tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10453960766854132152024-03-13T22:49:28.895-04:00One Man's FieldJeremy Knollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03647996984620729160noreply@blogger.comBlogger38125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1045396076685413215.post-20540561269502775652023-06-14T12:53:00.016-04:002023-06-14T13:03:29.246-04:00A Farewell to My Seniors<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO-PetZ4JEQCNLn6oeLR5oYDBChFFqFqsaapNvh16ytAjmzwhKX723Rxs-QcVGs2Tel9CR1neL5YJYXU9yp6F__BUHUFmkQN1Fv77pUBtNwPT8eErXKpDnm8egDSvBsmOBIrKik90GSe1ygW5KuTBQfzg9ObwGKLL7CcAvkG0QmGG9xM0IQLpRfH0SAw/s4017/IMG_6630.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4017" data-original-width="3013" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO-PetZ4JEQCNLn6oeLR5oYDBChFFqFqsaapNvh16ytAjmzwhKX723Rxs-QcVGs2Tel9CR1neL5YJYXU9yp6F__BUHUFmkQN1Fv77pUBtNwPT8eErXKpDnm8egDSvBsmOBIrKik90GSe1ygW5KuTBQfzg9ObwGKLL7CcAvkG0QmGG9xM0IQLpRfH0SAw/s320/IMG_6630.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><span id="docs-internal-guid-1daf097f-7fff-037b-a1cc-b4f938acbc83"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It has been years since I first assigned commencement speeches to my seniors to end their high school experience. The stories they have told year after year always reaffirm why I keep doing this job. It has become a tradition for me to deliver a speech of my own to end the year. Here is this year's edition.</span></p></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">I</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">n his book </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fablehaven</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Brandon Mull writes, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Smart people learn from their mistakes. But the real sharp ones learn from the mistakes of others.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">That’s one thing I hoped to accomplish with these speeches to conclude the year. I hope Maddi’s statement that being cat-called makes women feel unsafe prevents all the young men sitting here from making that mistake. I hope Ryan’s mistake of not getting involved right away in high school inspires you to jump right into things in college. I hope the cautionary tales people have shared about addictions and eating disorders prevent you all from making the mistake of ignoring warning signs and encourage you to ask for help when you need it. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Listening to stories and trying to learn from them is what made me become an English teacher. Reading books is one of my favorite pastimes and sharing those books with others is one of my greatest joys. That joy was present every time one of you expressed outrage at Leonie’s behavior, or fought back tears on behalf of Jojo, or shook your head at Hamlet’s hesitation. The best days were the ones when you put your books back in your bags as the bell rang and continued the conversation into the hall. The very best days were those when you turned that conversation inward and used our discussions to examine your own lives. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">So today I want to share with you a few passages from some of my favorite books of all time, words of strangers that guide me each day. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My first quote comes from a play I studied in college all those years ago called </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Man and Superman</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by George Bernard Shaw: “</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As a tap-dancing theater kid in the late 80s I </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">knew</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that the performing was a mighty purpose. I was going to tapdance my way into the hearts of all America and make this world a better place through song. But not everyone spoke kindly of a boy who loved singing, dancing, and monologues, and without even realizing it I grew to hate a part of myself I had onced loved. As I grew up I tried to match the masculine norms society showed me. By my early twenties I was a combative, chain-smoking jerk who drank too much and pushed people away. I believed that made me more of a man than being kind and creative. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am 47 now. I’ve been to therapy. I have learned to look back on my tap-dancing self with admiration and love. It took a courageous little dude to keep practicing triple time steps and chromatic scales. His purpose was a mighty one. He just didn’t realize his opinion was the only one that mattered. I hope you do. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That same quote goes on to say,”</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and, as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can.” </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is one of my core beliefs: life is given meaning through serving others. Coaching my sons’ flag football teams, caring for my aging parents, teaching. The best moments of my life are when my efforts benefit not myself, but someone else. Those are the moments I feel like it matters. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To serve others one must see them first and that requires looking out at the world rather than down at a phone. In his book </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anxious People</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Frederick Backman writes, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“If people really were as happy as they look on the Internet, they wouldn’t spend so much damn time on the Internet, because no one who’s having a really good day spends half of it taking pictures of themselves”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Remember those images are highlight reels at best, and complete photoshopped falsehoods at worst. Measure yourself against those carefully curated images and life is doomed to not measure up. Real life is messy sometimes. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When those difficult times have come for me, I have found solace in nature. In his book </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cloud Cuckoo Land</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Anthony Doerr creates a character who also finds sanctuary out in the woods. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“There is magic in this place” </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">he writes the first time he wanders out into the trees. “</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You just have to sit and breathe and wait and it will find you.” </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">We are animals. We were not meant to move from one temperature controlled and artificially lit environment to another. We are meant to experience the silence of the empty woods, the haunting call of an owl in the distance. We were meant to run. We were meant to explore. We were meant to feel our legs burning and our lungs bursting while in pursuit of something. We were meant to stare up at the stars in wonder, and contemplate just how small our problems really are. It is all about perspective. Phones and social media often magnify our problems. Nature makes them shrink.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When you do get out there, pay attention to the sunrises and sunsets. John Green (read all his books) once wrote </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“A sunrise is precisely as magnificent as it is inevitable.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">When the circumstances of your life knock you sideways wake up early and go watch the sun come up. It is nearly impossible to watch the world turn from darkness to light and not feel at least a glimmer of hope. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But, remember that not everyone in life has the good fortune to relax in nature. Everyday you will interact with people struggling to get by, people working multiple minimum wage jobs just to put food on their table and keep the lights on. Sometimes those people will mess up your order, or be unable to fix the mistake in your cellphone bill. When that happens remember what Sirius Black taught us in </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Harry Potter</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals" </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I don’t like the idea of labeling people as “inferior” but you get the point. Everybody is polite when they are trying to impress someone in power. What matters is how you behave when interacting with everyone else. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Whenever possible, show people love. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“And what is love, in the end?” </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">asks Gabrielle Zevin in </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow,</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> “Except the irrational desire to put evolutionary competitiveness aside in order to ease someone else's journey through life?” </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That’s what Mary Jane did. She simply wanted to ease others’ journeys through life and that is what she did for countless students, countless staff members, and me. She always listened when people spoke. She always ended conversations with a kiss and a hug. She always told everyone she loved them. We should all aspire to that. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If your interactions do go sideways, as they sometimes will, remember what Nathan Hill writes in his book </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Nix: </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Anger was such an easy emotion to feel, the refuge of someone who didn’t want to work too hard…the anger was so much easier than the work required to escape it.” </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I used to be angry a lot. Trust me when I tell you it is better to be understanding and forgiving. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“To like something is to insult it,” </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Matt Haig writes in </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Humans. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Love it or hate it. Be passionate. As civilization advances, so does indifference. It is a disease. Immunize yourself with art. And love.” </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He is right. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks,” </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scout tells her brother in Harper Lee’s </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To Kill a Mockingbird</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. She is also right. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This Is How it Always Is </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Laurie Frankel says, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Not much of what I value in our lives is easy.”</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Hard work, challenging yourself, testing your limits are all integral parts of a meaningful life. Life isn’t designed to be easy. As soon as it is, all the meaningful parts start to atrophy. Don’t sit silently because you are nervous; speak up. Don’t buy an e-bike; pedal harder. Don’t use AI to form your thoughts; think. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Using Death as his narrator, Markus Zusak offers us an important reminder in </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Book Thief</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“HERE IS A SMALL FACT: You are going to die.” </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That is why I have the 31,412 tattoo: my life expectancy in days. On average a human life is around 30,000 days. Check the math, then make sure you are using each and every one of them for something meaningful. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“We are all fixing what is broken,” </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Abraham Verghese writes in </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cutting for Stone</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">“It is the task of a lifetime. We'll leave much unfinished for the next generation.” </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Do the work anyway.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lessons in Chemistry </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">by Bonnie Garmus is another of my recent favorites. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Whenever you feel afraid, just remember,” </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">she writes.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> “Courage is the root of change - and change is what we're chemically designed to do. So when you wake up tomorrow, make this pledge. No more holding yourself back. No more subscribing to others' opinions of what you can and cannot achieve. And no more allowing anyone to pigeonhole you into useless categories of sex, race, economic status, and religion. Do not allow your talents to lie dormant, [people]. Design your own future. When you go home today, ask yourself what YOU will change. And then get started.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are just a handful of half days separating you from graduation and the next exciting chapter of your lives. I hope you feel more confident as readers. I hope you feel more confident expressing yourself in writing. I hope above all you feel more confident in your ability to decode the stories around us and take from them the valuable lessons they offer. Books, movies, television shows, tales told around campfires, and anecdotes shared with strangers while waiting for a pizza because you decided not to pull out your phone. I also hope you want as much as I do for those stories to come from people and our shared experience rather than from chatbots or whatever more advanced form of AI comes next. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">I look forward to hearing where your stories go from here. I wish you all confidence and adventure. Congratulations. </span></p><p><br /><br /><br /></p>Jeremy Knollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03647996984620729160noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1045396076685413215.post-66233812498986830942023-05-16T13:10:00.008-04:002023-05-16T14:37:14.597-04:00An Open Letter to My Seventh-Grade Flag Football Team<p>Boys,</p><p>I have coached most of you for years now, and I want you to know that I have never been more proud than when you lost 16-60 this past weekend. </p><p>You heard that right. </p><p>When the opposing coach, up by more than forty points, told his team to play “without restraint” you continued to play with it. That is more important than any win. </p><p>Quick vocab lesson since I am an English teacher: Restraint is a noun. It means self-control. Staying under control is one of the most important lessons games like flag football can teach you. Not exercising control is what leads to penalties in games and all sorts of bad things in the real world. </p><p>While the other team continued to launch passes to the endzone, and comments across the line of scrimmage, you maintained control. The one moment it boiled over, you immediately apologized. You showed restraint, and that is why I am proud. </p><p>You are going to face stuff like that your whole lives. You are going to come across people who think winning is more important than being a good sport, some who think winning is more important than just about anything. Again and again you will be told that as young men you should be aggressive at all costs, you should never show mercy, you should kick others when they are down to assert your dominance over them. I don’t agree with any of that for a single second. </p><p>We have been on the other side of games like that, and you know from experience that as fun as it is to keep scoring, it feels better to show restraint. When we bat the ball down rather than intercept it, or throw short completions and run the clock out it is because on the other side of the field there are human beings. You have learned that in a lopsided win there is no need to humiliate them. You can’t keep swinging when the fight has already been won. </p><p>Some people will tell you that I am wrong. They will tell you I am just being soft. They will say that if a team steps out on the field with you to compete you should spend every tick of the clock attempting to crush them. I don’t think those people are right. I am certain you can be a man, compete with passion on the playing field, excel as an athlete, and still show mercy and common courtesy.</p><p>One final definition of restraint is “restriction of personal liberty.” This one is a bit more complicated. The outdated ideas of what it means to be tough and what it means to be a man are examples of those kinds of restraints. Saying rude things to other kids playing a game so you can “get in their head” takes away your personal liberty to be the thoughtful kids I know you all are. </p><p>The same is true for the idea that mistakes are bad, or are something that should be met with anger and yelling as we see too often in the games we play. That belief takes away your personal liberty to take risks and view mistakes as opportunities to learn and grow. I don’t ever want you to play with those kinds of restraints. I don’t ever want you to think you have to give up being a kind, thoughtful, decent kid just to win some game. </p><p>Winning is not all that matters. I would argue it is not even one of the most important things in youth sports. Helping your teammate when he is struggling is important. Remaining positive and working hard through adversity is important. Showing respect and empathy to a team you have already defeated, ignoring the trash talk, and playing with class, are important. </p><p>Remember that all of these sports are just games. They are games we are meant to play. Play is a verb. It means “to engage in an activity for enjoyment,” and there is nothing enjoyable about embarrassing other kids on the field. It is also a noun: “an activity engaged in for enjoyment and recreation, especially by children.” </p><p>Now we just need all the adults to remember that. </p><div><br /></div><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Jeremy Knollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03647996984620729160noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1045396076685413215.post-69440002632715987732021-11-22T08:00:00.003-05:002021-11-22T09:16:57.348-05:00<p><b>It was my father’s wish that there be no funeral service when he passed away. We are honoring that wish by having a small private ceremony with his wife, his kids, and his grandchildren. Still, I wanted to share some thoughts about my dad as we celebrate his remarkable life.</b></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IOLEd7hsAQE/YZuP7FvbtqI/AAAAAAAAKNY/AegY9zpr4xITKtzLIH5HGZOcf-K_alGHwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1936/IMG_7206.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1936" data-original-width="1936" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IOLEd7hsAQE/YZuP7FvbtqI/AAAAAAAAKNY/AegY9zpr4xITKtzLIH5HGZOcf-K_alGHwCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/IMG_7206.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><p></p><p>
</p><p>Some will say my father has <i>died</i>. Others will say he has been <i>lost</i>. Maybe it is the English teacher in me that rejects both of those terms. Neither one is accurate.</p><p>
</p><p><i>Died</i> is just too permanent: <i>to have stopped living</i>. My grandfather’s life ended when I was seventeen, and I reached out to him just the other day. Out for a run, asking for his firefighter strength to bear me up, I swear I felt him. I believe he was right there with me as I tried to navigate the challenges of the past week, as I tried to help his daughter weather the conclusion of a fifty year long love story. I have had conversations with him all throughout the three decades since that day. In my life he has remained very much alive.</p><p>
</p><p><i>Lost</i> does not work either: <i>unable to be found</i>. When I needed my grandfather I knew right where to find him. I always have.</p><p>
</p><p>So today I want to honor my father’s <i>passing</i>. He is no longer with us in the sense we are used to; he has passed on to somewhere else. I hope it is somewhere beautiful. I hope he is reunited with his parents and all his brothers and sisters. I hope he is at peace buoyed by the love his family has always had for him.</p><p>
</p><p>Looking back I see in virtually every lesson of my life the shaping hand of my dad. It was that hand I held while learning to ride a bike, while walking along the Jersey shore or across frozen rivers. It was that hand I still held over these past weeks and months. The simple touch seemed to trigger something in the growing fog of his dementia, his eyes turning to mine alive with love and even mischief. In a less literal sense it was his hands that shaped me more than any others. I am sure the same is true for my sister. I am sure it holds true for my mom. In smaller ways I am sure it is true for everyone who had the good fortune of knowing him.</p><p>
</p><p>I guess it is the teacher in me again that takes stock of life’s events in the context of lessons learned. My father was the best teacher a kid could ask for.</p><p>
</p><p>He taught my sister and me how to find joy in work as he dragged us on leaf covered tarps across the lawn, threw snowballs between shovelfuls clearing the driveway, or called out jokes from his den as he worked some extra hours. He worked tirelessly at a job he basically hated in order to provide for us, the joy of fulfilling that role of provider seemed all he ever needed.</p><p>He taught me self sufficiency, of sorts. “Another great home improvement by Herman J. Knoll and son,” became a mantra for home fixes cobbled together with wood putty, duct tape, and determination. When I look at my messy workbench in the garage I smile at the memory of my father’s tool drawer. It was located in the kitchen. It contained all the home improvement equipment he owned: flathead, phillips head, hammer, duct tape, random assortment of nails, thumbtacks.</p><p>
</p><p>He taught me perseverance. Quarter after quarter, dollar after dollar, he fed the batting cages though I never seemed to get any better at hitting a ball. In those moments he taught me that perseverance matters but the outcome does not. He taught me that his love had nothing to do with my abilities on a playing field. When Elias and Wyatt needed to learn how to catch a football it was these lessons that brought me to the yard day after day rep after rep - the connection forged there having little to do with the game we practiced, having everything to do with playing together and talking between snaps, having everything to do with the laughter and joy my father showed me could be found in the moments between tries.</p><p>
</p><p>He taught my family how to care for others as he volunteered as the business administrator for the Cathedral Kitchen in Camden, or taught a bear of a man named Tony how to read.</p><p>
</p><p>He taught us reverence - standing together and staring in awe at Michelangelo's Pieta in Rome, and he taught us irreverence, burping the alphabet at Christmas dinner.</p><p>He taught us adventure in more instances than I can even begin to count. Ignoring the signs reading <i>Beware: Portuguese Man of War</i> and taking me swimming in Bermuda, walking me across the frozen Neva river and again standing on the frozen Gulf of Finland, eating the most delicious candied fruits from a shady street vendor in a dark alley in Beijing because they looked good and they were probably fine. Handing Jenn and me a hand-drawn map to follow his footsteps through the streets of Rome.</p><p>He taught us how to listen. When I called homesick from Middlebury, or Ireland, or New Hampshire. When my heart was broken in high school, or when it burst with the birth of his grandsons - him smiling contentedly at their first cries. Whatever my burden he would listen attentively, assure me it would be okay, and always conclude by telling me how proud he was. My sister just recounted the other day a moment when she sat crying with teenage heartbreak and he just sat down on the step beside her and held her. No matter how hard we leaned, he always held us up.</p><p>
</p><p>He taught me how to curse, and I am proud to say I learned from a master. That lesson came mostly in the kitchen where he cooked all of our childhood meals but also while repairing the driveway, or perhaps his most animated any time we hit a pothole. We made a lot of money from his swear jar.</p><p>
</p><p>A part of my heart is broken knowing my dad is no longer part of this world. Even as dementia started to dull the edges of his memories, even as the landscape of his life started to disappear like footprints in a snowfall, I still so enjoyed seeing him. I'm going to miss cutting his hair. I’m going to miss watching him eat my wife’s chocolate chip cookies. I’m going to miss his jokes, his hugs, his stories. I will miss his love, his laughter, and his lessons.</p><p>
</p><p>But above all, my father taught me faith, and strength, and joy. It is those lessons I know will get us all through this.</p><p>
