What Conservatives Get Wrong About Education: No Left Turn and Deviation

I could laugh off and dismiss No Left Turn in Education if it wasn't 2021. June brought the promise of a mask-free summer full of travel and music and family visits. Then came the delta variant. It was a deflator for so many of us, while for others it was simply a maskless, "vaxless," business-as-usual moment. Like alpha and all the variants to come before, the delta variant became a political football. The generalized left was advocating vaccinations, social distancing, continued mask mandates, and other mitigation practices. The generalized right was advocating personal choice: vaccinate, distance, and mask if you want to, but leave us alone.

As a teacher, this has been a confounding problem: first, how to communicate the actual purpose of masking to students and parents? It even took me a while to realize that the point of wearing a mask indoors was so that I wouldn't infect others. While there may be some protection from inhaling a viral load, my mask is protecting the others around me from being exposed to whatever viral load I could be shedding. Once I "got it," I tried to share this as often as possible with my students. Some never bought it, though, and teachers spend half the day saying, "Please put your mask over your mouth and nose." For some students, especially those eavesdropping on their parents' Tucker Carlson regimen, not wearing it is a sign of defiance. 

Maskless adults who knowingly traipse around in areas with high community spread are basically sending one message out to their community: "I really don't care what happens to you or anyone else. My comfort comes first." Fair enough. The pursuit of happiness is, in some measure, an inalienable right. Plus, originalists or strict constructionists can argue that there is nothing in the Constitution about the Federal Government dictating health mandates, and they would be right, literally. However, as states tried to exercise their authority in this manner, there have been reactions ranging from rude but peaceful protest to threats of violent insurrection, including a promise to kidnap a governor. Nice.

It is in this climate, then, that I find No Left Turn's desire to ban particular books seriously unnerving. Somehow, this seems possible, no matter how misguided. The Hate U Give? Really? It's difficult to imagine that the "banners" even read Thomas's narrative. It is a solid coming of age story that uses police violence as a catalyst for Starr Carter's dawning social- and self-awareness. Her biggest offense is standing atop a van with a bull horn exhorting a crowd to never give up until justice is served for her dead friend Khalil, a young man unjustly killed by a jumpy patrol officer. As an American book, it could sit comfortably beside Richard Wright's Native Son or Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self-Reliance." In that essay, Emerson writes, "I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. . . . I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways." When speaking out about needless police violence, Starr Carter was heeding Emerson's call.

In their desire to ban books, No Left Turn proves to be lacking in an irony meter. Robin Diangelo's White Fragility–featured in their "Critical Race Theory" category–identifies the extreme defensiveness found in much of white America when confronting issues of racism. This defensiveness and anger can cloud out the very message that Diangelo tries to send. She argues that when we holler and decry "attacks" on the integrity of Western or Enlightenment thinking, we are not listening. Diangelo goes to great lengths to point out that she is not accusing any individual of racist acts or positions. Rather, she discusses racism in the way that institutions have themselves been built for exclusion. One needn't look further than White Man's Leagues, Plessy v. Ferguson, Red Lining, Poll Taxes and Literacy Tests for evidence of institutional discrimination. This is basic AP US History material. Nothing shocking.

Recently, by revisiting and amplifying the events of Tulsa's Black Wall Street massacre 100 years after the fact, students were given a window into the past. It was a great educational moment, one that allowed a framework for discussing abhorrent acts of racial violence. None of this study, by the way, is intended to shame white students. Rather, in my predominantly white school of Downeast Maine, this is an opportunity to empathize with people who had all opportunities for generational wealth erased with a torch and a gun. These are not disputed historical facts. If discussing them makes us uncomfortable or mad, good. Go there. That's what Diangelo advises: our discomfort is telling us something.

As Americans, though, we should lean into that discomfort. Ours is a project, more than a nation. Ours is a state built on the promises of equity and equality. It is a state founded on the principles of evolutionary change. It is a state founded on the desire to seek redress for grievances. The founding fathers sought to disband the ties that bound them to an unjust king. "No taxation without representation." Agreed. The project of America is one of ever expanding inclusivity. And at each stage, it has come with a price. For the founding fathers, that price was an outright bloody revolution. The king had stepped on the colonists' rights, and the colonists sought to change the power dynamic.

