All Akron children deserve access to quality early learning

April 8, 2024 whoopsiepiggle1 Comment

In his first month as mayor, Shammas Malik asked Akron Public Schools to prioritize launching a universal pre-K program. The district has wasted no time boosting its commitment to early learning.

Next fall, Akron schools will offer full-day programming for Akron children ages 4 and up.

Why is funding a public school program for preschoolers so important and what results can be expected? Luckily, numerous long-term studies of preschool programs exist, yielding an abundance of data supporting their many benefits, particularly for the most underserved children.

Head Start, a federal-to-local pre-school program, was launched in the 1960s as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty.” It wasn’t mandated, so not all school districts adopted it. However, nearly 60 years later, research on the first groups of Head Start students show the impactful, life-long and even multi-generational benefits of attending preschool.

According to a recent Brookings Institute report, when compared to their older siblings who were preschool age before Head Start existed, students who attended three years of Head Start were “3% more likely to finish high school, 8.5% more likely to attend college, and 39% more likely to finish college.”

The financial benefit, both to the people who attended Head Start and taxpayers, is also notable. Again from the Brookings Institute, “Female students were 32% less likely to live in poverty as adults, and male students saw a 42% decrease in the likelihood of receiving public assistance.”

Early programming is an investment with long-term payoffs — in other words, it is not politically expedient. Also, as children do not vote, politicians often cater less to their needs than they do citizens at the other end of the age spectrum, the elderly, who not only can vote, but reliably do in large numbers.

Before entering kindergarten, students who have attended preschool will have learned many educational building blocks — things like the alphabet, numbers, colors, shapes. They also gain exposure to vocabulary that may not exist at home.

But equally important, students learn how to be in school. I’ve seen first-hand how consequential this is because my daughter, Lyra, who has Down syndrome, attended APS’s existing preschool programming, the Early Learning Program (ELP).

In Ohio, state support for children with disabilities is provided for the first three years of life through county developmental disability boards. Then, from ages three to 22, state support is delivered through the public schools, which is why Akron has an ELP.

Lyra attended Akron’s ELP for three years and when she began kindergarten, just after her sixth birthday, she could read, had basic math skills and knew her colors, shapes and more. She also knew how to behave in a classroom. Unfortunately, the same was not true for many of her more than 20 kindergarten classmates, most of whom were attending school for the first time. When the Akron Education Association negotiated a new contract with the district in 2022, student violence was a primary concern. Halfway through the 2022-2023 school year, kindergartners accounted for 24% of student “assaults” on staff and teachers.

Even with a fantastic kindergarten teacher, given the chaos of the classroom, Lyra did not learn the skills for first-grade readiness. We had her repeat kindergarten, this time with an aid to help her stay on task no matter what was happening in the classroom.

Children who are kindergarten ready when they start school are more likely to be first-grade ready at the end of the year. It’s reasonable to expect that the implementation of all-day pre-K means more Akron students will perform at grade-level. The accumulation of age-appropriate education, or the lack thereof, has exponential impact. Each year a student is promoted without the skills needed for their current grade level, the harder it becomes to acquire the skills of the next grade. But when a child has mastered grade-level curriculum, they are poised for success the next year.

The rate of return on the investment in preschool programming is eye-popping. For every dollar spent, communities gain $4 to $9 in return because students who\’ve attended pre-K are more likely to graduate and contribute to the economy and less likely to need public assistance or become incarcerated.

All-day kindergarten is a good step, but Akron still needs universal pre-k, which ensures any family that wants to enroll their preschool-aged child in a publicly funded program has the opportunity.

Foundations in Akron and Summit County should eagerly participate with the city and the school district to fully fund universal pre-K programming in because it is a direly needed game changer. The only problem with universal pre-K is that APS didn’t launch it many years ago.

This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, March 17, 2024.

For further reading of recent research on universal pre-K, see this NPR article.

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New windows restore an Akron house’s Arts and Crafts charm

March 19, 2024 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

Architectural and interior styles change over time and as they do, people often change their spaces accordingly. My next-door neighbors’ home was built at the turn of the last century by the family that owned Akron Brewing Co. Sometime in the mid-20th century, the kitchen’s wooden cupboards were removed and replaced with “modern” stainless steel ones.

Luckily, an original section of the bottom cupboards remained on the back porch, which my neighbors, having removed all the metal ones, painstakingly restored and integrated into their new kitchen, creating a pleasing mix of old and new.

My two side-by-side homes on the near westside of Akron were treated very differently by the families that lived in them for over 60 years. None of the original decorative woodwork remains in Cressler House, where I live. I have a photo of Claire Cressler and his wife, Gloria, gleefully attacking with crow bars the oak columns that had been near the front door.

Next door, at Dreisbach House, Herman and Ruth Dreisbach were more surgical when remodeling. Perhaps they appreciated its Arts and Crafts style, or maybe it was because they had been gifted the home by Herman’s uncle, Herman Zimmerly, who built the house in 1909. But they, too, looked to modernized their house with the changes they made.

The Dreisbach House, circa 1915. — Dreisbach House, circa 1910, the year after it was built. *Holly Christensen*

Between 1905 and 1915, several houses were built on my street with either golden or dun-colored brick, all held together with red mortar. Dreisbach House has the dun brick (the Akron Brewery home is of the golden brick). Large blocks of yellowish sandstone form the foundation while substantial pieces of pinkish limestone were used for the exterior window sills and lintels.

The windows in the living room, dining room, stairway landing and third floor of Dreisbach House are the original (and never painted) oak sash windows, with pulleys and weights to hold opened windows in place. The glass is leaded, creating a charmingly warbled view of the outdoors, and the interior brass handles have decorative flourishes.

In probably the 1980s, the Dreisbachs had the kitchen and all the bedroom windows replaced with white vinyl ones. They painted the exterior of the remaining original windows white to match the vinyl ones. Presumably that is also when they replaced the roof’s wooden soffits and fascia with white aluminum, which they also used to cover all exterior wooden features. And finally, they enclosed the front porch using louvered windows with, you guessed it, white frames.

The Dreisbach house in 2011. — Dreisbach House in 2011.

A conundrum of owning a historical home is while some upgrades make the home more efficient and even more comfortable, it doesn’t necessarily mean they look right. The many white exterior features make the dun-colored brick look washed out.

Two years ago, my home contractor begin scraping the white paint, which clearly contained lead, off the original windows. Underneath was the color the windows had undoubtedly been painted at construction: a brownish red, often referred to as “oxblood.” Not only does it accentuate the reddish mortar, it also gives a much-needed richness to the brick.

New kitchen windows at Holly Christensen's house restore the "oxblood" trim, giving a much-needed richness to the brick. — The new windows restore the “oxblood” trim, giving a much-needed richness to the brick.

Meanwhile, the decades-old vinyl replacement windows had become so warped, they could only be opened and closed by a strong man with tools. The replacement windows needed replaced. This was the moment I decided that, with the mortgage nearly paid off, I would pay more for windows that honor the original Arts and Crafts design of the home.

Wooden Anderson Windows, baby, that’s what I’m talking about. The interior of the windows were factory stained to match the original frames. The exterior of the wooden windows, however, are clad in aluminum and installed with an aluminum casing, both of which can (for an upcharge, of course) be color matched.

As to finding contractors for a variety of jobs outside the scope of my home contractor, I use the social media site Nextdoor. When you join, you are connected to other Nextdoor members who live in your area. Ask people for a good painter, concrete company, housecleaner and, yes, window installer, and you will get several responses from satisfied customers. That’s how I found Jim Sutcliffe, owner of Windows, Doors and More, whose work I highly recommend.

Sutcliffe gave a chip paint from one of the original windows to Anderson Windows, who uses Sherwin Williams for color matching. The results are exterior window sashes in Sherwin Williams Manhattan Brown surrounded by casings of standard antique bronze.

The difference color can make is remarkable. I replaced 11 windows and whenever I look across the driveway from Cressler House at Dreisbach Houses new windows, I feel a small trill of satisfaction. It’s a feeling I hope to have over and again as this renovation continues.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, March 3, 2024.

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A much-needed (and cheap!) respite in Chicago

March 10, 2024 whoopsiepiggle2 Comments

Akron was recently heralded as one of the best cities for retirees because it’s both affordable and livable, something Akronites already knew. A transplant myself, I frequently extoll Akron’s friendly people, many parks with trails and, yes, affordable and beautiful housing stock.

Akron’s low cost of living also allows me to do something else I treasure — get away. Many a February, I head to warmer climes to elevate my vitamin D levels and shift my perspective. Getting out of the forest, as it were, reminds me that trees are just trees and not to sweat the small stuff.

But this year I didn’t leave the Midwest. Instead, I went to its de facto capital: Chicago.

I chose Chicago because of a French woman I long have loved. Like so many great women throughout history, Camille Claudel, who died in 1943, was all but erased from history. Fortunately, the 1988 release of the eponymous French film starring Isabelle Adjani and Gerard Depardieu launched her canonical restitution.

I saw the film 34 years ago just before traveling to France where I studied in a program that required students to visit five museums. What piffle. France offers a feast for museum lovers, and I visited dozens. But the art at the Musée Rodin so moved me, I visited it, and it alone, twice.

A prolific and talented sculptor, Auguste Rodin is perhaps best known in the U.S. for The Thinker, a larger-than-life-size bronze of a naked man, seated with an elbow on one knee, his chin on the back of that arm’s hand. The Musée Rodin, located in what was Rodin’s Paris home, has 20 Claudel sculptures permanently displayed in one room.

Photo of young Claudel behind her bust titled "Giganti" at the Art Institute of Chicago. — Photo of young Claudel behind her bust titled “Giganti” at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Twenty-four years her senior, Rodin was first Claudel’s teacher, then her lover and artistic collaborator. With their sculptures in close proximity, it’s impossible not to compare their talents, and even though it’s like contrasting the work of demigods, I found Claudel’s to be slightly superior.

The recent Camille Claudel exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago provided the chance to see 58 of Claudel’s pieces. (The exhibit closed on Feb. 19 and will reopen at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles in April). Unlike most museums worldwide, the AIC is open Mondays (as is Chicago’s Field Museum and Museum of Science + Industry), which is great. Airline tickets typically cost less on Saturdays and Tuesdays than on Fridays and Mondays. Two round-trip tickets on Southwest Airlines were $372.

My companion and I arrived at Midway Airport Saturday morning, bought three-day Chicago Transit Authority passes for $15 each and took an Orange Line train to a station a block from our hotel. Cheap and easy. But the best tip is next.

CitizenM hotel chain provides a luxury hotel experience at an affordable price and, boy, do they deliver. I found them on Expedia.com when booking a room in Washington D.C. and was so impressed, I stay at CitizenM hotels whenever possible. Each room is only as wide as the king-sized bed nestled against the wall opposite the door, but because they are so efficiently laid out, the rooms never feel cramped. Located in the heart of downtown on Michigan Avenue and Wacker, I could see the Chicago River from the wall-to-wall window above the bed.

