Jan Resseger received an early copy of a new book edited by David Berliner and Carl Hermanns (I contributed one of the essays), and she was delighted to discover that the volume contains what must have been one of Mike Rose’s last essays before his untimely death last summer.

She writes:

I just received my pre-ordered copy of a fine new collection ofessays from Teachers College Press. InPublic Education: Defending a Cornerstone of American Democracy, editors David Berliner and Carl Hermanns pull together reflections by 29 writers, who, as the editors declare: “create a vivid and complex portrait of public education in these United States.”

It seems especially appropriate at the end of 2021 to consider one of the essays included in this new book—probably Mike Rose’s final essay—“Reflections on the Public School and the Social Fabric.” Rose, the wonderful writer and UCLA professor of education, died…

The Washington Post published a story about a teacher-librarian who launched a community tradition of feeding children and families during the Christmas holidays.

Elementary schoolteacher Turquoise LeJeune Parker was a few days away from the start of her holiday vacation when she received a text message from the mother of one of her second-grade students.

The parent wondered if Parker knew where she could find food for her children during the school’s two-week winter break because her refrigerator and pantry were almost empty. Her kids relied on free school breakfasts and lunches to get them through the day.

Parker, now a library teacher for 387 students at Lakewood Elementary School in Durham, N.C., said she felt like crying on that phone call six years ago.
“This mom told me she wasn’t worried about herself, but she couldn’t let her kids go without food for those two weeks,” she recalled. “I…

“Joan Didion (/ˈdɪdiən/; December 5, 1934 – December 23, 2021) was an American writer who launched her career in the 1960s after winning an essay contest sponsored by Vogue magazine. Her writing during the 1960s through the late 1970s engaged audiences in the realities of the counterculture of the 1960s and the Hollywood lifestyle. Her political writing often concentrated on the subtext of political and social rhetoric. … During her seven years at Vogue, Didion worked her way up from promotional copywriter to associate feature editor. Mademoiselle published Didion’s article ‘Berkeley’s Giant: The University of California’ in January 1960. While at Vogue, and homesick for California, she wrote her first novel, Run, River (1963), about a Sacramento family as it comes apart. Writer and friend John Gregory Dunne helped her edit the book and they moved into…

“… In the 1950s, the West Village and, later, the newly designated, edgier East Village (rebranded from the northern part of the Lower East Side around 1964) became the cradle of New York’s Beat generation, with its new, raw, and mold-breaking style of poetry and writing; jazz, heard in Village night clubs and coffeehouses; challenging forms of painting and art such as Abstract Expressionism, especially ‘action painting’ (which was an impetus for the Happening) as exemplified by Jackson Pollock, a Village resident; and the revolutionary politics preached by its denizens and frequent visitors. With untried, non-commercial, or experimental plays or productions, using then-unknown talent and shoe-string budgets, Off-Broadway became an artistic magnet. … Such companies as the Living Theatre, New York Shakespeare Festival, Roundabout Theatre Company (1965), Chelsea Theatre Center (1965), Negro Ensemble Company (1967), and Circle Repertory (1969, as the Circle Theater Company), many of which started Off-Off-Broadway, presented…

“The Illuminatus! Trilogy is a series of three novels by American writers Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, first published in 1975. The trilogy is a satirical, postmodern, science fiction–influenced adventure story; a drug-, sex-, and magic-laden trek through a number of conspiracy theories, both historical and imaginary, related to the authors’ version of the Illuminati. The narrative often switches between third- and first-person perspectives in a nonlinear narrative. It is thematically dense, covering topics like counterculture, numerology, and Discordianism. The trilogy comprises three parts which contain five books and appendices: The Eye in the Pyramid (first two books), The Golden Apple (third and part of fourth book), Leviathan (part of fourth and all of fifth book, and the appendices). … The plot meanders between the thoughts, hallucinations and inner voices, real and imagined, of its many characters—ranging from…

“Back in the day when I was an aspiring young artist, one of my bibles was a well-worn copy (gotten at the late-great independent bookstore Paperbacks Unlimited) of Movie Journal, a collection of columns by filmmaker/impresario Jonas Mekas that had originally appeared in the Village Voice from 1959 to 1971, trumpeting trumpeting the rise of something called a ‘new American cinema.’ The working-class suburb northeast of Detroit where I grew up was hardly a hotbed of avant-garde culture, and Mekas’s compendium of rants and raves introduced me to a creative world I could only imagine via the descriptions he provided. The roll call of names—Stan Brakhage, Kenneth Anger, Jack Smith, Barbara Rubin, Carolee Schneeman, and dozens of others—was an elite group of underground luminaries to search out and from which to learn, not an easy task in the days before VCRs and DVDs, much less YouTube and Vimeo. ……

The New York Times reports that the Proud Boys, the white nationalist group of the far-right, is now using its members to protest mask mandates at local school board meetings and other local events. Their presence will probably cause some people to leave their school board position or not to run. But their presence makes it all the more imperative that concerned parents and other citizens run for school board, show up for school board meetings, and support candidates who want to make local schools better.

They showed up last month outside the school board building in Beloit, Wis., to protest school masking requirements.

They turned up days later at a school board meeting in New Hanover County, N.C., before a vote on a mask mandate.

They also attended a gathering in Downers Grove, Ill., where parents were trying to remove a nonbinary author’s graphic novel from public school…

This very important story appeared in the Washington Post.

She had seen her grandson’s red, spiral-bound notebook before that night, but now, as Catherine O’Connor sifted through its pages for the first time, what she read astonished her.

“School Shootings,” Joshua O’Connor had titled the first page, above a reconstruction of the Columbine High School massacre that left 13 people dead. In the pages that followed, Joshua, who’d just turned 18, described a detailed plan to carry out his own massacre: the shotguns, pistols, assault rifle and ammunition he would buy and the bombs he would build; the doors he would zip-tie “so bitches can’t escape”; the spot by the bleachers where he would set off the first explosion; the route he would take on his killing spree; the moment, when it was over, that he would end his own life.

“I Need to make this shooting/ bombing… infamous,” he…