Now, when I see No Left Turn listing Howard Zinn's seminal A People's History of the United States, I continue to wonder, Have they actually read it? Left, right, or center, it is an historical fact that the Pinkerton Detectives, and sometimes the National Guard, were sent in to gun down striking laborers. Were some of them left-wing or even communist? Sure. But remember, no tension between (labor) agitators and abusive owners (capital), no 40-hour work week. No Upton Sinclair and other muckrakers, no USDA. Would you prefer rats and spoiled pork in your hotdogs? If students never read about Samuel Clemens' opposition to the Philippine-American War, how are they to have any historical context other than that of the "yellow press"?

Zinn's mission is not to make white people feel guilty. Rather, his is a mission to document Americans exercising their right to redress grievances. Following cycles of exploitation or struggle come waves of protest, sometimes violent, only to be followed by waves of reform. This is in keeping with the trends of the Second Great Awakening, a movement driven by the charitable side of Christianity. This early-19th century Protestant revivalism launched the temperance, feminist, and abolitionist movements, among others. These preachers were in line with the founding fathers' habit of complaining about their poor treatment at the hands of a greedy king. This is in keeping with the spirit of the Bill of Rights and the spirit of American reform. 

It is understandable how many conservatives are afraid of their children reading books that empower them to veer off the course their families have set. In a pluralistic, multicultural society, difference can be as difficult to accept as change. Yet in the words of that radical leftist Willa Cather, "When boys and girls are growing up, life can't stand still, not even in the quietest of country towns; and they have to grow up, whether they will or no. That is what their elders are always forgetting." If the No Left Turn folks were to do deep, analytical readings of Cather's novels, what would they find? Probably enough to make Cather, herself, blush.

The novel I just quoted, the classic My Ántonia, only features two rapists. One is a Boston farmer who torments his Swedish housemaids before one "was forced to retire from the world for a short time." The horrid Wick Cutter, exploitative money lender and town Brahmin, was also a letch. Regarding his housemaids, "One of them he had taken to Omaha and established in a business for which he had fitted her. He still visited her." But maybe it's just as well that this is couched in a language and context too subtle for the seeker of the salacious and the banner of books.

Cather's project, though, was reformist as much as it was reportage. She sought to show Americans just how much the maligned Eastern Europeans of the late-19th century actually contributed to the shaping of the prairie. She reveals just how provincial and narrow-minded most people become. Even Jim Burden, the novel's youthful narrator, succumbs to conservative claptrap and marries a disinterested WASP. Oh well, at least he shares his own mistakes with readers and embraces his shortcomings in the end.

By expanding the franchise, Andrew Jackson pushed against the then conservative American grain who would only grant white, property-owning men the right to vote. While expedient for his own ends, Jackson's move won him a spot on the twenty dollar bill in spite of his other, extensive short-comings. His democratic push was a wave of change and reform. And we are proud of him for it.

Then came the 13th and 14th Amendments. Then came the 19th. Despite the 1924 Snyder Act, Native American voting rights weren't secured until the passage of the 1965 Voter Rights Act. As an American, I for one am glad that these struggles pressed forward. There were always people objecting at each step of the way. Thankfully, they are mostly the forgotten voices of American history.

While No Left Turn will continue to gain traction in this reactionary moment, I will stand against them and their endeavors to limit American discourse. The reductive histrionics of Charlie Kirk's argument against Critical Race Theory, for one example, are simply designed to inflame and divide. No student benefits from an education that seeks to pretend that the world outside does not exist.

All best intentions to write more. . . . Well, I ain't givin' up!

Here, for this post, I'm just going to share a short story that I wrote in 1998. It was part of a series that I'd begun a couple of summers earlier when I was at the Haystack conference in Cannon Beach, OR with Sally Tisdale. She was an inspiration. Stories poured out of me onto paper via an old Smith-Corona typewriter. It was magical.

Not long after I returned home to Portland, OR from that coastal retreat, I was jumped, mugged, and beaten pretty badly in the Eastside Industrial District. It was late, and it was terrifying. Worst of all, I had had a three-ring binder with several stories I'd been sweating over for weeks. While I tried to hold on to the backpack as I was being kicked by 7 or 10 jerks, I kept hearing someone say, "Get the backpack! Get the backpack!" When I heard the phrase, "Put the gun to his head!" I released my grip. Gone.

This was only one step of many that left me defeated and basically giving up on writing fiction altogether. Now, maybe I'll start again. The good news, though, is that when finally moving into this current house, I began to unpack old boxes. There, I found this story, and I'm posting it, here. Take it for all in all. It is what it is and should speak for itself.

We all have stories to share, and there are a few more in me. Here's one.

All pictures and videos are from my return to Hampton in 2019 for Dead & Co.

