Rosanne Cash — On Art and Artists

Musician Rosanne Cash was named MacDowell’s 2021 Edward MacDowell Medalist —  the art organization’s top honor.

In honoring Cash, MacDowell notes: “The totality of her role as an artist, a woman, and the responsible courier of a storied cultural legacy means Cash is a rare artist with many outlets. All of these point toward the same end: Her belief that art and culture are a vital, shaping force in society.”

Belatedly, I read her acceptance speech — a wonderful confirmation of the role of the arts in society. Among other things, she said:

“Artists are in a service industry, the premier service industry for the heart and soul. We are bound by an imperative to create, connect, reveal, and to practice subversion.”

I’m listening to her music with renewed enthusiasm now.

I also encourage you to read her 2017 editorial in the New York Times, Country Musicians, “Stand Up to the N.R.A.”

Found Poems — Patti Smith

In December, I read Patti Smith’s M Train and Just Kids. In both books, I was impressed by her writing and dedication to the creative life.

Here are two found poems from M Train.

What We Want, Take 209

We want things we cannot have.

We seek to reclaim a certain

Moment, sound, sensation.

I want to hear my mother’s voice.

I want to see my children as children.

Hands small, feet swift.

Everything changes.

Boy grown, father dead,

Daughter taller than me,

Weeping from a bad dream.

Please stay forever,

I say to the things I know. 

Don’t go. Don’t grow.

— Patti Smith (from M Train)

My Pen

How did we get so damn old?

I say this to my joints, my ironclad hair.

Now I am older than my love,

My departed friends.

Perhaps I will live so long 

The New York Publish Library 

Will be obliged to hand over

The walking stick of Virginia Woolf.

I would cherish it for her

And the stones in her pocket.

But I would also keep on living,

Refusing to surrender my pen.

—    Patti Smith (from M Train)

Diving Back into the 20th Century

On my bookshelf is Joyce Carol Oates’s collection of Best American Essays of the Century — which is to say, the 20th Century. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit I’ve had the book for more than 20 years and never read. It was a thoughtful gift — and it was always my intention to at least dip into on occasion. But way leads on to way, and book to book. So I found myself staring at it some weeks ago and, after a moment’s hesitation, pulled the hefty volume off the shelf, opened to the table of contents…  and off I went on an adventure into the past.

I think my attraction to the book is partly a reaction to the current state of affairs. These days were supposed to embody the kind of progress and enlightenment that, back in the late 20th century, so many of us imagined coming. But it didn’t come. Instead, we’ve got this confusing mash-up of cultural battles, a killer pandemic, continuing war around the globe, a growing divide between the haves and have nots in America and elsewhere, the tail-wagging-the-dog technology, and a human-damaged world environment that may just swallow us whole someday.

So taking a trip back into the writing of some of the 20th century’s best American minds seemed like a good place to go. And, of course, what I found there is astoundingly good — moving, powerful, engaging, heartbreaking, hopeful, and more. 

I want to write about this reading experience for three reasons. One, it feels great to escape the loud, in-your-face, constantly streaming, always-anxious-making media noise. Even some of the clearly important contemporary writers whose work matters a great deal have been hard to read lately. It’s the sheer volume of daily “must-read” pieces about our tangled world that can feel so exhausting at times. Instead of Medium, instead of Substack, instead of Facebook and Twitter and the news feeds and the New York Times features and the long, important articles in The Atlantic, Harpers’, The New Yorker, and so on — I settled into reading thoughtful, slower-paced essays from the past that spoke to and of their day.

Two, I was impressed to see how the essay also speak to us today in ways we generally don’t hear from our contemporaries. Many of them challenge us to reconsider what we’ve done and what we’re doing. They ask all audiences to pay attention, to consider life on a deeper level.

Three, it’s just a pleasure to reconnect with these writers again, many of whom I’ve read in the past, but from whom I have drifted away in the currents of life — from Mark Twain to E.B. White, W.E.B. DuBois to Saul Bellow, Rachel Carson to Annie Dillard, F. Scott Fitzgerald to Maxine Hong Kingston. Whatever flaws these writers may have had, they were — some are still — deeply dedicated to their art.

Among the obviously essential works in the collection are James Baldwin’s “Notes of a Native Son” and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” — two remarkable essays that distill the whole history of America (and maybe all of Western Civilization) into thoughtful pleas for racial justice, for clear and obvious social change. That things are about the same or worse when it comes to race in America today is heartbreaking. But it’s also worth it for all of us to re-read these two pieces and figure out how we can regroup now and find ways to deliver on the clear promises of social and racial justice threaded into our founding documents. W.E.B. DuBois’s “Of the Coming of John” — a parable of how we divide what should not be divided — and Richard Wrights’ painful “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow” also remind us of the terrible place we had been and why, again, the civil rights movement must continue until we’ve reached an age of true racial equity. 

But there are other essays in the book that are moving for different reasons. I know it makes little sense to offer a brief summary of each essay (there are 55). I know readers will find their own connections. A few stand out for me.

Eudora Welty’s wonderful essay, “A Sweet Devouring,” on being a young reader and finding only traces on deep engagement and more than a bit of frustration with the pop literature of her day. What one feels is her remarkable youthful enthusiasm that comes dangerously close to giving up on books… until, as she writes, she found Mark Twain.

William Manchester’s “Okinawa: The Bloodiest Battle of All” retells the horrors of the American attack on Okinawa in World War II, which led to the deaths of more 200,000 Americans, Japanese, and Okinawan soldiers over the course of 82 days. Manchester is clear about the dangers of romanticizing war and creating “the glowing aura of selfless patriotism.” And he should. He was there in this “wet, green hell,” and was wounded twice.

Loren Eisley’s moving essay “The Brown Wasps” explores the notion of home — and the loss of home —  through the human and animals lens. It’s rare that I find myself having to stop while reading to fight back tears. But this was one of those essays that stopped me in my tracks. Perhaps it touched me deeply because, like Eisley in the essay, I’m looking back from my 60s to a younger life and a younger world, and I find I identify deeply with his notion that we are all in need of, in search, desiring to get back to that place we call home. 

 But this essay also reverberates deeply in a time of steady species lost, in the continuing human overdevelopment of the planet. Eisley, without being didactic, lets us know that indifference to the natural world is not only a form of cruelty but will also not bode well for any species, ourselves included.

