A dream journey

It had been years, perhaps even decades, that I had been dreaming of going to the GrandTetons, going to the Rocky Mountains! I had never been to Montana or Wyoming. I loved mountains and rivers. So earlier this year, I began the saving and the planning for this adventure.

Already I had learned that just seeing pictures of places was definitely not the same as going to those places!

Short outline of my trip: it was a solo journey. I flew into Boise, Idaho, staying one night there, rented a car and drove to West Yellowstone, Montana, for five nights, driving into Yellowstone National Park for three days. On the last of those days, I drove 100 miles through the park and exited the South Gate to drive to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where I stayed for five nights, going into Grand Teons National Park for three days. Then I drove to Salt Lake City, Utah, stayed one night there and flew home the next day. All total, it was a twelve-day trip, and I was in four beautiful North Western states.

I am so completely happy that I did not miss seeing the Grand Tetons and the Rocky Mountains in person. As I traveled to Jackson Hole on the sixth day of my trip and rounded a bend in the road, they appeared to my right. They were magically lovely in all their rocky snow-covered heights against the bluest skies. They literally took my breath away! I had only experienced this kind of natural beauty three times before: in the Tennessee southern Smoky Mountains (near Byyson City), in the Grand Canyon, and at Yosemite.And now in the Tetons!

Still and all, as nice as the photos are, they do not do justice to the actual viewing expereince! I loved the Tetons immediately when I saw them.

I believe the photos above may be Turquoise Lake or Jackson Lake, but I'm not sure. More to come about the Tetons and Jackson Hole. And of course, about my dream journey!

to be continued

My Aunt Sandra Goes to Washington

It was the autumn of 1967, and I had just left my family in Seaford, Delaware, to seek an English degree from Middle Tennessee State University. My world centered on the fears and excitement of college life--and I carried with me concerns about my family, myself, my sister, and my parents. But around the country, and particularly in Washington, DC, things were really happening.

My Aunt Sandra was 22 years old that September--only four years older than I--when she landed the job that forever changed her life. Almost as a fluke (which she considers destiny), she was appointed personal secretary to United States Senator Strom Thurmond from South Carolina.

October 1967: My pretty Aunt Sandra is quite a bit taller than I am. She's 5'8" to my 5'4', but I think we look quite alike.

Shortly thereafter, the historical Ford Theater (where Lincoln had been assassinated) reopened with a gala performance in January 1968. On March 31, President Johnson announced he would not seek reelection. A few days later, on April 4, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, spurring six days of race riots. After King's death, participants set up a 3000-person "tent city" on the Washington Mall for six weeks to gain economic justice for the poor in the United States. On June 6, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles. On Jan. 20, 1969, with a ball held in his honor, Richard Nixon was sworn in as the 37th president of the United States (and we all know how that would turn out). In March of that same year, Dwight D. Eisenhower's body was brought to the United States Capitol, where he lay in state in the Capital Rotunda.

These are a just a few of the things that my aunt, Sandra Drawdy Courie, remembers and experienced because she lived and worked in DC from 1967 through 1969. There, she met head-honchos too numerous to name: presidents and vice-presidents, congressmen, Supreme Court justices, military chiefs of staff, foreign ambassadors, even Ann Landers!

If you are not from South Carolina, you may not know about the famous (or sometimes infamous) Senator Strom Thurmond. Born in 1902 in Edgefield, SC, he graduated from Clemson in 1923. He became the county attorney for Edgefield and then was elected to the South Carolina Senate in 1933. Beginning in 1942, during World War II, he served in the army, rising to the rank of Major General.

From 1947-51, he was the Democratic governor of South Carolina. Then in 1954, he was elected as a United States senator from South Carolina, switching to the Republican party in 1964. He served for 48 years in that capacity, and he lived to be 100, the oldest person to have ever served in Congress. Eight years after his first wife Jean died at age 33 of a brain tumor in 1960, he married his second wife Nancy in 1968. He was 66, and she was 22. Together they had four children.

