The pleasures of the harbor

Mary and I have been working on the yard this weekend. Weeding and leveling in 90 degree heat for Gawd knows what reason. Okay, I do know a reason. We’ve had unseasonably wet weather until just a few days ago so we’re using every non-waterlogged day we can to get the work done.

We were going to put in a new fence on two sides until Odin the Large and Lazy decided our disposable income should be shunted into the doggie surgery account. And the Boston bombers made it necessary for Mary to make an expensive unplanned Mom visit with Two. So now, we’re limiting our landscaping to jobs that cost no money. The trouble is, when you’re talking about landscaping, money and sweat are expended in more or less inverse proportion. Two’ s worth it; jury’s still out on the mutt.

I find manual labor prime time for contemplation and I got to thinking about our house and what it means to us. Just because it’s been our place of residence for twenty years does not make it our home, to my way of thinking. You can build a house but you have to make a home. And a home’s not made of framing and plaster. It’s made of comfort and familiarity and security and love and trust and a whole bunch of other attributes that have nothing to do with construction materials.

Nor is a home necessarily the place where you spend the majority of your time. It is the place to which you will always return, no matter what else changes in your life. When A.E. Housman wrote the words “home is the sailor, home from the sea,” they resonated with folks wherever the words were read. They’ve been repeated and paraphrased in so many ways and by so many writers not because we all go to sea, but rather because coming home is an experience we all know or at least wish we could know. Because while your home and my home might be leagues apart and entirely different in physical ways, home is a concept upon which we can all agree. We don’t all see a windowless cabin or an Italianate manse or a tract or row house or a mud hut. But we do all see ‘home.’ And that word carries more congruence than diversity in terms of the parts of it we care about.

When Phil Ochs wrote “The Pleasures of the Harbor,” it didn’t matter which harbor. It didn’t matter if a particular listener’s home is anywhere near the sea. “The sea bids farewell. She waves in swells and sends them on their way…” The traveler has returned home. It matters not one whit whether there’s a coastline involved. ‘The sea’ is where we go when we’re in and of the world. ‘The harbor’ is home.

Mary and I are downsizing our ‘stuff’ just now (the same stuff of which I’ve written disparagingly in earlier posts) both as a de-cluttering program and also to prepare for the day when home will be differently located. We’ll eventually move to a different house, most likely in a different city or even state. But home will travel with us. It’s a place in one’s soul, not a spot on a map. We will know it as the place to which we and our daughters and others will always return.

A matter of trust, betrayed

The news is full of speculation as to the whereabouts of one Mr. Snowden, who apparently makes no bones about having stolen classified materials through his position as a contractor for the National Security Agency and the CIA, materials he then passed on to the Guardian, a British paper.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way – the information thus revealed has opened the door to a discussion of some things the government has apparently done that don’t make me particularly happy. Snowden has been quoted as saying his purpose was to “…inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them. “  But his actions appear to reveal quite another motive.

Snowden is reveling in the limelight and globe-hopping from one anti-U.S. regime to another, thumbing his nose at U.S. attempts to bring him back for arrest and trial. His supporters have set him up on a pedestal, as though he’s some sort of hero.

He’s not a hero. He’s not even an honest guy. I’ve held a high level security clearance and I promise you that in the process of securing that clearance, this guy was well schooled in what it meant to be entrusted with this designation and then promised never to reveal classified information under penalty of prosecution.

Any sovereign nation has to be able to trust its operatives not to reveal state secrets. And every nation has some secrets that it doesn’t want its own citizens to uncover. I celebrate when our government is caught out in lies and forced to face the music. But that doesn’t make Snowden and the creeps who provide confidential information to WikiLeaks and their ilk heroic. What they are is liars and cheats and traitors.

And they need to be prosecuted.

In the interest of fairness

The Supremes should announce decisions this week in several areas critical to our view of ourselves as a land of equal opportunity.