There’s also something moving about Eisley’s essay arriving as it does in the 1950s — and anticipating so much of the loss of “home” that grips the sentient world today. 

I was taken in by Joan Didion’s “The White Album, ” too — her ability to write on a personal and political level simultaneously. Didion writes so calmly and clearly.  But, oh, how hard it is to read about the cultural tensions and the disintegration of the ideals of the 1960s, as witnessed in LA.   

In “A Law of Acceleration,” I like how Henry Adams describes both metaphysics and theology as “violent stimulants of the mind” — and, again, what that tells us about contemporary times. It’s fascinating how, in 1900, he could see so clearly the coming problems of human existence in the 20th century and beyond. I don’t think he’d be at all surprised about where things stand today. What I found myself thinking, however, is how Adams doesn’t see the way art has acted, and will continue to act, as a counterweight to such tensions. 

Then there’s E.B. White’s “Once More to the Lake,” an essay I’ve read maybe a half dozen times. Besides being an excellent model for how to write a personal essay, it never fails to carry me back to childhood life in summer and those rare days by any lake, when body and mind felt connected to the world and time moved more slowly. 

If this were a book review, I might point out writers who I think are missing from the collection, or note that some of the essays feel included only to ensure a particular writer is represented. But I’m happy enough to take the collection for what it is. So many of the essays are beautifully written — as one would expect from a “Best of” collection. But what struck me more is that there’s also a clear feeling that these essays are not of our current century. They feel of the past. Which is to say, they are more patiently written than most today. They don’t reach for five or eight or ten bullet-point lessons or any key takeaways. They aren’t as steeped in the maddening politics of division. Collectively, they speak of the human experience in America. Even when they dip into politics they do so with a different sense of the world, of possibility, of hope — of that place where we should be by now. They also speak eloquently of the craft of writing.

I didn’t know I needed to make this journey. But now I know. As Joyce Carol Oates would say, it always helps to know where you have been in order to know where you are going. 

Turtle Season

Riding my bike this time of year, I often come across turtles either trying to cross the road or simply wanting to sun themselves on the warm pavement. I always stop to carry them off the road (carefully with snapping turtles!). Recently, I came upon this gorgeous painted turtle on a backroad through wetlands in the New Hampshire seacoast region.

On behalf of this turtle, and all other wildlife living among us, please drive slowly and attentively.

A Timely Dedication

The UCAP School in Providence, RI, recently unveiled a new plague honoring Rob DeBlois —  founder, longtime director, remarkable human being, and my closest friend. It’s so heartening to know that, from this day forward every student who enters the school will be greeted by Rob.

I wrote about book Rob and the founding of his school back in the late 1990s — Against the Current (Heinemann). You can also read a shorter article I wrote for the UNH alumni magazine, or download and watch the excellent documentary, Accelerating America.

Rock Formations

I’m not sure why I’ve been so taken by rock formations lately…. But I have.

Here are three from the Maine Coast:

How to "Fix" American Education

I appreciate this commentary on American education reform from Scott Newstock in How to Think Like Shakespeare:

“Jonathan Kozol’s Savage Inequalities (1991) repudiates the fantasy that any school can bootstrap itself to ‘excellence’ with just the right effort, just the right teachers, just the right curriculum, just the right assessment, just the right technology, just the right management, just the right… anything but the amelioration of poverty.”

It has been thirty years since Kozol wrote Savage Inequalities. The inequalities are still present. May 2021 be the year we take action in the name of equity and justice.

Remeasuring "Measure for Measure"

“Blue Shakespeare,” by Molly Brosnan (1990, at age 6)

“Oh, it is excellent 

To have a giant’s strength

But it is tyrannous 

To use it like a giant.”

— Isabelle, Act II, scene 2

In Shakespeare After All, Marjorie Gerber writes that Measure for Measure “has always been controversial, exciting a great deal of critical and directorial interest, and puzzlement.” 

I align with those who find puzzlement.

I recently read Measure for Measure because I had listened in on a webinar by an African-American English professor who specializes in teaching Shakespeare. As way of background, he noted that he was not particularly enamored of Shakespeare in college until “forced to read Measure for Measure.” In particular, he said, he found something oddly attractive about the character of Vincenzio — the problematic, oddly autocratic, and perhaps delusional Duke of Vienna. I think the professor said he was fascinated by the Duke’s role in shaping much of the action in the play and partaking in just about every scene either as himself or in the disguise of a rather inept and spiritually compromised friar. All in all, the professor said, Measure for Measure made it clear that Shakespeare was a kind of revolutionary.

Revolutionary?

This was enough to get me to pull out my 1975 edition of the Riverside Shakespeare and read Measure for Measure for the first time. And I have to say, I found it a head-scratcher. It struck me as a fairly annoying and more problematic play than the other Shakespeare plays I’ve read. I’m not sure where the revolutionary is shining through here. If I hadn’t known it was Shakespeare’s, I might  have dismissed it as a minor play that doesn’t deserve a long shelf life. 

On the other hand, it also fascinated me. Some wonderful turns of phrase aside, why exactly did Shakespeare write this one? What’s up with the off-kilter plot? Why this gathering of flawed and seeming unredeemable characters?

Vincenzio, the Duke of Vienna, whom most critics agree is a conundrum of a character, reminds me of so many men of power in my lifetime. They think highly of themselves as they go about making a mess of things without seeming to notice or care. They are not particularly smart or wise. They just happens to have power. And with that power, they have a predictable tendency to damage other people’s lives, then shrug it all off. They also embrace their own variation on the divine right of kings.

We don’t know anything about the Duke’s life and history. We only know that he’s the Duke and oversees the life and law (“the terms for common justice”) in Vienna. What we do know, mostly by his own admission, that he hasn’t done a good job applying the law consistently — seemingly at a loss for knowing when to be merciful and when to be the enforcer. At the start of the play, this future great city is semi-lawless. Or so we’re led to belief. However, the Duke, while admitting the point, takes no personal responsibility for the state of affairs. Rather, he invokes the vague, royal “we” in referring to the mess — as if there are others who are more responsible than he. In what seems like a whimsical act, he decides to deputize another highly flawed and inept character, Lord Angelo, to run things while the Duke pretends to head out of town on some kind of business. 

The very start of the play reveals the tragic nature of all to follow. The Duke asks the supposedly wise Escalus if he agrees with the Duke’s decision to deputize Angelo. Was it wise to have “lent him our terror, dress’d him with our love,/ and given him deputation of our own pow’r”?