Known for his pro-segregation policies, he helped propose a manifesto that opposed the Supreme Court decision to desegregate public schools in 1957. The decision was passed nevertheless and became the landmark 1957 Civil Right Act.

Ironically, it was later reported that Thurmond had a biracial daughter. At the age of 22, he fathered a daughter, Essie, with his family's 16-year-old African American domestic worker. Essie Mae Washington-Williams was introduced to her father during her teens and received financial support from Thurmond and visited him in Washington. She was a Los Angeles teacher with a master's degree. She did not publicly reveal that she was his daughter until six months after his death. She died 10 years later in 2013 at the age of 87.

...

If you are not from South Carolina, you also may not know about my famous Aunt Sandra! She is the youngest of nine children born to my paternal grandparents, Flossie and Fulton Drawdy. My dad, Ken Drawdy, was the second child born into that family. The story is told that when Ken called his mother to tell her that his wife Margie was pregnant (with their first child), her mother replied, "So am I." (She was pregnant with her last child!) So that's how I came to have an aunt only four years older than I.

Sandra was born and raised in Bowman, SC, a small town in Orangeburg County. Back in the '50s when cotton was king, this country town was situated in the center of what was a major cotton-producing area, where the rich clay sub-soil is ideal for growing cotton. As a child, when I would be taken on our annual summer visit to Bowman to my grandparents' farm, I was struck by the poverty of the place, by the intense heat, and by the barrenness of the land. As our car rambled down the long dirt road, I pressed my little face against the car window to take in the gleaming white cotton plants growing endlessly across the fields. Shanties would occasionally present themselves on the side of the dusty roads with numerous black faces peeping out, and tall pine trees grew scrubby against the bluest sky. The sandy soil invariably stuck to my sweaty, flip-flop-clad feet as I scampered around the farm yard. I was enchanted by the farm, its nature, and its numerous farm animals.

"My family always had plenty to eat, with two freezers full of beef, pork, and garden vegetables," remembers Sandra. "We had delicious mouth-watering hams curing in the smokehouse and a fenced-in yard for fresh eggs and fresh fried chicken on Sundays." After graduating from Bowman High School, which had a graduating class of 12 people, Sandra went to a two-year business college in Columbia and graduated with honors. She then worked at Pilot Life Insurance Company in Columbia. After her father died, she moved back home to Bowman to be with her mother, took a state administrative test (on which she surprised herself by scoring the second highest in the entire state) and got a job working for the South Carolina Vocational Rehabilitation Department. 

One day Sandra's mother called her at work to say that she had heard on the local TV news that Strom Thurmond was losing his personal secretary and sought a new one. "Mom told me that she wanted me to apply for the job." Sandra told her mother that she wouldn't get it, and she said, "I know, but at least you'll get a letter from Strom Thurmond!"

Mostly, just to please her mother, Sandra wrote a letter to the Senator's Washington office, applying for the job. "I received a call soon after that and was asked to meet with one of the Senator's South Carolina aides in Columbia. After the interview with his aide, the Senator called and offered me the position of his personal secretary at the then unheard of annual salary of $6,000 for a secretary." With Thurmond's thick Southern accent, it always came out as PUH-sun-al secretary.

With two weeks to prepare herself for the move to Washington, Sandra, her mother, and two of her sisters had a ball shopping for her new business attire; she remembers in particular one exquisite black dress that was perfect for all the DC receptions. Sandra found Washington to be the most impressive city that she had ever seen. She recalls that there on her left was the impressive Jefferson Memorial, all lit up and gleaming white. For the two years that she lived in Washington, she remained in awe that she worked in and around the Capitol building itself. Very early in her job, the Senator explained to her about not only making sure that things were done right, but also that they must look right to protect one's integrity. She remarked to him one night that the Capitol building was beautiful, to which he replied, "It is indeed beautiful, but there's a lot of 'dirt' that goes on under the roof."

