Facing the Music: Thoughts from the Festival

I read this sentence this morning and I can’t get it out of my head:

We have lost the joy of celebrating the success of fellow Americans.

There’s something true and very sad in there. But I’d probably write it differently: We have lost the joy of celebrating the success of people who don’t look like us. Or talk like us. Whose cultural expression is not identical to ours.

In fact, what I find so deeply troubling is that many people’s response to seeing that success is that it takes something away from them. Let’s face it: there’s an entire swath of white folks who see anything that doesn’t replicate and validate [their perception of] white culture as alarming, degenerate, even un-American.

Not only does this rob them of an essential element of being human, it’s also a motivating factor in some of the most hateful, authoritarian behavior this nation has ever seen. It’s not just damaging hearts, it’s breaking laws and crushing government.

If you’re wondering how this is going to end up being a local post, well…

I went to the Oakland Mills Fall Festival yesterday and soaked up the performance of the Oakland Mills High School Band and Poms. I am grateful for them. They brought me a lot of joy.

I went away thinking that, as a whole, they didn’t particularly look like my high school classmates back in suburban Connecticut in the 1970’s. My school was brand new and opened using a new bus/transportation plan to make the local schools more integrated. Perhaps they were on paper. In reality there were many tiny worlds of separation under one roof.

What a wonderful thing it is that I have been able to live in different communities since then and meet different kinds of people and experience different kinds of excellence. And joy. This isn’t because of any special qualities I have - - I don’t know how I came to feel this way. Having these life experiences has been a gift. I am joyful because I am still learning.

What a sad, angry world it must be for those who look at their neighbor and feel that they have nothing to learn and nothing to celebrate.

Of course, having the capacity to learn also means understanding things that enrage you and break your heart. Being open to the success of others also means being open to their pain and suffering.

That’s not fun or inspiring or heartwarming. It awkward and uncomfortable and upsetting and I hate it. I am not that great at it, either. But maybe the one gift must accompany the other.

I am still learning.

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Teacher Gifts

Today is the last day of school before the Winter Break. It’s a good time to remember the far-reaching nature of our public school system. You may not have children. You may have sent your children to independent schools. It matters not. You will be impacted one way or another. Yesterday I read a long thread on Facebook about several waves of illness in the schools right now. There’s influenza A and norovirus, I believe. And of course there’s COVID. Apparently in some individual schools the rate of illness is high enough for school admin to notify parents. When I was little the acceptable holiday gift for a teacher was one of those lovely floral handkerchief squares. (I don’t know what it was for male teachers. They were rare in my elementary years.) These days the range of teacher gifts is wider and I have fond memories of Target gift cards which I have written about before. I think it’s safe to say that giving one’s teacher Influenza, norovirus, or COVID is not the ideal holiday...

They Can Wait

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Separate and Unequal

Remember “Separate but equal”? Remember how that really meant that Black schools languished in broken-down buildings without adequate heat or toilet facilities, with cast-off, ragged learning materials, underfunded and largely ignored? The Supreme Court struck that down in 1954. The evidence was clear that separate was not equal. Plessy v Ferguson had led to - - no, endorsed - - deeply unequal schooling and opportunities. We tend to think of Brown v Board as being purely about racial integration. It was not. It was about the logical consequences of segregation. And they were not, not, not equal. The ruling in 1954 didn’t transform public education for non-whites into a land of milk and honey by any means. But it articulated some essential truths in a way that made including everyone a legal precedent which could be relied upon and built upon. It was better than what came before it but it rested upon unsteady ground. It did not necessarily change the hearts or minds ...

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