"There is a price to pay for speaking the truth. There is a bigger price for living a lie."

Dr. Cornel West

The price is social, paid by the pangs of hunger of a child at midnight, a child in my neighborhood. I practiced pediatrics a long time in places Arne's never seen.

The price is cultural, paid by the general malaise of folks who cannot resolve the insoluble dissonance of what can be, and what is.

The price is environmental, paid by the woman touching the bloody bandage hiding the wound that marks a missing breast.

We all lose when any of us live a lie. Our silence marks who we are.

***

 
NCLB is founded on a lie, a big, bald-faced piece of nonsense propagated by a few folks in power who do not love your children, who do not know your neighbors, who do not live more than a few years in any given area. They are, in essence, homeless, wallowing in abstract lives, pushing abstract ideas, but making very real money.

Call them on it. Call them each and every time they speak a lie. They're hurting us, bad enough, but they're hurting our children, too, and our silence is unconscionable.

I've always taught like my hair's on fire; I've always taught like our lives depend on it, because they do. Next year I'm going to teach like every day is my last.

If you knew you could only teach another year, another week, another hour, would Arne or Eli or Bill have a whiff of influence in your classroom?

I owe it to my lambs to show them what's possible. It's what I'm paid to do by my neighbors. Bloomfield is an incredible town. I bet you live in an incredible town, too.

Tip of the hat to Mike Klonsky, whose words I read regularly.
None of this happens by accident. Get to work.

Fish heads by Leslie (in Dublin).
Horseshoe crab shell by me, Delaware Bay.