Love Poem to My School

Today I opened a small book to enter the large world of Gerard Manley Hopkins. He was a Jesuit priest who was a conflicted poet and crafted perhaps some of the most intense, dense and condensed poems in the English language. He was a master of alliteration and wrote whole essays on the intricacies of his theories of poetic rhythms. Though Christ and God enter his work, he mostly praises their handiwork—sea and skylarks, rose-moles and brinded-cows, kingfishers and dragonflies and other glories of this sweet earth.

This morning, my eye fell on a casual poem he wrote in the visitor’s book at a place called Penmaen Pool. It struck me that by keeping the form and cadence and changing the words, I could write an ode to my place of work, The San Francisco School. Many years back I wrote a song about the school to the tune of The Girl from Ipanema that we still sing at graduation and Side by Side is informally our national anthem, but I thought it would be distinctive to have a school poem. As my mind began churning, there was a familiarity to it all and due to some surprising organization on my part, I actually found it on my computer— I had done this back in 2008!! So today, I added one verse, re-thought a few things and voila! our school poem was re-born. And so I offer it here. Best if read out loud.

POEM TO THE SF SCHOOL
(Derived from and parts outright stolen from Gerard Manley Hopkin’s Penmaen Pool)

Who long for rest, who look for pleasure

Away from counter, court or pool.

Oh where live well your lease of leisure

But here at, here at SF School?

You’ll dare the drum, you’ll risk the riff,

Each craft has here its tackle and tool.

Come clasp the crevice and climb the cliff

Ascend the scale at SF School.

From what’s yonder past  freeway’s roar,

That crooked world of cool or cruel,

Those droning dreams that bellow or bore,

You’ll find respite at SF School.

You’ll build pink towers, trace sanded letter

Sketch a cat, a dog, a mule

Let go best and strive for better

‘longside your friends at SF School.

Here’s both sun and stormy weather,

Both blazing heat and gusty cool.

Where side by side we walk together

Here at The San Francisco School.

Here we touch-taste-smell and see

And stitch it through with Golden Rule,

We are the change we want to be,

Though mere mortals we at SF School.

Here parents play and parents pay

And parents pray for teachers who’ll

Lift their children into the day

Of learning loving at their school.

So come who pine for peace or pleasure

Away from counter, court or pool,

Spend here your measure of time and treasure

And taste the treats of SF School.

Holding on for the Ride

A joyful evening of wild dancing to live music (ah, the poor DJ’ed generation, you don’t know what you’re missing!) to top off my 32^nd national Orff Conference, with a a gin and tonic chaser at the bar with the party folks and four too-short hours of sleep before boarding the plane home from Denver. Planning the upcoming plays with my colleagues in row 32, landing home to a sunny San Francisco and the good sense to sit in the yard with a fresh apple, walnuts, my handwritten journal and a pen. And what did I write about?

The fall leaves on the table. The quiet city hum sitting in a spot of sun. The review of the glorious moments in the four-day Conference alongside the usual disappointments and critiques. The remarkable circumstance of a bad idea set in motion by a committee pulled back and re-thought as a result of intelligent and civil discussion. It can happen! The sensation of healing, of staying with people for the long haul and moving from shouting across the divide of two microphones to sitting in a circle together. It can happen! The sensation that I’m finally beginning to shed the crusty skins of my accumulated bitterness and angers and move towards forgiveness and acceptance. It can happen!

And so a moment to pause in the fresh air of mid-day. Warm. Quiet. Peaceful. Content. Old by calendar years, but younger than I’ve ever been in many ways, energized to keep grabbing life’s tail and hold on for the ride. Life’s bounty before me on my backyard table and grateful and eager to partake. Much awaiting me this week— my granddaughter Zadie’s 2nd birthday tomorrow and what would have been my father-in-laws 89^th, my Dad’s birthday the next day and what would have been his 95^th, a visit with my Mom, rehearsal with my Pentatonic’s jazz band, another duet concert with Joshi, the sax player and school, school, school. Miles to go before I sleep and many, many promises to keep. But I’m holding on for the ride and ain’t it grand?!

The Privilege of Pre-check

I approached the woman checking ID’s at Airport Security. She looked at my ticket and started shouting, “Preacher! Preacher!” Well, it was Sunday morning and maybe she had heard about my reputation to stand up on soapboxes, but I soon figured out that she was shouting “Pre-check!” and motioned me over to another line. The person there said, “Don’t take anything out of your bag or pockets, leave your shoes and jacket on and walk through.”

Really? This was a First-World Heaven, the kind of stupid thing that sent me into spirals of ecstatic disbelief. I hate taking off my shoes, am tired of emptying my pockets and taking the computer out of the bag and particularly despise the hands-above-my-head-legs-spread booth. To just put my bag on the belt, walk through the simple doorway, pick it up on the other side and good-to-go— what a sensation! What had I done to earn it? Why was I suddenly considered trustworthy?

