Bertis Downs, a member of the board of the Network for Public Education, is a lawyer who lives in Athens, Georgia. His daughters attended public schools in Athens, where they thrived. Bertis spent his professional life representing the rock group REM. He now devotes most of his time to what he values, as a board member of NPE and People for the American Way. He is a wonderful person! On a trip to London, he visited the historic Church of St. Martin in the Fields. He thought about the famous quote from John Dewey about the best and wisest parent and did a mash-up with the prayer of St. Martin.

 
And we got this prayer from Bertis:

 
“It seems that John Dewey was Episcopalian, so I like to imagine him re-writing the St Martin’s Prayer for the World for school purposes:

 
“God, give us a vision of our public schools, where what the best and wisest parents want for their own children, the whole community and its leaders want for all of its children, leading to a world as your love would make it: a world where the weak are protected and none go hungry, uneducated or poor; a world where the benefits of civilized life are shared, and everyone can enjoy them; a world where different races, nations and cultures study and thrive and live in tolerance and mutual respect; a world where peace is built with justice, and justice is guided by love; and give us the courage to build it.
Amen”

If you don’t read this post, you will have made a great mistake. I have posted whatever Vivian Connell writes (for a couple of examples, see here, and here). Vivian is a beautiful, vivacious woman who taught high school English in North Carolina for twenty years, went to law school, became a lawyer, then learned that she has ALS. She began blogging about her life and how she was coping with ALS, which is a fatal degenerative disease. In her writings and in her life, she exemplifies dignity, courage, and grace. You will learn, if you read this post, that she is also a gifted writer who confronts life without complaint or fear as it slips away and as she loses her ability to walk, move, speak.

I met Vivian two years ago at a forum in North Carolina. She was on a panel of teachers who had left teaching or left the state to teach elsewhere; all explained why they left. The common thread was the very low salaries paid to teachers. Vivian is a passionate supporter of public education, and I was thrilled when she came to the Network for Public Education’s first conference in Austin.  I was surprised when I learned from a fellow member of the board of NPE, Bertis Downs, that she is a close friend of his; it turns out that Vivian and Bertis’s wife waited tables together long ago in Athens, Georgia. Bertis told me that Vivian hopes to visit the NPE annual conference in April, when we meet in Raleigh. This is fantastic news!

In this post, Vivian describes the remarkable events that have occurred since she received her diagnosis of ALS. She can no longer write or type, so a friend transcribed this post.

She traveled extensively in the first year, knowing that she had to use every minute. She took a group of school children to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. She was invited to tell a story–her story–at a famous story-telling convening (the video is in the post). Friends held a benefit to raise money for Public Justice, where she was honored. Our mutual friend Bertis Downs organized the benefit. She has met many new friends. She has experienced the goodness of friends and strangers.

She writes:

Who would have thought that a baby born to high school graduates, raised in tiny racist towns in Georgia and southern Mississippi, would end up in a progressive college community that revolutionized and expanded her thinking, generations beyond her upbringing?

Who would have thought she could spend three years living abroad, exposed to people from many countries, learning new perspectives on what it means to live on this planet, and certainly what it means to live outside her own country?

Who would have imagined the language ability she gained through this experience would lead her to a master’s degree and a 20-year career of teaching high school students?

And finally, who would have imagined that this first-generation college graduate would have been inspired by her students and teaching to leave her education career and become an attorney so that she would have the opportunity to have a voice in the public policy matters about which she was passionate?

I could not have imagined it, and I certainly could not have engineered it.

Again, I say my life has been much more blessed than cursed…..

How could I have imagined, when waiting tables in Athens, Georgia, with Katherine Downs, that I would go to law school, reconnect with Bertis, and have him connect me to Lauren, who staged the benefit gifted by Bertis that marks the culmination of fabulous events at the end of my life?

As I face my mortality.

Hell, every time I’m told about how rare my disease is, I want to laugh out loud because the events that have followed my diagnosis—the amazing connections and meetings—put the rarity of ALS to shame.

These unlikely events that have formed this magical web in my post-diagnosis life have in common a focus on justice, a belief in love, and a hunger for ideals and goodness.

These cannot cure my ALS, but they can certainly comfort and inspire.

And I would not trade them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And these are likewise the lessons of literature—the novels we teachers choose to teach:

The Scarlet Letter, which reminds us not to judge and points to the strength of women, the importance of the heart;

The Great Gatsby, which depicts the perils of acquisitiveness and of chasing worldly success; and

Of Mice and Men, perhaps the most important in my life now, which reminds us that we can never plan for an ideal future because…things happen—ALS happens—disappointment happens, and we must learn to cope.

