Vergil’s Coffee

It looks like Utterz has just updated its services and has focused its site around discussions (no more Cow theme?). I think Utterz has always emphasized this, but the recent facelift (and the changing of its calling menu) seems to be a clearer presentation in positioning itself as the Audio/text/video place for communication around topics or just whatever you like.

Which brings me to this Utterz from gtowna that I listened to this morning and feel compelled to share. Why? Not because I completely agree with him–I don’t know much about international politics; I think I know that we in an election year here in the States–I share it because I think I have to be reminded of how the actions of my country affect others (aside from Iraq). 

I get the feeling that folks in the US are a bit antsy about not being #1 and that as long as we can still be in the superpower club, then we can still call the shots. It’s the popular kids sitting at the popular kid table and everyone is (or should be) looking at what the popular kids are doing. All the while, there’s those who aren’t popular, having to deal with own issues of relevance and identity. 

I think that’s why I listen to NPR and BBC radio, read Christian Science Monitor and The Week, listen or read from sites like Twitter and Utterz: to try and get a better handle on a few of the single voices outside Goshen, Indiana.

Now, I’ve got to run to Wal*Mart.

(on having a former teacher asking me what’s been happening in my life since 1984 via Facebook)

Dear Mr. Noble,

And I start that way because what student has the gall to called their teacher by the first name? It just sounds and feels funny, so I’ll simply address you the same way I did in high school: Mr. Noble. (Besides, I think the students that called you by your first name were just being daring. To call your teacher “Dick” is both funny ha-ha and probably the result of some silly dare at the expense of your first name, perhaps).

I think the last time I saw you was at your house and I can’t remember for the life of me who was with me, but I remember it was probably after graduation and before a lot of us heading to the Midwest for college (or, in my case, post-high school education <g>). And I think your wife was there and your daughter (the one whom you proudly told us could say the Pythagorean Theorem by the age of 4). Wait, maybe it was Peter (who later said he had AIDS but I think is in Canada now) who was with me. Anyway, it was a nice visit and I think we made a lot of small talk and if I am correct, you even offered us iced tea and we accepted and sipped it (and why is it when we invite people into our homes do we give them tea or coffee or water? Maybe it’s a carry over from the olden days when traveling meant more).

From then, I sort of lost contact with you. I had heard a few reports of how you might have slightly ignored authority (creative teacher decision) and took some of your students to see Schindler’s List even if it was rated R (content over labels). I didn’t confirm the rumor, but I didn’t think it was that far out of your character. I don’t mean that in a negative sense; in fact, I think that’s one of the things I learned from you.

Remember when we were getting to Chapter 19 in Biology and you prompted us to say the “magic word” when a certain history teacher came in the room in the portable classroom you taught in? Yes, to the book, Chapter 19 was “Human Reproduction” but to our Biology class we gleeful answered your prompt “Class, what are we learning about today?” with a chorus “Sex!” This teacher-student exchange could be wrong on several levels: 1). You did it to possibly get a desired reaction from the unsuspected history teacher that walked in; 2). You were encouraging teenagers to say the word “sex” in public in the 1980s; and, possibly most damaging, 3). We were in a Christian school, weren’t we? And yet, there was so much more that I learned from your pedagogy than making someone a tad embarrassed and that was the power of being human and calling out sacred cows and celebrating things that make a lot of people uncomfortable. Sometimes the purpose of humor is to say the things that are unspoken in public so that we can simply get over ourselves.

And I’m not sure how he pulled this off, but I can say that Todd was a good “tally man” in Algebra II. Early in the semester you had made a mistake in a computation on the board and someone called you on it. Your response (and perhaps this is where the Christian school comes in) was that Jesus said that we need to forgive one another 70 times 7 (of which we all calculated to be 490). And we took it literally as most Christian folk take things in the Bible and Todd kept a running count of your mistakes, miscues and blunders (even if you corrected them immediately) until the end of the semester. When we reached 489 we decided as a class to have a celebration the following day and when you hit 490 the next day, we celebrated your mistakes with cake, ice cream, pop and other sweet stuff.