The off-season price for our room was $291 for three nights, which included all taxes and fees. Breakfast is not included, but the spread they lay out is decadent and well worth the $19 per person. In the evening, the same “canteen” has a full bar and serves a small selection of dinner options. Two 16-ounce local beers cost us $11.

After checking into our room, we walked to an Asian Lunar New Year festival at the Navy Pier and on our way back to CitizenM, stocked up on snacks at a Whole Foods that is larger than the one in Akron.

The TV in CitizenM rooms is over the die-for-it comfortable bed (after my first stay in D.C., I bought the same mattress for my home). Propped up on lush pillows–CitizenM ought to sell them to guests–we streamed the 1988 Claudel biopic. The movie holds up to the test of time and prepared us for the exhibit.

More than 30 years after first comparing her sculptures to Rodin’s, I again found Claudel the superior artist, hairsplitting though that is. (I wonder if she observed autopsies as the musculature of her figures is so exacting.) We spent two full days wandering the AIC, also enjoying other temporary exhibits — drawings by Picasso and a retrospective of South African photographer David Goldblatt — as well as AIC’s tremendous permanent collection from ancient to modern periods.

And any visit to the AIC must include viewing the 68 historically accurate miniature rooms, think dollhouses on steroids, meticulously constructed during the Great Depression. The 1:12 scale project, managed and funded by heiress Narcissa Niblack Thorne, provided much-needed employment for out-of-work artisans.

Yes, we have top-notch cultural institutions in Northeast Ohio and I’ve visited them all many times. But only when unplugged from the chores of home life by travel can most of us indulge in spending entire days at museums.

Now where to next? Hmm. New York City has two CitizenM locations and MOMA is also open on Mondays…

This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, February 25, 2024.

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State grant to expand tutoring shouldn’t be limited to private firms

February 24, 2024 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

Just before winter break, a tutor I work with in Akron Public Schools stated what had become soberingly obvious based upon students’ December test results: “In order to work with all the third, fourth and fifth graders who need to get to grade level, we have to sacrifice our time with first and second graders. There’re just not enough of us.”

Nationwide, the longer schools were 100% remote during the COVID-19 pandemic, the farther behind students in those districts fell. Tutors like myself are tasked with teaching grade-level skills such as multiplication and division to fourth and fifth graders (they were kindergartners and first graders when APS was remote) who have yet to master addition and subtraction.

Disparities among affluent and poorer districts had been slowly shrinking in the years before the pandemic. Those gains were vaporized in schools that remained closed to in-person learning longterm. Many students fell a year or more behind in both math and reading.

Intensive, small-group tutoring has proven an effective tool to help kids get to grade level, which is why the federal government, and many states, have invested in it. But not all tutoring is equally beneficial.

Akron schools are not alone in questioning the Ohio legislature’s offer of grant money for tutoring that can only be spent on tutoring by private companies. And these services only target fourth graders who did not pass what were, until late last summer, the reading requirements for promotion from the third to the fourth grade.

I wrote about Gov. Mike DeWine’s deeply misguided decision to promote last year’s third graders who did qualify, children whom I know well. In the second semester of the last school year, I worked every day with a group of third graders who read just below grade level. My job was to get them to grade level by the time they took the year-end reading test.

Then, for the entire month of June, I worked with another group of students who had not passed that year-end test. We worked for six hours a day, five days a week, in Akron’s Third Grade Reading Academy. Our mornings were spent on an intensive phonics program and in the afternoons we worked on reading comprehension.

I was struck by how my students with the lowest reading skills most enjoyed the morning phonics. As we broke down English into its various letter combinations, these students had several “Ah-ha” moments as the patterns and rules began to click for them. Anyone who has worked on something difficult knows the specific joy that comes with the mastery of once-elusive concepts.

Six of my eight students in the Third Grade Reading Academy passed the Ohio State Test. One of the two who did not was a student I called Tyronne in a previous column. Tyronne worked very hard in my class, which paid off because his score improved by 30 points. That put him in a strong position to acquire the skills to become fourth grade ready when repeating the third grade.

It is important to note that holding back third graders who cannot read at grade level does not stigmatize them. According to a story in the New York Times, “A [2023] Boston University study found that those held back did not have any negative outcomes such as increased absences or placement in special education programs. On the contrary, they did much better several years later in sixth-grade English tests compared with those who just missed being held back. Gains from being held back were particularly large for Black and Hispanic students.”

In other words, the folks down in Columbus blew it last year by promoting third graders who could not read at grade level and now they want to remedy their wrong-headed decision by giving those same students after-school online tutoring with people in Missouri.

That is just plain dumb.

A large factor in this year’s fourth graders being so far behind is that Akron schools were entirely remote for a full year during the pandemic. There is no credible reason to believe that remote tutoring, with people who do not know the students or the district, will fix the problems caused by remote learning.

When students are tutored in person, their tutors are part of a collaborative team that includes other tutors, the classroom teachers, the principal and the assistant principal. These teams know the students, their history both in and out of school, their strengths and weaknesses. Teams work collaboratively to teach each child.

Would Akron’s students benefit from additional funds for tutoring? Absolutely. But not the kind of tutoring for which the state has limited the grant funds. As school board member Rene Molenaur pointed out in a recent school board meeting, students would be far better served if the state gave the district $200,000 for expanded tutoring.

The state should support expanded tutoring, which our students direly need, by funding the expansion of services provided by the people in our school buildings. Anything else is a cruel waste of time and money.

This column first appeared in the Akron Beacon Journal on February 4, 2024.

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Transforming my beloved family home into a jewel

January 31, 2024January 31, 2024 whoopsiepiggle2 Comments

I met Herman Dreisbach in February of 2003 when he was 88 years old. His wife of 60 years had died the previous February, and he was selling his house to move to Atlanta, where his son and daughter-in-law lived.

Once a tall man, Mr. Dreisbach’s upper back and neck stooped forward from osteoporosis; his slow gait belied muscles that had weakened with age and bones that ached.

Each of the three times I visited his house, the final time with the home inspector, I had small children with me. Unperturbed by youngsters touring his tidy home, Mr. Dreisbach comfortably chatted with them.

The last time we met, Mr. Dreisbach took my hand in both of his, and with tears in his eyes, he told me: “I hope you’ll be as happy in this house as we were.” He died nine months later.

I’ve now owned what we call Dreisbach House for over 20 years. My first three children spent the bulk of their childhoods in the home, and my fourth son was born there. Then, for several years, I lived with the father of my youngest two children in his home and rented out Dreisbach House.

Dreisbach House when I first rented it in 2011. (At the back of the driveway is Hoover, the world’s sweetest Sheltie, who died in 2016.)

No tenant kept the house as clean as I did. But I soon learned that messes can be cleaned and damages repaired. Still, my heart hurt when tenants were not gentle with the house.

Little expense was spared when a maternal uncle of Mr. Dreisbach built the house in 1909. The exterior walls of the home are two layers of brick, which is why to this day none of the stairs or floors creak. Like a manufactured cave, all that brick keeps the house, which has hot water heat and no air conditioning, remarkably cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

The Arts and Crafts interior includes quarter-sawn oak columns and panels, a fireplace with decorative tiles from a renowned turn-of-the-century manufacturer, multiple pocket doors and two original light fixtures. And because the home remained in one fastidious family for 94 years, it is in remarkable shape.

Dreisbach House shares a driveway with its next-door neighbor to the south. In 2014, I bought that house, too.

For more than 60 years, it belonged to Claire and Gloria Cressler. Claire had been a widower for three years when I first met him. Years later, he would die in my arms.

In 2020, I moved into what we call Cressler House. I decided to stop renting Dreisbach House when my most recent tenants moved out. I owe less than $8,000 on the mortgage and, like its first owner, that puts me in a position to remodel the home without sparing many expenses.

Now, a new thread will be added to the warp and weft of my byline throughout my years as a Beacon Journal columnist − the process of transforming my beloved family home, the Dreisbach House, into a jewel. These columns will include design choices and the progress of projects, but also the histories of the people who previously lived here, as well as my family’s history in these homes.

Column changes

I was hired in October of 2016 to write a parenting/family column for the Akron Beacon Journal. At the time, my eldest child was in college and my fifth (and youngest) child was in preschool. Those first years, I wrote mostly on parenting.

Letters from readers often compared me to syndicated parenting columnist John Rosemond. Older readers regularly complimented me on how similarly to Rosemond’s approach I parented, while younger readers wrote to say they admired how differently my parenting advice was to that of Rosemond’s. Go figure.

Throughout my time at the Beacon, I have often written columns that were pointedly political. In 2017, I explained why I, a mother of a child with Down syndrome, was opposed to the Down syndrome abortion ban passed by the Ohio legislature and signed by the governor. Just before that column ran, the Beacon’s editor told me I’d get a lot of negative emails over it, but also that he knew I could handle it.

I’ve gotten far worse emails since, particularly when I’ve written anything involving race. I know I’ve done something right when I’ve provoked the ire of bigots who take the time to let me know what they think − though rarely about what I’ve written. No, bigots like to deride me as a person and, almost always, what I look like.

Three of my children are now adults. The first two have multiple college degrees and full-blown careers. One is getting married later this year. My relationship with them all is understandably different than it was over seven years ago, and yet, two of my adult sons still call me almost every day.

As a result, the content of my columns has expanded to topics facing our community, which often are issues that directly affect families.

To best accommodate this array of storylines and opinions, my column has a new, and more appropriate, home in the print edition’s community section. Here, I can have columns that are political, others that are personal, and some that are the ins and outs of a major project.

I hope you’ll enjoy reading future columns as much as I will writing them.

This column first appeared in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, January 21, 2024.

Civil Rights · Education · Local Politics

2024 will be a wild ride in politics

January 28, 2024 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

Last month, pundits aplenty predicted that national politics in 2024 will be a wild bronco ride. With many of the current do-nothing Congress members in Washington up for reelection and a likely rematch of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, that seems to be more statement of fact than prognostication.

Local and state politics will be similarly tumultuous.

As for local politics, the bad news first. Akron Public Schools, a major anchor for the city, which in turn is the economic and cultural driver of Summit County, has suffered poor leadership for far too long.

Last summer, Akron’s school board rushed to pick a new superintendent. This was after Superintendent Christine Fowler-Mack, hired by many of the same board members, was released from her contract 17 months early.

The board chose a candidate who has no experience running a district as large, diverse and poor as Akron’s.

I often feel like a bookie given the number of people who volunteer how long they think C. Michael Robinson will last. All bets are between 18 and 24 months.

There was an opportunity last November to elect school board members who could effectively mitigate the district’s many problems. Yet voters, as they often do everywhere, instead treated the election like a popularity contest. Two of the three open seats were filled by candidates with high name recognition but who in the debates revealed a critical lack of understanding of the district’s issues or any practical solutions.

