Last week of Freedom, Conventions, and Assorted Odds and Ends

Hello readers,
Am back after a hiatus spent with grandchildren and what we now officially call "Grandcamp". Four of the five were here for just about a week along with our youngest daughter, and we did have "grand" time. Running about looking at sites, making crafts and cooking for 3.5 times your usual table crowd makes for a busy week. It was fun.

So now it's time to get serious about the impending school year. And I am finding that a challenge. I really don't want to think about another year just yet. What's more, I find myself dreaming of grabbing a discount ticket to London and just jetting away! This is nothing new... it happens every summer during this time. I love my work, really enjoy the students and the variety, however about this time it feels a bit like a cage that soon I will be forced to crawl back into. I think the images I have of the work others do is part of the problem. I imagine other people at jobs where they can choose to spend more than 3 minutes in the bathroom or take a coffee break or lunch with friends and not be ''watching the room" and I inwardly fantasize about it. That's the sticking point for me about where I work and what I do - absolutely NO discretionary time. Your life is locked into 80 min. segments with 5 minute passing times and somewhere in the day you get "prep time" but you must use it while on campus. It's like being in a prison and it is not any surprise to me at all why all the inmates, both teachers and students, can't wait to rush out the doors each May! Is normal "work" like this too? Or do all you readers with "normal" (i.e. non-teaching) jobs get to call some of the shots about your use of time? So I start fretting about it a couple weeks out. The meetings get onto the calendar first.... I think to "break us all in" to the idea of having to be back in our routine.

For evening entertainment the past week I have been dipping between Netflix and the Republican Convention. Between the two, I will take Netflix. However, there was sort of train wreck quality to the RNC gathering that one couldn't help but watch. So tonight begins the Dems and it's kicking off with a bang that involves firing a woman who heads their national committee. If social media had anything to say about it, which it does but who cares, Senator Sanders should consider rising from the ashes and stealing the show, but that won't happen. However, given the list of speakers that will appear at this one, I will most likely find myself tuning in. I have at least found that conventions make it easier to knit or crochet while watching than do Midsommer Murder episodes on Netflix.
Are any of you less than excited about November's elections? I know I am NOT looking forward to all the ads on mainstream media... which is why I intend to avoid it as much as possible in the next 3 months. Most of you know that my husband is into all things political, although more on an international scale than a national one, so the days ahead are a bit like a big sports season are to other folks. Must admit, it's fun to be a spectator at times like these.

Movie review time: haven't seen many this summer and all of them so far have been kid flicks. Caught Spielberg's BFG based on the book of the same name by Rhoald Dahl. It was delightful and dark and well-executed. Mark Rylance was brilliant as the giant. Second film, The Secret Lives of Pets just about put both me and my 3yr old grandchild to sleep. I would suggest saving it as a rental for some night when you have little people you want to nod off around... and then quietly tuck them in. I will say this, cat lovers will not appreciate that all the cats in the film are either a) ridiculously overweight or b)viciously mean. It kept 3 out 4 grandkids mildly entertained and then they rated it only a 3 starts out of 5. My grandkids have serious movie critic chops, folks.

Still enjoying my bike, although I must admit that one week of 100 degree heat here in Misery-(oops) Missouri put the damper on my plans to ride daily. Some things are just not worth heat exhaustion.
Our pool seemed a safer option for the past 5 days of scorcher temps. I hope you all survive your final week of July with coolness!

Till next time - all the best.

Election Reflection.... or the Day After

Our entire family blogs, so it's been interesting to see and share one anothers thoughts on the developments of the past 48 hrs. I, too, had to put my thoughts into print on the day after this now "historic" election.

As my family is an interesting and tolerantly loving "camp divided", I found myself thinking about what I would most want to say about the election results. and my chief inspiration ironically came from the election night speeches of both candidates which were, in my mind, eloquent and unifying.

The beauty of the American democratic process is that we all have this opportunity every four years to stop and evaluate what it is we value in leadership and direction for our nation. We align ourselves in various and sundry ways behind the national and local candidates and ballot issues and we vote. Prior to that vote, things can get a bit heated at times; we wrangle, debate, campaign, and agonize about "what the other guy" will be doing on Nov. 4.

However, the beauty of our system is also what happens on the Wednesday AFTER we vote. My students were wrestling with this today. Teenage emotional highs and lows were all over the hallways of my school. Kids were proclaiming loudly about which foreign countries they might need to move to (next week!) and even some rather darkly inappropriate things were said about what could "happen" to our President elect prior to Jan. 20th. That's when I had to speak up and remind them about what happens in America on the day AFTER the election. That's where the true beauty of our democracy shines its brightest and best... where we become collectively "Americans" again... divisions aside, and look around and say, "So how will I be involved in making my country stronger and better? Where do I fit in the next four years? or (in a very Lutheran sense, ironically) What does this mean?"

That's not a pie-in-the-sky thing to do... to reflect. To stop and think, to realize one can't spend the next four years being either euphorically the victor or the angry defeated. Because to do that, devalues what the process is all about, exercising one's citizenship is as much about what we do in the four years between elections as what we do at the polls on one day. So I find the day (and days) following to be ones where I must examine what I will do and where I will find ways to make a difference as a citizen.

This campaign was long, and perhaps the very length of it explains why we all feel so jubilant that it's finished. It also might explain why feelings seem to be running so deep on both "sides" afterward. My prayer is that all Americans can manage not to be inclined to view the results the way we do our sporting events, with a winner-loser mentality. Politics are not a competitive sporting event, they are a reflective event, a visionary event, and a radical exercise in what it means to be citizen owners and cultivators of our democracy. We are a marvel to the rest of the world as we particpate in the process every 4 years. May God bless us all as we continue to grow our democracy; it's always a work in progress!

This is my favorite poem about what Election Day means... I have it on the bulletin board in my classroom all year round. Leave it to Whittier to put it all together so clearly.

The Poor Voter on Election Day

by John Greenleaf Whittier (1852)

The proudest now is but my peer, The highest not more high; To-day, of all the weary year, A king of men am I. To-day alike are great and small, The nameless and the known My palace is the people’s hall, The ballot-box my throne! Who serves to-day upon the list Beside the served shall stand; Alike the brown and wrinkled fist, The gloved and dainty hand! The rich is level with the poor, The weak is strong to-day; And sleekest broadcloth counts no more Than homespun frock of gray. To-day let pomp and vain pretence My stubborn right abide; I set a plain man’s common sense Against the pedant’s pride. To-day shall simple manhood try The strength of gold and land The wide world has not wealth to buy The power in my right hand! While there’s a grief to seek redress, Or balance to adjust, Where weighs our living manhood less Than Mammon’s vilest dust, — While there’s a right to need my vote A wrong to sweep away, Up! clouted knee and ragged coat! A man’s a man to-day!