Decisions regarding the Federal Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Prop 8 should go a long way toward restating our commitment to equal protection, even for folks whose orientation or lifestyle some consider ‘wrong’. In a larger sense, these rulings will send a message regarding the current Court’s ability to see beyond the sectarian arguments of the Christian Right and to reaffirm the fact that this is a pluralistic society in which preference and prejudice – even if seemingly aligned with the best interests of a majority in some states - cannot be allowed to trump the inclusion of all in the benefits of community. The whole gay marriage question will eventually be resolved on consideration of equal protection and full faith and credit, but we won’t get there without an appropriate ruling on each of the cases extant.

I’ve written plenty about this topic, so I won’t go farther in this post. And I won’t get into a discussion of the reconsideration of the Voter Rights Act because frankly, I can see both sides and it’s clear to me that no matter how they decide on the case extant, this won’t be the last word on the subject. No, it’s the other big ‘un slated to be announced this week that is in my mind pivotal to all other considerations of social justice.

Running up to the end of the session as we are, the Supremes are expected to rule on Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, and it seems to me that the framing of the argument on both sides is misstated. In fact, I believe the wrong concept is being argued. (Abigail Fisher applied and was rejected in 2008 and has filed suit based on her assertion that the university's consideration of race didn't meet standards previously set by the high court.) The currently relevant ruling (2003, Grutter v. Bollinger), as a result of which the consideration of race is required to be part of a  ‘holistic’ approach to admissions decisions, was decided with Sandra Day O’Connor as the swing vote. Conservatives are taking another turn at bat now that O’Connor has retired.

While I could offer impassioned comments regarding the current case I won’t, because I think the whole question of racially-based college admissions misses the point in both ethical and practical terms. Also, because with Kagan having recused herself, it’s entirely possible that the Court will be split, anyhow, rendering the whole thing moot until a more clearly egregious abuse reaches the Court on a future calendar.

What I will share with you is my belief that the whole idea of trying to correct years of educational inequalities at the level of college admissions is both tragic and ineffective. In fact, it’s tragic specifically because it’s so clearly ineffective.

As a quality trainer, I spend a lot of my work life helping folks understand how to make their business processes better. Frequently, I find myself emphasizing the basic concept that it’s easier to do things right in the first place than to correct them once the train has come off the track.

If a fairly low-level business trainer such as me understands this, why is this idea so apparently unreachable by our Federal and various state legislatures, our Federal and various state departments responsible for education, our school boards and the communities they serve? 

I’ve previously stated my belief that the first, inescapable duty and purpose of any government is to organize resources so as to provide for its citizens those things that are necessary collectively but unattainable individually. Surely, we can agree that education – in this country in which the framers identified an educated electorate as fundamental to a democracy – is the foundation upon which all else rests. But education itself rests on a progressive foundation that starts in kindergarten or first grade.

When a child has been forsaken by a system designed to move him along rather than ensuring the transfer of knowledge and building of skill sets, we end up with the current situation in which a student’s preparation for college is determined not as much by the student’s latent talent or even hard work as by the accident of birth that placed him or her in a particular school district. Yes, there are kids from the projects who shine and kids from gated communities who fail to reach their potential. But the exceptions in this case fall short of defining the rule.

In this case, I believe correlation and causation are one and the same. I don’t believe any kid starts school hoping to end up semi-literate and ill equipped for a successful adulthood. The kids who attend substandard schools by and large end up undereducated. A kid who’s never read a chapter book is probably not going to score 1300-plus on the SAT.

Our elementary and middle and secondary schools should be oases of learning, no matter where situated. Every kid should have a kindergarten teacher like Anne McDermott and a high school math teach like Mark Gingrich. Every school should look like the ones my daughters attended. And every student should have a fifth grade teacher like Amy Gottlieb and a mentor like Kim Herzog. My kids were blessed to attend the first twelve years of school in arguably the top public school district in the country. I wonder how we would have helped them access their dreams in a district with discouraged teachers, uninvolved parents and outdated, ratty books.

