Our Most Important Investment

Every year an amazing transition occurs during the first weeks of August and September: kids who have spent their summer hours lolling in pools, on bikes or in movie theaters; kids who swore in June they never wanted to see the inside of a classroom again, suddenly can’t wait to load up on pencils and paper, don the latest “Back to School” fashions and head back to the world of books, desks, chalk dust and computers.  This remarkable phenomena, eagerly awaited by most parents, is also happily exploited by teachers who understand that September enthusiasm must be harnessed and recycled like precious fuel if it’s to last all the way to the following June.

But keeping that enthusiasm alive is harder than ever these days as declining budgets force many school districts to cut back on services, classes, salaries and supplies.  Many teachers in our area begin their back to school preparations with a trip to the educational supply store where they spend their own money to purchase not just enrichment materials for our students but the basics as well: paper, pencils, maps, study aids.

It seems to me that when our economy suffers, the first items we cut from our budgets are those that appear to be the least painful in the short term: the Arts (the soul of our country), Economic Aid to the Needy (the heart of our country) and Education (the future of our country).

How shortsighted we have become, especially considering that our country has had a long history of respect for and belief in the importance of educating our children.  As early as the 1600’s, our colonists were establishing the first schools.  Our first institute of higher learning, Harvard College, was founded in 1636 by the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and by 1647 Massachusetts had passed a law requiring the establishment of public schools in every town with at least 50 families.

By the early 1800’s, public education had become a priority of our political leaders who wisely saw that the economic and social well-being of a world class country inevitably depended on well educated citizens.  With that in mind, many states followed the example set by Massachusetts in 1837 by establishing state boards of education.  And it wasn’t long before states began to pass compulsory school attendance laws.

With our long and rich history of improving our lives and country through public funded education, with the monumental tasks that face us in the 21st. Century—a fiercely competitive world economy, shrinking resources, global pollution and climate change, new and yet untreatable diseases—why, would we even contemplate cutting funds to schools and education?

I realize there are those who don't want their tax dollars spent on educating someone else’s children but if we’re lucky enough to reach old age, those children will be the doctors and legislators, the firefighters and police officers and the caregivers we will come to depend on.

Sure, schools don’t always teach what we’d like.  Sometimes the method of the moment overshadows the end result.  Sometimes emphasis on certain subjects seems misplaced.  So I suggest becoming an involved citizen.  Attend your local school board meetings and let your thoughts and concerns be heard.  Vote responsibly for school board members and other local and statewide leaders.  Question where funds are being spent and watch that they don’t get wasted or misused.  But please, while you’re voting, don’t vote away much needed tax dollars from public education.  Yes, the public education system can certainly do better but we have some great teachers out there who are working diligently to do the best for our children.

The future of the United States, indeed that of the planet, depends on well educated global citizens.  Our children are that future.  Today, their education is in our hands; tomorrow, our hopes and well-being will be in theirs.

An Almost Forgotten Art

From as far back as I can remember, one of the highlights of my day has been the arrival of the day’s mail.  When I was small, almost all of the cards and letters that the postman dropped at our door were addressed to my mother.  She had left her life and history two thousand miles away on the South Carolina shores to live in what she most surely thought were the wilds of California.  The many cards and letters that traversed the continent were her lifeline, her connection in vellum and medium card stock, to the friends and family she might never see again.

I began writing to these unseen relatives, my Grandmother Alice, great Aunt Hester, Uncle Avery and Aunt Lutie, almost as soon as I could print my name, and some of my most cherished treasures are the few cards and letters of theirs from the ‘50’s and ‘60’s that survived my many moves and spring cleanings.  The most special letter that I have though is one that was written by my Grandmother Alice to my cousin Ruth, who was my Mother’s age.  My Grandmother was living with us at the time helping my Mom who was pregnant with my brother (I was about 3 years old).  In the letter, she describes my Father laying the cement walkways in our backyard, the very ones on which I would later ride my bikes and roller skates.  She talked about him planting fruit trees, those marvelous apricot and fig trees that would become such an integral part of our lives, trees that in my child’s view had been there from time immemorial.  It is so hard to imagine our parents as young men and women; to read my Grandmother’s description of my youthful parents is to share an intimate moment with them that I would have never been able to experience otherwise.  For that irreplaceable gift, I will always be indebted to my cousin Ruth who graciously sent the letter to me shortly before her own death in 1994.

My Dad with my big brother Leo.  In the background you can see a young alder tree and his recently planted fig tree.

