I received an unexpected email the other day.  It was a brief notice from Saint Mary’s College of California where I earned my bachelor’s degree announcing that a classmate of mine had died.  Mike was 60 or 61. 
I dug out my old yearbook to make sure I was remembering correctly,
hoping that I had two classmates with the same name.  His is a common Irish name, but no such luck.  It was a small school, about 1,200 students, and I was right; it was him.  
            
     This shouldn’t surprise me.  As an educator, I’ve had students die tragically in accidents or illness.  Family members have passed on; both my parents are dead. This past winter, one of my colleagues at Southwest Minnesota State University died unexpectedly over Christmas Break.  He was only 54 and in perfect health, but a stroke took him after a long flight to visit his mother.  
 
    So, hearing of Mike’s untimely passing wasn’t out of the realm of my
experience.

    I opened my yearbook and glanced at the senior portraits.  This was 1972, the height of the counter-cultural movement in California; thus, these portraits were informal.  Turns out I took two of them, a fact I had forgotten.  Both were casual snaps of two friends after a play performance. Saint Mary’s had an amphitheatre then; the play, The Birds by Aristophanes, was performed wearing masks the way it would have been in 414 BC when first produced. (If the times were counter-cultural, I hung with the counter-counter-cultural crowd.  I believe the term today would be “nerds,” but that’s another blog post.) 
 
    I glanced at old friends with whom I have not spoken in years.  Partly, this is because I moved away from California in 1978 and have not been back for any length of time since then.  And once my Mother died in 2004, even my trips to family out there have been less frequent.  In fact, since her passing, my family has met here in Marshall or in South Bend more regularly than out West. 

    But, excuses aside, I should have kept in better touch with old friends.

    This past week, we drove to Chicago and Indianapolis to visit Marianne’s
family.  Her uncle, Uncle Tom, a retired priest, suffers from advanced Parkinson’s.  (He is affectionately, “Father Uncle Tom” or “UT”to his nieces and nephews.)  Even with his tremors, his mind is sharp as ever. What
struck me during out visit was his knowledge of classmates from high school,
Notre Dame, and Indiana Law School that he remembers and keeps in touch
with.  It’s a talent I lack.

    Uncle Tom is able to do this in part because he was born and raised in
Indianapolis and except for four years at Notre Dame, two years stationed in
Japan with the US Army in the 50s, and his time in Rome at seminary, he has
lived his whole life there. On the other hand, I have packed up and re-rooted myself several times since I was 28, twice in Indiana, then Pennsylvania, and twenty-plus years ago, Minnesota.  I move, time moves along, old friends are forgotten.

    Glancing through the yearbook of 1972 the other night, I remembered every one of my classmates, even ones I did not know well at the time. 
Several had a band, a retro group that in the early 1970s played 50s
music, their act complete with leather jackets and slicked-back hair.  Instead of individual snaps of these guys, they did a band photo in their stage attire. 
They were pretty good as a mock-rock band and actually ended up performing long after graduation.  They made quite a name for themselves in the San Francisco Bay Area until a few years back.  One or two years
ago they were up for a reprise gig when one of the members (another classmate) died unexpectedly.

    I knew all these guys, but was never close to them, so the passing of one
of them didn’t hit me like Mike’s.

But it was the announcement of Mike’s death that led me to my long-unopened yearbook with grainy black and white photos.  When I came upon the photos of close friends, I had to ask questions for which I don’t know the answers.  One photo showed a recently-married couple.  In this day and age, you have to ask at least mentally, are they still together? A few classmates had become lawyers. Still at it?  I know from recent class notes on the
Saint Mary’s alumni homepage, that classmates who went into high school teaching right after graduation have been able to take early retirement through buy-out programs designed to retire higher-paid teachers.  What are their second careers?  Another classmate once lived in Canada.  Still there? 
 
    It seems like I should know a few of these things, but I don’t.

    The twists and turns of keeping in touch. And the odd ways that old
friends and acquaintances return to your life.

    Soon after we were married, Marianne took a Notre Dame summer class. 
The first day, she came home talking about her new classmates and
mentioned one by name, a Christian Brother out from California for a summer degree.

    “Not Brother Edmund?”  Could he be my Saint Mary’s classmate?

