Sorry, But the Anti-CRT Ship of Parental Control Sailed Long Ago

Probably the most salient argument against the current railing against the inclusion of critical race theory in our schools is the idea that parents have little control over their children's education, but should. And, well, they usually don't, at least not on a daily basis. They don't know enough, and under nearly every circumstance, they really don't care that much.

But the fear-mongering that emerged about it--and has caused, now, at least one Democratic gubernatorial candidate who otherwise would probably have won his election (Virginia) to lose it, managed to very effectively gin-up parental control over their children's education--as if they ever really had it at all.

As in many other political rows, reality has been shunted aside. One day, everyone will wonder just how it got the attention it did, including the idea of watching so carefully what's taught on a daily basis. But the illusion of control was established long ago.

It was established with the voucher movement. Republicans managed to convince enough voters and parents, mostly parents with money to burn, that the Burger King concept of educational programming--have it your way--was not only possible but highly justifiable, to break the 'monopoly' that teachers' unions apparently had over the educational system.

Under the canopy of school 'choice,' they could take their monies and invest it somewhere else, thus 'controlling' their children's education without bothering to understand the advantages of the public system, of which there are many that they assume the private sector could also handle. They were wrong, they always have been wrong, but they feel better because they took the money and ran, and feeling better is the whole point, apparently, not actual results. That is called getting hoodwinked, and no doubt thousands still feel fully justified in actually robbing their kids of better educational possibilities.

None of that had anything to do with curricula, since the school districts had almost exclusive control over them, relying on faculties to consult and design within broad parameters. Except when the doors closed inside the hallways and teachers went to work, they sometimes found it necessary to adjust if not re-design lessons on their own, so I suppose the reactionaries have a point. Though they scream as loudly as they ever have, they want someone else to handle the review of curricula, never mind the extra time and bother and expense it may take, not needing to do any of that themselves. They'd rather just complain because blind anger is far easier and genuine caring isn't, which echoes ex- and his minions, most of which they of course are. No doubt someone will find something else for them to complain about, decrying the end of civilization as we know it.

I didn't know this, but critical race theory is a significant part of the Virginia Department of Education's website. You can click on it there. I wasn't making up what I wrote earlier, namely that I had never heard of CRT in all the 30 years I taught, and it had never been mentioned in any of my department's meetings that I attended (which were most of them). No wonder all the screaming; Terry McAuliffe, Democratic gubernatorial candidate, trying for his second, non-consecutive term (Virginia prohibits consecutive terms), downplayed the concept and tried to make it go away. Hindsight is 20-20, but a more direct dealing with the matter might have suppressed the anxiety.

Now that I know how widespread its usage has been, maybe leaning into it and trying to extrapolate its meaning in the total picture might be a better move. But I wonder if it's too late. Again, as in most controversial education issues, it's not supposed to be political, but education is the most political of all our public issues, partly because it's so local and thus so personal.

The memories we tend to have of our own schooling tend to lean toward the pristine and tender, not filled with the conflict and insecurity most of it actually was. That's partly because the older we get, the better we were. It's also because, well, that was then and we have to get on with things, and we'd rather not dwell on the bad stuff that life confronted us with, nearly right from the start.

So it is with parents who took on vouchers in the belief that they 'controlled' their children's education. They only controlled the educational site, not the stuff of education itself. Realization of that has either taken place far too late, or is still drifting in their dreamy clouds that they did the most to take care of their kids in that realm, too.

But the illusion of control is enough. What the Democrats should do is sit down and dream up possible other crazy ideas that Republicans could extend upon us in order to come up with decent responses ahead of time--kind of an idea vault. That way, they can't be ambushed with something like critical race theory and paralyzed about which way to go with it.

Since being defensive and/or dismissive didn't work, they should lean into it now. Continue the conversation or try to, kind of like a guy who MSNBC asked if he knew about it, and he responded not much but what he did know he didn't like. That's ripe for drilling down and getting people to honestly think about it. Granted, they may not, but at least it's a proactive approach.

