Day 98, June 22, 2020
The Tender-footed Chauffer
Today's soundtrack: Branford Marsalis: A Love Supreme, live in Amsterdam 2003 (with Jeff Tain Watts on drums) and the Dizzy Gillespie Quintet: Jazz 625, 1966
Yesterday was Father's Day, a distant one from my kids and my own father. Fatherhood has been a beautiful part of my life, something I don't think I ever anticipated. I wonder if there are people who grow up just waiting to become fathers. Perhaps because of toxic masculinity, all the forces shaping manhood and our visions of what that means and entails, as a man it seems to be a much less frequent vocation. But once it arrives, something changes, and something is forever changed.
I remember after the twins were born, I was driving back from Cooley Dickinson Hospital and crossing the Calvin Coolidge Bridge like a newly minted driver. The children were wailing and I struggled keep forward momentum above 25 miles per hour. I could not understand all the honking and impatience. I was transporting precious cargo!
I once drove a hundred and fifteen miles an hour on the Massachusetts Turnpike because I was late picking up a girl from the airport. I used to drive regularly over 80 on Airport Road, a small two lane road in Sewanee, TN, because you could. But on day one of fatherhood, well, day one outside of the hospital, I had become a tender-footed chauffeur.
All three of my children were born in the midst of snowstorms, and when we left the hospital it was spring, so I gauge the seasons by their March birthdays, remembering navigating icy roads and blizzard conditions, and then trying to shoo away a bee that had gotten into the car as I tried to buckle a newborn into the car seat amidst pillow bolsters and other accouterments.
It is interesting to realize that I have been a father longer than I have not been a father, so much so that it is an ingrained part of who I am, so that I cannot really remember the young man who didn't really think about fatherhood. It is as if I have always wondered what my son was practicing on the piano on a Sunday afternoon, what my two daughters were eating for dinner, or planting in the garden, or reading.
I imagine I must have been a pretty intolerable son. My mom recalled me recently as strident in high school. She was searching for the word, and I think she landed on strident, but it was really something like bull-headed, rebellious, irreverent, moody, and overly sensitive. I carried that through college, and didn't really mellow out until after the kids arrived. And even then, I must have been hard to fathom as a son. I think the hardest part about being a son, was learning how to accept parental love and how to express love back. I don't think it was a natural thing for me, at least after I hit puberty. I was always filled with indignity, self-loathing, and embarrassment that blinded me from anything else.
I remember I once visited a friend's house and joining her family for dinner felt like a revelation. I had never been around so much light hearted revelry. There was laughter, and after dinner we sat with her mom and drank glasses of wine until we fell asleep. I thought this was the American dream family. Ironically, that same family imploded in the same way so many of our families fall apart. My own parents, in what I thought was a dysfunctional semblance of a relationship, evolved, grew stronger, and is today a beautiful thing to behold. And while they certainly went through some truly challenging times, I also think my own perspective changed too, and what I perceived as one way back then, looks very different from this angle.
I wonder about my own children, how they will remember me. I think often times it is easier to remember the bad parts, examples of bad parenting. Like the time I could not get the twins to stop crying, so I put them in their car seats, put them in the car, came back in the house and hurled an office chair across the living room, then drove around with them wailing until they both fell asleep. It wasn't my finest hour. I'm sure they have a good collection of moments like that, even if they can't remember that particular one.
But what I tend to remember now, is how my father loves Halloween, when my kids were little, almost every Halloween my father would come out to join us trick or treating, and he would bring a mask to wear. He loved accompanying the kids in all their visions of grandeur, their imagination filling in the gaps in the cardboard and face paint. And then, I remember that he loved the holiday when I was young too. He dreamed up the costumes I would wear, one Halloween coming up with an elaborate invisible man ensemble with gloves stapled onto the sleeves of a trench coat, out of which I peered between button holes while wearing a plastic pumpkin on my head swathed in masking tape bandages and a fedora. I don't think I had ever seen an image of the invisible man (not the Ralph Ellison one, this time), and the whole getup confused me. Language was always a barrier in our household, my ability to understand my father, and his inability to explain precisely what he was trying to do. But I recognize now, he loved that part of fatherhood, that creative endeavor, his pride in creating a costume for his son to wear.
I inherited that love of play, of crafting a Willy Wonka hat out of poster board, staples and tape, of building elaborate spaceships out of Legos, of lying on the carpet with children and becoming more enraptured with the act of drawing than the kids' attention span could contain.
