Friday, May 28, 2010

Hello? Hello? Is this thing on?



The picture has nothing to do with the post, by the way, but Joanna always says you should have a picture to go with your blog. I remember that much at least. The question is, "Is writing a blog like riding a bicycle?" As sheer boredom lures me back to this abandoned site, will I remember how to go through the motions?

Of course, a larger and more important question is really, "Is there a reason to blog anymore?" Facebook and Twitter can usually satisfy the exhibitionist urge in me with a simple 140 characters, saving untold hours of mental labor as I attempt to find a way to craft my abstract thoughts into a suitably witty form. Seriously, it took me ten minutes to write that last sentence. In some ways, blogging feels like a conversation with my students about 9/11. It's such old news that it doesn't resonate with anyone any more, yet it isn't so out of style as to be retroactively cool again (like the Civil War or World War II, or any of the other "cool" historical events). Of course, I still have a car full of CD's and have never owned an ipod, so I guess being out of style has always been my style.

During the year that I went to the American University in Washington DC, I took a class over political cycles. I remember virttually none of this class (there was no great take away story from this class like there was from the Christian ethics class that was taught by the admitted Atheist), but I do remember a class about the cycle of rebellion. You see, no country has ever had a revolution when things were really good (obviously), nor do people rebel as things are getting worse (there is the part of our brains that says, "Don't worry things have to get better soon"). We don't even rebel when things are as bad as they can be, because we are too busy scraping by an existence to thing about changing our life. No, rebellion only happens when things are starting to get better. When we are not engaged in a life and death struggle for existence, when we can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but it is still out of reach, this is the point when people get so fed up with the system that they cry out for change and are willing to do anything, even commit great acts of violence, to accomplish that change.

All of that to say that I have two more weeks of working with this group of students. I am so close to getting a summer to recharge my batteries and refocus my priorities, but it is still so far away. I have often espoused the belief that at about this time in the year (maybe about a month earlier than this really), that there should be a large assembly, almost an anti-awards ceremony. Each teacher would select the one student that drives them absolutely bonkers. Now what happens to these students in my theory varies depending on exactly how crappy my day has been, but after appropriate public punishment is administered, I think the rest of the kids would figure things out and we could end the rest o the year on a positive note. So, look for that to me my platform when I run for the school board in 2000 and never.

Well, I don't know if this was an exercise worth involving myself in, but if filled up some free time and kept me entertained. Maybe we will try to climb on this metaphorical bike again sometime soon.