"Roundheads and Ramblings"

lessons unlearned

An Author Biography for Book Clubs

Posted on Thursday, May 22, 2014 1:55 PM

For many people. the word "retirement" conjures up daydreams about beaches, hammocks, lemonade, afternoon naps, or world travel. For me, retirement meant that I finally had time to work on things I wanted to do rather than the things somebody else expected me to do.When I looked back over my working career, I realized that no matter what job I was doing , I grew bored and tired of it after a few years.

I went to college to become a Latin teacher, and jobs were easy to find. After all, how many people do you know that want to teach Latin? But after ten years in high school classrooms, I was burned out. Lesson plans, faculty meetings, lunchroom and bus duty, extra-curricular activity supervision, and endless grading took almost all my waking hours. There were many days when I worked at the school for 14 hours straight. I really wanted my life back. At the end of that period, our school system was embroiled in a nasty teacher strike. I remember thinking that there was a great novel lurking in the details, but I was too tired to write it.

I escaped by becoming a stay-at-home Mom, particularly after my Air Force husband was stationed in Canada, and the NATO agreement under which our family entered that country said that I could not take a job that a Canadian could do. I became a domestic goddess instead. I picked wild berries and made jam and pie fillings for winter, bought a sewing machine and learned to make my own clothes and children's stuffed animals. Our yard sported an extensive vegetable garden, and I learned the fine art of making things like sauerkraut from my very own cabbage. I took lessons in pattern drafting, gourmet cooking, and cake decorating. The end to that phase came when the seven-year-old dropped my newly decorated Halloween cake face down into the shag rug. (yes, shudder, we had shag carpets back then!). I discovered I really missed books, and I toyed with the idea of writing one, but the idea sounded silly.

What was next? After five years of unemployment, my teaching licenses had all expired, which meant I had to go back to school to update my credentials. Going back to graduate school was exhilarating. Yes, I was older than my classmates, but I was also more experienced, and my own years in front of a class served me well in this new role. I loved the books, the ideas, the research -- so I stayed as long as I could. Instead of picking up a few credits, I did a Master's Degree in History, and then went on to pursue a Doctorate. Another ten years went by, and I was tired of sitting in the back of a classroom. I was ready to teach again.

This time I was a tenured professor in a fine and fancy liberal arts college. And teaching was fun again. The years of bus and lunchroom duty were far behind me, and people were actually encouraging me to write books -- but they wanted their kind of books -- academic tomes for my fellow professors. I did it because the stories about "publish or perish" are true. But it wasn't as much fun as I had imagined. And after fifteen years on that faculty -- as I stared down the throat of the monster who reminded me I was now 65 years old -- I knew I had to get out of our limestone tower and write the book I wanted to write.

That was ten years ago. In that period, I have written not one book, but six of them. And for the first time, I'm not burned out. I love what I do now, and within days of finishing one book, I discover another percolating beneath the surface. My mother had a treasure trove of old Pennsylvania Dutch "wise sayings," and one of them said: "We get too soon old, and too late smart." True enough, in my case, I suppose, except for the "too late" part. It's never too late!

All Pointed Hats Do Not Belong to Dunces -- or Do They?

Posted on Thursday, February 28, 2013 2:31 PM

This article in the Huffington Post today reminded me that news media would often prefer to report the juicy and scandalous, rather than any good news of the day:

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- A Ku Klux Klan chapter has been granted a demonstration permit to protest the renaming of three Memphis parks that honored the Confederacy and two of its most prominent figures.
In a written statement Tuesday, City Attorney Herman Morris said the permit was issued to the Loyal White Knights, which plans a rally in Memphis on March 30.
The planned protest is in response to the renaming of Nathan Bedford Forrest Park, Jefferson Davis Park and Confederate Park by the City Council on Feb. 5.
The name change angered fans of Forrest, a slave trader and Confederate cavalryman who was a member of the first version of the Klan. Supporters of the changes say Forrest was a racist who should not be honored with a park.

I think most locals are simply planning to ignore the event and stay home to dye Easter eggs. I'm not so sure we should ignore it, although I don't have an appropriate response in mind. The whole thing simply brings back memories of the Panhandle of Florida in 1964, when school desegregation was forced on an unwilling populace.

I was barely 25, hopelessly naive, and new to town. It had taken me less than an hour to find a new job as an English teacher at the local high school. I suppose I thought I was good enough that their "open arms" reception" was simply my due. I had no idea that when school opened in September, a flood of protests would result from the sudden closing of all black schools and the bussing of all those black students to the various white schools in town.

I'm happy to report that the schools themselves adjusted beautifully. Teachers found more desks, coaches went around grinning as they contemplated their new basketball and football players, the band director announced a new jazz band. And our kids? They just said "Hi" and went on about their business. But outside was a different story.

Faculty parked and school busses unloaded in an area surrounded by a high fence -- one gate, guarded by a patrol car at both the opening and closing of school. Outside that gate, the Ku Klux Klan assembled every day, no matter what the weather -- hooded, masked, and bearing hate signs. I soon learned to enter the gate at a fairly good clip and head for the far side of the lot, where I wouldn't hear the slurs being shouted after every car. Inside, I re-arranged my classroom, so that the student desks did not face the windows. Only I could see the picket lines just beyond the property line, and I coped by imagining that those pointed hoods were real dunce caps.

That was almost 50 years ago. Have we not learned anything in that time? How sad is it that such groups are still exercising their "legal right" to demonstrate their hatred?

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lessons unlearned

An Author Biography for Book Clubs

All Pointed Hats Do Not Belong to Dunces -- or Do They?