</p><p>In the hand-written note discussing his funeral wishes, he ended saying he would like his family to go on with their lives, remembering him fondly now and again. He reminded us to focus on what matters and “simplify, simplify, simplify.” Because life was simple to him. “Be good,” he told us when he turned 75. “Trust God. Enjoy.” Simple.</p><p>
</p><p>It saddens me deeply to know my dad has passed on. But I know he has not died. I know he is not lost. I know with certainty that while he has passed on to some other place, the world in which we remain has portals everywhere that will allow us access to that place. The outdoors will always be one of those portals for me. The smell of salt air and the cry of seagulls will forever transport me back to his favorite spots of Jones Beach and Corson's Inlet. The smell of exhaust and sound of car horns will forever pull me deeper into a city the way he used to walk the streets of every new city we visited to get the lay of the land. The sound of opera drifting out of some distant window. Adventures and laughter with my sons. Beef stroganoff, certain coffee mugs, sketchy food vendors, salted watermelon, Weber grills, the sound of church bells in the distance. All these and more will be doorways we can walk through to sit with him once again. I take solace in the certainty that the place to which he has passed is open to me through all of these doors. I know we can all keep talking to him. I believe he will be able to listen. I look forward to lots of walks catching him up on the latest news with my family, asking him for his advice.</p><p>
</p><p>So now, I ask that you all take a moment of silence and focus all your energy on your favorite memory. Picture that moment that bound you to him in life and know that bond remains now that he has passed. It will be there along with all the other beautiful memories whenever you need it. It will always be there. <i>He</i> will always be there.</p><p>
</p><p>May he be happy in his new place. May his ear be always attuned to our whispers. May his struggles be shed along with his mortal being. May heavenly angels sing him to his rest.</p><p>
</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p>Jeremy Knollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03647996984620729160noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1045396076685413215.post-13515158097291601202020-06-05T10:58:00.001-04:002020-06-05T12:35:05.817-04:00A Message to the Class of 2020<b>It has become a tradition to end the year with my seniors by writing speeches. Each student writes a commencement speech to deliver to the rest of the class, and I write one as well. Here is my message to this year's graduating class, who are headed out into a world that desperately needs their intellect, creativity, empathy, and passion. </b><br />
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<b>This year, for the first time, I also made a recorded version posted to YouTube. You watch that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVFdMsbCVlY&t=5s">here</a> or read the transcript below. Feel free to share. </b><br />
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Fourth marking period is normally my favorite marking period with seniors. I can jettison diction, and due dates, and debate skills and just chat about where you are going next year, what you hope to become. I lean on my desk after class, the smell of fresh cut grass wafting through windows on waves of heat, and hear about your dreams taking shape. Your excitement reverberates off the cinderblock. Your energy hums louder than the fluorescent lights. In the minutes between classes we talk about nothing and everything, and slowly you prepare to leave. Slowly, I prepare to see you go.</div>
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That has been stolen and I feel the loss of this pandemic in all those missed conversations. To those fortunate enough to have avoided COVID-19: I hope you remain safe and healthy. For those whose family members have lost their jobs: I hope they are back to work soon. For those whose loved ones have passed away from the disease: I am profoundly sorry. </div>
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Your senior year has been decimated by this pandemic and I want to take a moment to mourn that loss together. So here is an incomplete list of things you have lost. Senior trip and all its Mickey-eared magic. Prom, prom dresses, prom pictures, proma, promenade. You have missed trying to pin a boutonniere to your date’s lapel, the frenetic sweat-soaked dance floor, the ride to the shore where for one weekend the salt air smells only of adventure, and excitement, and the boundless future. Graduation - at least in all its normal crowded, beach-ball-tossing, sun-drenched, air horn-blaring, what’s-he-wearing-under-that-gown glory. You have lost yearbook signings. You have lost the time of year when hugs pass from person to person more easily than this virus. </div>
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I am sure some of you are worried that you have been robbed of some of the best experiences of your lives, because people keep telling you that high school is the best time of your lives. That is unequivocally wrong. I really enjoyed high school, but now at age forty-four, there is not a single experience from high school that remains on any top-ten list in my life. I could not tell you who I went to prom with, or recount a single memory from my senior trip. Don’t believe anyone who tells you these are the best years of your lives. You are just starting out. So, try to move quickly beyond mourning the losses of these last few months and instead look to the future. </div>
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The world needs your help. </div>
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Cities all across America have been burning this past week. After watching George Floyd’s murder the righteous outrage of peaceful protests have spilled over to violence and destruction. Again we are forced to look at the systemic racism of this country that has created, and continues to create, two very different Americas depending on your race. </div>
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Again we are forced to listen to arguments that completely miss the point, like those saying “All Lives Matter” or trying to rhetorically diminish the protesters' cause by calling them “thugs,” by speaking of “riots” rather than “rebellion.” Now is the time to analyze words closely. Our founding fathers looted British ships, stealing their goods and tossing them overboard, and we have celebrated them since with the euphemistic title of the “Boston Tea Party.” I find it unlikely that in the shadows there were not a few bad seeds thinking, “Sweet, free tea!” The armfuls they stole have been lost to history behind the larger reality: brave patriots rebelling. Or was it thugs rioting? Semantics are tricky. </div>
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Again we are forced to examine the concept of privilege. Here is an illustration.</div>
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If I passed a counterfeit twenty at a local convenience store, as George Floyd is alleged to have done, an employee would have come around the counter as I walked out the door. “Excuse me, sir,” they would say. “I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t think this is a real twenty-dollar bill.” The police would not be called. </div>
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If the police were called, the officer would approach me in a similar fashion. “Good afternoon, sir,” he would begin. If I had knowingly passed a counterfeit twenty, even had a wallet stuffed with them, the officer would assume it had been a mistake. He would size me up in a moment as a suburban white male and draw conclusions based off of that. </div>
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Those conclusions would benefit my well-being rather than endanger it.</div>
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The police would never assume that my reaching for a wallet was actually reaching for a gun, as an officer did before fatally shooting Philando Castile. I don’t believe I would have to repeat multiple times that I could not breathe before the choke hold that killed Eric Garner or the knee to the neck that killed George Floyd was relaxed. </div>
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I can wear a hoodie without being stalked and killed by a neighborhood watchman like Trayvon Martin. I can go running in a white t-shirt and shorts certain I will never be hunted down by my neighbors as Ahmaud Arbery was. I can sleep at night knowing with certainty that police will not bust down the door and gun me down as they did Breonna Taylor. I can kindly ask someone to leash their dog, as Christian Cooper did, without fear of my race being leveraged against me. I could not begin, in a speech this short, to name them all. </div>
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Obviously many police are good people working to protect and serve. Obviously they are not all racist. Not the point. We live in two separate Americas. Flames of outrage should be burning inside of all of us right now until that injustice has been fixed. Consider making that fight part of your life moving forward. It is time to decide who you will be and what you will stand for. </div>
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The move from high school to college hands you the mythical blank slate. From here on you write the narrative of your own life, in your own words, with your own voice. </div>
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Perhaps the slower pace of quarantine has a bit of a silver lining, giving you time to reflect before making that leap to your new life. Our present circumstances demand you think deeply. They demand you pull back and look at the bigger picture. They demand you see just how fortunate you are. They demand you ask yourself how you will use the privilege of a good school and a safe community. </div>
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On the eve of your graduation we find ourselves in a world of turmoil. The world cries out for heroes, and you are a room full of them. Those of you who have remained socially distant to slow the spread of his disease are heroes. Each time you put on your mask to better protect those with suppressed immune systems, or the elderly, or people without healthcare, you are engaging in a heroic act. </div>
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You are heroes each time you call someone out when they make a racist statement, or point out the inequities of education and economics that limit the opportunities of some while advancing the opportunities of others. It is heroic each time you skip the selfie and turn that camera outward in the hopes of creating a post that is beautiful, or funny, or inspiring, or truthful. It is a heroic act when you use your social media platforms to promote justice and equality. You are heroes each time you stand up against a sexist joke, a homophobic punchline, an unwanted touch. </div>
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I hope you see how the work you have done this year can help you with that. Critical reading is not taught so that you can wade through a Shakespearean play when you find it in the back corner of some used bookstore. Critical reading is so that you will carefully consider where you get your news, so you will consider the subtext behind the messages some people hope you will just echo on their behalf without any thought of your own simply launching sound bites and headlines like so many word-grenades. Debating skills are not academic exercises, but the fabric of healthy public discourse. Writing is a means both of reflecting on your own lives, and advocating for the change you want to see in a way that will make people listen. </div>
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In a recent commencement address President Barack Obama said, “This pandemic has shaken up the status quo and laid bare a lot of our country’s deep-seated problems — from massive economic inequality to ongoing racial disparities to a lack of basic health care for people who need it. It’s woken a lot of young people up to the fact that the old ways of doing things just don’t work; that it doesn’t matter how much money you make if everyone around you is hungry and sick; and that our society and our democracy only work when we think not just about ourselves, but about each other.” He goes on to say that the world we find ourselves in is “Your generation’s world to shape.”</div>
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Like President Obama, I am one of the old guys and I won’t stand here and tell you how to do it. The world I am handing off to you as you graduate from high school is not the one I hoped to hand off when I stood in your shoes and envisioned my own future. It is not the world I want my sons to inherit either. </div>
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Rather than any advice, I just have a request. My request as you graduate and head out into the lives you will create for yourselves is that you keep thinking deeply. Keep reading the world around you as carefully and critically as we have read literature in class. Keep thinking about your words, select them carefully, and revise. Then share them with the world with your voice that is bold, and assertive, and true. </div>
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I wish you all fulfillment and confidence.</div>
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Congratulations. </div>
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Jeremy Knollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03647996984620729160noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1045396076685413215.post-1524070539141456392019-06-14T13:49:00.000-04:002019-06-14T13:49:23.396-04:00Commencement 2019<b>Like any job, there are days as a teacher when I wonder if I am just wasting my time. Then there are days like today, when I say goodbye to a class of seniors who remind me through their character, intelligence, and grace why I keep coming back. </b><br />
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<b>In the tradition I started several years ago, my seniors ended their year by delivering ten minute long commencement speeches. Every year, I write one as well. Here is this year's. </b><br />
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This is the last time I will see you before you walk out onto that field Monday evening for a ceremony that recognizes not just your completion of four years of school, but the completion of the first phase of your life. While I am sure there is some sadness and maybe some anxiety, I hope there is also powerful mix of pride, expectation, and joy as you walk together out to that field. I hope you see in that ceremony the promise a future entirely of your own making. Others have run your life up to this point. Not anymore. Based on average life spans, you will be wrapping up the first 20-25% of your life when you walk out onto that field. That is a staggering statistic. While parts of this transition can be daunting, it is also wildly exciting. Don’t let my RBF fool you; I am so excited for all of you.<br />
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I want to talk to you today about two experiences that I believe offer some tips to survive the next few years as almost-adults, and thrive as fully fledged adults in the years to come. The first is a recent story about a sink. The second is an old story about a tattoo.<br />
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First, the sink. A couple weeks ago, I walked into the ND Hall bathroom to find a sink ripped from the wall. Maybe someone tried to sit on it, I thought, or for the more daring maybe even stand. Maybe it was a fit of rage. Maybe it was just an attempt to get a few more followers on Snapchat. Whatever the reason, it was a damn good illustration of a point I wanted to make: teenagers are not fully formed human beings. I know that may sound insulting, but hear me out. I mean, seriously, a fully formed human being simply washes his hands at that sink.<br />
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A teenager’s prefrontal cortex has not yet finished developing. It will not be finished until twenty-five according to most of the research out there. Teenagers, and people in their early twenties, still rely much more heavily on the amygdala when making decisions - the part of the brain that controls emotional response. The part controlling logic, good judgement, and understanding of long-term decisions is still very much a work in progress.<br />
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When I was a high school senior I would have taken great offense to some old man telling me I was not a fully developed human being. Now, a quarter of a century later, I look back at that truculent young boy and offer him as proof.<br />
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When I was a high school senior I was finishing up French I. I had dropped Spanish as a freshman, and two years of Latin was all I could stomach, but the college I went to required three years of a language. So, French I as a senior. It would be a gross understatement to say I did not like my teacher. On the last day I walked into his exam simmering with teenage angst and emotion. I sat down and got right to work. He eyed me distrustfully, but eventually decided I was making the “sincere effort” he had encouraged all year.<br />
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He did not know that I was not writing his essay, but instead writing all the words to the theme song from a cartoon called <i>The Animaniacs</i>. I was spelling every word carefully because, while I was writing the lyrics in English, I was working very hard to spell them phonetically with a French accent. I wrote every verse and every chorus. I thought it was a brilliant f-you. You see how the amygdala clouds judgement? When I finished, I walked up to the front of the room and tossed it on his desk. He stood, face reddening. “You can’t be finished,” he said with indignation. “Oui, oui.” I replied. Then I walked, no strode out the door. It felt awesome.<br />
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It was not until years later that I came to realize the chip on my shoulder had little to do with that teacher, and a lot more to do with my own insecurities about being a senior in a freshman class, about being bad at learning languages, and about my need to look like a tough guy after years of being bullied because I wasn’t one. In retrospect, I think the guy was just trying to help when he gave me a hard time about my lack of effort. I just wasn’t ready to see that. I was still seven years from a fully-functioning brain.<br />
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At graduation my brain was still a year away from <i>deciding</i> to <i>start</i> a pack-and-a-half-a-day love affair with cigarettes that would last five years, by far my longest and most stable relationship at the time. A fully developed brain does not choose cancer sticks. I was about to have my first taste of alcohol, a taste that in the hands of my undeveloped brain would soon turn into a tidal wave amid the unsupervised debauchery of college. College didn’t solve the issue either. While I grew a lot during that time, became a much more serious student, thought deeply about the injustices of the world, fell in love with the outdoors, I also drank too much, picked fights all the time, and tore down the goalpost on the school’s football field with some friends the night before graduation.<br />
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Saying you are not fully-formed human beings is not an insult. It is a scientific fact.<br />
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Your brains are good ones. I know this because of the thoughtful way you have read about, reflected upon, and written about our world this year. But they are incomplete. You will face lots of decisions filled with emotion in the coming years. Your amygdala will want you to hook up, lash out, and rage. When these moments come, I want you to think of that ND Hall sink. It might feel great to rip that thing from the wall. It might be a hilarious video when you sit down on it only to crash to the ground. But, tomorrow you are going to wake up and need a place to brush your teeth. You are going to go to the bathroom and need a place to wash your hands. Take a deep breath and give your prefrontal cortex a chance to catch up.<br />
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When it does, and you emerge as a fully formed human being, you will reflect on lessons you have learned. If you are like me you will see moments in your past when you made decisions based on what others think instead of what you think. With a brain now capable of emotion <i>and</i> logical future planning, you will set about forming the next version of you. The pressures to behave as others would like will persist. My hope for you is that you simply ignore them.<br />
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Because here is the news about who you really are: no one cares. When I got my first visible tattoo, I hid it beneath long sleeve shirts for half of a school year. I was nearly thirty, happily married, successful in my job, surrounded by good friends, and had just gotten a tattoo to celebrate the birth of my first son. I was so excited about that tattoo.<br />
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At the time I was still wearing a shirt and tie to work every day - another nod to the perceptions of others. I had a habit of always rolling up my sleeves. But once that tattoo had been inked on my skin, it was like I reverted. I reverted to the days in elementary school feeling like nobody liked me. I reverted to high school when I was starring in all the plays and musicals, still trying to hide the fact that I took tap dancing lessons and liked Broadway show tunes better than popular music. I reverted to the kid who used to drive with his windows open and music blaring on late summer nights, only to turn the music down at stop lights for fear some stranger in the car next to me would judge me for liking that song. I reverted to the college kid who pounded shitty beer to mask the fact that I never felt like I fit in.<br />
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I kept my tattoo - a representation of family and fatherhood - hidden like a dirty secret. I worried what the parents of my more conservative students would think. I worried what administration would think. I worried what my colleagues would think. And for months, even into the sweltering days of June, I kept my sleeves rolled down to my wrists and my carefully curated image intact.<br />
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I have fixated on the perceptions of others far too often in my life. It was only in my thirties that I really started to grow comfortable in my own skin, and early in my forties I still sometimes find myself wrestling with those insecurities of my youth. I tell you this, because I want you to know sooner than I did that absolutely no one cares. Nothing changed for me when I let that tattoo out into the light, just as nothing changed with each additional tattoo. If anything, they brought me closer to people by showing them a little glimpse into who I really am, by opening a door to conversations about the most important aspects of my life that I hide within myself far too often. It showed people who I really am, and only good can come of that.<br />
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This lesson is true too for opinions as much as for appearances. So use the work we have done this year to voice your opinions clearly and often. Embrace who you are.<br />
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I have now been teaching for more than two decades. I find I grow more sentimental with each passing year. My firstborn son is going into seventh grade next year, and I can feel his own graduation already looming in the distance. I can only imagine the strong cocktail of pride and loss your parents will all be sipping on as they watch you walk around that track, and then head out on your own.<br />
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I will send you off with the same words with which I have sent you off to every weekend this year, slightly edited for the realities of college and beyond. It is the weekend. Don’t drink <i>to excess</i>. Don’t <i>abuse</i> drugs. Don’t hang out with people who do those things. Make responsible decisions. Don’t pressure people into doing things they don’t want to do.<br />
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Trust your gut. Use your brain. Follow your heart. Above all, keep raising your voice so the world can hear what you have to say. I wish you all happiness and confidence. Congratulations.Jeremy Knollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03647996984620729160noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1045396076685413215.post-39320931014177417962019-05-15T08:16:00.003-04:002019-05-15T08:19:02.883-04:00It Has Been a While<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I haven't written anything on this site for some time. I have found a few editors willing to pay me to write, so I have been putting a lot of my efforts into those opportunities.<br />