But that means wanting to establish decent talking points about it and making them in understandable tidbits so they can be absorbed easily. As usual, the reactionary, simplistic, pseudo-grounded words used to object to CRT sound stronger and more salient than the real truth. Have it your way, like vouchers, is an easily digestible but totally misleading description to objecting to CRT. But it works, because it becomes yet another dog whistle. Or at least it did in Virginia, and might have lasting effects elsewhere.

When she was first elected to be Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jill Underly was at a post-election fund-raiser in Madison last summer. I decided to stop by. I managed to pull her aside for a moment and ask her whether she had any strategy to deal with complaints about CRT, because, as I said, "You can see it on the horizon." She admitted that her office hadn't done so yet.

I sure hope that's changed, but I haven't seen anything about it. Many Wisconsin school boards have been assailed about it (including Mequon-Thiensville, a well-educated district, which recalled a controlling majority of the entire school board over the topic--but, thank goodness, failed). No doubt the assailants want the momentum of it, like the false "steal," to last through the next gubernatorial race, when they're unquestionably planning to eliminate Tony Evers from purview and get the state to once again descend into the Dark Ages.

In the meantime, I'll be trying to come up with those talking points. But in doing so, it assumes that CRT has enough legitimacy to be discussed. The damage that its misunderstanding has already done practically demands it. More on that later.

Be well. Be careful. Get a booster shot. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Maybe, Instead, It Should Be "Stop the Scare"

The 'steal' of Stop the Steal is, of course, a lie. But the scare isn't.

The scare is the point. Finding something to scare people about is the way of ex-, the way of people who blindly follow him. If he says we should be scared, they not only are scared, they help spread the scare.

Instead, we should push back with a simple phrase: Stop the Scare.

This is a very simple way of responding to the boogeyman created by Critical Race Theory. The phrase is real, but it's only been (until now) applied to a graduate collegiate level. Nothing like it has been pontificated in high schools and middle schools. Few, if any, teachers have gone out of their ways to try to include it in their curricula.

The current frenzy in Mequon-Thiensville and lots of other districts, among well-educated people who should know better, is an excellent example. The their entire school board is being recalled because of some misapplied belief that our children are somehow being indoctrinated with CRT.

In several places, I've indicated that this is nonsense, as such. There is nothing incredibly pervasive about the teaching of the history of race relations in the United States that has been adopted by an overwhelming percentage of the faculty thereof. Yes, The 1619 Project has been introduced, and I'd imagine that some teachers have read it and taken some things from it and added it to their teaching. But have they sold out to it? I highly doubt it. 

One more time, and please try to understand: Standardized testing, brought to you by the very same kinds of people who are peddling all this fear and trepidation, gets in the way of introducing new and dynamic curricular choices. To say it in plainer English: You run out of time when you bring new stuff into the classroom because you have to be sure to 'touch all the bases' so the students are exposed to as much general information as possible so you can go to sleep at night knowing that you led all these horses to enough water, even though you know they won't all drink it. Never mind that such an approach pretty much eliminates the need for teachers to augment their base knowledge, which reduces their overall effectiveness, but nobody seems to care about that. 

Nevertheless, the point is that with so little time to teach so much, any new ideas can be brought into the room, but the goal is to cover the material, not to get them to think new things. We all lose when that happens, but anyone's notion that radically new concepts are somehow seeping into the kids' heads and staying there forget their own classroom experience. It's based mostly on the idea that, along with other subjects, the goal is to get through it well enough to remember well enough to pass the tests and move on, diploma firmly in hand.

Let me say what I've said to certain people who push this panic button: Do you remember any of the questions, never mind the answers, in your English final exam your senior year in high school? You don't? Well, neither do I, and I was a pretty good student. What makes you so sure that the kids won't think of CRT as another quirky concept that didn't stick until someone's going to bring it up at the 10th class reunion?

But when new things are brought up with enough emotional shock and enough buzz words to imply that the apocalypse is (again!) just around the corner--something these people are getting awfully good at--everything is supposed to stop and we are all supposed to act as if all else has been stopped, so that all other curricular avenues have been interrupted and we are all caught staring at some chimera. We're all supposed to be rightfully scared. Hysteria does that.