In time, we’ll learn that Angelo, despite the root of his name, is not a good choice for this work, and Escalus knows this. Still, perhaps playing the cowardly sycophant, he praises Angelo to the roof.

For his part, Angelo, either wanting to please the Duke or thrilled to have momentary power, agrees to the temporary promotion. But then he immediately causes a stir by being, essentially, a draconian stickler for the law. We’re led to believe the people of Vienna are out of control, that law and order needs to be restored. Fine. But in response, what does Angelo focus on? He decides to sentence a young man, Claudio, to death for… getting his fiancé pregnant. 

Claudio’s sister, Isabella, who is a novice to a sisterhood of nuns, gets word that her brother will be put to death for his actions. Given the extremity of the sentence, she rushes in to plead with Angelo for her brother’s life. While she makes a compelling, logical argument, Angelo holds the line. Says the law is the law and there’s nothing he can do about it. All of civilization will fall apart, Angelo implies, if Claudio is forgiven. No mercy is the best policy. And so on. And he does this with a strange kind of calm and self-assurance. 

But in the process of the conversation, Angelo happens to notice that Isabella is kind of hot and he suddenly feels a growing sexual attraction. So, of course, he offers to spare Claudio’s life if Isabella will sleep with him. He doesn’t really plan to spare Claudio’s life. He’s just saying what he thinks he needs to say it to get Isabella into bed. Not surprisingly, Isabella is incensed by the proposal, says no firmly, then says she’ll let folks know what kind of cad Angelo is. But in disturbingly modern #metoo moment, Angelo laughs off her threat — pointing out that no one will believe her over him. 

OK, so far Measure for Measure seems like a rather straightforward morality play crowded with broken characters who bring on their own troubles. As a “comedy,” it still seems like it may be headed toward an all’s well that ends well kind of resolution. Not funny. Just not deadly. We imagine that Angelo will get his comeuppance, Claudio will be pardoned, Isabella can get back to her nunnery, and the Duke can take some kind of lesson about law and mercy and choosing a better deputy. Right? 

Well, not exactly.

Instead, the Duke steps in disguised as an inept friar who manages to annoy folks with his confused sense of holiness and strange logic about life and death. He tries to convince Claudio that he should, in fact, die. He also tries to convince Isabella that Claudio should die. When that doesn’t work, he steps in to plot a way for Claudio not to die. Why? It’s not clear. But it seems he does so because he likes to meddle in the lives of everyone around him. While he shares his plan with Isabella, he later pretends that Claudio could not be saved. 

As for Isabella’s troubles with Angelo, the Duke creates another strange subplot, encouraging Isabella to tell Angelo that she will, in fact, sleep with him, but that Isabella should then convince another women, Mariana, to pretend she is Isabella and sleep with Angelo. Why? Because Mariana was once engaged to Angelo, until her dowry was lost at sea and Angelo quickly dumped her. The Duke sees this deception as a way to solve Isabella’s problem and a way to trick Angelo into marrying the women he had agreed to marry or be charged with the same crime for which he sentenced Claudio to death. 

Preposterous? Yes. But let’s pretend it’s not. Let’s say Mariana, having been dumped once by Angelo, would agree to the plot because she still loves this low-life lunk for whatever reason. But how could the Duke know Mariana was still in love with Angelo? And why would Isabella encourage another women — especially one coldly scorned — to sleep with the guy? Is she really willing to put Mariana through this, not knowing how Mariana feels or what the outcome of the ruse will be? Would she really want any woman to have sex with Angelo, given his motives and character?

I doubt it.  But, this is a comedy, so we’re really not supposed to worry about outcomes. Right?

Mariana does sleep with Angelo. Afterward, the Duke reveals this trick to Angelo. Angelo then has to marry Mariana. And afterward they live, what, happily ever after? 

Meanwhile, Claudio is not put to death, though the Duke doesn’t reveal this fact until the final scene, when after revealing himself as the wise Wizard of Oz, he spouts off like some pompous jerk about his own ruse — assuming that everyone will admire him for saving the day. But he doesn’t really save the day. No one is better off than before. Angelo has been used and is now embarrassed, as he should be, for his personal failures. Claudio is alive and one imagines he and his fiancé have a chance of a life together, though we don’t really know if Claudio is going to man-up or if his fiancé really wants to get married now.  We only know that he would not likely have been in this life-or-death situation if the Duke had not appointed Angelo as the arbiter of the law. Meanwhile, the Duke forces another character, Lucio, to marry a prostitute with whom Lucio has had a child. How the Duke knows that the prostitute had a child by Lucio is not clear. What is clear is that he finds Lucio completely annoying for the way Lucio has criticized the Duke to the Duke in disguise. In other words, payback. 

Then comes the weirdest part of the entire play: the Duke, seemingly out of nowhere, proposes marriage to Isabella. And the way he proposes makes it clear that he sees himself as is being a generous man, and that he expects she’ll be delighted to be married to a deceitful Duke who encouraged her brother to accept death and otherwise manipulated everyone for reasons that are not at all clear. At the start of the play, Isabella is headed for nunhood. Nothing in the action of the play would suggest that she wouldn’t want to return to the convent now that her brother is safe. And, in fact, she doesn’t say yes to the Duke. I can’t tell if we are supposed to assume that she’d swoon at his proposal. I hope not. By any measure, the Duke is a clueless, despicable, self-absorbed, entitled fencepost with power.

What am I missing here? 

I get that, in Measure for Measure, we’re faced with a tangle of human folly. But I don’t get the sense that any character has learned any kind of lesson about life. They’ve just made a mess of things and are left to make another mess when they’re ready to start up again.

But perhaps that’s the point. I finished reading this play just before the 2020 U.S. presidential election was called for Joe Biden. Like so many Americans who do not fall for the fear-and-loathing spell caste by Donald Trump, I’m feeling completely exhausted. And I wonder if there’s any chance in my lifetime that humanity, collectively, will find its way to any form of enlightened living — or if we’ll just keep resetting the spin cycle until we’ve worn out our welcome on Earth.

Perhaps Shakespeare was feeling the same kind of exhaustion with English politics, the problems with the legal system, and, of course, the mess that supposedly pious Christian leaders can cause (over and over).  If so, the play is kind of brilliant for exposing three areas of society that remain problematic to this day.