Probably what confused me the most about you was the Timothy group (I think that’s what you called them) where a few of us got a special invitation to meet as a group off campus to talk and have a look at the book of Timothy. It was a bit different of a group than I was used to and I really can’t remember any of the conversations or even topics that we discussed. I think I remember feeling like this was something special and that I was invited to be a part of it and I sometimes wonder why I was invited. For me, it was one of the few times that a teacher actually wanted to do non-school stuff outside of school. This wasn’t a school-sponsored club or even; it was something that you did for us and it was out of the ordinary.

Granted you did pick me up in Sebastopol every morning for a year or two. I would hop on the county bus at 6:20 a.m. in Monte Rio and get off by that corner where you would swing by in your … what kind of car was it? It had fins and was some shade of gold or silver or both. I think you also tried to explain why a manual transmission was better overall than an automatic one (it had three on the tree didn’t it?) And you are correct: I was a mooch for getting rides to places. I don’t think I every gave you gas money for the trip and perhaps you’d like to prorate your pay back in today’s gas prices, eh?

My oldest son, Evan, turned 11 Friday and he had two of his friends over for a slumber party thing.

Colin, the 7-year old, did his part in dressing up as a ninja/Darth Vader/bad guy from Meet the Robinsons. Lori is still a tad sore from last week’s running in the Cleveland Marathon…I got to help pace her to a new personal best of 4:44. (And, btw, this is the second year we’ve run a marathon on our anniversary and I wouldn’t exactly recommend that type of a weekend when you get a chance to get away from the kids). We’ve been married for 18 years, Lori and I, and we’ve been living in Goshen, Indiana for 12 years. She’s a SLP and works on private contract through the state with the 0-3 year old population. She’s the first person I met that really read a lot of books and had quick wit (though I’m proud to say that I beat her every time in Scrabble).

I am teacher, Mr. Noble, and though I choose English as my subject, some of the teacher persona comes from my observations in that portable classroom in that little school in Santa Rosa, California. I tried for a mathematics endorsement through college correspondence courses, but my heart wasn’t in it and I loved words more (though, I think they’re all symbols–math and English–and it’s all about language anyways, eh?). My students like appreciate respect me and have creative ways of showing it–and I think you know what I mean. Whereas somebody drew the numbers “666″ on the forehead of every one of your pictures in my 1984 yearbook, my students write “DDJD” on my board or on our class website or even on their Google Chat status indicator. I think one year, a student even made bracelets to hand out to the class with “DDJD” on it. I smiled. (Die Die Judson Die, btw).

In short: when you messaged me via Facebook: “I’m interested in you and your family and your work, etc, etc” I can tell you that I am happy, that I have a wonderful life with Lori and Evan and Colin (and sometimes LukeTheCat), that I am amusing myself in my work, that, and I think I got this from you, the classroom is not so much a place to learn about stuff for the future but a place where one can live a life. I think of you often: about a 4-year-old girl saying “The sum of the square of the legs equals the square of the hypotenuse” and a father smiling in approval, about Chapter 19, about 490, and about someone enjoying what they do and the people that watch him perform each day. And, about the improbability of impacting human lives and the randomness of words and how sometimes the whole business of life is a bit funny.

Thank you.

Peace,

Chris Judson

Class of 1984
(Geometry, Biology, Algebra II and Basic Auto Theory)

Because I can.

And that is perhaps the long and short of it.

As it stands, my teaching schedule does not include Student Publications nor Beginning Journalism and that is a first since I’ve taken this position at Concord High School 13 years ago. The change also has me not in Room 138: a room I’ve occupied since it was built 12 years ago. I will no longer be responsible for the Journalism program at Concord High School and it’s a change that I requested–a change that has been in the works since first trimester of this year and so it has little to do with the current newspaper staff and more to do with some necessary changes in my life and my department.

I requested from my department chair (Livrone) and principal (Cunningham) that I teach sophomores again and that in order to do that I would give up my teaching and advising responsibilities of Newspaper and Journalism. My schedule for next year will still include the other classes that I have been assigned this year (English 12b, Biblical Literature, and yes, AP English Language and Composition) and then sections of English 10A, 10B and another English 10 class to be titled later.

The teacher that will be taking the Student Publications teaching and advising responsibilities along with the Beginning Journalism class is Ms. Lauren Martin. We will probably be swapping rooms as we swap teaching assignments.