One Way Ticket

David leaned forward to turn off his clock radio. His long brown hair was matted in a wide ponytail that fell half way down his back. The colors of the rainbow were woven along one particular cluster that had begun to knot up toward his skull. He pulled the cotton strand free of the other hair and used it to tie up the loose mess. Sunlight streamed in through the leaves with the yellow tint of a D.C. autumn. David hadn’t seen the early morning sun in a long time, not after a full night’s sleep anyway. He stood up and looked for his favorite batik T-shirt in the corner laundry pile. It was a deep green, and on the front there was a loose image of rocks beside the seashore, moonlight on the water. He thought of the shirt as being representative of himself and his family roots; he dug deep down in the pile for it.

This was to be a big day. Bill Graham had pulled an East Coast coup. Two shows at the Hampton Coliseum had been announced a week in advance, a surprise billed as “Formerly the Warlocks.” All the heads knew what that was, the title going back to the Grateful Dead’s first collaborations with Ken Kesey in San Francisco twenty-four years before, but hopefully the enigmatic title would keep the rubberneckers out. Throwing on his cut-off fatigues and battered Birkenstock sandals, he lit a half-smoked cigarette and headed for his desk to pull out the gem tickets. He remembered a friend saying that they were like Willie Wonka specials with the embossed lettering and skeleton design.

The drawer was full of torn envelopes, plastic baggies, Post-it reminders, chewing gum wrappers, rubber bands and assorted useless items that had little more value than trash. David rifled through everything, slowly at first, methodically, accustomed to these layers of debris. He stopped and lit another cigarette, dragging heavily on the first, doubling the second hit. Positioning it in the left corner of his mouth, he continued to rifle the drawer. His pace quickened, and he began to look under various scraps again and again. He shut the drawer and tried another. He began muttering to himself. “Shit, I thought I left it in the other drawer.”

David proceeded to check every drawer in his room. Each one was a study in American junk. The last ashes of his smoke fell and mingled with the ashes of spent bowls in his stash drawer. The rush of nicotine made him a little too dizzy. He would rather have been enjoying this moment on the front porch in pre-Dead show reverie, waiting for his riders in triumph. David had now checked every drawer, every paper piled corner in his room, including the rarely used shelves that were built into the wood paneling. His clock now read 7:15; he tried to remain calm. But, as he kicked around clothes on the woven rug, noticing the deep grooves full of dirt and dust, David realized that someone must have snagged the tickets at the previous weekend’s acid house bash that he and his housemates had thrown. “So much for fucking generosity in the fucking Eighties,” he said through grit teeth. Furious, in a pulsating rage, he stepped over to his desk and poured the contents of each drawer out onto the floor.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Pencils, pencil shavings, random phone numbers on torn napkins and snapshots piled on top of the previously discarded socks and underwear. He tore the desk away from the wall, spilled his mattress and flipped up the corners of the barely visible rug. “Shit!”

“What’s wrong, Stoner?” David’s housemate Thrash was looking at him through the doorway. He held two steaming cups of coffee. “I brought you some good morning love juice.”

“Thanks, Thrash,” said David, the sympathy breaking his words into a sigh.

“What’s the prob Stoner?” Thrash extended the O of Stoner to make it sound stupid. They all called him that in this house of skate pukes, as he was the only hippie. David’s easy-going, pothead ways were treated as a humorous aberration in the punk household. He was the only non-musician, and certainly the only Deadhead, but well respected for his open minded and diverse musical tastes and for the fact that he never imposed his favorite tunes on the shared stereo downstairs – well, almost never. He and the bald, hulking frame of Thrash made an unlikely pairing: all black beside the multicolored mess. Thrash saw the piles of desk stuff on the floor and a ripe opportunity for a poke. “Oh, did little Stoner smoke too much last night and misplace his amyl-nitrate?”

“Very fucking funny. Some asshole decided to steal my Warlocks ticket during our End of the Universe party.”

“What?” Thrash scrunched up his face in disbelief, layers of nose pushing up his thick Buddy Holly glasses frames. “Are you sure that you didn’t do too good a job of hiding it from yourself?” His lenses fogged as he slurped from his coffee. He placed David’s cup on top of the desk.

David was looking at the pile on the floor as he said, “No man, it’s gone, it’s fucking gone.” He kicked a pile of stuff to one side, exposing the rug randomly and turned his head away.

