I'm lying in bed, waiting for Elysha to finish brushing her teeth. I've staring at my phone.
I laugh.
"What's so funny?" Elysha asks.
"Nothing," I say. "I'm just reading some haiku that Charles sent to me. This one really has me thinking."
I pause. Wait a moment.
Then add, "That's right! I'm the kind of guy who reads haiku before bed! I'm quite the catch!"
Her response: "Uh huh."
Probably less enthusiastic than I deserve because she still had a toothbrush in her mouth.
If you're a parent and your child is returning to school this week, or you simply adore the summer like I do, a bit of advice:
Sometime over the course of the next few days, sit down and make a list of everything that you did to fill your summer days.
My list includes beach days. Trips to museums. Golf. Movies. Carousel rides. Lots of ice cream. A trip to Washington, DC. Evenings spent performing onstage throughout New England. A week spent teaching at Miss Porter's School. A week spent teaching at Kripalu Institute for Yoga and Health. Poetry in the Hillstead's Sunken Garden. Weddings that I DJ'ed. Couples who I married. Concerts and fireworks and dinners with friends. Baseball games and bowling and lazy afternoons spent in the backyard.
The end of summer is a tough time for many people. It's a tough time for me. As much as I love my job, I love my summers a little bit more.
As much as a child might love school, summer vacation is often slightly more remarkable.
Parents often lament the end of lazy days with their children.
This exercise - this listing of my summertime activities - has stretched out my summer vacation in my mind. Allowed me to reflect on all that we did. Helped me to feel good about the two months that just passed. Made it a little easier to watch summer come to a close.
I'll read this list to the kids in the next couple days. Invite them to add to the list. Share their own memories. Re-live our summer as Labor Day approaches, and with it, the chill of autumn and the return of demands and obligation.
That's okay. As I said to Charlie last night, the best thing about summer is that there's another one right around the corner.
It's the top of the seventh at the Hartford Yard Goats last night, which means we have abandoned our seats for rides on the enormous, inflatable slides behind the right field fence.
Charlie has hurtled down these monstrosities before, but for Clara, this is her first time. I expect her to be nervous. Frightened. She may back out.
She is who she is.
I watch as Clara climbs the ladder, admittedly impressed by her willingness to even begin the process. A few seconds later, a hear her voice. She's shouting.
Her words:
"Ruth Bader Ginsburg!"
Then she comes plunging down the slide, repeating the name of a Supreme Court justice again and again.
She lands with a thud at the bottom of the slide, hops off, and makes a beeline to the ladder for another ride.
"Clara!" I call. "Why are you shouting Ruth Bader Ginsberg?"
"When I'm nervous, she gives me courage!"
She is who she is.
My summer vacation has come to an end. Today I return to the school that has been my home for the last 19 years.
These last few days of summer have been excellent, and they have served as a reminder about how important my school is to me.
How important the people who I met inside those brick walls have become to me.
A couple days ago we visited Old Sturbridge Village with a former colleague and his family.
He is also Clara's godfather.
Two nights ago we went out to dinner and a movie, leaving our children in the care of a former student. In between dinner and the movie, we popped into a Barnes & Noble, where I bought gifts for a two colleagues who I am proud to call my friends.
Yesterday morning, I played golf with my former principal and the father of former students.
He is also Charlie's godfather.
Actually, my former principal is also the father of a former student.
All of these people are dear friends. My closest friends. Some of the best friends I have ever had.
And then of course there is Elysha, my wife, best friend, and love of my life, who I fell in love with while teaching one door down from her classroom.
When asked if I am excited about returning to work after a summer off, I often say, "I love my job beyond measure. But honestly, I love vacation a little more."
It's true. If given the choice, I would take another week (or month) off to spend time with my family and friends. Write. Read. Golf. Play superheroes with my kids.
But if I must work, I can't imagine a better place.
Last night, Elysha and I learned that one of our former students is serving in the Navy. She's stationed in Norfolk, VA. A young lady who didn't have the easiest path in life is now serving our country with distinction.
Summer vacation is now over, and a part of me longs for a few more days. This morning, before our school district's convocation, I'll play nine holes of sunrise golf. It's become a tradition. My attempt to suck the last bit of marrow from the summer.
After convocation, I'll walk to the edge of the high school parking lot and hop over a small, white fence onto the local public golf course where I play all summer. There's a par-3 adjacent to the parking lot. I'll take two or three clubs over and play that hole a few times.
The very last bit of summer.