Maybe if I read Measure for Measure during a year when I felt more optimistic about humanity, I’d find those moments in the play where I could actually laugh. And when I couldn’t laugh, I could at least shake my head, be glad that we’re now listening to our better angels, and be thankful for the progress we’re making. But I just can’t. Not yet. 

After Biden’s victory on Saturday, November 7, 2020, Dave Chappelle hosted Saturday Night Live. Although it got plenty of laughs, Chappelle’s monologue was not particularly funny. How could it be? When he accepted the hosting role for this episode, he didn’t know the outcome of the election. He might have had to repeat his monologue from four years ago when he hosted after Trump’s 2016 victory. But this time, he had the afternoon to rework his commentary in light of Biden and Harris’s victory. It was a remarkable monologue. Chappelle had to walk that line of speaking very painful truth to power — to all the folks who voted for Trump — while infusing it with humor and hope. I found it quite moving. And I also found myself thinking of Measure for Measure afterward. Chappelle led with love and hope and kindness and intelligence. It’s what we want and need from good leaders, good speakers, and good comedians. 

But in Measure for Measure, we don’t have anyone with any kind of wisdom. Escalus tries, but his form of wisdom seems to fall on deaf ears. What we have is a Duke who believes wholeheartedly in the Divine Right of Kings (and Dukes) — always thinking highly of himself and his highly flawed decision making. We have Lord Angelo who fits the same basic profile, except without as much power or cunning. So… even as the play sets out to measure the question of law and justice, human desire and religious beliefs, it can’t really go anywhere with it. Is this Shakespeare’s point? Was he, like Chappelle, using the stage to stick it to the leaders of his time under the guise of comedy? 

Mostly, I’m sitting here, looking at the last of the leaves fall off the fall trees, wrestling with the Measure for Measure and wondering if there’s any chance will ever escape the long and winding Dark Ages.

Abstraction in the Concrete?

Rock formation, Cape Elizabeth, Maine

I came across this rock formation while walking along the beach at Cape Elizabeth, Maine, after Thanksgiving.

It seems to contain all the complexity and beauty of the Earth. No?

If you know what’s going on in this rock, please let me know.

The Joy of Learning?

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately re-reading older books on education that have influenced my thinking on education. Mostly, I wanted to know if they still hold up. With a few exceptions, the all hold up well. They all speak to the core of what I think we want to do in schools — and that we often lose sight of in the strained efforts to adapt schooling to the demands of our capitalist system.

The wonderful team at the Independent Curriculum Group introduced me to the writing of Mary Ellen Chase — and this quote on the excitement that should always be present in learning and yet rarely is these days:

“What we are after is an awakened consciousness, differing in each individual, an excitement in thinking, reading, and writing for their own sake, new discoveries, new enthusiasms, the casting off, or the retention with better understanding, of the old. What we want is to stimulate the love of mental adventure and constructive doubt, to create emotional satisfaction in the things of the mind, to reveal through books the variety and the wonder of human experience.

“How we do these things matters not at all. The numberless ways of their accomplishment reside in the numberless personalities of those of us who teach. The one thing that does matter is that we shall be awake and alive, alert and eager, flexible and unperturbed, likable and exciting.” 

                                                                                    — Mary Ellen Chase, A Goodly Fellowship (1939)

May we find our way back to this “love of mental adventure” in all schools.

New Writings on Education

Perhaps because I’m feeling a high level of anxiety about the state of education in the nation this month, I decided to revisit a number of books on education that have encouraged and inspired me in the past. I wrote short essays about each of them — particularly about why they still matter today. Three of the essays appear on the Carney Sandoe & Associates blog:

• Why Are All the Black Kids Still Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? — September 2020

• The Students Are Watching Us — More Closely Now Than Ever — September 2020

• In Pursuit of Excellence in Learning — August 2020

I encourage all school leaders to do more than they think possible to support their teachers during these difficult times. All of us are feeling the weight of the pandemic, but many teachers are definitely carrying more weight than is good for them.

The Case for Remote Learning This Fall

For the past two months, both public and private schools have wrestled with the various ways they can approach learning this coming fall. In most cases, the hope has been to try some form of in-person system with appropriate safety precautions for both students and adults. But as the pandemic continues to spread throughout the United States, and is now on the rise again, including in some states that were trending in the right direction a few weeks ago, an increasing number of schools are focusing on opening with distance learning as the first option — with only the slimmest hope that this might change at some point in the fall.

 This is a smart move. While few students and educators prefer distance learning to in-person learning, and many parents desperately want or need their children to be back in school, at this point the best way to ensure student and teacher safety, and the safety of the broader community, is to start remotely — with improvements to the systems instituted last March. 

Many schools have no choice but to open remotely. The majority of public and private schools in California, as of this writing, are required to open with distance learning. As of early August, the California rule is that a school can consider opening for in-person learning only if the county in which the school is located has been off the state’s high-risk watch list for 14 consecutive days. Many major urban school districts are also requiring distance learning for the fall (though New York State has given New York City the green light, if it so chooses).

For those schools that have the option of opening this fall, the tendency is to focus on finding a way to open safely. I have read about schools that are planning to open their campuses with a plethora of precautions and systems designed to reduce social interactions. I’ve read about boarding schools that are planning to open their campuses to students but also require that all academic classes start online and that students adhere to strict social-distancing rules. I’ve also read about schools that seem to be engaging in a form of wishful thinking — such as an independent school in a currently high-risk state that says it is opening later this month and not requiring either the wearing of masks or social distancing unless mandated by the state.

Most schools have a distance-learning model cued up and ready to go, if needed. The deciding factor for many is the state and CDC guides. If the state or region is at high-risk, the shift to online learning will likely kick in. But it strikes me now — here in mid-August when the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths are on the rise just about everywhere — that it makes most sense to plan to start with distance learning and use the remaining time to prepare in a way that will improve the online educational experience all around. With 4.6 million cases and 155,333 deaths in the U.S. — and rising — it’s hard to imagine how schools that open their campus can possibly contain the virus that seems to find every opportunity to spread. In other professional fields, such as Major League Baseball, efforts at early restarts have proven problematic. And a public school in Indiana that tried opening in late July had to close after one day when a student tested positive. Indeed, a July 31 New York Times article argues that “large parts of the country would likely see infected students if classrooms opened now.” With the danger of infection ever present, it makes little sense to endanger students and teachers in this way or to subject them to such a high possibility of infection or to the trauma of constant worry and fear.

