in two completely different countries.
So now, my reflections.
I make no attempt to assert that the thoughts I am going to share represent a coherent pattern of thinking. I am still processing what I saw and experienced as I traveled and volunteered, but also recent events in our political world and in my teaching at the school where I now am.
It is clear to me that I am coming to the end of my teaching career. The number of different jobs I have had since I retired, and then after starting a job around Thanksgiving the next year but having to leave that because of my wife’s health, has made it difficult for me to find suitable placements. I have in a few occasions wound up in situations that are not a good fit. That is very true of my current placement. The district, where I had worked for most of my career until I retired in 2012, has some serious problems. I knew that going in. I did not know that the person with whom I have to deal in HR would have such trouble understanding how restrictions / salary cap on people who are rehired in the district from which they retired do not apply to me. As a result, I have now received three paychecks each of which is only about 60% of what I should be receiving. I notified her of the problem before I actually received the first paycheck when I checked my salary online. I have provided all of the necessary documentation, I have explained in detail what I was told by the state retirement board, forwarded to her my correspondence from them. And yet I can still not get it straightened out. That is annoying and frustrating.
But the real frustration is that in many ways a significant number of our students in our school are out of control. I will acknowledge some of my own failures in the classroom, but that does not make me responsible for what I see in the hall, or having students not in my classes walk into my room and when I tell them to leave they tell me to go fuck myself. I have reported the incidents, but whether there has been any followup by security or the administration I do not know because I never get any feedback. That is discouraging, as is how rigid what we are supposed to do is. I am not sure even with my best efforts I can be effective in this environment. It is bad enough that I am fairly sure I will not continue in this setting after this year (and I have no right to transfer within the district until I have been back for longer than this year — even that time frame is not clear) and my wife and I have had serious conversations about my not completing the year. That would create serious financial issues, but I think if necessary I could make it work.
As it is, I get up at 4 in the morning, to be at school by 6:15 at the latest (to have time to make adjustments to what I plan to do, to write the outline of the lessons on the board, to do other kinds of preparation). I though about that yesterday when I got up around the same time to have a quick cup of coffee and glance and email and news before a 20 minute drive from my hotel to the site of the fair. I realized that while I was doing relatively low level tasks at the fair, not being a dentist or dental professional of any kind, I felt as if I were accomplishing more by doing that than I am in my classroom.
To be sure, I am reaching some students. They tell me. I am slowly getting some others to start changing their behavior and to be more focused on learning, but it seems as if I am bailing out a leaky boat with a teaspoon.
My primary course is Government. In the past I have wondered at times what I was teaching. I felt that way when the Senate passed the Military Commissions Act. I have seen our politics and our governance spiral downward into something close to unrecognizable in this country in my lifetime. But now? Most of my students are officially tenth graders, although I have some from each of the other grades. Some will vote in the 2018 cycle. But for what? Will they feel their voices make any difference? How do I get them to care about what we are supposed to be learning about democracy when what they see around them so often contradicts that? I used to feel I could still make a difference, but now I am very far from confident in my ability to do so.
As a citizen, in a critical election cycle in Virginia (all three statewide state offices and all 100 seats in the House of Delegates) I have for the first time since I moved to Virginia in 1982 been almost totally absent from political events of any kind. I know our Attorney General and slightly know the gubernatorial nominee, and I know all of the Delegates representing Arlington. Those Delegate races here are not competitive, nor are our local office races (which almost always are decided in Democratic primaries, given our leanings). Yes, increasing Democratic turnout upstate where we are can make a difference in statewide races, but somehow I do not find myself engaged.
I looked at the raw beauty of the ancient mountains. When I drove around the area where the fair was, I paid close attention to the human impact upon the environment. I listened to the people I encountered — in stores, gas stations, at my hotel, at the fair. I saw dentists who had retired some years ago who still come to events like this because they know they can make a difference, at least for the people they see. I know my own participation helps make the event run more smoothly, starting with my bringing down two hand trucks to get stuff from the trucks into the school for set-up, to helping organize the lines, training some of the other volunteers, even explaining to dental students from VCU how triage operates. The 12 hours of driving and the back pain I felt from being on my feet so long did not seem wasted.
