This story was published in The Daily Cuppa with a word limit 150.
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I’m new to this book club business, joining our community’s older men’s reading group about a year ago. It’s called that to distinguish us from a whippersnapper bunch who looked two decades younger when we met in a joint session last August.
When I asked our founder, Jim, why only men, he said, “Because we read different books than women.” Our geezer gang of ten consists of eighth-decade white men, including four college professors, one engineer, one banker, three small business owners, and a psychologist.
We intentionally exclude people by gender and age but not by race. However, we live in an almost all-white town in the nearly all-white state of Iowa. We asked Novian, an African-American English professor at the local college, to lead our discussion.
Two fertile hours later, Steve turned to Novian and said, “You’re the first black person I’ve gotten to know.”
In the central time zone in the USA, daylight saving time came this morning at 1:59.59 AM.
One second later, my MacBook clock took away the hour it had given us last fall.
Photo by the author
After taking this photo, I heard human sounds outside our corner street house. I went out on the back stoop and peered over the railing as the voices came from the street in front of the house. Three young people, two men and a woman, had exited a car. It looked as if one may have been sick. They were chatting amiably, so I left them to their privacy. But not before swinging in the other direction and taking this photo. It looks like my neighbor Ismael may also be up.
Photo by the author
Or, like my young friends, perhaps he’s not been down yet. I, on the other hand, went to bed around 8 pm standard time.
I love getting up early. For about fifty years, my engine has revved up around 4 a.m. I woke up earlier this morning because I wanted to document the change in time.
My brother Pat, who is 70 and six years younger and, like me, retired, rises every day at 2:30 for a part-time job monitoring drivers delivering organs and medicine to local hospitals.
We come by this naturally as our mom organized her Catholic parish’s breakfast after the 6 am mass until she was 90.
Whenever someone says, “I wish I had your willpower,” I’m quick to reply this habit has nothing to do with character.
Photo of the larva stage (caterpillar) by the author
This story was published in Fiction Shorts. The word limit is 100. Today’s word prompt is psyche.
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Did you know the Greek word psyche means soul and caterpillar?
That’s when it started. I guess humans need symbols — things that mean something else. But it’s not easy being a token — not all lions are courageous. Some want to stop and smell the African Lilly.
That’s me in the photo, what you call the teenage stage. Soon, I’ll spend time in my room, hanging upside down and stretching, eventually sprouting wings and flying away.
Just doing what comes naturally.
You should, too.
I suggest you look inside yourself for guidance instead of burdening me.
It’s about much more than baseball or a baseball player. Buck died at 96 almost twenty years ago. He was a Negro League player, manager, and the first African-American coach on an American Major League Baseball team, the Chicago Cubs.
He was a Black baseball player beyond his prime before Jackie Robinson opened the door in 1947. Buck had too many reasons to be bitter to count. It rained every day on him.
When Posnanski asked how he kept bitterness at bay, Buck said,
Where does bitterness take you?
To a broken heart?
To an early grave?
When I die
I want to die from natural causes.
Not from hate
Eating me up from the inside.
One last Buck O’Neil story.
Toward the end of his life, Buck was one of 39 Negro League players, managers, and owners considered by a special committee for induction into American baseball’s Hall of Fame.
17 of the 39 were selected for an honor Buck yearned for and deserved. But he didn’t get it. In July 2006, 16 Black men and one Black woman were inducted into the Hall of Fame.
A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Your presence here matters. Please stay on the page for thirty seconds so you will count as a reader. Thank you.
You are a fly on the wall in your neighbor’s bedroom.
It started innocently, with my new iPhone and zoom lens.
She woke every morning at 8 am, just as the sun crept over our building and gleamed into her room.
Even when we were kids, I was up an hour before her.
I’m in apartment six; Phylis is in two, just below me.
Two days ago, she told me she had fallen while entering the bathroom: “I know I should be careful first thing in the morning.”
“Maybe it’s time we moved in together,” I said.
“Since Bob died, I’ve learned to love my privacy. I promise to be careful.”
We’ve had forty-seven presidencies, with twenty-one men serving more than one term.