“Well, Karina and Jane are here. They’re downstairs ready to go whenever you are.” Thrash turned and walked slowly out of David’s disaster, a Buddha-like slow countenance to his pace. David got a backpack and dumped its books and papers on the floor, and shoved a baseball hat and a sweater inside it in case it cooled off that night. He headed downstairs to meet the girls thinking, “Fuck it. I’m going anyway, fuck it.”

On the highway, David’s Nissan was soaring up to seventy, swerving in and out of Northern Virginia’s eight-lane snarl of late model cars. “Hurry up! Don’t be stupid, don’t do it!” He was yelling at bumpers and leaning forward toward the wheel, as if the slump would speed him on somehow. As they had first hit the Beltway, the gentle, calm exteriors of Karina and Jane were driving him nuts. He’d occasionally roll down his window, yelling “Fuuuuuuccccccckkkk!”

Karina noticed big green and brown bags under David’s eyes and wondered what he’d been doing the night before. Jane was reading the Tao of Pooh, an obvious prop, David thought. Karina caught glimpses of the crow’s feet forming around David’s eyes, cracking, as he would squint in the glare of light off other cars. Jane strained to ignore David as he threw his head out into the dewy morning air, “Fucking fuuuuuucccckkkk!”

The breeze felt good as it pulled along his hair. David thought that the yelling out of the window had a sort of soothing effect on him, but every time he tried to settle back in behind the wheel, the stress was on instant replay. He recalled the day he had gotten the ticket from Lane. He had put it in an envelope, sealed it, labeled it, kissed it and stashed it in the upper right hand drawer of his desk. He had said to Thrash that it was a scenario that was too good to be true, to be living right beside these special shows. “Why did I have to say that?” David muttered to himself. He thought about all the possible disappearing scenarios. I’ll bet that asshole Stan Schmuckle stole it, the paranoid coked-out fat shit. Then he pictured his roommates all in their Vans and boots, fresh tattoos, his endearing friends who looked like he had in high school, thinking punk rock was so cool when they couldn’t see that it was already a nostalgia trip lost in its own memories as much as the Dead scene. He could hear them saying “Stoner,” mocking his slow laugh that made him seem stupid. Those assholes probably took the ticket, thinking that it would make me hate the veneer of brotherly-dread-head-bug-infested-love-disease once and for all. Elvis Costello’s earnest line "what’s so funny ‘bout peace love and understanding?" played over and over in his head. He thought about the previous day’s rushed Calculus exam. He thought about the rent that would be due soon. He recalled his checkbook in the jumbled desk pile. He stuck his head back out the window, quiet this time.

Karina and Jane hollered something and David jerked the wheel to his left, inches away from slamming into a tractor-trailer. A wheel higher than the roof of the Nissan would have spit them out the backside like a crushed can of cheap beer. “Jesus David, I know you lost your ticket and that you’re really upset, but could you please keep your eyes on the road?” The rhetorical question stung. If there was anything he prided himself on over the years of road trips it was his safety record. No matter how crazy he and his friends got at shows, David got them home in one piece. He did not enjoy that they were seeing him in a moment like this. He looked straight ahead at the three-lane highway leveled through the thick deciduous forest. Traffic was steady as always in one of the nation’s most congested corridors. He reached into the ashtray and pulled out a half-smoked Drum.

Jane looked up from her roost in the passenger seat. David lit the Drum. She dropped her book into her lap looking annoyed, “You’re not going to smoke that joint right now, are you?” The misinterpretation elated him.

“No, I’m not going to smoke a joint right now, this is hand rolled tobacco.” Jane looked back down to her book. Some road partners they are, David thought. Back in the day the New Hampshire crew would have been through a litany of substances that would have made David take on the sane-parent role. He did feel safer in his car, though. The last thing he wanted was a member of the Virginia State Storm Troopers telling him he’d have to spend the next eight years in jail for the sliver of acid a friend had dropped on the floor. They could search your car simply based on the stinky patchouli smell (often mistaken for weed) in the new, fascist war against marijuana fueled, but not paid for, by George Bush and his oil-soaked frat buddies. Not today. David tapped his fingers on the steering wheel before taking another long drag off the Drum, squinting his right eye to shield his cornea from the blue spiraling smoke. Cars were getting thicker on the road as they neared Richmond. 50, 40, 30, the brake lights indicated a full stop up ahead. “Oh Jesus Fuck!” David yelled. He smacked his knee, sighing and looking left, his knotted ponytail not wanting to pull away from the spot on his shirt where it was weaving in with the cotton threads. Karina and Jane looked up ahead.