Senator Thurmond liked his staff readily available, so Sandra's desk was right in his office. (He was the only senator to have this arrangement.) As his personal secretary, Sandra took care of things of a personal nature for the Senator: his appointment calendar, invitations, checking and savings accounts, all correspondence with his brothers, sisters, nieces, and nephews. She reminded him of appointments and committee meetings 15 minutes prior to the meeting or appointment and made sure that he appeared for votes on the Senate floor. Alongside the Senator, Sandra helped entertain constituents at lunches in the Senates' Dining Room in the Capitol and at other events.

It was while Sandra was still working for the Senator in Washington that he married his second wife Nancy in December 1968. When the Senate recessed around Thanksgiving through the first of the year, Sandra traveled to his home in Aiken, SC, each November/December as the Senator did. She got to know Nancy and all of the children well. Later, Sandra's own children attended their birthday parties. Years later in 1984, Sandra worked as Nancy's assistant for almost two years.

"Working for the Senator was an education unto itself; in politics, health (he was big on eating right and exercise), protocol, social studies, and much more on life lessons," Sandra stated. She was working with the Senator when he was courting Nancy, and one day he did something extremely special for her. Sandra remarked on his thoughtfulness, and he told her something that she's never forgotten, "The love you give is returned to you many times over."

Thurmond considered his Washington staff to be like family, and everyone who had ever met the Senator had a "Strom story" to tell. Highly intelligent with a good sense of humor, Thurmond would enjoy hearing the stories about himself as much as they liked telling them. Aunt Sandra tells one of her personal favorites:

Senator Bobby Kennedy's office was next door to ours in the Russell Senate Office Building. Although our staff was made up of staunch Republicans, we were still thrilled to see Bobby Kennedy pass by. He often was accompanied by his two rather large dogs, and one day those two dogs came directly into the Senator's private office and ran around his desk. The Senator asked, 'Miss Drawdy, what are those dogs doing in here?' I answered, 'Senator, those are Senator Kennedy's dogs.' He blinked his eyes and responded, 'Democratic dogs? I guess we'd better get them out of heyah on the double!'

March 1969: It looks as if the Senator is congratulating Sandra on her engagement here. That's why she left the job in Washington, to go home to SC and to get married.

As far as Thurmond's controversial politics, Sandra said, "It was the late '60s, and times were changing. I never heard the Senator speak unkindly of any black person. It was a different world when he entered politics, and his earlier views were out of vogue. He was a man of the times and felt he could do most good in serving his state."

When Sandra left the Senator's office to return home to SC and get married, Thurmond proclaimed at her going-away party that she had "one of the best minds" of anyone who'd ever worked in his office. Through the years, Sandra continued to work for Thurmond: on two of his re-election campaigns, as his wife Nancy's assistant, and at a half-dozen biennial reunions for anyone who had ever worked for the Senator. One of the reunions was held at Clemson when Vice-President Bush was the main speaker at the groundbreaking for the Strom Thurmond Institute.

Sandra and Strom remained lifelong friends. She attended his 90th and 100th birthday parties. The 90th was especially special, as Bill Clinton and Al Gore attended, and James Brown sang "Happy Birthday." During the last six months of his life, Sandra was one of a handful of friends allowed to visit him.

The Senator died in the summer of 2003. When his will was read, Sandra learned that he had left her (and a few other people) a small sum of money. She called her son stationed in Germany to tell him that she was "an heiress." A few minutes after reading the newspaper article online, her son called back to say, "Mom, the Senator didn't have many people in his will."

That's when Sandra knew just how much Thurmond had cared for her. Through 100 years of colleagues, family, and friends, she was one of the few who made a truly lasting impression with the Senator. In the years since his death, she says, "I've cherished this thought."

Memoir: My Great Aunt Pansy

Every time I dye my hair red (which I began doing decades ago to spice up the mousy brown), I think of my paternal Great Aunt Pansy, who also dyed her hair red. And for all I know, hers, unlike mine, was perhaps naturally red earlier in her life. I do know that red hair suited her personality well, as it did her wise blue eyes.

As a child, in my eyes Great Aunt Pansy was the rich one in our family. Sometimes when we went to visit my dad's family on the farm in Bowman, South Carolina, we would drop by Aunt Pansy's for a couple hours. Living in the city of Anderson, SC, in a really nice neighborhood, she had a brick house painted white, usually with a new Cadillac parked in her driveway.

