We Practice

Monthly fire drills 

Lockdown drills 

Shelter-in-place drills 

Like most schools in the US, the staff and students at the elementary school where I work practice all of these drills. 

We diligently, quietly, and respectfully practice. 

We are 600+ students and over 100 staff members. 

We range in age from 5 years to 70+ years old and represent a spectrum of abilities. 

We practice where to go in an emergency; where the 'safest’ part of the classroom or other gathering areas is located. 

We huddle together, in silence, when sheltering in place. 

We report via laptop if anyone is missing. We report via laptop where we are. 

We deal with blocked exits so we know what to do if that happens during a fire. 

We stand outside in silence as teacher-by-teacher reports their class status via walkies. 

We must pass a series of clearances on a regular basis: an FBI clearance, a state police background check, a child abuse history clearance, and an arrest/conviction certification report. 

We know that anyone entering the building must first ring a doorbell at the school entrance where a camera sees who is there. 

We ask the visitor questions and for legal identification before granting entry. 

We practice lining up by class all the time. This keeps things organized but the subtext is safety where we can quickly account for every child if we are anywhere else but the classroom in an emergency 

We practice, practice, practice for all of this. 

We comply with these safety procedures because we value the safety of our children and those who care for them.

We teach and reinforce safety every day.

Yet we fail these same people because the world of guns and danger is real and woven in a hideous relationship with elected officials and money compromising the best intentions of a safe school environment. 

When are we going to turn the tables and make access to assault weapons difficult? 

Our country is horrifically unique in the world when it comes to our fetish for assault weapons and unfettered access to them. 

When you turn 18, an assault weapon can be yours. Just like that. Why? This is not sportsmanship.  This is a weapon for mass murder. 

These very assault weapons make a 4th-grade victim unrecognizable and require parents to supply DNA samples on the worst day of their lives. 

We watch as the collectors of ‘donations’ from the gun lobby/NRA/various political action committees for gun rights in Texas send their soulless 'thoughts and prayers' to the elementary school families.

 

We watch as a Texas senator, Texas governor, and a former president plan to speak at an NRA convention on Friday. 

The Robb Elementary School shooting was the 30th such mass shootings in 2022. 

We are 145 days into 2022.  

In nearly a quarter of those days, a mass shooting took place. 

Brady United lists the elected officials who accept NRA money to support their elections. 

https://elections.bradyunited.org/take-action/nra-donations-116th-congress-senators

It is a non-profit gun control group created after then-President Reagan’s press secretary, Jim Brady, was among those shot in an attempt on the president’s life in 1981. He was permanently disabled and his death in 2012 was correctly ruled a homicide due to those injuries. 

We are strangled by wildly distorted views of gun control instead of liberated and united by sensible limits to what firearm access should be. Step one: ban the sale of assault weapons. 

The answer is NOT more guns. Too many guns have placed us right here. 

Meanwhile, the smallest, most vulnerable of us practice. 

The smallest, most vulnerable of us look to the adults and we fail them. 

Until this country deals with the unchallenged access to assault rifles, mass shootings are not a matter of if, but when.

https://www.sandyhookpromise.org/

https://www.everytown.org/

Roadrunner

This blog post mentions suicide.  National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 800-273-8255 available 24 hours in English and Spanish. 

Well, of course, I loved him. 

I loved him along with all others who followed his travels around the world and virtually placed themselves in the seat across from him, watching and listening as he flicked on the light of his curiosity.  

Anthony Bourdain shared his worldview as a storyteller.  He loved the strength of well-honed phrases  His rat-a-tat-tat verbal delivery sated the moment. He could have been writing songs he was so lyrical.

This oral finesse along with his bass timbre, lanky gate, commanding height created a navigation system that seemed unbeatable.

But, as we all know, that is the lie. No one is unbeatable.  We all need serious scaffolding to hold us up.

I recently watched this summer's release of Roadrunner, A Film About Anthony Bourdain, and Bourdain's suicide hurts my heart as much today as when he died in 2018.  

The film left me feeling surprisingly untethered; a reminder that the bruises of suicide don't necessarily heal for the living - even those of us watching from the very, very cheap seats.  

Bourdain first popped up on my radar during his No Reservations show on the Travel Channel followed by CNN's Parts Unknown. His appeal was as the cool kid who could lure the viewer into his shenanigans.  We were invited to be his co-conspirators and we could almost hear him utter, "Psssst....come see this!"

