Thoughts

One week ago today, I sat poised in open air, close to 224 feet above the ground, amid expectant silence overlooking Santa Clara, California. I watched as a moving shadow that measured our ascent slowed and then stopped, telling me it would happen soon. Then, suddenly, I fell. I fell sixty-two miles an hour to a waiting hydraulic braking system (or what seemed that way) that cushioned me and the others into the beckoning safety of terra firma . This was Drop Tower (formerly known as Drop Zone) at Great America, and I had conquered my fear of heights, again. It wasn't the first time I'd ridden this stupid ride, and given the fact that our eighth-grade students attend Great America at the end of each school year, I'm sure it won't be the last. I had to ride it. I had to show myself that I could still look Heights squarely in the eye. The transition from the school year to summertime is like this ride, in a way. As the year progresses, students and teachers "ascen...

Robert Frost's most famous poem: Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening Whose woods these are I think I know His house is in the village though He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. These woods are lovely, dark, and deep. But I have promises to keep And miles to go before I sleep And miles to go before I sleep. People thought (and think) the poem is about suicide. The owner of the woods, they say, is a reference to God. The horse is his conscience telling him that this idea (stopping "without a farmhouse near," or committing the act) is unwise (he "must think it queer"). His peering into these woods is like peering into the unknown, and his hi...

A young man in Haiti watches as a pregnant woman suffering from malaria begins to have serious respiratory problems where she lies. The doctor tells her sister that the woman needs a blood transfusion, and that she will need money to get it in Port-au-Price. The young man, desperate to help, runs around the hospital and eventually gathers fifteen dollars to send with the sister. It wasn't enough. The sister returned to say that she didn't have enough money for both the blood and for transportation. Despondent, the young man thereafter committed to raising money to buy blood-storage equipment, later to find that the hospital would charge for its use. "I'm going to build my own f_ing hospital," the young man remembers thinking. This he did, building a large complex in the midst of one of the poorest towns in all Haiti, Cange.* Life work like this takes sacrifice, very personal sacrifice. Influenced by men like Rudolf Virchow and Latin American "liberation t...

Leadership is a learned trait. I found this out through the course of this school year. Each event my class organized taught me something different about it. I used the following for my speech at our end-of-the-year leadership banquet, like a progressive journal that highlighted the year's events. On the floor of the gym were nine "X"'s. For each new event, I walked to the next "X," all while "Dare You to Move," by Switchfoot, played. Here were the events. Monday, August 23rd, 2010 I met with my leadership class for the first time today. To be honest, I felt kind of alone being up there in front of the students. I have some really big shoes to fill. The students loved Mrs. Porta, and I know it won’t be an easy transition for them. Leadership, to me, means fear. Friday, September 24th, 2010 The class held its first rally today. Without a doubt, it was stressful. I had the students meet for a rehearsal, and things didn’t go well at all. I felt ...

Ask experts in literature to tell you what makes a story so compelling, and they will inevitably tell you that all fiction is founded on and driven by a single, all-important central conflict. This conflict can take one of two forms. The first, the external conflict, occurs when the main character struggles against some outside force, whether this is another character, nature, society, etc. In Ice Age , the external conflict is between Manny and Sid on the one hand, and nature on the other. They have to get the baby back to the humans before snow blocks Glacier Pass. The second type, the internal conflict, occurs within a character, who must make some important choice that will determine the outcome of the story. In the first Spiderman , Peter must choose whether to continue to be Spiderman and risk hurting those he loves, or go back to his life as Peter Parker and ignore his responsibility to the city. I used to ask myself why anyone would read fiction. Since it didn't concern r...

Harold Reese's grandfather pointed to a tree in Brandenburg, Kentucky, telling his son that this was where black people were once lynched. That made an impression on the boy, who then relayed the story later to his children. One of these children was Harold Reese. It was Reese who, after Jackie Robinson was signed to play for the Dodgers, refused to sign a petition stating the Dodgers would not play ball with a black man. It was Reese who first introduced himself to Robinson on the field, who played cards with Robinson, and Reese who walked over to Robinson in 1947 and put his arm around him while Robinson was being booed from the stands. Robinson recounted that he had felt a "hopeless, dead feeling" while being ridiculed by his own fans, and that it was Reese who had probably saved his career that day. Reese himself described the last event as sort of an impulse: "Something in my gut reacted to the moment." He didn't exactly know what it was, but his ...

I started a book today called Mountains Beyond Mountains . It details the life of Paul Farmer, a doctor who spends much of his life and energy treating the sick in central Haiti. His complex, called Zanmi Lasante-- "Partners in Health"-- rests in a desolate, remote village called Cange, its seven doctors serving about 100,000 people from the surrounding area. One way that Haitians have explained sickness has been through the idea of maji , or sorcery. While not all Haitians practice Voodoo, even many Catholics and Protestants believe in maji, which many believe is used by enemies to cause illnesses. I suppose this means that there are pidgin religions, just as much as there are pidgin languages. Cultures meet and mix, and you get blended ideas. Geographers call it "acculturation." I don't know yet why the book is called Mountains Beyond Mountains . Maybe it has to do with the challenges that Farmer faced as a doctor here. Anyway, this man lived a unique life...

