Home Again - Redux

 

My hometown high school in Los Altos was part of a three-school district called the Mountain View Los Altos Union High School District. The fist school opened in 1902 but moved to Castro Street in downtown Mountain View in 1924. The next one was opened in Los Altos on Almond Ave. in 1954. Finally, in 1961, Awalt High School opened on the Mountain View-Los Altos border near Grant Rd. The mascots were, respectively, the Eagles, the Knights and the Spartans.

 

The last graduating classes for the Mountain View Eagles, the Los Altos Knights and the Awalt Spartans was 1981. The district decided to close one of the schools and it was decided that it would be the oldest (and probably most valuable real estate asset), Mountain View High School. Beginning with the 81/82 school year, Awalt would become Mountain View High School, but not the Eagles - it would keep the Spartan. And while Los Altos HS would keep its name, the Eagles would fly there. The respective school colors would follow the mascots; Awalt-turned-Mountain View would remain the same, Los Altos would get the colors of the Eagle from old MVHS.

 

I graduated from LAHS in 1981 - the last of the LAHS Knights. That was the end of a 27-year reign of the Knights. It probably isn't a big deal to anyone in Los Altos or Mountain View today. In fact, where Mountain View High School once stood, all that is left is a park called "Eagle Park" where the football field once was. The rest is all gone. But it all happened 43+ years ago. Although the initial transition was huge, the majority of these schools' histories are from then to now - by a lot. And, it goes without saying to anyone who came from a Silicon Valley small town from before it was Silicon Valley, everything has changed. Everything.

 

Almost 15 years ago, I started a group on Facebook called "Los Altos High School Knights" dedicated to LAHS alumni from that era. In it we reminisce about our time in high school, the time we spent in a town that barely resembles what it is today, and we try to keep alive and appreciate the idyllic place and time we grew up in. For better and for worse, the world is not like it was 50 years ago. Yes, there have been major improvements in countless areas, but along the way we have lost so much. And some of what we have lost is an innocence that made growing up, somehow, much more authentic.

 

My parents still live in the same house I grew up in. I go back a handful of times every year to visit for various different occasions. I went yesterday for Thanksgiving. The following is what I posted in our group. To say it resonated would be a huge understatement. It blew up.

 

Home again

 

I am currently sitting on the front porch at my parents house, the same house I lived in all the years I attended Santa Rita, Egan and LAHS. It has changed over the years, the neighborhood has, too. But, overall, both are similar enough to be recognizable. A time traveler dropped here from 1970 would know this place.

 

I drove here, for Thanksgiving, from Sacramento earlier this afternoon. I’ll be returning tonight. I came straight here, off Bayshore, down Old Middlefield, San Antonio… and here. Some of what I passed looks eerily the same, much more isn’t remotely so. And I know what most of the rest of Los Altos looks like. I’ve been, it’s not likely to have changed back.

 

I have no plans to drive down any memory lanes. There are precious few memories left standing. I come here four or five times per year, but of late, it’s been only here. What was Los Altos still lives, but not in a physical space. It lives with me and with y’all. Sadly, when we are gone, all that will be left are these archives - our pictures, our words and our memories enshrined in binary bits on some server somewhere.

 

It was a good place to be a kid. Maybe it still is, but not in the same way. The world has moved beyond such simple pleasures. I am quite sure we are not the first nor will we be the last to reflect on the passing of our childhood fixtures - these are not new revelations.

Still, I am profoundly thankful to have had what I consider to be an idyllic youth, even if I did not recognize it at the time. I am prouder today than I ever was then to be a Knight. And, appropriately, this is Thanksgiving.

 

Happy Thanksgiving, Knights.

Semester's End... Again

Getting a spike in student emails at the end of the semester, right when the "big things" are coming due, is nothing new. It happens every semester and the variety and creativity of the excuses never ceases to amaze me. And I am not here to judge the validity or legitimacy of them. I actually do not care - produce the documentation necessary, as required by the university, and it is an "excused absence." Done. I don't give two shits if it is the third time your grandmother died this term.

However, an excused absence does not excuse a student from completing the required work. I think most of them understand that and that - excused and legitimate or not - they are just looking for more time, but there is a trend I'm starting to notice that indicates perhaps a new level of coddling is happening somewhere before they get to me. Some of these students seem to believe that if they have an "excuse" of significant magnitude, that is disruptive enough in their personal lives, that it not only excuses their absence (I almost never "take roll" anyway), but it also excuses them from doing whatever project was assigned to them when their lives were disrupted.

I am not sure what they expect. Am I supposed to just remove that project and the associated points from the total and calculate their grade on what they did do? Do I take their average of what they did do, insert that in the grade space for that project and then calculate their grade? Am I expected to recognize - and award credit for potential? Does "deserving grace" equal merit as shown by performance? And how is that going to be received by the rest of the class - you know, the ones who did do the work?

