This post first ran in April of 2019 and the 6th grader I’m referring to is now in college and I’m leaving every possibility open to journey with them again. I pulled my 6th grader out of school for a week to hit the road. I adore the public school teachers who spend time with […]
Education
The Scopes Monkey Trial was held 100 years ago this month, but it feels like just yesterday. Actually, it feels like today; it feels terrifyingly like tomorrow. The theocrats are ascendant, friends, and their rejection of evolution is tied to all the other monstrosities they’re imposing on public life. Theodosius Dobzhansky said that nothing in […]
Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor died on Friday. This essay regarding her influence on American educational standards originally ran on May 12, 2011, but today it may be more timely than ever. Specific temporal references (e.g., “seven or eight years ago,” “last week,” “the current”) remain the same as in the original post. […]
My work has become opening digital files to search for signs of life. The biggest thing I do, the midday ritual of checking emails. Refresh, refresh. Happy Teacher Appreciation Week! I’m a saint. I miss you, Ms. Dusto. I’m dad, away on business. Can I please have an extension? This morning we got my Auntie’s […]
In August, I took my almost-four-year-old daughter to the dinosaur galleries in the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. The ceilings were lower and the clientele was shorter than I remembered from my own childhood, but the essentials were the same: the bones, the horns, the talons, and best of all, the enormous teeth. The better to […]
When Kentwood Wells was 12 years old, he and his parents stumbled across a magic lantern in an antique shop during a Maine vacation. The instrument, an old image projector that used a kerosene lamp for illumination, came with beautiful German glass slides depicting scenes of hunters, soldiers, and children. Wells’ family became fascinated by […]
Some years ago I attended a beach barbecue in Juneau, Alaska on a gray summer day. The adults drank beer in a ring around a fire where salmon collars sizzled and talked about the price of boats and politics. The kids ran in a mixed-age herd closer to the surf, clambering over driftwood and getting […]
My friend Taya and I were out at her parents’ country place, about twelve acres in the western foothills of the Cascades. I was maybe eight, visiting for the first time. Taya was taking me on a tour. We were struggling along, as short-legged people do through dense, early successional Northwest forest. She stopped and […]