    The next class meeting, Marianne put the Saint Mary’s Alumni Directory at Brother Edmund’s seat.  When he came in, he glanced around the room.  Zarzana is not a common name but when first introduced to Marianne he had not put the two together.  He should have asked about a connection; it’s not a name like Murphy or Smith or Kelly. 
 
    Small worlds do exist.

    On Saint Mary’s alumni webpage this past week, I found out Brother Edmund is now principal of a Christian Brothers high school in Berkeley, California.  I’m a department chair; he’s a principal; a classmate is gone. 
Time moves on.

    This all made me realize yet again how important it is to cherish each day and each friend.  I think this is one of life’s main messages, but daily routine can smother us so we forget it.  We need to relearn it.  And it takes a jolt to shove this message back into the forefront of our lives. 

    Take the sentence, “Life’s too short for. . .” and fill in the blank.  Life’s too short for bad coffee or cheap wine.  Life’s too short for putting up with this or that nonsense.  Life’s too short for wasting on an unfulfilling career. 
 
     For some, life is just all too short, period.

    When an obituary arrives out of the blue, making you realize how short life really can be, it’s time to remember and reconnect.

    I hope you make time this summer for just that: connecting and
reconnecting with family, with friends, and with your own past.

         Riding home from campus on my bike the other day, I passed by a house that is a residence for adults with developmental disabilities.  In social work parlance, it is a group home.  Two residents were each pushing lawn mowers down the street while a third talked to a neighbor.  These residents had a caretaker with them who was kindly walking along keeping the three on task.  This across-the-street neighbor was kidding the men, all in their late 40s or older, because he had seen them out at a local restaurant the other night.  He was needling them for all the BBQ ribs they ate. The good-natured chiding, the laughter, the warm feelings:  it may have been a work crew finishing a long week together or a bowling team after a tournament.  Guys having fun.  Guys sharing a laugh with one of the guys.
             
     I found the sight heartwarming.  
           
     I know one of the residents by name, Tom.  He is quite the Notre Dame Football fan, as I am.  I owned a few ND shirts I didn’t want anymore and made it a point of dropping them by his residence several years back.  He
still lights up when he sees me.  This was during the darker years of ND Football when the Faithful (Subway Alums or graduates alike) needed to rally to the cause.  Tom was right there.
           
     This particular residence has 4 or 5 adults.  It’s a stable group.  I think Tom’s lived there for about 15 years, a few of his housemates about the same. Every workday, a bus gathers them up, drives three blocks to a second group home and gathers another 4 or 5 adults, and off they all go, lunch boxes in hand, to productive work in a sheltered workshop or another business here in Marshall.
            
     As a homeowner, I appreciate these group homes because their lawns are
cut, their siding, windows, and roofs are in good shape.  I don’t want to cast aspersions at any other neighbors in these tough economic times, but the two nearby group homes look far better than several houses around here.  And at first glance you would never suspect these homes are in fact used for institutional purposes.   
         
     I know at SMSU every few weeks, yet a third group of adults with
disabilities comes up to collect recycling.  This particular group is not as high
functioning.  But their caretaker moves them along and they complete their task in a satisfactory manner.

    When we were first married, Marianne worked for an agency with the long-outdated name of “Council for the Retarded.”  In charge of this agency’s PR, Marianne’s first task was changing the name to Logan, because their buildings were on Logan Street in South Bend, Indiana, and their campus had become known as“Logan Center.”  
       
     Of course, “retarded” was the term of choice when this agency first started about thirty years before Marianne joined Logan.  Retarded was a polite euphemism that became the vogue in the 1950s.  At that time, the parents of the children this agency initially served were proud of the name, Council for the Retarded, because few agencies or groups were doing much for their special-needs children.  Back in the early 50s, the correct medical terms and psychological titles for children and adults with these disabilities were idiot, moron, and imbecile.  If I had a child which the state and the medical community labeled as “moron” or “imbecile,” I’d feel that “retarded”was a much softer, friendlier label. “Oh, my son’s not an idiot;
he’s just slow or retarded.”  
      
     How times have changed.  

     About the time Marianne worked at Logan, the last of the Indiana state
hospitals for such adults were being closed.  These institutions had shunted children and adults with disabilities out of plain view, often out of parents’
homes.  In the 80s, group homes like the two in our neighborhood were becoming more and more common.  Two social forces met and agreed on this:  the cost-cutters who never loved any state agency and the social activists who saw warehousing high-functioning adults as cruel.  Warehousing is also self-fulfilling.  It suggests that “these morons can’t do anything else,” so well-meaning bureaucrats set up a system where the developmentally disabled could not do anything else.  But when given the chance, oh, how
these young men and women shine.  We see it every day. 
          