Then I'm off to prepare for my incoming students. Say hello to colleagues who I haven't seen in two months. Meet new faces. Some may become close friends. Trusted confidants. Best friends, perhaps.
Maybe I'll even find a new golfing partner.
I plant pennies heads-up throughout my home and in the wild because of the commonly held superstition that finding a penny on heads is good luck and/or allows you to make a wish.
I like to think that every heads-up penny makes someone feel a little bit happier.
In our house, Charlie accompanies these discoveries with, "Find a penny. Pick it up. All the day you'll have good luck!"
Happened twice yesterday. He was so happy.
Makes me a little happier, too.
I drove by Northeast School in Vernon, CT the other day. Lovely little school filled with teachers who are undoubtedly doing an excellent job, but Northeast School?
With the opportunity to name a school after any of the people in the world worthy of recognition, the town of Vernon decided to name their school based upon its geographic location in town?
That is sad.
Even worse, there are THREE schools just in Connecticut that are named Northeast School. Bristol and Stamford also chose to name schools based upon where they are situated in town.
The town of Vernon is actually guilty of naming all of their schools poorly. Instead of honoring a Connecticut luminary or perhaps an underrepresented or unrecognized war hero or civil rights activist, the town named all of their schools based upon simple geography:
Vernon, CT isn't the only town guilty of wasting this opportunity. Many schools, streets, and other structures bear meaningless, oftentimes geographically oriented names.
I just happen to be driving through Vernon recently.
Naming a building or a street or any other public structure is an opportunity to bring recognition and praise to a person deserving of celebration. A town or city should be excited about the chance to honor someone deserving.
Squandering an opportunity like this is just dumb.
On Tuesday, Louise Linton, wife of Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, posted a photo of herself stepping off an official government plane wearing designer labels.
I know she was wearing those labels because she hash-tagged them in the photo caption.
Jenni Miller, a Portland, Oregon mother of three, didn't love the photo and wrote “Glad we could pay for your little getaway #deplorable.”
Linton responded by insulting Miller. Essentially, this born-into-wealth, married-into-wealth failed actress made fun of Linton for being poor.
“Aw!!! Did you think this was a personal trip?! Adorable! Do you think the US govt paid for our honeymoon or personal travel?! Lololol. Have you given more to the economy than me and my husband? Either as an individual earner in taxes OR in self sacrifice to your country. I’m pretty sure we paid more taxes toward our day ‘trip’ than you did. Pretty sure the amount we sacrifice per year is a lot more than you’d be willing to sacrifice if the choice was yours. You’re adorably out of touch. Thanks for the passive aggressive comment.”
“Your life looks cute,” she wrote an hour later before deleting the comment and making her Instagram account private as the world saw her comments and rained scorn upon her.
Linton is a woman who was literally born in a castle. She's a woman whose designer labels are the result of her birth and marriage. She's a woman who has always had everything that she wants and needs.
She's a woman so vacuous that hashtags the designer labels that she is wearing.
This isn’t Linton’s first act of stupidity.
In 2016, she published a memoir about the six months she spent in Zambia in 1999 during her gap year. The people who she worked with refuted the claims she made in the book. The Zambian government criticized her for falsely characterizing the country as a "a war-torn hellhole" when it was actually at peace during her time there.
In addition, Linton’s book featured photos of the HIV-positive children, which were used without the children’s (or their families’) permission.
The backlash was so acute that Linton pulled the book and apologized.
So yes, Louise Linton has apparently decided to embrace the image of the 1980's John Hughes female super-villain:
A snobby, condescending, pretentious, mean, wealthy woman whose fortune comes solely through birth and marriage and yet feels like this alone places her above all others.
Her last film, Cabin Fever, has the unique distinction of having a score of 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. In that film, she played a sheriff's deputy. Perhaps she's trying to present herself in a new light to prospective producers or directors.
"Look! I can do evil, stupid, rich-bitch ice queen, too."
Yes, Louise. You certainly can.
This is simply amazing. The best, most inspirational documentary of the most remarkable person I've seen in a very long time.
Feeling like you can't make a difference? Feeling helpless.
Don't.
Forest Man will make you feel like you can do anything.
You know what's even more overhyped than a partial eclipse?
The panda. I know I sound like a curmudgeon, but every time I see the panda at the National Zoo, I can't help but think, "Yup. It's a bear. Black and white, but really, just another bear."
My friends find bears wandering in their suburban backyards all the time. Larger, more impressive bears than this solitary, bamboo-eating machine.
Even Charlie wasn't all that impressed.
This is the way journalists should conduct an interview. This should be taught in journalism school.