“What now?” Jane asked, squinting up the lanes. Only eighteen or nineteen and she already had the demeanor of a middle aged woman, one calm enough to be knitting in the passenger seat; it made David boil.

“Looks like Richmond rush hour.” David frowned, looking around for more tobacco as he downshifted.

“What time is it?” Karina asked from the back.

“Eight forty-five,” said Jane. She was wearing a watch.

“Oh man. Nine o’clock?! That means that the earliest we’ll get there now is at eleven. Man, I’ll never get a ticket now!” David pictured the mass of happy people who would be there, crisp from the show the night before, blowing bones and playing guitar, drinking beers and resting on the laurels of secure tickets. They’d all have that pre-show glow of relaxed abandon, little concern for the past – all now, all show, suspended time.

“You’ll be fine,” Karina said. She was leaning forward now, between the bucket seats, offering Camel filters from an open hardpack.

“Oh, thanks,” David said as he took one. He didn’t notice her tan hands or the nappy little dreads starting on her head. David didn’t notice her blue eyes staring down the road and then staring at him as he automatically reached for the dash-lighter. David didn’t notice her battered Guatemalan skirt, athletic, tan legs, soiled toes on well-worn sandals, or the slight, wry smile on her lips. David was concentrating on the lighter, the smooth, full smoke of the tobacco as he pulled off the hot metal. David was concentrating on the road, too, accelerating a little.

“There should be tickets around,” said Jane. “You know so many people in the area, someone’s bound to hook you up.”

What the hell did she know? David frowned. He’d been seeing shows down here for years. Jane is just outta high school, high school, what the fuck could she know? “I dunno Jane, Hampton is one of the smallest places left that they play in the country. Plus, it’s called the Warlocks, people are gonna be streaming in from everywhere. Rumors are flying, too. Everyone’s talking about crazy sound checks and that this is gonna be like an Acid Test or some shit. Besides, they always rock that house, everyone knows that.” David took a deep drag, ashed in the overstuffed ashtray; the bumper to bumper cars began to cruise along at a dangerous sixty. David sighed.

Jane said, “You’ll be fine.”

David looked into the rearview mirror. Karina was looking at him in it. Her eyes were gauzy in the morning light. They locked into the gaze for a moment. Karina didn’t say a word.

At exactly eleven-thirty, David’s Nissan pulled past the guardhouse at the entrance of the parking lot. They had fashioned a fake ticket to stuff between the two real ones so that it looked like three. No one, absolutely no one, was allowed into the lot without a ticket anymore. Karina had torn up a notebook cover that she’d found in the junk underneath the seats and forged a convincing fake. They flashed them to the guard in a hurry anyway, paying more attention to the guy in the bright orange vest with the directive airport wands: “Over to the right, people, over to the right. Show your tickets and move on, parking’s over to the right.” He repeated this in various configurations, a calm metronome for a voice.

David pulled the Sentra into a space beside a multicolored school bus from Tennessee. The old crystal digging crew of that region was there, visiting and sharing wares. All the men looked like middle aged homeless professors with dreadlock beards and deep set eyes. Their wives, or girlfriends, or whatever, looked young enough to be their daughters. David was already wondering how these scraggly types with dirty duffel bags full of rocks managed to be loved by the most beautiful, ankle-bell, longhaired women in the free hippie world. The emergency exit of the bus had a painting of an open hand missing one finger, an open eye in its palm. The side was covered with an eclectic mural of mountain scenes and what looked like dancing hillbilly skeletons. There was a logo, “Ragged but Right,” declaring their stance toward house cleaning and decorum. All eyes, the neighbors’ eyes, were twinkling as David, Karina and Jane poured out of the Nissan, stretching out the road kinks, greeting the day’s peers. Jane had already begun conversing with one of the “sisters” by the time Nissan’s engine issued its last rattle, and she was working her way into the crowd as David shut his door. He flashed the “I need a ticket” single raised finger gesture at people passing. All had genuinely smiled and shown regrets that they had nothing to offer.

Opening the back hatch of the car, David headed straight for the cooler he’d prepared the night before and popped open a cool Bass Ale. He stood up and took a long drink from the bottle, hoping to wash away the grit jaw traffic grind. He surveyed the lot, noticing that they were still among the first major wave of cars, indicating a generally late start to the day. People on the periphery, on all sides, were abuzz with talk of the night before and all the killer breakouts and fat jams. David didn’t want to hear any of it; his ticket was stolen, damnit, and these starry-eyed retired military defense contractors gone hippie could give a shit. He took another long sip.