I am 71. Since having a stent put in my aorta just under a year ago, I have had to pace myself more, I tire more easily.
Perhaps I am reaching the point where what I really want to do is be able to savor the time I have left to me, whatever it might be. Perhaps that is why I am apparently reluctant to make the kind of commitment I would need to to turn around what is happening in my classroom.
Then I look at the world around me. I see people who criticize the occupant of the Oval Office or criticize what our gun culture is doing get themselves ferociously attacked on line, or on occasion in person. While I see many ordinary folks pushing back on these things, I see too many who choose to use the ensuing disorder and fear to profit financially and politically. I begin to despair that anything I say or do will be at best fruitless and at worst counterproductive.
Facts seem not to matter to increasing numbers of people, some, including Justices on the Supreme Court, in a fashion that potentially can aggravate the failures of our politics and policy, even of our civil society.
If one’s ideology ignores the human consequences to which it may contribute, then there is something wrong with our ideology.
If the increasing tendency is to “otherize” those with whom we disagree, whether for religious, political, or any other justifications upon which we choose to rely, then the only possible outcomes are either tyranny or a Hobbesian world of every person against every other person with life increasingly becoming solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short for far too many.
The increasing disparities in wealth and power, the frightening increases in open racism, misogyny, religious bigotry, and homophobia, the willingness to seek to impose one’s views and suppress those of others ….. these are thing which we should not tolerate in a society that at least on the surface is a diverse as ours is. It leads to world that is far more dangerous, both on the geopolitical and also the intimate personal scales, and every place in between.
We have no children. We have cats, nieces and nephews, colleagues at work and in our religious communities (her church and my Quaker Meeting). We have networks of acquaintances from education and previous work experiences and professional contacts. I have a network of students, and a circle of those I have gotten to know because of my electronic participation and my writing for print.
I wonder whether i will have any legacy. It is for me most likely to be the impact I have had in the lives of the several thousand students I have taught. I do not always know that impact.
During my volunteering I tried to explain what we were doing and why to people who were waiting for service. I tried to be patient, to listen. Most of all, I tried to be caring and kind.
I was an outsider who came into an event that intersected their lives, their world. I wanted what I said and did to be positive, to never lose sight of their humanity.
Perhaps what has been wrong with my teaching this year is that I cannot say I have been as consistent on these issues there as I was this weekend.
I am shy. I am socially awkward. But neither of those justify my ever treating a student in my classes with less than caring, patience, kindness, even if at times I must by policy enforce rules that have negative consequences for them. That is my failing, and I acknowledge it.
Similarly, for me to be true to my own beliefs and core values,there is never an occasion in a store, when driving, here online, with my spouse, with my cats, t ever rationalize treating a person (including a 4-footed person) with less than caring, patience and kindness.
Insofar as at times recently I have here been harsh, insensitive, unkind, I apologize.
Tomorrow I will begin to do so with my students.
When I used to go to Mount Athos, the Orthodox Christian monastic republic in northern Greece, I would walk between the monasteries rather than catch a ride on the logging trucks. I had come to realize that a pilgrimage is more about how we travel than the destination to which we believe we are headed.
That applies to the pilgrimage of life as well, at least for me.
Over the past few days I encountered many people. Some are those I already knew: the woman from Buchanan County who arranges our rooms for us; a few key people from Remote Area Medical, who run everything but the dental; lots of people I already knew from volunteering at previous events, some dentists, others who work for dental supply companies, some volunteers like me I encountered ordinary folks in various settings. I was reminded once again that what should connect us is our common humanity. As a Quaker, it is what we call answering that of God in another person. Note that phrasing — “answering” because we know it is still there, no matter how opaque the person may seem, no matter how invisible it may appear to us. By taking that approach we open up our best selves.
As I reflect back on the now 52 hours since i left home for Grundy, I realize as I always do that I get far more from these trips to volunteer than I give. I get a chance to stretch myself and my understanding, even as I must acknowledge that at times I get impatient with other drivers on the highways traveling from and back to my home. I need to remember even there that how we travel is as important as our destination.
I do not know if these rambling thoughts have any value for anyone other than myself.
They are offered in an electronic community where we share broadly because we understand our politics in a broad rather than narrow context, one of shared humanity.
Make of it what you will.
And peace be with you all.