Once inside the house, there were luxurious furnishings with the softest carpets on the floors and velvety towels hanging in the bathroom. The house sounded like laughter and always smelled nice, as did my Aunt Pansy. She wore the loveliest clothes my eyes had ever seen: saucy hats atop her head and sumptuous furs across her shoulders. Pansy was a country girl who had grown comfortable in the city. The elegance she had learned never could disguise the real Pansy--funny and down-to-earth, genuine, sprung from humble roots.

Born in 1905 on a farm in Orangeburg County, SC, she was the second daughter of Carrie and Charlie Ayers. The first daughter, born 17 months earlier, was Flossie, my father's mother and my paternal grandmother. These two daughters were the only children of their parents. Flossie went on to live in that same farmhouse and to have nine living children. In contrast, Pansy moved to the city, married twice, had a career. No children.

This is me, about the same age as Pansy was below. I never realized how much we favored until I saw this picture of her recently. I guess I do look like the Ayers sisters after all.

Pansy's first husband was Earl Hammerly, a professor at a small private college in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains in Rome, Northern Georgia. He was apparently older than she, a man of some means who had a chauffeur. After his untimely death, she married Harry Groce, a traveling salesman, who was gone during the week days. He adored Pansy and called her P.A., short for Pansy Ayers. Like his beloved, Harry didn't take things too seriously; he was full of laughter, jokes and pranks. Also like her, he was a sharp dresser. He smoked cigars, liked his bourbon, and drove a white Silverhawk Studebaker around Anderson, SC., where they lived together.

In the meantime, Pansy was named the manager of the Western Union office in Anderson. She invited two of her sister's grown children to live with her at various times. Once Flossie's first born graduated high school, CF (Charles Fulton) went to live with and work for Pansy, delivering Western Union telegrams. Later she sent him to Clemson College, then procured him a summer job at Carolina Beach, NC, where he met his future wife. His subsequent marriage and World War II changed his course, and he didn't return to college. A disappointment to her, I'm sure.

My Great Aunt Pansy in her younger days.

Flossie's third daughter Bonnie also lived with Pansy and attended Anderson College for a semester, where she met and married her husband. Pansy was said to be put off about her not continuing on in college. Still later, after CF had a son, my cousin Butch would visit Pansy for a fun-filled week during the summers, and she would buy him spiffy back-to-school clothes from the downtown J. C. Penney's. With Aunt Pansy's attention, Butch almost felt that he had two grandmothers on his father's side of the family. Butch remembers, "We always went to church on Sunday morning and then went to Clemson House in Clemson for a lunch of she-crab soup, roast beef with mashed potatoes and gravy and real strawberry shortcake for dessert. We would joke around about how could they tell if it was a she-crab or a he-crab. We would laugh and talk; there was never a dull moment around Aunt Pansy." Butch also recalls his family going to lots of Clemson football games with Pansy through the years.

Later in life, Pansy opened her home to a feisty little fleet of Chihauhaus who would nip at the heels of her guests, particularly of children. She dearly loved them. To me, they always looked like puppies, and I could think of nothing I wanted more. Finally, my family got a Chihauhau/Toy Manchester mix from her. We named him Jose, and I considered him my dog.

Little Jose and little me in Madison, Tennessee, during my best childhood years. 

Pansy remained close to her sister Flossie and sent money to help out with all of the children. When Flossie's fourth girl Sandra was a junior in high school, Pansy and her mama went shopping in Orangeburg and came back with a surprise for her: a beautiful white evening gown with layers of lace and a striking blue cummerbund, which she wore to her junior-senior prom.

Some years after Harry and Flossie's husband (my father's father and my paternal grandfather) died, Pansy retired from Western Union and moved into a nice house in Orangeburg. Still later she moved into the farmhouse in Bowman with her sister Flossie and had the farmhouse beautifully remodeled. Then a stroke took her to the nursing home in Orangeburg, where Flossie joined her several years later. She would enjoy keeping up with her beloved Atlanta Braves on radio and TV. Pansy died there in 1993 and is buried beside Harry in Anderson. Her sister Flossie died a year later.

