We’ve come down to Florida to spend a couple of days on the beach with L. In some miracle of timing, all three of us connected to or involved in education have spring break the same week. So we arrived today and went straight to the beach after dinner.
Spring has begun poking its head around the corner, hinting at what’s to come with warm sunny days that have brought the yellow bells to bloom and encouraged the lawn to shoot up in a few spots. The blueberry bushes at the base of the driveway are already opening blossoms and whispering of the cobblers and preserves that K will be making in the coming weeks. Trees are budding, and soon the wisteria that hangs from the trees across from our house will start sharing its blue and white blooms. I’ve mowed once, and K has begun planning our spring planting.
We all begin thinking about the summer and our trip to Polska to celebrate Babcia’s eightieth birthday — it will be the first time we’ve ever gone back-to-back summers. My first year at the new school is coming to a close slowly (only one more quarter remaining), and since we’ll be moving into our new building next year (though we keep hearing it will be ready by late April, I doubt it), it’s like starting over a second year in a row.
That’s the heart of spring: starting over — the beginning of warmth, of evenings on the back deck with friends, of early-morning light that stretches into the late evening, of fresh. We brush off the malaise of the late winter (inasmuch as we have such a thing here in the south) and warm ourselves again.
Everything seems to be ending and beginning at the same time. The Boy is finishing middle school; the Girl is beginning college, truly learnings is rhythms. And next week, spring ends with temperatures falling to the twenties…
This evening the Boy’s youth orchestra had a concert at the Peace Center — the premier performance space in Greenville. It’s where we saw Fiddler on the Roof, Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, and The Sound of Music, among other shows. Yo Yo Ma is playing there in a month.
During the second piece, E had a solo: “a mournful trombone” according to the program notes.
K teared up to hear what he’s been working on for weeks in its full context. I might have experienced a touch of dampness as well.
I grew up in a cult, and that means I grew up learning how to be adept at double-speak and managing cognitive dissonance in many areas but especially in questions of power. We were taught that God was unquestionably in charge and not to be questions — nothing extraordinarily unusual about that since that’s a fairly orthodox position. However, we learned that we had to transfer that kind of blind obedience to God’s only true representative on Earth, Herbert Armstrong. Not only were we to obey him but we were also to assist him. Our job was not to proselytize or to try to win converts to our religion. That was God’s job through Armstrong’s preaching. Our job was simply to support him, and there was only one kind of support he wanted: fiscal. We weren’t to question what he did with the money we sent him. We weren’t to entertain doubts about the wisdom of his decisions even when they seemed to be causing problems members individually or the church as a whole.
The most wide-spread cult in America today is unquestionably MAGA with its unquestioning loyalty to Trump. Every now and then, I read something that seems so perfectly parallel to how members of Armstrong’s cult used to talk that I feel I’m simply hearing a sermon from my youth.
I discovered this picture posted on social media recently, and combined with the poster’s own thoughts, it fairly accurately mirrors all the destructive thinking patterns of Armstrong’s own cult.
The most immediately obvious parallel of the hagiographic nature of followers’ descriptions. This idea of Trump sacrificing so much to save America has been around in memes for a while.
This is one my own mother shared early in Trump’s first term. It has much more blatantly messianic tones than this newer one, but the sentiment is the same.
The original post included the author’s own thoughts about Trump’s recent actions:
Yes! He is TRYING to save our whole world!! Trying to demand peace. The road to that is very rocky, but you have to be willing to do it and endure any roadblocks and hiccups along the way. But if you stay strong and stay faithful, you are doing your part.
Almost every sentence of this echoes the thinking that pervaded my cultic upbringing.
“He is TRYING to save our whole world!” This notion parallels notions that Herbert Armstrong and his organization were literally the only thing holding at bay the complete destruction of not just America but the whole world.
Additionally, Trump is “[t]rying to demand peace.” This is in direct opposition to what we’re seeing with our own eyes. This gaslighting is critical to cults. It allows followers to ignore their own experience and thoughts when they contradict the official story. He’s not killing civilians in American cities, extra-judiciously attacking boats in the Gulf of Mexico, or initiating a completely unprovoked war. That’s violence. That’s not what he’s about. He’s about peace. He’s said it himself countless times over the last ten years, and just because it seems to contradict his actions, we just have to listen to him and understand that he is trying to create peace through his violence. Doublethink at its best.
However, we must understand that the “road to that [peace] is very rocky, but you have to be willing to do it and endure any roadblocks and hiccups along the way.” Again, don’t pay attention to your own eyes. Ignore the reality you’re seeing. These are just hiccups, roadblocks to our complete supremacy and world peace. Just remember that “if you stay strong and stay faithful, you are doing your part.” Your part is not to think. Not to question. It’s to support — without question, without thought, without doubt. Our dear leader knows best. After all, look at all he sacrificed to reach this moment. Ignore the riches he’s created for himself by using his position. He sacrificed because he said he sacrificed.
I intentionally retained the pronoun-antecedent ambiguity of the above paragraphs simply to illustrate the fact that one could use either “Trump” or “Armstrong” as the antecedent, and the result would be identical.
