Birddroppings October 14, 2024
Listening to a five-note flute and pondering at a Honda dealer
I arise relatively early, even in retirement, on my days off from my part-time teaching. Each morning, I run up to my corner store for conversation and to stock up. I need a couple of Smart water bottles, sometimes the local paper, and whatever else to make it through the day. Yesterday was no different till a young man approached me and stuck out his hand, “Mr. Bird, great to see you,” I rushed through my memory banks looking for a name. He began asking about animals in my room, which were former classmates and asked if I was still teaching. He had seen a photo I posted on Facebook of my room at school and was thinking about me. Funny thing, it hit me, Stephen; we talked for several minutes, I bought his coffee, and we parted ways, both of us heading off to our work of the day.
Sitting here this morning getting started on my writing or journaling, another student popped into my mind. I left teaching in 1977; this particular student was fifteen at that time. He had several issues all rolled into a neat label of learning disabilities. After two years of working with him, I knew more was at stake, and administrators did not want to push any more probing. After I left teaching, I kept in touch with the school and several of my former students. This former student came up in the summer of 1979 to work on our family farm for me. We had a day camp, and he helped cut grass and work around the camp area. One evening, he and his buddy, another of my former students, asked if we could watch a new movie, Dawn of the Living Dead. We did go, and there was a knock on our door about thirty minutes after dropping them off at the camp lodge. Could they sleep in our house that night?
Sadly, my predictions came true several years later, and he is serving three life sentences. I looked him up one day on the Georgia Correctional web page. I recall his sister’s desperate call after his arrest, telling me what happened. The family pleaded for life sentences due to psychiatric issues and signed off on no parole. He is now a ward of the state. Could it have been a different a gesture here and there, a word?
I listen to flute music played and recorded by Carlos Nakai, a renowned musician and Grammy nominee for Native American music. Every morning, I start my day chasing sunrises when I can and listening to the haunting music. He plays a handmade wooden five-note flute, often unaccompanied except by echoes from his flute. I looked through the news on my phone earlier this morning, and I found an interesting article. The Dakota Sioux are playing Scrabble to preserve their language. In the Sioux nation, less than 205 members of the tribe are fluent in the old language. A good friend who happens to be Creek told me about going to boarding school in this day and age. he is my age and was punished for speaking his native tongue, old-style Creek. He grew up speaking only Creek, living with his traditionalist grandfather, who was the medicine man to the Creek nation and would only speak Old Creek; while knowing the English language, he refused to speak it, having given up on the white man many years previous.
“The American Indian is of the soil, whether it be the region of forests, plains, pueblos, or mesas. He fits into the landscape, for the hand that fashioned the continent also fashioned the man for his surroundings. He once grew as naturally as the wild sunflowers; he belongs just as the buffalo belonged…. Out of the Indian approach to life came great freedom, an intense and absorbing respect for life, enriching faith in a Supreme Power, and principles of truth, honesty, generosity, equity, and brotherhood as a guide to mundane relations.” Luther Standing Bear, Oglala Sioux, 1868-1937
I was amazed at the offerings that we used to have at our high school. In a previous course catalog, there were Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, German, French, Spanish, and Latin courses. Yet, in our lifetimes, or at least in mine, we refused indigenous people the right to their language. I recall a scene from “Into the West” several years ago, a mini-series that recently replayed, and it is a rerun on HBO, a movie with a different slant. Children were brought to the Carlisle School in Pennsylvania from reservations in the Dakotas and elsewhere, and we tried to make them “normal.” I am not just addressing indigenous peoples but our feeble attempts at normalcy.
The guidelines we draw and the rules we make. It was not that long ago left-handed children were forced to write right-handed. In numerous research papers, mixed dominance came up and showed significant damage being done to left-handed children neurologically. Even today, many traditional teachers will try and get kids to write with their right hand. It seems it is easier on the teacher. Here I am with a granddaughter who favors her left hand. We tend to forget you are right or left-sided, eyed, footed, literally your entire body.
Normal is such a simple word, and it is pretty much everything that is not abnormal, borrowing from the philosopher Foucault. But in schools, it is the norms that drive everything. We look for patterns in testing, averages, norms, and things we can put numbers on and measure. Years back, I recall a student going to the door before a period and asking to be let go early because there were no norms about it. He did not want to be recognized as a SPED, a Special Education student. I would have snuck him out the back door, but we didn’t have one. What was funny was that it eventually became a joke as I would go to the door and determine who was the norm or not and clear the way when the bell rang.
I remember my high school days before IDEA became law in 1974. This was before most exceptional children were allowed in schools. I worked in a private center with severely and profoundly disabled children and adults. Our kids were normal, and we viewed the rest of the world as disabled, and we talked this way. They were disabled because they could not experience what we did every day. To appreciate little things, reading your first word, taking a step without a wheelchair, not having a seizure for a day or two.
I read blogs and bulletins about clothes and music and think back. I see jeans purchased with holes in them; we earned ours, and I had numerous pairs of jeans with holes and patches. My sons have claimed them all now. But we earned the holes and patches with wear and tear on and in our jeans. Back in the day, we did not have fifty brand-name labels to argue over. It was simply Levis or Wranglers, and they all had brass rivets on the back pockets. It was funny. As a matter of fact, in high school, we could not wear jeans because of rivets scratching seats. This is what we were told: girls could not wear pants, although I am not sure about anything other than the puritan demeanor of the dress code in those days. That was over forty-five years ago.
I was thinking back to what was normal and what a word that is. I recall special education back then and how one student who was in special education all her life graduated from college and retired recently as a teacher. Nowadays, she would have been labeled as learning disabled, and I wonder where we will be in another fifty-plus years as I sit here. It was once estimated that by 2025, the Dakota Sioux language will be extinct, and many said so what? It is sort of like so what if we lose a piece of wilderness for more oil as some politicians are calling for again with the drill baby drill chant started popping up again at such endeavors as MAGA rallies. So what if the Grizzly bear is extinct, or the eastern red wolf or some nondescript freshwater mussel no one ever sees, or a rainforest tribe who is better off in a house and raising crops than hunting in the forest?
Something we tend to forget is that everything is interrelated; Mitakuye Oyasin (We are all related in Lakota), each piece connects to the other, and by losing a piece, the puzzle will never be complete. Some selfish people do not care about 2025 and whether the Dakota Sioux language disappears or the wilderness is gone as long as they make billions. I wonder what you can do with billions of dollars when you are gone; maybe that is the part I have a hard time with, and on a smaller scale, looking at lists that drive popularity on Social networks—things like Do you have a cell phone, iPod, car, Jet Ski, etc. I will admit I have a few collections, but still, I keep books, and I store literally hundreds of thousands of photos of all bits and pieces of my life and understanding.
So where do we go, and what do we do? We look for each connection to the next. We look for coincidences and chance happenings. We look for the synchronicity in life. I have found after a day or two of looking, you will find amazing things. It is as if the pieces fall into place, and life takes a whole new outlook, and what was important may not be as crucial anymore. Try reading Thoreau; there are several good sites on the internet. He walked about for several years to learn. Enough of my wandering for today; peace be with you all, and please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and heart and always give thanks and namaste.
My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,
Mitakuye Oyasin
(We are all related)
bird
The daily meanderings of a teacher 