My pushback is simple, and directly entirely at them: Stop the scare. You're trying to scare people over very little, conjured by someone who knows better. You can't scare me, at least, because I've been in the classroom and I know how things work.

Some of the people who are in the classroom now, and have been in the past, need to step up and expose this imaginary monster for what it is. A lot of very good things still happen inside our public school classrooms every day. We need to return to doing what's really needed: Supporting them and the job they're doing in producing decently educated citizens.

The victims, in fact, are the ones spreading this nonsense. Because the person who's at the bottom of this doesn't care one whit about them. In fact, he thinks of them as chumps, acting crazy in spite of their own education: easily fooled, easily manipulated, easily scared, malleable as putty, ready to run off into the next vacuum, off the next cliff, whenever he wishes. That others are doing his work for him makes the danger all that much deeper.

Stop and think, folks. Stop trying to scare us.

Be well. Be careful. Get a booster. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

The Afghanistan Papers: Another Lesson Unlearned

When you read about something that everyone's forgotten about by now--or wants to forget about--you feel out on an island in a way. But also in a way, that makes it all the more necessary.

Besides, The Afghanistan Papers took longer than I thought. I couldn't get through more than two chapters at a time. It was just too hard. Craig Whitlock, of the Washington Post, is an excellent reporter and journalist, and it shows. He is quite thorough. He flinches at nothing. The chapters are short and concise, but they were infuriating, futile and revelatory of blind anger that wouldn't stop to reconsider itself, and anger that you'd think, initially, that we would be too big for.

It all just drags you further and further down. The failure was so complete, so multi-faceted, that it begs so many--demands too many--questions.

Such as: Why don't we learn anything? Why do we keep treating people without technology as beneath us? Why do we make absurd assumptions about them?

I knew it would be filled with errors committed by a bloated military that thought it could fight two wars at once, identifying them similarly-seen one Arab, seen them all--and somehow change their societies. Well, it did. It made them unholy messes.

There's bullying that lines everything done there. Some big country says, We're looking for a bad guy, and everyone's supposed to stand aside and let us do that. And the Afghans did, in a manner of fashion, for a while. But we had to stay ten years to find him, and they began to hate everything about us, and used us for their own gain. Passive aggression is insidious but very, very effective. Then it graduated, and Afghans began to ambush the very people who were trying to help them. Think of the atmosphere that created.

Pentagon leaders have been grilled by Congress about our involvement in Afghanistan in a by-now all-too-familiar dance to the funeral music. When things fail, there must be investigations, you know, but only in hindsight. Nobody bothered to sufficiently fact-find when everything surged onward. 

I have only one question: Why the hell did we stay so long? We had no idea what we were doing!

We went in, we applied overwhelming force as you might have guessed, with nowhere near the kinds of resources that we could have expended. We pretty much had our way, too, as you also might have guessed. The folks on the ground weren't even supplied to stay long. And, in terms of rounding up and/or destroying the bad guys, we didn't do bad at all.

But the big prize, bin Laden, was still roaming. So we stayed. And burgeoned a new culture, new nest eggs, new investments. We became, once again, not liberators, not agents of revenge, but aliens in an alien land.

We really did try to train the Afghans. We ran into all kinds of issues, including people who liked the money but not so much the discipline. They dealt with whatever they needed when they needed it and not one second before. Tough to sustain planning that way.

And the bad guys morphed. Al-Qaeda was pretty much eradicated, but turned into ISIS, an even tougher, harder, fiercer foe. They retrenched in Iraq. Plus, as we learned (or thought we learned) in Vietnam, the natives won't disappear. Give them twenty years to bounce back, and by golly, they will. And the Taliban did.

We said we didn't want to repeat the previous mistakes, but found, like all other addicts, that stopping something you're used to takes far more work and attention than suspected. It takes a different mind-set, one which never developed. The military culture reveled in it, but the quick wins allowed the public to turn its back and drift from its attention. And with the previous victories, the military could sustain its presence with rhetoric that masked the true situation.