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One of my favorite publications is a relatively new magazine based out of Vermont called State14. I was fortunate enough to be featured in their most recent print magazine with a story I wrote called "In Search of Dragons: Tales of a Middle-Aged Mountain Biker." I hope you will take a minute to check it out. The link is below.<br />
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<a href="http://www.state14.com/home/2019/4/29/in-search-of-dragons">In Search of Dragons</a><br />
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<br />Jeremy Knollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03647996984620729160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1045396076685413215.post-22605342268442966022018-09-11T14:47:00.000-04:002018-09-14T14:12:33.783-04:00The Rules, as They Apply to Serena<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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“<i>Well, she DID break the rules</i>,” some people are saying.<br />
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This past Saturday, Serena Williams was penalized in ways that were unprecedented for a Grand Slam final. Some want to spin the narrative that <i>technically </i>Serena deserved what she got. That is an oversimplification that needs more careful thought.<br />
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Her first warning for coaching was justified, <i>technically</i>, by the fact that her coach was indeed gesturing for her to go to the net. Set aside for now the fact that men are rarely, if ever, called for similar behavior. Her second infraction, resulting in a point deduction, was for smashing her racket. She did. The Grand Slam rulebook defines “verbal abuse” as any statement about an official that “implies dishonesty or is derogatory, insulting or otherwise abusive.” So for her third infraction -- calling Ramos a “liar” and a “thief” -- she <i>technically </i>broke that rule resulting in a game deduction late in the second set.<br />
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What people need to acknowledge is how sexism and racism lurk beneath these oversimplifications; sexism and racism love technicalities. Ramos did not <i>technically </i>say “Woman, how dare you speak that way to me,” before stealing a point and then a game from Serena. <i>Technically </i>he was just officiating.<br />
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But, what about the men? The men, <i>technically</i>, deserve those deductions for code violations as well. They just don’t get them. They don’t get them despite throwing f-bombs along with their rackets.<br />
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In a Washington Post op-ed tennis legend Billy Jean King asks a rhetorical question: “Did Ramos treat Williams differently than male players have been treated?” The consensus is that he did. “Ultimately,” King continues, “a woman was penalized for standing up for herself.”<br />
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People who are focused exclusively on Williams’ behavior are missing the point. The point is not that she lost her cool and verbally vented her frustration. The point is she was not treated like the men on the tour who have lost their cool and verbally (often much more aggressively) vented their frustration.<br />
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As King pointed out in a tweet, “When a woman is emotional, she’s ‘hysterical’ and she’s penalized for it. When a man does the same, he’s ‘outspoken’ and there are no such repercussions...” These semantics speak to the obvious double standard at play on that court and all over our society.<br />
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“<i>Well, she DID break the rules</i>,” people reiterate. “Yes, but which rules?” I wonder.<br />
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When people say that Serena broke the rules, we must remind them that beyond the technical rules, she broke more subtle ones: women should be polite; women should be deferential; women should just control their emotions; white men hold the power.<br />
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“Ramos took what began as a minor infraction,” writes Sally Jenkins in the Washington Post, “and turned it into one of the nastiest and most emotional controversies in the history of tennis, all because he couldn’t take a woman speaking sharply to him.”<br />
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In an interview with ESPN the next day, Katrina Adams - president of the USTA, said, “We have to have consistency, because when you look at what the women, in this case Serena, is feeling, we watch the guys do this all the time. They are badgering the chair umpires on the changeover. Nothing happens.”<br />
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“There should be no difference,” says WTA chief executive Steve Simon, “in the standards of tolerance provided to the emotions expressed by men vs. women and [we are] committed to working with the sport to ensure that all players are treated the same. We do not believe that this was done last night.”<br />
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As an interesting juxtaposition, we have Nick Kyrgios. Playing in the men’s draw of this same tournament he started to have a bit of an emotional meltdown in his match against Pierre Hugues Herbert. Instead of penalties, the chair umpire, Mohamed Layhani, came down from his chair and calmed him down. “I want to help you,” he said. Kyrgios went on to rally and win the match.<br />
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Lahani and Ramos broke the cardinal rule of officiating sports by making it about them. There are two players in a tennis match, and they made it so there were three. Still, the intrusion into the men’s match had a sense of brotherhood, one man helping another. In the women’s match there was a sense of chastisement, one man putting a woman in her place.<br />
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Serena will never have that chance to rally and win. She was robbed of it by Carlos Ramos, just as Naomi Osaka was robbed of the joy of her first Grand Slam title. The blame cannot fall on Serena for an emotional outburst similar to those we see in countless sporting events. The blame is on a system that views an emotional outburst from a woman as different from that of a man.<br />
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Which rules were the cause for her unprecedented in-match discipline? The rules of tennis, or the rules of history?<br />
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Gillian White writes in The Atlantic, “To see Williams’s comeback after a traumatic birth stymied over seemingly minor infractions seems unnecessary and malicious. To see the devastation that those penalties wrought on two women of color at the top of their sport, during what should have been a joyous time, is heartbreaking.”<br />
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This is not just about one call or one match. It is about systems of power that still hold back women and people of color. Serena has spoken for years about the double standards that impact her as a woman of color playing this game. At the U.S. Open alone she has been the recipient of outlandish calls in 2004 against Jennifer Capriati, and even more egregious calls in 2009 against Kim Clijsters. Analysts questioned those calls when they happened. Serena still questions them today.<br />
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Serena’s outburst on the court can’t be looked at in the isolation of one match. To do so would be like analyzing the Black Lives Matter movement without acknowledging the police brutality of the civil rights movement or slavery. Williams has a history that she brings with her to each match.<br />
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She and her sister Venus were frequently heckled and taunted as they first entered the tour because of their race. Serena has faced excessive scrutiny of her body type that men would never face. After wearing a form-fitting bodysuit to the French Open, officials took the unprecedented step of banning her clothing in future matches. Serena said that black suit made her feel like a “warrior princess.”<br />
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It appears the officials don’t like the image of her as a warrior, or as a princess. “One must respect the game and the place,” a male spokesman said explaining the ban. Even when that openly disrespects the women playing it by applying archaic concepts of modesty to a modern game.<br />
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Toby Oredein, writing for the UK’s Independent, sums it up best. “Some have been quick to say,” she writes, “that Williams’ confrontation with Ramos was because she is a sore loser and a bully; typical knee-jerk criticism that comes from the stereotype of the angry black woman. However, this lazy assumption ignores [the facts].”<br />
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I am a middle-aged white guy, so <i>technically</i> this isn’t my problem. Still, I am angry. I am troubled by the obvious double standard. I am saddened that I could not watch the greatest tennis champion of all time try to fight her way back into the match.<br />
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“<i>She DID break the rules</i>,” people say. Yes, she did, and like countless other women and people of color, she has been punished.<br />
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Jeremy Knollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03647996984620729160noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1045396076685413215.post-10098196453349241012018-06-20T12:55:00.000-04:002018-06-20T13:05:14.798-04:00Action is Worry's Worst Enemy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Each year my seniors conclude by presenting ten-minute long commencement speeches. It has become a tradition for me to write one as well, my final message as they head out into the world that awaits. Here is this year's speech. </b></div>
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Some morning near the end of high school, I stood on the beach in Ocean City and watched the sunrise. I remember seeing that sunrise as the perfect symbol of my own new beginnings. I was only weeks away from graduation, and I was ready for the next step in my life.<br />
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That year Nelson Mandela had been elected the first black president of South Africa, and I was <i>positive </i>that was proof of the world leaving racism behind. That year the Irish Republican Army agreed to a ceasefire, ending years of bombings and shootings, and I was <i>certain </i>that was evidence of the world turning its back on terrorism. That year the United States and Russia agreed to stop pointing nuclear weapons at each other, and I was <i>sure </i>that signaled end of governments threatening mutual annihilation.<br />
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I saw in that sunrise all the promise of a world turning its back on hate, and moving toward a just and peaceful future. I was young and filled with hope.<br />
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That was 1994, nearly a quarter century ago. The world has not progressed the way my teenage self believed it would. Of the ills I thought were disappearing, many are even stronger today. These days the events of the world errode my sense of idealism and hope almost as surely as a strong nor’easter can erode the shoreline I stood upon all those years ago. Some days I think the undertow might just pull my sense of hope right out from beneath my feet and wash it out to sea.<br />
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On those days I feel especially grateful that I get to be a teacher. Being a teacher gives me a daily reminder that there is an army of young people already fighting to fix the mess they see around them. Over the last couple of weeks, as you have all spoken so honestly about what you have learned in your life so far and your hopes for the future, you have helped replenish my sense of hope.<br />
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One of the anecdotes shared during your speeches - that of the burgundy car - really got me thinking.<br />
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Since not all of you have heard Dan’s story of the burgundy car, here is a quick recap. He was walking alone along the side of the road one afternoon when a car passed by and then pulled to the shoulder. No one got out; the car just sat there. In his mind, he began to worry. You see, Dan knew that we live in world filled with menace. He knew from Trayvon Martin that when you are a young black man, just walking along the street can end in death. He began to worry.<br />
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Well, as that sense of worry took hold that afternoon on the side of the road, Dan took a good hard look at that burgundy car and said without hesitation: “Fuck this. I’m out.”<br />
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There are more and more days I want to do just that. There are days I want to retreat with my wife and sons to the secluded hills of Vermont, get some goats and maybe a cow, plant a vegetable garden, throw up some solar panels, and live totally off the grid. Because then, I imagine, I could finally stop worrying.<br />
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Removed from society like that, I would be able to ignore racism’s resurgence in this country. Without wi-fi and cell service I would be able to ignore the stories of another powerful man using his position to assault and abuse women. I could homeschool my kids and ensure they are never the focus of a candlelight vigil and the thoughts and prayers of the leaders who have failed them. I could stop worrying that the world being turned over to you is a total mess.<br />
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“Fuck this,” I could say to all that worries me. “I’m out.”<br />
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I have contemplated this a lot this year - your graduation year- because it has offered wave upon wave of worry. There are all sorts of things for you, the class of 2018, to be worried about as you head out into the world.<br />
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You should worry that climate change continues to drive storms that used to come once a century, but now come closer to once a year. You should worry that our government’s response to Hurricane Maria may have been slowed by the fact that the people living there did not have skin the color of mine, or fatter wallets, or stock portfolios and second homes.<br />
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You should worry that the frequency of school shootings in this country has driven your English teacher - a man who has never held, much less fired, a gun - to endorse the idea of training and arming teachers so we can shoot back. You should worry that our elected officials continue to take money from the NRA, a process that holds gun reform hostage. You should worry about all the inner-city kids being shot down in American streets that look more like a warzone than the land of the free.<br />
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You should worry that it feels like a relief to me to have sons in a world where men of power prey on our daughters.<br />
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You should worry that not everyone in our country believes that #BlackLivesMatter, just as you should worry about cheering for a sport that has just told its athletes to be quiet and stop drawing attention to the racial injustices we face.<br />
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You should worry about the threat of a nuclear war with North Korea, about the separation of immigrants from their children, about the opioid epidemic, about the growing gap between the wealthy and the poor.<br />
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Wave upon wave of worry crashing upon our collective sense of hope. “Fuck this,” I am so tempted to say. “I’m out.”<br />
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But, here is the thing: not getting involved won’t lessen the hold worry has on me about our future. Trying to ignore the ills of society won’t make them any less real, any less damaging, or any less frightening. Whether someone disappears into the hills, or into the distractions of money and material possessions, ignoring it won’t fix anything. So here is the message I want to send you as you contemplate what your place in this world will be: ACTION IS WORRY’S WORST ENEMY.<br />
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I got that from a fortune cookie. My wife hung it up on our refrigerator and it has been a guiding principle for me since. As I have struggled to take what has been bleak year of headlines and create a commencement speech to conclude the year, I thought that was the answer. A fortune cookie. Being older and wiser, I would enlighten you with this one final message before you leave us for good.<br />
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Then you all started presenting your year-end speeches. It was listening to you that I realized, you have apparently already gotten that fortune with your lo mein noodles. You have already learned that action is worry’s worst enemy, and many of you already do it better than I ever have. That gives me hope. I still sometimes look at the world and think, “Fuck this.” But, your embodiment of that simple fortune-cookie phrase helps me follow that thought up with the words “I’m in” rather than “I’m out.” You inspire me to act.<br />
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When Talia saw a friend of hers disappearing in the grip of an eating disorder, she was worried as all of us would have been. But then she risked the very friendship she hoped to save by <i>acting </i>upon her concern and telling some adults who could get her friend the help she needed. When Casey then walked into a room of adults who now new her secret, she was worried. Then she committed to <i>taking action</i>, and she worked her way back to health.<br />
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When Garret worried about socializing, he put a smile on his face and made it his mission to befriend his coworkers. Robb worries about the little girl he saw on that emergency call, beaten and terrified. His worry does not paralyze him into inaction; instead it gets him back out in the ambulance for another shift. Alex and Marissa were worried about the abusive relationships they were in, and they found themselves a way out. Anthony was worried about the homeless woman he saw outside of Shoprite every week, so he humanized her, and talked to her. Tyler and Emily were worried they might not be able to make it in this life, but they fought to find hope and something to stick around for. Antonios was worried about a prom date, so he asked. Musa was worried about racism and a language barrier, so he studied harder.<br />
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Turns out the lesson I thought I could teach you was one you had already learned. The young men and women you have become offers me hope that alleviates much of my worry. You have shown clearly over the last couple of weeks that you know action is worry’s worst enemy.<br />
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I don’t sleep as soundly as I did when I was in high school. Driven from bed by some nagging worry I see more sunrises than I used to, and they always do the same thing. They remind me of new beginnings. They remind me that while every generation has its problems, we can act to change them. It is in those acts that we give our lives meaning, that we find our purpose, that we connect with others, and hopefully it is through those acts that we take a step toward making this a better place despite it all.<br />
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So here, instead of some wise piece of advice, I have for you - the Class of 2018 - a plea. As you set about deciding your future, consider how you will act to combat our collective worry. At a time in your lives when many will counsel you to focus on a career that will make more money and buy more material possessions, think deeply about how your career will work to change the things that worry you. Action, not money, is worry’s worst enemy.<br />
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I hope that as you move forward through life you are pulled from sleep a little before your alarm by some nagging worry, because if you are not worried, it means you are not paying attention. I hope you then look out your window at a sunrise and see in it a new start and a chance to act. I hope you live lives dedicated to that principle: action is worry’s worst enemy.<br />
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I am proud of you the way a father is proud of his own children. Because of you, I am hopeful for our collective future. I will miss all of you next year. I wish you all confidence and happiness.<br />
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Congratulations.<br />
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<br />Jeremy Knollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03647996984620729160noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1045396076685413215.post-41660045204399592162018-05-25T10:54:00.000-04:002018-05-25T13:20:39.178-04:00This Memorial Day, I Would Still Take a Knee<img src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-T6M6IDDdOQQ/WcqItLw6NHI/AAAAAAAAA_I/z10vI37JjREMxqoZNeZZNSHVbNC15pStQCLcBGAs/s1600/49ers_Panthers_Football.JPEG-a109d_c0-222-3639-2343_s885x516.jpg" /><br />
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When Colin Kaepernick first decided to take a knee in protest of the unlawful use of excessive force by white police officers against unarmed black men, I wrote that I would take a knee. If I were fortunate enough to be an athlete whose natural talents and hard work had placed me on a national stage, I would still take a knee. I would walk out of the invisible world of the locker room and onto the televised field of play, and I would kneel. I would do this because peaceful protest is just as much a part of our collective history as are slavery, segregation, and suppression of black Americans.<br />
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A couple days ago NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell made an announcement. “This season,” he said, “all league and team personnel shall stand and show respect for the flag and the anthem.” Right there, he misses a fundamental truth: kneeling is a respectful gesture; a gesture meant to draw attention to a gross social injustice is not synonymous with disrespecting the flag, the anthem, or the country. Drawing attention to the mistreatment of fellow citizens in the hopes of righting that wrong is a patriotic act.<br />
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Goodell went on to explain that any “personnel who choose not to stand for the anthem may stay in the locker room until after the anthem has been performed.” So players can protest as long as no one can possibly see their protest. Players can draw attention to the injustices of our society as long as it doesn’t actually draw any attention.<br />
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I hope everyone sees the irony. Goodell made this announcement on the same day that Milwaukee police released footage from police officers’ body cameras showing us exactly why these protests are necessary. Sterling Brown- a player for the Milwaukee Bucks- parked his car over two spaces in a nearly empty parking lot. Sure, he shouldn’t have done that.<br />
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In the released video he talks to a number of officers who encircle him for several minutes before they begin demanding that he take his hands out of his pockets. “No,” he replies, “I got stuff in my hands.” He never makes a single movement that could ever be construed as menacing. Some will say he should have cooperated and taken his hands out of his pockets. But, despite his refusal to cooperate with that request, no reasonable person can justify what happens next.<br />
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One officer grabs him, and the others swarm in. They tackle him to the ground and tase him. You read that right. A group of armed police officers tackle him to the ground, and still an officer finds it necessary to use his taser. He was <i>parked</i> illegally.<br />
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Be honest. Is there anyone reading this who thinks that would have happened if he were white?<br />
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“We believe today’s decision will keep our focus on the game and the extraordinary athletes who play it,” Goodell explained on Wednesday. There are a few other ways he could have worded that. “We believe that today’s decision will keep our focus on profit margins and the spectacle of our product, rather than on the humanity of our players,” he might have said. “We believe today’s decision will help whitewash any controversy from the product we are pedaling to the public, and help us all enjoy a Sunday game focused only on cheerleaders and big hits rather than having to think about the complexities of racism or police brutality.” I suppose racism and police brutality don’t make good material for a beer commercial.<br />
