Lessons I've Learned The Hard Way ...

 

The strongest fences in our lives are the ones we build ourselves. 

Not to get all pretentious here, but I’ve had a lot of interesting experiences over the last ten years, and I want to share some principles that guide my life I’ve learned from those experiences. There is also a story behind every statement. I may even share those stories sometime …

1. Sometimes we don’t see our personal prison until we’re out of it. Comfort zones aren’t always helpful, especially when they keep us from progressing. Relationships, careers, or where we live can all be barriers to being a better person.
2. Find someone you can love wholeheartedly, passionately, and without fear of rejection. Love someone who loves you for who you are now, but makes you want to be a better person. Love and be loved unconditionally. If you already have that someone, hang onto them for dear life.
3. Like what you do, but realize a career doesn't define you as a person. If you don’t love everything about your life now, find at least one thing you can love - exercise, a hobby, the arts, whatever it is that helps you transcend drudgery for a while. Life is too short to never find anything that makes you truly happy. I like teaching, but I don’t love the politics that go along with it. I’m lucky to be in a place now where I'm happy and engaged with my work, but there are many other things that make my life good as well.
4. Appreciate beauty. This is a lot of good in this world. Recognize the ugliness and change it if you can, but don't let it define you.
5. Fear sucks. Don’t be afraid of your feelings. Accept them, and if they’re negative, channel those feelings in productive ways. Recognize depression and deal with it.  I once reached a point where getting out of bed in the morning became a challenge. That was no way to live, so I did something about it. Mostly, I found reasons to get out of bed – my job, my kids, and the people I loved most. Don’t be afraid of trying new things. Don’t be afraid of trying old things in a new way.
6. Don’t trust anyone who says he or she knows what God - whichever one you happen to believe in - wants for your life. Organized religion is mostly bullshit and is usually just a means for people to exploit and make money off of others. For a long time, I believed there were people who were more insightful or inspired about myself than me, because they claimed to have a closer relationship with God than I had. I finally realized that nobody knows me better than myself. Depending on others for guidance because they claim to be more inspired is an invitation to disaster. It’s your life. Live it your way, but always strive to be kind. Be true to yourself, and accept, respect, and trust yourself. Don’t worry about what most others think or say about you; you can’t really do anything about it. Care what your loved ones think of you, but realize even they don't always understand where you're coming from. 
7. Accept others for who they are, but don’t be anyone’s doormat. Recognize that otherwise good people sometimes have bad days. None of us are defined by who we are at our finest moment or at our worst moment. Most of the time we're just doing the best we can. Be patient, but don’t accept being treated less than how you deserve, whether it’s by friends, family, employers, religious leaders, or anyone else. It took me a long time to realize that I didn’t have to put up with being treated poorly just because I had invested time and emotional energy into a relationship.
8. There are crazy and/or mean people out there who enjoy hurting others. Learn to deal with them. Even better, avoid those people altogether if you can. Sometimes bad people put on a good front before you realize who they actually are. Some of the worst people I’ve dealt with in my life have had advanced degrees or have been religious leaders.
9. Be grateful. You’re blessed (or lucky) every day in large and small ways. Be grateful for the good things, because it could always be worse. 
10. Knowledge matters. Education matters. Experience matters. Ignorance is not bliss.
11. Intentions don’t matter. Actions do.
12. When you're gone, you're gone. Live a consequential life that influences others for the better. Give people a reason to say good things about you years after you've shuffled off this mortal coil.

A John Prine Winter

 

Man, I still miss John Prine. The guy was an amazing artist, and from all accounts, an amazing human being as well. I still haven't gotten over his death from COVID last April. Standing outside today in a snowstorm with a bunch of fifth graders brought memories of his music to mind. Few performers can evoke a time or a place for me the way John Prine could, and with a cold winter wind blowing through me and snow pellets lashing my face, I thought of Prine's songs "Storm Windows" and "Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow)". "Storm Windows" came out in 1980 and has been a part of my life for a long time. Here are the lyrics:

 

Storm Windows

By John Prine

 