Most of us who remember Pansy remember her with a smile on her face and on our faces. "Her chin would quiver when she was tickled," Sandra recalls. She loved to have a glass of wine in the evenings and is said to have been the life of any party. I regret not knowing her better. As a matter of fact, I'm beginning to feel that same way about many people in my father's family. Independent, fun and funny, quick witted, with a twinkle in her eye, my Great Aunt Pansy is a lady whom I remember with great fondness.

Random thoughts on housework or house-care

Thank you for all of your perspectives about housework that I got on my Facebook status last week. Here was the status:  Have you ever gotten a hold of the housework? Where you felt that things were under control for once and always? I may be quoting some of you.

Almost all of the images that I found on the internet about housework are cartoons. It's as if housework is a big joke, but as any woman knows, most of the time, it's just not that funny.

I used to have two places of residence to clean and organize--one was my house and the other was my classroom. For the nearly forty years of my career, I never quite felt that my classroom was as in good shape as it should or could be. At last, I don't have to fret about cleaning my classroom anymore!

Parental voices inside our heads die hard. Even though my mother (and father) have been gone for over 25 years, I still remember their white glove tests when they would come to my house for periodic visits. If you read the blog on my mother, then you may recall some of her harsh remarks on my housekeeping when she would visit. And even though (of course) I would clean the house super well when my parents were expected for a visit, my rather tall father once or twice told me that I had dust on top of my refrigerator. Bu the way, my mother was a housewife all of her life and kept a clean, clutter-free house. My older sister keeps her house so clean (and organized) that you could literally eat off her floors. So those two have been my examples in my family.

I'm so glad that my daughter Ellen doesn't feel that she has to clean up her house for me! We focus on what is important when we visit each other--the people. I'm so pleased that she and I feel that we can leave our houses the messiest/dirtiest for each other as for anyone!

It bothers me that hardly any of us mention housework, It's taken for granted. Hardly worthy of mentioning. If someone asks you, What are you gonna do today? few of us say that we are going to clean out that refrigerator or scrub those toilets. It's just assumed that those chores will get done and that they hardly count.

One of my favorite responses to my FB status came from Susan King, one of the best housekeepers I know. She responded, "Once but not always." When I was much younger than I am now--say 25 years ago--every summer, I would give my house a thorough cleaning. I mean from top to bottom--like with a toothbrush! I organized inside every closet, cabinet, and drawer as well. But that craziness ended when I began kayaking and hiking and traveling in the summer months. In other words when I began to have fun! Well, there you go--that should tell me something.

Here recently after I began to fret once again about housework, it came to me that the solution to my housework quandary lies within me. I need a whole attitude adjustment! There is no "perfect" way to keep house. (And therein lies part of my problem--the dysfunction and futility of my thinking I'm supposed to do things perfectly. One of my mantras can be--Embrace imperfection!) Each of us must keep house to suit herself.

Besides embracing imperfection in my housekeeping, I also want to train myself to look for and see the good--to see what has been done and what's beautiful about my home--instead of seeing always what needs to be done. I also need to say to myself that something I've done to clean, organize, or improve my house is "good enough." And no damn guilt about what doesn't get done. Or about those drawers, closets, etc., that don't get cleaned out often enough. "Often enough," according to whose standards? Consciously lowering my standards about some aspects of housework is another really good idea!

I'll have to say that what bothers me most about housekeeping is that it seldom stays done. It's such a circular activity. From bed making to washing clothes to cooking and dish washing to dusting and vacuuming from window washing to mopping floors to bathroom cleaning and outdoor sweeping, it all so soon needs to be done again and again. Housework is a progressive activity that never stays done. I think that perhaps accepting that little truth and appreciating what does get done is half the housework battle.