This is exactly what people want from the media:
Hold public officials and hackneyed pundits accountable.
I was prepared to be underwhelmed by the eclipse. As infrequent as these things may be, a briefly, slightly darker version of the world for a short period of time did not strike me as warranting the hype.
In stark contrast to my cynicism, Elysha hosted an eclipse party. Four other families brought their children over to watch the eclipse. Over the course of two hours, Elysha taught eight children to make eclipse viewers out of cereal boxes and decorate eclipse-themed cupcakes. Then she brought everyone outside to view the eclipse with actual eclipse glasses (which she somehow managed to acquire that morning), as well as their surprisingly effective homemade eclipse viewers.
There was food, drink, and fun. I swear that she threw the whole thing together in about four minutes.
The eclipse itself was underwhelming. The quality of the light shifted for about 30 minutes. I watched the moon pass in front of the sun.
Still, the world got a little darker for a little bit of time. That was it.
But here is what I loved:
Americans came together around a single, non-tragic event.
Our culture is rarely as ubiquitous as it was when I was young. No longer are Americans gathering around the television by the tens of millions to watch the final episode of M*A*S*H or the latest episode of Seinfeld. Movies like Star Wars, Titanic, and ET: The Extraterrestrial do not draw wholesale segments of America any longer. Radio is rapidly diminishing, making it harder for a song to gain cultural purchase.
Our culture is becoming fragmented and fractured as personal choice, facilitated by the digital age, allows Americans to curate their own content with remarkable ease.
This isn't all bad. Voices that were once stifled in a three network television system, a music industry full of gatekeepers, and a film industry that required millions of dollar to produce a movie can now be heard. Television content is better than it's ever been. Music is more diverse than ever before. Services like YouTube have allowed talented, creative, hard working people to circumvent the gatekeepers of the past and reach millions of viewers.
But we have so little that brings America together absent tragedy or divisiveness.
The Super Bowl
Holidays like Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July
The Oscars
The occasional viral video
The Ice Bucket Challenge
The Woman's March, to a degree, brought vast segments of Americans together, but even that was not without protest. Similarly, Saturday Night Live is a cultural touchstone, but based upon their recent political material, not everyone would agree.
Yesterday's eclipse brought the country together for a moment of unity. The vast majority of Americans were looking at the same thing at the same time, absent politics, religion, or tragedy.
That was good.
I thought the eclipse was fairly underwhelming. I wish it happened more often.
A rule of signage that people don't seem to understand:
Signs only work on people who obey signs.
I worked with teachers this summer who wanted to hang signs on campus to enforce rules that they already had the power to enforce. Parents who were visiting the school weren't adhering to the limitations outlined during orientation, so the teachers wanted signs so they could point to something in the event they were required to act as an authority figure.
As if a sign would abdicate them of any responsibility and therefore eliminate any potential confrontation.
"Sorry, sir. You can't be in this building. It's not me. It's the sign."
"Apologies, ma'am. But did you see the sign? It says you can't be here."
I tried to explain that parents already understood the rules and were purposely violating them. The signs weren't telling these parents anything they didn't already know. Therefore, additional signage would not change behavior.
Human intervention was required.
I know this because I am not a rule follower. If I see a rule as arbitrary or ridiculous or unfair, I often disobey the rule. I plow through signs quite often. For people like me, a sign is irrelevant if we do not agree to the rule stipulated on the sign. A sign is merely a suggestion about how the world should operate, but if that vision of the world strikes me as unnecessary, inefficient, arbitrary, or a hindrance to the way I think the world should operate, a sign is not going to stop me.
The authority behind the sign may alter my behavior. The parking ticket or the air marshal or the social pressure applied by friends or colleagues may convince me to adhere to the rules, but a sign?
No.
When people are knowingly disobeying the rules, signs will rarely stop them, and they do not afford an ounce of backup or support to the person required to enforce them.
As a person who has accepted the responsibility of your position, you must enforce the rules. You must confront people like me and explain the expectation is and the potential consequences of failing to meet these expectations. I know that for some of these teachers, that would be hard. An annoyed, angry, or entitled parent is not pleasant. Confrontations aren't always fun.
But when you accept the job, you accept the responsibility that comes with it.
Signs won't do your job for you. Nor will they offer any support when you're dealing with someone like me. Decent people who are also rule breakers will often abdicate in the face of authority. If pressed on the issue, we will usually alter our behavior.
But not always.