I miss those moments. I make up for that now by changing car tires, picking up things from the grocery, little token things that make me still feel like a father even though the kids are nearly grown up. It is hard to let go of a thing that has brought me so much pleasure.
Good night,
Leo
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| First tubing of the summer on the Saw Mill River |
From Our Friends:
From The Hechinger Report via Academic Impressions:
Students Say They're Sick of "Lip Service" from Universities on Racism
Article | The Hechinger Report
Many black students say the statements released by universities in support of Black Lives Matter are often empty rhetoric; what they want is action.
Coalitions of black students say that microaggressions and racial insults by white students go unaddressed; that, despite endless commissions and study groups, the monuments of Confederate and pro-segregation leaders remain lodged on some campuses; and that, after demonstrations and despite numerous pledges, the numbers of black faculty members stay stagnant and black student enrollments haven’t increased. Read more.
From Human in Common and the Noho Chamber of Commerce:
Two-day Zoom training on June 25 & June 29 from 1:00-4:00pm both days.
This compassionate, interactive, skills-based training includes:
Community agreements for compassionate, respectful & brave engagement
The History of Racism in the US Timeline
The material impact of racism today
Creating a diversity mission statement
Language for effectively talking about racism
Six methods for respectfully & effectively interrupting racism
Policies & practices to amplify racial equity in your workplace
This compassionate, interactive, skills-based training includes:
Community agreements for compassionate, respectful & brave engagement
The History of Racism in the US Timeline
The material impact of racism today
Creating a diversity mission statement
Language for effectively talking about racism
Six methods for respectfully & effectively interrupting racism
Policies & practices to amplify racial equity in your workplace
From the W.K. Kellogg Foundation:
Save the date for a virtual preview to our 2021 National Day of Racial Healing, Healing in Action, Thursday, June 25 at 3 p.m. EST / 12 p.m. PST.
The violence and inhumanity that killed George Floyd serve as a prism for the callous forces of structural racism that have plagued our country since its inception. The W.K. Kellogg Foundation stands with the Black community in this moment – along with all people of color and allies across the globe – and in continued support of the many partner organizations actively in pursuit of racial equity. Let’s convene to grieve together, pursue healing and renew our commitment to racial equity and ending racism together. The time for action is now.
Tune into the live premiere of Healing in Action on June 25 at 3 p.m. EST / 12 p.m. PST on our YouTube channel, and join the conversation live. #HowWeHeal
Participants include: Baratunde Thurston, Bryan Stevenson, Dr. Celeste Clark, Dr. David R. Williams, Diane Wolk-Rogers, Henry Kravis, Isabel Delgado, Jerry Tello, John Legend, Keedron Bryant, La June Montgomery Tabron, Linda Sarsour, Mayor Mitch Landrieu, Kathy Ko Chin, Michelle Alexander, Reverend Alvin Herring and Sunni Patterson.
From Diverse Issues in Higher Education:
by George R. Boggs
While I believe that most faculty members and leaders, no matter their race or ethnicity, value diversity and are committed to the concepts of equity and inclusion — and may even have specific goals to improve diversity — progress is stalled. Actions do not seem to match rhetoric. The question is, are we in higher education truly sincere in what we say about the value of diversity, equity and inclusion?
From AAC&U and Inside Higher Ed:
Inside Higher EdSimply adding race to the list of differences equally targeted in a diversity strategy won't eradicate the systemic racism that marginalizes—and kills—black Americans. Read more >>
From the Mass History Alliance:
The Mass Commons is an interactive website where people from Massachusetts history organizations can gather, network, share tools and resources, and build the profile of their organizations and institutions -- a place where all historical organizations and groups can hang out a shingle and be seen as part of a much larger whole. Its web address will be masshistorycommons.org.
The Mass History Commons brings us together!
Join the MHA Board, Commons logistics coordinator Caroline Littlewood, and esteemed guests as we take a tour of the Commons and explore its possibilities.Friday June 26, 2:00-3:30 pm
From Eventide:
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From NEASC:
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Today's Online Teaching Tips:
From Google:
Teach from Home a website of resources for teaching online!
More than ever before, the world is searching for ‘how do teachers do it.' Whether in a classroom or at home, we are grateful to everyone helping to keep students learning.
From NPR:
Alternating school days, socially distanced desks and scheduled online learning — the upcoming school year may end up looking like one giant, uncontrolled “Let’s hope this works!” experiment. But American education has a long history of innovation under duress. Here are a few ideas that seem newly relevant given the constraints of 2020 and beyond. (Listen here or read the story)
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