GODSPEED* with Learning Stories

America is young enough to learn from its past, but not old enough to know any better. For years we told ourselves and the rest of the world a story, mesmerizing in the simplicity of it’s allure. We were one of a kind. We invented the lightbulb, skyscrapers, airplanes, motion pictures, and on and on and on.  Now we are not so special. Talk with a young person in Southeast Asia these days and they will shrug their shoulders if you ask them what’s so special about America. Everyone has skyscrapers now.   Our political system, called revolutionary in 1776, was in fact a mash-up of systems borrowed from Europe, and which Europe had borrowed from China together with ideas from the Iroquois Indians and their confederation. We are the inheritors of the world’s political destiny, gathered from the disinherited pioneers of other revolutions in other parts of the world.  We are also the forgotten slaves of political regime change, who paid the price to control the old world ...

    Whatever your parenting style may be, there is no guarantee that what works to successfully navigate one season of your child’s life is going to work in every season. Whatever the thought police may say, you have to use your intuition.  Toughen up. Children need to deal with some tough situations, and they are not going to be prepared if you don’t show them how to get a job done without complaint, and expect for them to handle a thing or two themselves.  Also, be more sensitive. Listening to children teaches them that their feelings and perceptions are important. You don’t have to tell them how to solve their problems, but they do need to know that you understand their world on some level, that you feel for them, and they are not alone.  You have trouble on your hands either way. Teach your children to think for themselves and they are going to get into good trouble , and probably trouble you would have rather they avoided. Fail to give them the tools to thi...

The best medicine is the medicine you have. Children know this to be true. They know what band-aids are good for, and they know how to use them. If there are no band-aids, kisses will do just fine. The simpler the better, really. The more options there are, the more we need experts to help us decide which option might be the best one. But nobody has to tell a healthy person what to do.  Nobody has to tell a disabled person what to do either, or an old person, or a child. They know exactly what they want to do. The question is whether they can convince the powers that be to let them go for it. The idea that adults know what is best for children is generally accepted. With people who are disabled and old people, it’s a little different.  Once a person has come of age, they are expected to be able to make up their own mind. Their autonomy is respected. We can admire the cantankerousness of people who are old or disabled. Imagine what it must be like to be in their position, and y...

  Talk is cheap, and it passes for knowledge. It can also stand in the way of both thought and action, which are the twin forces that transform the world. In terms of time wasted, talking about our problems is a primary focus for both mainstream and social media.  This is the perfect environment for the Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee of maintaining the status quo, activism and verbalism. There can be no transformation without praxis, which is what Freire described as the synthesis of thought and action in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed.  In an age where anyone can teach themselves almost anything by watching YouTube videos, most people are not looking for a teacher. Most people are content to consume the words of people who they think will protect their interests, and reject the words of anyone associated with questions about the implications of their logic. If they do not know something, it is not worth knowing.  This is the age of the sound bite that sounds true, but o...

Red Blood Cells "Open hearted citizen of our world" kellyjane bradley reported for jury duty at the Gender Switch Trials yesterday. She wrote, “Trans identities are valid, and individuals must find their own way to authenticity.”  I would be interested in knowing more about what she meant because while I agree, it’s her idea.  I am going to use somebody else’s words to tell you my idea, because they express my own idea to a T. To be honest, I can only speak for myself. If I use a trans person’s words, I am the one who is responsible for what I say with them. I can give credit where credit is due, but each of us has our own personal relationship with the truth, even if we mean the exact same thing.   When I say “it’s the authenticity, not the form it may take, that matters most”  in  “supporting all people to express themselves”  I want to talk about what’s in our bones. Like, IN our bones, the marrow. That’s where our blood comes from. The beating of ...

The worst has already happened. The healing has already begun. As soon as you got hurt, that’s the moment you started getting better again. That is how my momma taught me to make sense of things when I was overwhelmed with strong feelings of loss, and even horror at the sight of blood or disfigurement resulting from the hazards of being an energetic young boy. There are worse things that can happen than skinning a knee.  When anyone in your family is hurt, they can turn to despair. Hurt people hurt people. If somebody gets hurt, and the hurt turns into despair, there is a danger that the despair will become contagious. Despair can be passed from person to person until your whole family is in despair, like a family of zombies with the same affliction.  We all know that in the zombie world the best thing to do is avoid getting hurt in the first place. That’s not the real world though. In the real world, we are born into families that have already turned to despair without knowin...

  Focus up. It’s Father Time in America.  The last word of our family story is not going to be about who the victim is. It is not about the drama of the trauma, and what you think needs to change to restore fairness in our family court system. It’s not about the politics of eternity, or being woke or making America great again. Love is the last word of our family story.  This is about the drama of the hero who stands for the heart of humanity. This is about affirming the best in each member of our family, our whole family, unbroken and unseparated as it was in the original moment. This is about restoring hope for the hero’s journey of every child to share the best of the people they come from with future generations. It’s time to take this drama out of the courtroom, out of the streets, and shut out the media. It’s time for the Patriarch and the Matriarch to stop fighting for control, against each other. It’s time to fight for each other, and our shared humanity.  It...