A favorite Parts Unknown episode for me aired three months following Bourdain's death.  W. Kamau Bell (I am a big fan of his United Shades of America show) and Bourdain traveled to Kenya - a country neither man had ever visited. Bell's middle  name - Kamau - is Kenyan meaning 'quiet warrior.'

Bourdain savored Bell's discomfort watching goat's head soup being prepared for him. Bell knew the time and space shared was precious and noted this arc while the two sat perched before the golden vista in the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy. It cemented a connection to each other, to Kenya, to Nature, to Life, to feeling small in the raw, wide world. 

I saw it as another perfect example of how Bourdain drew in his guests, his guides, and his viewers determined that they experience the marrow of the moment.

As someone who loves to cook and bake, who delights in reading about food, who pours over recipes, and follows chefs, cooks etc. on social media, I was naturally intrigued by Bourdain's iterations of travel/food television shows. I watched and listened intently always appreciating his ability to straddle being relaxed and edgy as he sought to unspool the essence of location - always appreciating it with a touch of humility. 

I had never read Bourdain's insider Kitchen Confidential until after he died. While I prefer to read the print version of books, I deferred to the audio version listening to it each night as I prepared dinner at home. I chopped, seared, blended, and mashed paying a small homage to this cook turned chef turned author turned TV host turned famous man of the world.  I reveled in the many faces of Bourdain.

My choice of an audiobook had a singular motivation: I hungered to hear him spin tales.

It was excruciatingly clear while watching Roadrunner how Bourdain's many friends and co-workers who appeared in the film did so because of their shared craving to reminisce, to wonder, to search for answers.  Not one of them had yet to find someplace to rest their grief.  

The film's power for me came from this repeated universal need to experience their compadre; to talk of him in shared pain and joy; to utter their loss and struggle as they felt impotent in knowing he slipped through the bonds of their friendship.  

Bourdain insisted he was not a good friend ("I'm not going to remember your birthday") and yet many lined up to be his. He was the guy they all wanted to be around.  And now they couldn't. 

In the 2017 Tony award winner for Best Musical The Band's Visit, the final song's lyrics titled Answer Me bubbled up as I watched Roadrunner.

All alone,

In the quiet,

Ah, my ears are thirsty

For your voice,

For your voice,

Can you answer me?

Criticism of the film's intent noted it as "a snippy tell-all" pointing to heavy focus on Bourdain's TV shows and too little focus on his hefty career in restaurant kitchens and heroin addiction as a young man. I did not see it this way but I understand how the author arrived here. All loss leaves a mark.    https://www.wbur.org/news/2021/07/15/roadrunner-anthony-bourdain-documentary-review  

The article's critic included a spot-on bit from comedian Dave Chappelle's 2019 show Sticks and Stones that referenced a sort of celebrity sleight-of-hand when we think we know how good life must be for famous, rich folk. Chappelle reminded us that Bourdain's death telegraphs one truth: "No matter what it might look like from the outside, you don't know what the f--- is going on inside." 

In 1980, I visited my brother Vincent in Maui for three weeks. His newly claimed home blew open my worldview.  We saw the island from the sea, air, and land and the boxes of slides that resulted in my unquenchable thirst to capture it all numbered in the "way too many" range.  I wanted to share all of it upon returning home and did so to a very patient group of co-workers held hostage by my "you gotta see this" slide show. I easily fell into the 'vacation slides sharing' trap.  (I again apologize to those lovely co-workers.)

I offer this only to say it's easy to overshare.  Bourdain did the opposite of this. He managed to lure us in as travel companions even in this world where any internet search will provide easy context for all things exotic.  We wanted him and his point of view to guide us. 

He managed to deftly describe important moments, making them important to those of us who loved his work. 

Morgan Neville, Roadrunner Director created a 100-song playlist of favorite titles randomly mentioned by Bourdain with some added by the chef's friends.  

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/anthony-bourdain-roadrunner-playlist-1200455/

Listening to it while I meandered through this post I was unsurprised by the 

beat-thumping, electric guitar-laden push of Patti Smith's High on Rebellion, Elvis Costello's Lipstick Vogue, or New Order's Blue Monday.  

These seemed to represent Bourdain's velocity.

