Bends Toward Justice

In my first year of teaching I was sitting in the teachers' lounge as another teacher expounded about one of those periodic administrivial admonishments; in this case, not to allow students to leave class to buy breakfast in the cafeteria and bring it back to class.  Lou exclaimed that he knew what was best for his students. If they couldn’t think about schoolwork due to hunger, he’d send them to get food, etc. I thought this guy understands why we’re here.  He really cares about his students. He isn’t mindlessly obeying arbitrary rules.  We had no mentor program in those days; I decided that I would look to him as an unofficial mentor. Within a month, I learned he`was fired, and the Principal was telling us mysteriously, “Lou needs our support right now.”  I soon found out that he’d been having sex with two different students (at different times) in a janitor’s closet, and when the first student found out about the second, she revealed it. I never had an...

Thinking about the death penalty compassionately is a challenge because those convicted are probably (more on that later) guilty of a heinous crime, and their victims and the victims’ families’ feelings need to be considered along with the more general concerns of society. Certainly, sentencing that allows a murderer to be free within a decade is wrong. However, most states do have laws that allow for a sentence of life without parole. Furthermore, if we contemplate changing laws (as some propose fast-tracking executions), we could simply make life without parole a possibility in all capital cases. By the way, many strong arguments, both in favor of the death penalty and against the arguments of death penalty opponents, may be found at http://www.prodeathpenalty.com/DP.html . It might be simple and make sense if we could structure our law as Supreme Court Justice Scalia has suggested: “You kill, you die.” However, I see four strong arguments against the death penalty. The first ...

Why shouldn’t blondes have coffee breaks? It takes too long to re-train them. (“Short Funny Blonde Jokes”) May reasonable conclusions about less-obvious traits be drawn based on shared physical qualities?How much influence can one gene or batch of genes working together have? Though genetic understanding is still in its infancy, according to Stephen Ceci and Wendy M. Williams “most researchers agree that genes do not explain between-group differences.” That is, differences other than the obvious physical features that mark a person as part of a racial group are not genetically based. In modern times, any contrary argument is likely to be found offensive by many, and may result in ostracism or job loss. It seems silly to imagine that genes that cause a person to have a broad flat nose or an epicanthal fold of the eyelids or female genitalia or blond hair can also impact intelligence. Racial characteristics are already seen as social, rather than scientific markers. Sexual characteri...

This is a contest entry I sent to CelticsHub almost a decade ago.  It won me a pair of basketball shoes. Hate the Lakers?! Thatʼs small minded. As Bill Russell noted in his autobiography, the com- in competition means “with”: without the Lakers the Celtics would not be as great, just as without Wilt Chamberlain Russell would never have become as great as he did. I grew up in Southern California until age 11. It seemed like every other week Jerry West and Elgin Baylor were playing out Atticus Finchʼs definition of courage: knowing they were licked before they started, but giving it their whole heart, soul, and guts, only to fall to Russell, Cousy, the Joneses, and the perpetually-in-motion and perpetually-in-the-right place John Havlicek. What a relief when I was fourteen, truly aware, and truly in love with NBA basketball to live in the land of the champions. I fell in love with the Cowens/White/Havlicek Celts. Think KG plays like a mad dog? You must never have seen Dave Cowen...

Marilyn Monroe is “probably the most celebrated of all actresses,” and People Magazine’s “Sexiest Woman of the Century.” Since her death in 1962 her estate has earned an average of $2 million a year by licensing her image("Marilyn Monroe - Biography."). But would she have had the same success in life and after death with a different name? Marilyn Monroe was born with the name Norma Jeane Mortenson. Her mother almost immediately changed the last name to Baker (Mr. Mortenson had long-before departed the scene), so she grew up as Norma Jeane Baker. She started her modeling career as Norma Jeane Daugherty while her husband was in the Merchant Marine during WWII. A 20th Century Fox executive named Ben Lyon fostered her movie career and name change. Monroe was her mother's maiden name, and Lyon liked the sound of Marilyn, according to Wikipedia. The first time she signed the name she had to ask someone how to spell Marilyn, according to IMDB. She began working in film as Mar...

