That and this, September 2018 edition

Back at school. I'm getting closer and closer to prompting a chorus in my classes when the PA announcer says "Excuse the interruption" of a loud and hearty "NO!" It's really not okay to interrupt classes- it just isn't. And I always audibly say NO. And some of the students are joining me.

We had a spirited discussion today about new school rules. Kids just do not like change. Even if the change isn't really significant in the larger sense. Boundaries and limits are a source of comfort for kids, whether they admit it or not.

A couple of other things caught my eye recently. First, was the appearance of the adjectival hyphenate "soul-crushing." It's not hard to figure out what it means, but where did that come from? Does it mean anything that I've heard it used repeatedly in many contexts over the past few weeks? What's going on that we seem to need this descriptor for things that frequently?

The other thing is this- an article about the rise of what it calls "anxiety consumerism." Again, what does that say that this is a topic to be discussed.

And speaking of hot topics, I've struggled to put a finger on sexual harassment's place in society today, and to deal with my discomfort over people like Louis CK returning to the scene. This article tries to explore how men really don't get it, hard as they might try, And maybe that's what I'm uncomfortable about- my inability to really know what it feels like. I do agree with the writer's point that, while people like Louis CK deserve to be able to make a living, that we should not be feeling any pity for them if they have not done everything possible to engage in restorative justice.

I've generally steered clear of politics here, but it's become impossible at this point. Like him or not, it's important that everyone understand that what Donald Trump's actions and words mean is that he is attempting to transition this country from a democracy (of sorts) to an authoritarian dictatorship. For anyone who knows Trump's history (which I have for about 40 years- I even met him in 1980), this is completely unsurprising. I'm not disappointed or outraged by him; this is who he is, and you can't get upset at people for being who they are- it's pointless.

What I'm disappointed and outraged (but not entirely surprised) by is the Republican party's willingness, eagerness even, to embrace this antidemocratic objective. I'm not a Republican but do most Republicans feel like the pursuit of power is more important than democratic institutions? Do they so hate the Democratic Party that they've grown to hate small-d democracy as well? I didn't expect them all to just fall in line. Maybe that was naive, but this is unprecedented.

I'm not going to catalog everything that's been done and is being done, from so-called voter fraud measures designed to disenfranchise who are unlikely to vote for them on down the line. If you consume the news you know and either care or don't. But understand that this is exactly what is going on and either like it and go along with it or try to do something to change it.

Now that I think about it, I don't read this as political. I read it as existential. Does the country, the United States of America, exist as a democracy as enumerated  in the founding documents? Should it? Politics is only part of it- the part that empowers specific people to do things. Just because you have the power to do something doesn't mean you should.

That said, it makes for some great comedy, doesn't it?

Reboot part 2

Some of you know all or part of this story. The seeds of what happened this past school year were planted unintentionally by people who are peripheral to my life. First came an offhanded text (that doesn't seem technically possible, let me find a better word than offhanded), a casual text from someone I know who was experimenting with deepening her sense of Judaism. She told me she'd seen a good speaker and I asked what it was about. I don't remember the whole thing but it was relating shame and something else and teshuvah.

What interested me had nothing to do with the speaker or the person who told me about it. My thought was, if I don't ever intentionally hurt anyone or do any harm, and when I do something even by accident I apologize and try to make amends, what exactly am I atoning or repenting for? And let me just say, I'm not dealing with having evil thoughts as a sin of any sort. Having evil thoughts and not being evil is a positive, not a negative.

 The answer that was most obvious to me was things that you did and didn't even realize you'd done. Who had I harmed without realizing it? So I started thinking about this a lot, and just then, #metoo happened. I've never had any kind of incidents and the one time I gave a student a 3-minute ride to the train station I was terrified. But what might I have said or done that made someone feel uncomfortable or harassed?

In the course of my exploration, I started hearing stories of harassment at my school, as there seem to be almost everywhere. I had never really thought about sexual harassment to any depth. I'm a feminist and have thought about issues of bias and discrimination, but harassment specifically wasn't anything I'd focused on.

Long story short, as I explored harassment in general and in the school, three things happened. First, an alum offered to come to school and talk to seniors about sexual harassment in the post-high school world, there were sexual harassment incidents that sent shockwaves through the school, and I tapped into an undercurrent of frustration with the way people in the school treated each other.

What followed were many meetings of constantly growing size, assemblies and discussions among students, teachers and administrators. There was a growing realization that we as a community needed to meet this challenge head-on. And we come into this school year with the topic of how we treat each other at the top of many agendas. Now let's see what happens next.