After Our Blood and Tears…

Barack and Michelle Obama have walked up Pennsylvania Avenue, waving to the cheering crowds as the President and First Lady of the United States of America. We are a different country now; a better one.

If you are one of my rare friends who is unmoved by the historic meaning of this moment, I ask you in kindness and in love to examine your own heart and see if there may not lurk there some burden on your soul.  For the rest of us–those of us who are prouder and more sure of ourselves as Americans than we can remember being–today is a victory over the real enemies of our country:  fear, hatred, xenophobia, and jingoism.  

You can tell I’m moved because everything I try to say about this day is pretentious.  I can’t find work-a-day words for an event of such great moment.

So I’ll shut up, and leave you with Aretha, who sings what we can’t speak.

First Day of Spring Semester…

…and I am already feeling guilty for having, once again, bogarted all the best English 101 students.  I have students who are artists, musicians, film makers, smart people, interesting people, kind people, and even one who is missing a rib.  There are boys with ponytails and boys who are just back from serving in Iraq.  There are girls who play rugby (who do they scrum? I’ve always wondered) and girls who fight injustice and poverty.  There are fans of Modest Mouse and Neil Young, an undreadlocked Bob Marley devotee, and no one who claimed Buck Cherry’s “Crazy Bitch” as his or her favorite song.   There are, all told, forty-four sets of stories who will be sitting in my classroom tomorrow, just waiting for me to ask them to be told.

How lucky am I?