The good news is that Akron has a new mayor. The city was long overdue for a new generation of leaders. In the May primary (Akron’s de facto mayoral election), voters hired 32-year-old Shammas Malik by nearly 18 points more than the second-place candidate.

Some citizens, especially those who have long known Malik, are wildly enthusiastic about his ascension to the city’s highest position. Others remain skeptical of his ability to root out cronyism and effect positive changes for every ward in Akron, especially those that need it the most.

Anyone who speaks with Malik quickly realizes his passionate commitment to Akron. He’s smart and a tireless worker who has shown acumen in the appointments he’s made to his administration. He deserves the chance to show the city what he will do.

Last fall, Ohio voters overwhelmingly approved both a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to an abortion and a law legalizing recreational marijuana. In response, Ohio Senate Republicans unsuccessfully attempted to modify the new marijuana law. They’ll likely try again, but with the law now in effect, making substantive, if any, changes is less likely.

Meanwhile, Ohio House Republicans discussed moving the jurisdiction of the abortion-rights amendment from the judiciary to — ta-da! — the Republican-controlled legislature. This is not the first time Ohio’s Republican state lawmakers have decided they need not comply with laws that they do not like.

Republican legislators have long enjoyed a supermajority in Ohio due to gerrymandering and in 2022 had no qualms ignoring two Ohio Supreme Court rulings that rejected Republican-drawn state redistricting maps as unconstitutional.

And like so many Republican-dominated states, Ohio’s legislature has taken aim at transgender youths and their families. A bill that would have banned trans females from playing sports on female high school and college teams, as well as severely restricted the medical care of trans youths under the age of 18, passed both the Ohio House and Senate.

But with a signature that angered many Republicans, Ohio Republican Governor Mike DeWine vetoed the bill. Ohio Democrats shouldn’t have been too surprised.

After stridently opposing the passage of the constitutional amendment protecting the right to an abortion in part by falsely claiming it would take away parents’ rights (it doesn’t), DeWine could not bring himself to sign into law a bill that openly and aggressively takes away the rights of parents to make medical decisions for their trans children.

These wedge issues will continue to dominant this important election year as Republicans try to draw attention away from the restrictions to reproductive rights they’ve imposed since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.

So, yes, hang on to your hats; 2024 politics, here we go!

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, January 14, 2024.

Postscript:

Ten days after this column was published, Ohio’s Republican legislature overturned Governor Mike DeWine’s veto of House Bill 68. Now, “access to gender-affirming health care for transgender minors and adults in Ohio is set to be heavily restricted under proposed administrative rules filed earlier this month by the state Health Department.” Once enacted (90 days after the overturn), many believe it will be a de facto ban on gender-affirming care for any Ohioan.

HB 68 also includes a ban on transgender females from participating in scholastic athletics. Currently there are only six such athletes in Ohio. Those six athletes had to meet rigorous qualifications to ensure they were not competing with an unfair physical advantage, which is why many referred to this ban as a solution in search of a problem.

Since DeWine’s veto of HB 68 was overturned, many Ohio families with transgender members have reported plans to leave the state. There also are concerns that people offered jobs in Ohio, including at the new Intel facility near Columbus, will no longer be willing to relocate to the state.

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Holiday tree represents readiness to celebrate once again

December 17, 2023December 17, 2023 whoopsiepiggle2 Comments

For the first time since 2019, I feel festive this holiday season. Life is more certain than it’s been in four years, this is true. But there’s more to it than that, which for me somehow involves a tree.

When I was a child, each December my mother assembled the same artificial tree stored the prior 11 months in a box in the basement. The precise triangle silhouette was created by wire branches with long needles a dark green not found in nature. Unlike a live tree, the branches were strong enough to hold the heavy ornaments my mother once made.

I equated my mother’s Victorian-esque ornaments, Styrofoam balls covered with satin and beads, with elegance. For five years, we lived in a house too big for my mother and her husband to afford furniture for every room. The warmly lit Christmas tree stood in front of a picture window in an otherwise cold, empty living room.

The first years I set up my own tree, which were always live, I was college poor. Far cheaper than ornaments, I inserted sprigs of baby’s breath among the branches, on which I had tied satin ribbons. The shiny red bows and bursts of white flowers distributed on the gray-green branches created its own simple elegance.

After my first child was born, I adopted a charming tradition from his father’s family. My ex-husband had a few ornaments with a year handwritten on each. His mother, who had died before I met him, had given her children an ornament every Christmas. Each year, my children’s ornaments share a theme. One year, they all had different mini nutcrackers; another year, it was tiny tin toys — a carousel that spun, a horse and a steamship, both with wheels that rolled. The first Christmas after my last child and only daughter was born, I purchased four silver gingerbread boys and one gingerbread girl.

For many years, our Christmas trees were richly adorned with ornaments that represented memories as much as the holidays. Only once did I choose glass ornaments. Like waterless snow globes, they contained heartwarming scenes. The following year, our tree fell over twice, breaking those (and many other) fragile decorations.

The summer of 2020, I realized the father of my youngest two children was incapable of giving me what I needed, and I moved back to my home. Intrigued by the pre-lit feature they now have, later that year I decided to buy an artificial tree.

Knowing a fresh tree can never be effectively replicated, what I really wanted was one of those aluminum trees popular in the 1960s. They were illuminated by a rotating color wheel, which changed the trees from green, to blue, to pink, to an odd salmon shade. Instead, I found a tree that is silver at the top and then, in a gentle ombre effect, turns fully gold at the bottom.

My metallic tree provided welcome light on the dark nights of winter. I left it plugged in for three months that year and did so again the next two winters. But what I didn’t do was decorate it. I simply could not bring myself to drag out the bins of ornaments and holiday decor.

At the time, I figured it was because I’d been holiday decorating for over three decades and I was, well, over it. However, there are things in life that cannot be fully understood without distance. I see now while feeling deep loss, I found it hard to act festive.

When a relationship — either personal or professional — has received years of investment and then ends when it becomes clear a commitment to a common goal is not shared, years of life seem wasted. Asking what lessons were learned only feels pathetic when what has been lost is the one thing that can never be regained — time.

And, of course, those same three years my tree remained unadorned, the world was plunged into a pandemic, making it hard to spend in-person time with family and friends. What life would look like on the other side was unknowable.

Leif and Lyra decorating this year’s tree.

This year, I needed a live tree. Long ago, a friend (aptly named Noelle) introduced me to the perfection of a Fraser fir. With short, soft needles, it’s easy to hang ornaments on their branches without children’s fingers getting pricked. After Thanksgiving, I found Fraser firs at Whole Foods for the competitive price of $70. All were wrapped, so rather than scrutinizing them for the perfect shape, I chose one that was tall, but also bulged with ample branches under the netting.

At home, the fir first looked like it was in the midst of a mugging — its branches all held upwards. But after a day, they relaxed, revealing a most perfect tree. I brought out my ornaments and also my collections of nutcrackers, snow globes and wooden alpine vignettes.

While its passage is irretrievable, time does soften some of life’s rougher patches. This year my heart is tender, but no longer torn. And a fresh Fraser fir, bejeweled in twinkling lights and thoughtful ornaments, reflects my readiness to celebrate once again.

This column first appeared in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, December 17, 2023.

Uncategorized

Making a child’s memories is important part of parent’s life

December 13, 2023December 13, 2023 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

For all the messes, chaos and, far too often, poor sleep that comes with a house full up with children, I (like many parents) frequently have wished I could keep my children at a specific age and time.

For his first six months of life, my second baby had such severe colic, the sanguine nature of my third baby was unsettling. Like Shirley MacLaine in “Terms of Endearment,” I confess I sometimes awoke my third baby to ensure he was OK. Accompanying the gift of a child who slept when put to bed and rarely fussed while awake, my older boys were enviably close. 

The same summer my third baby was born, the big boys got bunk beds. Each night I’d tuck in 3-year-old Hugo on the top bunk and 6-year-old Claude on the bottom, just as they wanted. Two hours later, when I’d return to turn off their nightlight, they were always together in the bottom bed, sound asleep, limbs entangled.

I savored that summer with a sweet baby and little boys in swimsuits eating watermelon on the front porch, competing to see who could spit their seeds farthest out into the garden. So much laughter, I wished I could stop time, but on it marched.

Hugo and Claude eat watermelon on the porch during the summer their brother Jules was born. — Hugo and Claude enjoying watermelon on the porch the summer their brother Jules was born.

Christmas 2003 was the last year all three boys, then ages 9, 6 and 3, believed in Santa Claus. When they came downstairs that morning, they found a letter from the old elf by their stockings. It told them to follow the ribbon attached to the letter. It wended yards and yards away from the fireplace, through the dining room, into the kitchen, down the basement stairs to, “Oh, my gosh, look!” they cried out to one another, “An air hockey table!”

The summer of 2007, I packed the boys and plenty of gear into my 5-speed Toyota Matrix and drove due south on the first leg of a cross-country trip. We saw amazing landscapes, national parks and museums. We also had mishaps that were not as funny then as they seem now. It was a pivotal trip, especially for the eldest two, who often refer to their childhoods as either before or after our multistate adventure. 

Claude and Hugo were teenagers when the first of my bumper-crop babies, another boy, arrived. Two years later, my only daughter followed. For several glorious years, I had a home full up with some of my favorite people. 

That’s not to say it was always easy. Hugo, the one who had been a colicky baby, was often a horrid teen. Feeling abandoned by his father, as did his brothers, Hugo’s behavior seemed devised to see if I, too, would abandon him. Instead, I tough-loved him to adulthood. It wasn’t fun, but it paid jackpot dividends.

Hugo pretends to drive a friend’s Vespa with Claude enjoying the ride. — Hugo “driving” a friend’s Vespa while Claude enjoys the ride.

Too soon — suddenly it seemed — the big boys fledged to college. The first to the University of Michigan, the second to Eastman School of Music in Rochester, the last to Ohio State. The house became quieter, dinners harder to cook. (Scaling down meals after years of doubling batches is oddly difficult.)

COVID, wretched as it was, brought them all back home for several months. In spite of the many difficulties of a global pandemic, thoughts of 2020 make my heart keen because undoubtedly it was the last time all my children will ever be home for more than a short visit.

The next best thing, year after year, has been Thanksgiving.

For more than a decade, we spent it with family in northern Michigan where my stepmom, my partner and I did all the cooking. I appreciated that not all college students eagerly went home for the holidays — some of my sons’ friends spent the holiday with us. 

This year, Hugo, who lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where he’s a manager at a performing arts center not unlike Cleveland’s Playhouse Square, could not get out of work to come home. Thanksgiving also fell on Hugo’s 27th birthday. “What if we all come to you?” I asked him. 

Hugo and I work side by side in the kitchen for a day and a half to prepare a Thanksgiving spread made with many family recipes. When we weren’t cooking, we watched old movies, went on long walks and played euchre with the others, including Claude who flew in from Washington, D.C., and stayed for a week. 

