Thinkers Link

On censorship and memes

_{The Ministry of Truth in present-day China has successfully persuaded a very large part of the Chinese public that the heroes of Tiananmen Square were actually villains bent on the destruction of the nation. This is the final victory of the censor: When people, even people who know they are routinely lied to, cease to be able to imagine what is really the case.}
Salman Rushdie, May 2012

The above graphic showed up in my social media feed and immediately all I could think was, “I hate meme culture.”

But I don’t really. Memes are fast food, pop music, pulp fiction, summer romances, costume jewelry. Memes are the digital bumper stickers of the internet letting people know that your car is a mountain climber, your kid is an honor student, you have a baby on board and you voted for the loser in the last election, but you’re fine with that. Memes are meant to be funny, insightful, light-hearted and forgetful.

This meme, however, is personal. It feels different because it’s not any of the things I described memes as being. It represents instead, an attack not just on my profession as a librarian, but my entire field as an educator and worst of all, the very foundation of what we call “Western” civilization. Fact-checking is the basis for the scientific method and is at the root of such wise old adages as, “Measure twice, cut once”, “look before you leap” and “fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me”. The last aphorism was famously flubbed by former President GW Bush during a live speech because he hadn’t fact-checked the saying.

In today’s socially targeted, media-rich world, fact-checking has become the work of the audience, the consumer. It is not enough to sit passively by and simply accept whatever shows up on your screen, especially if you are on.a social media platform. As we learn more about how these platforms collect, aggregate and employ data points about us, we must also become better educated about the shape, depth and strength of the “information” or filter bubble around us.

Students no longer face the same obstacles of scarcity of resources or access to those resources that past generations dealt with. Instead, they are drowning in misinformation, disinformation and the echo chamber effect that the technology we all use inevitably creates. It gets worse when you mix in politics, religious beliefs and other issues that may be sensitive or controversial, but that we have strong feelings about. This is called bias, and it builds up slowly over time, like plaque or sediment, covering the original and changing the shape and color of the thing, until you can hardly recognize it at all.

The people who are posting the meme above are angered and annoyed that some of their other posts are being blocked or removed. They are not satisfied with the explanation they receive that their posts have been found to be false, misleading or violate some other community standard. Instead, they believe they are being “censored”. What is really happening (IMO) is that we are seeing our freedoms clash with our changing technological realities. More and more I hear people discussing the idea of “freedom of speech” vs. “freedom of reach”, which I hadn’t heard prior to the advent of online social networking.

I agree that we should be having serious discussions about who controls what. But this is a conversation that academics and leaders in technology have been having and warning the general public about for years. My first encounter with these dangers was reading about the FBI e-mail “sniffing” program called Carnivore back in 2000, so Eric Snowden’s revelations hardly surprised me … and they hardly moved the public either. I can read about both on multiple platforms, cross check the stories and even write about them (as I am doing here) to warn everyone that ALL YOUR INFORMATION IS BEING COLLECTED AND SOLD.

Graphic from article in Fast Company: Everything connected for your convenience can also act as data collectors for companies.

But that is not the same thing as censorship.

What’s wrong with meme culture is that it’s superficial and meant for throwaway ideas, not serious discussions like what is at stake for us all going forward. If you’d like to read what author Salman Rushdie (who had a fatwa placed on him for his writings … like a personal wanted poster and censorship warning) I include a link to his 2012 New Yorker essay On Censorship. If you’d like to read more about the Carnivore program, including discussions on the dangers to our Constitutional rights such programs posed twenty years ago, I include links to those as well.

If you’re just here for the memes:

Have a great day and stay safe.

Talking about a revolution: & primary and secondary sources (and Shakespeare, a little bit)

Using political cartoons, a photo editing tool and Google slides, anyone can create a visual guide to what they are trying to say.

“Et tu, Brute?”

That’s probably the only Shakespeare that most Americans remember from High School English. Considering what we witnessed on January 6^th, it seems apropos. Conspiracies, betrayal, government overthrows, these things have all been with us for a long time. The day of the insurrection, looking out at the sea of people who were storming the Capitol, it was easy to identify where this group’s allegiances were. Besides the obligatory American flags and the easily identifiable MAGA hats, there were a few hilariously theatrical Trump posters, too many disturbingly racist banners and most notoriously, Q signs and symbols announcing that there was a strong undercurrent of people who had arrived under instructions from a mysterious task master, supposedly working with the POTUS.

One of the most disturbing things that has come out of the aftermath of the riots and the attempted coup is that many of the people that were there, live in a separate reality ruled by a different set of facts. “Alternative” facts, is what U.S. Counselor to the President, Kellyanne Conway called them on January 22, 2017 at a Meet The Press interview. This kind of doublespeak is what George Orwell warned about. It is the kind of alternative world building that Donald Trump has been engaged in his entire life. Even way back in the Art of the Deal, where he first spoke about “truthful hyperbole”, our disgraced former president has always been what my mother called a, “mentiroso asqueroso*”.

