Midlife Meditation

I have no idea what this kid is thinking--and neither do you. Cards on the table: I'm frequently uncomfortable around teenagers. As an educator, this has been a hard thing for me to accept about myself. My initial training was to be a band director, more specifically, a high school (and hopefully, eventually, college) band director. I didn't really get to do that until 2011, when, coming out of the recession, I was hired back to Banks as a half-time middle and high school band and choir director. There I found many kids I liked and enjoyed working with, some who were difficult, and a few who scared me. More cards on the table: boy energy agitates me, sometimes to the point of shutting down. As boys get bigger, they also get louder, their impulses more dangerous. I've seen boys in the fifth grade (the oldest kids I work with, now that I'm an elementary music teacher, band together into disruptive proto-gangs. I've seen them play at, and sometimes a...

Antman and the Wasp is an enjoyable summer movie, a lovely palate cleanser after the loud, gloomy, and commercially cynical (of course they're not killing off all those franchises! Money!)  Avengers installment. As my time on earth steps more fully into its downhill phase, I'm far less likely than I used to be to see movies multiple times, but I didn't mind at all seeing this one twice. Most of the jokes held up very well (though one unfortunate trope involving a Hispanic character and a hot little car really bugged me on the second viewing), and one in particular, with clever callbacks throughout the movie, resonated with our contemporary political situation in ways the filmmakers may not have anticipated. To set the stage very quickly: Antman is under house arrest for something having to do with his involvement in the last Captain America movie (it's never really explained what law he broke). To entertain himself, he's taken up a variety of hobbies, including...

It's true: he doesn't care what you think. He's not your President, either. It dates back at least to the debates, when candidate Trump referred to Barack Obama as " your (meaning Hillary Clinton's) President." Of course, that attitude toward the 44th President grew out of years of single-handedly keeping the "birther" movement alive, as Trump refused to accept even the documentary evidence of a birth certificate that Obama was born an American citizen. Many, including Trump, have criticized Clinton for engaging in identity politics: promoting the ways in which her policy goals would benefit women, persons of color, the LGBTQ community. In doing so, the critics forgot the essential truth, voiced by Tip O'Neill many decades ago, that "all politics is local." It's the job of government to address the needs not just of the whole populace, but of its fractions, even its individuals. The Constitution exists not to defend t...