October 2021 Newsletter
I know, I know. A few days late. I’ve been pulling together the outline of my next book, working title, “Cries In The Woods”.
My wife and I attended my 50th (plus one due to COVID) high school reunion a couple of weeks ago. I won’t recount the whole weekend, although it was a lot more fun than you might think.
There was a table display of the class photos for all of the thirteen years at the main event dinner. We had a small, homogenous class, with most of the students having been together from kindergarten through graduation. In addition to learning from the teachers depicted in the class pictures, we also learned from one another as we grew up. The memories brought to my mind by those class pictures seemed to me to reflect that. One such memory was from November 1963. Our class was walking on a sidewalk, led by our teacher, when another teacher pulled up in her car and called out the news that the president had been shot. Now that was a shared experience!
I then remembered how last Fall, my grandson had gone from the excitement of choosing a backpack and supplies for kindergarten to being told at the last minute that in-person learning was canceled at his school. Instead, our little man attended school sitting alone at a small table in front of a laptop on the sundeck, taking in sounds and images of those described to him as his teachers and fellow students, none of whom he had ever laid eyes on. Watching his boredom and frustration was sad beyond description. While certainly not the worst consequence of COVID, I wondered about the long-term effects on so many youngsters.
My classmates and I had learned so much about our own behavior and that of others by being in the classroom together. Will the present crop of kids be able to make up the ground this year and next?