My two eldest sons are still enviably close, which has more to do with luck than anything I ever did. That they were born into the same family as their best friend is a relationship few are fortunate to experience.

Holly Christensen stands for a portrait at the Thanksgiving table with Hugo's fiancee, Claudia, Joe Studebaker, Holly, Lyra, Leif, Hugo and Claude. — This year’s Thanksgiving dinner at Hugo and Claudia’s home in Madison, WI. Claudia, Joe Studebaker, Holly, Lyra, Leif, Hugo and Claude. (L-R)

This coming summer Hugo will marry his phenomenal girlfriend, Claudia. Yep, that’s her name. And I’m sure at the wedding I’ll once again want to stop time so as to savor the joy.

Long ago I realized that an important part of a parent’s role is the making of a child’s memories — both those that are fond and others that are instructional. I realize now that in so doing I have also created a book’s worth of invaluable remembrances for myself. 

And no matter how endearing any current moment, I’ve come to trust that the next phase will further expand my heart.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, December 3, 2023.

Uncategorized

A love letter to my inner-city neighborhood

December 1, 2023 whoopsiepiggle1 Comment

I love my inner-city Akron neighborhood.

Surrounded by beautiful homes and friendly residents, we are less than five minutes away from EJ Thomas to enjoy Akron Symphony concerts, the downtown Akron-Summit County Library to hear award-winning authors speak, the Akron Art Museum for spectacular exhibits and talks, and The Nightlight Cinema to see movies not shown elsewhere.

Each year when spring arrives, I all but abandon the interior of my home. I set up outdoor furniture for months of open-air living and plant garden beds and pots with flowers, vegetables and herbs. Impromptu visits with neighbors—all but impossible during months burrowed inside warm homes—resume. On the first temperate day last April, my next-door neighbor Joe and I stood in my driveway and lingered in inconsequential conversation while our combined six dogs frolicked. None of us wanted to leave the warm sun and moist spring breeze.

Summer in my neighborhood, stocked with century-old homes, is a huge part of why I love where I live. Built in the days before air conditioning, most of the houses have invitingly large front porches. Like me, many of my neighbors drink their morning coffee and, later in the day, eat dinner on porches set up like living and dining rooms.

My favorite season, however, has long been fall, when the temperatures and humidity drop, the blue of the sky deepens and life somehow feels easier (the kids returning to school helps).

Soon after they appear at Acme, pumpkins and multi-colored gourds cascade down the steps of my porches. Then, on the third Thursday of September, I drive to Barberton to buy half a dozen or more potted chrysanthemums from the Barberton Mum Festival. Priced at five for $40, the festival sells large mums in a wide variety of colors, all robustly healthy.

Helpful Henry surrounded by the fall decor.

There’s work a-plenty to be done outside this time of year. Flowerpots need hauled into the garage to shelter from the coming winter. The leaves from several 80-foot oak trees repeatedly obscure my lawn and its regular supply of dog bombs. The satisfaction that comes after hours of hauling leaves to the curb is both simple and substantial.

Years ago, the owner of Constantine’s Garden Center in Bath, not far from where my two dyslexic sons saw their tutor for many years, told me the sales of spring flower bulbs have dropped dramatically, perhaps as much as 75%, from what it was in the 1960s and ’70s.

There have been years when bulbs I bought never made it into the ground. I was afraid the same would happen this year when October seemed interested in only serving dreary, cold rain on the weekends. And then, on November 1, autumn appeared to have clocked out early, and we awoke to over 2 inches of snow on the ground. My impatiens, coleus, dahlias and many (though not all) zinnias crumpled and turned brown. And that’s the poignant lesson of fall. Throughout October, I enjoy each warm sunny day and the kaleidoscope of color blooming in my yards even more than I had all summer because I know full well it will soon be gone.

My home, all decked out for Halloween, on the morning of November 1.

But as often happens, the death freeze was quickly followed by gossamer summer. Last weekend, the first nice one in a month, I planted dozens of bulbs, this year attended by my new assistant, Henry. A Yorkipoo puppy we brought home last winter, Henry is what some call a “Velcro dog” because he never wants to be parted from his humans, especially me. Nine pounds of keen intelligence and outsized personality, Henry rules the house. He wrestles with our 90-pound German shepherd with a pugnacious ferocity, but then sweetly allows my 11-year-old daughter to carry him around like a baby.

As I dug 6-inch holes for tulips, hyacinths and daffodils, Henry and I visited with neighbors who walked to the stores at the end of my street. Diversity has always been one of Akron’s strengths, and I take pride in my own slice of the city, which is both ethnically and economically diverse.

Or, as my 20-something sons tell me, my neighborhood “slaps.”

Thirty years ago while visiting my grandmother in Tucson, she and I struck up conversation with a man who was visiting from Seattle. When I mentioned that Seattle had recently become a popular place to relocate, he told me, “Shhh, don’t tell anyone.”

When I bought my 1909 Akron Arts and Crafts house 21 years ago, like the man from Seattle, I believed I’d gotten in on one of the best-kept livable city secrets. There are many reasons to believe in Akron’s potential, which I don’t hesitate to write about.

Now, more than ever, I believe in this city and its citizens and am committed to our success.

This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, November 10, 2023.

Uncategorized

Pick strong leaders for Akron school board

November 2, 2023 whoopsiepiggle2 Comments

The League of Women Voters’ voter guide states, “The [Akron Public Schools] board is a policymaking body and members are the chief advisors to the superintendent on community attitudes. Board members do not manage the day-to-day operations of a school district; they see to it that the system is managed well by professional administrators.”

The last 13 words of that statement have not been the case for a long time.

Without strong leadership, the needs of Akron’s students have not been given the urgent priority currently required.

During the pandemic, APS leadership refused to push back on the teachers union and kept all buildings closed to all students for a full year. This all-or-nothing thinking was indefensible. As early as summer 2020, widely published, substantive research proved that schools were not super-spreader locations. However, keeping buildings closed to all students for so long, as was documented in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, devastates student outcomes for years.

Today, teachers and staff are dealing directly with that devastation. Vulnerable children lost tremendous academic ground and the youngest students didn’t adequately learn the academic and social basics needed to function in school and beyond.

Akron needs school board members who come to board meetings not to learn about the agenda items they will vote on, but already prepared and willing to engage in dynamic discussions, debates even, so as to find the best solutions to the many important issues facing the district.

On Nov. 7, Akron voters can choose three new school board members from a pool of eight candidates, including one former and one current member.

The first is Patrick Bravo, who was a school board member for 10 years, and board president during the pandemic. Many poor board decisions, including the hiring of of former superintendent Christine Fowler-Mack, were made while Bravo was on the board. It is concerning that he has not spoken to what he would do differently if again elected.

Rene Molenaur was chosen to finish out the term of N.J. Akbar when he stepped down last April and must now run for a new term. Molenaur has impressive academic credentials including a Ph.D. in urban education and education policy. Her answers in board meetings and debates are thoughtful and well-informed. But she is not, at least yet, a leader. A strong board president would welcome her input on complex issues — which are most issues at APS.

Like a game of  “tag you’re it,” three members of the Sykes family, Vernon and Barbara, along with their daughter Emilia, have continuously held seats in the Ohio Statehouse for four decades.

Barbara last held office in 2006. Her performances at the debates have not included any “aha” moments as to why she’s come out for this race, though it’s widely speculated she’s positioning herself to win Vernon’s state senate seat in 2024.

Gwen Bryant stands out as someone who knows the district and understands the realities of what faculty and staff face each day. Her answers in the debates were pragmatic and forthright. Like Molenaur, Bryant has a graduate degree in education. But she has more experience and has worked with several large, urban school districts. She speaks with a comfortable authority.

Phil Montgomery is the current director of finance and budget for Summit County and already knows how the district budget works and where it can be improved. Montgomery’s two young daughters are APS students, which informs his keen understanding of the district’s most pressing issues. 

With the current and ongoing financial matters the district has on its plate, it would be a boon to have Montgomery not just on the school board, but also for him to become its president.

As for Summer Hall, Myron Lewis and Keith Mills, all three believably share a desire to see APS improve, but none has informed, thought-out plans for what issues need addressed and how they would address them. The district can ill afford to have new board members with steep on-the-job learning curves.

School board races don’t always enjoy high voter turnout. But where the schools go, so too goes the city. If you live in Akron, do your homework and vote for strong leaders for Akron Public Schools. 

A version of this column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, October 29, 2023.

Civil Rights

Diocese of Cleveland’s new anti-LGBTQ+ policy is sinful

October 9, 2023 whoopsiepiggle3 Comments

The Catholic Church is an institution with a track record of abusing children.

In recent years, courts across the globe have required the church to pay out millions upon millions of dollars to victims. Some were young women in Ireland and elsewhere held against their will in what were known as “mother and baby homes” in which the mothers and their children were often horrifically abused, many to death.

Also in Ireland, more than 10,000 girls and women were confined to Magdalene Laundries between 1922 and 1996. This included sex workers, unmarried mothers, the daughters of unmarried mothers, victims of rape and even some girls who had never had sex but had been deemed promiscuous. At the Magdalene Laundries, the girls and women provided slave labor, were ubiquitously and monstrously abused. Again, many died.

You might be saying, “Ah, but that’s Ireland.”

The sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests during the past seven decades in every state in America and in many other countries is now well documented. The numbers of priests who raped children and the number of children they raped is staggering.

Not only did bishops, archbishops and cardinals know priests were abusing children, they went to great efforts to hide the abuse and protect the abusers. To this day, state attorneys across the nation continue to investigate victims’ claims and produce reports of rampant abuse.

Time and again, those with power in the Catholic Church wield that power over those who have little to no say in the choices being made for them.

In this tradition, the Diocese of Cleveland announced in September its hardline stance against any students, faculty or staff in its schools who openly identify as LGBTQ+. Even rainbows are forbidden on diocesan school properties.

Leaving Christ’s compassion outside the church and school doors, the diocese’s new policy requires parental notification of students who are in some manner exhibiting LGBTQ+ behavior or symbols. The diocese claims it won’t tell families if the student would face physical abuse at home. Right. The Catholic Church claiming expertise at sussing out which families are physically abusive is not very reassuring.

In its statement on the new policies, the diocese claims every person is welcome to the church — as long as they are, or pose as, heterosexual. The diocese further claims that people who are LGBTQ+ are experiencing “gender dysphoria” and “gender confusion,” exposing the diocese’s willful ignorance of biology, which has never been as simple as two types of genitalia.

The Diocese of Cleveland insists that LGBTQ+ people are behaving “contrary to the divinely revealed reality of our true, God-given human nature.” If God is responsible for all creation, the diocese’s assertion that God wants only heterosexual expression in humans devalues, indeed brazenly questions, divine omniscience.