“Watch out!” I jerked my handlebars back to the right as a racing bike rider in a yellow spandex jersey flashed by on the left. He turned his head to throw back an added, “Stupid!” Given all the bike riding that happens on Marthaʼs Vineyard in the summer, some parts of it are terrifically unfriendly to bike riders. Just a mile out Wing Rd. from Oak Bluffs, after Wing Rd. crosses County Rd. at a four-way stop, the sidewalks bikes are supposed to use disappear I was first in a group of four strung out along a narrow road with other bikes and a lot of cars. We four needed to turn left onto Alpine Rd. I looked back, saw a big black SUV, and waited. On a second look, I saw that the driver was waiting to let us turn. I thrust my left arm out in a sketchy turn signal, turned it into a thank-you wave at the driver, then pulled it back in at the spandex riderʼs shout. He rode on. The SUV driver waited. I turned, meditating unspoken retorts. My brother-in-law caught up with me. “If ...

I believe in magic. Not witchcraft, not voodoo, nor even the“sufficiently advanced technology” indistinguishable from magic of Clarke’s third law (but thanks be to technology for the incomprehensible gift of cut-and-paste, spell check, and the magical interwebs). I’m talking about the magic of Harry Potter. Still not the magic of lignum vitae wands with phoenix feathers, expeliarmus, and time twisters, but the mysterious magic of love. [SPOILER ALERT] As we learn early on, Harry survived Voldemort’s attack because of his mother’s love. Dumbledore explains it to Harry, “If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love.”  And as we learn late in the final book, Snape, tortured and ambitious, always chooses good because of his love for Harry’s mother. Again and again throughout the saga, Harry is pressured toward isolation, doubt, pessimism, negativity, and evil. But every time the persistence of love and loyalty, friendship and trust hold him to his mission of goo...

My wife Meg and I met when we were in college together. When Meg tells the story, it is about us joining together to help our mutual friend Alicia with a problem that Alicia thought was a big deal.  We didn’t think it was a big deal, but both of us respected her and her feelings; we may have exchanged some smiles about it, but we took it seriously and stuck with Alicia until it was solved. A few months later I ran into Meg by chance, at the Cumberland Farms on Route One in Wells  That was the encounter that actually started our relationship. She was riding up to college with her high school friend Carol.  For Meg and me, the relationship was kind of off-and-on for the next year. When we got back together for what turned out to be 32 years now, Carol and her mother were both in the hospital with emergency health issues.  Carol’s mom had an aneurism she was lucky to survive. Carol, by then late in her first pregnancy, was having complications. Our date turned into...

“Tell us your name, and something special about yourself,” asked the instructor of the curriculum class.  “Why do they always ask this?” I wondered. No one thinks they are special; everyone thinks they are pretty close to average.  These days the extraordinary is not spectacular; instead, it is an accumulation of positive ordinary actions over time, rippling outward and onward through society. One of our curriculum textbooks makes the point that school conveys values.  It is part of the implicit curriculum. For example, we say the Pledge of Allegiance every day, students are encouraged to address teachers with honorific titles and to refrain from offensive language.   I could add many more examples. The point is that every working day I am a steward of society; all teachers are. Not all teachers are equally thoughtful in their stewardship. Being thoughtful means every day includes challenges that are moral as well as educational.   We hear of tea...

I believe in music. Maybe it was the eurythmics. During my early years, my mom took my brother, my sister, and me to a weekly class where we danced, sang, and played rhythm instruments. We went to those classes once a week for about three years.   Maybe it was my father. My dad had a huge collection of jazz records and a console stereo hi-fi. He used to put stacks of records on the changer: Dinah Washington, Frank Sinatra, Stan Getz, and more. Maybe it was the times. My early awareness of music on the radio coincided with the era of folk songs, protest songs, and the civil rights movement. Pete Seeger sang “We Shall Overcome,” and Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.” Over the next few years protest singing started to rock, and attacked the Vietnam war: “Fortunate Son,” “Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag,” and  Woody Guthrie’s son Arlo’s anti-war epic “Alice’s Restaurant.” Maybe it was the Beatles. The Beatles seemed to make pop music an even bigger cultural phenome...