Political Scientists rank presidents, with Lincoln first and Trump last. (source)
Barack Obama is tucked in at #7 between Truman and Eisenhower.
Political Science was my day job for forty years. I love politics and I loved teaching this vital subject. In fact, even at 75, I can’t stop. This past year, I taught short courses on the 2024 US presidential election in America, Romania and Mexico.
Honestly, I’m as gobstruck as you may be as to what is going on in my country. I read books and articles, listen to podcasts, and watch documentaries. In my courses, I put together learned sounding lectures with thoughtful power point images.
I won’t repeat, with two exceptions, any of that here. I’ve paid my dues. And will again. But not today. It’s all just too sad. The best I can say is that we really don’t know how it is going to turn out. In the moment, it is dire, very dire.
But I believe two things.
The fact of Barack Hussein Obama, as America’s 44th President, is more important than any of his policies or decisions as president. This is true in the sense that the fact of Jackie Robinson transcends his brilliant baseball skills. As Kamala Harris said, over and over, “We aren’t going back.”
This reality— a Black man and a Black family — as the face of America, led inevitably to the rise of Donald Trump, on the shoulders of the birther lie, Trump’s political ignition spark. He’s been motoring with low octane, calculated deceptions for a decade.
As James Baldwin wrote forty years ago, “America changes all the time but doesn’t change at all.”
This story was published in Medium’s Entertain, Enlighten, Empower.
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Dawdled.
However, Monet nails it, doesn’t he? We worry about crossing our bridges of concerns, but we can never see them clearly — the fog of human unknowing — until we’re on them.
Or, in my case yesterday, trapped inside this MRI machine.
Photo by the author after the scan!
As some of you know, I fell about a month ago. I’ve written about my excellent medical care in San Miguel, Mexico. Did I black out and fall or fall and knock myself out? Both my Mexican and US doctors asked this question, and now my American GP is putting me through a blood, heart, and head work-up. The MRI was to peek inside my noggen, looking for anything suspicious. We’ll discuss the results of all these tests in a few weeks.
Last week, when my doctor mentioned the head scan, I asked if that meant a tube. He said yes and preferred the enclosed MRI to the more open Cat Scan because it would give more detailed images. “I’m claustrophobic,” I replied. “I’ll prescribe an anti-anxiety drug. The MRI is the best option.” I got the message. And started worrying about coffin-like enclosed spaces and, of course, tumors, a word he used but skirted over.
The good news is there doesn’t seem to be any “unusual mass.” Reading the summary from my doctor, I noticed there doesn’t seem to be anything other than “thinning and atrophy,” which is pretty standard for a 75-year-old organ.
Maybe it was the Lorazepam or the experienced handling of Debra, my MRI technician angel, who included a facial cloth to cover my eyes and a blanket. But the 40 minutes I spent inside that machine were different than anticipated.
In the days before, I imagined feeling confined and panicking. What if I can’t get the image of being in a coffin out of my head? Would I start screaming?
MRIs are loud, so Debra inserted earplugs and small pillow bookends to keep my head from moving. The knocking noise was initially distracting but then comforting. Every magnet pause suggested progress. About halfway through, I started observing myself and my reaction.
Three unexpected thoughts appeared. One, I looked panic square in the eye and dared it to come closer. I’m Rocky egging Appollo Creed on in the last round. He knows he can go the distance. I’m on the bridge, almost enjoying the view from here.
The second, more astounding, was that I could get used to letting go of control. Grasping control of whatever is the core of claustrophobia and much of what’s wrong in our world. For example, if only I could show you, dear reader, my vulnerability, you would love my story.
That’s the essence of “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” All our bridges are phantoms. We use our language to fool ourselves.
Until we get on the bridge, we don’t know. And when we pay the toll, we usually muddle through!
The third thought? You’ve probably figured it out. The coffin image I feared so much? It came back and sat gently on my chest. It wasn’t as scary as I thought.
This story was published in Medium’s Fiction Shorts.