People who grew up in times and places where they felt unsafe revealing that they are LGBTQ+ often describe it as feeling invisible, wearing a costume or living a lie. They feared being discovered and then being physically harmed. That stress often takes a huge toll on mental health.

Fewer than 10% of American youths are LGBTQ+ but 24% of 12- to 14-year-old Americans who die by suicide are LGBTQ+, while 40% of homeless youths are LGBTQ+. It doesn’t take a logician to figure out why. Even today, many families kick out children who are gay. Other LGBTQ+ youths run away from home to escape physical abuse.

Some homeless LGBTQ+ children couch-surf at the homes of friends and family. Others wind up in shelters or live on the streets. Many end up trafficked. In his book “Dear America,” Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jose Antonio Vargas describes how he came out in high school when he was 16. Though he was a good student and never in trouble, Vargas’ grandparents, who were Filipino immigrants and Catholic, kicked him out when they learned.

Suddenly homeless, Vargas went to the home of a 38-year-old man whom he’d met in an internet chat room for gay men. He remained with the man until his grandparents asked him to return home. For many homeless LGBTQ+ youths, like all homeless teens, the enticement of shelter and meals makes them easy prey for human trafficking.

If the Catholic Church as an institution is unable to reflect on its innumerable recent crimes committed against children and stop new abuses, including this anti-LGBTQ+ policy, it might consider the financial consequences.

Many families in Northeast Ohio are watching to see if the Catholic schools their children attend will adopt the new anti-LGBTQ+ policies of the Diocese of Cleveland. Many Catholic parents are committed to instilling the virtues of compassion and love for all humanity in their children and will not spend their money on schools that promulgate bigotry and hypocrisy.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on October 8, 2023.

Parenting & Family

Son finds his way after worrying about future

September 28, 2023October 9, 2023 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

On a recent Sunday at Akron Family Restaurant, I was reminded of one of my earliest Beacon Journal columns in which I wrote about my eldest son, Claude. In January 2017, he took me to lunch at Akron Family to discuss his existential anxiety.

Claude was a freshly minted college graduate who didn’t know what to do next. In fact, instead of graduating the previous spring, when he had all the credits he needed, he took an extra semester at the University of Michigan.

With three more decades of life under my belt than my son, I knew Claude would be fine even if I could not tell him precisely how his life would unfold. He is curious and hardworking, which has made him many things, including pretty smart.

Claude met his closest friend at college the day they moved into the freshman dorms. Neal earned a degree in engineering, promptly left for Berkeley and began a Ph.D. program with a comfortable stipend. Claude envied Neal’s knowledge of what to do next, even if his friend wasn’t always satisfied.

“I sometimes think I should have taken a gap year after high school,” Claude told me over soup that day.

Thank God you didn’t, I thought.

My parents held entry-level jobs. My mother worked hard, mostly as a waitress, sometimes as a secretary, and lastly baking coffee cakes and fruit bars she sold at markets not unlike the Mustard Seed. My dad worked seldomly, usually retail when he did — a hardware store in Michigan, Circle K in Arizona.

Neither ever talked with me about going to college. After high school, I took classes here and there, including the University of Arizona and Wright State. Finally, at age 21, I settled in at Ohio State where I voraciously studied religion and French, receiving degrees in each at 26.

I set a different course for my children. “After high school,” I told them, “you go to college.” Not “you could” nor “you should,” but “you go.” However, I never pushed them toward, nor dissuaded them from, any particular major. “Just get a bachelor’s degree, that’s what matters.”

A gap year after high school, I feared, might easily lead to a long-term forestalling of college like me, or a permanent one like my parents.

But my children are different from my parents or me. They had a blueprint because I had gone to college and earned degrees. When they talked about juggling studying for tests and writing papers, I understood and could make suggestions.

Also, for four years as a single parent, I regularly brought home Pizza Bogo pizzas before heading off to night classes. I earned my graduate degree at age 44.

Today, my first three children have bachelor’s degrees.

In the years after that luncheon conversation, Claude did as I expected while doing things I could not have predicted. He worked a string of odd jobs, including a stint at Starbucks. They were not career inducing.

In the fall of 2019, Claude became an AmeriCorps VISTA and worked at the Summit Food Coalition, then located at Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank. He also worked several positions at Macaroni Grill to supplement his meager stipend.

Six months later, the pandemic hit. Claude loaded boxes of food into vehicles at distribution events and learned much about food insecurity, who it affects and why, and that the best-practices model for combating hunger is food stamps, not food banks.

“I want a career in which I can make a difference,” he told me.

He applied to graduate programs in public policy in the spring of 2020 when the country was in COVID lockdown. Ohio State’s hiring freeze extended to assistantships, knocking out Claude’s first choice, the John Glenn School of Public Affairs.

Maybe it was his AmeriCorps credentials, but Texas A&M’s George H.W. Bush School of Government and Public Service offered Claude a full ride with a generous stipend. In August 2020, he packed up his car, left his cats with me and drove to College Station.

Two years later, he was offered jobs by the federal and state governments. Choosing which to pick was something I could discuss, but my life’s experience held no blueprint for this. I suggested he discuss it with his grad school adviser.

Claude works for the EPA in Washington, D.C., a city we’ve always enjoyed visiting. His friend Neal finished his Ph.D. program and recently spent a long weekend with Claude in D.C. Both appear to have arrived at similar points in their careers.

Now almost 30, Claude was home for a visit when we went to Akron Family. He comfortably explained over breakfast how the federal EPA works with state and regional EPA offices, along with other federal agencies. He believes he’ll have a long career with the agency; it suits him.

Eight years ago, I told Claude I wished I had a crystal ball to show him where he would land. But, then again, doing so would have interfered with the maturity and wisdom he’s gained along his way. As I wrote in 2017, a successful life rarely follows a straight line to some prize, nor should it.

Now all I ask is that the next time Claude returns home, he retrieve his cats.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on September 17, 2023.

Uncategorized

Phone monopolies reap vast fortunes while overcharging customers for subpar service

September 13, 2023 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

When I was growing up in the 1970s, phones were strictly used to talk to people out of earshot. They were hardwired to walls and a cord connected the handset to the base. A home’s main phone was usually in the kitchen, which meant most calls took place there, too.

Phones today are entirely different, as is how we think of them.

My smartphone is a relatively tiny supercomputer capable of modes of communication few could have imagined in my youth. Instant connectivity, now more so through texting than calling, is ubiquitous.

Answers to most questions can be found using a smartphone’s chosen search engine and math teachers can no longer tell students they can’t go through life carrying a fancy calculator in their pocket. And yet many are the days I’d like to go back. Not for the slower pacing of communication with far fewer daily interruptions, though there is that.

No, at issue is that while much of the (seemingly miraculous) technology behind smartphones has been, and continues to be, developed in the United States, Americans pay more for less reliable cellphone service than citizens in most other developed nations.

There are two primary reasons for this. One is a lack of competition. In the past half century, the federal government has gotten soft on monopolies, which, as a result, have grown. Two companies, AT&T and Verizon, control the majority of U.S. cellphone plans.

The second is a similar government softness on regulation. The service for cellphones, which have overwhelmingly replaced landlines in the United States, is a significant percentage of most average households’ utility expenses.

For many years, my children and I were AT&T customers. When in 2011 we moved less than 2 miles away, we could not get reliable cell service inside the new house. AT&T’s response was to set up two small signal towers inside the home for a fee, promising me our cellphones would have reception equal to our old landline. Yeah … nope. We continued to walk around our house repeatedly asking, “Hello? Can you hear me now?”

My then-partner was a Verizon customer and did not suffer connection troubles in the house or anywhere else. Eventually, we moved onto his plan. That worked well and when I left my ex, my sons and I moved to our own Verizon plan.

And yet, whenever we called someone’s landline (mostly elderly friends), the caller ID would give my ex’s name. I spent a ridiculous amount of time calling Verizon with what proved to be futile requests to fix this problem. I decided the solution was to go back to AT&T. And I figured it’d been a couple of years so surely AT&T’s connectivity quality had improved on my side of town. Again, yeah … nope.

The boys and I returned to Verizon last fall for the superior connectivity. But as soon as we switched, multiple people told us their calls to us chronically failed. I missed several calls from an eventual employer, who luckily knows a friend of mine who told me about the calls not connecting.

For several weeks, my boys and I called Verizon about our inability to receive all calls. I also repeatedly asked that my activation fees be waived. Our connections were not fixed nor our activation fees waived until I became exasperated enough to file a complaint with the Ohio Attorney General’s Office.

Activation fees are simply monopolies getting away with making customers pay for the privilege of paying for cell service that is less reliable and more expensive than it should be. It’s like a playbook page from organized crime: You wanna do business with us? You gotta grease some palms.

Customer service reps told me the activation fees are necessary to keep cell tower equipment in sterling condition. Baloney. Between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2023, Verizon’s gross profits were $78 billion and AT&T’s were $72 billion.

In other words, Verizon and AT&T have more than enough money to maintain superior infrastructure without shaking down customers for money for nothing.

This summer, my incoming calls were once again not connecting. After Apple checked my phone and found no issues, the boys and I switched to T-Mobile. The connectivity was not great, but that’s not why we quickly moved back to Verizon.

We switched back because they billed us $1,725 for two phone purchase plans and other perks they can legally remand if a contract is broken in fewer than 24 months.

Even after we returned through Verizon’s Winback program, the company tried to pull the $1,725 from my bank account. Several other erroneous charges remained as well until I, once again, contacted the Ohio Attorney General’s Office. Soon thereafter, a very helpful Verizon corporate representative began fixing our account.

The representatives, both in the stores and on the phone at all three cellular companies, have been professional and courteous. It’s important to remember that the employees do not make their employer’s policies and understandable frustrations should never be taken out on the person just trying to make a living.

Last fall, the Biden administration announced an initiative to reduce or eliminate junk fees charged to consumers. Cellphone service activation fees — which are $35 on average for each line on a plan — should certainly be at the top of the list of fees to be outlawed.

Meanwhile, our legislators, including Akron’s congressional representative, Emilia Sykes, and U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, should seek to replicate the policies adopted in Europe that increased the number of cellphone companies, and thereby competition, which in turn improved service and lowered consumer costs.

This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on September 3, 2023.

Education

Feed bodies and brains healthy meals for kids to succeed in school

September 4, 2023October 9, 2023 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

“You are what you eat,” a cliche phrase commonly attributed to “your mother,” lives on generation after generation because it remains irrefutable.

Research published earlier this year highlighted something your mother would tell you is obvious — the more a food is processed, the less healthy it becomes.

Highly processed foods — packaged chips, cookies, beverages, frozen meals, canned meals such as beef ravioli —are made with industrial ingredients. They tend to last longer, cost less and contain high amounts of calories, sugar, fats, salt and many ingredients you cannot find in a household kitchen (think carrageenan).

