Family Reunion
Posted on September 12, 2014 by nicholasmeier
ATTENTION ONE AND ALL. Check out the trial of the new film on Mission Hill: Good Morning Mission Hill. Check on where and when it’s being shown. And ask your local PBS station to show it if they are not already planning to.
Dear friends (and other readers),
As I lolled lazily in the swimming pool (see above) in Bodega Bay –at our one every five-year family reunion) I thought mostly about my amazing and wonderful Larner family (descendants of my grandparents, Sara and Maylor Larner). I am lucky to have such interesting, kind, and engaged relatives. I also had time to think about absolutely nothing. Plus a little left over to think about “the world,” and my particular obsessions—public schooling and the democratic idea. How much does the sense of family that pervades my life and in my work in schools have a connection to my obsession about the future of both.
On my return home from California I joined a few friends at a local Hillsdale restaurant to celebrate the work of a colleague and friend—Nancy Mann—who has just retired from being the principal of Fannie Lou Hammer Freedom High School in the Bronx. She was a great CPESS humanities teacher and our union rep, and, along with Peter Steinberg, agreed to start a new CPESS-like school in the Bronx. She has just completed 20 (could it be?) years of inspiring leadership in that quite remarkable school. The occasion felt family-like.
-Deb