November is anniversary month. I started posting these entries in November, 2019. It’s the kind of project that people undertook when their normal work lives were disrupted by Covid. But I was ahead of the game by a few months, motivated by different forces, one of which was not to disappear in my declining years. Seven years later that need is even stronger. I chose writing as my vehicle because...

Rekindle? When we arrived in Chicago 31 years ago, friends encouraged us to attend the annual meeting of a group of progressive educators in a retreat center about an hour from the city. Other members traveled from both coasts to converse with some of the educators whose writings nourished our public and private school classrooms and our university seminar rooms. The discussions of teaching and...

                                           Where Have All The Teachers Gone? For those of you of a certain age, you’ll recognize in the title of this week’s posting a small tweak of a...

This October is one of the most consequential months in Israel’s tangled history. It began with the commemoration of the tragic events of October 7, 2023 when invaders from Gaza murdered more than 1200 Israelis, some attending a music festival and others residents of settlements close to the border. The country is a long way from healing from that trauma. At the other end of the month, on October...

The weekend got off to a rough start. On Friday morning, Rosellen and I got our Flu and Covid shots. By now I’ve racked up dozens and dozens of these shots with no ill effects. In fact, the absence of any reaction made me wonder if they had actually “taken.” This time there was no question.  That evening my legs felt heavy and achy – an effect I had never heard mentioned before – and I...