Mary and I worked our butts off to afford to live in this district and we were involved and encouraging and (we like to think) inspiring. But what if we weren’t those parents? Doesn’t this national community owe a stellar – or at the least, adequate – education to children who weren’t raised by the McDermotts? Or who didn’t have Marilyn or Anne or Pam or Cathy or Sindy or Sherree or… as parents? Isn’t this one of those areas that is enhanced by great parenting but in which we as a community must still deliver for the kid in the absence of a great home life?

Our great failure lies not in how we frame college admissions but rather in the horrific fact that many of our kids, arguably including some of our potentially best minds, are being wasted in a morass of failed programs and low expectations. Force-fitting a kid with inadequate preparation into a college program for which he or she is not prepared may arise from good intentions, but it should not be allowed to distract us from the inconvenient truth.

We fail the kid when we fail to prepare him or her, not in the finishing room. I believe that race-based college admissions are inescapably discriminatory, no matter how well intentioned. All applicants should be considered on the basis of preparation and innate ability. But in order for that approach to be fair, every kid has to be provided with the opportunity to arrive at the college steps ready to make the place his or her own.

A topical play

A couple of my friends and a number of other people who would probably be friends if I’d ever met them open tonight in a play called ‘8.’ I understand it deals with the overturning of Prop 8 in California which was designed to deny gay couples the right to marry.

I wish I could see the play. Heck, I wish I could have been in it. Because this is one of the singularly important issues being decided in the country as I type.

Mary and I attended a wedding a couple of weeks ago that would not have been legally sanctioned a year ago. And the couple could not have held the ceremony in Texas where they live, because it will be some time before it’s legal there.

Rest assured, it will be. Legal in Texas, that is. And in the other states that have yet to bow to logic and right thinking and practicality and simple social equity. Because no sane person will ultimately accept the argument that any identifiable subset of ‘us’ can reasonably be denied the rights and benefits that others enjoy on the basis of such specious arguments as have been mouthed by the religious right in the case at hand.

Even in the holdout states, there will come a time when a couple married elsewhere sues for their civil rights and when the thing makes it to the Supremes – assuming the ultra right religionists haven’t stacked the court at the moment in question – they’re going to lose against the overwhelming weight of ‘full faith and credit.’ Oh, they’ll piss and moan about states’ rights and the religious foundation of this country (really?) but you don’t need to be a constitutional law prof to understand that this dog just won’t hunt.

They’re gonna lose. And in doing so, they’re gonna win and win big. Just as the South ultimately won (although in many parts of the South they still don’t embrace their good fortune) when the Supremes decided the cases that came to be known collectively as Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, KS and Southern states gradually and grudgingly expanded their educational enterprise to include the rich resource represented in the young black minds that had formerly been relegated to day work and hard labor.

So Mary and I went to a dear friend’s ‘gay’ wedding and guess what? It felt like any other wedding. The only thing special about it was that it was friends getting married. And this from a guy who knows weddings, having sung for literally scores of them back in the day.

Anyway, this threatens to become a diatribe and really I started with the intention of simply congratulating Larry and Sindy and their buds on a timely theatrical presentation that I hope will come to be considered mainstream in the near term.

My sister

Sorry for the hiatus; we’ve been away on a very busy but nonetheless restful vacation. Hung out with family and friends, drove along the coast, it was da bomb!

Mary and Two and I attended a party Saturday evening in honor of my sister’s retirement as a school principal. It was a great party and absolutely the high point was when a half dozen of her former kindergarten students, now high school seniors through college sophomores, surprised her with both their presence and their testimonials as to what she had meant in their lives. It was a tear jerker, as you might have surmised.

None of them spoke of curriculum or lesson plans. Each of them described the impact she’d had on them as children and as people. One credits his choice of college major and career at least in part to conversations she’d had with him way back when.