Nearly 70% of what American children eat is highly processed, which, according to NPR reporting on the research, “has been linked to health concerns ranging from increased risk of obesity, hypertension, breast and colorectal cancer to dying prematurely from all causes.”

Akron Public Schools serves free breakfast and lunch to all of its students. Last year when I tutored at an APS elementary building, I arrived each day after the children had eaten breakfast.

But this summer when I taught APS’s four-week Third Grade Reading Academy, my students ate their free breakfast in our classroom. I saw that the food Akron schools serves its students is entirely processed, most of it highly so.

The main breakfast item is always a pastry (donuts, apple fritters, waffles, banana bread). The rest of the meal includes some form of packaged fruit and a half cup of a 100% juice.

In other words, complex sugar served with a side of sugary fiber washed down with four ounces of simple sugar.

Unless a student chooses milk instead of juice (none of mine ever did), there is no protein to the first meal of the day, which your mother has likely told you is the most important one.

Of my eight students, two were boys. One, whom I’ll call Josiah, is tall and athletic. Quick to smile, he’d answered me with, “Yes, ma’am” and “No, ma’am” and is equally comfortable talking with adults and other children.

The other boy, whom I’ll call Tyronne, is small and has strabismus, or eyes that do not track in unison. Not surprisingly, students with uncorrected strabismus have a higher rate of learning disabilities as it is harder to process visual information without binocular vision.

Tyronne, it is fair to say, worships Josiah while Josiah is a good friend to, and even protective of, Tyronne. I pointed out to Josiah that he is a powerful role model for Tyronne, who sometimes needed to regroup after working hard on the morning phonics lesson.

But mentors can lead proteges in multiple directions.

On our third morning together, Josiah came to school in a foul mood. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t pull him out of his funk. He’d look at me with his forehead bent toward the ground and his brow furrowed. Tyronne followed right along.

After multiple disruptions, I moved the boys, who sat next to each other, to opposite sides of the room. When they got up to dance around a few minutes later, I had the building’s behavior officer remove them from the class.

After lunch, Josiah and Tyronne returned to class with the other students. It took only a couple of minutes to see that Josiah was back to his usual, amiable self.

When the students worked independently that afternoon, I pulled Josiah aside and asked him what had been going on with him that morning.

“I was hungry,” he told me.

“But you had breakfast,” I said.

“I know, but I was still hungry.”

Sugar feeds neither the body nor the brain. Akron schools pump students with empty calories that give them a rush of energy, followed by a crash, leaving their bodies hungry for nutrition.

And then we blame them when they can’t sit still and learn.

The next day I brought in two large bowls. I filled one with apples and the other with clementines. I also brought in a bulk package of mozzarella cheese sticks. I told the students they were free to get up anytime and help themselves to the food.

Two staff members told me the kids wouldn’t eat fresh fruit, it’s not what they want. The opposite was true. Few were the days when all eight of my students were in attendance. Yet frequent were the days that ended with empty fruit bowls.

As for the cheese sticks, the only protein available before lunch, each day they were gone long before dismissal. And, yes, behavior and engagement improved.

Last December, the National Institutes of Health published an article titled, “Unhealthy school meals: A solution to hunger or a problem for health?” It’s a question every school district should be asking.

The federal funds provided to feed Akron’s students should not be spent on highly processed foods that fuel neither bodies nor brains while at the same time encourage dietary habits known to cause myriad long-term health problems and early death.

Feeding students healthy meals won’t solve all the problems facing a large urban district with high rates of poverty like Akron’s. But it would help. Doing so does not require an entirely new program, just a reworking of the current one.

The Drury Hotel chain runs a hot breakfast bar every day. They serve eggs (scrambled and hard boiled), breakfast meat, potatoes, biscuits and gravy, oatmeal, bagels, waffles, toast, yogurt and fresh fruit. On busier days they feed approximately 500 guests.

Holly Christensen:What do poor people look like? No different than everyone else

The school where I tutor has 374 students, up to a fifth of whom are absent on any given day. If profit-conscious hotels chains can serve a healthy breakfast, federally funded school meal programs can too.

Using the federal dollars currently spent on junk food to instead provide students nutritious meals that will help them learn is simply a no-brainer. Just ask your mother.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, August 13, 2023.

Postscript: Because the OSTs have a written portion that cannot be graded by a computer, the scores of my Third Grade Reading Academy students were not available when this story went to press. Six of my eight students passed. Josiah had the highest score in my class, having improved 29 points. Tyronne was one of the two students who did not pass, however, he improved his score by an impressive 33 points.

My students did so well because I am a good teacher. But serving them healthy foods also helped. What I did not mention in this column is that on the day the students took the OSTs, I brought them all Egg McMuffins from McDonalds. Yes, those are processed too, but Egg McMuffins include substantial protein and are far better in nutritional content than what APS gives students.

Furthermore, and as I discussed in my July 23, 2023 column, Gov. Mike DeWine committed something akin to a crime when he allowed Ohio’s third graders this year to all be promoted to the fourth grade whether or not they passed the reading portion of the OST. Given the huge losses in learning due to virtual instruction during COVID, Ohio should have prioritized sending kids who did not pass the OST back to the third grade with extra supports. What it that would have cost the state today is a fraction of what it will cost the state down the road. The teachers these kids will have in the next few years must try to teach history, literature, science and more to students who are functionally illiterate. Imagine how frustrating that will be for both the students and the teachers. Who benefitted from this wrong-headed idea? Certainly not Ohio’s students.

Education

Promoting unprepared third graders is a recipe for failure

August 7, 2023October 9, 2023 whoopsiepiggle2 Comments

A law that needs more carrots just lost its one big stick.

Since 2012, Ohio’s Third Grade Reading Guarantee has required all public school third graders to pass a state reading test. If a student did not pass, they had to repeat the third grade, even if the student’s guardians wanted them promoted to the fourth grade.

Ohio is not the only state that has had stringent reading requirements for promotion to the fourth grade, and for good reason. From kindergarten through the third grade, students acquire the educational entry skills of reading, writing, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

After the third grade, students apply these skills to learn about history, geography, science, literature and advanced math. Students who have not mastered the fundamentals of learning before entering the fourth grade are not likely to succeed in school. Or as I tell the third graders I tutor, “Someone with just a screwdriver can’t build a house – they need a toolbox full of tools.”

In 2013, Mississippi, which has the nation’s highest rate of child poverty, passed a third grade reading guarantee law similar to Ohio’s, which includes the requirement for third graders to pass a state reading test to enter the fourth grade.

Mississippi’s program is far more robust than Ohio’s, in part due to a $100 million reading institute created by Mississippi native and former Netscape CEO, Jim Barksdale.

Barksdale worked with the state government to implement teacher training in what is now called “the science of reading,” which emphasizes phonics. The state also expanded pre-K programs, particularly in struggling districts, and full-day school.

Mississippi diligently collects metrics on the impact of their efforts. The results have been tremendous. According to a recent story in the New York Times by Nicholas Kristof, the state has “moved from near the bottom to the middle for most of the exams — and near the top when adjusted for demographics.”

Measuring success and data collection are important. In the case of Mississippi, the data proves that poverty and racism cannot be accepted as an excuse to allow students to fail.

The Mississippi data also shows, contrary to common assumption, that repeating the third grade is not stigmatizing. In fact, by the sixth grade, students who have repeated the third grade are more academically successful than the students who just barely passed the third grade reading test.

COVID-19 not only revealed systemic problems in Ohio’s K-12 public schools, it made those institutional problems worse, particularly for the most vulnerable students – those with learning disabilities and the youngest students.

This past June, I taught Ohio’s four-week Third Grade Reading Academy (TGRA) to eight Akron Public Schools students who had not passed the Ohio State Test (OST) for reading during the school year. Our six-hour days were full of activity, but generally we spent mornings working on phonics and afternoons going over the reading sections of recent past OSTs.

It is important to state that the OST reading section is obtuse and should be replaced. Many of the passages are outdated, dull and contain language few third graders, regardless of demographics, would recognize. As for the questions, many are so far above a third grader’s abilities, I doubt most freshman at the University of Akron, where I also teach, would score 100%.

My students this summer were bright and worked hard. Some struggled with behavior issues born of hunger, trauma at home, and exhaustion from staying up late playing video games. But by our last week together, the group had become a band of supportive cohorts – and I, too, feel deeply invested in their success.

Last week, I called the district to see if they had received my students’ test results. Because the OST has a written portion, it cannot be graded instantly by a computer.

“We expect the results in August,” the woman I spoke with told me. “But you might want to sit down. A few days ago, Gov. DeWine signed House Bill 33 into law, which this year allows all third graders promotion to the fourth grade no matter what their scores are.”

Going forward, if a student does not pass the OST, the state will promote the child to the fourth grade at their guardian’s request. I expect enrollment in the Third Grade Reading Academy, which has proven to increase literacy, to plummet as it will no longer be a last-chance option.

Last year’s third graders were kindergartners in 2020 when Akron’s school buildings closed that March for what was to be an entire year. Already facing academic risk as students in a large urban district with high rates of poverty, these children missed essential instruction.

Ample research, particularly conducted during and after the pandemic, reveals that in-person instruction is far more effective than remote learning. This is particularly true for the youngest students and those with disabilities.

Furthermore, significant numbers of students in poorer districts had difficulties attending online instruction, functionally receiving little to no education for a year.

And now, instead of redoubling Ohio’s investment in its most vulnerable children by giving them one of the surest necessities for success in life – fluent literacy – the state is going to pass this group along unprepared for the fourth grade. A sure-fire recipe for failure.

In his piece on Mississippi, Kristof points out that before the state implemented its third grade reading guarantee, no matter how bad things were in other Deep South states, they could always say, “Thank God for Mississippi!” where it was inevitably worse. But, thanks to 10 years of investment and hard work, that is no longer the case.

Now they can just say, “Thank God for Ohio!”

This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on July 23, 2023.

Education

Akron school board has not learned its lesson with new hire

July 19, 2023October 9, 2023 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

Rushing to make important decisions usually leads to unintended and unwanted consequences.

Sometimes haste is unavoidable, such as when the federal and state governments responded to the COVID pandemic in 2020. There were problems, some of which could have been avoided with better oversight, but rapidly creating robust safety nets to sustain the multitudes who lost their jobs vastly outweighed any downsides.

However, when conducting a nationwide search for the superintendent of a troubled urban school district with more than 20,000 students and 47 school buildings, careful examination of both the district’s needs and the candidates’ qualifications is imperative.

When Akron’s school board chose the previous superintendent in April of 2021, only one of the two final candidates had any superintendent experience – Akron native Sandy Womack, Jr., who was, and remains, one of six regional (assistant) superintendents of Columbus City Schools.

But the school board instead hired the candidate with no prior superintendent experience, Christine Fowler Mack. Nineteen months later, Fowler Mack resigned and her nearly half million dollar severance package revealed just how eager the board was to part ways with someone they’d only recently hired.

