Tag Archives: Covid-19

Notes from In-house exile: Feeling the End of Touching…

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Notes from In-house exile: Feeling the End of Touching…

(4) March 21, 2020

“Though lovers be lost, love shall not”–Dylan Thomas

I’ve reduced intimacy to the constant warm feelings of two hands, covered with warm soapy water, engaged in the act of hand-washing (these days you do what you can). As an educator I guess I have always been able to transform some challenging situation into an exercise of practical problem solving. And with the inept and callous efforts by the leader of this nation, I could imagine seeing the end of my life without ever hugging another person again.

One of my former students who is now an educator and is presently working with a class size of one; and by the way is doing a great job with her child’s preschool remote learning class, posted: “Anybody want a 3 yr. old?” … I wanted so bad to say “Yes, me!”. A plague can separate us from our call-to-service; for alas I have a house with a children’s book library, educational toys, puzzles and games, but I am missing a three year old. I know her mother will probably say: “Yeah right, I’ll give him one day with a three year old and…” (But what I want to know Akilah; is why none of you’ll told me about this D-Nice party thing; I could have brought my flashlight—inside SSCHS joke!:-)

It also just occurred to me once again after (ELA skill) comparing and contrasting the White House and NYS Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s press briefings; that as a nation we are in serious trouble. But then there is a kind-of-good trouble that I have striven to always get myself into. Andrew Cuomo is like that crazy (good crazy): “I can’t let these folks destroy my children” principal, working in a public school system that is structured to destroy certain children. You can’t wait, you can’t fool around, because your children can’t wait. You must speak the truth, even if it makes people uncomfortable, and act audaciously even as those same people want to maintain the status qua. It is probably a matter of taking matters into your own hands; and then when necessary bend, twist, ‘reinterpret’ and sometimes break rules that work well for some kids, but don’t work well for your students. The only chance a Black and Latino child, or any poor and/or politically disfranchised child of any color, ethnicity or religion will have to succeed, is to have a ‘crazy’ educator take up their cause.

I turn everything no matter how bad, into a reading project. I guess in the midst of any tragedy we must all find some individual small space of a peace process that will help us to cope. It might sound morbid to some, but I just completed my second plague (Covid-19) related reading (Edgar Allan Poe’s: “The Mask of the Red Death”). The great myth that the plague destroys, is that we can somehow separate ourselves from the pain and suffering of others.

There is an equality of aspirational dreaming for all children, regardless of race or economic status. I learned that as a superintendent visiting PreK and Kindergarten classrooms, where all of the children will enthusiastically give you a list of things they want to grow up to be: dancer, police officer, doctor, fireman, nurse, teacher, astronaut, air plane pilot… Often multiple professions in one lifetime! And then they move up in the school system and lose large parts of those dreams at every new grade level (especially Black and Latino boys). Public schools should be dream builders, not dream destroyers. And yet we can make sure our entitled kids receive a quality education (and not lose their dreams); and deny that same level of quality education to the children of ‘others’.

But the Plague introduces a kind of terrible equality; those children denied a quality education (and thus an end to their dreaming); will later be the adults who will bring the plague of their lost dreams onto the heads of the children of privilege; for in a social-economic plague there is no separate place to hide.

Notes from In-house exile: When Battles Are Lost…

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Notes from In-house exile: When Battles Are Lost…

(3) March 20, 2020

I am reading Antony Beevor’s: The Battle of Arnhem; but reading these days is different. I can usually get immersed in a book and be totally lost to the world. This is a skill I first mastered back in my elementary school days when the Brooklyn Public Library (Grand Army Plaza branch) served as my unofficial after-school childcare provider until my mother came home from work. Reading was like dreaming, and every day I could experience a different dream: dinosaurs, WW-2 fighter planes, space travel, whales, science fiction…. I could escape and be anywhere and everywhere in time, place or space. My love of reading was so great that my mother ordered me (back then children actually obeyed their parents) to make sure I did my homework before I “started doing that reading!” I did my home work fast, because it was the only thing that stood between me and my reading for fun time. And so, every day as a member of the latchkey kid club, between milk and cookies, I would read until 5:PM and then dare the dangerous Brooklyn streets with arms full of books to take home to continue my dreaming.