Also notable were unexpected softer choices such as the Beach Boys' God Only Knows, The Velvet Underground's Sweet Jane, Earth, Wind, and Fire's That's The Way of the World, and Kevin Morby's Beautiful Stranger. 

I think these, like much of his offerings, pulsed from his soul.   

Roadrunner isn't perfect and neither was Bourdain. We are all just fragile humans. 

Two more links to Roadrunner reviews:

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/anthony-bourdain-movie-roadrunner-doesn-t-allow-life-s-loose-ncna1274895

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/15/movies/roadrunner-a-film-about-anthony-bourdain-review.html

Article on the use of artificial intelligence technology to replicate Bourdain's voice in the film:

https://www.npr.org/2021/07/16/1016838440/ai-brought-anthony-bourdains-voice-back-to-life-should-it-have

Julia 2012 ~ 2019

She is forever six and a half years old. 

She does not suffer fools.

She loves red grapes, colorful sweet pepper slices, mini Babybel cheese rounds, and key lime yogurt for lunch.

She has a weak spot for Reese's peanut butter cups (and most chocolate confections.)

She calls out adults on our obvious nonsense.

She is a solid friend who's in high demand among her peers. 

She sings and dances to Katy Perry's song, Roar.

She is a lioness in a cub's body. 

She asked Santa for 100 boxes of Nilla Wafers.

She giggled seeing the over-sized red sack containing 100+ Nilla Wafer boxes on Christmas morning. 

She makes the magic.

She knows her own mind.

She embodies Tom Petty's lyric:  I won't back down.

She chooses turquoise as her favorite color.

She loves to complete every line of the "See Ya Later Alligator" poem from memory. 

She invents new lines to this sweet rhyme.  She knows they work.

She corrects me EVERY SINGLE TIME I screw up the poem's order. 

She is genuine, as are most six year-olds. 

She loves to dance.

She says she can belly dance, Irish step dance, as well as dance hula. 

She immediately demonstrates each dance to prove it.

She is a unicorn devotee.

She shares the same birthday as my 27 year-old daughter.

She asks, "What's the name of your daughter who has my birthday?"

She has perfected the pouty face and weaponizes it expertly.

She dressed as Wonder Woman for Halloween.  

She is, indeed, a wonder.

She firmly rejects my usual greeting of "Hi Toots!" with,  "I am NOT a Tootsie Roll!" 

She often points her tiny index finger as she admonishes me.

She sometimes includes a foot stomp, yet, she indulges me each time.

She giggles with a semi-deep timbre. 

She fiercely loves her older brother.

She teases her older brother with equal ferocity. 

She is masterful in her role as younger sibling. 

She is a beach bum.

She loves a good hot tub soak.

She adores her mommy and daddy and extended family.

She sparkles.

She is so much more than these few cursory descriptors.

She has been dealt the cruelest of hands. 

She has left us much too soon.  

Dear Reader: Help honor our little friend, Julia, and the too many youngsters like her who have been taken from their loved ones by DIPG and similar childhood central nervous system cancers. 

Childhood cancer research receives only 4 percent of all federal government cancer research funding - 4 percent!!  Help us defeat this beast so no other youngsters and their loved ones suffer.   

Please click on the link below to donate to The Cure Starts Now. 

Then go hug the little folks in your life. Thank you. 

Donation link:  https://thecurestartsnow.org/donate/general-donation/

Heroes link: https://thecurestartsnow.org/heroes/view-heroes/julia-bitto/

A Curious Deck of Cards

My unintended collection of memorial cards.

NOTE: This post mentions suicide. If you have suicidal thoughts call 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. 

 

It's early February 1967.  I am 10-1/2 years old.  I am about to receive my first card.

A phone call early on that snowy morning confirms that my best friend's brother is dead.  The 'adapted for children' story goes this way: he was playing with his belt before bedtime and it was looped on his bedpost.  His head somehow got tangled in the loosely closed belt during the night and he accidentally died. 

I accept this explanation because I am 10-1/2 years old. Suicide is not in my orbit.  My friend and I never talk about the circumstances of her sibling's death.

But I have his card.  

This month, the dad of another grade school girlfriend died.  The viewing is held in my childhood church because hundreds of mourners are anticipated.  The queue extends out onto the sidewalk and down the street.  We wait in the frigid winter night to honor an 87-year-old wonder.  