And then there was Iraq, the president's personal vendetta, the opportunity for the machos to display their bullying from which Sept. 11 provided the pretext. It got attached to the entirety of the effort through the bully pulpit and an exaggeration and big lie (re: WMDs). If nothing else, this book underscores and amplifies the tragedy of that hubris. The shadow of Iraq loomed over everything we tried in Afghanistan.

Beyond that, there was a stunning lack of preparation of the U.S. troops about to enter an entirely mysterious and alien culture, one with values that they could barely comprehend, much less imitate. The language barrier was ridiculous. The attempt to impose one's will failed with the pretension that our 'good' things introduced to people could suddenly make them 'not bad.'

That the failures were covered up is, by now, commonplace, and done by Republican and Democratic presidents (Obama does not look good here). The military tried that in Vietnam and couldn't maintain the deceptions. That they lasted so much longer in Afghanistan is a tribute only to media strung thin and a public that wearied.

The attitude of those who tried to train the natives to defend themselves reminded me of the film The Man Who Would Be King, in which Sean Connery and Michael Caine desert from the British Army and travel to a strange land called Kafiristan, where they are hailed as (white) gods. They try to train the natives into a fighting force but can't seem to communicate very well. Not without reason: An overwhelming percentage of them are illiterate. They can't maintain their deception forever, though. The suspicions of the natives grow, they are exposed, and are condemned.

In Afghanistan, a very lifelike clone for Kafiristan, the same thing happened: Puppet rulers were created (and sustained through an election that really was rigged, like that of Diem in Vietnam), dependency extended, but wore thin. The metamorphosis failed the same way it failed in Vietnam, from the rural, tribal outward areas first, then to the cities where government presence held things together longer. It was textbook.

A people who do not understand the implications and responsibilities of democracy (as opposed to those who willfully undermine it because it makes them uncomfortable, a problem here in the States) will take generations to embrace it, if they can at all. I continually refer to the leaflet handed out by a socialist group in World War I, begging men to resist the draft: Democracy, it said, cannot be shot into a nation. It must be allowed to grow from within.

That always takes time, more than good intentions and tolerance for error and imperfections. It also takes a much larger commitment than the one we settled on. We really had won, according to our original goals: al-Qaeda had been largely routed. But it wasn't enough. 

We had already developed a quasi-governmental presence, one that sudden withdrawal would produce bad looks. We had already looked really bad in Vietnam. We needed to avoid that in Afghanistan, but nobody knew how. So we got out the same playbook, based on the same attitudes. We patronized the natives, treated them as an afterthought. No wonder they turned on us. Again.

This time, we delayed a withdrawal until twenty years had passed. But it was too late: The counter-revolution of Muslim extremists had penetrated too far. There were no ceremonies. Our heads were down, just like before. 

The "decent interval" of our leaving to create ownership of ultimate failure with the government we once supported didn't happen this time. The bad guys were already in charge. They let us leave without too much damage, suicide bombings notwithstanding.

But I couldn't let it just pass. More than 2400 of some of our best people are dead now, and no coverup will suffice. Yes, in an indirect way, you could say that they died for their country; after all, al-Queda caught a pretty big haymaker from us, and their numbers are deeply reduced. But like the Taliban, they can recover, too. Will we hunt them down again, somewhere else, just fill in the blank of the nation that will receive our enormous military help but have to deal with the nightmare of us, their cultural misfits?

We can't kill them all. We can't capture them all. The mentality that motivated their training is still out there, and we haven't been invited to their camps.

We really do have policy and intervention choices, and we really do need a discussion about it. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan: three big, big mistakes, or if they weren't mistakes at the start, the mistakes were applied so thoroughly that by the time they had ended, you couldn't tell the difference. 

Withdrawal from world affairs? I don't think that's an option. Too many businessmen are making too much money. Economic imperialism is too well established, and has been for going on two centuries now. Authoritarianism is running too rampant, though we ourselves may still be inclined to accept it too well. As long as we have a government that cares, it should care about democracy elsewhere, too. And there's always NATO and the carnivorous Putin who borders it on the east.

