The hijacking of innocence on the YBR.

“Between May 1961 and the end of 1972, there were 159 hijackings in American airspace. The majority of those were between ’68 and ’72, a five-year stretch, and sometimes they happened at the rate of one per week. You could have multiple hijackings in the same day — it was not an infrequent occurrence.”

I am a member of that shrinking community that remembers hijackings. In the spring of ’69 I flew home on El Al after spending a year studying abroad. Two soldiers holding machine guns were sitting in the rear of the plane. El Al was a likely candidate for being hijacked. Was I scared? Not really, and not because I felt invincible. I just didn’t want to be paralyzed by fear.

Today airline passengers rarely, if ever, worry about being hijacked. Measures are in place to minimize the risk. Today, though, we have new and more pernicious fears. The fear that fills us today was activated by yesterday’s elementary school shooting in Texas where 19 “innocent” children and two “innocent” educators were killed.

This tragedy overshadows any other fear we can think of because it is universal. Rare is the person who doesn’t have an emotional connection with a child. Rare is the person who has not been moved to tears by the tragic loss of life…again, in a school where innocence should reign supreme.

The airwaves and every form of social media will be flooded with outrage. Gun-talk will dominate many conversations. And the opinions will be divided. Stronger measures to make our schools a safe place will be bandied about. Some will argue that short of making our schools more “prison-like,” our schools are too vulnerable. They are literally sitting targets.

Teachers, who are on the front line, are totally distraught today, and rightfully so. They feel so helpless. They can’t help but think that such a tragedy could happen at their school. They are at risk of being paralyzed by fear. And it doesn’t help to tell a teacher that the “odds” of a school shooting happening at their school are a million to one. What happened at Robb Elementary (Texas) yesterday…what happened at Stoneman Douglas High School (Florida) in 2018…what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary (Connecticut) in 2012…and what happened at Columbine High School (Colorado) in 1999, happened in EVERY school in America because there isn’t a teacher who doesn’t believe or wonder that it could happen “here.”

Short of gun laws and extreme protection methods what can a teacher do? The fear of not being able to do anything will result in emotional paralysis…and that would be terrible for their students. As tragic as last week’s shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo was, people will continue to shop. The reason behind the Tops grocery store shooting can be identified and isolated. It can be rightfully called an extreme racist act, and as such the matter can be discussed. But, a school shooting? Such an act defies reason, and that’s why it leaves us heartbroken and helpless.

Does that mean we can’t do anything? I think there is something we can all do, and it needs to go way beyond talking about mental illness, even though mental illness has been a common factor among all the shooters.

Here’s something to consider, or should I say, ponder, and I suggest this at the risk of being called a sexist. The shooters were all males—-teens or young men. That’s not to say that a teen girl or young woman could not have been a shooter.

I have no answer, but I do think it is a question to consider.

And while we’re considering that, here’s something else to think about. Regardless of the age of the shooter, once-upon-a-time he was an innocent young boy. He was a pre-schooler, a kindergartener, a first-grader….He was in “your” class.

With anywhere from 20 to 30 students in a class, it is a gargantuan task for a teacher to connect with each and every one of their students. When a teacher greets their students on the first day of a new school year, they have no idea who those students (really) are. Since in my experience teachers are generally kind and loving people, they only see the goodness and innocence of their students. But, not all students are alike. As much as we don’t want to admit it, not all children come from loving homes. And where there is no love being shown at home, it is a challenge for a child to believe they are capable of being loved, and as a result they often don’t know how to love.

Unfortunately, many of those children fall through the cracks, especially if they are quiet loners. And then there are the “troublemakers,” the student who is the bane of existence for even the strongest teacher.

The expression that the “child is father to the man,” is so true. Without the ability to deal with the pain of not being loved or fitting in, or being the butt of “mean” kids, many children sail the seas of childhood without a rudder.

Teachers, since many of them are also parents, know how difficult it is to parent a child. If a parent is not really equipped to be a parent, there is a risk that the parent might overlook the tell-tale signs of a troubled child. Or in some cases, the parent is dealing with emotional or mental issues that have a long-lasting impact on their child.

Love is never part of a school curriculum, but loving always has a place in every class across America. Just imagine that if even only one or two teachers along the way provide that love and care a student needs, what a difference there could be. And if a teacher’s gut tells them there is something amiss with a child, how great it would be if just one or two teachers might be the “force” for change in a child’s life.