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“What NFL owners did today was thwart the players’ constitutional rights to express themselves and use our platform to draw attention to social injustices like racial inequality in our country,” wrote the Philadelphia Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins in a tweet. “Everyone loses when voices get stifled.” Jenkins, an active leader in the players’ protests, is correct.<br />
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Chris Long, another outspoken member of the Eagles said, “This is fear of a diminished bottom line. It’s also fear of a president turning his base against a corporation. This is not patriotism. Don’t get it confused.”<br />
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This silencing of protest is not patriotism. Still, people do seem to be confused. I am sure Goodell chose the week leading up to Memorial Day to capitalize on people's patriotism and nationalistic pride. Perhaps he hoped his assessment that protest is inextricably linked to disrespect would play well amid all the flag waving. People would not see what is actually happening.<br />
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As I wrote <a href="https://onemansfield.blogspot.com/2017/09/i-would-take-knee.html">last time</a>, “those taking a knee are protesting the fact that parents of young black boys are far more likely to bury their children than their white counterparts. They are protesting against racism, against a system of racial profiling, against police brutality, and now against censorship of free speech.”<br />
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So, I would take a knee. I would take a knee to show my sons what it means to use the advantages we have been given in being born white to help those who don’t have those advantages. I would take a knee to show the black kids I teach that I understand the injustices they face and I am not okay with them. I would take a knee in celebration of the power to use peaceful protest as a means to create change.<br />
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Jeremy Knollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03647996984620729160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1045396076685413215.post-22851142234095103412018-02-16T12:22:00.000-05:002018-02-20T08:32:14.734-05:00AR-15s: An Education<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Science</b>. The human brain is not fully developed until the age of twenty-five. Fully developed adults process the world relying heavily on the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for good judgement and understanding long-term decisions. Kids under the age of twenty-five rely heavily on the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for processing emotion. The amygdala develops first. This is why my seven and eleven-year-old sons have more emotional outbursts than I do. They just feel hurt and angry in a maelstrom of childhood emotion. Logic has not kicked in yet. It won’t fully until they are twenty-five.</div>
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Still, a nineteen-year-old boy, who I wish the media would stop calling a man, legally bought an AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle. </div>
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My amygdala says, that thing would be awesome to square up some grudges I feel against the legislators who have wronged me and this country by weaponizing our citizenry, and profiting off of the carnage. My prefrontal cortex, however, says you can’t shoot people because you are angry. But, that part of the brain is not fully developed in many of the people buying these weapons. </div>
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No semi-automatic guns until you have a fully developed brain. Couldn’t we at least start there?</div>
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<b>Marketing</b>. The AR-15 is, according to the NRA’s website, “America’s Most Popular Rifle.” The NRA has an entire page dedicated to singing its praises in which they explain the perks of a gun that is “customizable, adaptable, reliable, and accurate." It goes on to explain that “The AR-15s ability to be modified to your own personal taste is one of the things that makes it so unique,” like it’s a fucking American Girl Doll. They brag it “can be skinned and wrapped in all different types of colors and patterns,” like it's an iPhone case. </div>
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It is a gun. The NRA wants it to look like a toy. </div>
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Kids like toys. “Make it even cooler,” reads one Instagram post the NRA’s article highlights “add a suppressor from SilencerCo.” Who are they marketing these semi-automatic, military-grade weapons to?</div>
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Oh, right. Nineteen-year-old boys with a troubled past. And the country they want to fear those boys enough to buy their own. </div>
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Profit margins are a bitch. </div>
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<b>English</b>. The NRA loves to argue semantics. They love to explain that these weapons are not automatic weapons, as a way of arguing they are safe and reasonable. “There is a vast difference,” they write, “between fully automatic and semi-automatic firearms.” This means you must pull the trigger each time you want to fire a bullet; you can’t just squeeze and hold. </div>
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Vast is an adjective. It means “of very great size or proportions; huge; enormous.” As an English teacher, I must question their use of that word. Right now, hold your hand up like you are holding a gun. For one minute, pull your finger like you are pulling a trigger as quickly as possible. Count how many times you can do that in just one minute. One-hundred? Two-hundred? One or two hundred bullets per minute is not enormously different from automatic fire. A front-loading muzzleloader that must be reloaded after each shot would be vastly different. A semi-automatic with a thirty bullet magazine? That is not a vast difference. </div>
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That is total bullshit. </div>
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<b>History</b>. The Second Amendment was not written with AR-15s in mind. Saying that these weapons should be protected by that document is absurd. The Second Amendment was written when the only guns in existence needed to be loaded one bullet at at time. </div>
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On March 13, 1996 a man walked into a classroom in Dunblane, Scotland and killed sixteen kids and a teacher. Seventeen people, just like Florida. In response, the government introduced the Firearms Act of 1997 banning all cartridge ammunition handguns with the exception of .22 caliber single-shot weapons. Shortly thereafter those guns were banned as well. This left only muzzle-loading guns, the very guns our forefathers were actually talking about. </div>
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There have been no mass shootings since. </div>
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We are always talking about learning from history. There is the lesson. They did not offer thoughts and prayers. They offered sweeping reform to protect their children. </div>
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I was teaching the year Columbine happened. It was my first year. That event stopped this country in its tracks. The shooting in Florida, because of the failure of our legislators, was business as usual. </div>
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<b>Math</b>. According to a Washington Post analysis, more than 150,000 students attending 170 different schools have experienced a shooting on campus since Columbine in 1999, my first year as a teacher.</div>
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Since 1968 when they began collecting these numbers, there have been more than 1,500,000 gun deaths in this country. </div>
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Guns + more guns = more gun deaths.</div>
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<b>Gym</b>. Keep running those laps kids, because the leaders of this country are relying on you to be able to outrun the bullets. </div>
Jeremy Knollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03647996984620729160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1045396076685413215.post-67083826410442378342018-01-04T10:51:00.000-05:002018-01-04T10:52:17.610-05:00Bringing back an old favorite post in honor of the ice. Pond Hockey.<div>
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Pond hockey is a simple game. Wait for the lake to freeze, find a bunch of guys willing to put on ice hockey skates, buy some Advil and a bunch of extra pucks for all the shots we will miss, and play. Those of you who have played know what I am talking about. For those who don't, I am talking about a slip in time that lets you be a kid again. I am talking about the reality of time travel. </div>
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The excitement surrounding pond hockey begins early in the day, the first time one of us goes out and measures the ice. Drill in hand we drive the bit into the frozen surface of the lake hoping like children that it won't give too soon, that we will feel at least four inches of resistance before hitting water. We are dying to send out the text telling everyone that the ice is thick enough to skate, that the game is on. <br />
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Once the news is out, we feel ourselves getting more and more distracted as the day goes on, maybe cutting corners on some task at work or reading a bedtime story a bit more quickly than usual. By the time we are sitting on the ice lacing up skates, we are bursting with the same enthusiasm we see in the kids we are now raising, the ones we are out on the ice with most of the time. Through a series of very cold winters, our sons and daughters have come to love the ice just as we do. But these are the games reserved just for us. <br />
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When we arrive, we race through the snow with our sticks and skates in hand, slipping our way down the icy path. We are a ragtag bunch in sweatshirts and sweatpants, the occasional hockey jersey of some player traded away long ago. We adjust the straps on our shin guards, holding them on our legs with a few turns of hockey tape, the Velcro worn out years ago. We blow on our fingers as we try to lace up our skates in single digit temperatures. It feels just like it did when we were teenagers and before. We do everything quickly, not to beat the cold but to get out onto the ice that much more quickly. When we first stride out and start skating around with a puck, we are transported. Time shifts backwards, and we are kids again. <br />
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With that comes a recklessness most of us left behind years ago. We skate hard despite the rust we are shaking off all over the ice. There is no checking, but no shortage of friendly bumps. One guy needs to get his knee drained after taking a hard fall a couple of weeks ago; it looks like a rotten grapefruit. Naturally, he is postponing the procedure until the ice melts. This same guy completes a thorough warm-up routine at home before heading out onto the ice to protect his hip replacement. Another plays with a brace to protect his newly repaired quad tendon, a brace he recently bent in a game. Everyone is sore, and bruised, and scraped. I am pretty sure at least a couple of us have been concussed. No one is the athlete he once was, but we play like we are teenagers again. <br />
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There is little we won't do to make it so we can get a game. We have used shovels, and brooms, and a particularly effective rubber squeegee to clear the ice between efforts. We have run snow blowers across the frozen lake, and followed behind with hoses connected to hot water heaters and threaded through basement windows. One guy took a bunch of PVC pipe and built a hand-held Zamboni that attaches to a hose to help spread the water more evenly. We have been out there in groups, and pairs, and alone prepping the ice. We have filled small cracks by hand with snow and water, packing down our patchwork with a puck. We have poured bottles of water we should have been drinking into expansion cracks to fill the gaps. Hoses have frozen. Hands and feet have frozen. Temperatures have been so cold that the water coming out of the hose froze in ripples on the ice before it could finish spreading out. <br />
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We have rescheduled business meetings, dates with our wives, trips to the store. We have postponed countless meals, and chores, and bedtimes. We have played past the point of exhaustion and then called for a quick game to five. We have played four-on-four with goalies, and one-on-one without any goals at all. Six weeks of ice in a row this year, and I am not sure any of us really wants Spring to arrive. <br />
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One guy, who owns a construction company, has brought out a set of diesel-powered highway lights the last couple of years. After getting the kids to bed, we head out for another hour or two under the lights. I can hear that diesel generator fire up and see the glow of the lights from my house down the road. I don't think I can explain to someone who has not been there the sheer beauty of that scene, driving across the dam and seeing that pool of bright white light, the silvery sheen of fresh ice. I have stood and stared at the Sistine Chapel and Michelangelo's David; I have seen the Mona Lisa. They come close.<br />
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After a game, sitting on porch furniture pulled out atop the frozen lake, we share a few beers. Despite storing them in coolers to insulate them against the arctic cold, we typically wind up sipping slushies as the post game chill descends. The addition of drinks is the only thing that separates this from the pond hockey of our childhoods; the conversation is the same we had as kids. It starts with verbal highlight reels: excited accounts of goals we scored, the perfect cross-ice pass, collective groans in response to the memory of the hardest falls. We laugh about the open net shot sent sailing wide, or some penalty-worthy hack. Listen to the words, the unbridled enthusiasm, and you are transported twenty or thirty years into the past. We are just kids talking about a game. <br />
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Eventually, with steam rising off of us and up into the frigid night air, the talk moves to our kids and our jobs, retirement savings and investments. Huddled around an open fire, we make the transition back into adulthood. Slowly we remember that our lives now include dependents and mortgages, ailing parents and daughters who date. The frozen surface of our lake has hosted conversations about the tragedy of burying a parent, and the importance of realizing how little time we all have. We have discussed the tricky balance of work and the rest of life. We have voiced our hopes for the education of our children. We have debated local politics, and lamented the gradual break down of our aging bodies. Our conversations, sitting there after a game, become unequivocally adult. We all have moments when we wonder how we became such grown-ups. <br />
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That is the only time we remember how old we are, when the conversation turns to the responsibilities we all have. The rest of the hours we spend preparing and playing we are time travelers, kids basking in the wonder of winter and the magic of water turned to ice. <br />
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I know my neighbors better than I did before, or likely ever would have without the ice. I have learned more about their jobs, their families, and their finances. I have heard stories of some pretty rough times, and reflections about lives sailing along smoothly. Hockey is like that. Missed opportunities, cheap shots, and hard falls balanced against the smooth glide of a perfectly passed puck, the satisfying click of hitting another guy's blade, the celebration of a goal. <br />
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The ice will melt this week, and Spring will slowly start to emerge. Like a little kid, I will sulk a bit as I put away my skates. But, like a little kid, I will look forward to next year and all the years to come. Next year, when the lake freezes, men one year older will lace up and let the magic of pond hockey once again take us back to our youth. <br />
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<script>!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');</script>Jeremy Knollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03647996984620729160noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1045396076685413215.post-89366434199680161342017-10-04T20:36:00.000-04:002017-12-13T08:33:18.904-05:00Literature After Las Vegas<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jLbAZCt5krg/WdV-X-h2qAI/AAAAAAAAA_4/ebmUCtedy1UCm8VQfNQJQLsnEOpzYUY8ACLcBGAs/s1600/Las%2BVegas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1196" data-original-width="1600" height="239" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jLbAZCt5krg/WdV-X-h2qAI/AAAAAAAAA_4/ebmUCtedy1UCm8VQfNQJQLsnEOpzYUY8ACLcBGAs/s320/Las%2BVegas.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I try to start each class with a quote. I hang a new one up on the board each morning when I arrive at school. They come from books that have entertained me with page-turning plots and enlightened me with revelations about the human condition, books that have cheered me up, challenged my beliefs, and captured my imagination. Today the quote was from Abraham Verghese’s brilliant novel </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cutting for Stone. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“We are all fixing what is broken,” it reads. “It is the task of a lifetime. We'll leave much unfinished for the next generation.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I read it to my first period class, a room filled with bright and curious ninth graders, I could not make it through the short quote without my voice breaking. I had to stop and regroup so that I did not simply start bawling right there in front of my students. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I picked out that quote in June, in preparation for this school year, I saw it as uplifting and positive. I read it as words of hope and progress. We are all actively fixing what is broken - advancing gay rights, electing a black president, almost electing a woman, working toward affordable healthcare. Sure, the quote concedes, it is hard work that will not be completed in our lifetime, but handing it off to the next generation is a gesture of both victory and hope. “We need you to take over now,” we will say to our children, “we have made the world better, but there is so much more to do. Keep fighting.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">But this morning the quote sounded hollow. Hollow like the tips of bullets we continue to sell, bragging of their “sophisticated designs that allow for maximum expansion upon impact with a target.” Hollow like the thoughts and prayers offered by our elected officials in place of meaningful legislative reform. Hollow like the rhetoric of the Second Amendment used to justify the sale of semi-automatic weapons and the little trinkets that allow someone to essentially make that weapon fully automatic. When I selected that quote, the idea that “we are all fixing what is broken” was a promise. I see now that, at least as it pertains to guns, it is a lie. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">We are not all fixing what is broken. We are helping those whose souls drive them to break. We are handing them their tools of destruction on a silver platter so that gun companies can use fear to drive up stock values and politicians can trade innocent lives for donations from the NRA. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">I agree with Jimmy Kimmel that “it feels like someone has opened a window into hell,” and I just can’t stop staring. He is right about it being common sense, about how absurd it is to apply words written by our forefathers to AK-47s and AR-15s. I will let him handle the rhetoric meant to enrage us all into action, even as he concedes we are not likely to act. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">I will just try to go back to teaching. Today, that was difficult. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Today, we took a detour from analyzing Harper Lee’s </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To Kill a Mockingbird</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> so my students could try to process a tragedy none of us can wrap our brains around. They wanted to talk about what had happened. They wanted to ask questions and offer opinions. They wanted to offer simple solutions that our elected officials are unwilling to enact. I am already dreading the day we have to talk about innocent Tom Robinson being shot seventeen times. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Guns </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> racism. At least that old book is still relevant today. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After class I took a look at some of the other quotes already hanging on the walls from our first few weeks together. “Be passionate,” Matt Haig writes in his wonderful book </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Humans, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“As civilization advances, so does indifference. It is a disease. Immunize yourself with art. And love.” We cannot, I try to remind my students, allow these shootings to become so commonplace that we react to them with indifference. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">John Irving’s </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A Prayer for Owen Meany </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">reminds us “if you care about something you have to protect it.” I wonder is it possible our so-called leaders care more for the gun lobby than for human life. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I used to think the world was broken down by tribes,” Sherman Alexie writes in </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“By black and white. By Indian and White. But I know this isn’t true. The world is only broken into two tribes: the people who are assholes and the people who are not.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">From Angie Thomas’ </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Hate You Give, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a question every one of our elected leaders should ask: “What’s the point of having a voice if you’re gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn’t be?”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">And finally, another from Abraham Verghese. “God will judge us by what we did to relieve the suffering of our fellow human beings. I don’t think God cares what doctrine we embrace.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is not about doctrine. It is not about Democrats and Republicans. It is about common sense. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So. Tomorrow I will face a room full of students again and try to pull their attention away from this tragedy at least for an hour. I will turn us again back to the literature we are studying. I already hung up the quote of the day on my way out this afternoon. It is Atticus, from </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To Kill a Mockingbird</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. “The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.”</span></div>