Phil E. "Pops" Martelli was a St. Joseph University legend. He supported the basketball team in every way.  His son began coaching the Hawks in 1995. Pops retired from the DuPont Company that same year so he could attend just about every team practice and game. 

Mr. Martelli (as he was known to me long ago) was a beloved husband, father, grandfather, and Hawks fan.  

I now have his card. 

These two cards, separated by five decades, are the current bookends to a "deck" of over 70 others.  All are stored in a small, green wooden memento box painted with doves and flowers.  Each new card, tucked inside without fanfare, acts as a placeholder for the deceased.   

The keepsakes make up an odd blend of memorial cards offered to mourners when someone dies.  As an unintended collection, they become the afterthoughts of souls who have passed through my life.  

Each holds a soft echo:  I arrived. I mattered. I am gone. 

I'm not sure what moves me on this February day to look at each one, but I do. The feeling that bubbles up is an achy wonder.  

The younger the deceased, the more I wonder about what could have been. What future gifts from them did the world miss opening?  A different wonder surfaces when I consider the older person. Did they live the life they wanted? Was it satisfying?  Sweet compassion pulses for them all.

Sliding the first few cards from my left to my right hand, I notice not one, but five cards saved when my grandfather, Vincent Labate, died in February 1979. Why would I keep so many?  The answer makes easy sense to me.  My grandfather was the first close family member to die in my lifetime. My 20-something self must have grabbed what I could as a sort of armor for the grief. The protective bubble burst later that year when my two surviving grandmothers followed him in death.  

My teeny card collection doubled in eight months.  Death became real from then on.

Included with my grandparents' cards are those for aunts, uncles, cousins, and all forms of friends: friends' parents and grandparents, a revered college Jesuit, friends' spouses, a friend's fiancee, and a friend's 22-year-old child.  There is one name I cannot place, even after an intensive internet search.

For a quick breath, I think: after I am long gone, what is to become of this little grouping?  In my next breath, I know.  It will also be gone, as it should be.  It's not the job of my children to hold on to these memorials of folks who are mostly strangers to them.  It's enough to acknowledge that I savored these lives too.  

George Harrison sums it up well when he sings, "All things must pass, all things must pass away."

A melancholy spreads as I deliberately shuffle through the pile, whispering each name. The memories ooze a sweetness that only Time can grant.  The further away the death, the more manageable the pain, making room for other emotions.  

It's comforting to know we can simultaneously hold mixed feelings, unwieldy as they often are. Sadness ebbs as joy flows.  Happy memories percolate yet succumb to the pain of loss, again.  It's a game of emotional hot potato.

The decorative box has become my tiny altar.  In a world where buildings, statues, theaters, highways, street signs, parks, and even turnpike rest stops commemorate the infamous dead, the dear deceased souls within my world are remembered less opulently but no less deeply via one fragile card. 

The following link is of George Harrison singing "All Things Must Pass" in 1997, in what turned out to be his last public performance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yufsEgTcEOc

Robin Williams

Robin Williams' jarring death has become a shared experience.  His audience has loved him in life and now aches over his departure.

Over 1,000 comments sit aside the NYTimes article announcing his passing, like pallbearers trying to hold him up; trying to switch roles and keep the comedian in a suspended state of love.  He was the morphing face behind the comedy/tragedy mask. 

After my first glimpse of him as an alien introduced on the TV show Happy Days, I was hooked.  Quick, hilarious, facile with language - he was truly from another planet where time vaporized against his wit.

I saw him perform in October, 2009 at Upper Darby's Tower Theatre.  Here is what I recall:  laughing so hard my cheeks ached as did my stomach.  I cannot remember one joke he delivered, but know each was fired machine gun style for 90 minutes.  No intermission.  I wish there had been one so the comedy snippets could settle in somewhere in my overloaded brain instead of skimming off. There was no rest for him or the audience.   He had returned from heart surgery like a rocket.

His tour was titled the "Weapons of Self-Destruction." 

My favorite Robin Williams bit is during his appearance on Inside the Actors Studio when he asks to use an audience member's "little shawl" and proceeds to give four minutes and thirty seconds of manic improv, with shawl in hand, as a Bollywood director, an Irani woman, a rabbi, a contestant on Iron Chef,  a matador, a police officer making an Amish house arrest, and as a car wash soap brush   Here is the YouTube link - the shawl portion begins at the 5:00 mark.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGhfxKUH80M

He made sure comedy did its job in grabbing the laugh and then dropping it for the next laugh.  Old material had no space in his world.  Yet, old demons set up shop and apparently dug in within his life.  Who lifts up those who lift us up?  Jimmy Kimmel's tweet touches this:  "Robin was as sweet a man as he was funny. If you're sad, please tell someone." 