 The call for continued distance learning this fall is also getting a significant push from teacher-generated petitions asking schools to halt efforts to start in person this fall — prioritizing health and safety over all other considerations.  Meanwhile, an increasing number of colleges and universities are also deciding to start with distance learning, include Johns Hopkins University. Others are opening only to a small percentage of students and requiring adherence to a long list of social-distancing and health rules. 

 At the moment, my thinking is aligned with these teachers who are petitioning for distance learning and those institutions that, even with a choice, are starting the fall online. I would argue that making the decision to start with an online program now — with the exception of communities that clearly have had no new cases of the virus for the past two weeks — means that schools can take much of the anxiety that comes with uncertainty off of the table. For one, distance learning in the fall improves the odds of everyone’s health, which helps with the national effort to shut this virus down. This decision also means that teachers can start their planning now to make remote learning as engaging and effective as possible, and that families can also begin planning how to manage their days. 

 To my way of thinking, it’s not really a time to worry about testing or checking off every box on the list of national learning standards. This crisis is a time to think more carefully about what children truly need in order to engage in learning. While it’s clearly best to work with most children in in-person settings, if we stop thinking of schooling as some kind of academic treadmill on which students need to keep churning out worksheets, papers, quizzes, tests, and the like and think more in terms of engaging students in high-quality, project-based learning that leads to outcomes the students are proud of and that mean something to them, distance learning this fall can be leveraged to drive the sort of needed changes in learning that can help shake up the system in a way that benefits everyone. 

 From brain science research, we know that children need strong social-emotional connections to adults and other students in order to learn anything well. We know from the spring experiment in distance learning that such social-emotional engagement can be supported with low teacher-student ratios and with schoolwork that matters to students. It’s not just about asking teachers to keep kids emotionally safe. As Ron Berger, author of An Ethic of Excellence, notes, it’s a matter of asking teachers to both help keep kids emotionally safe while engaging them in high-quality learning that matters to them. If we can focus on both issues this fall — without worrying about standards or testing or competing with other nations or the supposed needs the job market — we can actually make the fall an interesting time for teachers and students. 

 I know that none of this will be easy for parents — most of whom need to work. I won’t pretend that I have any general answer to that solving that problem other than asking Congress to continue with the additional monthly funding along with unemployment benefits. I only know that we need to stop this pandemic as soon as we can — and that this means we should keep most school buildings closed a little longer. Doing so, we’ll likely save thousands of lives, keep children safe, and help get the world back to some kind of normal faster if we stop trying to pretend we can open up our communities while the virus is clearly spreading.

 I also encourage Congress to create and fund a temporary WPA-like program that will enable young adults and retired adults to work with public teachers in a supporting role — taking part in synchronous distance-learning classes as “classroom aides” and being responsible for supporting a small group of students during the time and afterward. This is a way to drive down the student-teacher ratio and enable students to have more adult contact points. Those adults in the program could also help ensure that kids stay engaged in learning in asynchronous learning projects with daily check-ins.

If you are a parent with young children and you are currently feeling like you’re at wit’s end and just want to your kids back in school for their sake and yours, I get that you would disagree with my suggestion here. My essential argument, though, is that we’ll get back to the semi-normal world quicker if we dig in now — accept a few more months of restrictions, refocus distance learning more toward project-based learning, and then open up the community without the fear of a resurgent virus. 

Note: For schools looking for successful projects in a distance-learning environment, El Education offers numerous good examples at the organization’s Projects at Home webpage.

Found Poems

As noted earlier, when I read works of prose, fiction and nonfiction, I keep an eye out for found poems. Here’s one from This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom, by Martin Hägglund. The passage is a part of an analysis of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle.

This Is Your Life

Evenings that no one else can remember

live in you, when snow touched your face

or the rain caught you unprepared,

when you were all alone yet marked

by all the others who have made you

who you are. There are things you cannot

leave behind or wish you could retrieve.

And there is hope you cannot extinguish.

This is your life.

There is nothing else.

— found poem in This Life, by Martin Hägglund (page 92-93)

Racial Justice and Education in America

 By Michael Brosnan

As one can tell by the date of this post, I have hesitated to write about the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, the continued violence and racism against people of color in America, and the groundswell of protests in every state and around the world. Don’t get me wrong. I am angry about George Floyd’s death. I’m angry about the way police in so many communities illegally profile, target, abuse, arrest, and too often kill people of color. I’m angry that the list of victims keeps growing. I’m angry that this sort of racism is embedded so deep in American culture that it persists against each generations’ passionate call for change. I’m particularly angry at those in the top levels of national leadership who time after time express sympathy for those killed, if that, and then quietly act to defend the status quo that privileges whites and suppresses people of color in myriad ways. And I’m appalled by those elected officials who can view citizens who peacefully protest injustice — who ask America to be what it claims to be — and somehow see them as thugs, as the kind of threat that requires military intervention.

So why do I hesitate? Because there are plenty of clear, passionate, expert voices out there who have made the case for racial justice and political and social change. The scope and scale of racism in American history and our current culture is about as clear as anything can be — and I can point to dozens of articles and books and op-eds that both dig into this truth and make the case for change now and forever. For me to highlight the injustices and make the broad argument for change seems a bit egotistical — as if I will suddenly be the one to drive change because of my outrage and the shape of my argument. It would be nice to think I could do this, but it’s more likely that I’m simply screaming my frustration in an echo chamber. And I certainly don’t want to express outrage as a way to imply solidarity with people of color or to suggest that I’ve done something good for society through penning a few paragraphs about what is wrong — immoral, criminal, culturally damaging — in American society. I want actual, measurable, lasting change.

For those of us who are white, expressing outrage is far better than silence and indifference. It’s good to be an ally to people of color. It’s good to do the self-reflection and self-education to understand the truth about American history and society and our own indoctrination in the story of white superiority. It’s good to acknowledge our inherent advantages as white people in America today. But that’s the least we can do. The more important work is when we return to our families, communities, and jobs and beginning the daily effort to collectively keep up the pressure and demands for change until we get where we know we need to be. 