Like a bad dream that had taken material form, Qanon came to life and was now clad in blue jeans, layered flannel and hiking boots; its presence in the Capitol riots could be seen everywhere. And like Brutus, who thought of himself as an honorable man and wanted nothing but the best for Rome, but who lacked the political savvy and historical understanding of his co-conspirators, the insurrectionists were betrayed and lied to. In a final display of both their misdirection and misguidedness, the rioters were able to breach the security and storm the halls of both the Senate and the House, roam the offices of our representatives, collect mementos of their treason, document and share online their capital crimes and otherwise celebrate the strangest (and quickest) American “revolution” ever.

Most of them left peacefully, stepping over broken glass and splintered wood, taking a final picture perhaps of a ransacked office or sneaking a last look up at the ceiling of the great rotunda, completely unaware that they had participated in an insurrection. Yet, in the end, whatever they thought was going to happen, didn’t happen, because it couldn’t happen. It was never going to happen. They had been lied to and betrayed.

The truth matters. Especially in a free, democratic society.

Please find below some links to resources I find useful in trying to understand Trump, the person and candidate, The Trump Presidency and the Trump Insurrection. Surely, history will tell us a different story as time goes on, but I think it is important for us in the present to grapple with this character and what his tenure in power says about us as a nation.

* disgusting liar

Art as Protest: Political Cartoons in the Age of Trump

Cartooning The Trump Years: The Views from Opposing Political Planets

A Game Designer’s Analysis Of QAnon: Playing with Reality by Reed Berkowitz

Truthfull hyperbole, honest bullshit: Ancient Rhetoric Explains Why Trump’s Lies Work So Well by Daniel Ruprecht

Have a great day, and I hope that you are staying safe.

Primary sources: For students at Haverhill High School, these are very important research resources, as they are first-person interviews with people who were at the center of the action. That does not mean that everything they say is to be taken as TRUTH, but that their stories are solid data points for our cumulative knowledge.

Primary Sources vs. Secondary Sources

The FRONTLINE Transparency Project gives everyone access to hours of original reporting and source material that goes into the making of their films. The Transparency Project gives the audience access to an amazing catalog of mostly uncut and unedited interviews from a number of FRONTLINE investigations. I counted eight (8) different projects and two hundred and eight seven (287) interviews and transcripts.

Trump’s American Carnage| FRONTLINE

Frank Luntz (interview} January 27, 2021

Republican strategist and pollster. Some would say he has been the great message maker and spin doctor for the Republicans for the last 30 years.

Bob Corker (interview} January 27, 2021

Tennessee Senator from 2007-2019. Corker decided not to run for reelection in 2017 and has been an outspoken critic of Trump.

Olivia Troye (interview} January 27, 2021

Long-time Republican who served under Mike Pence, but endorsed Joe Biden in the last Presidential election.

Trump’s Twitter Archive| 56,571 Tweets

The Complete List of Trump’s Twitter Insults (2015-2021)

Kevin Quealy Jan. 19, 2021

Deleted Tweets From Donald J. Trump, R-Fla.

Secondary sources: Unlike primary sources, secondary sources add another layer of analysis or understanding between you and the source. Even documentaries leave material on the cutting room floor, and that means that you are not getting all the information that there is.

Trump: What’s The Deal?| Full Documentary (1991)

Donald Trump: Master of the Deal| Biography Channel (1994)

Especially interesting to me are the last four minutes of this old documentary where Donald Trump and others talk about the “real” Donald Trump.

Tony Schwartz: The Truth About Trump| Oxford Series (2016)

Ghost writer of Art of the Deal, reflects on his time with Trump who at the time was the Republican Nominee for the Presidency

Trump’s Road to the White House| FRONTLINE (2017)

Behind Trump’s Billions: How He Really Got His Real Estate (2018)

Inside the U.S. Capitol at the height of the siege

Washington Post Report, January 16, 2021

American Reckoning – A PBS NewsHour Special Report

The Capitol Riot Explained/ Second Thought

Trump’s language and our brains | December 16, 2016

Linguist Studied Trump’s Speech| July 7, 2017

The secret to Trump’s power of persuasion| October 31, 2018

MAGA and Fascism| Renegade Cute

Links for Political Cartoons used in the Google Slide Presentation at top.

Was that an insurrection?

Trump’s assault on academics and experts appeared, to most, to just be a quirk of a narcissistic personality; an annoying game of one-up-man-ship easily attributable to years of self-promotion and self-aggrandizement. As a librarian and educator, however, I found this to be the most annoying and dangerous aspect of this man’s personality.

I have been thinking long and hard about whether or not I should post anything discussing what happened last Wednesday, January 6^th at our nation’s capital. As an educator, a father, and most importantly a citizen of the United States, I feel a certain obligation to discuss what I think I saw.

Obviously, what makes this difficult to talk about, is that it involves politics, and many people believe that teachers/ educators should not express their political views, lest they should indoctrinate their students into a certain set of beliefs, views or values. For me, this is always in the back of my mind as I discuss any issue with my students or even with other teachers. I try to be as open and up front about my beliefs as I can be and if you read this blog, it’s pretty obvious how I lean.

Nevertheless, this is my personal blog, and I have always said that the views and opinions expressed here belong to only me, and are not a reflection of Haverhill Public Schools or their administration.

My immediate reaction on Facebook as I watched live, reflects my horror and disbelief.

So, just when I thought I had seen it all … along came an attempted coup. (Even as I try to finish writing this, I have the House Members debating whether or not to impeach President Trump for a second time, playing in the background).