I recommend The Afghanistan Papers, despite its strong dose of bad news. Because at some dinner or some gathering or another, someone's going to take out the same old rhetoric based on the same old assumptions and put them on the table. I think someone should be there with this new set of facts to refute them, someone who hasn't forgotten this disaster, either.

Either way, you get the sinking feeling about a once-proud empire, fading in the distance in spite of itself, or perhaps because of itself. Prestige is a real thing, but we've lost so much of it now that our allies can't possibly look at us the same way. We've said to three countries, we have your back, and failed to sustain that promise each time. No philosophical argument overcomes utter failure.

Be well. Be careful. Get a booster. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

A Hell of A Coach Who Got Caught in An Even Tougher Game

Jon Gruden really has been a hell of a football coach, per se.

If you ever watched him with new pro quarterbacks right out of college on his show "Jon Gruden's QB Camp," which aired on ESPN a few years ago, you knew he had a special connection with them. He established it by watching them, one at a time in the room, on film and praising their great plays--of which they made many, otherwise they wouldn't be there.

But just to listen to him give kudos in his tone of voice brought with it an authoritative tone of someone who's been there and watched it all. After all, the show ran after Gruden had won a Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Great coaches are great teachers, and great teachers are called great by great and not-so-great students. It doesn't take long for them to hang on their every word. They find a way to say things that have been said before but in a new way, to paint mental pictures that get across the needed message. They have that gift, but like other gifts, they have transformed it from natural to workable to often brilliant with endless polishing and effort. In terms of the basic skill that it takes, I'll put Jon Gruden up against anyone.

There's a decisiveness and success ratio about it all that often, perhaps too often, spills into other areas. That's partly because of the perhaps overemphasized, but evident, importance we place upon sports, which are normally supposed to be connected to physical fitness or a temporary pastime. 

It's not for nothing that ex- recruited football coach Lou Holtz and basketball coach Bob Knight to shill for his campaigns. Note, too, that to the best of my knowledge, neither of them ever campaigned for any other presidential candidate. 

Nobody needs to analyze that much to know that great coaching and political endorsements are very, very distantly related, if at all. But if you know your audience, it also might count for something. Why else are they also featured on business ads? Why are they invited to speak at business conferences?

Because they seem so sure of themselves and after all, they've been successes (notice that people with sub-.500 records never seem to get top billing, even though they might be excellent teachers). It's when they drift outside of their realms, though, that cognitive dissonance takes over. Sometimes it's intentional. 

Sometimes, kind of like Jon Gruden, it really isn't, but you can get taken there when so much winning makes you so full of yourself and your ego starts believing what others do not. You think you can control what you can't. From the outside, from the periphery, it looks far easier.

So no one knows, normally, where a great coach's influence ends. But Gruden's ended with a crash just the other day, when e-mails he sent to the Washington Football Club's president, e-mails with racist and homophobic epithets, suddenly emerged.

No one knows, either, where anyone's electronic transmissions end. They might as well be carved on walls, waiting to be harvested when someone's stream runs dry. Like Bill Clinton's bimbo eruptions, they can emerge anywhere if someone becomes unpopular or someone else wants to take credit for outing perpetrators, whether presently or long ago. Never mind that the subjects might have cleaned up their act; they must now prove their newfound purity, if there is any, to a jaundiced public.

But it's pretty difficult to prove that something's not there anymore, that absence of ill will is intentional. If the accused hasn't gone out of his way to bring witnesses to the fore, or simply let the comments go regardless of how long ago he made them, the stain can't be bleached. One thing's for sure: You can't use e-mails to make snarky comments and then count on others to help you hide them. Better to just do it over the phone. Better deniability.

Note, too, that the racist comments came out first, and Gruden apologized for them and explained their context to anyone who cared. Then the homophobia erupted, those comments seemed even worse, and the simple fact that a defensive end on his very football team had come out not three weeks beforehand left Gruden naked. 