The end of the school year is full of wonderful memories: pool parties, yearbooks being signed, students crying and hugging as they say goodbye to each other, awards being given. Yes, it's a wonderful time, the end of the year; but alas, there is a dark side to it, too. It is during moments like these that teachers become tired and less focused and, as a result, do some stupid things. Here, then, is a short list of stupid things I did as the year wound down. *At promotion, in front of hundreds, I could not find the award to give to the student I chose. It was in the front of the box where all the awards were, but I skipped over it. It was in the same place last year, and the year before that, and before that. The students laughed. I smiled. Fun was had by all. *At an end-of-year pool party, I said hello to a former student with the words, "Hello, Emily" (her name is Hannah). The worst part is that I didn't figure this out until that night. *Today, after getting ...

When I was young, I used to pretend that other people could see through my eyes. More than just seeing what I saw, though, I pretended they could feel the emotions I felt. For the good times, it was a way for me to feel like I was on stage, like the things I was doing were important. For the bad times, it gave my circumstances purpose, like someone would understand what I was experiencing. I remember reading not long ago that maybe what people want, more than to be loved, is to be understood. I think this practice reflected that need in me, though I never could have understood it at that age. It makes me wonder now how much others have that same need, a need to be understood, and makes me think that maybe I should do more to empathize with others. In effect, I would be practicing the exact opposite of the thing I wanted for myself. I would be seeing through other people's eyes. It all sounds so ideal, but I think it's possible when a person is rooted enough in his or her walk w...

Soren Kierkegaard once said that "there is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming." This man is identified as the father of existentialism, a philosophy whose proponents hold individual choice as the act that shapes and defines human nature; and who believe that when the individual makes a choice because of social pressure, he or she devalues his or her nature. It follows that any role we play out of obligation to others fails to give us a genuine identity. We are what others say we are, not what we ourselves have determined. I have questions, though. What if that role gives us the identity we've always really wanted? Would we be any less genuine just because our motives were not personal? It seems to me that we can, indeed, find ourselves when we choose out of obligation. I'm specifically thinking about service. The man who serves may not want to, but he discovers in the process of service ...

I started writing this on Friday. It's far from perfect, and I might change things around, but it's done for now. It's a narrative poem whose main character loses hope, hears a familiar sound from heaven, and finds himself alive again. It's a spin off of a poem I wrote on as part of another post in January. In any case, I hope you like it. Noise Silent songs stop playing Through chambers cupped and curved Through insides of once softened space Through dreams once less deserved Familiar sound pours forth past gates Past sentries long in dream Reaching ears that long went deaf To roar its endless theme Piercing past the sound of noise Through whispers breathed for free Booming, distant, fast-felt sky Makes its quiet mark on me On again, and up to play Songs come from deep below May not be played for list’ning ears Still thunder soft and slow Mirroring their master’s tune With awkward tarnished rings Played through doubt on hopeful frets Play sile...

At the end of each school year, the teachers choose one student who has demonstrated notable talent, effort, or both in his or her discipline. Sometimes it is an easy choice, sometimes not. The following is a speech I wrote for one of these students. If anything, it helped me grow aware of the influence we have on others, and what that influence says about our character. A life, I found, is a narrative. My hope is that mine will be something people would want to read. In any case, here's the speech. It’s easy to confine literature to the world of concepts. It’s easy to speak of character, of plot lines with internal conflicts and complications, of suspense, climax, and of motivations that compel a character to act as she does. It’s easy to speak of literature in this way because, by doing so, you relegate it to the pages of a novel, as though these concepts have no bearing on our everyday lives. Literature, however, was never about books alone. Instead, its greatest purposes are to...

My class this week will debate whether schools should value athletics over the fine arts, or vise versa. When first introduced to it, I thought the question was an easy one. I remember hearing of studies that showed the academic benefits of music, and so I concluded without much additional thought that schools should prefer the arts. At first glance, I source mined (not purposely) to prove my conclusion; and alas, I did find evidence that the arts are valuable: a doctor from the University of Maryland found that listening to joyful music may increase cardiovascular health. Blood vessels, he found, opened when volunteers of the study listened to enjoyable music, which improved blood flow. At the same time, other studies have found that the practice of music increases abstract reasoning (though this has not been conclusively proven). It seemed obvious that schools should choose the arts. As I looked into the other side of the topic, however, I remembered learning about the benefits o...

Today, my church started our community garden. We were given a plot of land on the grounds of a child abuse prevention center, and we're using it to create a garden that people will use to grow fruits and vegetables. The great part about it is that each of us had our own part to play in getting it started. I did most of the trenching for the drip line system, two of the girls laid down the pipes and glued them together, our pastor (the "Hammer") took on hammering down all the rebar, another of the girls did much of the woodcutting, and one of the other guys managed most of the project. By the end, we all worked together to shovel dirt into the new garden beds. We now have four full raised garden beds, an unfinished drip line system, and dirt in the beds. We'll likely finish the garden in the next two weeks, and though it's a little late to plant some types of crop, we'll begin planting.