Was a lesson learned? That is what a rabbi once asked one of my sons when he confessed to lying about an altercation with another student. Learning from mistakes cultivates not only intelligence, but discernment, an essential component of wisdom.

Many of the current members of the Akron school board were involved in the hiring of (and break up with) Fowler Mack. Ignoring calls from across Akron to choose the next superintendent after this fall’s elections, in which three of the board’s seven members must run for reelection, this spring the school board announced their plan to seat the next superintendent this summer.

By the June 5 application deadline, 23 candidates (of which nearly half were from Ohio) had applied for the position, including Mary Outley, the district’s interim superintendent. Outley has been the district’s executive director of elementary education since 2004.

On June 9, the school board president, Derrick Hall, told the Beacon Journal that he had been too busy to give more than a cursory glance at the candidate list (he was on military leave).

And yet less than a week later, the list had been winnowed to just seven candidates. Of the seven, only two are currently superintendents, Charlie Smialek of Parma City Schools and Kenny Rodriguez of Grandview (Missouri) C-4 School District. (While an important role, interim superintendent experience, which Outley now has, is not the same as being fully vested to run a district.)

Many school districts have just three buildings – one elementary, one middle and one high school. In such districts, the principal of one building may have the experience and skills to become superintendent of the district.

However, to assume someone who has never been a superintendent or assistant superintendent – or even someone in charge of a small district – could competently address the overwhelming challenges Akron’s schools face – from poverty, to discipline, to low attendance and literacy rates and much more – is pure folly. 

Besides Outley, the other Akron Public Schools’ administrator on the list of seven was Larry Johnson. Johnson is the district’s supervisor of secondary schools. Previously, Johnson was principal of Firestone High School, where he was well liked by students, parents, faculty, staff and me, as my third son was a Firestone student during Johnson’s tenure.

A few days after the list of seven was announced, the district’s teachers’ union endorsed Johnson. As much as I respect Johnson, like so many on that list, he lacks the experience to become Akron schools’ next superintendent.

On June 21, the school board cut Johnson, along with Smialek and Rodriguez, from the list, leaving just four candidates to choose from, none of whom are currently superintendents or assistant superintendents.

Underscoring the school board’s questionable judgement, one of the four candidates previously had been filmed and investigated for alleged assault and battery of two high school students – neither of whom filed charges – in the district where she worked. Luckily for Akron, that candidate withdrew her application.

Days later, the school board offered the job to C. Michael Robinson Jr., who is currently the chief academic officer of East Baton Rouge Parish School System in Louisiana. He was previously the superintendent of Pine Bluff School District in Arkansas, which, with 3,800 students and 10 school buildings, is roughly one fifth the size of Akron Public Schools.

Pine Bluff’s schools hired Robinson in 2016. Two years later, and a year before his contract was set to expire, Robinson asked to be let out of his contract. The Pine Bluff school board approved his request and Robinson left the district with a severance payment of $50,000 (his annual salary was $155,000).

APS superintendent search:Board selects C. Michael Robinson Jr. as district’s next leader., spokesperson explains why he left previous job

It is clear that the school board of Akron Public Schools has not learned a lesson.

What Akron Public Schools needs is a strong superintendent who can foster substantial, significant and systemic improvements to how the district operates and educates. 

Which begs the question, why did the school board rush the process and hire a candidate who any reasonable observer would realize is not qualified for such an important and difficult position?

The optics and the history of this hire, along with the hiring of former superintendent Christine Fowler Mack, point to a school board that wants a superintendent who won’t give them pushback.

Bluntly put, they want a weak superintendent they assume they can control.

And just how did that work for them last time?

This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, July 9, 2023.

Civil Rights

What do the poor look like? No different than anyone else.

June 19, 2023October 9, 2023 whoopsiepiggle1 Comment

What do poor people look like?

Perhaps the designers of the latest Harvest for Hunger ad don’t know people who are poor. The ad, which thanks everyone who contributed to the latest Harvest for Hunger Campaign, prominently features a of photo of a young girl sitting in front of a meal.

I imagine the design committee’s discussion as follows:

“A child who is neither too white, nor too Black.”

“She shouldn’t smile, but we don’t want her to look too sad either.”

“How can we make it clear that she’s poor?”

“I got it,” says one. “Let’s give her bed-head.”

The result is a hackneyed stereotype of the poor — a child whose hair is messy, a stand-in for dirty, which is just a short walk to laziness. Not far behind laziness is dishonesty. Charles Dickens couldn’t have done better.

“Please, sir? Can I have some more?” pathetically begs Oliver Twist in a room full of dirty, thieving orphans.

There is plenty we can do as a nation and a state to help the poorest of our citizens build lives that take them out of poverty. For starters, our country should fully fund SNAP, otherwise known as food stamps, which is nine times better at delivering food to hungry people than food banks.

I also applaud Gov. Mike DeWine for recently promoting the science of teaching reading and the importance of strong schools. As he’s pointed out, a qualified workforce attracts businesses to Ohio.

There is also much important work to be done locally. In fact, that’s often where the greatest impact occurs.

I worked this past school year in an Akron Public Schools’ elementary building with some of the poorest students in the district. These students may have many underserved needs, but they are as clean and well-groomed as any student body in an affluent district.

And most of children in the school where I tutor come from families that clearly love them — even the students whose parents do not prioritize getting their children to school regularly.

How do I know? Because of the way these students engage with others — openly and without fear, the way children who are regularly spoken to as full humans interact with other adults.

One 6-year-old girl, whom I reassigned to my more advanced reading group, told me her mother was fired for getting into a fight at work. This girl draws whenever she’s given the chance. Her drawings of people show an understanding of proportion and detail combined with heartwarming whimsy. In her portrait of me, I sport cat ears and a tail, along with my glasses.

One of her students drew this portrait of columnist Holly Christensen.

An older student, whose family lacks permanent housing, loves to read. She is chronically absent and likely wouldn’t need tutoring if she attended regularly. When she is in school, she seeks me out and we often talk about the books she’s reading.

The math program I teach to four fourth grade boys includes a story about a boy who was given money by his grandparents and then spent it on foolish things until he was broke.

“Why doesn’t he go around and mow his neighbors’ lawns?” these 9-year-olds adamantly suggested.

“That’s what he should do,” they said, indicating that working is a no-brainer solution.

Contrary to what some believe, poverty is complex, particularly multigenerational poverty.

In his book, “Rosa Lee,” based upon his Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative series for the Washington Post, Leon Dash provides an extended, and often harrowing, profile of a woman and family shackled in multigenerational poverty.

The book includes sociological research on what led to the Great Migration, in which Black Americans left the South in large numbers starting in 1910. Dash then explores the history of those who, like Rosa Lee’s family, settled in Washington D.C.

Rosa Lee had eight children and a life filled with the struggles of the underclass, including crimes related to addiction and sex work. What she was not, however, was dirty or lazy. Her small Section 8 apartment housed several family members. It was always spotless.

By the end of the seventh chapter of “Rosa Lee,” the stories of her and her family were so unendingly bleak, I didn’t know if I could finish the book.

Fortunately, Chapter 8 highlights two of Rosa Lee’s children who rose out of poverty. Each credits an adult who reached out to them when they were children. For one it was a social worker, for the other it was a teacher.

Again I ask, what do poor people look like? In my experience, mostly like everyone else.

Poverty is not an unsolvable problem. Strong national and state policies combined with local outreach can effect substantial change. Dismissing those among us who are poor as unworthy of our time and help for any reason is not just morally wrong, it is a loss of opportunity for everyone.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, June 11, 2023.

Civil Rights · Education

Akron students need school leaders to address issues

June 19, 2023October 9, 2023 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

Akron Public Schools has a leadership crisis.

In response to the pandemic, Akron schools remained remote for all students — with no exceptions — from March 2020 until March 2021. Yet by August 2020, well-publicized reports concluded that the educational costs of not allowing any students into the buildings for instruction were far greater than the risks presented by COVID.

The month after finally allowing students back into the buildings, the district hired a new superintendent, Christine Fowler Mack. Soon thereafter, and for several months, public disagreements among the superintendent, the school board and the teachers union left them all looking like cliques in a cafeteria food fight.

The dysfunction of those making important decisions for Akron’s students escalated and in January 2023 a teachers strike was narrowly averted. Days later, Superintendent Fowler Mack resigned.

The leadership deficit in Akron’s schools could not come at a worse time. Students in poorer districts have always fallen behind their richer counterparts, which was exacerbated by the pandemic. Researchers at the Education Recovery Scorecard have analyzed data from more than 7,800 communities in 41 states, resulting in some grim findings as reported in the New York Times:

“In 2019, the typical student in the poorest 10 percent of districts scored 1½ years behind the national average for his or her year — and almost four years behind students in the richest 10 percent of districts — in both math and reading.

“By 2022, the typical student in the poorest districts had lost three-quarters of a year in math, more than double the decline of students in the richest districts. The declines in reading scores were half as large as in math and were similarly much larger in poor districts than rich districts.”

I am a substitute tutor in an APS elementary building with some of the district’s most disadvantaged students. I am also a parent of a student in an APS elementary building with a population that is, on average, middle class. In both roles, I have witnessed some of the district’s most pressing issues.

Attendance

Post-pandemic attendance in Akron schools, like many urban districts nationwide, is devastatingly abysmal. Ohio requires 180 days of instruction each school year. I have students who have missed 50, 60 or more days this year. And when you break it down by hours per school year, it’s worse because chronically absent students routinely arrive late on the days that they do attend. Some of my students would not need tutoring if they attended regularly, while others exhibit learning disabilities. Yet because of the chronic absenteeism, the district is resistant to testing this second group of students for additional supports. Teachers, building administrators and staff in ancillary programs, such as Project Rise, which provides support for families experiencing housing insecurity, reach out to guardians in multiple ways. If attendance doesn’t improve, eventually the cases are referred to the courts where they typically languish.

Nothing being done now demonstrably addresses chronic absenteeism. This is a dire problem the next superintendent, school board and legal system need to prioritize with the utmost urgency.

Discipline

Yes, Akron schools have a discipline problem. For the most difficult cases, there are three go-to solutions: Temporary placement in the SOAR (Student Outreach Alternative Resources) program, moving a child to another building in the district and, if all else fails, placing the child at the Bridges Learning Center.

Bridges

Of the three, only the Bridges school seems to have any beneficial impact. According to the district’s website, Bridges “is an alternative school for students in grades K-12 that provides enhanced support for children with emotional or behavioral needs.”

However, and not surprisingly, Bridges does not have enough spots for the students who qualify. Are there federal pandemic dollars available to expand Bridges? Are there other resources the district can tap into to expand Bridges placement? All potential possibilities should be investigated and pursued, again, with the utmost urgency.