Last Wednesday, January 6^th I logged online to watch the verification of the Electoral College votes, a rather dry piece of political theater, intended to finalize what started with citizens showing up to cast their votes months earlier on a Tuesday in November. Even before that day, this election cycle promised to be filled with drama and suspense, being already unusual because the COVID pandemic had forced changes in how, where and when we would be voting. The long shadow of the summer’s protests also still loomed heavy in the political air, along with the presence of an incumbent President who seemed focused on ignoring the spreading virulent virus while serenading crowds of his followers, all the while fomenting distrust in our most necessary institutions.

Beginning long ago, with his call of “fake news”, Donald Trump’s assault on academics and experts appeared, to most, to just be a quirk of a narcissistic personality; an annoying game of one-up-man-ship easily attributable to years of self-promotion and self-aggrandizement. As a librarian and educator, however, I found this to be the most annoying and dangerous aspect of this man’s personality. It was more than just a minor glitch in his programming, it wasn’t a bug, in other words, but a feature. A terrible component on what I thought was already a terrible product.

Worst of all, what Donald Trump was selling was corrosive to all aspects of our national character. Along with ditching the kind of decorum we expected from our politicians in favor of what people said was “speaking his mind”, Trump’s ascension through the Republican party to the top of the ticket was marked by bullying, name-calling, ad-hominem attacks and gaslighting that would become standard for the whole of his Presidency. Throughout his rise to power, people in his party looked the other way or stood by silently when the President stared into the sun during an eclipse, or when he used a Sharpie on a weather map to contradict the path a storm would take, or when he stood in front of medical doctors saying COVID was the flu or that disinfectant could be used in the body … or when he wouldn’t show us his taxes. Time and time again no one stood up sternly and just said, “No. You’re wrong. That’s dangerous. That’s not true. That’s not the way we do things around here.”

Posted on August 2020, Miles Taylor shared his insights and fears, which turned out to be accurate.

So then Trump denied that he lost the election,

then he denied that he lost the court challenges,

then he denied he lost the recounts,

then he denied he lost the electoral vote,

then he denied the reality that he couldn’t stop his loss.

All the while telling his most hardcore followers that they had to fight to stop people from “stealing their country” and that, “you don’t concede when there’s theft involved”. He told a crowd that had already been hyped by his son and his lawyer, that they had to march to the Capitol to “Stop the Steal”. They had to reclaim their landslide victory (he lost both the popular and electoral college votes).

Unironically, the President who led this wink-wink insurrection made his first public appearance days later in a Texas town called Alamo (not that one, but it sounds the same, don’t it) to parade proudly in front of a border wall that will not protect us from COVID (which has now killed 385,000 Americans) but will provide his followers a reminder that the imaginary enemies they are fighting are much more dangerous.

Thank you and stay safe.

P.S. As I post this, Donald Trump has officially become the only U.S. President to be impeached, twice.

Year End Review, 2020

Admit it. This has been the longest year of your life. It has been an experiment in existential dread; a real-life drama that has played out all of our collective worst fears. Along the way, we have daily mourned the loss of icons* and everyday people. We watched in horror as a police officer used his knee as a deadly weapon, then marched in the streets against injustice, even as more evidence of these kinds of injustices kept rolling in. It led to a low-grade civil war in the middle of a summer of pandemic, the White House becoming a bunker rather than a beacon. Then, we fought with our neighbors over whether or not to wear masks, fought with our neighbors over confederate, rainbow, BLM, and proud boy flags. We learned to live mostly in isolation for three fourth of a year, grew QANON to a full-fledged factory of fear, watched small businesses close while the Stock Market hit a new high of 30,000 points, spread rumors of a stolen election, got seriously hacked (again) by foreign agents, celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas via Zoom … and said goodbye to more than 335,000 of our loved ones. All of that (and more) in one year!

But before it ends, I would like to reflect upon 2020 a bit here, and share with you some of my insights and observations.