While I want our federal, state, and local government officials to enact laws, policies, and procedures that will lead quickly to racial justice and equity — and I will vote only for candidates who make this central to their political commitment (along with a clear commitment to environmental justice) — I also know that related change must also happen in every single institution in our nation. White supremacy was woven into the fabric of this country from the day Europeans arrived. While we were able to unthread the formal institution of slavery in the bloodbath of the Civil War, we have never eradicated racism and racial injustice — and in our continuing white-dominated culture do not seem to care deeply enough to make it happen. We never should have gotten to this point. We’ve had numerous chances over the past five decades to right this original wrong. But we haven’t. In fact, since the enactment of the Civil Rights bills in the 1960s, economic and social conditions have gotten worse for people of color. This needs to change now. Starting today. Overall, our goal must be, as bell hooks puts it, to dismantle the interlocking systems of domination. Another way to put it, the flip side, as Martin Luther King, Jr. and bell hooks argue, is to focus on developing a truly “beloved community.”

The systems in question include housing, education, jobs, banking, criminal justice, environmental health, health care, food, and more. It also includes Corporate America where displays of racial discrimination and bias are widely evident in staffing and leadership as well as in business operations and practices.

Here, I want to focus on education — the institution I know best. While I’ve seen progress in some areas, racism and racial bias still seriously undermine our system of education, still hurt our schools, still fail and damage too many students — and, in doing so, damage all students. If we say we are outraged by the killing of George Floyd and other Black Americans, we should also say we are outraged by the racial injustices in our schools — both public and private — and that we will use whatever thimble full of power we have to insist on and commit to change. We should hold steady in this commitment until we know we’ve achieved what should have been evident from the start.

What should be evident? That the point of our education system is to justly treat and support each and every child in developing their academic and social-emotional skills en route to citizenship and fulfilling work. It’s not hard to identify the problems and outline the goals. But in my experience, the needed change keeps running up against white indifference, ignorance, and/or outright resistance.

There are plenty of resources available to help educators in this effort. Here, I’ll only outline areas where I think we must focus our attention until we can talk about systems of racial injustice in the past tense:

• In the public school sphere, we must insist on high-quality, equitable education for all children. We must design it, build it, and maintain it. If we’re going to continue to fund education primarily through property taxes, we must also insist on state and federal supplemental funding that raises the per-student funding at every school to a level that would make any of us comfortable sending our children to any school. Resource disparities should no longer exist. Decades ago, writer Jonathan Kozol passionately and painstakingly outlined the immoral and inequitable funding and outcomes in public education. In recent times, Nikole Hannah-Jones and other writers and journalists have made similar arguments — and have done so brilliantly. Too many of us just haven’t listened. It’s time we do.

• Private and public schools need put make it clear that diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) are part of the essential mission of every school. These need to be key elements of every school’s mission statement — and all policies, practices, and pedagogy must arise out of these statements.

•  Private schools need to commit to supporting and partnering with public education. They also need to commit to a racially and socioeconomically diverse student body that at the very least represents the states in which the schools are located. They also need to commit to a racially diverse teaching and administrative staff that at the very least matches the diversity of the state in which they are located. They also need to make this commitment clear in their mission statements, which in turn drive policies, practices, and pedagogy.

• Our university schools of education should all commit to enrolling a diverse group of students and require courses in antiracist education, which encompasses classroom and community practices. For working teachers who haven’t had such training, it must be required professional development. Within five years, every teacher in American should have training in antiracist teaching and should be evaluated on their commitment to students and families based on race. Following this, all educators should be involved in continuing professional development to improve their antiracist teaching practices.

•  In every subject, teachers should be trained in delivering an antiracist curriculum. Academic leaders should ensure that the academic program at every level is viewed through a racial lens and adjusted as needed. This work applies to STEM-related courses as much as the humanities and the arts.

•  Every aspect of school life — from the classroom to the science lab to the theater to the playing field to the lunch room to the counseling program to family connections — must be viewed carefully through a racial lens to identify shortcomings and develop a plan to correct the problems. Schools are good about collecting and analyzing data. So it’s time to include annual data on the experiences and educational outcomes of all students based on race — and to follow through with all the necessary support systems and partnerships to ensure positive outcomes.

• For all of us in education, we need to hold each other accountable. We also need to engage in our broader communities to support the kind of leadership change that will lead to racial justice in all areas of society.

 I’m sure there are other salient bullet points one could add to this list. I’m also sure others can state the challenges and needed steps more clearly than I can. But I hope you’ll share my wish that we use this new civil rights groundswell as the catalyst for improving our schools so they are truly diverse, equitable, inclusive, and just. If all of us aim to do our part in our schools and communities, we can start the flywheel of change and this time keep it spinning until we get justice right.

Resisting the Toad

For some reason, I’ve kept a copy of Vladimir Nabokov’s Bend Sinister for decades and only now have gotten around to reading it. My copy is a 1964 Time Reading Program Special Edition, which I think came to my parents’ house as part of some book club my mother signed up for back in the 1960s.

Given that I’ve exhausted my recent to-read list, and given the sinister bent of the current administration in Washington, I thought it was finally time to read the book and get acquainted with the mind of Vladimir Nabokov. And, of course, I’m glad I did.

As you may know, Bend Sinister is a dystopian novel focused on Adam Krug, a highly respected professor of philosophy at a well-regarded university in a fictional European nation that has recently taken a sharp political turn (a sinister bend?) to some sort of mix of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. The domineering new leader is a former elementary school classmate of Krug’s named Paduk (nicknamed Toad in school), whom Krug admits bullying back in their schooldays. At the start of the novel, Krug’s wife dies in the hospital, and Krug’s mourning and bitterness keep him distant from the political fray. His university is at risk of being repurposed to serve the needs of the state, which is to say Paduk’s desires. Krug’s colleagues hope Krug can intervene on their behalf, but he has no interest in compromising his position or kissing up to Paduk. Even as people start to disappear around him, Krug thinks his reputation will protect him or that he can escape whenever he wants, but it clearly won’t and he clearly can’t. After he refuses to accept Paduk’s invitation to become the state-appointed leader of the university, serving up appropriate praise and propaganda, Krug’s world falls apart. Before he can escape the country, he and his young son are taken into custody, where ineptness and brutality reign with predictably horrible results.

This is an Orwellian world. A Kafkaesque world. This is a world that felt all too real in the late 1940s after Nazi Germany had wreaked its immense havoc and death. This is the world Nabokov feared was rising again in a different form in post-war Russia. This is the world evident in numerous autocratic nations today, where free-thinking intellectuals and artists are jailed or killed, where religious beliefs are dictated and gender roles assigned, where the press is state-run, where education is indoctrination, and where justice isn’t even an illusion.