Love and kindness. Openness and inclusion. Cheer and goodwill. All are, in my opinion, in a teacher’s “wheelhouse.”

The “Prayer of St. Francis” comes to mind

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

That’s a big order for a teacher, but I believe if a teacher believes they are a force for good, they can do something to change the horrid landscape of school shootings. Instead of going to the head of the class with fear in their hearts, they need to shower their students with the goodness that comes from being a teacher.

Of course a teacher still needs to be cautious and prepared for the unexpected, but the fear of what could happen should not overshadow all the good that will happen.

Needless to say, we are living through extraordinary times. Anger and hatred have divided us in ways that none of us ever expected. The chasm that divided us has caused a terrible vacuum…and the little I know about the subject, nature abhors a vacuum. As a result, our children are being sucked into the black hole of despair. Our children are suffocating.

There should be an app to take care of this heinous vacuum. The funny thing is, there is an app. It’s the app of care and kindness. It’s an app that is powered by the love we have stored in our hearts.

While there is no way to say for certain that school shootings will go the way of air hijacking, I believe that our teachers, with the help of sane legislation, will make a big difference for our children.

Dedicated to the innocent victims at Uvalade.
In memory of all our children lost to the madness of school shootings.
In honor of my daughter Jennifer Begley Devine; my daughters-in-law, Sarah Miressi Begley and Courtney Muller Begley; my sister-in-law, Annette Luzon Harstein; and my niece, Jenna Hartstein – wonderful teachers all who teach our children to reach for the stars.

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Looking back on the rocky Yellow Brick Road.

May 4, 1970. 51 years. A life time? A memory? A veritable smudge on the American Canvas? It was the month I expected to walk across a raised platform and be handed my college diploma from the president of Marist College. But, a terrible thing happened on the way to an event that would mark my first step on the “real world” Yellow Brick Road.

The war in Viet Nam had been raging for what seemed like forever. Many students had either crossed the border to Canada to escape the draft or were drafted. Or…signed up for the National Guard. Or…for people like me, it was life as normal. The only problem…after the shooting and killing of four war protesters at Kent State by members of the Ohio National Guard, normal was turned upside down and inside out.

Marist, like hundreds of colleges across the country put up a “closed for business” sign. There were to be no final exams. Commencement hung in the balance. (In the end, Marist decided to hold a very solemn and subdued Commencement.)

What do I remember most about being on a ghost campus until Commencement exercises? I remember the “Wizard of Oz.” Literally remember it because I was part of a cast of the play rehearsing for a bus and truck tour of the Marist production that was to take us into the poverty belt of Appalachia in Kentucky.

Looking back, it was odd and ironic to be lost in Oz when the world was in mourning. Oz was about escaping from a grey world and finding what was over the rainbow. It was all about going to the Wizard to be awarded what we already had. It was realizing that there was “no place like home.”

If home was anything like the real home where innocent students could be killed, who would want to go home?

51 years after the Kent State shootings, the Yellow Brick Road is not paved with gold. Rather, it is paved with the result of our short-comings.

Is it possible that we left Emerald City without what we went there for? It doesn’t appear we are using our brains the way we should be; our ability to love is torn by so much hatred; and we seem to lack the courage to stand up and do what needs to be done.

We’ve got to do better.

Today’s blog is dedicated to Allison  Beth Krause, 19, Jeffrey Glenn Miller, 20, and Sandra Lee Scheuer, 20, who died on the scene, at Kent State, and William Knox Schroeder, 19, was pronounced dead at Robinson Memorial Hospital in nearby Ravenna shortly afterward.

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9/11. Do something good in their memory.

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Wicked words of advice to the Class of 2017

The annual commencement speech at the University of Oz was delivered by the Wicked Witch of the West, her sister unable to attend the ceremony because she was bogged down with housework.

Good afternoon graduates. While it is customary to be warmly embraced by your commencement speaker, it is not in my purview to offer you hollow plaudits and pleasant platitudes. I will not coddle you, I will not play nice-nice with you, and I will most definitely not bull shit you.  You have a legitimate reason to celebrate because you did finish what you started out to do when you graduated from high school. That’s more than the close to 50% of college bound students can say who didn’t pass the finish line. But don’t get a swelled head. Across the fruited plains of America two million undergraduate degrees are being awarded.  Mathematically that means you are not even one in a million.