On FB, I like how Linda Bush said, "Call it house-care instead of housework." Caring for my house is something I understand. I recall that she also had said that we need to be good stewards of our houses because they were given to us by God.

Bottom line is what I've already said on the Facebook status, I feel that I've wasted too much time, too much of my life, worrying/thinking about my housework or lack thereof and feeling guilty that I don't do better! Less time thinking about it and more time doing it might have helped, but oh well!

My other bottom line (and yes, I can have two bottom lines!) is that I'm just not disciplined enough to have a regular housekeeping schedule such as bathrooms on Monday, vacuuming on Tuesday, grocery shopping on Wednesday (grocery shopping could also be considered part of housekeeping), washing clothes on Thursday, etc.

I tend to do better when something bothers me so much that it needs to be done, or as I like to say, it calls to me. The glass storm doors or windows may say to me, "Wash me today. Let the sun shine in!" Or the over-flowing trash cans may call out, "Empty me. Or it's time to take a trip to the landfill today!" When I see no birds outside my windows, the empty bird feeders say to me, "Fill us please." Ad infinitum et ultra. Even so, sometimes I can choose to ignore their voices!

"A clean house may be a sure sign of a wasted life," but housework is a part of that life, so getting a good perspective or a handle on it is important to me. I want to remember how much I really do love my house as I blogged about over a year ago, and I want to remember Mindfulness, with a capital M. When I do choose to tackle a household chore, I want to do so mindfully and try to get all the fun and enjoyment out of it that I can. If it's some chore that I dread (like cleaning the stove), then I can set my phone alarm for an hour and work on it for an hour that day. It doesn't have to get all done in a day. I can work on it an hour again the next day or the next week.

Perhaps my Aunt Sandra  gave the recipe for true peace of mind about housekeeping: "Keep your house as clean as you want to live. Then have 2-3 friends who swear on their lives that the moment they hear you've passed on, they'll rush in and clean before the hordes start arriving!" Now that should do the trick!

Agreement No. 2 to make with yourself for the new year!

Way back in September, I wrote a blog about The Four Agreements. It was primarily about the agreements: Don't make assumptions. It was particularly about not assuming that someone got your text or email or other communication unless you have heard back from them.

Through the years, I imagine that there have been lots of hurt feelings and misunderstandings when someone did not receive another person's letter/communication. Recently, I heard of someone sending an apology letter that the other person never got. Sadly, the friendship ended permanently.

Another of the four agreements is one that I wish someone had taught me in my youth and explained to me what exactly it meant, for I have wasted a great deal of time with this one. It's don't take anything personally.

Wow, through the decades, I have taken so, so many things personally--when they have had nothing--absolutely nothing--to do with me! For example, my father was bi-polar, and I took this personally. What I mean by that is that I hid his illness from others (because my mother told me to) and because I thought that it would reflect badly on me (us). Also somehow I thought that it was my job to fix him.To figure out what would be the perfect treatment or medicine that would "cure" him. What a burden that was on a child and on a teen/young adult! I wish that someone had told me, "Your father is sick, it is not your fault, nor is it your responsibility to fix him (period)."

Also for most of my life, I took my older sister's behavior personally. From her years at home on through her three marriages, she kept me and my family turned upside down much of the time. In my 20s and early 30s, I stood ready to go at a moment's notice if  my parents should need me to help them with Lynda and her latest antics. She tried to control me (and everyone else), treated me poorly, and often made me feel bad about myself, even told a therapist that she "could destroy me." Finally in my 50s, I figured out that she was truly a narcissist, and then all of the pieces fell into place.

With my mother, I commiserated and thought that I could somehow help her with her sadness about my father and my sister and her own sadness from her early life.

Even my parents' not getting along, I took personally, felt somehow responsible for their misery, and thought that I could help them, so that they would be happy.

What illusions on my part! Or as one therapist asked me, "Who died and made you God?"

By the time I met and married my second husband, I thought that if only I were prettier (for by that time, everything for me had become boiled down to that issue), he would love me more and come home to me. Then after discovering that he was an addict, I thought that I could "fix" him.