COVID-19 changed everything: This is obviously the winner of the “no-duh” award, but it deserves attention, reflection and study. For me, the biggest question is, “why did we, one of the supposedly most advanced societies on the planet, fail so miserably at dealing with this pandemic?” Certainly, poor messaging and confusing press conferences from our leaders, combined with the general public’s tenuous relationship with science literacy contributed to our failures, but there had to be other contributing factors. Even as we failed to contain the spread of the virus, we readjusted our lives as best as we could, and the repercussions of this change will continue to resonate for the next decade or so. Traditional workplaces have been shuttered as homes transform into virtual offices; no longer are pants required for those boring meetings about the next quarter’s projections. Gone, for now, are concerts, ball games, movie theaters, parades, dance halls, comedy tours, religious services, museums, dog shows, pie eating contests, and virtually any good time gathering of more than a dozen or so people. Even with our shutdowns, we still managed to lead the world in COVID related deaths (335,000 as of this writing). The only places people could gather in large crowds for most of this past year were protests or Trump rallies. That, probably says it all.
The Summer of Protests: As a lifelong reader, a one-time aspiring writer, a school librarian and an educator, I could not help but watch the events unfolding this past summer without thinking about what an amazing “episode” we were all living through. Of course, this is but the latest chapter written in this epic tragic saga that is American history. Those that have just become aware of it, who love to pronounce themselves “woke”, will have much to keep them awake as they pore through the events that have led us all here. The riots in 1919 led to anti-lynching reform, and the protests of the 1960s led to the Civil Rights Acts of ’64 and ’68. Thus far, the protests of the past summer have led to some superficial branding changes and promises of other changes forthcoming, but we shall have to wait and see what else comes of these historic marches. I am positive that artists, writers and musicians will be able to mine the events of the pandemic protests for their crafts, let’s hope that the activists and politicians will also be able to do the same and make the kinds of significant changes that will undoubtedly lead to more confrontation … because we’re Americans, and that’s how we do things. By force … and legislation (sneaky, sneaky legislation).
Surviving Isolation: Even before the pandemic struck and forced everyone to go into isolation in mid-March, I had been stuck at home for eight weeks, recovering from a medical procedure I underwent on January 2nd. At that time, most of my energy and focus was spent on trying to get stronger and return to my working life, so I didn’t have to think much about what to do with my time alone. Besides, I learned to enjoy developing new routines, charting my progress, incorporating exercises and stretches. The whole time, however, the light at the end of my tunnel was the idea that I could return to my “regular” life once I was done with my rehabilitation. But then, COVID-19 arrived, and everyone had to join me in isolation. Suddenly there was no light, only more tunnel.
Thriving in Isolation: Once we all started living apart, it seemed like everyone was giving advice on how to not just survive this isolation, but also thrive in it. Easier said than done for most of us. Millions of United States citizens find themselves struggling to keep up with the most basic needs of everyday life. Rent, food, utilities and transportation expenses are more than many can handle right now. Trying to grow while also making it through this pandemic is something that will best be assessed AFTER we have survived it. Those of us fortunate enough to continue working through this, have done so, at either great risk or with major adjustments to our lives. Others have transferred into new lines of work, seeking out whatever opportunities have emerged in this time of forced change. Throughout it all, for better or for worse, we have managed our way through a tumultuous year. Even those of who feel right now like “this was the worst year EVER”, I believe will look back on this year as something that truly marked our lives. Sometimes surviving is a form of thriving, because adaptation is a form of growth.
A Year of Loss: In closing, I must address the tremendous amounts of people we all lost this past year. Even as I write (5 pm, EST) the COVID death count is at 344,000 for the United States. That number is both dizzying and painful, as it marks our pronounced failure as a nation in our battle against an inanimate invader that relied on our own behavior in order to mount its attack against us. Like an episode of my beloved Twilight Zone (thank you Rod Serling), we argued over toilet paper, Lysol wipes, whether or not wearing masks mattered, the difference between riots and protests, whether or not the President’s medical advice was dangerous, and on and on. All the while, the virus continued to spread and kill us. Besides COVID though, it also felt like 2020 marked the end of an era, as the number of iconic figures from all fields seemed to take their final bows. For people of a certain age (maybe 45+), who grew up mostly with radio, television, newspapers and magazines as their forms of entertainment and information, the number of icons that passed away this year was quite staggering. Almost weekly it seemed, we heard of someone who was famous, in the sense of what fame used to mean “in the old days”. These people played in the big leagues, many of them, literally. While there are many more, here is a list of names I thought were a big deal, who said goodbye.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg	John Lewis	David Dinkins
Olivia De Havilland	Kobe Bryant	Chadwick Boseman
Gale Sayers	Christo	Chuck Yeager
John Le Carre	Pierre Cardin	Sean Connery
Kirk Douglas	James Lipton	McCoy Tyner
Eddie van Halen	Little Richard	Regis Philbin
Joel Schumacher	Carl Reiner	Hugh Downs
Wilford Brimley	Alex Trebek	Jerry Stiller
Fred Willard	Dawn Wells	Terry Jones
Brian Dennehy	Don Shula	John Thompson
Don Larsen	Tom Seaver	Bob Gibson
Whitey Ford	Phil Niekro	Joe Morgan
Al Kaline	Lou Brock	Curly Neal
Diego Maradona	Jim Lehrer

If nothing else, 2020 made us face the reality of our own mortality. It made us re-examine what is important in life. It gave us all a lot to think about. I hope that at least some of your thoughts were positive, powerful and life-affirming. Here’s to a better year ahead, for all of us.

Thank you for stopping by. Happy New Year. Stay safe.

Virtual Library

Hello everyone. It has been a while since I have posted … again. School life has been anything but normal, as you can imagine. The novel Coronavirus has now taken more than 300,000 American lives, and has altered the way we do everything, including education. Teachers have had to learn new technologies in order to deliver the content they used to prepare for live instruction. Students have had to adjust to being isolated and working from their bedrooms and kitchen tables. Gone are the early morning bus rides, the gossip in the hallways, the commiserating about parents, the after school hangouts. Instead we are left only with video conferences as classrooms, e-mail chains about what the students aren’t doing, and mixed messages from media about what is worse for all of us … the isolation or risking a little more spread. The good news is there is a vaccine on its way. The bad news is that we are Americans, and we’re gonna fight about whether or not to take it.

In the meantime, many of us have had to return to working from home. Since working from home means being “virtual”, I took the time to fool around with Google slides to make a virtual library. I was inspired by the virtual Bitmoji classrooms I saw earlier this year created by teachers.