And of course, Plato, who writes of Socrates (as I state at the end of my Monti story), who told the Athenian senate that anyone can escape death if they are willing to say or do anything but that the real challenge in life is not to escape death but to escape unrighteousness, for unrighteousness runs faster than death.

All the people who have lifted me up, supported me, and been a part of the amazing highlights of my life since my diagnosis…well, they are my running partners. We all seek not to escape death, but to escape unrighteousness. And our hearts are indescribably full.

I hope that my message—my insistence that fighting for our highest ideals of justice and for a life of service to others—will outlive me. I speak from firsthand knowledge when I proclaim these pursuits to be the greatest comfort—and perhaps the only comfort one has—when one faces death.

And I hope that this will be part of my personal narrative, the story that I tried to write through my life…

…that these truths will be the takeaway for anyone who reads my story.

Vivian has a beautiful soul. I don’t know if she realizes it, but she is loved and admired by many who never met her. She will live forever.

I have decided to take a break from blogging during the Christmas holidays. It is the first time I have turned off the blog since it started in April 2012.

Now, after writing 13,500 posts, after reading more than 300,000 comments, I am hitting the pause button for a few days.

If you see anything interesting online or in the local news, send me a link. I will be stockpiling posts for the re-launch.

You should rest, spend time with friends and family, read, travel, relax.

That’s what I plan to do.

I hope you miss the blog. I will be back on Monday, January 4, 2016.

Have a happy, healthy, satisfying Néw Year. Hug those you love.

Diane

This is a repeat of a post I published in 2013. I think it is worth posting again.

As you may know, I was born and raised in Houston, Texas.

I am third of eight children.

My parents were both Jewish, as am I.

Yet every year we celebrated Christmas.

Is this puzzling? It wasn’t at all puzzling to me and my siblings.

Every Christmas, the family bought a Christmas tree, and we all joined in decorating it with lights, ornaments, and tinsel.

Every Christmas morning, we woke up like a noisy tribe about five a.m. and rushed to discover that we all had presents under the tree.

Why did our Jewish family celebrate Christmas?

To begin with, my parents had been born into observant Jewish families. My father was born in Savannah, Georgia, where he was the youngest of nine children and the only boy. He was spoiled rotten, left high school without graduating, and tried (but failed) to make it in vaudeville as a hoofer and comedian. My mother was born in Bessarabia and came to America at the end of World War 1 as a nine-year-old girl with her mother and little sister. They traveled on a ship (the “Savoie”) loaded with returning American soldiers, then made their way to Houston to meet my grandfather, who was a tailor and had come to America before the war broke out.

What my parents wanted most was to be seen as “real Americans.” My mother was especially zealous about wanting to speak perfect English (she arrived speaking only Yiddish). She was very proud that she earned a high school diploma from the Houston public schools. In her eyes, real Americans celebrated Christmas. So, of course, we had a tree, and we believed that Santa Claus brought the presents. There was no religious content to our tree and our gifting.

We went to public school, where we learned all the Christmas songs. We went to assemblies and sang “Silent Night,” “Joy to the World,” “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” and all the other traditional songs. I knew I was Jewish, and I usually hummed certain words instead of saying them, but nonetheless I loved the songs and I love them still. I was never offended by singing Christmas songs at public school. It was what we did.

Of course, my siblings and I went to Sunday School at the synagogue, and my brothers were bar mitzvah. I was “confirmed,” which was a ceremony that occurred at the end of tenth grade, when we read from the prayer book as a group.

I should add that we started every day in public school with a short reading from the Bible, over the loudspeaker, followed by a prayer and the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.

I was okay with the Bible reading, the prayers, the Christmas songs. I was also okay with our family putting up a Christmas tree while belonging to a synagogue and practicing our Jewish rituals and holy days.

I committed one major faux pas as a result of my upbringing in two religious traditions. On one occasion, when I was about 12, the rabbi at my reform temple invited me to join him on the altar and say a prayer. I said “The Lord’s Prayer,” the one that begins, “Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name” prayer, and there was some awkwardness afterwards. I had no idea that I was saying a Christian prayer, drawn from the Gospel of Matthew, in the synagogue! I had heard it hundreds of times in school. I think I was forgiven my error. After that, the rabbi was careful to propose a specific prayer from the prayer book for children who were invited to speak from the altar.

Many things have changed, and I understand that. But when I go with my partner to midnight Mass on Christmas Eve at the Oratory of St. Boniface in Brooklyn, I am glad I know the words to the songs. I learned them in public school in Houston. I look around and am not surprised to see a fairly large number of other Jews from the neighborhood, also joining in singing the songs with the choir. It is Christmas. It is a time to celebrate peace and joy and goodwill towards all. We can all share those hopes.