I can hear the wheels of the automobiles so far away

Just moving along through the drifting snow

It's times like these when the temperatures freeze

I sit alone just looking at the world through a storm window

And down on the beach, the sandman sleeps

Time don't fly, it bounds and leaps

And a country band that plays for keeps

They play it so slow

Don't let your baby down

Don't let your baby down

Don't let your baby down

Well, the spirits were high till the well went dry

For so long, the raven at my window was only a crow

I bought the rights to the inside fights

And watched a man just beating his hand against a storm window

While miles away o'er hills and streams

A candle burns a witch's dreams

Silence is golden till it screams

Right through your bones

Don't let your baby down

Don't let your baby down

Don't let your baby down

Storm windows gee but I'm getting old

Storm window keep away the cold

 

Don't let your baby down

Don't let your baby down

Don't let your baby down, oh no

 

Here’s what John Prine said about “Storm Windows”:

“I grew up on a four-lane highway. Lots of trucks. Lots of traffic. I used to have these spells every so often as a child where like the ceiling of the room was in normal perspective, but the doorway would appear much farther away than it was. Coupled with this, all noises seemed muffled and distant, particularly the traffic moving on the wet or snow-covered pavement. I was really in another world. I finally worked up the courage to tell my mother and father about it, and Mom made Dad take me to the eye doctor. I love them both.”

        

Another reason I have John Prine on my mind today is I went to Randy’s Records after work, waited outside for fifteen minutes until it was my turn to go in, and bought a boxed set of John Prine’s albums he recorded for Asylum Records. Not only did I get Storm Windows with the set, it also contained Bruised Orange, which was released in 1978. Here’s John Prine's intro to "Bruised Orange (Chain Of Sorrow)", and his lyrics to the song:

 

“I used to work at this Episcopal Church when I was like thirteen years old. I was saving money for a guitar and I'd go in on weekends and dust the pews up because round about then, a lot of people started going to church, so the pews would get real dusty. And I'd wax the cross up, vacuum the carpet and clean up the cup they put the wine in. Religion kind of lost its magic for me. I was a roadie for god."

        

"In the wintertime they used to call me up early on Sunday morning to come get the snow out, off the walk in front of the church, because if one of the congregation fell and busted their ass they'd sue the church for all the money they'd given it all those years. And I used to have to go in pretty early, about five thirty, six o'clock on Sunday morning to take care of the snow. I always thought it was a real strange time of the day, particularly on a Sunday morning. You normally see people are out late from Saturday night, or else people really had a job on Sunday morning, like a newsboy or altar boy or a bunch of people like that."

“I seen, I was going over one Sunday morning and this kid who was going over to a Catholic church, this altar boy, he got hit by a train. He was just kind of screwing around, walking down the track, looking at his shoes and he got hit. He was a pretty bad mess. And there was about six or seven mothers around the scene of the accident. They didn't know where their sons were at the time. They didn't know who had gotten hit, and it took about fifteen, twenty minutes to identify him. I always remember, like, the look on one mother's, on the other mother's faces. Not the ones that, the others had a big sigh of relief. And they tried to comfort the other one but they were too relieved to be very comforting.”

 

And that’s the story behind this song …

 

Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow)

By John Prine

 

My heart's in the ice house, come hill or come valley

Like a long ago Sunday when I walked through the alley

On a cold winter's morning to a church house

Just to shovel some snow

 

I heard sirens on the train tracks, howl naked, gettin' nuder

"An altar boy's been hit by a local commuter"

Just from walking with his back turned

To the train that was coming so slow

 

You can gaze out the window, get mad and get madder

Throw your hands in the air, say, "What does it matter?"

But it don't do no good to get angry

So help me, I know

 

For a heart stained in anger grows weak and grows bitter

You become your own prisoner as you watch yourself sit there

Wrapped up in a trap of your very own

Chain of sorrow

 

I been brought down to zero, pulled out and put back there

I sat on a park bench, I kissed the girl with the black hair

And my head shouted down to my heart

"You better look out below!"

 

Hey, it ain't such a long drop, don't stammer, don't stutter

From the diamonds in the sidewalk to the dirt in the gutter

And you'll carry those bruises to remind you wherever you go

 

You can gaze out the window, get mad and get madder

Throw your hands in the air, say, "What does it matter?"

But it don't do no good to get angry

So help me, I know

 

For a heart stained in anger grows weak and grows bitter

You become your own prisoner as you watch yourself sit there

Wrapped up in a trap of your very own

Chain of sorrow

 

My heart's in the ice house, come hill or come valley

Like a long ago Sunday when I walked through the alley

On a cold winter's morning to a church house

Just to shovel some snow

 

I heard sirens on the train tracks, howl naked, gettin' nuder

"An altar boy's been hit by a local commuter"

Just from walking with his back turned

To the train that was coming so slow

You can gaze out the window, get mad and get madder

Throw your hands in the air, say, "What does it matter?"