The idea behind this is, of course to try and make learning not just more fun, but more interactive, engaging and hopefully, welcoming. Teachers used the virtual classrooms to include calendars, schedules, assignments, links to online resources and even social media connections. In many ways, this pandemic, has forced educators to rethink about how they deliver their subject content, and created a need for all of us to learn many of these new technologies.

In the image below, unfortunately, my links do not work. For that, you must download the .pdf that I have provided underneath the image. In reality, the image is a visual reinterpretation of this blog, Thinkers Link, as a virtual library. While most of the active links in the picture are on the bulletin board to the right, and are clearly labeled as “Links”, there are other connections to internet resources. The pictures of the earth, for example, take you to two very different but incredibly interesting sites; one hosted by NOAA and displaying real time atmospheric information, and the other a simulator site which displays the earth’s tectonic plates as arranged throughout its 4 billion year life. There are two links on the left side of this image, as well. Clicking on either the Digital Commonwealth or the Purdue OWL posters will take you to their respective websites.

virtual-library Download

Eventually, I would like to create another virtual library, with more resources and perhaps a better layout, but as a first stab at such an endeavor, I would say I did a satisfactory job … even if I couldn’t figure out how to create a Bitmoji of myself (I couldn’t download the app to my Macbook laptop, which is where I work from).

Thank you for stopping by, and I hope you found something useful.

Stay safe.

We are back, 2020!

After much speculation and preparation, we reopened the doors to the school and invited the students to return. Like so many other schools, we have launched the new year with a hybrid model in place and much uncertainty ahead. Some students have decided to remain remote full-time, while others have joined us in the building, returning to in-person instruction and dealing with the inconveniences that we face daily during this public health crisis.

Among the notable changes in the school library is the obvious absence of computer work stations and study students. Gone (for now, anyways) are the days of seeing the library media center full of students wandering in and out, finding a corner to isolate themselves, gathering with friends, catching up on their homework or printing out their work. Instead, we are using the wide open space in the library media center as a classroom for our EMT students, and as distribution center for student laptops.

For now, there is a different feeling and rhythm to everything in the world, so why wouldn’t we expect it to be that way at school? Both teachers and students are doing their best to bring a sense of normality back to our lives … as impossible as that is.

One thing that remains the same is the beauty of the book. For me, it still represents one of humanity’s greatest achievements; to be able to stalk, capture and tame the great minds in our midst before they return to the silence of eternity. Here, amongst our bookshelves are the recorded ideas, the timeless voices of Shakespeare, Cervantes, Chaucer … the lyrical musings of Keats, Angelou, Espada, Baraka, Browning … the imaginary worlds of Tolkein, Rowling, Orwell, Huxley … the textured and piercing social commentary of Achebe, Morrison, Baldwin, Paglia, Friedan. Open a book, and you get to borrow another person’s brain for a while, as they take you along a journey that can only happen with written language; a mystical, almost other worldly experience, that has not been available to most people, for most of human history.

But of course, you should expect a school librarian like me to try and push books on you, the unwitting and reluctant public (your restless fingers searching for a link to your favorite Tik Tok “star’s” latest lip synch video). So here they are, just three interesting additions to our collections.

Superior: The Return of Race Science by Angela Saini

After a summer that was marked by protests, riots and aggravated confrontations in general, I heard people everywhere talking about race, skin color, cultural appropriation, melanin, and other issues that strike close to home. Unfortunately, we have accepted the idea of race as a viable social construct, despite the scientific evidence that it is an essentially meaningless (and dangerous) paradigm from which to view humans. In this book, Saini explores the hows and whys of this persistent myth and its impact on everything from art and culture to science and social programs. (Review at the Guardian here).

Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch

I bet you LOL. Or maybe you ROFL. By now, you definitely 🙂 . No matter who you are, these examples of internet language are not just due to laziness; they represent the emergence of a whole new set of linguistic expressions. For English teachers and librarians, and anyone else who values and wants to preserve the sanctity of the written word, these abbreviations and pictographs (emojis in computer speak) were the bane of their existence in the early days of computer communications. Many people saw this trend as a bad sign for writing. Instead, argues McCulloch in this book, what we are witnessing (and co-creating) is a whole new ecosystem of writing, and that (IMHO) is thumbs up.

The Book of Eels by Patrik Svenson

Like the book Rats (by Robert Sullivan), or the books Cod and The Big Oyster (both by Mark Kurlansky), The Book of Eels by Patrik Svenson invites readers to think deeply and extensively about something we don’t ordinarily give much thought to at all. What exactly is the deal with eels after all? Are they fish or snakes? A little of both? Maybe neither? Go along with writer Patrik Svenson in this short, but utterly entertaining book, which is part nature mystery and part personal memoir. Sometimes, the best journeys happen when you take a wrong turn down an unfamiliar path, and suddenly you have a head full of eel facts.

Now more than ever, I encourage you all out there to use some of your alone time, some of your at home time, some of your “I don’t know what to do with myself” time, to explore someone else’s mind. Get out of your head for a bit, and sit with a book.

I hope you are well, and that you found something worthwhile.

Thank you for stopping by and welcome back.

Closing Thoughts, 2019-20

I don’t even know where to begin.

