Dear Spike:
Today we mourn a man who spent more time in Congress than any other individual in the history of our nation.
Sen. Robert Byrd began his service in the House of Representatives in 1953 and was elected to the Senate six years later. His long fight for the primacy of the legislative branch of our government ended at 3 a.m. this morning.
But Byrd’s greatest contribution to our nation wasn’t the length of his tenure, the money that he funneled to improve the conditions of those living in abject poverty in West Virginia, his staunch opposition to imperialistic military adventures, his steadfast support of health care reform or even the soaring speeches he delivered to his colleagues on the Senate floor.
No, the most important thing this former Ku Klux Klan organizer gave to us was the hope that we are all worthy of redemption.
I’ll save the details for the history books. It is enough to say that Byrd was a supporter of the greatest home-grown terrorist organization in the history of the United States. In latter years that association would have effectively, and appropriately, precluded his election. In West Virgina, in the 1950s, it likely facilitated his ascent.
It’s not precisely clear to me when Byrd changed, but he did so nonetheless. In 1964, he filibustered against the Civil Rights Act. But by 2004, he had won the endorsement of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which noted that Byrd was one of just 17 senators that had supported its stance on every bill of interest to the NAACP.
He came to be known as the "Conscience of the Senate." And although some called him the “Guilty Conscience,” I’m not sure it matters, except as a lesson for us all on what it means to be human.
We all make mistakes. Sometimes we make mistakes so grave that they will stay with us for the rest of our lives. But while we, and others, may never forget those failings, we don’t have to repeat them.
We can change. We can be better than who were yesterday, and better still than who we are today. We can admit that we have been wrong. We can ask forgiveness. And then we can earn it.
One day at a time.
Love,
dad
Showing posts with label heros. Show all posts
Showing posts with label heros. Show all posts
Monday, June 28, 2010
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
NEVER IN NOTHING
Dear Spike:
Your mother began the school year with a classroom of 25 students, many of whom didn't speak English and most of whom had never had a book read to them, much less ever owned one.
She fretted. She cried. She wondered whether she was the right teacher for the job.
But she didn't run away. She didn't say no. And when she was advised to simply treat her kindergarteners as pre-schoolers, she declined.
Yesterday, the students' test scores came in. Almost all of them are reading on grade level.
Winston Churchill said it best: "Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in."
Love,
dad
Your mother began the school year with a classroom of 25 students, many of whom didn't speak English and most of whom had never had a book read to them, much less ever owned one.
She fretted. She cried. She wondered whether she was the right teacher for the job.
But she didn't run away. She didn't say no. And when she was advised to simply treat her kindergarteners as pre-schoolers, she declined.
Yesterday, the students' test scores came in. Almost all of them are reading on grade level.
Winston Churchill said it best: "Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in."
Love,
dad
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
NO JOE HILL
Dear Spike:
A potty strike?
I'm a big supporter of labor. Big.
But you're no Joe Hill.
Love,
dad
Sunday, January 6, 2008
ALL SACRILEGE ASIDE
More important than the Iowa caucuses. More historic than the New Hampshire primaries. More democratic than Super-Duper Tuesday. It's Spike Poll 3! Make your vote count! (It's just off to the right hand side there... a little down... a little further... there, you found it!)
Dear Spike:
I don’t know where I was when I first heard Desmond Tutu speak. I can’t tell you when I first heard U2’s Bono sing. And I’m not sure when my long and tortured relationship with St. Augustine began.
But I can still remember the very first time I heard a Weird Al Yankovic song.
I was in the third grade. My class was out in the playground, standing around the outside line of the dodgeball circle. Mrs. Tillman was leading an aerobics class. She had a big black boombox, in which was playing a mixed tape of Weird Al songs.
I’d never laughed so hard in my entire life.
Granted, I was only 9 years old, but still.
Sometimes you chose your personal prophets. Sometimes they choose you.
I know, it’s all kind of blasphemous, right? I mean over here, behind Door No. 1, we’ve got the archbishop emeritus of Cape Town, who helped end apartheid in South Africa, won the Nobel Prize, and whose ticket for heaven is rumored to read: “Section 1, Row 1, Seat 1.”
And then over here, behind Door No. 2, we’ve got the guy who sang “Dare to be Stupid.”
To wit:
“Put down your chainsaw and listen to me,
It's time for us to join in the fight,
It's time to let your babies grow up to be cowboys,
It's time to let the bedbugs bite.”
But all sacrilege aside, I’d be really thrilled if someday...