Today is a day to count our blessings and to be grateful for our family, our friends, and our freedoms.

There is so much happening in the world and in our nation that is alarming. There are so many nations and regions where the great majority of people don’t have personal security, where every day is a struggle to survive, where life is cheap, where men with guns threaten everyone daily. We can be grateful to live in a nation where most people most of the time are not in constant danger.

Clearly, we have serious problems to address in our own country, especially the fact that so many live in poverty in a land of abundance. We must commit ourselves to rectifying that terrible wrong so that all can be assured of enough to eat, a good place to live, and appropriate medical care. Or as Franklin D. Roosevelt put it so eloquently in his address to Congress in 1941:

“For there is nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy. The basic things expected by our people of their political and economic systems are simple. They are:

“Equality of opportunity for youth and for others.

“Jobs for those who can work.

“Security for those who need it.

“The ending of special privilege for the few. The preservation of civil liberties for all.

“The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and constantly rising standard of living.”

This was the speech where he enunciated The Four Freedoms:

“The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world.

“The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world.

“The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants- everywhere in the world.

“The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world.

“That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

“To that new order we oppose the greater conception—the moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear.”

Words spoken 74 years ago, a vision of a world that still eludes us, a vision that we must not abandon.

I am grateful to live in America. I am grateful for my family and friends. I am grateful for life and health.

I am grateful to the educators who dedicate their lives to helping children gain the skills, knowledge, and character to build a better world.

To all of you, parents, teachers, social workers, psychologists, health workers, and political activists who fight for children: Thank you.

Stop here if you are bored with hearing people of a certain age talking about their health. That’s what I’m going to do.

In April 2014, I tripped coming down the steps outside my house and landed on a flagstone on my left knee. I had a ripping sensation and knew it was bad. The surgeon said I had torn my miniscus and ACL and needed a total knee replacement.

Two weeks later, I went to the University of Louisville to receive the Grawemeyer Award. I used a walker but managed to hobble to the podium without it.

On May 9, I had the surgery. Surgery is especially complex for me because I am on blood thinner and always at risk of bleeding too much or (without the blood thinner) clotting. Before the surgery, they took me off the blood thinner and started it as soon as the surgery was over.

The rehabilitation and physical therapy were intense over the summer, but no matter how hard I worked, I couldn’t straighten my leg. I switched physical therapists, and the new one–Karen Yanelli of M.Y.P.T.–was spectacular. She told me that my knee was encased in scar tissue. It is a condition called arthrofibrosis. She told me I had to go to Dr. Frank Noyes in Cincinnatti, at Mercy Hospital. He literally wrote the book on this condition.

I was fairly desperate. I was afraid I would be permanently disabled, and I was deeply depressed, feeling hopeless. I was willing to go anywhere, try anything. My neighbor on Long Island, Dr. Roxana Mehran, a reenowned cardiac researcher, spent an hour giving me a pep talk. She was my guardian angel. She persuaded me that I had to take any path that would help. She gave me the strength to persevere.

I flew to Cincinnatti with Mary, my partner, and met Dr. Noyes. He opposed further surgery, as I might get more scar tissue. Instead, his staff forced my leg straight with strong (excruciating) physical pressure and built a fiberglass cast while my leg was forced straight. They cut the cast open, lined it with cotton, and told me to wear it for 12 hours a day, wrapped tight with a giant Ace bandage.

After seven weeks, I did not need the cast anymore. My leg was straight and I could walk! I was so happy!

Just a few limitations. Often, it is difficult to get out of a car or rise from a chair or walk up or down stairs. Not painful, just difficult and uncomfortable. I feel like I am walking on stilts. In other words, I am fragile. I am frightened of stumbling, tripping, or having a little kid on a bike run into me on the sidewalk. I would topple over. I fell once. I was walking Mitzi, our dog, about 10 pm in a small city park, and a rodent ran in front of us. Mitzi took off in hot pursuit, and I was determined not to let go of her (she weighs 70 pounds). I went sprawling on the ground, but it was soft, I didn’t let go of Mitzi. I managed to fall flat without injuring the knee.

I am feeling much, much better. I am not depressed anymore. I know that I have a permanent disability, and I can deal with that. I can’t run, I can’t walk fast, I can’t walk long distances. But I can walk. I have recovered from an ordeal, and I am grateful to all those who helped me along the way.

The lessons I learned: Walk slowly, watch where you are going, always hold the handrail. And be very grateful to your caregivers.