I’ll be adding more to this post tomorrow, but for now I thought it was time that you know.

It was Mrs. Addis who told me that I’d be blind in twenty years if I looked at the solar eclipse back in 1978; I looked and I’m still looking. She also was the first person I remember to complain (or comment) about the poor, or those on welfare. She was telling us how she was in a family’s house who was poor and that “They had a color television set…one nicer than ours,” she said. I think she then went on to make some comment about how it wasn’t fair or right that people who weren’t working to have more comforts than those who actually worked for a living.

My mom sent me to the Christian School in the sixth grade because she didn’t like what she saw at the school my brother was attending. She told me later that “almost every kids was stoned out of their minds” and she was not going to have neither me nor my sister Stephany go to “that public school.” So, she looked in the phone book and decided against the St. Eugene’s (”too expensive and too much guilt”) and enrolled us in Rincoln Valley Christian School in the fall of 1977. Mrs. Addis was my 6th grade teacher and I listened to her most of the time. I remember trying to explain to my best friend, Brad Frost, that I was transferring schools and that we’d probably not hang out a lot. Brad’s dad was a car salesman and I think the Frosts were a bit better off than we were. They had a pool and we had the Santa Rosa Creek.

I know my mom didn’t make a lot of money and the court-order child support checks from my cardiologist father helped us to be clothed and fed and kept a decent house functional until we moved in 1980 out to the Russian River area. Those support checks continued until I turned 21 and I remember appreciating those checks because they basically paid for 3 years of college in Grand Rapids, MI.

I think I became more aware of our lack of money during my sophomore year of high school. We moved back to Santa Rosa into a 3-room apartment and I remember people from the church doing a lot of nice things for me. In fact, I think someone even bought my letter jacket for me because they realized what I knew: we didn’t have much extra cash for luxury items. And though that was to my advantage when I applied for financial aid (for, on paper my family had little), it was an odd feeling using my mother’s food stamps to buy her some groceries when I visited her during the Christmas break of my freshman year of college.

I don’t pretend to fully understand what it’s like to be poor as I come from a family which was upper middle class, then middle class, and then lower middle class. It’s all labels anyway, isn’t it?

I suppose that’s why I had to snap myself when ConcordLive! ran the “Where are you going for Spring Break?” piece last Friday. It’s an annoying topic because you know what’s going to happen: all the rich kids are going to shove in everyone else’s faces what tropical climate they’ll be sunning in while everyone else is stuck in this “nothing-to-do” permaclouded area known as Elkhart County. (I’m hoping you were reading that “all the rich kids” part in an annoying nasal tone; it’s fun. Go back and do it…really; it’ll be fun and effective for the tone I’m trying to set…Spencer, do it; Chris, that’s a great nasal tone).

At least that’s the impression I got when I look on the faces of some of the students in my classes. Their families are working poor or certainly can’t afford to go on holiday for a week or so. These families may or may not own color televisions or letter jackets. But why do those who have more get to tell us about their seemingly wonderful exploits? Do the rich even deserve the wealth they have?

And it’s at this point where I silently slink into another conversation because you’ve heard this rhetoric before. You’ve heard it recently as a battle cry against the “have’s” who make big profits and who get huge tax breaks. The reason I tend to back away from this line of thinking is because of the eventual cliché:

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Cliché because I don’t even know if it’s accurate, but man you can get the Democrats “Amen”ing about this one. We might as well recite the labeling:

• Republicans = Big Business,
• Democrats = Social programs for the individual,
• Ron Paul = Sancho to Don Quixote.

As the ConcordLive! piece ended, I remember making some comment about how each person in the piece were going somewhere warm and exotic, while not one student said that they were staying in town. And at that moment I wanted to make a value judgment, but I stopped myself because the implications are unjust and illogical. People like to blame their misfortune on the fortune of others and that makes for a fairly miserable and cynical permacloud on one’s day. Some days I’m ready to pick up the lance and fight windmills; most days, I’d like to think I might just aim a little lower and be happy with a cup of $1.98 coffee and some blinding sunshine.

Sunshine feels good, doesn’t it?

Even in Elkhart County.