What do you say to “sum up” your thoughts in a year like this?

Well for one thing, school is over. How and when it reopens is something I would like to address in a separate essay, after having some time to think about it, and seeing what comes of this next wave (which is really still part of the first wave) of illness.¹

One thing I know for sure, is that we should take this disruption as an opportunity to re-evaluate how and why we do all of the things we do in school. Since many schools in the US shut down around the middle of March, we have two and a half to three months of data, sloppy as it may be, about what kinds of things worked, and what didn’t. The sudden and extended closings also reminded everyone that schools are not just academic centers, but important social institutions that place the health, well-being and development of our country’s children at the center of their daily mission. Whatever form they take come September, schools will be dealing with more than just delivering lessons and lunches.

And of course, there’s no way to “sum up” this year without mentioning George Floyd². And Ahmaud Arbery³. And Breonna Taylor⁴. And the parade of other names that followed, as the nation was reminded that it had been here before. Was reminded that it had heard, “I can’t breathe” before.

A recurring nightmare that used to be dismissed, before it was finally caught on tape that night, March 7, 1991⁵. It was a scene that horrified most people who watched it, as four officers took turns swinging their batons at a man on the ground, writhing in pain, covering his head, obviously pleading for mercy.

Almost thirty years later and this new video was worse, more brutal, even though it was done without a baton. More brutal because it occurred in the middle of the day, right in the open, the officers aware that they were being recorded. For eight minutes and forty-six seconds, an officer of the law, rested the weight of his body on the back of a prone man’s head and neck, using his knee as both fulcrum and weapon, killing him in the middle of the street.

Protests in dozens of American cities erupted. A police station in Minneapolis was abandoned and partially burned down. Cable news stations had multiple journalists on the “front lines” as looting broke out, sometimes associated with marches, other times not.

The White House was surrounded by protestors nightly, and the response was to build higher walls and expand the perimeter of said walls. Then one day, the President had peaceful protestors parted by force (think smoke cannisters, pepper balls, riot shields)⁶so he could take a selfie holding a Bible (not even his own) in front of a church he doesn’t attend.

Then the NFL apologized for not taking earlier protests seriously⁷. Then Aunt Jemima was canceled⁸, followed by Uncle Ben and Mrs. Buttersworth⁹. Then NASCAR said Confederate flags were not welcomed at their events any longer¹⁰. Then Mississippi said it was removing the Southern Cross from its state flag¹¹. Now statues to Confederate heroes are coming down¹² and the nation seems to be in full “culture war” mode. Just in time, as I said at the beginning, for another round of COVID-19¹³.

So yeah, it was one strange year. But the anger and frustrations that we are watching unfold should not come as a surprise to anyone. In past blog posts here, I have discussed the mass incarceration of African Americans¹⁴, questioned why Christopher Columbus was celebrated as a hero¹⁵, revealed how cronyism and nepotism kept my wife from advancing her professional career¹⁶, and discussed my frustrations with an education system that looks at poverty as an inherent character trait and not as the result of bias and discrimination¹⁷ (and lack of funding!). As recently as last November, when I talked about unpacking our new books, I discussed how my world view had been shaped by my awareness that our collective past is riddled with terrible episodes fueled by racism and violence¹⁸.

As we head into this summer of uncertainties, I hope you find some time to continue learning more about this history, not from spin doctors on cable news or via memes with forgettable quips, but from writers. There is something intimate and special about the written word, because it is a direct invitation into the mind of the other. It is a special kind of magic listening to the way another mind strings together words to create imagery and meaning.

Below you will find an abbreviated “starter” list of books and writers I think are important to understanding where we find ourselves, and perhaps how we move forward.

Biographies/ Autobiographies/ Memoirs

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Written by Himself
Autobiography of Frederick Douglass
Up From Slavery, Booker T. Washington
Autobiography of Malcolm X, with Alex Haley
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
Nigger, Dick Gregory
The Diary of Latoya Hunter, LaToya Hunter
Brothers and Keepers, John Edgar Wideman
Fist Stick Knife Gun, Geoffrey Canada
Makes Me Wanna Holler, Nathan McCall
The Other Wes Moore, Wes Moore

Non-fiction

Before the Mayflower: A History of the Negro in America, Lerone Bennett Jr.
The Middle Passage: White Ships/ Black Cargo, Tom Feelings
To Be A Slave, Julius Lester
Her Stories, Virginia Hamilton
Eyes on the Prize, Juan Williams and Julian Bond
Death at an Early Age, Jonathan Kozol
Savage Inequalities, Jonathan Kozol
Going Up the River: Travels in a Prison Nation, Joseph T. Hallinan
Agents of Repression; FBI War Against Black Panther and American Indian Movement, Ward Churchill
Black images in the Comics: A Visual History, Fredrik Stromberg
Black noise: rap music and black culture in contemporary America, Tricia Rose
Voices from the Harlem Renaissance, Nathan Huggins, editor
Breaking Ice: An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Fiction, Terry McMillan, editor
Hidden Figures, Margot Lee Shetterly
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot
Medical Apartheid; History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans, Harriet Washington
They Called Themselves the KKK, Susan Bartoletti
Sugar Changed the World, Marina Budhos
1619: Jamestown and American Democracy, James Horn
1919, The Year Of Racial Violence, David Krugler
Cutting school: privatization, segregation, and the end of public education, Nollwe Rooks
DNA USA: A Genetic Portrait of America, Bryan Sykes

