The Real World and the Bubble

Death and destruction in Israel and Gaza.

Dysfunction and bad leadership choices in the US House of Representatives

Another mass shooting, this time in Lewiston, Maine.

It’s not a pretty world.

In our own little bubble people get up to live another day. If we remember, we are grateful for the beauty of nature around us, the food we eat, the schools that nurture our children, clean water to drink.

We reminisce over places that used to be here. We get excited about things that are to come. Sometimes, we worry about them.Will Columbia/HoCo still be the place we want to be? The place that we remember? A place we feel at home?

Every day inside our bubble we have reasons to be thankful and reasons to complain. No one claims this is paradise, except possibly realtors or the tourism folks. It isn’t paradise. Some folks struggle a lot.

But then I look at the world outside our bubble and shrink from the violence of it. The hatred and injustice. It is every small failure, disappointment, and imperfection we see in our own lives but blown up to an unimaginable size.

This week it threatens to consume us.

How much easier it is to cling to our tiny world. Post photographs of sunsets and autumn leaves. Complain about school buses or bike lanes or how things just aren’t like they used to be.

We know - - oh yes, we feel it to the bone - - that it is not a pretty world. But for God’s sake, let us our keep our bubble and a few illusions to cling to.

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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...

F ³: We Are Not Entitled

A college student went missing. His family and friends were distraught. The community was encouraged to be on the lookout and spread the word. Days passed. They must have been agonizing days for those who cared about the missing student. Thoughts that foul play had been involved cannot have been far from their thoughts. Then, at last, the student was found. Alive. The news was shared with the public. So. Much. Relief. A family had been reunited with their child. Even though we know that life is complicated, I think it is okay to accept this as a happy ending and leave it at that. But the world of social media says no. For every expression of joy at the news came questions and even judgement. It became clear to me that some folks felt entitled to an explanation. They wanted the backstory. It’s as though they felt that, by enlisting the help of the public on social media, the authorities now owed them all the details. Television dramas often weave curr...

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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