But it don't do no good to get angry

So help me, I know

 

For a heart stained in anger grows weak and grows bitter

You become your own prisoner as you watch yourself sit there

Wrapped up in a trap of your very own

Chain of sorrow

Man, I still miss John Prine.

The Wild, The Innocent, and The Eagle Mountain Shuffle*

*with apologies to Bruce Springsteen.

I drove to Eagle Mountain yesterday. I’ve been meaning to go back for a long time. I spent an hour there a little over a year ago — for the first time since 2011 — because I wanted to show the love of my life where my marriage fell apart, among other things. She wasn’t impressed with the place. My lady saw cheaply built houses spaced too closely together, and a remoteness that is frustrating until you get used to it, and then it’s kind of nice. And that was pretty much the only time I had been there until yesterday, with a few exceptions. I have a lot of unresolved issues that involve Eagle Mountain, and I went there thinking I might get some closure. I spent nearly six years in that little town, and I still think about my time in Eagle Mountain a lot. Every time I listen to John Mellencamp’s or Bruce Springsteen’s later work, it takes me right back there.

 I took my camera with me yesterday because I wondered if I could find any beauty in Eagle Mountain. I don’t know if I did. I spent several hours walking old routes that I took with my faithful pug, Waylon, years ago, while I took a few pictures. I’ll let the readers of this post decide for themselves if I succeeded.

My life wasn’t all bad in Eagle Mountain. I had a good job and worked for a principal whom I liked, which is increasingly rare for me nowadays. My kids attended the same school where I taught, which gave me the opportunity to see them everyday at work. I owned a house there, and my kids lived with me under the same roof, instead of seven hundred miles away as they do now. There are still people in Eagle Mountain who I consider friends. I had a period of stability there (outside of the shittiness of my marriage) that I have only recently regained. I hiked and biked in Eagle Mountain – which I loved because I didn’t have to worry about some idiot running me over, as I do here in the big city — and enjoyed the quiet and small town quality of the place.

However, for me, Eagle Mountain is haunted by memories that still make my heart ache for the loss of living with my kids full time, and haunted by the ghosts of what might have been had I been smart enough to see the trap I was creating for myself with the predominant culture. For the sake of marital and community harmony, I tried living a lie in Eagle Mountain and pretending that I liked it, and it didn’t work. God, I not only tried to be active LDS (although I never did get used to some Eagle Mountain LDS people claiming they lived “a higher law,” which apparently meant disbelieving that evolution was a thing, and that white shirt, tie, and clean shaven were what God required), I also pretended to be a conservative. You can stop laughing now. 

As I wrote earlier, my marriage ended there (although it was a long time coming), and the results of what my ex falsely claimed about me caused some sanctimonious school district people in the most Mormon county in the state to decide I was no longer worthy of working in a school district that, in many ways, is an extension of the LDS Church. Basically, they made my life so miserable in the district that I quit.

I wrote years ago that the former HR director of Alpine District thought he was the stake president of human resources, rather than the director, and he treated anyone as persona non grata whom he didn’t feel was living LDS standards. I say that with full confidence of it being true, because every time this person opened his big, fat mouth, the only thing he talked about was his LDS Church calling. He also vigorously pursued people for doing things in their personal lives that in most other school districts would not have been relevant to their employment. Yes, Mr. Spencer was a piece of work, but he was not an anomaly. The whole district reflected LDS Church guidelines in dress and behavior. I say that without bitterness now — although it took me years to get rid of that bitterness.

I didn’t mean for this post to turn into an LDS Church bashing session, but as I write I realize there is no way around it. The LDS Church created the culture in Eagle Mountain that made living there unsustainable as long as I was an active member of the church. The attitude of LDS leaders and the edicts they issued — let’s be honest, the bullshit they spouted and the herd instinct of the members there — made life miserable, and when that bullshit encompasses every aspect of your life, both professionally and personally, it’s a big deal. The LDS Church set the agenda for the area and everyone followed more or less blindly, just because there weren’t any alternatives for a social or spiritual life. As a post Mormon, I can see clearly how abusive and coercive the church is, especially in Eagle Mountain. And as it turned out, when my ex decided she was done with our marriage, she used the church as a cudgel to beat me with.