“Could I have one of those?” David turned to see Karina looking at him. He had forgotten that she was even there. And Jane, as predicted, was already nowhere to be seen, already swallowed up by the growing makeshift marketplace all around them. Booths were being set up, and blankets were being laid down as quickly as the cars were piling in. The Nissan would be in the thick of the Shakedown Street melée by afternoon.

“Yeah, yeah, no problem.” David didn’t really have a problem providing good cheer as long as people acknowledged it. Providing cheer was a pride of his, and Karina hadn’t taken advantage of him, yet. He took his worn Bic lighter from his pocket and popped open the bottle making a suction sound in the palm of his hand. He handed the ale to Karina, the wet label smearing to the side.

“Cheers,” she said, a glint of sun catching her eye and flaring as she tilted the neck of the bottle his way.

“Cheers.” There was a quiet moment as they both tasted their cool English ales. Thin cirrus clouds looked like rippled low tide patterns of sand, authentic beside the blurred jet streams. Karina studied the odd contrast between them. David didn’t notice. Instead, he looked at Karina, snug in a thick sweater, something about her seeming older, more together, despite her being eighteen. She had elegant poise. “Do you gotta another cigarette?” he asked her. “I don’t feel like rolling one just now.”

Karina looked at David, said “Sure,” and reached into her overstuffed fanny-pack. She pulled out two, David lit them, her smoke first, with a cupped hand to dampen the cool October breeze. She was silent, smoking, surveying the scene. David, stomach in knots, thought about how he had been bugging the other cars on the highway for tickets as they’d neared Hampton. He had asked at rest areas and gas stations to any random head who happened to be there. He ran from car to car when they had waited in line for the parking lot, Karina fashioning the fake ticket and Jane driving while he ran frantically down the line. Nothing. Not a ticket out there. Is she waiting for me to say something? David’s thoughts brushed up against Karina for a moment, and then went back to tickets. He slammed down his beer and reached into the cooler, “You want another?”

Karina didn’t turn her head, “No thanks.”

“Well, I’m gonna lock up now,” and he did. He threw down the hatchback, opening one beer, pocketing another and stepping onto his skateboard. “Later,” he said.

“Good luck,” said Karina without turning her head. David didn’t hear her.

After hours of cruising the lot, scanning the scene in a panic, passing row after row of newly arriving cars, shouting out pleas, David had no luck. “I need a ticket!” Less than a minute would pass, “Cash for your extra!” Most heads didn’t even move. This sound was rapidly becoming a part of the scene, though less than three years before loose tickets had not been much of an issue. Older heads always told stories about how one never used to worry about tickets; they would be there. One exception, he’d been told, was a tour of theaters in the mid-seventies, but that was a different era. “Please help me replace my stolen ticket!” The latter plea only encouraged people to ask David his story, eliciting lots of “That’s bogus!,” “Bummer dude!” and “Good luck tonight!” types of responses. Still, no one had a ticket.

After an afternoon of more beers and hollering pleas, chasing down a sale he saw aisles ahead, only to have it be over as he arrived – “Sorry bra, I only had two extras.” – David returned to the car empty handed. He sat on the tailgate and watched people pass, rolling cigarettes. There were floppy-hatted Southern hippies in their ponchos and unselfconscious seventies styles, suede moccasins to the knees. There were the New England hippies in hiking boots, plaid shirts and dark wool sweaters. Occasional Californians would stand out, looking too tan for an Easterner and like they just rolled in from the surf, always too little clothing east of the Divide. Bits and pieces of songs wandered by and smells of cooking dinners wafted through the air. Deep congas kept the pulse of the gathering tribe, and there were ticket seekers from six to sixty. David had given up. An hour before he had wanted to try, really try and get a ticket, feeling more deserving than the number of “straight” looking locals that had shown up to join in on the fest. He knew, though, that he hadn’t more right than anyone else. He gave up caring about it and began to wonder where Karina had gone.

Couples of all shapes and sizes walked by. They represented the varying degrees of hippiedom, the subculture attire and looks breaking in only after years of commitment like a pair of stiff hiking boots. Friends were reuniting, gathering in group-hugs, opening bottles of champagne. Bubbles floated by, each one reflecting the entire scene like a fish eye lens, like a crystal ball predicting nothing but the moment itself. David self-consciously rolled another cigarette, feeling unclean, and subdued his urge for motion. Up the aisle, he thought he spied Claudia, tan with her head held high. He jumped up to get a better view, but it was another young woman who looked a lot like her. He lit the Drum, smelling the rot of his nicotine fingers. A couple, well into their forties, walked by slowly, eating. They were entranced by a fat plate of stir-fry. Each one wore a baby in a backpack, twins. Their dreadlocks, his black, hers blonde, burst all the way past their children, touching the tops of their waists, signaling years of dreadication, all through the Reagan years. The woman practically walked right into the back hatch of the Nissan. She and her partner laughed. “See what happens when you’ve got a killer stir fry?” the man said to David and his partner. All three then laughed.