... you know, before you fall in love with some talentless bunch of boy band eunuchs, and beg, beg, beggggg me to buy you a $150 ticket to go watch the corporately contrived group of hacks lip sync in front of 25,000 other preteen girls, all screaming at octaves and decibels that even Dick Cheney would concede violate the Geneva Conventions ban on torture...
... your first concert was a Weird Al concert.
And maybe your first date could be your dad.
And maybe we could sing along to “Yoda,” and dance along with “Fat” and laugh as the rail-thin, accordion playing singing comedian from Lynwood, Calif. belts out his version of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody — polka style.
There will be plenty of time, later on, for us to discuss the lessons of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation commission and to debate whether Augustine’s just war theory is adaptable for modern humanists and to argue over who your generation’s Bono is, the way my father and I once pondered who my generation’s John Lennon would be.
And yes, I expect we’ll have some of those conversations.
But sometimes it’s simply best to...
“Settle down, raise a family, join the PTA,
Buy some sensible shoes and a Chevrolet,
And party 'til you're broke and they drive you away,
It's OK — you can dare to be stupid.”
Love,
dad
Dear Spike:
I don’t know where I was when I first heard Desmond Tutu speak. I can’t tell you when I first heard U2’s Bono sing. And I’m not sure when my long and tortured relationship with St. Augustine began.
But I can still remember the very first time I heard a Weird Al Yankovic song.
I was in the third grade. My class was out in the playground, standing around the outside line of the dodgeball circle. Mrs. Tillman was leading an aerobics class. She had a big black boombox, in which was playing a mixed tape of Weird Al songs.
I’d never laughed so hard in my entire life.
Granted, I was only 9 years old, but still.
Sometimes you chose your personal prophets. Sometimes they choose you.
I know, it’s all kind of blasphemous, right? I mean over here, behind Door No. 1, we’ve got the archbishop emeritus of Cape Town, who helped end apartheid in South Africa, won the Nobel Prize, and whose ticket for heaven is rumored to read: “Section 1, Row 1, Seat 1.”
And then over here, behind Door No. 2, we’ve got the guy who sang “Dare to be Stupid.”
To wit:
“Put down your chainsaw and listen to me,
It's time for us to join in the fight,
It's time to let your babies grow up to be cowboys,
It's time to let the bedbugs bite.”
But all sacrilege aside, I’d be really thrilled if someday...
... you know, before you fall in love with some talentless bunch of boy band eunuchs, and beg, beg, beggggg me to buy you a $150 ticket to go watch the corporately contrived group of hacks lip sync in front of 25,000 other preteen girls, all screaming at octaves and decibels that even Dick Cheney would concede violate the Geneva Conventions ban on torture...
... your first concert was a Weird Al concert.
And maybe your first date could be your dad.
And maybe we could sing along to “Yoda,” and dance along with “Fat” and laugh as the rail-thin, accordion playing singing comedian from Lynwood, Calif. belts out his version of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody — polka style.
There will be plenty of time, later on, for us to discuss the lessons of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation commission and to debate whether Augustine’s just war theory is adaptable for modern humanists and to argue over who your generation’s Bono is, the way my father and I once pondered who my generation’s John Lennon would be.
And yes, I expect we’ll have some of those conversations.
But sometimes it’s simply best to...
“Settle down, raise a family, join the PTA,
Buy some sensible shoes and a Chevrolet,
And party 'til you're broke and they drive you away,
It's OK — you can dare to be stupid.”
Love,
dad
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
EVERY LITTLE STEP
Dear Spike:
This week was an absolute explosion of development for you.
You’ve begun to sit upright without any help at all. You can now roll from your back to your front and then back again. You’ve started to slither, just a bit, in an attempt to grab out-of-reach toys. You study your hands as they open and close and have begun to experiment with moving one or two fingers at a time. And, just in the past two or three days, you’ve begun to scream — not in sadness or agony, but simply to demand attention and maybe to sing a little song.
I’ve pretty much given up trying to capture every momentous moment with the camera. And recently, I’ve had to abandon the fantasy that I’m even going to be present for every little step.
To wit, this exchange with your mother a few days ago:
Me: “Come quick! Look what she’s doing.”
Your mom: (rushing into the room) “What? What is it?”
Me: (proudly) “Look! Spike is crawling toward her toys!”
Your mom: (sighing) “Oh that? Yeah, she did that with me a few days ago.”
Me: “A few days ago? Where was I?”
Your mom: “Well, you were somewhere.”
Me: “So I missed it?”
Your mom: “No, you just saw it.”
Me: “It’s just not the same.”