So yeah, I have some issues with my past in Eagle Mountain. Strangely, after walking around familiar places yesterday, I think I could live there again. I am no longer religious, so I wouldn’t have to deal with the hypocrisy and the sanctimony of the predominant culture. I could ignore it and just ride my bike and go for walks and appreciate the tranquility without worrying about what my bishop thought or what the stake president preached in church last Sunday. Hell, maybe I could even get another dog to follow me.

Honestly, my life is happier now. I have a great girlfriend who loves and cares about me, and provides very little drama in my life. I see my girls, but not nearly as often as I would like. I work for a principal who doesn’t suck. I now drive a vehicle that gets me where I’m going, is paid for, and doesn’t embarrass me. It’s twenty years old, but what the hell, I like it anyway. It’s been a while since that happened, and it’s because of what happened in Eagle Mountain.

Unfortunately, having the most important things in my life — time with my girls, my job, and my house — stolen from me will hurt for a long time. And I’m not sure closure is even possible, because that would require ignoring my feelings about the worst experiences of my life. I do realize I still have to live my life, however. Living in the present is more important than living in the past, no matter how much pain I endured when I lived there. Guess I’ll just have to call it a draw between Eagle Mountain (and all it represents, which is the main thing) and myself.

Anyway, here are the pictures where I tried to make Eagle Mountain look purdy, along with pictures of where I used to live …

From one of my old biking routes.

This is the place … maybe.

It can be pretty, if you look at it just right.

Where I lived.

It looked better when I lived there. It had trees and a fence. Ugh.

   

My route when I walked to work. There were fewer houses then. I think I actually made this look pretty.

The Big 2-0

Adams Elementary, Logan, UT, February 14, 1991

This month marks the twentieth anniversary of the official beginning of my career in education. In January 1991, I started Level II classes in the Elementary Education program at Utah State University.  Although I didn’t get my first real teaching job until August 1992, Level II was my first taste of what would eventually become my livelihood. I was actually working in the public schools, and had a few instructional responsibilities.

Starting the first week of January, I drove twice a week to Sunrise Elementary in Smithfield, a small town north of Logan, to observe and to work as a quasi-teacher’s aide for a practicum class. I worked in the classroom of a fourth grade teacher, Terry Olsen, who was very enthusiastic and had a lot of fun with his students. He was a big influence on me. After four weeks I moved to Adams Elementary in Logan, right next to Adams Park, where I worked in a second grade class for another four weeks. Good times.

Looking back at Winter Quarter 1991 makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. It was something of a milestone in my life. I was finally progressing in my academic career, which had felt stalled up to that point. I’ve been rereading a journal I kept during that time, and it has been quite entertaining. My outlook on what I was committing myself to for the next thirty years was awfully naive.

That winter was also an interesting – if tumultuous – time in the U.S. The build-up to the first Gulf War was occurring, and the war would start on January 16, 1991. The night the war started I was sitting in the Salt Palace arena in Salt Lake City, waiting for a Paul Simon concert to begin. Paul came out fifteen minutes late because he and his band had been listening to the first President Bush address the country. I also remember listening to war news on the radio as I drove to Smithfield. That was the era when we all learned about Scud missiles and other slightly surreal words, like Kurds and Basra.

A disconcerting thing happened to me that morning of January 16th. I had an early morning class on campus, and as I scraped the ice off the windshield of my car – it’s too cold to walk very far in Logan during January – I managed to scrape the skin off of one knuckle as well. I didn’t think much about it until two days later when my hand began to swell and a red streak started making its way up my arm. I went to the campus infirmary in the student center and found out I had a raging case of blood poisoning. The doctor lectured me about the severity of the red streak. I’m just grateful I was smart enough to go to the doctor.

So here it is, exactly twenty years later. I’m now doing pretty much what I expected to be doing back in 1991. I’m occasionally nostalgic for those seemingly care-free days, but then I read something I wrote back then and think to myself, “Gosh, I was an idiot.” 

I hope I won’t feel the same way when I read this blog in another twenty years.

Acting Principal

When my boss is out of the building, I have the dubious honor of dealing with the discipline problems that can’t be handled in-class. The older students aren’t much fun under these circumstances; their issues most often involve threatening other students or actual fighting, along with defiance or disrespect to their teachers. Oh, and the girl fights. There's nothing quite like the animosity that can develop between sixth grade girls to keep life interesting.