Essays

The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. DuBois
Ain’t I a Woman, Sojourner Truth
No Name in the Street, James Baldwin
The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin
Letter from Birmingham Jail, Dr. Martin Luther King
A Rap on Race: Margaret Mead in conversation with James Baldwin
In Search of our Mother’s Gardens, Alice Walker
Fatheralong, John Edgar Wideman
Race Matters, Cornel West
Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Rediscovery of North America, Barry Lopez

Novels

Native Son, Richard Wright
The Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, A Gathering of Old Men, Ernest J. Gaines
Jubilee, Margaret Walker
Fallen Angels, Monster, and many more by Walter Dean Myers
Beloved, The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, anything by Toni Morrison
Coffee Will Make You Black, April Sinclair
How It Went Down, Kekla Magoon
Today the World is Watching You, Kekla Magoon

Graphic Novels

March: Books 1,2 and 3, John Lewis
Nat Turner, Kyle Baker
The Harlem Hellfghters, Max Brooks
Malcolm X: A Graphic Biography, Andrew Heller
21: The Roberto Clemente Story, Wilfred Santiago
I Am Alfonso Jones, Tony Medina

Plays

To Be Young, Gifted and Black, Robert B. Nemiroff
A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry
For Colored Girls Who Have Contemplated Suicide When The Rainbow is Enuf, Ntozake Shange
The Piano Lesson, Fences, August Wilson
Fires in the Mirror, Anna Deavere Smith
Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, Anna Deavere Smith

Poetry

Every Shut Eye Ain’t Asleep, Anthology
Langston Hughes
Claude McKay
Gwendolyn Brooks
Maya Angelou
Lucille Clifton
Nikki Giovanni
June Jordan
Audre Lorde

REFERENCES

Thank you for stopping by, and I hope you have a great summer.

Reading about isolation

What is it about isolation? There is something both frightening and mystical about being alone. Being forced to be alone, the classic time-out, is used to punish everyone from children to condemned criminals. Seeking to be alone can be seen as either a cry for help or an enlightened search for truth, depending on who you are and what you are looking for. Either way, being alone is a universal experience, perhaps our most common bond, right up there with birth, death and falling in love.

Whether you find yourself alone by choice or against your will, being cut off from the rest of the world is never easy, and only in the most extreme or cruelest cases do individuals actually find themselves completely alone without any human contact at all. By now, for example, most of us have learned that Thoreau’s self-imposed isolation at Walden Pond was never really far from civilization. (In fact, he probably had some interesting neighbors really close by). His, was an intentional retreat against the burgeoning industrialized world, and as such, he lived and experienced his time at Walden through that prism, making certain to heighten his awareness of what was “happening” … around him and within him … but he wasn’t in any real danger.

Other times, loneliness and isolation become one of the obstacles, one of the dangers in our lives. Here are five books for high school students where loneliness or isolation act as one of the antagonists:

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. One of the first books I remember reading where the protagonist finds himself alone for a long stretch, I had the illustrated classic edition of this novel. By today’s standards, this book’s portrayal of “the other” falls short, but it should be revisited and reread for the classic that it is. Part travelogue, part survival manual, Robinson Crusoe blended truth and fiction into interesting entertainment. You can find a no frills, free version of this novel at the good ol’ Gutenberg Project.
Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. This short, but compelling book retells the story of Chris McCandless, a twenty-two year old from Wisconsin who decides to travel alone to Alaska instead of going off to college. By trying to retrace the final fatal decisions McCandless makes, Krakauer invites the readers into reflections about his own past, and the decisions he made. The novel was turned into a film in 2007, which only fueled the fascination people had with McCandless’ final journey. Writer Diana Saverin reports in The Chris McCandless Obsession Problem, how the bus has become a place of pilgrimage for some, continuing the cycle of searching for self out in the world.
Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Another one of those “classics” that everyone is forced to read in high school, and fortunately, it is short enough to read in a sitting or two. Written in the middle of the twentieth century, this book reflects the pessimistic, zero sum attitude that still pervades the culture today, without the snark or ironic humor we have added to the recipe. The grim outlook that Golding had about human nature, though, has been proven wrong on more than one occasion, including this true-life account of six boys which you can read about here. IRL, the shipwrecked boys survived #aloneTogether for 15 months on a tiny uninhabited island. They took turns doing different jobs, including keeping their central campfire going. No matter what else happened, someone always kept the fire going.
Kon Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl. This true-life adventure story recounts explorer Heyerdahl’s 1947 voyage via raft across the Pacific Ocean. The journey was the author’s attempt to show that the Polynesian islands could have been colonized by ancient navigators, a theory widely dismissed at the time which has since become mainstream. Accompanied by five others, Heyerdahl successfully navigates the small, hand-made raft from Peru to the Polynesian Islands. Besides cataloging the struggles at sea, the book is a testament to one person’s obsession with an idea that everyone else calls “crazy”.
Diary of Anne Frank. A classic for so many reasons and one of the first books that made me cry. I remember having to stop every few pages to stare at the black and white pictures included in my illustrated version, unable to believe that the little girl in the photos was dead. The young author of this work was writing to herself, keeping a journal of the world around her as it turned upside down, but she did it with such innocence and insight that it has endured. There have been film and stage adaptations made of the book, and finally, a graphic novel version is also available. I have not yet read this latest version of Anne Frank’s diary, but the reviews have applauded the graphic novel for sticking to the young author’s own words.