Or might it be that such security scanning is as safe as is necessary and the whole shoes off/ computer out/ pockets emptied is simply to keep us all afraid and humiliated and to keep the new scanning machine companies making profits? It really makes no sense whatsoever.

But hey, we all love being in the carpool lane whizzing by others stuck in traffic, enjoy getting waived to the front of the line just because, feel like the world owes us something for all the indignities it heaps upon us and any scrap of privilege is to be happily accepted. Take a look at my monthly paycheck and the deep respect our culture holds for teachers (not!) and you can see why walking through the pre-check security is probably going to be the pinnacle of privilege I’ll enjoy in this lfe. See you at the gate!

Made 'em Laugh

Keep this between us, but I got paid money today for showing kids “Singing in the Rain.”

Of course, I justified it splendidly, putting it in the context of “The Jazz Singer “excerpt we had watched earlier that exposed them to one of the weirdest recorded aberrations of human relationship— the Minstrel Show and blackface. The kids know High School Musical, but like most Americans, are wholly ignorant of all the glorious and goriest histories that led up to it. Such a history— which I am attempting in a mere 45 minutes per week— would have to dip into West African oral cultures, West European literate cultures, the slave trade, the avalanche of consequences of slavery and the flimsy philosophies, theologies, scientific theories desparately trying to hold up institutional ignorance and brutality, the move from the Minstrel Show to Vaudeville to Broadway to Hollywood, the impact of emerging technologies, the rise of ragtime and silent movies, Tin Pan Alley, the development of tap dancing, the first talking picture, the manufacture of our collective dreams and mythologies— and that’s just for starters! Behind and alongside of Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor and Debbie Reynolds is Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Bill Robinson, the Nicholas Brothers, Cab Calloway, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington and so many more, who laid down the path that led to the Yellow Brick Road.

What’s remarkable is how much of that list (minus the early histories) is in this movie! Here are two hoofers who get their start in vaudeville, move into silent movies and then cross into the new technology of the talking picture— with direct references to The Jazz Singer! The scene in which Don (Gene Kelly) reveals his love for Kathy (Debby Reynolds) is a brilliant exposure of the props behind the dreams— the romantic sunset lighting, the big fan for wind, the mist machine, the enchanting violins— love and romance manufactured, but still we don’t feel it as sham. We hunger for the magic to take us out of our humdrum days and are willing and ready to suspend all disbelief. “Sweep me away!” we implore the screen as we sit in the darkened theater (or Broadway Show) and that’s what the musical is— pure fantasy, lifting us in the air as Fred did with Ginger, sending us to the heavens with a heavenly song, turning the inconvenience of rain into an invitation to dance and sing with joy in our feet and love in our heart. There’s plenty of political incorrections— the sexy-only chorus girls, the background jungle scene, the dumb blonde bombshell (thank goodness, no blackface)— but in the midst of viewing, we’re not interested in deconstruction and critique. Nor should we be.

This film contains not one, but at least four memorable musical moments in the history of American film. The opening Fit as a Fiddle, then Make ‘Em Laugh, Moses Supposes— and of course, Singing in the Rain. Make ‘Em Laugh is my personal favorite, and I nominate Donald O-Connor, along with Danny Kaye, as one of the most brilliant comic dancers/actors. My 8^th graders, some entering their adolesence to the soundtrack of Gangsta Rap, were smiling and laughing like innocent 7-year olds— testimony to the staying power of great art. It truly made ‘em laugh.

Next week, Stormy Weather!

Ripples to Bosnia

Yesterday, I went to a concert and a woman approached me in the lobby:

“Do you remember me? I took a workshop with you about 20 years ago. Called you and told you I was going to Bosnia the next day to work with war-ravaged children and asked if you had anything I could take over to them.”

“And what did I say?”

“That yes, you were reasonably sure you did. And so I came to the workshop.”

“And did I?”

“Yes, I used the ideas and material immediately and the children loved it. Thank you.”

“And thank you, both for the work and for telling me about it. One rarely knows what people take out of a workshop and where they take it and with whom.”

I’m not much of a poet, but I’ve always liked this little poem I wrote around my 60^th birthday:

Pebble in a Pond

20 years old. Confident, cocky, sure that

that boulder I will heave into the mainstream

will make a big splash in the world.

Each decade, the stone

and the river

 got smaller.

At 60, that once-big splash a mere pebble

In a small pond.

But still it makes ripples, tiny rings

that circle outwards

and sometimes reach the shore

of someone’s life about to be changed.

And so yesterday I found out that many years ago, a little ripple reached some children in Bosnia and gave them a few moments of pleasure. Who would have guessed?

"What Is WRONG with You?!!"

Teaching is perhaps one of the most difficult and effective spiritual paths. The one that will test you to the hilt on the whole “love thy neighbor” idea. Of course, most people’s version of school has nothing to do with love, but from my vantage point, it’s at the center of the whole enterprise— or should be. As Dickens so eloquently put it:

“Thank you, Mr Rokesmith. You love children.”