The timing of all that revelation feels calculated. Maybe it wasn't. That context, too, needs to be explained to get the complete story. Maybe it's circumstantial but sincere.

Regardless, the e-mails are there, as they will be until the end of time, as are all e-mails. Source explanation might diminish, but not diffuse, the basic acts. Gruden resigned, and was right to do so.

Money won't be Gruden's problem; he has far more than enough of it. He won't starve. When people are embarrassed or feel embarrassed, they normally lay low for a while and start again slowly. Sometimes that time is needed for more mitigating facts to emerge.

In the meantime, a great teacher of the game has been grounded. His removal is the price he must pay for a culture that has caught up with comments that he made a decade ago. There's something vaguely vindictive about that, but something about justice that rings true, too. That, too, reflects the toughness of the game he entered, tougher in a sense than the one he coached.

Be well. Be careful. Get a booster. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

On Turning 70: Time's A-Wastin'. Walter Davidson Knew That.

This morning, edging into my 71st year, I thought about Walter Davidson.

Rest assured, Walter has gone from this realm quite some time ago. I knew Walter back in 1967, when I worked on Sundays at a trapshoot north of Grafton. It was privately owned by A. J., "Doc" Kauth, a retired dentist who'd made friends of old patients and acquaintances. All of them were born at least in the early part of the last century, so they're all gone.

The cadre which surrounded him, as well as his property, were offshoots of the money into which they all were throughly saturated. Lawyers and businessmen (and I do mean men; absolutely no way a woman would be allowed into this group) of the most successful kind came to shoot 'birds', as clay pigeons were also called, on Sunday mornings.

Some carried their wealth quietly with some semblance of dignity. The cars these guys drove also spoke to their attitudes. A majority of them had Cadillacs, Chryslers and Buick Electra 225s (Remember them?), and nobody had anything that was more than two years old. Straddling the circle drive outside Doc's estate, it looked pretty impressive, as if some kind of diplomatic round table was taking place.

Not Walter Davidson. Uh-uh. He didn't show up every Sunday, but when he did, he had new stories and new ways in which someone was trying to gyp him out of a few more bucks (as if he would never do that to anyone else). Flamboyant and carrying a stride that belied his somewhat diminutive presence, he had taken over the motorcycle business (Davidson as in Harley-dash) from ancestors and, of course, was riding (so to speak) major profits.

Not that his vehicle wasn't impressive; it sure was. But it was a canary yellow Chevy Corvette. Walter Davidson was 73 when I knew him.

He didn't have it in cruise control, either. Quite the opposite. One Sunday he came in and admitted he'd been picked up on the freeway (one hopes a rather deserted stretch of it) for doing 113 miles an hour.

Yup. One hundred thirteen. No downhill expansion of highway allows anybody travel that fast at reasonable freeway speed, even in 1967, to accumulate speed that intense. It was willful, and for him, all kinds of fun.

Rather than be humbled by the experience, though, old Walter sounded a tone of defiance. "Damn," he said. "They caught me."

At that particular moment, and at the rather tender age of 16, I thought that absurdly inappropriate for someone of that advanced age: 73. Now I'm at that advanced age. And I think: Damn. They caught him.

Now, I'm not thinking about doing 113 or anything near that, and putting people in trouble by my driving isn't anything I had in mind. But seems to me it's time to do something I've always been meaning to do, and to keeping finding things to do so I always have something else to point to. 70 is 70, it's not the new 50. The clock keeps ticking.

I don't even know exactly what I mean by all this, but one thing's for sure: If something grabs my attention (assuming legality), I'm not going to hesitate any longer. I'm not going to worry what someone else thinks. I'm going to be gone a long time, and they can talk about me all they want by then. If that, if someone does, that will be enough of a legacy. People are forgotten soon enough the way it is.

The kind of rich guys mentioned above are the kind that have annoyed me for a long time: their power, their cocky arrogance. I haven't been jealous of their money, ever--research has proven that the more money you have, the more you tend to be obsessed by it--and I don't have a whole bunch of it myself. But it's a big world and people like me can still accomplish a lot, with decent health (which is a work in progress) and enough sleep (which is an ongoing battle).