 

 ID 5291693 | School © Jimmy Lopes | Dreamstime.com

In every case, when I receive these emails of personal hardship, my response is empathetic (been there), but also pragmatic. I can both understand and explain that there is no way to award credit for work that was not done - excused or not, legitimate or not, documented or not, whether I believe it or not. None of that matters and at this very moment, there are exactly six days left of the regular semester before finals week begins. Time is also a factor. I get the feeling that there are students who were counting on their excused absence also excusing them from the work. This is not exactly new, but it is much, much more prevalent.

I don't know where this is happening, but somewhere they are learning this works. I hope it's not happening in college classes, but I'd bet there are some overly sympathetic professors who do give grades, that were not earned, because of circumstances beyond a student's control. But my students are mostly freshmen and sophomores - they are not learning this in college. It’s coming with them, from high school, from middle school - but ultimately, it's coming from their parents.

Stop it.

Constitutional Crisis?

I have remained silent on all my anti-social media platforms. As much as I have wanted to respond, correct, engage and persuade, I have resisted. In private, with friends, (real friends), family, associates and a few others, I have had “those” conversations and in those cases, while they have been cordial and respectful, they have also been unproductive. I have not convinced anyone of anything. I cannot compete against the machine that has created the polarization we are seeing today. It is the worst I have ever seen in my life, and of that, about five decades of political awareness. The results of it manifested once again last night.

 

This nation is a petri dish. It has been from its constitutional beginning (which was 1787, not what is, sadly, commonly believed to be 1776) when we became the United States of America. Prior to that, we were an unworkable, loose confederation of states; it was not working and our founding fathers, through a lot of debate and compromise formulated the government we have today. It is not perfect, and they all knew it, but they were confident that, because built into that Constitution is a means of amending it, we, the people, could and would adapt it. And we have, through much debate and compromise – and one terrible war.

 

Our grand experiment in self-rule is unlike any other in the world, before or since. It is precarious, always on the edge. It depends on us and our faith in those founding documents, our founders’ vision, and each other. It has been tested, many times. So far, our Constitution has proven stronger than any one person, party or outside influence. We have grown, not because of some piece of paper, but because of that faith in each other, into the strongest nation in the world. We have made mistakes, we have done some bad things, but we have also done immense good and made vast improvements. We have taken far more steps forward then we have taken steps back. 

 

We are at yet another crossroads, another constitutional test. There are forces at work – people – who see our constitutional protections as a barrier to whatever it is they see as “American.” It is almost laughable. The core of what is American is the Constitution and what it contains. However, if enough people lose faith in it, if enough people agree that certain elements of it are “in the way,” then they will no longer matter. The Constitution itself will no longer matter. 

 

In every constitutional crisis over the past 237 years – including that very first Constitutional Convention that formed the government we now have – it was the Constitution that prevailed. From the Civil War to the Great Depression, WWII, McCarthyism, civil rights, equal rights, Watergate and others – all of them presented serious challenges to the very fabric of our nation and, ultimately, we, the people said, “no, the experiment does not end here.” It has often come with great pain and angst, but in the end, our flag was still there.

 It is no secret that, for reasons that I will not elaborate on here, I am no fan of Donald Trump. But he was just elected be President of the United States, again. The people, enough of them, have spoken. We can talk about (and should) the liabilities of the Electoral College system, but that would take an amendment to the Constitution. The election was by the book, it was constitutional, he will be our president. The experiment, however, does not end there. Trump has made a variety of statements, some vague policy positions that I assume appeal to a large number of people, and that’s fair enough, but he has also spoken about doing a number of things that are absolutely unconstitutional. Prosecuting and jailing his opponents, shutting down media and free speech, using the US military on our own soil against citizens are just a few of his “musings” on the campaign trail.

 

Maybe this was just campaign bluster, the “bravado” that seems to appeal to a certain segment of his followers. Let’s hope that is all it is. If so, there might not be any crisis, just a lot of handwringing from the left when what they believe to be overly conservative policies are enacted into law. But that is how democracy works. Those policies, too, will be tested and if they prove unsuccessful, the Democrats will have the opportunity to put the brakes on them at the midterms. Whether people believe Trump crossed the line of Presidential privilege or not or whether they believe he acted unconstitutionally or not in his last administration is not the same as whether people believe the president is allowed to act unconstitutionally. If they do, enough of them, then we are in deep trouble.

 

My other hope is that the teamsmanship, the side-taking, taunting, the denigrating, the questioning of who is or what it is to be “American” will stop. The only team is Team USA and there is only one flag. All of our policies belong to the will of the people. We will get shit we don’t like sometimes. We will get shit we do sometimes. Ideally, we will get compromise where we get some of what we want, but not all. When government works best – check that – when government works, that’s how it works. 

 

I still have faith in our Constitution. I still have faith in the common sense of the vast majority of the people who are not on the extremes, despite what the echo-chamber tells each side about “the other side.” The fact is that most of y’all are a lot like y’all. If you would just talk to each other and stop talking at each other, you might find that the extremes are lying to you, manipulating you, and it is hurting this country. 

 

I know I’m going to get a lot of “what aboutism” in response. Save it. There is plenty of blame to go around. We have had enough of that. How about looking for consensus, for solutions, for places where we do agree and can get behind. Maybe we can start with the Constitution. It needs us. Indeed, it only has us. It always has had only us.