Though we did not celebrate Christmas, my parents often bought me something to occupy my time during winter break. One year, likely 1979 or 1980, they bought me an enormous box of Fiddlesticks, plastic building toys consisting of plastic tubes of varying lengths and colors along with connectors of various configurations.
My set came with strange Batman, Superman, Hulk, and Spider-man figures that bent at the waist and had stickers to represent the sides of their bodies, but they all had their heads turned and their fits balled at their waists, making them look more constipated than ferocious.
The first item in the instruction booklet was a gigantic plane that I probably built at least twenty times. The toy required substantial imaginative license as there was actually nothing solid about the plane (or any other toy one created with the set). Everything, then, looked particularly unrealistic, but I, a kid in the early-eighties, couldn’t have cared less.
As with many of the other toys I had, I grew tired of creating just the pre-planned planes, rockets, and cars and began creating my own things: guns (it was particularly good for creating assault rifles), stilettos, and incendiary devices.
And the thought of them came to me today out of the blue…
Some days every class seems to go so perfectly. that teachers wish they could have videoed for posterity. Everything seems to click. Every student seems to be focused and hardworking. Every class seems to take a noticeable step forward.
Today was such a day.
We’ve been looking at how people communicate in the 21st century with an eye to how leaders should communicate in the 21st century. Specifically, we have been examining how leaders might or might not use social media, in general, and memes, and emojis, in particular.
Yesterday, we began the setup for today’s Socratic seminar. Students were divided into groups, and these groups were assigned a position. They didn’t have choice in the matter. They weren’t consulted regarding what their personal opinions were. I simply assigned them a position.
Students meant yesterday, brainstorming reasons to support their own positions, counterclaims the other side might make, and rebuttals they could, in turn, make to those counterclaims. Today, we ran the Socratic seminars.
They were, in a word, spectacular. If you could’ve been a fly on the wall, you would have seen six and seventh graders, behaving with decorum and dignity. Listening to each other’s positions, not interrupting each other, respectfully disagreeing, respectfully pushing each other for evidence and justification of their claims. And even occasionally, laughing. All while arguing positions they might or might not have personally held since they’re positions were randomly assigned.
If I could have, I would have recorded today for future years, for future school years. That way, when I taught students how to do a Socratic seminar in the future, it would be easy. I would simply show what those students did today and say, “Here, watch them. Do what they did.”
A breakup — what all adolescents fear yet think will never happen with a first love. No one embarks on their first venture into love with the thought that it likely will not last forever. We meet; we’re overwhelmed with these emotions for the first time; we’re convinced that something so strong, so beautiful, so pure cannot possibly die. How can perfection perish? How can this intensity ever diminish? All we want to be with our love, and we desire that with the same unquestionable necessity we crave food or water. The sound of her voice is more beautiful than just about any piece of music we’ve heard. The faint scent of her perfume that might linger after we’ve sat beside her in the cafeteria keeps us enraptured until we drift into sleep many hours later.
All I want to do is just sit here
Sinead O’Conner “The Emperor’s New Clothes”
And write it all down and rest for a while
How does that perfection dissolve, inevitably into tears for one or both of us? How does something so dazzling become so dark? How does such joy transform into such sorrow? It seems impossible until it happens, and once it happens, and we resign ourselves to the loss, it seems unavoidable.
It’s been forty years since I went through this myself. I met her at church band camp (we had church everything: dances, basketball games, talent shows), but she lived a full 100 miles away. That first love was a week of intensity followed by months of letters and the occasional phone call until her feelings for me dissolved. I don’t remember much about it all but I do remember how sure I was that it was something more real than it really was.
We realize our kids will go through the same thing at some point, but it still hurts to watch.
There’s often a sense that gratitude and Monday are incompatible. There’s a whole network of memes all suggesting the same thing: there’s nothing positive about Monday. It’s built, I suppose, on the assumption that, with the weekend complete, the best part of the week is behind us, and we have little to look forward to. But that assumption is, in turn, based on another assumption: that the fun weekend is superior to the business week day, and that Monday is the worst possible of the five workdays because it’s waking up from the dream that was the weekend and returning us to the daily reality that seems to have less choice and more obligation. After all, one can choose to sleep in or to get up early on a Saturday morning; a Monday morning lacks the former and demands the latter. So what is there to be grateful for on a Monday?
I went to work, which means I have a job and can provide for my family. That’s certainly something to be grateful for. My kids are (relatively) safe at school during the day: certainly not all parents have that same assurance. I woke up in a bed and will return to it: not everyone has that simple privilege. I get to work with some amazingly sweet (though predictably chatty — middle schoolers are the same everywhere) students. The list could go on and on. We can literally find things all around us to be grateful for.
And I’m especially grateful that I don’t have to write any more. It’s not a job, not an obligation, and so I can tumble off to bed at 9:16.
Imagine you are teaching a college creative writing class open to any and all students. One day, a girl who’s not even in your class, not even a lit major, enters yoir office with about 150 typed pages and hands them off to you.
She’s sure she’s the next Kundera.