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<br />Jeremy Knollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03647996984620729160noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1045396076685413215.post-48956891780312206522017-09-26T09:30:00.000-04:002017-09-27T11:06:24.064-04:00I Would Take A Knee<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-T6M6IDDdOQQ/WcqItLw6NHI/AAAAAAAAA_I/z10vI37JjREMxqoZNeZZNSHVbNC15pStQCLcBGAs/s1600/49ers_Panthers_Football.JPEG-a109d_c0-222-3639-2343_s885x516.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="516" data-original-width="885" height="186" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-T6M6IDDdOQQ/WcqItLw6NHI/AAAAAAAAA_I/z10vI37JjREMxqoZNeZZNSHVbNC15pStQCLcBGAs/s320/49ers_Panthers_Football.JPEG-a109d_c0-222-3639-2343_s885x516.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I would take a knee. Absolutely and without any question. I want everyone to know that. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">First of all, taking a knee is a gesture of respect even while it is a gesture of protest. Taking a knee is what young athletes are taught to do when their coaches speak, as well as when one of their peers is injured on the field of play. They do so out of respect. Kneeling is what people do when they pray, when the circumstances of life demand deep reflection and faith. The circumstances of our world demand both. Eric Reid, the San Francisco 49er who first took a knee beside Kaepernick in 2016 has explained, “We chose to kneel because it’s a respectful gesture. I remember thinking,” he continues, “our posture was like a flag flown at half-mast to mark a tragedy.” The senseless slaughter of unarmed black men at the hands of white police officers is a tragedy. Those taking a knee are simply trying to mark that, to draw attention to it, and to encourage all of us to raise our voices in defense of the oppressed. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have close friends and loved ones who are jumping on the “patriotic” wave of condemnation, people I care for and respect who are expressing the belief that players should stand up and respect the flag and the country. I have seen Facebook posts hashtagged </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">IStand</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and heard the argument that because they are paid well they should shut their mouths and play. I think people are missing the point. I think they are being tricked by an oversimplified narrative and blinded to an overly complex history. To say NFL players taking a knee are disrespecting our country, our flag, our soldiers, is to miss the point entirely. While the president tweets out that fans booing those taking a knee is an example of “great anger,” he tries to fool us all into forgetting what great anger looks like and how our country’s proudest moments have harnessed anger into peaceful protests and needed social reform. Those taking a knee are not protesting against soldiers or patriotism. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Protesters are not disrespecting the flag, or this country, and certainly not the men and women in the armed services who have fought valiantly so that citizens can have the right to make this protest. I don’t believe there is a person in the Armed Services who has ever fought in the hopes of censoring Americans, or silencing political dissent. Protesters are drawing attention to the systemic racism that has plagued this country’s history - a history of slavery, segregation, and suppression that seems on the rise again in the white supremacist undercurrents of the current White House. Those taking a knee are protesting the fact that parents of young black boys are far more likely to bury their children than their white counterparts. They are protesting against racism, against a system of racial profiling, against police brutality, and now against censorship of free speech. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have sat and listened to honors students, remarkable kids who have never broken a rule or questioned an authority figure, recounting experiences of being pulled over simply because they were black. I have heard their stories of being asked what they are doing standing on a corner in the neighborhood </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">where they live. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have heard black parents talk about the methodical way they explain to their children what to do when pulled over so that a police officer doesn’t have a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">reason to shoot them. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I don’t have to talk about that with my two white kids. I have never been pulled over because of the color of my skin. I have watched videos of unarmed black men being shot by white police officers, considering how much good fortune was scattered at my feet simply because I was born white. I once sarcastically asked a police officer who had pulled me over for speeding, “Are you going to give me a ticket or not? I don’t care, but get on with it.” There was no fear of that interaction going sideways because I had gotten mouthy and a bit aggressive. My cloak of whiteness protected me. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have now listened to a president who supported violent neo-nazis in saying there were two sides to what happened in Charlottesville. Then I have heard him say any son-of-a-bitch who doesn’t stand for the anthem should be fired. Where is the second side to that one, or is there only a second side when the people on that side are white, no matter how detestable? Where is the side in which peaceful protest is a cornerstone of a functioning democracy? </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am not a professional athlete, but when that anthem plays, I would take a knee. For those posting pictures on Facebook waving flags with the hashtag </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">IStand</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I ask: for what are you standing? Have you thought about what is actually being protested? </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I would take a knee if it meant losing out on a lucrative contract, just as I would take a knee knowing it would upset and offend some people. I would take a knee because the slaying of black men in this country by white officers is a real thing, and that is what Colin Kaepernick wanted everyone to talk about. I would take a knee because his one brave gesture did more to get people paying attention to that issue than anything else I have seen. I would take a knee because so many white people trying to make it about disrespecting the flag, or worse - patriotism, are simply missing the point and I would make any gesture within my power to help them see it. Protest is the foundation of patriotism. What do people think the founding fathers were doing hurling tea into the ocean? How did women get the right to vote? </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Martin Luther King Jr. said, “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” I believe that time is now. I think it is time to make some clear statements about the injustices being perpetrated against African Americans in this country. I think it is time to see the complexity of how our collective history impacts our current world, and not summatively dismiss a gesture we may find distasteful. I think we must take a good hard look at what is motivating people to kneel rather than just the act of kneeling itself. I believe we must all kneel in reflection and only stand when we are certain what we are standing for. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<br />Jeremy Knollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03647996984620729160noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1045396076685413215.post-65568715266391448012017-09-18T09:19:00.001-04:002017-09-18T09:21:18.117-04:00The StorySeveral people have asked me about the trip my family took last winter to Vermont, the trip where my wife got the flu, our car couldn't make it the final two miles to our house so we walked through the freezing rain in the dark, and I broke my wrist trying to snowboard. It is a good story.<br />
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So, if you are looking for a laugh and a little perspective on this Monday morning, <a href="http://www.state14.com/home/2017/1/19/kdlsb4qd4ce6nl9rvyl7b6f81potjk?rq=jeremy%20knoll">give it a read.</a>Jeremy Knollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03647996984620729160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1045396076685413215.post-73727834381078456072017-06-14T10:34:00.002-04:002020-12-01T07:16:45.141-05:00<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>It has become an annual tradition for my seniors to end their year by writing and delivering ten-minute commencement speeches. Each year, I write one as well. Here is my speech for 2017.</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Most commencement speeches focus on what the speaker has done. It is from the things we do that we gain valuable life lessons, and it is these lessons that are sometimes worth sharing. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I contemplated talking to you about wiping out and breaking my wrist this winter trying to learn how to snowboard as a forty-year-old. I could emphasize the importance of taking risks, I thought, or bouncing back from failures, or how that whole experience only solidified my desire to try new and challenging things. If you never get broken your aren’t risking enough - that sort of thing. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I thought about explaining how my wife and I bought a house in Vermont in October; I could emphasize important lessons about not listening to the advice of those who tell you your dreams are impractical, about how we just took a deep breath and did it, about how wonderful it has been so far. Leap and the net will appear sort of stuff. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I could tell you about how I have managed to find a career I really love, where I feel like I am doing something meaningful on most days. The clear and resounding message being that doing what you love is more important than doing what makes the most money.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Like I said, most commencement speeches focus on what the speaker has done. But today I don’t want to talk to you about things I have done. I want to talk to you about a few things I have never done. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have never officially announced to the world that I am straight, or explained to someone </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">why </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am attracted to women. I have never been asked </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">when </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I realized I was straight, or if I was </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">sure</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I have never been told that the reason I “think” I am straight is because I played Little League as a kid, or because I can throw a football. I have never glanced around to see who was looking before kissing my wife, and I have never had my abilities as a father called into question because of the gender of my partner. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have never focused all my energy on keeping my hands in plain view, eyes forward while waiting for a police officer to approach my car. I have never worried that reaching for my wallet would be mistaken as reaching for a gun, a mistake that could lead to my funeral. Balanced against the color of my skin, the hoodies I wear have never be the cause for me being followed by a neighborhood watchman. I have never had to point out that </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">my </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">life matters.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have never texted my friends to let them know I got home safely after a party or a night out. I have never looked over my shoulder at the person walking behind me and wondered if I might be raped, just as I have never reached into my pocket for pepper spray. I have never had someone I didn’t know tell me I had a nice butt, or press up against me in an elevator. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have been protected from these gross injustices because I was born straight, and I was born white, and I was born male. Those are just the beginnings; I have other advantages too. I was born relatively intelligent. I was born free of any disabilities. I was not born into poverty, or into war. I was born in a place with consistent electricity and unlimited potable water. But for the sake of illustration let’s focus on those three: straight, white, male. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While so many others will walk around with targets on their backs - targets for degenerates out to bash gays, or store clerks who trail black kids around the candy aisle assuming they are going to steal, or frat boys hoping a girl will pass out - I have had the benefit of wearing a cloak of invincibility because I am a straight white male. It’s like winning life’s biggest lottery.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But here is the thing about winning the lottery: you have to figure out what you are going to do with all of that money. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have been given tremendous wealth to spend in this life, and I am not talking about actual dollars and cents. I am talking about the wealth of power and influence. I am talking about the wealth that grows each time my thoughts are not interrupted by a need to focus on self-preservation. I am talking about the capital that was loaded into my account at birth simply because I was born straight, white, and male in a society that ranks those qualities above so many others. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am not a fervently religious guy, but I often think of the the phrase, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” In other words, if not for the grace of God, that could be me. It doesn’t matter if you believe in God or not. Luck, circumstance, whatever. The concept is simply that when I see someone relegated to the margins of society, I don’t immediately think I am better and that is why I have been spared those difficult circumstances. Instead, I think that with the smallest alteration I could be right there in their place. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There but for my geography, go I. There, but for my skin color, go I. There but for my gender/sexual orientation/religious beliefs/economic status/educational opportunities/family dynamics...you get the idea. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The other day my wife asked a student of her’s what’s the biggest problem facing the world? “The fact that we are all the same,” he answered, “but we just don’t realize it.” He went on to explain that we are all human beings and in that there lies an inherent sameness. Geography, religious beliefs, cultural differences, a myriad of other factors all conspire to convince us that isn’t so, that instead we are inherently different. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If we could all just focus on our humanity and the things we have in common, we might be able to bridge many of the gaps that lead to everything from high school cliques to the war on terror. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yet somehow there are still people who have to make something as simple as their sexuality a declaration to the world, because the world is still demanding that they explain their difference. There are still men my age vastly more likely to be pulled over, and vastly more likely to have any interaction with the police go sideways simply because their skin color is different than mine. There are still people being sexually objectified and assaulted because they are of a different gender. The progress is undeniable, but equal we are not. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These inequalities are a problem you all must work to change, and all of you have won enough in this lottery of power and influence to make a difference. Every one of you sitting here today is about to graduate from a good high school in a country filled with opportunity. That alone gives you more in your accounts than the overwhelming majority of the rest of the humans on earth. I want you to consider that for a moment. No matter how bad your gym class was, or how pointless you thought your homework assignments were, you have been given advantages and your accounts are filled with winnings, money you must now choose how to spend. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You have to spend a pocketful of those winnings every time you hear someone make a racist, sexist, or homophobic joke. There will be times, when the joke is tossed out by a business associate or boss, when speaking out will cost you a bit extra, times when speaking out may alienate people who could otherwise offer you access to greater power or greater wealth. Remember how much you started with, and pay the fee willingly. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When people who have not benefited from your level of education are used en masse as a scapegoat for the ills of society, you must cash in a bit of your relative power to stand beside them and help them find their voice. When you are on campus next year and someone passes out, you must use the money in that account to purchase them protection. Anytime you see someone with inadequate funds, people marginalized and forgotten about by society, you must make a withdrawal from your own plentiful accounts. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is not about money. It’s about influence. This is not an option; it is your obligation. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I want my sons to live in a world where coming out isn’t a thing. I hope that if one of my boys is gay he never has to explain that to anyone, but can simply fall in love and date people who interest him just as I did growing up. I hope someday there is no need to chant the slogan “Black Lives Matter” because the equitable treatment of black people will simply makes it too obvious to bear repeating. I hope I am still teaching when the girls in my classes can go out on a weekend and feel just as safe as the boys. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So before you head out there tomorrow, give yourself a big pat on the back. You deserve it for the hard work and determination that has gotten you here. But don’t get carried away. You deserve a pat on the back, but you did not pull this off all on your own. It is not only your hard work and merits that got you here. You were also handed a great deal. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At a minimum, you were given a quality school and one of the best public educations available. Each of you has won varying amounts in the lottery of power and influence. Some have won more than others, but no one sitting here is going home empty handed. Now that you have won, figure out how you want to spend that money. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am excited for all of you, and for your developing futures. I hope to hear from you again along the way. I wish you all confidence and happiness. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Congratulations.</span></div>
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Jeremy Knollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03647996984620729160noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1045396076685413215.post-71707209862349373512017-03-13T19:25:00.001-04:002017-03-13T19:25:37.892-04:00Facebook<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My face has been known to intimidate my students. It has made my sons cry on more than one occasion.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-c9f36ec7-c9fd-50cb-9aa3-271bcab8dfbe" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“What is the matter?” people ask on days I am feeling just fine, good even. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Between my eyebrows, there is a furrow which at first glance may suggest deep thought, or mild aggression, or possibly boiling rage. I have to concentrate to relax it away, and change the message of my face from “tread carefully” to “why, hello there.” </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I don’t smile nearly enough - not at my boys, or my wife, or my parents, and certainly not at strangers or casual acquaintances. If my face is a book, I am not sure it is one people would be excited to read. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The book of my face does an admirable job of telling the story during the big moments of life. When my story is one of exceptional joy, my face will show you that in a moment’s glance - crooked teeth, eyes alight with happiness. When I am angry or feel I have been wronged, there will be no hiding it. I lock eyes with my adversary, and bystanders dive to the ground covering their heads. When sadness takes over, laying itself across my back like a heavy coat, one need only take a cursory glance to know.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The problem is, my face malfunctions in the ordinary times. Washing dishes, listening to my boys tell me about their days, sitting beside my wife reading, talking with my aging parents - in these moments a glance at my face tells far too serious a story. In the hours that make up the majority of one’s life, my face reads like a tale of an angry young man or perhaps a tale of one betrayed too many times. But, I am not angry. I have not been betrayed. That is just my face. My book has an unwelcoming cover. The book of my face misleads the reader and does not hint at how wonderful a story lies beneath. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is not a light-hearted tale, it seems to say. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I began writing, in part, to reveal a bit more of the true story behind the face I wear and show others. I began writing my blog so that years from now, my sons will have a record of the way I look at the world rather than the way I appear to look at it. The title of my blog came from my time in Vermont. I liked the connection to Mt. Mansfield, the highest peak in the state, a place where one can see clearly for miles. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was also struck by an image I saw repeated all over the state. Along winding highways and dirt roads alike, I frequently saw farmers standing and leaning on a fence post, or amid the clumps of tilled land, or paused atop an idling tractor. There they surveyed their fields. They took stock of what they had, where it had come from, what it could become through their toil. One man’s field, each one. I am sure there are all sorts of stories of joy behind the wrinkles of their serious faces. Despite the simple and unyielding cover, there are wonderful stories beneath. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I set out to take stock of my life and share any observations that might resonate with others. It is a solitary pursuit, but the fruits of that labor have created a much deeper connection to community than I had ever thought possible. My closest friends have come to understand parts of me I would be unlikely to share in public. Acquaintances have become friends. They have come to literally read chapters of my life, moving well beyond what my face could ever convey, far beyond what one could see by taking me at face value. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The next step in that is my joining Facebook. I haven’t so far, because I fear the replacement of real interaction with tallies of likes and shares. I fear the compulsion, the voyeurism, the distraction of another invasive technology. The part of me that distances myself from others had vowed to never join. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But, life is quick and I find myself hoping to connect a bit more closely with those around me, to share a bit more of myself. My hope in joining is that I will be able to tell a fuller story to more people. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I doubt getting older, watching my parents age and eventually pass, tackling the trickery of teenage boys, will help relieve my furrowed brow. It is unlikely my directness will suddenly be viewed as a warm invitation to sit and chat, but perhaps Facebook might just help tell a story my face sometimes covers up. </span></div>