“I should hope everybody does.”

“They ought,” said Mrs. Boffin., “but we all of us don’t do what we ought, do us?”

The school year starts with great hopes and expectations that every child will be lovable instantly. But they’re not. And some will make us crazy with their behavior. If we remember that “behavior is the language of children,” we needn’t take it personally. They’re telling us things like “This subject is so incomprenhensible to me and it’s so confusing that other kids seem to get it that I have to do something here to survive.” Or  “I haven’t had breakfast in three days” or “My parents are fighting” or a thousand other things. It takes a while for us to notice these patterns and how they interrupt our perfect lessons and we start to get exasperated and angry and either alone in our thoughts or checking it out with fellow teachers or out loud to the child him or herself, we say, “What is wrong with you?!!” with the full force of frustration and judgment.

Though the tone is wrong above, the question is a good one. If the answer has a scientific name, like Dyslexia or Autism or Asperger’s, it changes everything. Judgement turns to understanding turns to compassion. If the answer is a humane one— like a pet or grandparent dying or difficult issues at home— we also lean in further to affection and loving gestures. It is our ignorance—and sometimes the child’s as well— as to what’s going on that keeps the patterns of exasperation and  harsh judgment going, that puts the italics in “wrong” and the exclamation points after the question mark.

As with children, so with everyone. How many of the people who piss us off and drive us crazy might be seen in whole different light if we took the time to ask, “Tell me your story.”? Or if their behavior had a commonly accepted diagnosis like “obsessive compulsive.” Suddenly we’re an inch more understanding when they keep moving everything we put down somewhere else.

If we’re ever going to move this “love your neighbor” thing beyond a convenient soundbyte platitude and make it real, that’s the kind of work we’ll have to do. And while the stories can evoke compassion, they can’t be used as mere excuses in a victim mentality kind of way. We are all responsible for moving beyond our stories to improve our behavior and take responsibility for our actions and the way they affect others.

To review:

• Step one is noticing and asking the question.

• Step two is asking again after removing the italics and exclamation points.

• Step three is listening and re-framing once you know more. Leaning into understanding and compassion.

Where things get really thorny is when you’re trying to love your neighbor while they’re dumping their trash in your yard or throwing loud parties with live heavy metal bands at 2 in the morning. And they’re not interested in hearing your story about why you might find that upsetting. The people I’ve had the most trouble loving are those who have intentionally sought to harm me. That’s a whole different ball game.

But I’ve been told that I have “too-many-ideas-in-one-blog-Syndrome” so I’ll leave it at that. 

Shopping at the A & P

I’m shamelessly dating myself here, evoking the old supermarket up on Elmora Ave. in Elizabeth, New Jersey where we used to shop. I believe A & P stood for the Atlantic and Pacific Company and according to a quick Wiki check, it actually was founded in 1859! But though tempting to go into the history of U.S. supermarkets, this entry was born from two words that rose up before me this morning while playing Solitaire— Affirm and Provoke. I should post them at my writing desk, in my classroom, on my piano, reminding me of my twin purpose in writing, in teaching, in performing jazz.

Affirmation. We are luminous beings, radiant with a true nature aligned with all of nature. At the top of evolution’s experiment, we’re graced with immense possibility— to think with dazzling intricacy, feel with profound emotion, move with grace and eloquence. Our gift (and curse) is the opportunity and obligation to choose. The promise of self-actualization is given freely to all, the fulfillment is our lifetime path of what we choose, what we don’t choose, what seems chosen for us. It’s not enough to be generically wondrous— each of us has our own particular way of shining and our unique blend of the rainbow colors. In writing, teaching, performing music, I’m looking at how to remind myself and others of this promise, both in general and specific ways. The most moving comment in my recent concert was “It felt like you were speaking to each of us alone.” The most moving affirmation I received recently was that I managed to capture a bit of each person’s genius in talking about the 22 Level III Orff graduates this summer, found the language and had taken the time to notice each’s unique way of being amidst the general appreciation. And I am always happy to receive comments from readers like “You spoke what I felt but couldn’t quite articulate.” To praise, to affirm, to remind— worthy hopes for us all.

And then provocation. We are none of us as good as we hoped to be, as we might be, as we should be, as we could be. The sun of our original nature may be ceaselessly shining, but the clouds of our ignorance, poor choices, troublesome personalities and just plain old emotional weather are constantly obscuring the light. And so each encounter in a class, concert or piece of writing, at the same time that it lovingly affirms, should be kicking our butt. “Get to work, you worthless, lazy scoundrel! Think deeper! Stop covering your heart! There’s bad things happening out there— raise your voice and speak out! Get out and work! There’s bad things happening inside of us— look them in the face and deal with them! Don’t beat yourself up brutally, but don’t be so smug and self-satisfied either!” To challenge, to question, to provoke— it keeps us honest and growing.

Affirm and Provoke. That’s the A & P store I shop at. See you in aisle 4.