Economic statisticians love to point out that college graduates have a much higher life-time earning potential than non-graduates. Big deal. So you spent about $200,000 to get where you are today.  It will take you a decade to break even with your non-graduate contemporaries’ earnings. Imagine what you could have done with that $200,000.  Instead of earning 15 credits studying abroad for a semester, you could have actually lived abroad for four years and come away with a lifetime of valuable experiences.  You could have invested your $200,000 and bought a nice car with the interest.

But for the moment let’s forget about earning potential and let’s focus on what happened to you after four years on the Yellow Brick Road. What did you really learn? What did you really learn here in these hallowed halls and rolling hills that you couldn’t have learned somewhere else? How many hours did you spend in class and working on papers and projects that were wasted hours?  If your four years of college were an orange, how much juice would you have actually squeezed out?

If we were to be really honest you would know that it wasn’t the courses you took in college that made all the difference, but it was the course you set to navigate the waters of higher education. If you didn’t set a course, all the credit courses you took were for naught. But don’t think for a moment that your course had to be a rigid one because many a boat has been dashed upon the rocks because the navigator failed to trim the sails or let them fly when necessary.

Graduation is not a final destination. It’s a port. If you got the most out of your education you will see the open seas and be overwhelmed about all the opportunities that await you.

Please don’t think for a moment that your diploma is equipped with a GPS. Your diploma is like a driver’s license. And if you can remember the day you passed your road test you had no problem saying you still had a lot to learn.

Sometime in the next week or so, check your parents’ odometer and see how many miles they’ve journeyed on the Yellow Brick Road and ask them what they’ve learned in all the years they’ve been driving.

It is totally out of character for me to say anything that is not a tad wicked, but I will break character today and say this. You life is what you make of it and if I can offer you a suggestion, your life will be full of meaning if you take full responsibility for your actions, your motives and your decisions. You will never have full control of what happens to you in life, but you can retain control over how you deal with what life throws at you. So don’t spend your life blaming others.

Formal education eventually comes to an end, but learning does last a lifetime…if you choose a lifetime of learning.

Now get out of here before I turn you into a Munchkin.

 

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We all need a cyclone…or two…in our lives.

For a moment forget about the wonderful Wizard of Oz movie. As good as it is, Hollywood failed to understand some of the finer nuisances that can only be found in the book.  There were no farm hands, no Elvira Gulch, and no Professor Marvel. What was left?  Aunt Em, Uncle Henry, Dorothy…and Toto, too.

Who can forget Dorothy running away from home to find happiness over the rainbow only to abandon her plan to return home where a cyclone propelled her on her fantastic  journey.

It’s different in the book. It took only 600 words to set the story to send Dorothy up, up and away. Author L. Frank Baum used the word “gray” ten times in those 600 words. He not only described Dorothy’s home and landscapes as gray, but he used the same word to paint a picture of Em and Henry.

In the book Dorothy had no reason to run away. She was not a misunderstood little girl. But she did have a longing for a place over the rainbow.

“It was Toto that made Dorothy laugh, and saved her from growing as gray as her surroundings.”

And therein we learn why Dorothy was longing for something to happen. She was deathly afraid of turning gray like Em and Henry. Deep down inside she understood how easy it was to lose your color and turn grey.

overwhelmed by what her future was going to be like, a cyclone struck…and nothing was ever going to be the same.

We don’t have to wait for a cyclone to help us avoid or escape becoming gray. We have options. We have opportunities. But many of us prefer to stay grey because it’s so safe.

Having had the opportunity to teach college students for more than a dozen years I have observed, first hand, the future. The close to 1000+ students I have had in my classes were all solidly nice “kids.”  But they were in danger of becoming gray, and not because they wanted to become gray, but because many of them didn’t know they had a choice.

By and large they were all good students in high school. And by good I don’t only mean they had good grades, they were well-behaved, polite, and focused on the role they would play in the greater marketplace. From early on in their education they either knew or their parents knew, what they needed to do to “succeed.” They learned that it was far better to play it according to the rules than to take risks. When they colored, they stayed inside the lines.  And over time they only had one colored crayon.

What do these students need? A cyclone. They need something to send them on a journey. They need to step out of their comfort zone. They can do this by choosing to study abroad, by taking a lead role in a campus activity, by being selfless and going out into the community and volunteering, by shedding old prejudices and embracing people not like them, by being exposed to new ideas, and by standing up for what is right.

We don’t need to go to Oz, because in the book Dorothy was glad to be home, and home is where can not only bring color into our own lives, we can bring color into the lives of others.

 

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