On the other hand, the younger kids are usually a hoot when they get in trouble. Case in point: this morning the school secretary called me to the office because a kindergarten teacher had kicked a student out of her class, and the student was waiting for me in the time-out room. The time–out room is a small room across the hall from the principal’s office; the room is painted a soothing forest green and isn’t much bigger than a walk-in closet.

As I entered the office the secretary warned me, “She’s cute but don’t let that fool you.” When I walked into the time-out room I found that the secretary spoke the truth. Waiting for me was a little girl straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting: tiny, pigtails, freckles, an impish smile, and feet that didn’t quite touch the floor from the chair where she was sitting. I asked the miniature miscreant her name and what she had done to end up in the principal’s office. The diminutive delinquent – whom I’ll call Sarah, which isn’t her real name, of course – told me that she teased another little girl named Eve. Apparently Sarah thought the similarity between Eve’s name and Christmas Eve was pretty funny. Sarah had also refused to sit on the rug with the rest of her class when her teacher asked her to, which was the main reason she was no longer in class. I had a hard time keeping a straight face with this runty wrongdoer.

Sarah chattered away about various misdeeds she had perpetrated in class, and I began to sympathize with her teacher. I finally asked the tiny terror what her parents would do if they knew she was in trouble at school. Her eyes widened and she whispered, “They would be mad.” I told Sarah that we were going to call her parents. It sounded like there would be consequences at home for getting in trouble at school, which is a good thing. However, my calling her parents didn’t seem to faze Sarah, and I soon found out why: no one answered any of the numbers I dialed. This crooked cutie knew no one was home.

I gave Sarah the standard speech – obey your teacher, how would you feel if someone teased you, blah, blah, blah – but I could tell by the small smile on Sarah’s face that I wasn’t getting through. I took Sarah by the hand – mainly because I was afraid she might make a run for it in the other direction, and the last thing I needed today was to put out an APB on a fugitive kindergartner – and led her back to class.

When we arrived at Sarah’s classroom, I asked her teacher to come out into the hall for a private talk. I reassured the teacher that Sarah would behave (although I privately had grave doubts about the truthfulness of that assertion), and told the teacher to keep Sarah in from recess. The look on Sarah’s face told me that she was still bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and more than ready for round two with her teacher. Suddenly, inspiration struck and I uttered those same four simple words that weary parents have told their obnoxious offspring every December for hundreds of years: 

“Santa Claus is watching.”

Sarah’s face fell, and she quietly returned to class. I congratulated myself on my cleverness.

Sarah’s teacher told me later that my words of wisdom guided the bitty bandit’s behavior for all of five minutes.

Thank You and Happy Veterans Day, Sergeant J

Kind of a preachy blog post today. Normally I try not to preach; it makes me feel hypocritical in a major way. However, what I have to say today is near and dear to my heart, so I’m gonna preach:

I have two little girls - stepsisters - in my class this year. Their father and step-father, Sgt. J, is a master sergeant in the army. In September he was severely injured by an IED - what used to be called a booby trap - in Afghanistan. Sgt. J’s job in the army was to actually defuse IEDs. For the last two months he has been recuperating in various military hospitals between here and Afghanistan. Tomorrow (on Veterans Day, no less) Sgt. J finally gets to come home. Like other returning Iraq/Afghanistan veterans in our area, Sgt. J will be escorted by the local fire department, and the main road into town will be lined with American flags. My class, along with several others, will be waiting by the roadside to cheer and demonstrate our appreciation as his entourage pulls into town.

I’m proud to teach this brave soldier’s children, and proud that he lives in our town. America wouldn’t have survived over the past two hundred and thirty-four years without men and women like Sgt. J and his family, who are prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice. I honor our country in a million little ways, but compared to heroes like Sgt. J, my efforts seems pretty inadequate.

This Veterans Day, let’s truly remember and appreciate Sgt. J and all the other brave men and women who have served - or are serving - our country. No other country in the world offers the freedoms and opportunities that we have here in the USA. The men and women serving in the military are prepared to lay down their lives to safeguard those freedoms and opportunities.

As the holiday season nears, let’s not forget we’re still fighting two wars. It doesn’t seem like a day goes by that there isn’t news of someone being injured or killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. There are also hundreds of thousands of servicemen and women who won’t be with their families on Thanksgiving later this month because they are sacrificing that time with their families to serve our country. 

Let’s not ever take any of them for granted.