It made me think of a conference in which I took part come years ago. The participants were parents, students, teachers, college professors and deans; in short, a wide cross-section of persons with a vested interest in the quality of education. We were there for a skull session about the nature of education at the turn of the millennium.

One of the questions we asked each of the eighty-some attendees was, “Describe a transcendent learning experience in which you took part as the learner.” Every one of the attendees chose to provide an answer and upon review, I found two attributes – and only these two - represented unanimously in the responses:

1.       Each of the described encounters involved a direct personal interaction between ‘teacher’ and ‘learner.’

2.       None of the respondents described an episode that was a planned part of the curriculum or set forth in a lesson plan.

In listening to my sister’s former students, I realized that each of them would have had a great answer for our conference question. And each of them would have involved mention of “Mrs. McD,” their kindergarten teacher.

I wish a well-deserved, wonderful retirement to my sister, Anne McDermott.

Road trip

Mary has her last final tomorrow, and then it’s off on our road trip to California. My friends and family - Marilyn and Pat and Toni and Anne and Patty and Gary and Naomi and Sherree  and Barry and Two and Jennifer and Sean and others - think we’re coming for Anne’s retirement and Naomi’s graduation. Don’t tell them the following:

It’s actually all about Duck Butts! Yes, you did hear me correctly, we’re talking mallard posteriors here.

You see, there’s an eatery in Klamath, CA named the Forest Café that has paddler bottoms glued to the blue-painted ceiling to convey the impression of taking one’s repast at the bottom of the pond. And we’re gonna eat there, in spite of the multiple negative reviews I’ve seen concerning minor issues such as food quality and service. As I pointed out in an earlier missive, it’s ALL about context and in restaurants, that means atmosphere.

It is entirely possible that overhead swimmers are not the sole roadside attraction to which I intend to expose mine frau during our coastal sojourn. I predict quite a number of topnotch sites will greet us in our slide south down the coast. Yes, we’ll drive through the huge tree trunk and we’ll look at our share of seashore. But we won’t stop at such pedestrian pursuits, not us!

I can’t wait to take a picture of the love of my life at the Tribute to Prostitutes plaque in Ukiah or the tower of bicycles in Santa Rosa. We’ll check out both the World’s Largest Sea Lion Caves near Florence, OR and the World’s Shortest River (the D River in Lincoln City, OR) and plenty of other oddities de nature.

And the noticing! Imagine the noticing one can accomplish on a trip such as this! The mind is officially boggled!

It’s going to be a heck of a drive. I just hope me beloved can fully appreciate the lengths to which I’ve gone in planning this wonderful, fantastic, once in a lifetime  automotive soiree.

Oh, did I mention the World’s Largest Wooden Hangar?

I can’t wait!

(Sherree, you might want to have a glass of wine ready for Mary. And perhaps a bag of frozen peas for moi...)

The (apparently) infinite list

I crossed a big one off the bucket list this week. Of course, in so doing I sort of redefined the meaning of ‘senior’ as in ‘senior thesis,’ but what the hey.  And I’ll cross another one off the list this coming week when Mary and I drive US 101 the length of the Oregon coast on our way down to California for frolics with amis et famille.

So, one would think that the list de bucket would be two notches shorter, non?

To be succinct, non.

I’ve added more goals than I’ve subtracted. Why is that? Just additions to the sub-list of places I’d like to see are sufficient to ensure that the master list will never be depleted. If we add books I’d like to read, the rate at which the list increases - even correcting for completions such as this week’s - requires a grounding in calculus to, well, calculate. If you add in the things I want to build, places I’d like to paddle, ideas about which I’d like to write…

Anyhoo, crossing off this big one means more time for personal pursuits such as blogging. I’ll leave it to you to decide if this is a good thing.

(Sidebar: Congrats, Sindy! Sounds like the show was a hoot!)