Wishing Life's Puzzles Were Easier to Solve - Sending a Variety of Emotions to the City of Louisville (& Encourage Hitting the Books Even More)

546 S. 1st Street, on the corner of Muhammad Ali. That was my home away from home for over a decade, and Louisville's pastiche was an inspiration: beautiful cultures, blue grass charm, rituals, and the wonderful young people of the Brown School. I was fortunate to have knowledge of the location because my cousins went there, and after doing two Masters at the University of Louisville, I was lucky to meet Sue McV and have an invitation to what was a miraculous space - a K-12, public school with a vision for diversity, inclusion, and high standards for all. My saying always was, "It's like the yellow pages. If it's out there in the world, it's in our school." I like Mac Finley's explanation, as well...."Take all the colors in a Crayola Box, swirl it together, and you get Brown. That's us." Brown is a location for blending zip-codes and hosting dialogue between young people and their families who arrive from multiple locations in one city - a mini-democracy, within a larger democracy. An example of what democracy should be that helped me to see that we all have a larger responsibility to our communities around us. 

Chitunga brought a puzzle home the other night. On Mt. Pleasant we do puzzles during the holiday season, sipping bourbon before we go to sleep and making our brains think, but shut off for a while. The latest one was opened, but he didn't start it, so last night I asked for permission to at least pull out the edge work. I didn't put the first pieces together, though, because it's his puzzle. Eventually we'll work on it. We'll solve it, and this one, in the tradition of Chitunga's pastoral love of nature and serenity, we'll create the scene of a man and his dog looking out at a beautiful landscape. We share  a desire for outdoor life, calm, and the ebb & flow of the natural world. We pay attention. We expect more.

If only life's more complicated puzzles could be put together so easily. 

We all lose when a young Black woman is shot in her home. No one is triumphant, even when money is handed out and verdicts get made. Her life was lost, a student of Kentucky, Western High School, a young person, like so many young people teachers across this nation are fortunate to interact with and teach. History and libraries predicted this outcome, because it is an outcome written again and again and again. What differs now is the frustration from seeing the same story told and retold and retold. Over and over and over. And although we see it clearly, and desire change, the tale is woven again. Something has always been wrong.

All of us are good. All of us are bad. It doesn't matter the profession, the income, the location, the childhood, the church, or the schooling. Humans. That's what we are. Pieces of a puzzle that fit better when working together.

I feel for the City I love, and pray for the healing, only to be frustrated that the story will likely repeat itself more. To date, nothing has changed. There is hate in our hearts and we carry it into what we do - There is love in our hearts, too. It's a choice. All the social justice work, and all the equity, inclusivity, and diversity training that is ubiquitous in this nation has not delivered a solution to what Rockwell named The Problem We All Live With. Perhaps, education is the key (that's what I like to think), but with 24+ years in it as a teacher, and an entire life of it as a student, I'm not so sure such optimism works. 

For me, the Brown School worked. For me, Young Adult Literacy Labs at Fairfield University Work. For me, the National Writing Project works. What's the common denominator? Diversity, Inclusivity, & an attempt for Equity for all. Dialogue. Togetherness. Conversations about history - all history, and civic responsibility to work against it division...divided we're conquered, together we're strong. 

I have been working, reading, and thinking about the influence of Dr. Carol Boyce Davis on my worldview ever since I met her as a 19-year old in London. I took her Literature of Exile and the Black British Experience class and she mentored me post-London, too. She is the reason I chose to be an educator and act in the ways I do. 

All of us are losing right now, locally, nationally, and globally. This American quest towards a true democracy is showing its ugliest sides (which many populations in the United States have always seen). Cry the Beloved Country. I'm crying, too, Alan Paton, 72 years later.  Different nation. Same stories.

The teachings of Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Animism, etc. teach us what to do, to be, to strive for....yet.

Yet.