Regrettably, letter writing has lost its popularity in our country.  Whereas, at one time it was our major form of communicating with loved ones and friends from afar, today the technology of our harried society—text messages, email, telephones, facebook, fax machines—have pretty much replaced the slow and thoughtful musings of the pen.  People complain that they are too busy to write a long newsy letter, but I suspect that we are really no busier as a people than we ever were, that instead we have replaced the time we could write letters with time in front of the television set or the xbox or the computer.  Instead of committing our thoughts and impressions of the world to paper—a physical act that can leave a permanent mark of us in time—we have allowed ourselves to become passive recipients of someone else’s images and viewpoints, a process that will likely leave nothing more permanent than an indentation in our sofas.

I am not guilt-free in this leaving behind of letter writing.  I love my computer; I love the instant communication it allows with email and the wider audience one can achieve with blogging and the instantaneous dissemination of important news and ideas.  And I admittedly spend many hours sitting in front of it.  But there is something very sad to me when I walk down to my mailbox and find only flyers or ads or bills - and not even very many of those.  The Grandmothers and Aunts and Uncles who used to write long interesting letters to me are gone now and with them, my sense of anticipation and eager excitement for what the mailman has to bring.

Throughout history, some of the greatest literature ever written has been in the form of the letter.  Whether from kings and statesmen, lovers or friends, letters have provided a more intimate view of ourselves as a people and nation than newspaper or history accounts could ever provide.  And one of the reasons they provide this stunning and insightful viewpoint into ourselves is that letters allow us to muse, to simmer our thoughts, to let our defenses down at times; to show ourselves as we truly are.

The invention of the telephone was admittedly a landmark in human communications and no one can deny the thrill of hearing a loved one’s voice from miles away.  But verbal and written communications are very different.  We don’t speak the way we write and it is the written word that years later can still bring a tear, a smile, a memory.  If Sarah Bernhardt had told her love by phone, “Your words are my food, your breath my wine. You are everything to me,” her words likely would have been lost to the rest of us forever.  And what a shame that would be.

A Room Of One's Own

I have this great room for writing.  And thinking.  And daydreaming.  It’s on the second floor of our house and has two large windows with views of the trees and hill behind our house as well as the mountains to the northeast of us.  Sometimes the views are stunning when we have heavy storms that blanket our mountains with snow.  Some days I can sit up in my room and watch dark brooding thunderclouds roll by one after the other.  And one day the sun came out while it was still raining and a glorious rainbow filled up half of my window.  I have to admit it’s hard to get any work done when a rainbow is staring you in the face.

This room has not always been mine.  For more than twenty years it was the personal domain of our daughter Michaela.  She took possession of the room when I moved here in 1976 when she was only a year old.  Right away we painted the room a bright sunny yellow that complimented her white crib (soon replaced by a bed) and the cute white furniture I bought from Sears.  When she was older, we let her pick a new color scheme and she chose a soft sky blue.  By the time she moved out to go to graduate school, however, it was nearly impossible to tell what the color of her room was because almost every available inch was now covered with pictures, sayings, posters and photos—even the ceiling!  I don’t recall ever seeing a single poster of a rock group or celebrity, however.  No, Michaela’s room expressed her concerns for the environment, indigenous peoples and life on the planet.

It was a daunting task for her to go through all her belongings in this room before she moved to Colorado—and no small task to remove all those posters and photos.  In fact, there was still plenty of stuff left behind when she moved out.  When she came home that first Christmas, she spent a few days sorting and packing more stuff that I later mailed to her.  And yet, even with all that, there were still boxes that she had left behind—mementos, school awards, things she just couldn’t decide about.   Things she thought she might want later but didn’t want to schlep around with her now.  That was why for another year her old room became a sort of storage room for things of our own that we didn’t know what to do with.  We kept saying we had to get to cleaning the room and redecorating it, but no one really wanted to take the first step.  Maybe part of me kept hoping she would actually return and retake possession of the room but I think mostly I just didn’t want to exert the necessary energy.  Finally, in the fall of the next year I went through the rest of her stuff (and all the junk we’d added) and got everything out of there.  Then Jim began the really daunting task of prepping those poor abused walls.  We re-painted the ceiling, added a central light and fan and then took several weeks going over color schemes.  Finally, I decided and Jim went about transforming the room. 

I think of Michaela every day I am in this room.  All the years of her growing-up that she spent in here.  The good times, the sad times, the sound of her laughter echoing off these walls, the tears that were shed in here.  The secrets that she kept locked up in little private places.  This room helped shape her life, helped direct her toward the future she is now living.  Watching the birds in the tree tops, seeing the clouds rolling by, it is no wonder she cherishes the environment.  It is no wonder she is a poet. 

There is poetry here in this room and now I get to read it.