A Sunday morning meditation
on various topics.
I have very few days left with my students. With Friday as graduation day, this is a 3-day school week. But I will be with them only on Tuesday, as Wednesday I fly to Florida to serve as a Reader (grader) for the AP exam for US Government and Politics. I will return to my students on Friday, June 10, then Mon-Wed of the following week before heading out to Netroots Nation the morning of June 16. Only 5 more days with my students. That makes me reflective about the school year now approaching its end.
Also making me reflective is learning on an email list that a friend's mother passed - he had gone home as she was dying, helped gather other family around her. She was lucky to pass in her own home, surrounded by those who love her. That makes me further reflective - on how isolated many are as they die, whether in military conflict, or tragedies such as that in Joplin. Those are bad enough. But then too many are ripped from family, from comfortable places - they die in hospitals, or in facilities to which they are moved because they can no longer care for themselves. As I age, now 65, I become more aware of such issues. I went through it with my father, who died in such a facility, and contrast that with his baby sister, who stayed vibrant and active and living in her own home until her recent death at 89.
Mixed in with this are my reflections on various political issues - education, medicare, infrastructure, to be sure, but also environmental, geopolitical.
And then I stop. The front door is open. I hear the birds in our bushes and trees.