But today reading Beevor’s book I find for the first time that it’s hard to keep my mind in the 1940’s. There is something about the existential urgency of the Covid-19 plague; and how we are all at some level participants in its story of isolation, illness and death. A plague is inescapable, even for those of us who could always find refuge from life’s storms in books. Covid-19 is a persistent uninvited guest in our minds; it won’t leave us alone even if we are, as I am at this moment, alone. Thinking as I am reading ‘Arnhem’ (I guess using that ELA reading skill of: “What does this passage remind you of?”) about how the strategic thinking ability and the leadership quality of Generalship so influences the outcome of a battle (again ELA referencing Carl von Clausewitz’s book: On War).

In all of Beevor’s books (e.g. Stalingrad), it does not matter how strategically smart the German command was (and they had an excellent class of highly studied and experienced military leaders, as well as a highly competent group of military scientist, engineers and technicians); their effectiveness would always be ultimately undermined by the immoral and deranged German nation’s leader, Adolph Hitler. Humanity is indeed fortunate that Hitler’s narcissistic and self-absorbed personality constantly got in the way of the decisions of his best military experts. But when a country is fighting a war against a virus pandemic, having an ethically challenge psycho-pathological leader, leads that nation to death and destruction; alas the delusional leader (whether they were only a corporal in the last war; or used faux ‘bone spurs’ to avoid going to war completely) always assumes that they are the best and most capable of experts; after all, did not the snarling and hateful frothing ‘wisdom’ of the masses place them in power?

One of the ideas that motivated my first book: Report to the Principal’s Office is this idea (something I learned as a superintendent) that there is no other more powerful singular force in a school building then it’s principal. An ineffective principal can cause even the potentially best school to under-perform; while a highly effective principal can efficaciously cause a school with the potential to terribly under-perform, to actually over-perform its potential! The quality of leadership matters so much.

And so, how on earth, in a time of great national suffering, collective fear and despondency, did we as a country fall so far down; so as to go from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, to Trumps racist ‘Kung-Flu’ rants? Well, they can’t blame this one on Black folks!

Notes from In-house exile. So many thoughts in one solitary walk around the block…

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Notes from In-house exile. So many thoughts in one solitary walk around the block…

(2) March 19, 2020

Prison must be terribly psychologically damaging place…Now let me state up front that I can in no way compare my self-imposed house-isolation to being in prison. After all, I have a steady retirement income, food that I eat when I want, I have music, books, cable TV, films on video, a computer with internet access, a daily Yoga practice, 5-6 hours of writing/per day routine, phone access to friends, family, former students and colleagues; I have dozens of ‘hobbies’ e.g. organizing my large but neglected stamp collection; and so, to be honest I am in no way suffering having to stay home all day. But putting aside whether an incarcerated person is or is not guilty. I am wondering if we must ask ourselves if we are truly ‘rehabilitating’ for the purpose of reintegration of these individuals; or, are we further (and more deeply) damaging human beings who will return to our society so severely emotionally wounded and employable unprepared, that their ability to effectively integrate back into the society will range from extremely difficult to impossible.

Yesterday I gave myself an outside “vacation” (I live in a low populated area and so I did not encounter anyone else, which was one of my objectives) to walk around the block. This after being inside for more than 3 weeks; which means that if I have Covid-19 and don’t know it, I won’t infect others. I sheltered in place very early as soon as I algebraically and biologically mapped the virus —this, for all of my former students who did not believe that Biology and Algebra were ‘useful’ subjects to learn! I also suspected before being told, that all of my medical “onset” illnesses probably would put me in a ‘high risk’ category— I have an advantage in gathering and sorting out all of the Covid-19 information because I am and educator, and specifically a STEM* educator. Our nation however, lost so much precious time, and is still doing so, by being led by ignorance personify; and he (Trump) continues even in the midst of this plague to mischaracterize and mislead through racist unhelpful misinformation; a virus as should be clear by now is not a citizen of any particular nation or people, but I digress…

Back to my walk around the block. It was the most amazingly wonderful liberating experience. The sun massaged my memory such that I felt like that excited Crown Heights kid entering the wonderful Grand Army Plaza portal of Prospect Park. In Prospect Park my friends and I could safely run, yell, play “Army”, “Explorers”, fly our kites and sail our homemade boats in the (we imagined) rapid streams of the ‘untamed’ wilderness.
But I also thought during my much too short meditation-journey around the block, about all of my students who own businesses, those who work in corrections, sanitation, the post office, transit, EMT-EMS, police and fire departments, and the many STEM, Social service professional, and the many who are working professionals in medical facilities all over this nation; there are so many others who are at their post serving humanity and risking their own personal safety and health; they will always be my heroes; and each step I take as I walk around the block I dedicate a prayer for them, their coworkers and colleagues…

#ifpossiblestayhome

*Science,Technology,Engineering and Mathematics