<br />Jeremy Knollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03647996984620729160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1045396076685413215.post-19754530911651594382017-01-19T17:28:00.001-05:002017-01-19T17:28:50.407-05:00On the Eve of the Inauguration <b id="docs-internal-guid-86f07b80-b8cb-af81-c234-853529f0e992" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As both a father and teacher, I feel like a Depression era farmer on the eve of the Dust Bowl. The farmer has done everything to ensure his crops will grow. For years he has worked the soil to make it as fertile as he can, but a hard world has overpowered his good intentions. Day after day he watches helplessly as all he has tried to build blows away with the grains of dirt howling across the flaking paint of his front porch. He wants control, but he has none. He wants to heal the earth he has tended so carefully, but he can't. All he can do is hope.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tomorrow Donald Trump becomes the next President of The United States. As a teacher and father I find that deeply troubling. For twenty years, I have tried to use literature to teach students the importance of this country’s core beliefs. Atticus Finch defending Tom Robinson despite the racist forces of society working against him. Toni Bambara’s “The Lesson” in which a girl living in poverty stands before FAO Schwartz wondering who could afford such things, and why she isn’t in that group. I have tried to teach my sons as well. A sign hanging in my foyer reading “Be Nice, Or Leave.” A couple trips into Philadelphia to hand sandwiches to people in need of a meal in the hopes of inspiring empathy and understanding. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now I worry the seeds of those ideals will whither and die under the scorching blaze of our next President. I worry a drought of decency begins tomorrow. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As someone who has dedicated my career to fostering social justice in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">public </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">education, I can’t help but be scared. Lead by a billionaire who has never attended a public school, let alone taught in one, we may usher in a new wave of school vouchers that can drain engaged parents from struggling schools, and leave behind populations without the skills of advocacy, without hope of change. I don’t know what to tell students when they ask why the man picked to run the EPA seems so against ideals of protecting the environment. I don’t know what kind of world my sons will inherit when the science of global warming seems to be up for debate. I don’t want my students or children to believe it is conscionable to deport millions en masse with no consideration of circumstance. I don’t know how long it will be before my sons witness the leader of our country mocking someone with a disability, degrading women, or openly lying to fit his needs. I already miss my President who, despite any political flaws critics levy against him, was the model of decency, and civil discourse. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have been mired down by this since the election. I have struggled to understand why so many people were capable of looking beyond violations of common decency and overt lies and still elect this man. At times I have felt that the ideals I have tried to sow are drying up and dying out. </span></div>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HEQMla1wLD8/WIE7ybmRpcI/AAAAAAAAA30/oM9q5kU5F90jrZ8243ASi66y8gMZ0HeZQCLcB/s1600/IMG_2258.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HEQMla1wLD8/WIE7ybmRpcI/AAAAAAAAA30/oM9q5kU5F90jrZ8243ASi66y8gMZ0HeZQCLcB/s200/IMG_2258.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then, yesterday, just two days before the inauguration, I found this on my dining room table. Home sick from school, my youngest son was practicing making sentences with words my mom had cut from magazines. “Now is the time to make your life love,” he had written. And there, in the simple words of my six-year-old son, was the answer. Love.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Facing the hate-filled rhetoric spit out on Twitter, vehement attacks meant to undermine a free press, name-calling and lashing out at any critics, it is time to devote more time to promoting the only known antidote to hate. Now more than ever we must challenge people who make racist or sexist comments, showing our children how to treat difference with respect and love. Now more than ever it is time to show immigrants who are contributing to our economy and raising families on the promise of a better life that they are welcome here and loved. It is time to fight against those who still believe in conversion therapy and teach our kids that everyone is free to choose who they love. It is time to scrape together our watering cans, and buckets, and any small container of hope and fight to nurture the growth of our ideals despite an environment hostile to them. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I fear a drought of decency begins tomorrow, but it is not the first one. Ideals of fairness and justice survived the drought of segregation. Justice for all continued to grow even when all did not mean women. The roots of equality, first sent out through the soils of inequality have proven strong enough to support new branches of gay marriage. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yes, we are going to face a drought. But, all droughts eventually end. One night, that Depression era farmer heard a rustle through the curtains of his open windows. He sat up beside his loved one who reached over and put a hand on his shoulder. Together they raced barefoot downstairs across the grit of a dirty porch, and out into a deep soaking rain. Fingers laced together, they stared out over the darkening fields. They felt that grace upon them, that beauty, and a blinding euphoric love washed over with each glorious drop. They knew what had been planted would survive.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So too will our ideals of decency survive this drought, if we tend to them. </span></div>
<br />Jeremy Knollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03647996984620729160noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1045396076685413215.post-26940026927525777012016-11-21T20:36:00.000-05:002016-11-21T20:36:04.203-05:00The Santa Sham<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I struggle more each year with the approach of the Christmas holiday, as I find myself deeper and deeper in the Santa lie. It felt so good at first. When my first son was born more than a decade ago I relished my new role as Santa. Above my desk at work I hung up the card my wife gave me that first year: “First he believes in Santa,” it read. “Then he does not believe in Santa. Then he is Santa.” I loved that last part, the magic in it, the giddy sneaking around with Mrs. Claus after the kids were in bed to fill up the space under the tree. I hung that card above my desk with a special care previously reserved only for stockings. With our kids we put out deer food for Santa’s team. We strained our ears for any jingle, and scanned the skies for any glimpse. We swore we heard a bell, were certain we saw a twinkle.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These are the difficult years, now that my eldest son has reached double digits. I know some year soon - perhaps even this one, though I hope not - my son will realize it is all a sham. He will realize that this benevolent character of his childhood excitement is nonsense and that I have perpetuated the lie. I, his father, who has so adamantly insisted on truth-telling has been lying to him all along. “The Tooth Fairy too?” he will ask with quivering lips fighting back tears as he tries to reconcile the disappointment with the shame and embarrassment of having been so gullible. “The Easter Bunny?” Maybe he will just nod, as some of my friends’ children have done. “I thought so,” he may say before casually returning to the examination of this year’s haul. Or maybe he will react as other kids have, awash in confusion and crushed dreams he may turn to me and say in a way he never imagined, “I hate you.” Either way it will mark a turning point in his childhood, a point to which we will never be able to return. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He is a clever boy and we are only keeping up this charade as long as he will allow it. It is only his grace that gives me another precious year of being Santa. He will help with his younger brother, I am sure. He is not the kind who would spoil it for another kid. Hopefully he will enjoy that new role, playing Santa right beside his conspiratorial parents. Hopefully he will feel the fun in that and forgive the lie. Telling my sons people should </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">always</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> tell the truth has made for easy navigation through some tricky waters. Telling them they should </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">almost always</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> tell the truth is not a change I am eager to make. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was thinking about all of this today, when I came across the word that will save Christmas. Just in time for the pending revelation, “post-truth” has been named the Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year. The word is an adjective defined as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” In crowning the word, the Oxford site references the EU referendum in the United Kingdom (Brexit) and the presidential election in the United States. This troubles me more than I can explain in a simple blog post, filling me with deep misgivings about the future we all face. I still want the truth to govern major elections, just as I want it govern my interactions with my sons, my teaching practices, my marriage. I don’t want to live in a post-truth world, yet here I am. Perhaps that is why I prefer my small Vermont house where I don’t get any wi-fi or cell service to living here where I can follow the President-elect on Twitter #hamilton. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But the holidays are coming, so I am going to embrace this post-truth world. I am going to really up the Santa game this year so that my boys can have one more year of believing in a man whose sole purpose is to bring gifts to good little boys and girls and justice to the bad ones. I like a Santa with a clear sense of good and bad. Nice kid who helps other kids and doesn’t make fun of the kids who look different or talk “weird”, enjoy your pile of toys. Little shit who picks on kids because their clothes don’t match or because they have two dads, enjoy your coal you little bastard. In this post-truth world, I am going to rub the soles of my boots in the ashes from our Christmas Eve fire, and stomp all over the carpet. Stains be damned. I am going to savor each and every bite of those cookies to make the lie feel a bit more real. </span></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-a81388d4-89ab-4c8d-9004-d1f8ce598c69"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then when my boys figure out that Santa does not exist, I am going to talk to them about the importance of post-truth thinking. I am going to tell them how I once found out the truth about Santa too, and how I chose to believe anyway. I am going to talk to them about how sometimes objective facts are less important than personal beliefs. Sometimes those personal beliefs are all that sustain you when the truth just hurts too much. </span></div>
Jeremy Knollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03647996984620729160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1045396076685413215.post-12698381075247583792016-10-23T14:03:00.000-04:002016-10-23T14:03:26.130-04:00The Haunting of Ghosts<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I keep thinking about haunted houses, the ones of our childhoods where we were taught to fear the dead. I think we have it all wrong. If I heard of a haunted house now - gray clapboards weathered by winter after winter - I would make my way there like a pilgrimage, counting those who have passed like rosaries. I would sneak inside to wander the darkened hallways, trying rusting doorknobs in the hopes of opening up a portal to my grandfather, or Frank’s dad, or Kate’s mom. I would press my ear to the walls and listen for the accented Croatian tongue of my brother-in-law’s father. I would turn the knobs on dusty old radios long unplugged, straining to hear the call of the Cubs games I always listened to with my grandpa, the spectral taste of Pop-ems on my tongue. I would climb to the attic and listen for the whispered advice of the dead as I try to navigate the complexities of this life. </span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-18307ae3-f2ae-27e4-633b-68d3b59e8be6" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I want to be haunted. I want so desperately to believe that is possible. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tonight, I spent my Friday night coaching my son’s street hockey team. Tomorrow morning I will watch his younger brother play soccer in the rain. I will say the same to both at the conclusion of their games: “I love watching you play.” That will be the end of my critique. I used to say a lot more, praising specific plays and offering advice I thought might develop a greater competitive edge. But, they are just children and I want my message to be crystal clear. I fear that advice about attacking the ball, or looking for the right pass opens the door to misinterpretation. Hearing these ideas, my sons might draw the conclusion that I think the way they play a game is somehow wrong or deficient. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So I just say, “I love watching you play,” because it is a game, that they are </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">playing</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and one can’t </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">play</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> wrong. Certainly one can spectate incorrectly, but not play. Playing, in the hands of six and ten year-olds, can only be done correctly. It is the spectators who mess it up. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I did not come to this realization by myself. It came from a woman I barely knew who has been dead now for two-and-a-half years. I am plagiarizing her. It was her line when she watched her grandchildren play; she was an expert spectator. “I love watching you play,” she would say after wins and losses, backyard pickup games and league playoffs alike. I don’t know if this is what she said to her own kids when they played or if this was a bit of wisdom picked up the second time through with the experience and distance only grandparents have. I never actually heard her say it myself, but I watched it. As her grandchildren and my boys skated together on our frozen lake during her last winter, I saw it. I watched it in her smiling eyes and uproarious laughter as she sat there on the edge of that frozen lake and watched those kids play. She watched them like a child watches a chick hatch, like a zealot watches a miracle. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Each game concludes and her ghost whispers in my ear, “I love watching them play.” </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I love watching you play,” I repeat to my sons. Then I notice the unseasonably warm breeze across my skin, the play of the setting light on the clouds, the chatter of the kids replaying their favorite moments from the game. I am here, and she is not and that is an instructive realization. Just enjoy it she tells me, just bask in how wonderful it is to watch those two blonde-haired boys race around that field of play. Listen to their laughter, marvel at the simple purity of their stride, love watching them play. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My father, still very much alive, once expressed something strikingly similar. At his seventy-fifth birthday my wife asked him if he had any advice. He brought his fork back to rest on the table for a minute and thought about it. Then he said, “Be good. Trust God. Enjoy.” I try to be good. While my vision of God is blurry at best, I have developed a trust I never thought I would have. But so many moments of my life I do not enjoy. I fret. I worry. I simmer, and stew, and rage. I complain and lament. I ruminate and plot revenge. Enjoyment has been reserved for only the most perfect of moments. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am certain all the people my friends and I have buried did this too. I am also certain that in some way wherever they are now, whatever form they have taken after this world, they are longing to have those moments back. Death has shown them that even the worst days are good ones. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My father’s mind is faltering. Like some shitty old record player, it has begun to skip and stick. My mom pretends that he does not know it is happening, but I am certain he does. I know for a fact that he can feel the blind spots filling his landscape. His memories are like the operas he loves so much with the harmonies stripped away. They have been reduced to simple melodies. I believe he knows this just as he knows that bar by bar the melodies will someday start dropping notes. I know for certain he is aware of this happening because he is laughing more than he used to. He is good. He trusts God. He seems increasingly determined to enjoy. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He is cracking jokes that seem to unhinge his joints with hilarity. He is teasing everyone from my youngest son to his wife of nearly fifty years. He is showering us all with praise. It is as if he is trying to sow all the joy he can while he is still here. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At age forty, I still turn to my parents at times of great significance. Like a ship loosed from its moorings I test the currents and channels I used to only explore as a passenger. In stormy seas when my parents used to take the helm, I am the captain now. Yet, I keep looking toward the shore to see them standing there keeping a reassuring and watchful eye. I know that someday they will not be there anymore. Someday the skies will darken, the surface of the water will turn to a froth, and there will be no reassuring figures standing there in the sheets of rain. My children will keep turning to me but when it all feels too much I will turn and find no one there. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Most of my friends are in their forties now, and more and more we are walking among ghosts. We are at that age where people who are integral parts of our world have started passing out of it. The generation that raised us is being razed one small tragedy at a time. It has happened to my closest friends and my brother-in-law; it has become a common occurrence among my colleagues. As the leaves outside my window drop from the trees, the air is rich with the scent of my own father’s winter. The loss feels overwhelming. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So I will be searching out paths where I can hear the whisperings of those who came before me. Besides all the Halloween definitions of the word, haunt also means simply to visit often, or to continually seek the company of. It means to stay around or persist, to linger. </span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is so much I have yet to learn. There is so much guidance I still need and seek. I hope those who pass choose me as an object of their haunting. </span></div>
Jeremy Knollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03647996984620729160noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1045396076685413215.post-16327699903590963242016-08-02T08:31:00.000-04:002016-08-02T20:22:45.764-04:00A Break in the Narrative<b id="docs-internal-guid-d25be47b-465e-016c-4e74-3eb688092d17" style="font-weight: normal;"><br></b>
<br>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Got time for a haircut?” my father asks as soon as soon as I walk through the door of my house. He is waiting for me, literally opening the door as I walk up the two front steps. He and my mom are there when I get home, having gotten my sons off of the school bus. I take a deep breath. “Sure,” I say, “let me grab the stuff.”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I pull one of the dining room chairs onto the tile of the kitchen floor, walk down the hall and grab the comb, scissors, and clippers. Sitting there in the middle of my kitchen, my eighty-two-year-old father looks old. He looks tired, and I am not sure it has been a good day. He no longer looks like the father of my childhood remembrance. I take his glasses from him and place them on the counter beside us. I wrap a towel around his thin shoulders; he folds his right hand over his twisted and atrophied left, and the world tilts. The patient way he waits for me to begin, the vulnerability of it, knocks me off center. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I grab pieces between my fingers and snip, the silver strands falling like snow around my feet. We talk about my sister’s new house, and he laments her being so far away. I remind him that she moved a few months ago and now lives only two hours away. He says no, insists it is at least four. “Remember dad,” I say softly, combing gently through the hair on the back of his head, “they moved a couple months ago.” He asks my mom, sitting by the window in the kitchen. “I thought you told me four hours,” he says to her, losing steam. “No honey,” she replies, her voice rich with the complexities such conversations evoke. She turns her gaze back out the window. I turn my attention back to my father; I try to concentrate on the haircut.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">More and more his mind functions like a story missing some pages. We will be reading along nicely, and then there is a gap he can’t seem to fill. We can usually keep moving along, but I see in his eyes that he feels the break in the narrative; he knows some pages have been torn loose. This is all relatively new – my dad’s dementia, the small daily confusions. The injustice of it makes me angry. I watch him struggle to reconcile his thoughts and my fingers go white clutching the comb. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My father spent over two decades of his life as a Franciscan priest. He led mass, and took confession, and offered solace. He traveled through Brazil trying to help those less fortunate. Once he left the order to start a family, he spent years working tirelessly at a job he did not love because he wanted to provide for us. When he retired he volunteered at a soup kitchen and taught adults how to read. He deserves to keep his faculties until he passes. He deserves better than those jarring moments when he looks up, having lost his train of thought, feeling the sting of a mind that is betraying him. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Not long after this haircut, my mom leaves to visit a friend for a couple of days. She is hesitant to go; she does not like leaving my dad alone anymore. Living nearby, I assure her I can fill in. The day after she leaves, I wake early to a call from him. He sounds confused and agitated. He tells me he has diarrhea, and that it had been going on for days. He struggles to maintain his dignity. As I dress and head out to the local pharmacy it is not lost on me how similar this errand is to the one I have done so many times for my two little boys. I buy the medicine and grab some electrolyte drink, bananas, rice and apple sauce – our pediatrician’s menu for tummy troubles. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I arrive my father is asleep in his bed. He looks like an older version of one of my boys - mouth open, hands curling the blankets up against his chin. I go out the kitchen and start cooking some of the rice and laying supplies out along the counter. After a while, my father comes out and begins pacing. He walks measured steps, slow and steady with the help of the walking stick I made for him. Spiraling around the edge of that stick in Sharpie marker are the names of all the places he and I have walked together, all the places he has taken me: The Tapajos River in Brazil, The Great Wall of China, the narrow alleys of Assisi, Russia's Neva River. Name after name spiraling round in a double-helix like the DNA we share. These days walks stay within much narrower bounds - the hallways of his house, my front walk. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After talking with him for a few minutes he seems visibly relieved, but cannot pull together many details. I ask what he has eaten that morning, and he can’t tell me. I ask how many doses of Imodium he has taken, and he can’t answer. He walks over to the counter to a series of lists my mom has left for him – phone numbers, what to eat when, tasks to accomplish. He struggles, and stares, and smiles apologetically. He keeps checking the lists to find the answers he can’t recall, but the answers are not there. The answers are somewhere in his mind like footprints lost in a blizzard. My heart breaks. My anger swells. It all seems so unfair. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After I piece my dad’s day together as best I can, I measure out a dose of the medicine and place it on the counter beside the food. He does not talk while I organize his food for the day, but watches with a quizzical look and then paces restlessly around the house. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Later, we sit together in his living room and the version of my dad I have known my whole life returns, perhaps freed from the haze of a sleepless night or the anxiety of being sick and alone. We talk about the cabin my wife and I are building, about my sister and her kids, about the little love notes my mom has left for him all over the house. Again and again he tells me what great sons I have. “That’s because they have great parents,” he must say a dozen times. “You are a good son,” he repeats any time there is a lull in the conversation. “You are a godsend,” he says to me when we hug goodbye. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A godsend. A blessing. While not a very religious person myself, I like the idea of a God who would send help in a time of need. I take solace that my flailing attempts to show this man I love him, to help him out when he needs it may be interpreted that way in his mind. It is right there, standing in my father’s doorway that I first see a kind of light in the darkness that is my dad’s developing dementia. Suddenly I see myself recast, no longer just a helpless and angry victim, but instead someone who can help my father navigate his fading landscape. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In my father’s mind, snow is falling. I don’t think it is going to stop. The landscape of his mind is losing its detail beneath a layer of white. At some point in the future, the familiar paths of his world are going to be hidden, more and more things in his world will be buried. I get angry when I forget where I put my keys. I get flustered when I can’t remember why I walked into a room. I can’t imagine what it must be like to feel all the certainties in your life slipping away. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Perhaps this is not some awful fate my family must struggle through. At least it is not only that. It is also a chance for closeness I wouldn’t ever experience if my fiercely independent father’s brain kept functioning properly. Having my father call me that Saturday morning, hearing the anxiety in his voice and being close enough to make the short trip to his house and help him offered me an opportunity. As his dementia progresses, as it inevitably will, I need to look at these moments as opportunities rather than burdens.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Got time for a haircut?” my father asks as soon as I have walked through the door of my house. I take a deep breath and think about the comfort he gets from not having to go out to a barber. I think of the finite number of times there are left for me to give that comfort to him. I think of the finite number of days I will be able to return home and be met by my dad at the door, my two boys practicing their karate on his legs as he asks me about my day. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">More and more those impromptu afternoon conversations revolve back to my dad’s anxieties and confusions, yet I know we are just at the beginning. More and more he asks me questions he has asked me days or even minutes ago. I take a deep breath and answer them. No matter how many times he asks, I just try to answer. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I pull one of the dining room chairs onto the tile of the kitchen floor and grab the comb, scissors, and clippers. Sitting there in the middle of my kitchen, my eighty-two year old father looks old, but he is smiling. I think it has been a good day. The windows are open and the heady smell of an early spring wafts through the window. I take his glasses and place them on the counter. I wrap a towel around his shoulders. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.3800000000000001; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I smile and start cutting. </span></div>