Seventy and counting. The alternative awaits. In the meantime, damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead. Walter Davidson would approve.

Be well. Be careful. Get a booster. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Sometimes, A Bolt from the Sky

There are times in one's life, as I'm sure you've experienced, when something hits you like a bolt from the sky. Something like that has bridged the last two days.

Yesterday, I helped pay tribute to a former teaching colleague, Ron Jacobson. Sadly and undeservedly, but perhaps because of the pandemic and the emerging lack of reliance upon a dying newspaper culture, there weren't many people there. I do know there were tributes on Facebook, so Jake (as we all called him)'s passing did not go unnoticed by some of his former students.

He was a terrific colleague. Always with kind of an impish grin, I remember the way he brightened the downstairs teachers' lounge with a quip or two. He was always positive. I never, ever saw him angry, though teaching does bring with it plenty of reason to be so.

He taught science, so I didn't really know him all that well, being in the social studies department, the center of which activity was normally upstairs on another side of the high school building. But Jake impacted my life in a very clear and decisive way: He served for years on our bargaining team, when collective bargaining for teachers was a real and palpable thing in Wisconsin, back in the day when people were fair, or at least had to observe fairness through legal requirements. Upon retirement, the two major sources of my income have become my state pension and my Social Security check, both of which were impacted by the salary I earned while an active teacher. He helped grow that as far as could be stretched. So thanks, Jake, for that. Too.

I received an unexpected treat from Jake's younger son, who, besides delivering an excellent and moving eulogy at the service, spoke with me before it. He had had me for a class. He introduced his daughters to me, calling me a "great teacher," which gave me a glow I hadn't had in years. Thank you, Ross. Very kind.

Beyond that, I got to see some other former colleagues and catch up. As usual, I had to tell them about my research and travels to the places named Grafton that has become quite the project. Some of them kind of looked at me as if to say, He's going off some cliff. Others were nice enough to listen more deeply. Some, I think, rather marveled at someone who still gets that excited about something. Maybe I jolted a couple of minds into believing it's okay for them to still do so, too.

Regardless, great to see them. Many of them look pretty good, even if they're all older than me. Which reminds me--

Today is my 70th birthday. Yes, I think of it as a milestone. Yes, that and Jake's passing remind me all too well that the clock ticks for us all and time is running out.

And it's another reminder that, if there's something to do or say, I'd better get that done ASAP. Because you don't know anything. The future is a blur and a mystery. I'm reaching out and getting together with other colleagues, which should have been done sooner except I was traveling and stuff and moving around the country and people, understandably, lost track of me. You get immersed in things and conclude that nobody really cares that much anymore, anyhow. 

So you stop trying to maintain contact. Your energy goes elsewhere. Not only are you reminded how much you've missed some people, it occurs to you that it works the other way, too. Long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, all that mattered an awful lot once.

I get a blog called "Calm," which emphasizes staying that way. It shows something each morning. Today's message was: Name three things that you have gained from growing older. Take time to celebrate.

Okay, since the number really did go up by one vital digit today (most specifically, at 1:57 p.m.), here goes, in no particular order and not necessarily inclusive:

• Wisdom, if one pays attention;
• Perspective, since hanging around long enough demonstrates that things tend to repeat themselves; and 
• The unfortunate, but necessary, knowledge that though you'll never accomplish everything you set out to do, it's never too late to leave a footprint.

Celebrate? Well, I plan on it, though not necessarily all in this day. It's also occurred to me that maybe celebration might take longer--in which case, I ought to take all the time I need. Life is a challenge, yes, but it's also a celebration. And, after all, I'm still here. I came close to not being here not long ago, and the first conscious thing I did this morning was thank heaven I have yet another chance.

And if there's something to say, I'm going to say it. But then, partly because of this blog, I'm in the process, anyhow. Sometimes a bolt from the sky, bridging over two days, brings all that home.

Be well. Be careful. If you need to do something, by golly, get out there and do it. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Among Old Papers, A Glimpse of A Troubled Present Day

You know how sometimes you just get a bug in your bonnet and have to clean things out? Happened to me the other day.