Your mom: “Yes, it is.”
She’s right, of course. It seems that we’re often so obsessed with firsts that we tend to miss the significance, the joy, the struggle and the glory in everything that comes next.
Many people know, for instance, that Jackie Robinson was the first black baseball player in Major League Baseball. Far fewer can name the second black player drafted out of the Negro Leagues, Larry Doby, who played his first game for the Cleveland Indians on July 6, 1947.
The world had not, in the 11 weeks separating Robinson’s and Doby’s entries into the big leagues, suddenly become a more tolerant place for black baseball players. Doby spent the rest of the 1947 season – and indeed, a good portion of his Hall of Fame career — suffering through the same indignities as Robinson.
Robinson rightfully went down in history for his place in advancing the cause of civil rights for Americans of color. Doby’s role in the battle, meanwhile, was ignominiously ignored. And yet even in Robinson’s shadow, Doby still shined. He was a seven-time All-Star, twice led the American League in home runs and led the Indians with seven hits, including a double and a homer, in Cleveland’s 1948 World Series victory over the Boston Braves.
Many people know that Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay were the first men to summit Mt. Everest. Hillary and the expedition’s leader, John Hunt, were promptly knighted for their accomplishment. Nearly lost to history is the subsequent journey of Swiss climbers Ernst Schmied and Jürg Marmet.
The 29,029-foot peak had not shrunk a single inch in the three years that separated the first and second ascents of the world’s tallest mountain. Marmet and Schmied (and, the following day, climbing partners Adolf Reist and Hans Rudolf von Gunten) didn’t have the promise of being first to the top of the world to help drive them up the deadly peak. They climbed not for history but for themselves.
And at the risk of beating a dead horse ...
Many people know that Charles Lindbergh was the first person to make a solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean. The second person to make the solo hop hasn’t exactly been lost to history, but I think that’s likely because her name was Amelia Earhart.
To be certain, Earhart knew there was value in being first. “Never do things others can do and will do,” she once said, “if there are things others cannot do or will not do.”
But it seems equally clear to me that Earhart didn’t make her solo flight across the Atlantic — or any of her other “firsts” — simply to be the first woman to lay claim to those feats.
“Adventure,” she once said, “is worthwhile in itself.”
Being first — or being present to witness a first — is as good an excuse for doing something as anything. But being second should never be an excuse not to do something or appreciate something that is being done beautifully.
The last time our species set foot on the moon was in 1972 — six years before I was born. Someday I hope to see us (you?) return. And when that happens, I assure you, I won’t be disappointed that I’m not watching Neil Armstrong’s first “small step.”
A giant leap is a giant leap, after all.
Congratulations on all of your accomplishments this week. I can’t wait to see you do it all again.
And again.
And again.
Love,
dad
This week was an absolute explosion of development for you.
You’ve begun to sit upright without any help at all. You can now roll from your back to your front and then back again. You’ve started to slither, just a bit, in an attempt to grab out-of-reach toys. You study your hands as they open and close and have begun to experiment with moving one or two fingers at a time. And, just in the past two or three days, you’ve begun to scream — not in sadness or agony, but simply to demand attention and maybe to sing a little song.
I’ve pretty much given up trying to capture every momentous moment with the camera. And recently, I’ve had to abandon the fantasy that I’m even going to be present for every little step.
To wit, this exchange with your mother a few days ago:
Me: “Come quick! Look what she’s doing.”
Your mom: (rushing into the room) “What? What is it?”
Me: (proudly) “Look! Spike is crawling toward her toys!”
Your mom: (sighing) “Oh that? Yeah, she did that with me a few days ago.”
Me: “A few days ago? Where was I?”
Your mom: “Well, you were somewhere.”
Me: “So I missed it?”
Your mom: “No, you just saw it.”
Me: “It’s just not the same.”
Your mom: “Yes, it is.”
She’s right, of course. It seems that we’re often so obsessed with firsts that we tend to miss the significance, the joy, the struggle and the glory in everything that comes next.
Many people know, for instance, that Jackie Robinson was the first black baseball player in Major League Baseball. Far fewer can name the second black player drafted out of the Negro Leagues, Larry Doby, who played his first game for the Cleveland Indians on July 6, 1947.
The world had not, in the 11 weeks separating Robinson’s and Doby’s entries into the big leagues, suddenly become a more tolerant place for black baseball players. Doby spent the rest of the 1947 season – and indeed, a good portion of his Hall of Fame career — suffering through the same indignities as Robinson.