After writing much of my memoir piece by piece here in my blog, I now understand myself and my family better than I ever have. I clearly see that I was so enmeshed in them and in their dramas that it would have taken a wiser person than I to extract myself from their lives sooner than I did. I'm just pleased to have now learned not to take their stuff personally--because it helps me not to take anything personally from anybody today, and that makes me a much happier person!

Of course, sadly all of this family stuff set me up to take things personally in the workplace too. That, along with my inability to communicate tactfully, caused some problems, dramas, and some unnecessary sadness for me among some of my co-workers, students, and their parents. But that's a story perhaps for another day.

Now with my daughter, my son-in-law, my friends--old and new--, my granddaughters, my neighbors, I try not to take anything personally. Of course, it still creeps in sometimes, but now I can say to myself, "It's not about you."

Because as Don Miguel Ruiz said in The Four Agreements, very little of what others "do is because of me. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering."

Boy, have I suffered needlessly. And played the victim way too many times! But I've learned and am still learning. I'm changing my mindset, looking at things differently. Rising above hurt and victimhood.

Ruiz further tells us, "Don't take anything personally, even when a situation seems so personal, even if others insult you directly. It has nothing to do with you. Their point of view and opinion come from the programming they received growing up. When you take things personally, you feel offended and your reaction is to defend your beliefs and create conflict. You make something big out of something so little because you have the need to be right and make everybody else wrong."

Now when I find myself feeling offended and trying too hard to prove my "rightness," it's a sure sign that I'm taking something personally! So I simply take a deep breath in, and let it go, let it go, let it go with the out breath--as many times as necessary. Try it. Conscious breathing is a step into mindfulness, into the present moment, into sanity.

Are you a conservative or a liberal or like me, someone in-between those two labels??

The word conservative, according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (fourth edition)  means "favoring traditional views or values, tending to oppose change, moderate, cautious." From the same source, conservatism is "the inclination to maintain the existing or traditional order, a political philosophy or attitude emphasizing respect for traditional institutions."

Besides in education, which I will write about in a moment, I know that I am a conservative (or a preservative) concerning Nature and our wildlife and natural resources. As our Native Americans teach us, we owe it to the Earth, our home, "Mother of us all," to protect her from injury, peril, harm, or loss. Like many people, I fear the harm that we have already done to Earth and her environs may have irreversible consequences. I pray that our harm to her will be abated, and I will work toward this end. As Tracy Chapman sings, "it is the deadliest of sins" to "rape" the Earth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WHrhWRsiC4.

Just as with images of liberalism in my last bog post, I also had trouble finding images of conservatism that were not negative. Once again some wordsmiths or spin doctors have been working hard to put a negative, evil spin on the words conservative and conservatism.

As a matter of fact, it occurs to me that the powers that be are working really hard to turn us against each other! And unfortunately in too many cases, they are succeeding in spades. Let us not be taken in by their desire to control us. Let us think for ourselves and try to understand each other and to recognize all sides of an issue. Let us not be haters but to love one another. Our love for one another will completely stump those who want to control us!    

Luckily for me, some of my best friends are conservatives, and some of my best friends are liberals, and we like to discuss the issues with one another. So I get to hear both sides on the issues that confront all of us Americans. In searching for images, I did notice that both conservatives and liberals seem to claim Lincoln as one of their main advocates!

Besides being a preservationist, I am also a conservative in education. I am an essentialist in education: I believe that there are certain basic/essential things that all educated people should know about or have been exposed to--such as proper grammar, certain writers, "true" American history (as in The People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn), how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide (without using a calculator!), etc. 

Some things about learning and teaching just haven't changed. It still takes discipline in the classroom and in the individual student. I believe that students and parents need to respect and trust a teacher unless the teacher proves otherwise.

Teachers still set the atmosphere in a classroom, they still plan what to teach and when, they plan lessons and evaluate those lessons' effectiveness, and they evaluate students' responses to those lessons, etc. To learn, students still need to put forth effort, to want to learn, to listen to and follow directions, to listen to and comprehend lessons, to practice the material being taught, and to perform effectively on some type of evaluative instrument.