I was photographing the menu outside the cafeteria at Kripalu, hoping to send it to Elysha so she could tell me what to try (since I recognized nothing on the menu). As I was snapping my photo, a woman approached.
"I'm sorry," she said. "But this is a cellphone free floor."
I considered debating her on the subject. "Listen, if I had a camera in my hand right now, you'd have no complaint. So can we just pretend that this is just a camera for a moment? I'd like to take a photograph of your menu and send it to my wife so she can tell me what I might want to try, since I don't know recognize anything on your menu. I'm a heathen. A man child. Uncouth."
Instead, I asked, "Are you going to take my phone away if I keep using it?"
"No," the woman said, looking befuddled.
I smiled. "Then I'm going to keep using it for a minute or two."
Never tell a rule breaker that there is no consequence to breaking a rule.
This little baby girl grew up and became a warrior who stood against hate and injustice.
Heather Heyer.
Say her name. Remember her name.
I spent a week at Kripalu Institute for Yoga and Health last week, teaching storytelling to a dozen remarkable people.
On Tuesday night I performed my one-man show, and on Thursday evening, ten of the storytellers from class took the stage and performed.
It was an extraordinary night.
One of my storytellers had not spoken to a group of people in more than 15 years after suffering a terrible embarrassment in high school. Just standing in front of 50 people was an enormous accomplishment for her. I felt so honored to give her the space and support to help her conquer this enormous fear.
Then she proceeded to make the audience roar with laughter with a hilarious and moving story about her childhood. It turns out that she's a storyteller.
Several of the storytellers stood before this audience of strangers and told stories about parts of their lives that they had never shared before. Hard parts. Haunting parts. The parts that require more bravery to tell than most people can muster.
There was laughter and tears. Gasps and guffaws. Hilarity and heartbreak. There were lines that I will never forget. "Golden sentences" one of my storytellers dubbed, and she was right. It was 90 minutes of beauty nestled in the quiet mountains of the Berkshires. It was dark outside, but each storyteller shone bright that night.
After the show, a man approached me. He reached into his pocket, removed a small container, and held it out for me to see. He explained that he suffered from a heart condition, and this was his nitroglycerin. The medication he needed if his heart started "acting up."
"But I feel like I should throw this away," he said. "My heart doesn't need medication. It needs what you did on Tuesday night and these people did tonight. I've listened to all these stories, and my heart hasn't felt this good in twenty years. This is what people need. This is what I need."
I suggested that he keep the nitroglycerin close in the event a storyteller is not available when his heart started "acting up" again, and he agreed.
But he was right.
Stories are good for the heart and good for the soul.
I think we should hire people for any and all jobs using the following procedure:
1. Interview the last five people who served the candidate in a restaurant. Inquire about how the candidate treated them over the course of the meal.
2. Interview the candidate. Ask the following questions:
Unorthodox but effective, I think.
It's hard to acknowledge your privilege when you've enjoyed it for your whole life.
It's even harder to admit that your success is very much the result of that privilege, and that your self-perceived story of hard work, sacrifice, discipline, and skill might be entirely different absent your privilege of race, nation, gender, socioeconomic class, or health.
Someone who has been listening to me stories this week said to me, "It's amazing that you've come so far given where you once were."
I replied, "I'm a healthy, intelligent, white man in America. Even with the misfortune that I've suffered in life, I was already hugely advantaged from the get-go. Change the color of my skin or my gender or stick me in a third world country, and my story is probably very different. My path might have been hard, but it was a hell of a lot easier than most people of the world."
It seems to me that there are a segment of people in America today who enjoy the same or similar privileges but refuse to to recognize their good fortune. They feel like victims rather than the benefactors of a lottery that afforded them enormous privilege. They fail to see that the struggle of others is in large part the result of institutions that make their path more difficult because of their race, gender, or country of origin.
It made me think of these words, spoken by fictional Game of Throne's character Tyrion Lannister:
We spent last week in Washington, DC. We visited with good friends, ate good food, toured the museums and the monuments, and had a grand time.
What I will always remember about this trip, however, is the way my daughter's insatiable curiosity, her incessant reading, and her mother's influence have transformed her into a student of the world.
Clara loves Clara Barton. This love began with the name they share, but it quickly grew into a genuine interest and love affair with this woman. She's read several books on Barton and can detail her life history if you have about an hour.
The Clara Barton home is coincidentally just a couple of miles from our friend's home, so we stopped to visit. We were sad to discover that the house is closed. Though it's designated as a historic site (it was also the first headquarters of the Red Cross), it's in disrepair, and it doesn't look like it will be open anytime soon.