“Yeah man, you can’t drive on the highway with that stuff in your car,” David added. The couple chuckled a little more. The woman shook her dreads loose, just a little, throwing David a smile and a wink as they moved on, lifting their faces to bask in the last threads of twilight. From his left, he heard a whisper.

“Psst. Hey man, aren’t you from New Hampshire?”

David turned his head. There was an older guy, bare arms tattooed and protruding from a Levi vest. He held a can of beer in a spongy cooler and a bunch of stickers in his other hand. “Yup,” David said.

“You need a ticket?” He was looking David right in the eye, walking slowly toward him. 

Containing an electric storm in his gut beneath an abdominal crunch, David answered him quietly, without panic: “Yes, I do need a ticket.”

“Well, you’re in business. Right on, right on. I was sort of looking for someone kind to turn on, you know, someone chillin’, not makin’ a spectacle of himself.” He sat down on the tailgate and David handed him a Bass without a thought. The man said, “You’re from Portsmouth, aren’t you?”

Bewildered by this sudden surge, David only said, “Yeah.”

“I walked by here about an hour ago and saw the sign in your window,” he pointed to the “I need one” sign that Karina had made for David and taped in the window. He had forgotten her gesture entirely. “Then I saw the New Hampshire plates and the Starkey dealer logo on the hatchback, and I knew I’d find someone to turn on here. I even think I seen you around before, probably right here in Deadland.”

Before David could do more than give the guy his twenty bucks, exactly the face value of the genuine Warlocks ticket, he had slid on a pair of sunglasses that said “Don’t Panic” on the lenses, tipped his Harley baseball hat toward David and gone on his way, smiling. David watched his receding figure replace the can of Bud with the Bass Ale in his koozie as he was swallowed into the expanding crowd.

David shifted his weight, pulling his feet close up beneath him, feeling his stomach go wild like a crowd. He rolled another Drum and grabbed another beer. He drew slowly on the thick smoke. The volume and tone of the crowd seemed subtler to him now, more subdued, as though someone had put on a Dolby filter. Heads bobbed past in an even, slightly undulating stream. He took another sip off the beer, feeling the cool carbonation on the back of his throat. He stared toward the cyan horizon where between the deep red clouds and the black line of land, he could see an oversized Harvest Moon rising.

There were still a couple of hours left before the show.

5:15 . . . This alarm is never easy. These days, I slog out a bit late, still stuck to headlines and tangents, a news diet that has crowded out calm at an increasing rate for the past five years.

6:40 . . . Breakfast done, lunch is coming together, the pace picks up; don't forget the go coffee.

7:30ish . . . (It used to be earlier.) . . . It's time to fire up the machine:

• Key into the lock to enter classroom.

• Lug the shoulder bag, lunch box, coffee cup, sundry items, over to the desk area.

• Hit the powerstrip for lamps and laptop charger.

• Walk over to the east window, unlock, and crank open at least 5".

• Turn on small exit fan, it's an insert held in place, partly, by a summer screen duct taped to the window frame.

• By the free-read bookshelf, hit the HEPA air filter, make sure it's on the germ setting.

• The iPad is next, clasped to a stand horizontally, mini-dongle awaiting the laptop's arrival at this mobile standing desk. I turn it on.

• The Promethean Board projector system follows; turning that on allows me access to the Apple TV settings where I can find the daily bulletin window, the one that announces class changes, student of the month, and various rotating calendar items on screen.

• Once class is about to begin, that's when the Hybrid fun really starts.

8:00ish . . . This is time to check emails, meet with families and other teachers for IEPs, 504s, and any other student support team meetings. As the end of the quarter approaches, these morning slots are filled with students wanting to workshop essays and discuss revisions and my feedback. There are even a few regularly scheduled meetings, weekly, as students are a bit untethered in the role of being virtual students and are struggling finding ways to focus on tasks independently.

Some mornings, I even have time to begin looking at last night's homework or responding to student writing before class. It's never uninterrupted time, though, as Hybrid and in-person students start popping into the classroom by 8:30. It all happens so fast!