<br>Jeremy Knollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03647996984620729160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1045396076685413215.post-67348583041719523882016-06-16T12:51:00.001-04:002018-05-08T11:11:08.204-04:00Commencement 2016<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>For the last two years, my seniors have ended their year by delivering ten-minute commencement speeches. They are the most remarkable part of my year. Here is the speech I gave to them.</b></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was looking at a poster in my son’s room last night, and thinking of how many superheroes wear capes. Tomorrow when you walk around that track, taking your final steps as high school students, you will also be wearing capes. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Okay they are robes, but they are a lot like capes and I like the symbolism. You are headed out into an imperfect world and you must fight injustice. Billionaire or not, you must act like Bruce Wayne. Like The Batman, you don’t possess any real superpowers, just your own determination, intellect, and maybe some cool gadgets. My goodness you all carry the equivalent of the batphone in your pockets. As you soak up all the pomp and circumstance of that event, don’t forget about the capes you are wearing. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">My time with you as students is now down to a matter of minutes. I hope you feel more confident as writers, and more capable as readers. I hope you look at the world just a bit differently than you did when you showed up in September. I hope you feel excited for the next chapter in your lives. Before you go, I want to take one final stab at teaching you a couple of things, offering to you all I can at this late stage in the game: a few stories from my own experience that I hope might be instructive in some positive way. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">A couple of years ago on a warm Friday afternoon in May, I was called down to the office and fired from my job as Department Coordinator. I had never been fired from a job before. I had no warning this was going to happen, and the process knocked me down hard. When I asked for a reason I was told simply, “We think we can do better.” I wanted more of an explanation, but realized quickly I was not going to get one. The meeting was over, and so was my time in that position. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Losing that position meant a thirteen-thousand-dollar pay cut amid homeownership and raising two young boys. It meant looking my wife in the eye, and telling her I had been fired, asking her to pick up a few more tutoring jobs. It meant seeing my colleagues each day with the embarrassment of a very public failure. I was angry and humiliated. I had to go into the office that I had for seven years and pack my things. I had to carry those things out to my car in boxes, taking that walk of shame right down D-Hall. I flipped daily between anger and indignation, humiliation and sadness. </span></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">A few years removed from that experience I now recognize that day as the greatest moment in my career. It was a remarkably fortunate and defining moment. That one event reinforced that regardless of the difference in salary, I belong in a classroom not an administrative office. The pay cut sent me scrambling for a side hustle to make up some of the loss, so I started writing more and pitching my ideas for publication. I think the early success I have had in selling pieces I have written is because I knew I needed to. Rather than writing being a hobby that I did whenever I had the time, I needed it to also be viable source of income. So I wrote all the time. I write every day now, and sitting in some quiet corner tapping away at the keyboard creates some of the most enjoyable moments of my day. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">My fears about money had caused me to turn away from writing because the stipend of department coordinator offered much greater security. It brought with it guaranteed, pensionable money and no risk. It also made me feel like a fraud. I applied for that job only for money, knowing with total certainty that a step toward an administrative role was not for me. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I stopped being myself at work. During the time I had that position, I alienated the majority of friends I had among my co-workers. I filled my prep periods trying to match toner cartridges to printers, and collecting paperwork rather than thinking about my classes, grading papers, and sharing ideas with my colleagues. I became the messenger for things I did not agree with. I felt in my core that I had to act differently in order to be successful. As someone with strong opinions and a pretty big mouth, I found I had to actively silence myself. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now I am making money off of the very same statements I sought to suppress. I am making money by publishing writing the way I always knew I wanted to, rather than making money in a way I always knew I didn’t want to. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">My point is this. When your gut tells you something is not a good fit, listen. When you know inside what you want to be doing, but people are telling you to play it safe, don’t listen. It is that simple.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I want you all to know how much hope I see in you. The speeches you have given over the past week are proof that we can change this world to one in which we see, and empathize with each other’s failings. This week has proven what I already knew to be true: that people can show others who they really are without fear of ridicule. People are capable of listening to someone else’s struggles, even when they are difficult to hear, and respond not by turning away but by reaching out. I want you all to see the beauty in what you have accomplished. I want you all to see the similarities with those sitting in this room rather than the differences. I want you to see that it is okay to struggle, okay to fail, okay to suffer, okay to doubt. I want you to see that these are things that are universal and normal no matter how many times you are taught they are weak, or aberrant, or deficient. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am at a loss in the wake of another mass shooting this week in Orlando. I keep looking at my two little boys and wondering what kind of world they are growing up in. I have honestly gotten to the point where I question taking my kids to Disney, a place that has come to represent all that is innocent and magical and good in childhood. I mean, such crowds. Such symbolic resonance as a target for terror - innocent American kids playing in a magical world built upon commercialism and capitalism. I want to take them to the Statue of Liberty, but now she is not just a perfect symbol for </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">us</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, she is a perfect symbol for </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">them</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I find myself, despite my own objections, using that pronoun more and more. I balk at taking my kids to the ball game, to the concert, to anywhere that might appeal to some animal lurking in the darkness with a legally purchased gun. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">You are the reason I refuse to back down. You are the reason I have the courage to take my boys to Disney, and Citizens’ Bank Park, and New York City. You, the graduating class of 2016 are the reason. You have spoken with unimaginable grace of the loss of your fathers; you stand back up and keep moving despite that injustice. You have looked out at a room full of people whose judgement you feared and removed the mask you have worn all these years. You have overcome crippling social anxiety to share with us something you have learned. You have spoken about rising above addictions, both your own and those of your loved ones. You have spoken about loyalty of friendships that have redefined family, and resiliency to bounce back from the unspeakable. You have admitted your minds have tried to trick you, you bodies have failed you, you friends have betrayed you, and yet here you are fueled by your ideals, and your optimism. You remain undeterred. I look at you and have faith that we can fix this. I have faith that you will help reverse this trend of senseless violence. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">You are remarkable people in whom I place a great deal of faith. I look forward to watching you anchor the nightly news, where despite a long history of focusing only on discord and disagreement you end each telecast with one story that represents hope. I look forward to hearing about the life you saved as a doctor, the cure you developed as a biochemist. I look forward to reading the book you write, listing to the song you compose, or voting for you with the conviction that you will guide us toward a better world. I look forward to watching highlights of your race, or your game, awash in the inspiration such endeavors can provide.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">More than that, I look forward to all the small moments I will never hear about. The moment you sit at a dinner party and tell the guy who just made a racist joke that he is not funny. The moment when you stop and talk with the woman begging for change on the corner. The moment pull yourself from sleep, swing by the store for a pint of Ben and Jerry’s, and show up at your friend’s door in the middle of the night to help her through one of life’s inevitable tragedies. The moment you look yourself in the mirror and love what you see. The moment you stand up for what you believe. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, do not take tomorrow lightly. Understand the role of all the people who have gotten you here. More importantly, understand that despite all the people telling you this is your day, it is not. The day does not belong to you. It belongs to us. It belongs to all the people sitting in the stands who are so much more similar to you than you may have previously thought. It belongs to your parents who need to believe the world they are leaving behind is a good one, and it belongs to my sons who need to believe the world ahead is just as good. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Put on those robes, and commit to your role. You are superheroes. You are charged with making the world a better place. I believe you can. I look forward to hearing your stories.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I wish you all happiness and confidence. I wish you all lives where you can look in the mirror each day, grin, and head out to fight the bad guys.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Congratulations.</span></div>
Jeremy Knollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03647996984620729160noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1045396076685413215.post-45275190690005488352016-06-10T14:23:00.001-04:002022-03-30T11:03:40.418-04:00Pink<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To entice my first son to move from his crib to his new “big-boy” bed, we told him we would paint it any color he wanted. He did not hesitate for a single second: PINK!</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-bdf65ecb-d4bd-4f2d-3b83-34a8b4f325d6" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He said this with a huge grin, and the unbridled enthusiasm of a little kid being given the freedom to make a decision all his own. Pink was his favorite color, and I had made a habit of challenging anyone who raised an eyebrow. “What do you think this is,” I would ask with varying levels of indignation, “the 1950s? It is a color. He likes the way it looks.” It was shocking the number of people who felt they needed to weigh in on this. Friends and family members alike, people I believed to be intelligent and open-minded, rolled their eyes and made jokes. Pink is a girl’s color. Pink is a gay color. Archaic, ignorant, outdated nonsense. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, there my son was bouncing with excitement at the new color of his bed. “Any color </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">other</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> than pink,” I said immediately. I did not debate this answer. My better self - a man who strives to battle stereotypes as a classroom teacher, who does laundry and irons my own clothes, who took tap dancing lessons as a kid - was nowhere to be found. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The same thing happened when we took him to his first baseball game. The Phillies were enjoying the best years of my lifetime, and that first trip to the park was a father’s dream. Already sporting his foam finger on one hand and carrying the sticky remains of his helmet sundae in the other, we marched into the store to buy him his first Phillies hat. There were blue ones and red ones, gray ones with the Philadelphia skyline, and black ones with the Philly Phanatic. Again, he did not hesitate. PINK!</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There in that store, I told him he could not get a pink hat. I looked my two-year-old son in the eye and told him that those hats were only for the girls. I lied, and told him that the person working at the cash register would not allow him to buy it. I told him it was against the rules. </span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I didn’t like what I was doing. I aspire to be better than that. But a boy in a pink hat gets teased, and I wanted to protect him. I did not want other kids to have an easy target to belittle him or make him feel bad about his choices. In my attempt to protect, however, I became the one doing just that. Despite my intentions, I was the one telling him that what he naturally liked was wrong. As a way to mitigate my feelings, I bought him a pink baseball to go with his red hat. </span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is amazing the weight of the baggage we carry from childhood, and the ability our own children have to stir it up from the past. I was not good at sports when I was young, but could knock out a solid triple time step in tap shoes. I spent my summers at theatre camp. I got labeled a “faggot” right around junior high. I remember sitting in a class as a kid poked my butt with a ruler. “You like that faggot?” </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That little kid version of myself keeps popping up; he is not going to allow that to happen to my son. If that means embracing stereotypes, he tells me, then so be it. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Last week, my son’s school offered a night for kids to try out instruments for next year’s band class. Immediately, my son knew which instrument he wanted to play: the flute. If instruments were colors, drums would be black, the brass section would be a combination of blues and reds, the flute would be pink. </span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As soon as he said it, my childhood self jumped right back to the surface. A boy with a pink bed is going to be made fun of by someone. A boy with a pink baseball hat is too. “So is a boy who plays the flute,” said my childhood self. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This time, however, I was determined not to show my thoughts. Still, I struggled with the urge to encourage something else, something more stereotypically masculine. Play the drums, I found myself thinking. Play something from the brass section. Out loud I told him the flute was great. I told him it was a beautiful instrument. “Good luck with the flute,” I said as my wife took him off to tryouts. </span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When he came home and told me that he wanted to play the trombone, I was thrilled. He had tried the flute, and hated it. </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was relieved that he would be playing something that would make him a little less of a target for the type of kids who went after me when I was little and insecure. More importantly, I was relieved that he decided against the flute simply because it was so difficult to play. I had not sent him the message that his interest in it made him less of a boy. I had not reinforced that his interests could ever make him less of a man. These days, he is leaning toward the flute again and I hope he tries it. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I hope the little boy in me that keeps popping up as my two young sons navigate this world, shows them what he did not know - that what interests you can’t be wrong. I hope that from here on out my sons will see my ability to arrange flowers in a vase, my love of Taylor Swift and Beyonce, the way I shower them with hugs, as no different than my love of playing ice hockey, and throwing a football. Those are not things women like, or things men like. They are things Dad likes. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yesterday, while I was coloring with my youngest son, he told me kids at school were teasing him. When I asked him why, he said it was because he likes the color pink. “Well, that is silly,” I said, reaching for the pink crayon. “It is red mixed with white. I like red. I like white. I can’t like them mixed together because I am a boy? That makes no sense.” He laughed. We colored.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Cool pink monster,” he said. Damn right.</span></div>
Jeremy Knollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03647996984620729160noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1045396076685413215.post-64291614962950118252016-05-03T16:33:00.000-04:002016-05-03T16:33:31.017-04:00Teacher Appreciation Day<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was pumped this morning when I realized it was Teacher Appreciation Day. Everyone loves a free cup of coffee and a donut. </span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-742456dd-7851-c9d5-c5b8-14b13c4862b7" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But, my real joy came when a former student walked up and handed me a note. “Thank you for being a teacher,” she wrote. “It can’t be an easy thing to do, with tests and politics pulling the marionette strings. It must feel pretty powerless sometimes.” She is right about the puppet strings, but not wholly right about the powerlessness. I have learned to cut some of those strings meant to control my every move in the classroom. All good teachers have, but we could use more help.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Think back to a teacher who influenced you in a meaningful way, and I suspect you will remember character more than content, how you felt more than what you learned. I am not saying content and skills are pointless, just that they are not the main point. Most of what my former student wrote about in her note was about my seeing in her the wonderful person she would become rather than the struggling person she was. “You are able to make every student feel important,” she wrote. “That is a superpower.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The English teacher I had for my senior year of high school, Paul Steltz, had that superpower. His class was the first to make me believe my voice might be important, my thoughts something worth sharing. He never gave us a single test with multiple-choice answers, and never stood at the front of the room telling us what to think simply so we could regurgitate it and prove we were listening. He did not want us to master the skill of taking a test, or sitting still, or coloring within the lines. He wanted us to think. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">His essays had no rubrics. In an educational landscape focused on standardization, he was utterly subjective. He knew school was not a factory capable of churning out a uniform product. Grades were not given in numerical form - five points off if you misspell a word, ten for a comma splice. Instead grades came in the form of narratives. There at the bottom of our page was a paragraph praising what was worthy of praise, and always challenging us to clarify our thinking. From him I learned to write; I also learned what I wanted out of my schooling, my friendships, and myself.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In college, I was fortunate enough to have another teacher with that superpower. John Elder never tried to teach skills that were neat and clean, easy to quantify and measure. You know what I remember most about him and his teaching? I remember the quality of questions he asked me when we reviewed a draft of something I had written, and how attentively he listened to my answers. I don’t remember a single assessment that required filling in bubble sheets. I don’t remember a single moment when I was forced to learn a skill in isolation rather than amid a practical application. I don’t remember ever being bored.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am not sure my sons will have that experience. My sons are bored already. That is not due to their teachers. Their teachers are exceptional. My boys are bored because they are required to do a lot of assignments regurgitating what they already know rather than exploring what they don’t. They must fill out bubble sheets entitled “The Daily Core Review” that look a whole lot like the standardized tests. They must complete homework assignments because that is what the script says come next regardless of whether or not they need the practice. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As parents we must not be complacent as testing companies and politicians attempt to control classroom practice. We must not simply accept the justification provided by administrators presenting the company line. Ask the teachers of your children if they are being forced to sacrifice anything they consider important in order to meet the requirements of mandated testing. If you do, you will hear talented teachers lamenting the loss of imaginative free play in Kindergarten to make way for practice multiple-choice questions. High school teachers will talk of losing nearly two weeks of instruction for standardized tests, the results of which we never see. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Want to make a difference during Teacher Appreciation Week? Support teachers who are cutting the marionette strings rather than allowing them to bind their hands. Tell the first grade teacher that watching your son read his original poetry at “Poetry Cafe” was invaluable. Tell the Kindergarten teacher that you appreciate her refusal to cut down on free play for the sake of test prep. Tell high school teachers you appreciate the sometimes messy process of complex assessments designed to provoke original thought. Tell school administrators that you want more of those things and less standardization.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tell them you want your children in the hands of people with superpowers, rather than puppets with strings. </span></div>
Jeremy Knollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03647996984620729160noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1045396076685413215.post-53092489272506995452016-02-12T12:05:00.000-05:002016-02-12T12:05:27.975-05:00Food, Kids, and Beauty<b>Our food.</b><br />
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There is no beauty in grocery shopping.