For American readers today, it’s hard not to see parallels between the world of Bend Sinister and the behavior of the current U.S. administration. This is not to suggest that our current U.S. president is Paduk. But there are stark links, the prime one being a combination of deep self-absorption coupled with immense power — this autocratic cocktail that our system of government is, in theory, designed to check. In both cases, there’s also clear and disturbing indifference to the common good and basic human morality. In both cases, truth takes a back seat to ideology and the personal whims of the leaders. The only voice that matters in such worlds is the one holding the specially designed autocratic microphone or Twitter account. In such worlds leaders rule by defying and reshaping laws, twisting and breaking arms with impunity, generating fear, sowing division, pinning every societal problem on the opposition, attacking the press, steering funding toward cronies, and marketing multiple daily portions of self-serving lies.

For me, however, the most disturbing aspect of the novel (and of the current American society — and of every autocratic society) is the willingness of people to serve a leader who is clearly taking their nation down the wrong path. In America, this path leads us further from our essential democratic tenets, grows increasingly narrow and rocky, and dead-ends in ruin. Out of either fear or the desire for personal gain, there are enough people in the world of Bend Sinister who enable Paduk to dictate at will. In the last chapter, we get a glimpse of how vulnerable Paduk really is. Without his sycophantic support, he cannot easily sustain his cruel leadership. Of course, in pure dystopian novel fashion, someone with guns comes to the dictator’s undeserved rescue. This is the cautionary part of the tale. When the current president was elected, I hoped the Republican Party would realize it had lost its way and begin rebuilding itself in some sort of fiscally conservative yet moral fashion. In Washington today, however, the lineup of sycophants seems to stretch for miles on end. When someone questions the president, he or she is replaced and reviled. In this way, the president creates his grotesque world of worker ants doing his bidding without hesitation or question. It would be one thing if these “ants” didn’t know better. But they do. The reward for their loyalty may be a temporary thimble full of power, but at what long-term cost for the nation? And for the self-proclaimed Christians in the group, what kind of afterlife?

I don’t mean to reduce Bend Sinister to commentary on American politics in this terrible year of a terrible pandemic, a broken economy, continuing racial injustice (and, as of this writing, the eruption of nationwide protests), and self-absorbed leadership with Ahab-inspired, autocratic instincts. The novel is an interesting work of art on numerous levels. But it did keep me up late at night thinking about our growing dystopian society in a growing dystopian world.

Here’s my 3 a.m. wish: With apologies to actual toads, starting today, we’ll collectively resist all autocrats who prioritizes their needs over the nation’s. By summer’s end, we’ll get a vaccine and, come November, a new president. Then we can start rebuilding this nation — once more aiming to meet the democratic goals so clearly outlined in our founding documents. In my late-night reverie, I imagine all of us taking stock of our sense of the common good, recalibrating our moral compasses, thinking more deeply about peace, justice (especially racial justice), and both economic and environmental sustainability — and then we’ll get to work building the nation and world we need.

It’s all within reach, I think. And God knows, things shouldn’t be the way they are.

Found Novel Poem

Cover of the 1964 Time Reading Program Special Edition of Bend Sinister, by Vladimir Nabokov

New Novel Poem

Note: I’ve got into a habit of looking forward (and finding) passages in the books I read that seem to want to be poetry. I write down a few as a way to remember the novels better. Here’s a recent one from Nabokov’s Bend Sinister, which I’m reading for the first time.

Bend

I am a lake.

I am a tongue.

I am a spirit.

I am fevered.

I am not covetous.

I am the Dark Cavalier.

I am the torch.

I arise. I ask. I blow.

I bring. I cannot change.

I cannot look.

I climb the hill.

I come. I dream. I envy.

I found. I heard.

I intended an Ode.

I know. I love.

I must not grieve,

my love. I never.

I pant. I remember.

I saw thee once.

I travelled. I wandered.

I will. I will. I will. I will.

— Found poem in Bend Sinister, Vladimir Nabokov, page 28 of my 1964 Time Reading Program Special Edition

A Tribute to My Friend Rob DeBlois

Rob DeBlois, with wife Bonnie, in East Boston, summer 2019.

Two weeks ago, I lost my best friend, Rob DeBlois, who also happens to be one of the most important figures in American education in recent decades — and an all-around amazing, inspiring human being.

Back in the late 1990s, I wrote a book about Rob and the school he founded, The UCAP School in Providence, Rhode Island. At the time, I was focusing on the difficulties of starting an alternative public school program for at-risk kids. I also outlined the unique and successful accelerated learning model that the school employed (and that I’m still waiting for other schools to embrace). In addition, the book was a profile in courage about Rob. In college in 1975, he broke his neck in a diving accident and had become a quadriplegic . As I’ve said many times, it’s astounding how he was able to handle this terrible setback in life and accomplish so much.

Let me note a few things. After recovering from his injuries and settling into the complicated life as a quadriplegic, Rob would do the following:

• Finish his undergraduate degree from the University of New Hampshire.

• Earn his Masters degree in English from Brown University.

• Earn his Masters in education from Rhode Island College.

• Teach English at an all-girl’s Catholic school.

• Start and run SPIRIT— an academic enrichment summer program for inner-city children.

• Start The UCAP School — a groundbreaking, highly successful, year-round independent public school for kids at risk of dropping — and run it for 30 years straight.

• For his work, Rob would earn, among other awards and accolades, an honorary doctorate degree from Rhode Island College; be named the Rhode Island Middle School Principal of the Year; be inducted into the Rhode Island Martin Luther King Hall of Fame; win the Rhode Island Foundation’s inaugural Murray Family Prize for Community Enrichment, be honored in Washington, DC, by the National Caring Foundation (along with the likes of Mother Theresa); and, of course, change the life trajectory of hundreds of Rhode Island children.

• Rob and his school would be the feature of a book on education — Against the Current.

• He and the school would also be featured in the documentary Accelerating America, which won best documentary in the Seattle International Film Festival and the Rhode Island Film Festival. (If you haven’t seen it, please do so soon).

• CBS News also ran a spotlight feature on Rob and the school.

• The UCAP School would be named a national middle-school model by the Carnegie Foundation. The U.S. Department of Education named the school as a national model.