     Logan ran about six group homes when Marianne worked there.  I remember filling in for the caretaker staff one night to make sure the six residents were fed dinner.  I hadn’t barbequed on their grill before, but I gave it my best shot.  Well, the men loved my burnt chicken.  Loved?  They devoured it.  

     A few of them were workers at a South Bend steel finishing works.  They did all the labor of the regular crew.  In fact, a study of their work productivity showed they actually out performed some of the longtime workers there.  These guys were on time each day.  They were scrupulous about their break time and lunch time.  They punched in and out accurately.  They didn’t sneak off to smoke on the company’s time.

    When Logan bought its seventh group home, however, the neighbors raised a stink.  All of Logan’s group homes had to meet stringent State of Indiana regulations. So many bedrooms so there was no overcrowding; so many bathrooms; and an adequate suite for the live-in caretaker. Logan did not want to saturate any one neighborhood, so for the seventh home, it went into a higher-end location. This upper-middle class neighborhood had families with good sized broods of children, thus the houses were larger, well suited for Logan’s needs.

    It was only here that Logan ruffled some feathers. However, at a public meeting, the confrontational neighbors were embarrassed to hear themselves essentially saying they didn’t want “those kind of people” as their neighbors, saying that “those kind of people” weren’t welcomed.  As these complaining
future neighbors heard themselves speaking out, they grew humiliated and humbled by their own heartlessness and mean-spirited attitudes.  
  
     But what good neighbors the group home residents turned out to be.  The group home residents cut their own lawn.  When the guys realized there were two widows on either side, those lawns were cut also.  And what guy can
resist a powerful snow blower?  Plus, South Bend is in the Great Lakes’ Snow Belt.  So, three driveways got cleaned up early every morning it snowed. Baked cookies soon replaced complaints as reluctant neighbors realized what great new neighbors they had.

    Marianne’s second task at Logan was getting the PR ready for the International Summer Special Olympics which were being held at the Notre Dame campus.  By the time the Games were held, my new teaching position across state had moved us away from South Bend and her job at Logan, but the experience has stuck with us.

    Special Olympics.  Group homes in residential neighborhoods.  The
clerk at a local supermarket here in Marshall helping me load my bags of
groceries in my car.  The visible and normal lives of our fellow citizens with special needs.  No longer labeled as morons, no longer warehoused out-of-sight, no longer shunned.  
 
     They’re carrying their lunchboxes, going to work, and every once in a while packing away the BBQ ribs like one of the guys.

    This past weekend we celebrated Memorial Day.  As summer approaches, the US takes time to celebrate its hard-won freedom on the Fourth of July, Independence Day, the day which marks the beginning of a revolution that began a grand experiment in governance, a country of the people, by the people, and for the people.  An experiment which continues 235 years later.
     
     Today we are witnessing the so-called “Arab Spring”or “Jasmine
Revolution” as millions of disenfranchised citizens take to the streets in
countries as separate as Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Tunisia, Libya and Bahrain to
insist on voting in free and fair elections and to demand their governments be responsive to all their people, not just a ruling clique. As members of a functioning democracy, these scenes should give us hope. Aside from Syria and Libya, these protests have been by and large peaceful; that is, peaceful enough to say some of these countries have not fallen into civil war, as in the case of Libya, nor into mass reprisals by the tyrannical ruler, as with Syria. 
These fledgling democracies have a long way to go to be sure, but they
are on their way to fully functional, elected governments.
        
     Before our own Civil War, Abraham Lincoln cautioned us that war could not come to this continent unless we brought it upon ourselves.  His words were never more prophetic.  We are at this time beginning to commemorate the 150th anniversary of our Civil War.  Last April marked the fall of Fort Sumter.  Soon the bloody battles will be highlighted as they pass by:  Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Petersburg.
            
     My hope for this time is clarity.  When I was in elementary school, the 100thanniversary of the Civil War came and went. There were TV shows, movies, a host of documentaries.  It was also the time of the Civil Rights Movement.  It seemed to me there was a disconnect because the Confederacy was held in praise during this time.  Its generals, especially Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and the cavalry officer, J.E.B. Stuart, were glorified as gallant and honorable men.  Yet, these“honorable” men broke an oath they swore to serve and protect the US Constitution and then went on to defend a “nation” set up solely to keep the institution of slavery alive.  They fought not to set men free but to continue their degrading captivity.  