As educational author Larry Cuban says, "Things have changed in classrooms. Desktops and laptops are prevalent in schools; teachers use the Internet for videos in lessons; students give PowerPoint presentations; teachers take immediate polls of student answers to multiple choice questions with clickers; new textbooks, some of which are online.

"Yet amid those changes, there is a commonness in the unfolding of a lesson, the activities that teachers direct students to do, and Q & A that characterizes the back-and-forth between teacher and students. There is a familiar continuity in teaching.

"Change occurs all the time in schools and classrooms but not at the scope, pace, and schedule reform-driven policymakers lay out in their designs for reform. Sadly, such policymakers fail to understand the complex interaction between stability and change in nearly all organizations. In this failure of understanding lurks the many errors that decision-makers make in repeated efforts to transform schooling, teaching, and learning."

So I think that what Cuban is saying is that we need to respect the things in education that don't change: the way teachers teach and the way students learn. When it comes right down to it, let's conserve the good things about teaching and learning. And again let's quit disrespecting our teachers, and let's trust them to do what they have been trained to do or what they intuitively know how to do. Let's stop being haters. Oh, but I digress!

So wow, now I see more clearly how I am both a conservative and a liberal! After taking the time to do some researching and some thinking, I better understand both sides, and I see that we don't really have to choose a side. We can choose not to stereotype each other nor to assume things about one another, instead we can choose to understand and yes, to love one another. That's my Christmas message, or wait a minute, perhaps "love one another" is not original with me!

Part I: I am liberal; Part II: I am conservative

On my list of facebook friends, of course, are lots of my former students--quite a variety of now grown people. When one of them "went" on a rant about the issue of immigration the day Obama came to Nashville, I had to respond. Then when he began to demonize liberals, I had to respond again. As a matter of fact, here is my response.

The word liberal has been demonized, if words can be demonized, in the past decade or two by some group of people who don't quite know what they are talking about, but who definitely want to create "haters" in our country.

Just as with the words feminism and feminist back in the 70s and 80s, the word smiths have tried to make sure that the words liberal or liberalism connote all sorts of things that they do not connote!

According to the new updated edition of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, the word liberal actually means "not limited to or by established, traditional, or authoritative views, attitudes, or dogma, free from bigotry, open to new ideas for progress, tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others, broad-minded, and generous." Further from the same source, liberalism is "a political theory founded on the natural goodness of humans and the autonomy of the individual and favoring civil and political liberties, and government by the law with the consent of the governed."

Guilty as charged, I am a liberal! About most things. I like to think that I am broad-minded and generous person who believes in the natural goodness of humans. Who doesn't want to think that of him/herself? I like to believe that I am tolerant of most everything (except of intolerance--I am definitely not tolerant of intolerance or of ignorance or of evil, to name a few things). Also I am definitely not a bigot and favor civil and political liberties!

What is really interesting to me is that when I went to find images of liberalism for this blog on the internet, most of the images were incredibly negative! The most common one was that "liberalism is a mental disease or disorder." As I've stated, someone is doing a really good job of demonizing the words liberal and liberalism. Some wordsmiths or spin doctors have been working hard to put a negative, evil spin on the words.

Some of my favorite people in life and in history have been liberals. They are people whom I admire and wish to emulate.  A former principal and supervisor of instruction of mine, Dr. Alvin Rose was one of these people, and he always said that he didn't see how a person could be a public school teacher and not be a democratic! Besides Alvin, I also admire Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Jesus, to name a few.

The above book is on my list of books that I want to read in 2015. Its preface was fascinating reading. Perhaps Santa will leave this book in my stocking!

Some of you may appreciate learning more about liberalism by watching the educational documentary Deflating the Elephant, available on Netflix and youtube. Another fascinating piece on the topic is Bill Moyers' interview with Johnathan Haidt, who wrote a book that I've recommended before entitled The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. 

Next week, I will write a blog post about conservatism. I look forward to doing some research on the subject and on seeing just what I am conservative about. See you later, dear reader.