A Drabble is a concise 100-word story that respects your busy schedule. Your presence here matters. Please stay on the page for thirty seconds so you will count as a reader. Thank you.
Setting: A baseball game
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“President Trump attended this year’s Superbowl in New Orleans. The NFL replaced its traditional End Racism endzone logo with Choose Love. Which one is the better commercial?”
“At Fenway, the Red Sox privilege the message Black Lives Matter. It doesn’t mean white lives don’t. It means in American history, Black Lives haven’t mattered, and they should, equally. Should we replace Black with All?”
“Doesn’t All Include Blacks? If we all chose love, wouldn’t that end racism?”
“Doesn’t Love and All divert our attention from what is still a problem in America?”
That’s me doing what I do best: talking with students.
Not at, with.
Like you and whatever it is, you do well; we fail as often as we succeed.
Photo by Rebecca Wiese
Embarrassing.
Worse, I’m describing the first of three reasons I thought Kamala Harris would beat Donald Trump.
Professors like threes; it makes them seem organized, even when wrong.
I’m 75 and have been in a classroom for half a century, starting with 6th graders and ending, well, I haven’t finished yet. Since 2018, when I retired from teaching Politics to college students, I’ve been on the Lifelong Learning circuit, with a few short appearances in Romania and Mexico. The photos are from last fall at West University in Timişoara, Romania.
Rodrigo S-C asks what we do well. And then gives us his answer.
“She’s a natural-born teacher.” We hear this all the time. Nonsense, and patronizing. No more than Michael Jordan was a natural at basketball. Jordan practiced his way to excellence.
For most of my teaching years, my practice involved learning about the topics I taught. Michael took 100s of jump shots every day during the off season. I read 10s of books every summer. I saw my craft as learning better content. Until Jenna knocked on my office door in 2008.
She was a psychology major taking my course on poverty and inequality. I developed this course soon after I arrived at Luther. It attracted majors from around campus and usually enrolled 30.
I was proud of keeping the course fresh by using different books each year. Books I had read the previous summer. Jordan was shooting. I was reading.
By the time Jenna took the course, I had replaced overhead transparencies with PowerPoint.
Slides.
Full of words summarizing the main ideas from the day’s reading assignment. High-tech transparencies.
I sent an email to Jenna asking her to stop by. She had earned an A on the first exam but was missing classes. That was an unusual combination. Usually, students who missed didn’t do well.
I asked her why she was missing class. “I’m bored in class. I don’t need to go. All you do is summarize the material.”
And then she added this kicker.
“You faculty are hiding behind Powerpoints.”
I felt my face turn red.
There was no smile from Jenna to soften the blows.
In response, I made comments about the value of in-class conversations. And about how I didn’t just summarize the reading but added insights from other authors and my ideas.
I didn’t change right away. I fumed.
And told myself stories: I was a good teacher; Jenna was an arrogant student. True stories. But Jenna’s words wouldn’t go away.
I always prepared my classes in the early morning. Two hours into one morning’s work, I realized all my energy had gone into how to organize the perfect Powerpoint slide show.
And not what my students needed to understand that day’s assignment. Two weeks after Jenna’s observations, I stopped using Powerpoint.
Cold turkey.
My favorite scene in Mr. Holland’s Opus, about a high school music teacher played by Richard Dreyfus, was after most of his students did poorly on a test. Those test results were a Jenna moment. He had to find another way.
In the next scene, he uses a piano to show his students how a Bach minuet formed the background of a pop song. You can watch this scene here.
I love this scene because Dreyfus’ Glenn Holland sits on the piano stool and talks to his students. And asks them questions about what kind of music they like.
Barriers down. He was still the teacher. But he had now joined the class.
It took me a year to revamp my pedagogy. Experimentation.
Finally, I developed an in-class template.
I broke our sixty or ninety-minute classes into 15-minute segments. Each was organized around a theme or question about the day’s assignment. I rearranged the classroom so that we were all facing each other. Sometimes I would be in the middle. I was part of the circle, prodding, questioning, and summarizing.
I relaxed in the classroom.
And started to arrive 10 minutes before the students filed in.