     Additionally, the lingering effects of slavery and the Civil War didn’t seem to come up during the 100th Anniversary.  There were marches with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the forefront, but there didn’t seem much discussion of the War’s aftermath.  The Civil Rights Movement went a long way in healing the War; President Barack Obama’s election is a piece of that as well.
     
     I am a firm believer, to shift gears, that most of the Tea Party’s
reaction against President Obama stems from the fact that he is a black
American.  I know that nationally, the minority party will always and understandably rally against a president.  With most presidents, however, there is a honeymoon period before the political daggers come out.  Obama had none of that.  The rabid, extreme Right Wing and hate-mongering talk show hosts went after him from election night on.
           
     Politics this election cycle is again proving Lincoln correct.  An invading Army can never stand astride the Mississippi River; any discord fracturing this wonderful, experimental country of ours is often home-grown.
           
     And I don’t fear the tyranny from the so-called“Left” as many decry.  I fear the tyranny of ignorance, fear, and intolerance from all sides of the political spectrum.  
           
     I am an educator. I have a long history of being educated in Catholic schools. Before coming to SMSU, I taught at Catholic high schools and
colleges.  I taught at a Lutheran college.  During those times as a
student and teacher, I never heard a whimper of conflict between science and religion.  Science was reason; religion was faith.  It was the job
of the scientist to reveal truthfully how God created this world.  It was never hinted that Genesis was factually scientific or that this book of the Bible was a “code” to science.  
          
     I am aghast at the number, (a growing number, I fear), of so-called
educated leaders and politicians who espouse the literal accuracy of the Bible
and want to dictate scientific policy accordingly.  I am also concerned about educators not being allowed to speak of Darwin, or educators who must stress that it is “the Theory” of Evolution, and thus not a proven scientific fact.  The homeschooling movement and charter school craze is a part of this, I believe. These groups sit farther from a sensible Board of Teaching list of requirements; some misguided parents have taken over their children’s education so that scientific nonsense and 19th Century curricula can pass for a 21st Century education.  
        
     Think of the agenda that we as a nation need to address:  global climate change, health issues ranging from diseases like Parkinson’s and AIDS to the decreasing effectiveness of antibiotics, and energy policy.  Now think of trying to solve those problems based on a slim book of the Bible.  A beautiful book.  An inspiring book.  I especially love the refrain, “and God saw that it was good.”  But not a science book.  
          
     Some reactionaries do not want to work to reverse our planet’s climate
change.  Some call on us to not study stem cells.  It is inconceivable to me that an obstinate few can hold up progress in these fields.  
             
     The fear-mongering today is beyond belief.  Some on the fringe are so rabid in their attacks against “government” that they don’t seem to realize that our government protects us from an anarchy so destructive we can’t imagine it.  Do you want to live in a society without law courts?  (Have you heard the fringe rant about our courts?)  Do you want to live in a society without an educational system in place?  (Have you heard them rant
on education and educators?)  No safe roads?  No hospitals? No safety net for children or the elderly?  Is this the society they want?  If so, let them move to Somalia, a perfect example of their theocratic society complete with an AK-47 on everyone’s hip.
        
     And the intolerance. I am cynically amused by religious people who use their religion to espouse hate.  They quote the Constitution on guns, but not on separation of Church and State.  Well, I believe in the separation of Church and State, as our Founding Fathers did. Furthermore, I believe
in the separation of Church and Hate.  
             
     These folks should reread the New Testament, especially those parts where Jesus rails against the established religious leaders of his day and the
powerful, entrenched rulers (Roman and their Jewish sycophants) who crushed the poor, the widows, the orphans, the powerless.  WWJD?  Can you imagine the Wedding at Cana being a gay wedding?  I can. If here right now, I think Jesus would be ministering in an AIDS clinic or serving meals in a homeless shelter, and certainly not on TV begging for money.  
             
     And so, perhaps this summer, we will spend some time reflecting on our
country.  I hope we spend time honoring those who gave their lives to move this grand experiment, this unique country of free and educated people, forward. 

    One can only hope that fear, ignorance, and intolerance does not become
the invading army that straddles the Mississippi.