9:00 . . . On the iPad, I open Google Calendar and find Block A's time slot. I open the link to our Google Meet, make sure the iPad is muted, and join the meeting. This will act as the camera into the classroom for the students who are at home. 

I plug the dongle into my laptop, now on the standing desk. Then, I plug the MOVO area microphone into a different USB port on the laptop. This provides superior ambient sound, as in the teacher-student dialog in the classroom.

The chimes for students joining the class online keep pinging, and I then join the Meet via Calendar on my laptop. This is "command central," the place where I can share documents and control what is seen on screen. When I log in, here, I wave to the early arrivals at home, eating breakfast or waking up, peering into the camera. "Morning, Peter! Just setting up, here. Give us a minute."

The power supply needs to be connected to the laptop, so I haul that over. All of this takes a lot of juice. Then, the last plug in for the morning is the sound bar. This will broadcast the student voices from online into the classroom at a volume level everyone can hear. Hopefully, we can have a coherent conversation.

9:05 . . . After first bell, it's time to take attendance. I can easily check the classroom, where several students will have slipped in as I'm acting as tech roadie and set up guy. "Morning, folks." Chit chat and attendance follows, allowing for a few stragglers to join us online.

This is a tricky part, as I ask students to turn their cameras on daily. While some cannot do so successfully without sacrificing bandwidth, some can. I need to see as many faces on my laptop screen as possible before I start sharing documents, or I will fall into the despair of fearing that no one is "out there" at all. 14- and 15-year-olds are experts at tuning me out in person. Turning off a camera and mic make that all the easier. 

Sometimes, when I ask a student to turn on mic or camera, I regret having done so. I have seen basements with insulation drooping from between the rafters, clutter like a hoarder show, black light dungeons of rock, or just simple kitchens. One never knows. Sound also yields sudden surprises like screaming younger siblings, anger television or music soundtracks, orders barked from rooms afar. The demand for mics and cameras has softened.

OK, class up and running. Many days, in my new World History classes, we start with a CNN-10 video. I must remember to mute my own mic, share a tab (not whole screen), and check with remote students if we're all systems go. It's chunky, skipping, and sometimes pixelated on a good day. The audio is the key, though.

One odd feature about sharing a screen, be it for a broadcast or a document share, that's when I lose track of the faces (or avatars) at home. My screen is what I am projecting only, and I rely on verbal check-ins. "So, Locke was making claims about the sanctity of life, liberty, and property. Does that sound familiar? Is that language we know from a separate document or a different place? Timmy?" I pause, waiting. "Timmy? Are you there? Tim? Is your mic working, buddy?"

These asks are to share the wealth of conversation. If, like me, a student can learn better by verbalizing, by conversing, I want them to have that experience. It's also important to note when students are, or are not, engaged. We need to check for understanding, regularly. "Timmy?" I'll pause again, and on many days, my students have heard me say, "Well, I guess he went to make a sandwich." I try to keep it light.

Every once in a while, I will have moved on. "Let's take a look at the responses about Rousseau's socia . . ." Then, a sudden garbled break in, "Yeah, Locke was. . . . [diginoise garble]. . . " and it's apparent that Timmy's response from 120 seconds ago is just now trying to break through the airwaves. I pause, let it pass, and keep moving on.

Adaptability

So, wash, rinse, and repeat for each class in the day. It's screwy. Prior to the holidays, families were worried about sending their students to school, and I might have only one or two students in the classroom while all the rest are online. We try to act as though there is a classroom culture. We try to act as though it's a normal day.

One thing is for certain, these students have adapted. The teachers have adapted. We're doing it, daily, weekly, monthly getting better at doing things we never dreamed of doing one year ago. Here we are, though, losing touch with the energy that brings a classroom discussion alive, that ineffable spark that surges through a great conversation, the immeasurable pleasure of seeing recognition in the eyes of those understanding something for the first time.

Like music without an audience or a sporting event with cardboard cutouts, we're playing all four quarters this year, open for Hybrid learning, whether or not we have a quorum. The skills we've developed will serve us well in the future, too, provided we can direct them to the right purposes. However, there's no denying what we've lost, and the jury's out on what it means for us moving forward.

2:15 . . . In-person learners are hitting the busses, and the afternoon meetings have begun. Once I leave the building at 4:00, 5:00, or 6:00 or so, depending on that day's grading and workload, it's off to the home office where the planning happens, devising lessons and making instructional videos into the evening, on weekends, and over breaks.

I'm shouting, but this year, it's like shouting into the wind.