Robinson rightfully went down in history for his place in advancing the cause of civil rights for Americans of color. Doby’s role in the battle, meanwhile, was ignominiously ignored. And yet even in Robinson’s shadow, Doby still shined. He was a seven-time All-Star, twice led the American League in home runs and led the Indians with seven hits, including a double and a homer, in Cleveland’s 1948 World Series victory over the Boston Braves.
Many people know that Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay were the first men to summit Mt. Everest. Hillary and the expedition’s leader, John Hunt, were promptly knighted for their accomplishment. Nearly lost to history is the subsequent journey of Swiss climbers Ernst Schmied and Jürg Marmet.
The 29,029-foot peak had not shrunk a single inch in the three years that separated the first and second ascents of the world’s tallest mountain. Marmet and Schmied (and, the following day, climbing partners Adolf Reist and Hans Rudolf von Gunten) didn’t have the promise of being first to the top of the world to help drive them up the deadly peak. They climbed not for history but for themselves.
And at the risk of beating a dead horse ...
Many people know that Charles Lindbergh was the first person to make a solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean. The second person to make the solo hop hasn’t exactly been lost to history, but I think that’s likely because her name was Amelia Earhart.
To be certain, Earhart knew there was value in being first. “Never do things others can do and will do,” she once said, “if there are things others cannot do or will not do.”
But it seems equally clear to me that Earhart didn’t make her solo flight across the Atlantic — or any of her other “firsts” — simply to be the first woman to lay claim to those feats.
“Adventure,” she once said, “is worthwhile in itself.”
Being first — or being present to witness a first — is as good an excuse for doing something as anything. But being second should never be an excuse not to do something or appreciate something that is being done beautifully.
The last time our species set foot on the moon was in 1972 — six years before I was born. Someday I hope to see us (you?) return. And when that happens, I assure you, I won’t be disappointed that I’m not watching Neil Armstrong’s first “small step.”
A giant leap is a giant leap, after all.
Congratulations on all of your accomplishments this week. I can’t wait to see you do it all again.
And again.
And again.
Love,
dad
Thursday, September 20, 2007
BLESSED AND VENERABLE
Dear Spike:
Your mother is a saint.
That’s not a prerequisite of being a public school teacher, but it certainly helps, especially in a school like the one she began teaching in a few weeks ago — the school you’ll be attending in about five years.
Among her students are several Sudanese war refugees and a number of children with family members in prison — including one little girl whose older sister is in jail awaiting trial on charges that she tortured and murdered their brother. There’s another girl whose mother is severely mentally retarded (that mom, by the way, was the only parent who showed up for back-to-school parent-teacher conferences,) several students who don’t know a word of English (and a majority who are still learning English as a second language) and a couple of children whose teeth are so rotten that it makes me wince when I see them smile. All but one of them get free lunch at school and several of them eat all three squares, each day, in the school cafeteria.
Most of them put on brave faces. But they’re troubled. And that often makes them trouble.
It’s heartbreaking. And hard. I wouldn’t last 10 minutes if I had to teach her class. But your mom does it all day long — breaking only for a few short minutes, during lunch, to feed you.
See? A saint.
We had dinner this evening with your mom’s teaching aide, Sue (actually she’s more like a partner, than an aide — and she’s a saint too) and Sue’s husband, Rob, who teaches English at a high school in the most crime-ridden district of Los Angeles. The first week he worked there, he remembered, one of his students was shot in the stomach after first being threatened during his class. Understandably, he wondered whether he’d made a mistake leaving Utah. But he’s been flying down to L.A. — leaving his wife, his home and his two beautiful dogs for months at a time — for seven years now.
Yup. Saints.
I’ve always felt like I had an important job — Tocqueville called freedom of the press “the constitutive element of liberty” (and since you can’t have freedom of the press without the press, I suppose that makes hacks like me kind of worthwhile.)
But I felt small sitting at a table with these people. Absolutely tiny. Miniscule. Subatomic. Quarkian, even. I mean, Jesus, what good is the press to an illiterate nation?
Catholics believe that saints are blessed and venerable people who, in the course of a lifetime, perform at least three miracles.
Heck, your mom does that every day.
She doesn’t just teach children to read, she teaches them to be. To have compassion. To have respect. To have hope.
She changes their lives. And in doing so, I’m convinced, she saves lives too.
Someday, somebody’s going to ask you who your heroes are. And I’m not ever going to tell you what to think, what to believe or what to say, but I’ll tell you who my hero is:
Your mother, the saint.
She’s my hero. My absolute, unequivocal hero.
Love,
dad
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