We went to look at it even though we knew it was closed, planning on taking a photo of Clara standing outside the house. Instead, we were met by three men who were inspecting the building, and one offered to bring just Clara and Elysha inside. He gave them a private tour of the home, and he and Clara exchanged Clara Barton tidbits.
It was almost better than the house being open to the public. Clara was the first child in a long time to enter the home, making the moment for her very special.
Later that evening, we were touring the FDR monument when Clara spotted a statue to Eleanor Roosevelt, a remarkable politician in her own right. Clara began spouting facts about this female American icon as well, but she also asked at least twice as many questions.
We ended our tour of the monuments that evening at the Lincoln Memorial. Having lived in DC for six months, I'd visited this monument many times, but it was just as awe inspiring this time.
My son, Charlie, couldn't believe that we were allowed to step inside. He asked an endless stream of questions about the architecture and Lincoln himself.
Elysha and Clara sat down in the north chamber so that Elysha could read her the Gettysburg Address aloud.
It's easy in today's political climate to become despondent over all that we see. It's not hard to lose hope and perhaps think that our country is spiraling in the wrong direction.
I am not immune to these sentiments from time to time, and I am an optimist and an anti-alarmist.
But my trip to Washington renewed my spirit.
Abraham Lincoln led our country through the Civil War. Millions of Americans died on American soil in a battle for the future of our union.
Clara Barton served as a nurse during the Civil War. She witnessed horrors beyond imagination in a time when women did not have the right to vote and lacked many of the basic rights and privileges enjoyed by women today.
Eleanor Roosevelt helped to lead our country through the Great Depression and World War II.
These were some of America's most challenging times.
Yet here we stand today. Our country persists.
The not hard to imagine the despair that Americans must have been feeling during the times of Lincoln, Barton, and Roosevelt. I must have been easy for those men and women to lose hope in the future of their country.
Yet they fought. They battled. They persisted. Just like we will.
My greatest hope comes from the wide-eyed, insatiable curiosity of my children and their inherent desire to, in the words of Abigail Adams, do good and be good.
Lincoln, Barton, Roosevelt, and their generations of Americans faced enormous, almost unimaginable challenges, and they won. They preserved and protected this nation for future generations.
Just like I know we will, for Clara, Charlie and their future generations.
I'm teaching storytelling at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health this week.
This morning, I returned to my room to find a note from housekeeping:
"You don't need to make the bed."
I laughed. I didn't make the bed. When I went to sleep last night, I climbed onto the bed and simply fell asleep atop the sheets and blanket. It was a warm, summer night, so I had no need to slide beneath the covers.
When I woke up in the morning, I was still in the same position, lying flat on my back in the center of the bed. I stood up, leaving a perfectly made bed behind me.
I told some people in my workshop about the note, and they looked at me like I was a monster.
"You just fell asleep on top of the covers?" one woman asked. "Who does that?"
"I can't fall asleep if I'm not under the covers," said another.
"What kind of monster are you?" a third asked.
There were mentions of Frankenstein as well, and one person suggested that I might be a robot.
I really didn't expect this reaction.
I've always been able to fall asleep this way. At summer camp as a boy, I often slept atop my sleeping bag because of the heat. I've taken naps at work when I was sick by lying down on the carpeted floor and falling asleep during my lunch hour. When I was homeless and living in my car, I slept on the backseat, where blankets and sheets were impossible.
Is this really as strange as the folks in my workshop made it seem?
A waitress with a pro-LGBTQ tattoo received this note from a customer.
I realize I am a reluctant atheist, but in my lifetime, I have read the Bible from cover to cover three times (which is more than many ardently religious people), so I am familiar with the teachings of Jesus.
And yes, while it would admittedly run counter to everything Jesus taught, I am fairly certain that he would at least want to punch this bigot in the nose for invoking his name in support of intolerance and hate.
I like to think that even Jesus had his limits.
Her name was Heather Heyer.
She died when a car with an Ohio license plate rammed into a crowd near Charlottesville's downtown mall after the rally at the city park was dispersed. Heyer was one of the counter-protesters marching in jubilation near the mall after the white nationalists dispersed from the scene.
Heather Heyer went to Charlottesville to stand against torch-wielding, gun-toting, Nazi flag flying white supremacists who were there to protest the city's decision to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from the Emancipation Park.
Now we know whose statue should replace the traitor and racist Robert E. Lee:
Heather Heyer, an American patriot and hero who stood against hate, intolerance and violence, and paid the ultimate sacrifice so our country could be free and safe for all.