I think there once was, maybe for my parents, or my grandparents, perhaps
I have to go back farther than that.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Asphalt parking lots, metal carts, meat
packaged in a way that allows us to forget we are eating things that were once
alive and looking about. Florescent lights and packaged foods designed to
sit on our shelves for unimaginable stretches like that book I have been
meaning to read but never get to. Increasingly we turn away from
ingredients that might expire and rot because meal planning takes time and
thought, and we are too busy. With preservatives piled high, we can all
just stock our pantries and grab whatever we need whenever we need it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We have simplified the whole shopping
experience in the name of progress. Gone are the days of buying meat from
a butcher, vegetables from a farm stand, fish from a fish market. Now it
is one stop shopping. We no longer carefully examine a piece of produce
for color and texture: who has that kind of time? There is no time to
pick up each orange, one by one, to feel its weight in our hand, knowing the
heavier ones bear more juice. There is no time to inhale deeply,
searching for a smell our most distant ancestors knew meant fresh, and ripe,
and ready to eat.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Gone are the days of standing in the dirt
talking with the person who has grown our food, inhaling the air rich with the
smell of damp soil, and ripening tomatoes. Now we can even forgo the process
entirely, sending our store lists to someone else who will pick it all out and
drop it at our door. We shop quickly between work and soccer practice,
on the way from dance class to yoga. We cook quickly. We eat quickly.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We rarely experience beauty the way our
ancestors experienced it - wandering through the woods in search of a
particular mushroom or fiddleheads, or gathering bulging blackberries from a
bramble our finely tuned noses have lead us to, salivating and ravenous.
Cooking on an open fire, the smell of pine and smoke wafting out across
the night.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Our kids.</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><br />
</b>There is no beauty in my
third-grader's education. At age nine, progress and pragmatism seem to be
outstripping imagination and ingenuity.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Black and white photocopies handed out for
every kid to complete, those who have mastered the concept right along with
those who are struggling for the basics. Standardized tests and the
Common Core dictate prescriptive, unimaginative drilling of basic skills,
pushing us ever farther from creativity.<o:p></o:p></div>
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No one is assigning the task of
documenting the emergence of the rhododendron flowers: tight green buds, the
way they fatten up before revealing slivers of purple and pink, kids watching
wide-eyed as they open to full-blown face-sized blooms. You can't test
the sense of awe that might inspire. You can't test for poetry, or
appreciation of nature, or imagination. Addition and subtraction.
Right and wrong. Black and white. Fewer and fewer questions
they create, more and more answers they select from a prepared list of multiple
choices.<o:p></o:p></div>
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There is no beauty in scheduling every
moment of our kids' days. We are giving away the essence of childhood in
the name of progress: better athletes, better test scores.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Kids as young as first and second grade
are moving from school to practice, then on to private lessons in music or a
private trainer. Many then head off to their second sport of the day.
I teach hundreds of high school freshmen who walk around like zombies.
They survive on five hours of sleep so they can complete all of their
assignments after a day of classes, sports practice, and dance class.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Few go outside on a regular basis.
More and more they socialize through texts and tweets, snap chats and snippets.
Fewer still can recall the last time they had an afternoon with nothing
to do. Rarely do they all meet up in a park wondering what they day will
bring.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Back to beauty.</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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I know it is crazy to spend my days
dreaming about using my iPhone as a skipping stone across the silvery surface
of a lake, spinning ever more slowly until it slips into its watery grave.
I know I seem ungrateful when I long for a wood burning stove instead of
central heat, for hunger instead of a stomach over filled with Double-Stuff
Oreos. I wonder if our generation may end up being the first in history
that wants less for our children, wants life to be more difficult rather than
easier.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But, I think back on the greatest memories
of my childhood, and this is what I get: Something my friends and I called
mud-sliding - rainy warm nights where we would take running starts and treat a
grassy hill like our own slip-n-slide. The tang of the homemade
sauerkraut my parents used to put on our hotdogs. Hours of ultimate
frisbee beneath the parking lot lights by the High Speed Line, a game we played
in disorganized glory simply because we loved to run and jump and compete - not
because we had to. I remember splitting wood with my dad and then eating
huge chunks of watermelon sprinkled with salt, the juice making little
rivers through the dirt on my forearms. The first time I ever watched the
two little whirlpools disappear behind me after splitting the brown cedar
waters of the Batsdo River with a canoe paddle. Sledding. Wrestling
my dad. Eating escargot the first time, a dish so carefully and expertly
prepared that I didn't even get angry when my parents revealed I was eating snails.
Waiting on the back porch for the coals to light in the Weber grill,
watching the fireflies fill the darkening air.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Again and again, the moments I recall with
greatest clarity are moments with enough time to think and room to breath.
The food of my remembered childhood was carefully thought out and real.
The activities mostly unstructured and of my own creation.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We are wired to survive in a world far
more challenging than this one, and far wilder. We are wired to spend
time staring up at the firmament, struck with awe at the vastness, wondering
about our place in it all. I know fantasizing about a simpler world is a type of nostalgia afforded only to affluent Americans whose means
far outpace our needs.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But man is it difficult to stay focused on
what matters, on the beauty that surrounds us at every turn. We fill our
lives with all we can cram in. Let's remember what it was like as kids to
just go outside after school and get dirty. Let's remember the quick
impromptu conversations that popped up with our own parents when we were
sitting on the porch or playing a board game together - conversations that were
never interrupted by a cell phone.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Pretty soon, winter is going to melt again
into spring. Crops will be sown. Kids will feel that strong pull to
get outside. Daylight hours will stretch into late afternoon, and
evening, and even early night. When you pass the farm stand on your
harried drive, roll down your windows and try to catch the scent on the breeze:
ripe peaches, tomatoes, something sweet and earthy you just need to
investigate. Ignore the buzz of your phone, the text asking if you are
almost there, and pull over. Talk with the farmer, ask what has been
growing well this season, take all of her recommendations and then go home and
figure out how to cook collard greens, or kale, or parsnips. Stand there
on the side of the road and sink your teeth into a peach, and do nothing but
stare out at the distant field and enjoy the sweetness. Lick every last
drop from your fingers. The world will still be there with all of its
insistent requests when you are finished.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Kick your kids out of your house.
Tell them the iPad is broken, and hide it away in some forgotten corner
of your closet. Pick the best early spring evening, and tell them not to
do their homework. Give them a camera and ask them to take pictures of
spring as it breaks through. Skip a practice. Cut one scheduled
event out of their young lives and tell them to fill that time with whatever
they want to do as long as it is outside. Don't call them in for dinner.
Bring it out to them and eat on the lawn.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We are all in danger of tilting our heads
down and grinding it out. The society we live in puts us at risk of
spending too much time indoors, eating something out of a bag or box, and
looking up someday to realize we have missed it. Listen to the voice
inside of you, a voice made of the whisperings of all our ancestors telling us
to slow down, calling to us through all our senses to breathe deep, play often,
and look around at the beautiful world.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />Jeremy Knollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03647996984620729160noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1045396076685413215.post-13071308511395270662016-01-01T20:20:00.001-05:002016-01-01T20:31:59.256-05:00Happy New Year<div class="MsoNormal">
I like routine. I like small get-<span aria-haspopup="true" id=":z.1" role="menuitem" tabindex="-1">togethers</span><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>with
a few people I know very well much more than large parties where I meet new
people. Small talk exhausts me. My sports of choice are running and
cycling - activities known for their monotony. I make an espresso to
start my morning every day, and get a little cranky if that can't happen.
I can settle for a cup of coffee instead, but I smile less and grumble
more. I am thirty-nine years old, and am suddenly seeing less humor in
the little idiosyncrasies of my eighty-one-year-old father. Think Ghost of
Christmas Future with a<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><span aria-haspopup="true" id=":z.2" role="menuitem" tabindex="-1">snarky</span><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>and
sarcastic sense of humor: See that buddy? That is you in forty years.
Ha. </div>
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My dad. He has a collection of mugs from his travels around
the world and each day he drinks from the one on the bottom shelf, far
right. Then he shuffles them all over one space and replaces that one at
the back of the order when he is finished. He listens to a<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>different</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>opera every Saturday. At one
o’clock. After finishing the soup he has for lunch. But before his
afternoon coffee break. He rotates his breakfast cereals. Mondays,
Wednesdays, and Fridays are oatmeal. Boxed cereals on the other four
days. “Variety is the spice of life,” he says with no hint of
irony. <o:p></o:p></div>
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At thirty-nine years of age, I have a pretty well established
routine. I teach. I run. I cycle. I spend a lot of time
with my wife and kids. I am not trying to figure out my place in the
world with the same reckless abandon<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>I
did when I was in my twenties. I know what I am good at, what I excel at,
and what I like. I am comfortable - a thought which makes me
increasingly uncomfortable. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I was thinking about this one day when I walked out onto the dock
that extends into the lake where I live. I got to the corner, taking in
the sweet smell of cedar water in the unseasonably warm air, and the dock
collapsed. Not totally, but certainly enough to say my days of ignoring
its state of disrepair were over. First thought: shit. Second
thought: Who repairs docks? Third thought: It is a week before Christmas,
we don't have money for this. Fourth, hesitant, thought: I wonder if I
can build a dock.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Further thoughts, swirling around in my head: Growing up, my
father's tool box was a drawer. In the <i>kitchen. </i>Its
contents: one hammer, one pair of pliers, two screw drivers (flat head and
Phillips), random assortment of screws and nails, tape measure, duct tape, and
“plastic wood” – he loves the stuff. He had given me many things in my
lifetime, but knowledge of home repair was not one of them. <o:p></o:p></div>
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When I recently hung a ceiling fan, I had to call my buddy Chuck
to bail me out. I am not handy. I am an English teacher, and
aspiring writer. That is what I am good at. I became a runner
because, as my wife once fondly told me, I have "absolutely no athletic
talent," but I am pretty stubborn so can usually make myself keep going.
I have no place building a structure meant to remain standing in water, a
place where friends and family will sit believing they won't end up in the
drink. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Logic told me I should just walk slowly away from the edge of the
failing dock and call someone qualified to build one. Someone who owned
power tools. Someone with a skill set tailored to craftsmanship.
Yet, I am afraid of how much I like routine. I am not sure it is
super healthy to have the lack of an espresso throw off my day. I don't
want to rotate my mugs, and my cereal in the name of variety. <o:p></o:p></div>
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So. I built a dock. I started by ripping out the old
one, posts and all. I watched a couple of YouTube videos, borrowed my
friend's circular saw, bought a chalk line and line level, borrowed another
friend's pick-up for the lumber I got at Home Depot, and spent a lot of time
staring at the project with my hands on my hips. I measured twice and cut
once. I worked for a whole Saturday, all week during the two hours of
light I had between getting home from work and sunset. And, sure as shit,
I built a dock. This was a couple of weeks ago, and I still go out to
stand on it sort of shocked by the fact that it is still there. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I think that at a certain age, or perhaps a certain level of
responsibility - think a mortgage and two kids - I stopped branching out.
I defined myself as a husband, father, teacher, runner. These were
the things I knew. These are also the things, despite how much I love
them, that sometimes leave me feeling stagnant and stuck. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I can't tell you how much fun building that dock was. Fun
because I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Fun because unlike
most of my time these days, it was a brand new experience. Fun because I
was not sure I could pull it off. It was fun because I broadened my horizons
just that little bit; it opened up a new door. <o:p></o:p></div>
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My point is this: Society tells us that as we age, we should
find out what we do best and settle down. Congratulations, you are a
teacher/banker/doctor/spouse/parent. See you in thirty years. Even
the technology we all carry with us everywhere is tailoring our search results
to our current interests, shepherding us down ever narrowing paths. What
we know is comfortable. But what we don't know is exhilarating. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Remember the first word in New Year is<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><b>new</b>. Maybe we should make
that the focus of our resolutions and remember the thrill of experiencing
something for the first time.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span> T<span aria-haspopup="true" id=":z.6" role="menuitem" tabindex="-1">omorrow</span><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>I
might take up knitting and join an equestrian club...or maybe I'll just trade
my espresso for a cup of tea. </div>
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Jeremy Knollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03647996984620729160noreply@blogger.com0