• Rob spoke at numerous conferences on needed changes in public education. He served on numerous boards and took part in Providence-area educational leader groups.

• Over the years, he would also write a steady stream of op-ed pieces — many of them focused on supporting education for the underserved. But he would also write a number of moving pieces about life in and about Pawtucket and Providence

• Oh… and he and wife, Bonnie, also decided they would start a family.

In all the tributes to Rob, a pattern appears — including the words remarkable, amazing, astounding, inspiring, monumental. When Rob was in the hospital recently, a friend talked with me about, among other things, Rob’s lifelong commitment to social justice. The friend noted Rob’s deep respect for John F. Kennedy — particularly for Kennedy’s final speeches before his assassination in Dallas. This speech took place at Amherst College in October of 1963. Kennedy went to dedicate the college’s new Robert Frost Library. Listening to the speech recently, I felt like I was also listening to a version of Rob — for everything Kennedy said that day about service to the nation, about using privilege for the common good, about the poetry of Robert Frost, and about the vital role of the artist in society — are all things I’ve heard Rob talk about over the years.

I have considered Rob my closest friend for 50 years. What I’ve so admired about Rob year in and year out has been both his unfailing enthusiasm for life and his wish to make this a better world. I’ve always been astounded by how he had kept his spirits up, given all he been through, given all his physical limitations. Here was a man who couldn’t even get himself out of bed in the morning, who could never be alone, who needed people to feed and clothe him — a man who lost so much of what one might consider the central part of himself — and yet he never sank into self-piety, never backed down, never gave up, and indeed, astoundingly, had spent so much of his life supporting others, guiding others, giving to others, cheering on others, loving others. Rob, in many ways, was our Mr. Rogers.

It’s hard to put into words my feelings for Rob. Of course, it’s deep admiration. But it’s a particular kind of admiration. What I know, though, is that I have always loved spending time with Rob. Because of his injury and limited mobility, spending time with him almost always involved slowing the world down, sitting together, being fully in the moment. Rob’s magic in every instance was in making us feel not just welcome, but valued. A conversation with Rob always felt like one of the better gifts one could get in this world.

When I can’t handle the sadness I feel, I often turn to books. The evening after Rob died, I was sitting in a bar in Exeter, New Hampshire, drinking a beer and reading a book by the Irish writer Colm Toibin. After a couple of pages, I came upon this sentence: “Somewhere in the great, unsteady archive where our souls will be held, there is a special section that records the quality of our gaze.”

Reading this, I knew instantly that I was supposed to find this quote on this day. For it describes the core of what has, for me, made Rob such a special person. It’s in his gaze — which is simply the outward expression of a soul that ran so deep. It’s that look he gave us. The way he’d see each and every one of us so fully. It’s the way he worked to acknowledge our humanity, encourage us, let us know that we, indeed, are special.

I’m deeply sad at Rob’s passing. But I also feel lucky for having him as such a central part of my life all these years. I know I will carry Rob in my heart for the rest of my days. His voice, his example, his humor, his moral strength, his open-heartedness, and his appreciation for others are now part of our essential fuel for living.

Here are some links about Rob DeBlois:

Do Not Discard
An uncommon educator helps those least likely to succeed 

UNH Alumni Magazine

The Lucky Man

Brown Alumni Magazine

Accelerating America

Documentary film by Tim Hotchner

(Official Trailer on YouTube)

Against the Current

My book on Rob and the school. Out of print, but still available — and still relevant.

Favorite Poems

I’ve been aware of the Favorite Poems Project for a while now, but it was only last night that I started watching some of the videos. And they are outstanding — and moving.

Every single video I’ve seen has touched me. I’m listing links to four of them here — all of which come from students. Each one underscores the importance of art in our lives, in understanding who we are, what we are feeling, were we’re going — and that we are never alone.

On Emily Dickinson’s “I’m Nobody, Who Are You?”

On Countee Cullen’s “Yet Do I Marvel”

On Gwendolyn Brooks’s “We Real Cool"

On Langston Hughes’s “Minstrel Man”

Environmental Justice, Culture, and Education

I’ve written a number of new pieces for the Teaching While White and Carney, Sandoe & Associates blogs recently. For those who don’t follow the blogs, I thought I’d include a few links here:

Creating a Coaching Culture in Schools

A excellent book on professional coaching, a conference session on instructional coaching, and some related research got me thinking about the value of educators connecting more with mentors, experts, and colleagues.

Celebrating National Hispanic Heritage Month

This piece gave me a chance to highlight the 2017 book, “Citizens But Not Americans: Race and Belonging Among Latino Millennials” (NYU Press) by Nilda Flores-González. For the book, Flores-González interviewed more than 90 Latinx American Millennials. Her research touches on the experience of a broad range of young American citizens who are aligned, sadly, in feeling like second-class citizens or unwelcome guests in their own country. As always, we can do better in schools….

An Accelerated Learning Model that Works

With my close friend, Rob DeBlois, retiring as principal of The UCAP School, after thirty years, I needed to both honor Rob’s work and remind the world just how wonderful and important this school is

Environmental Justice, Culture, and Education

The Environmental Literature Institute, held each summer at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire remains one of my favorite events of the year. As we continue to wrestle with the question of the role of schools in helping students develop their environmental knowledge and ethics, this institute is digging right in.

Democratic Discord in Education

Many educators today — feeling pressure from every quadrant and too-often working in underfunded and under-resourced schools driven by competing mandates — struggle mightily with how to approach the question of education for democracy. They also wrestle with how to address challenging societal issues that arise in school with greater frequency these days. A new book from Harvard Education Press — “Democratic Discord in Schools,” by Meira Levinson and Jacob Fay — looks at these questions head on, with the goal of helping schools gain greater clarity about their role in educating students for citizenship in a world seemingly on fire.

What White Educators Can Learn from “Thanks for the Feedback”

This is my attempt to address the tendency for white educators to get defensive when questioned or challenged about their skills in teaching a multicultural curriculum. I examine Thanks for the Feedback, by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen, as a way to shed some clarity (I hope) and being open to growing.

Another Year Has Come and...

Yesterday, I just turned… well… older. The Medicare Zombies are on my trail.

Here’s a poem for the day.

Getting Old 

I drop things more often than I used to.

My handwriting is shot.

I know you well — just not your name.

I expect to die without ever trying kombucha.

Some days, I speak to plants about this.

— Michael Brosnan