With me, it usually involves uncovering a trove of untreasures, things that used to be valuable but no longer are. Job interview information, personal organizing advice, stuff like that. Being retired means that jettisoning some of that brings a sense of relief and brief nostalgia. Those were the days....

But I also found something that brought me up short. It was something I'd written down when I watched a rerun of an HBO show called "The Newsroom." Someone wrote into the script something that was so universal that it boded remembering, just in case I would run up in front of someone shooting off their mouths.

"The Newsroom" was Aaron Sorkin's paean to journalism, its flaws, its passion when genuinely pursued, its occasional brilliance, and its liberalism despite itself. It starred Jeff Daniels as the evening anchor and editorialist. It's in the latter role that Sorkin got to vent his spleen about things that were bothering him.

It was written for the present-day audiences, addressing current crises, both ongoing and potential. It aired in 2013-14, during the latter days of Obama. You could see the storm clouds forming, though, since that would be his last term. Washington, DC, where I then lived, was full of pushback against the idealistic but futile hope that that presidency would usher in a new era of racial understanding and effort.

It all hung by a thread of Obama's presence and style. The damage already done by the Tea Party was evident and unrelenting, and Sorkin thought he would summarize what those denizens were all about within an editorial comment by Daniels, who played Will McAvoy.

McAvoy calls out the Tea Party in no uncertain terms. I caught the original show--I tried never to miss it; it was really good--but it occurred to me to write down what he was saying a bit late. I knew it would replay, and I had paper and pen ready next to the couch.

The Tea Party, he said, was actually the American Taliban. I thought that was a great label (and so, so ironic). He went on to call them "fatuous, mean-spirited bigots." I nodded. I would do it thoroughly for the next five minutes, so much so that it threatened neck soreness.

Here's what they stood for, and stand for today under another label:

• Ideological purity
• Compromise as weakness
• Denying science
• Fear of progress
• Denial of facts
• Scriptural literalism
• Need to control women's bodies
• Pathological hatred of the U.S. government
• Demonization of education

Stop me if you've heard this. Just add three more: 

• Loud and obnoxious interruption upon disagreement;
• Slavish loyalty based on fear of being excluded; and
• The end of democracy in the United States.

The Tea Party, of course, hasn't disbanded. It's been subsumed by a demagogue who's lassoed these backward ideas under his own ugly tent. But if they can use these as talking points, so can you. So can anyone who's opposed to them. Granted, there are a lot of them, but remembering, say, three (always a good number; two's not enough and four are too many) will turn back any loudmouths. It'll get you through an elevator ride, too.

Be sure to include the last one in case you run into any slavishly loyal minions. Don't let the other side deflect the discussion by bringing up extraneous issues. Don't let them take you there. Stick to the knitting. Get your voice, nice and clear, into the room, when confronted with fatuous, mean-spirited bigots.

It's time, folks. The threat has become crystal clear. It has permeated to the school board level, where nonsense has been re-introduced (See: demonization of education). If you turn to walk away, thinking that somehow either someone else will take care of this or it's just too intense, think of how intense it'll get if this awful demagogue gets elected again. He's back out there, blasting imagined opponents with vomit.

Bret Stephens, New York Times columnist (and a conservative one), said it a while back on Bill Maher's HBO show, "Real Time": It was like a jackhammer going off outside your bedroom window at six a.m. every single morning for four years. You want that again? It can happen.

The Republicans are more scared of him than ever. I'm no longer mystified. Just check the above list. All he had to do was get up and say them all at once in his own way, say a couple of other things people wanted to hear about being victims, and they'd follow him off whatever cliff's coming up. They also risk removal by the lathered mobocracy that it's all created.

That's fine. Let them. But you may be chained to them if he wins. 

What kind of a country do you want? The issue is still up for grabs, more than ever.

It's because too few heeded Aaron Sorkin's warning that we find ourselves in the troubled present day. I didn't think I would find it amongst old papers. But I'm glad I did.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark