We Didn't Have School Today

On the eve of our granddaughter’s eighth birthday, the lovely Madelyn Simone stood at the end of her driveway, waiting for the school bus with her young friend. It was already a warm, spring-like day in mid-February, and the afternoon temperature promised to climb to 70, a perfect day to play hooky. But after a four-day weekend, it was time to head back to school, to the reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic of second grade. Fortunately for Madelyn, those subjects are no longer taught to the tune of a hickory stick.

But on Tuesday morning, the school bus never came. Were they late? No, they’d even been a few minutes early. They’d watched other buses go past, so they knew school must be in session. So where was their bus? Would one of the dads have to drive them to school? Before they could load up the car, the automated messages began to arrive.

“ . . . self-inflicted gunshot wound . . . safety services . . . lockdown . . . all four elementary schools will remain closed today.”

According to local law enforcement, a seventh-grade child brought a “long gun” to school, along with “distractionary devices,” and they weren’t talking about fidget spinners. The subsequent lockdown was triggered by the discharge of that rifle, reportedly a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

In the days since the Ash Wednesday massacre in Parkland, Florida, much has been said and written about school shootings. Those of us of a certain age remember the Columbine school shooting in 1999; the West Nichol Mines shooting at the small Quaker school in Pennsylvania; the young children killed at Sandy Hook; those being buried this week in Florida.

And now, a week after the murders at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, this became personal for me. This was not the duck and cover drill of my elementary classroom, in hindsight a rather foolish response to the threat of the cold war. This wasn’t lockdown practice or A.L.I.C.E. training. This was a live shooter in a middle school, the same school Madelyn will attend when she is in sixth grade, when she is eleven years old. These were our neighbors’ children, sixth, seventh, and eighth grade, under lockdown for almost four hours. These were our neighbors, scared to death that the specter of Parkland has descended upon Jackson. The rumors were flying, with trolls and bots on the rampage. The network news picked up the story, thrusting my granddaughter’s school district into the spotlight, at least for one news cycle.

Last week, it was personal for Dr. Abbie Youkilis, aunt to Jaime Guttenberg, murdered in Parkland. Jaime was in the ninth grade. Her aunt describes her: “She was intelligent and feisty and she danced with beauty and grace. She always looked out for the underdog and the bullied, and she probably had been kind to the student who shot her.” Youkilis continued: “Fred and Jen are the world’s most loving and over protective parents but they could not protect Jaime from the sickness that has gripped our country. Unless we change, nobody can protect us.”

I have strong views on nonviolence and gun control, which have garnered the harshest criticisms of my columnist days. Because of those convictions, I will march in solidarity with my young friends, joining in locations across the country to “March for Our Lives” on Saturday, March 24, either at the event being planned in Ashland or perhaps near Jackson Middle School. This is a public health crisis that cannot be ignored. Youkilis is right – we must change.

As I write, the news helicopters have flown on to their next crisis, and the incident in Jackson Township, Ohio will only be a blip on the nation’s radar by the weekend. But the fear born in Columbine and Sandy Hook, and rekindled in Parkland, knocked on our door this week, an unwelcome visitor for sure.

“Nana,” Madelyn said as we grilled burgers on a glorious winter evening, “we didn’t have school today. Do you know why?” What could I possibly say in response to our family’s precious little girl on the eve of her eighth birthday? 

Olympic Dreams

The notes are so familiar. When we hear the iconic mi-so-so-do-re-mi-do trumpeting forth from the television, it’s time for the prime-time Olympics coverage of the day. With eighteen days of athletic prowess from Pyeongchang, South Korea on view for the world, Olympic enthusiasts can satisfy their cravings with 176 hours of live coverage on NBC. And for the addicts, streaming offers over 1800 hours of coverage. I’ll stick to the nightly recap myself.

Since I’m not a rookie viewer, I’ve heard of the Lutz, the Salchow, and the Axel before, although I have no clue as to the differences between them. But this year’s Olympic competition has already added some new phrases to my vocabulary, especially from the half pipe event. It took me a bit to figure out that the event takes its name from a huge pipe, cut in half, coated with ice. That spells disaster in itself. As the competitors fly into the air, their gyrations fall into two main categories, either backside or frontside (the direction of rotation of a spin). Often named by the snowboarder who first invents the trick, some of my favorites are the nose blunt, the tamedog, the chicken salad, and the rusty trombone, which is a roast beef and nose grab performed at the same time. My contribution to the lexicon, were I to attempt the half pipe at my age, would be the face plant.

I ice-skated a bit as a kid, both on a makeshift rink in our backyard that my dad constructed out of 2x4s, and sometimes at Ives Pond, across town in Tonawanda. I never did manage to skate backwards, thus ending my fledgling gold medal pursuit before it began. I’ve also never been able to figure out how the skaters can spin with such speed, sometimes nearly 300 rotations per minute. I get dizzy just watching them. Apparently there is a large physics component to skating, another reason I was no Peggy Fleming or Dorothy Hamill.

I chuckled when I read a friend’s Facebook post: “Every Olympic event should include one average person competing for reference.” I could probably pull off the role of the person yelling at the stones in curling, but the thought of hurling down a bobsled run at eighty miles an hour is not on my bucket list.

While my dreams of Olympic fame are long gone, I’m still in awe of the achievements of these young athletes. Watching them march in the opening ceremonies, they looked like typical teen-agers and young adults, healthy and happy, with phones in hand to capture selfies for posterity. Yet behind those smiles are hundreds of stories of grueling early-morning workouts, career-threatening injuries, family sacrifice, and the “agony of defeat,” much more common than “the thrill of victory” over the course of an athlete’s career. For every athlete who proudly stands on the medal platform as the national anthem fills the arena or the hillside, there are thousands whose Olympic aspirations end in a torn hamstring or a lack of resources.

My original intention was to conclude this column on a “proud to be an American” note. The Olympics certainly provide that inspiration, even if we’re not on top of the medal ranking. But then it happened again. This time, Parkland, Florida. I already knew that twenty children from Newtown, CT would never have a gold medal placed around their necks. Now, more of our children will never perform a rusty trombone or a triple Lutz, or even don a graduation robe.

Writing in the New York Times, David Leonhardt puts it bluntly: “Here’s the truth: The teenagers killed in Florida yesterday [Wednesday] had the misfortune of growing up – of trying to grow up – in a country that didn’t care enough about their lives.”

Over the next few weeks, we’ll honor our Olympic athletes with medals and applause, well-deserved due to their incredible achievements. But as we do, I plead and pray that we might also honor the dead of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. In Leonhardt’s words, “May we honor them with anger that does not cease until the unnecessary deaths of children do.”

Missing Ashland

Life isn’t fair. When we first moved to Ashland in 2006, I heard a litany of complaint. “There’s nothing to do.” “It’s boring here.” “If we want to eat out, we have to go to Mansfield or Wooster.” “I wish there was a Dunkin’ Doughnuts, Tim Horton’s, Chipotle, etc.”  

It’s a small town (city), for crying out loud. What do you expect? Don’t forget, the grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence, for as Erma Bombeck used to remind us, it could be growing over the septic system. I was glad for what I saw as the real benefits of Ashland life, such as getting to know our neighbors and eating Hawkins donuts. As I explored our new community, I encountered solid opportunities for enlightenment and entertainment, just not as flashy in appearance as the glitz of the big cities. You just had to look a little harder.

Almost twelve years later, as we began to contemplate a move closer to our kids and grandkids, it seemed as though Ashland was teasing me with its potential for the future. “Please stay. Look at what you’ll be missing.” The long-awaited Uniontown Brewery has finally opened, and some nights, on-street parking in downtown is at a premium. Plans are in the works for Vines Bakery – the scent of fresh scones is tickling my nose from sixty miles away. The new storefronts on Main Street are looking great, and there is music downtown year round, inside and outside – and not from a tinny P.A. system. The Olivesburg General Store received a makeover, with music of its own at its re-opening celebration. The Tin Can Chandelier is doing all kinds of fun projects. And opening soon - Whit’s Frozen Custard. What more could a girl want?

Park Street Brethren Church is hosting a winter seminar series that sounds so interesting – marriage, foster care, spiritual resilience, and how to design your vegetable beds – there might even be hope for my hot mess of a garden this year. The annual Ashland Center for Nonviolence John D. Stratton conference is coming soon (February 24), and an opportunity to have deliberative discussion about the opioid crisis is at the library the same day. I hope that goes better than the deliberative discussions I attempt to have with my favorite two-year-old, the delightful, determined Elizabeth Holiday.

And the symphony – seeing my young friend Jacob Slade on the front page of the T-G, touting the Harry Potter night at Archer Auditorium – what a magical evening. With Phantom on the horizon at Ashland High School, I’ve picked a terrible time to move away from Ashland.

I can’t forget about a different kind of magic happening in Kates Gymnasium. I’m reading about our AU women’s basketball team in the New York Times! I’m glad we can livestream the games, thanks to the terrific job the JDM students do, but there’s nothing like being up close and personal with a thousand of our dearest friends as we rock Kates.

Am I missing you, dear Ashland? You bet. Just like I missed Tonawanda, NY, Dover, NJ, Philadelphia, PA and Cleveland and Canton, OH. Considering it’s taken the Philadelphia Eagles twenty-three more years to win the Super Bowl, I may need to carry the torch for Bills and the Browns a bit longer.

Life as an itinerant Salvation Army officer presented a challenge to us from day one, knowing our family could be uprooted at any time and moved to another location based on the needs of the ministry. But we determined early on that no matter how long (twelve years) or short (fifteen months) our stay would be, we would sink our roots deeply into our community, eating the food, wearing the jerseys, walking the streets and loving the people.

If home is truly where your heart is, I’m privileged to call many places home, because I’ve left a piece of my heart in each one. Ari Berk says it best for me: “We may leave a house, a town, a room, but that does not mean those places leave us. Once entered, we never entirely depart the homes we make for ourselves in the world.”