Robins Haiku

 

As robins were late

For southern warmth this winter

Our holly fed them

A Haiku for the Season

 A little Haiku to mark this unusual start to winter:

                    Snowfall turns to ice

                    And the cold keeps us at home

                    Awaiting Christmas.

"A Tale of Two Cities" Paints a Portrait of Today

 I sat down this afternoon to begin re-reading Charles Dickens' classic, A Tale  of Two Cities and was surprised to be immediately struck by its opening sentences:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,  it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope,  it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

Published in 1859 and telling a tale set in 1775, it could have been describing our own times.  What more to say?

"Call Jane" --A Must-See Movie About the Recent Past for Our New Times

 Yesterday, we went to see Call Jane, a new film starring Elizabeth Banks and Sigourney Weaver.  Set in the late 1960s, it is a fictionalized account of the true story of a group of women who organized themselves to provide safe abortions in Chicago in the years before the Roe versus Wade decision, when access to abortions was often controlled by the Mafia. 

It was a matinee, and we were alone in the theater, except for one guy who came in after the film had started.  However, it needs to be seen.  It is a powerful film—one that is especially relevant in this post-Roe time, when the Supreme Court has taken away the rights that Roe had ensured over the past half-century. 

Interestingly, Call Jane is not alone.  HBO Max is offering a documentary about the same group of women.  It is called The Janes.  Here is a link to a review.

The phenomenon portrayed in these programs is one that Americans need to explore.  With abortion now being outlawed in different ways by different states, Call Jane allows us to look back just a generation ago to see what America is doing to itself again.

Celebrating German-American Day

 

Today is German-American Day, in recognition that on this date in 1683, William Penn brought the first German settlers to America—a group of 13 German Quaker and Mennonite families who founded Germantown. As Garrison Keillor notes in The Writer’s Almanac:

Penn the son called Pennsylvania his “Holy Experiment,” and he set about to find a group of righteous men to form a new society founded on Quaker ideals of nonviolence, freedom of religious worship, and equality for all. “Freedom of religion” and “equality” were conditional terms, however. While other religious traditions were tolerated in Pennsylvania, participation in government was restricted to Protestants; Catholics, Jews, and Muslims could not vote or hold office. And Penn’s promises of equality didn’t really extend to everyone: women couldn’t vote, and Penn himself was a slave-owner.

However, Penn’s first 13 German families had a different idea.  As Keillor notes, “Germantown became the birthplace of the anti-slavery movement in America five years later, when several town leaders sent a two-page condemnation of slavery to the governing body of the Quaker church.”

It is a good reminder that, while many settlers from the Old World brought their ideas of white supremacy and intolerance for others with them, some also brought traditions of peace and tolerance that came to be honored as national ideals.  We are still struggling with these issues, but German-American Day is a good time to ponder the broader impact of Quaker ideals on Americans’ ongoing struggle to honor equality as the context for celebrating freedom in all aspects of our lives.

The Teacher Shortage: Another Thought

 Here is a thought on how we might minimize the negative impact of the teacher shortage on today's students:   

Why not encourage States to make a policy that allows retired teachers to teach up to 2 class sections per semester in our high schools without endangering their existing retirement income?  Not all retirees would be interested, but there surely are teachers who would be willing to help--and earn some extra money-- by teaching one or two courses per semester or by providing other professional support.

 At the same time, we need to acknowledge that some uses of new technology--things that we did during the Pandemic to keep learning active for our students--will find permanent homes in our educational environment.  For instance, in higher education, we have already begun to see universities using e-learning to share specialized curricula in areas such as agriculture, geographic information systems, and other areas.   In the U.S. Midwest we have the example of the Great Plains IDEA (Interactive Distance Education Alliance)  through which multiple state universities are sharing responsibility for teaching undergraduate and master's level specialties.  This opens new possibilities for school districts within a State to share junior and senior-level courses at the high school level.  

Another way to increase the teaching capacity of our high schools is to partner with area higher education institutions to offer online "dual enrollment" courses,  in which high school students can earn both high school graduation and college credit.

The online eLearning environment has been with us now for over a quarter of a century.  It is increasingly a mature, well-supported learning environment at institutions that have taken it seriously.  Now is the time to consider how to fully integrate it to ensure that students have access to the kind of learning that will prepare them for postsecondary and workplace success.

The President and the Freedom Fighter

 

I just finished reading David Kilmeade’s The President and the Freedom Fighter, which looks at the Civil War through the evolving perspectives and actions of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.  It is a fascinating read.  In just about 250 pages, it presents key people and events before, during, and after the Civil War and explores how Lincoln and Douglass saw the issues of slavery and emancipation.  It reads like a novel.

Douglass, an escaped slave who became a major public figure, believed in immediate emancipation.  Lincoln, a self-made lawyer and politician, was concerned about the bringing the Union back together.  He worried that immediate emancipation would make it impossible for southern states to re-join the Union and cause some northern states to join the Confederacy.  He wrote the Emancipation Proclamation and kept it in his desk drawer, awaiting a time when it would be accepted as a solution rather than as an irritant.

The story of these two leaders and the environment that shaped their lives before, during, and after the Civil War, is powerful.