We play roles in our lives.  We typecast ourselves.  But when we get boxed in, do we have a safe exit strategy? I bet each one of us mourning Robin's death would gladly reach for his hand to keep him with us.  Ultimately, though, I believe the first hand to reach out must be our own.

I love to laugh and am sad to feel the end of Robin's humor.  He made sure we craved more.  Thanks, Robin, for your generous gift. 
 
Link to "Weapons of Self Destruction" performance in Washington DC - full concert:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiCxqbT2Ru8

To Every Thing There is a Season

As I packed away another season of Christmas decorations I lingered over a few that have become sweet symbols of the past.  Mostly they are the worn ornaments made by my daughters during their pre-school and elementary school years.  I am not sure why I am so attached to these things but I know it runs deep.

Looking at the abundance of homemade tree ornaments filling up the storage bins, I realize my zeal has resulted in too many "things on strings" for the tree. It's time to cull the herd of crafts, as it were.  And yet, as odd as it sounds, it's a struggle.

I thought about other things as strong symbols as I read a front page item in the Sunday NYTimes regarding what the town of Newtown CT is doing with its many memorials to the sweet lives lost in December. The items carry more than memories - they embody the desire to hold up those lives as important.  They also give people a place to grieve.   http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/nyregion/as-memorials-pile-up-newtown-struggles-to-move-on.html

Grief has a clear beginning but where it ends, if it ever ends, is vague at best. 

Officials in Newtown CT began the process of removing the most elaborate memorials a couple of weeks following the shooting. The town's selectwoman, Patricia Llodra, waded into those delicate waters with sensitivity and focus.  The community was alerted by phone about the removals. Plans have been made to process organic materials into "sacred soil" in a future memorial.  Stuffed animals and other inorganic materials will be processed into bricks for use in constructing a tribute.

Families of those killed were given police protected time to visit the memorials privately.  Then, in the middle of the night, items were removed.

Practical reasons like harsh winter weather pummeling the memorial items, rendering 
them as sad reminders instead of sweet honor guards, along with traffic issues moved town officials to take some action.  I applaud the light, thoughtful touch this effort is being given.

Grief's path is marked by infinitesimal movement. The term "moving on" is often used and perhaps this is Newtown's effort to do so.  I'd like to think it is more of a way to simply move regardless of direction. 

My friend Linda, whose 22 year old son died in May, recently shared one of the things she realized during this past difficult holiday, "I believe I can survive my grief.  I'm learning to move through it."  I relish her awareness.  We don't so much get over or under grief, but if we can come out on the other side of it, we learn how capable we are.  If and how we do this is where the work of love takes place.

There is a local roadside memorial to a young woman named Aimee that I used to pass each Saturday when I drove home from taking my daughter to dance class in the city.  (It sits along the southbound on ramp to Rte. 1 as you exit Rte. 476 in Springfield PA)  It marks the spot where this young woman was brutally abducted; she was later found murdered in a North Philly lot.  It has had various incarnations over the years with signs and symbols but they are mostly all gone.  Someone planted a tree in her honor and it flourishes.  I think of her every time I pass that spot. I hope those who loved her are also flourishing. 

It's not the spot where someone dies that contains meaning about their life; that singular spot is the place where we started grieving.  If we can learn to give our focus to how we loved their lives, then perhaps the place where they died receives a more balanced treatment.

My grandparents died in 1979.  The cemetery was near my home so I would stop by their gravesite to have some silent time with them.  Once I moved away a few years later, those visits ended.  I think the last time I was at their gravesite was at their son's burial in 2001.  I think I've learned to spend silent time with them in other ways.  

The Bible says it well but Pete Seeger's lyrics sung by the Byrds adapted it best:  "To everything (Turn, Turn, Turn) There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn) And a time to every purpose, under Heaven."

 

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 King James Version

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

 

Postscript: The topic of roadside memorials which mostly honor those where they died in traffic accidents is addressed in a 2009 documentary.  Here is a clip from that film.