You begin reading the pages that evening and you see Kundera’s influence: strange flights into seeming magical realism that are not quite magical realism; thoughts about love, life, the nature of the universe, the nature of anything and everything; a narrative that moves freely about in time and tenses. It’s evident this girl has taken at least an introduction to philosophy class. It’s clear from all her talk about God that she’s at least sat in a cafe drinking overpriced coffee with somebody in the religion department. But that’s about it. What’s more, she can’t write well, and like many sophomores, she thinks it’s edgy to include references to “cunts” and “cocks.” So proud is she of her image of the universe “ejaculating” (her word, not mine) her father‘s spirit into her upon his death that she uses it multiple times.
This is that manuscript, and it’s every bit pedantic, empty, and pathetic as it sounds.
A few signs that must date back to the 1990s or earlier.
After a day of rain yesterday — it absolutely poured for most of the day, which is why I didn’t go for a walk during the Boy’s practice — we were thrilled with the lovely light streaming into our kitchen this morning. The sky was a rich blue, which meant we had to get outside.
I spent the morning grading — remember that? I don’t do that much grading at home these days because I no longer teach a heavily academic subject.
I still have a bit, though: the kids keep a daily journal as their warm-up in class, and I use that as a major assignment grade. As such, I take the time to read what they’ve written. For example, we’ve had a change in our school’s morning routine, and I asked the kids what they thought of it. With 150 students, though, it takes a long time to work through all those journals.
After lunch, we headed to our favorite park for a walk. We thought about going to a local state park and going for a longer walk, but in the end, we elected for the closer park and shorter walk.
Few things bring up as many memories, immerse one so fully in the past, as listening after many years to music that once formed the center of your orbit when young, music that you know ever nuance, ever breath of the vocalist, every small detail that at first went unnoticed. Paul Simon’s Rhythm of the Saints is one such album for me. It was the regular soundtrack of my college years, an album I listened to so frequently that had it been on cassette instead of CD, I certainly would have worn it out.
I received the album as part of the introductory twelve-CDs-for-a-penny package from Columbia House, the now-defunct mail-order music club that was one of the many casualty of streaming services. I must have joined the club, bought the requisite CDs, quit, and rejoined half a dozen times, and Rhythm was one of the selections I chose on the basis of liking the artist but knowing nothing about the album. It captivated me from the first instant, from the first moment of the first song, “The Obvious Child.”
Every element of every song captivated me: the tones of the guitars, the rhythms of the percussion, the lyrics, the arrangements, the paradoxical diversity and continuity of all the songs. It was an album that I could immediately replay after finishing it, using it as an endless loop for the soundtrack of just about any activity.
I don’t know the last time I listened to Rhythm, but while driving to CYS rehearsal this afternoon, E and I were listening to You’ll Hear It, a podcast that explores albums in depth, one album per episode. After the Boy went into rehearsal, I sat for a moment scrolling through the episodes to find some interesting ones for future trips, and I noticed they have an episode on Still Crazy After All These Years. As I sat waiting for the Boy, I decided to listen to Still Crazy. My thoughts turned to the role Simon’s music has played through my life and I remembered Rhythm and switched to it immediately. It was like opening a portal to the past. Suddenly, I was in the print shop at my college printing covers for the literary magazine for which I was the editor my senior year. I only stayed there a second before landing in my car, driving back from class and singing along with Simon with abandon (but not much skill). Another moment and I was standing on the grassy oval that served as the hub of my college, handing the CD to a friend with a warning: “I need this back in a day or two.” Each song felt warm and inviting, like meeting with an old friend for the first time in years and finding we are just as close now as we were years ago despite the break.
It was a little like old times today: the Girl had a volleyball tournament; the Boy had a soccer game. L is playing on something like a rec team at UF. They travel to various universities and play other rec teams, and this weekend they’re in Clemson, just down the highway from us.
The Boy had his first spring-season soccer game today. We had some worries that he wouldn’t be on the same team as the previous three or four seasons, but with some polite asking and a little string-pulling, we managed to get him back on that team. It’s a good coach with a good group of boys, and they should have a strong showing this season.
And so, as we so often did in the past, we had split duty today: K went to cheer on L while E and I stayed behind for soccer and youth orchestra make-up practice.
The Boy’s team dominated in the early minutes, quickly going up 2-0. After that initial surge, though, their dominance waned a bit, and they even allowed a goal. “We got too comfortable after that,” he explained as we were leaving after the first half to head to rehearsal. When I picked him up three hours later after rehearsal (“Oh, I forgot how awful those long rehearsals are,” he moaned as he got in the car), he told me that he’d gotten a text about the game: 5-2. An overall dominant performance.
The Girl’s team also had a dominant performance, not losing a single game and losing only one set. K said the Girl played as well as she’s played in a long time, with some really strong kills and overall aggressive play. They walked away with the tournament victory and big smiles.
Afterward, just like old times, the Boy and I went out for Mexican at our favorite restaurant. “We’ve tried other places,” I told the owner, “but we just keep coming back here.”
Three golds and a bronze in previous Olympics makes you a legend who gets to carry your country’s flag in your sixth and final Olympics.