I hope you and your loved ones are safe during this pandemic. Remember that all things pass, even when we can’t quite see the end. In the meantime, pick up any of these books so that you can be reminded of how incredible the human spirit is. We have been through much worse, sometimes even throwing ourselves straight into the line of fire. What we leave with is usually another chapter testifying to our wit, our will and our wonderful ability to adapt.

Thank you for stopping by and I hope to see you soon.

An open letter to my sons and students

I’ve always been a sentimental sort, in touch with my feelings, easily manipulated by a melancholy chord progression, willing to shed a tear for a cartoon robot or a superhero dissipating into CGI nothingness . But this is different.

I am grieving.

Editor’s Note: While this blog serves as my professional digital portfolio and archive, documenting and preserving my words and ideas in my role as a high school librarian and lifelong educator, it is also highly personal, and I have written essays in the past addressing issues such as nepotism, inequality, poverty, identity, among others. This is one of those “other’ posts. My sons are 15 and 20 years old, my students all in high school.

I have a few thoughts I need to share with you. It’s almost three in the morning and I can’t sleep, again. Just about every day nowadays, I break down and have a cry. Usually it’s brought on by another news story about someone I don’t know, dying overnight in the fight with this menace we are all forced to know now. Other times, my tears are flowing before I’m even sure what I am crying about. They just roll down my cheeks as I drink my coffee, scrolling through the news, reading tweets and memes connecting death and incompetence, ruin and irony, loss and lying.

You know me. I’ve always been a sentimental sort, in touch with my feelings, easily manipulated by a melancholy chord progression, willing to shed a tear for a cartoon robot or a superhero dissipating into CGI nothingness . But this is different.

I am grieving. Like so many people. I am not just sad, but in real deep grief.

And not just because of the deaths brought on by the pandemic, which would be cause enough. I am grieving because some days it does feel like we are all losing at everything. Gone is our way of life, our every days, our sense of normalcy. We are losing money, jobs, houses, futures. But most of all, I am grieving because I see you grieving. I see you mourning and helpless. I hear your questions and feel your frustrations. I see you sinking into depression, beginning to believe that nothing will ever be good again.

This sense of panic that you feel from this pandemic came early, like a jump shock in a horror movie. Before we knew what was happening, we learned that the monster was already in our home. And while we couldn’t see it, it was moving among us, stealthily. This monster had a name and an identity, but it was also something new, and therefore, unknown. Worse than that, how we (the adults) handled it, especially in our country, made you feel lost and confused. We kept giving you conflicting information about the symptoms, how contagious it was, how deadly it was, whether or not we should wear masks or gloves.

And now we’ve been telling you for a month and a half that the world has shut down. I can see that you feel like this will never end, like we are losing control of the situation. But I am here to tell you that this is not the case. I’m going to tell you something adults hardly ever admit to kids or themselves. The truth is, we lose control of the situation all of the time. In big ways and in small. We get sick, we get lost, we lose track of time. But we’re a curious and clever bunch. We find our way through things, we make sense of the chaos, and eventually, we find our way home … or else we make a new one wherever we land. We conquered the planet in this manner, and you will make it through this trial if you remember that.

I have five decades of conscious experience at my disposal to sift through to try and make sense of this crisis. In my lifetime, I have had personal medical setbacks, watched loved ones suffer through Alzheimer’s, AIDS, cancer and all those other ungodly maladies that come for us. I’ve lost family and friends to violence, drug addiction and mental illness. And of course, most recently, lost my beloved mother, to the genetic specter known as aneurysms, which has claimed several family members. Loss is inevitable. But you cannot let that emptiness fester. You must find a new seed to plant, work the barren ground left behind.

One thing that has given me hope, is how we have responded to this crisis. Not our government, but the people. Us. You and me. Your friends and mine. Our family. In the face of this contagion, we have ceased to operate in the ways we used to, so that we can fight off this invisible monster which threatens our most valuable resource which, of course, is each other. The whole world is willing to sacrifice everything, it seems … for each other. If I have learned anything about life and living, it is that as long as we have each other, we shouldn’t give up hope.

Finally, I would like to remind you that it is okay to cry, to grieve, to mourn. Your pain is real, your loss is great. We are still unsure about how we go forward, still not sure how to beat the monster or how many more of us it will take with it. We don’t know. That’s the other thing that adults rarely admit to kids or themselves. We just don’t know.

But I promise you, something else will grow in this empty space we all feel. Let us plant wisely, and tend to our gardens.

I love you.

P.S. In the age of social media, we often get requests on another platform (FB, in case you must know) to share information that could help others in need. Below is the text and link of one such viral campaign.

Could 2 friends or family members just copy and repost? I am trying to demonstrate that someone is always listening. Times like this are extremely hard for people with depression.

#SuicideAwareness
1-800-273-8255

Thank you for stopping by.