SOAR

The SOAR program, located in the district’s Conrad Ott building, is an independent organization staffed by its own employees who are not APS teachers. Theoretically, students with behavior problems are sent to SOAR for several days to address behavioral issues with counseling and academic supports. In reality, the many students sent to SOAR whom I know simply spent their days doing school work online. They received neither assessments to determine why they have behavioral issues nor coaching or counseling to improve their behavior. Essentially, teachers and classmates in the home schools are given a few days’ break from a child’s behavioral issues before the student returns and the disruptive behaviors inevitably resume.

A new superintendent might consider replacing the SOAR program with something run by the district where students learn appropriate ways to manage frustrations. This would benefit not only these students, but the instructional time of all students.

Placement in a different building

Finally, moving kids with severe behavior issues to different buildings is a lose-lose scenario. Let me be clear — these students are going from one standard school to another standard school, not one that specializes in behavior issues. They are taken from everyone and everything they know and shipped off to an entirely new environment.

I’ve witnessed these students arrive at my building and promptly express understandable fear and anger. One 8-year-old threw desks and chairs on his first day. Another was suspended for fighting on her first day.

According to the National Institutes of Health, “Youth who switch schools are more likely to demonstrate a wide array of negative behavioral and educational outcomes, including dropping out of high school.”

Why would anyone believe switching a student’s placement from one standard school to another standard school magically solve behavioral problems? It only makes them worse.

Chromebooks should stay at school

For every elementary student who does homework on their district-supplied Chromebook, 100 or more use them to stay up late playing video games, watching YouTube and scrolling social media.

Young children regularly fall asleep in class or during tutoring and state testing. Every day, every classroom.

The default should be for the computers to stay at the school where there is plenty of time to do the assigned Chromebook work, known as iReady. Exceptions can be arranged between guardians and teachers. Never in our lifetimes have students needed the best possible programs to address systemic deficits that were made significantly worse by a year of remote learning. The search for a new superintendent is underway and three school board members are up for reelection this fall. Yes, Akronites need to demand the hiring of the best possible leaders for the schools. But the gravity of today’s issues require the robust cooperation of our courts, our city officials as well as state and federal representatives.

To rescue an entire generation of students from inadequate preparation, which is a setup for a lifetime of struggle and — too often — failure, requires the implementation of documented successful educational practices. It won’t come easily or cheaply, but we must do better. The alternative is a future nobody wants.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, May 28, 2023.

Parenting & Family

Farewell, Mr. Tressler

May 31, 2023October 9, 2023 whoopsiepiggle2 Comments

This past January, my longtime friend Jen, who is my regular traveling companion and has made several appearances in these columns, called to tell me her father would soon die.

Several years ago, Mr. Tressler was diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer’s. And, yet, he seemed himself when Jen and I talked to him on the phone in May 2021 while we toured Iceland and again later that year when we went to Peru.

In January 2022, Jen, who lives in Philadelphia, spent two weeks with her parents’ at their home in Painesville, where they’ve lived since 1980. She, her dad and her eldest daughter came to Akron to shop at their favorite thrift store, Village Discount Outlet on Waterloo, and visit me.

Over lunch at my home, Mr. Tressler recounted various times over three decades that he and I had visited, both with and without Jen. I had forgotten several of these accounts until he shared them. That I was in his long-term memories when he was no longer able to write his own name was an honor unlike any other.

Jen’s job as a triage nurse for a medical practice at the University of Pennsylvania periodically allowed her to work remotely. Every month or two, she’d come to Ohio to spend a week helping her family take care of her dad while also spending increasingly precious time with him.

During one of her stays late last spring, I drove my youngest two kids to Painesville where we spent the afternoon and dinner with Jen and her family.

Mr. Tressler seemed unchanged from January and, again, we talked of many things. While dishing up bowls of ice cream, he showed me his significant collection of ice cream scoops. Upon learning I had none, he gave me one.

Two months later, Mr. Tressler’s Alzheimer’s specialists told the family he was beginning to decompensate and would soon need full-time care. Jen and I were shocked, but like Delphi oracles, the specialists were tragically correct.

When Jen called this past January, I asked if her mother would be OK if I visited Mr. Tressler at Kemper House, where he was living. Some families prefer their loved one with Alzheimer’s to be remembered as they were without the disease. And, too, some people with Alzheimer’s are agitated by visits.

Mrs. Tressler told Jen she welcomed my visit, but then, just two days later and before I could make the trip, Mr. Tressler died.

I first introduced readers to Jen when I wrote of the 14 months that she, her husband, Milan, and their four daughters circumnavigated the globe beginning in August 2015. This past fall, after their two eldest daughters had graduated from college and high school, the family again left the country, this time to tour Central America and South America for several months.

They were in Patagonia, at the southernmost tip of South America, when Mr. Tressler died. Returning in time for the funeral proved overly complicated and costly. On my drive to the funeral, Jen called and asked if I could do something neither of us would have thought of before the pandemic: Zoom her into her dad’s funeral.

Jen’s mother, siblings and their spouses sat in the first row of pews at St. Gabriel’s Catholic Church in Concord. I sat behind them in the second row, holding my phone up so Jen could see and hear their parish priest perform the funeral rites.

Before he developed Alzheimer’s, Mr. Tressler could be described as gruff. He grew up in a working-class Ukrainian community in Reading, Pennsylvania, and married his sweetheart soon after they finished high school. He worked hard every day of his life and didn’t suffer nonsense. But he could also assess a person’s character with mystical accuracy. And if he found you measured up, you could forever count on him.

John and Elaine Tressler share a moment last fall. — Mrs. and Mr. Tressler share a moment last fall.

After Mr. Tressler’s. death, Jen and her siblings learned of their father’s unadvertised history of generosity. The people he helped and how he helped them revealed a man who understood firsthand what it meant to have little and that being poor is not a character flaw.

The priest shared many stories of Mr. Tressler’s quiet largesse, including the time he arranged and paid for the dental work for the city worker who collected the family’s trash each week.

Far too many people past the age of 30 have experienced the vicissitudes of a friend or family member losing their memories, personalities and lives to Alzheimer’s disease.

But, as I have shared in previous columns, current Alzheimer’s research is promising. Studies around the world, including those focused on people with Down syndrome, look to yield preventative and corrective treatments in the coming years. That is something everyone can welcome.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, May 7, 2023.

Civil Rights · Local Politics

Akron’s stagnant status quo has got to go

April 27, 2023October 9, 2023 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

Coaches do it. CEOs do it. Teachers do it. Parents do it. And, ideally, elected officials do it. They routinely ask: What worked? What would work better? What failed, and why?

Sometimes the limitations of an approach are revealed when implemented, particularly in situations that are uncommon. An unwillingness to consider that a different response may have yielded better results all but guarantees that past failures will be repeated.

It’s hard to find Akronites who think our current mayor and his administration responded perfectly to last summer’s killing of Jayland Walker by eight Akron police officers.

And yet five days before a grand jury chose not to indict Walker’s killers, mayoral candidate Marco Sommerville claimed the current mayor’s administration, in which he serves as deputy mayor for intergovernmental relations, “handled [the Jayland Walker killing] the best way we could have handled it.” He spoke as if it was all in the past, as if the horror and outrage over Walker’s killing had magically dissipated.

After the grand jury decision, Sommerville issued a call for change that was too little too late. “I do know that community safety and police reform go together, and Akron needs both,” he said. “We need our law enforcement members and our community members to commit to lasting change.”

Wounds left to fester do not heal. Even before the grand jury announced last Monday that they would not indict any of the eight officers who shot Walker, freshly boarded windows downtown signaled the tension that remains 10 months after Walker was shot 46 times.

Peaceful protests understandably resulted in the days after the grand jury’s decision. At a march last Wednesday, reporters filmed police pepper spraying the crowds while also deploying chemical canisters.

Because too many Akron leaders like Sommerville think everything was handled just fine last summer, nothing was learned and here we are again.

In polling, Akronites claim to want new leaders with fresh ideas who will move the city forward. Unfortunately, the May 2 primary likely will be the de facto general election for who becomes Akron’s next mayor as there are no Republican candidates.

Akron mayor’s race:Akron mayoral hopefuls answer citizen questions in latest debate

Is Akron truly ready to pivot to a new direction and away from the stagnant status quo?

Consider the fraught White Pond Drive development. Issues include the viability of the land for housing given the soil’s toxicity and the destruction of wetlands and trees that the city itself identified as essential to managing Akron’s stormwater, pollution and summer heat.

There also are concerns about pursuing high-priced housing on the edge of town when so many neighborhoods in the inner city are filled with vacant lots.

But more concerning was Mayor Dan Horrigan’s peevishness when citizens learned of the secretly planned development and quickly organized against it. Horrigan’s open disdain for these citizens, and the council members who opposed the development, revealed an administration whose members flout accountability to the people they have sworn to serve.

Shortly after the trees on the future development site were cut down, the Beacon Journal informed readers about Section 56, a provision that has been in Akron’s budgets for 57 years. It has effectively given mayors a legal way to work around the checks and balances outlined in the city’s charter, which requires expenditures of $50,000 or more to be approved by City Council.

Learning about Section 56 was an “Ah-ha” moment. With Section 56, the option for a mayor to legally ignore the charter, essentially the constitution of our city, has been baked into every budget for six decades.

As a result, consultants have been paid huge sums to do work that city employees are also paid to do. Contracts are awarded without public bidding. And in the past two years alone, Mayor Horrigan has awarded contracts worth more than $121 million without city council oversight.

That is not good governance, but last month enough members of City Council voted to approve the current budget that contains, yet again, Section 56 with no modifications. Two who voted “yes” were council-at-large members Jeff Fusco and Ginger Baylor. Both are running for re-election and have latched their campaigns onto Sommerville’s.

Last fall, Fusco proposed a City Council resolution opposing citizen-backed police reform. It was directly aimed at thwarting Issue 10, a ballot initiative to create a citizen-led police review board whose members are chosen by City Council. City Council never voted on Fusco’s proposed resolution and in November’s election Issue 10 passed with 62% of the vote.

When City Council voted to seat the members of the police review board earlier this year, Fusco was chief among those opposing Imokhai Okolo, a 27-year-old Black attorney, as one of the board’s nine members. Young Black men are disproportionately the victims of police brutality in this country, making their inclusion on the review board not just important, but essential.

Fusco said he opposed Okolo, who was also opposed by the FOP, because last summer, in the wake of Walker’s killing, the young attorney had referred to police officers who aren’t held accountable for their violence as “pigs” on his Facebook page. Baylor switched her vote from supporting Okolo in early rounds to abstaining in the final round. She and Fusco now have campaign signs listing both their names and Sommerville’s.

Fellow Akronites, reflect on those who are currently in office. Many are honorable servants. But far too many others are comfortable conducting the city’s business in ways that may work for them, but clearly do not work for all the people of Akron. We can move our city forward only by voting for officials who support good governance that includes transparency and sorely needed checks and balances.

New faces with fresh ideas running for mayor and City Council in the May 2 primary can be found at the League of Women Voters voting guide.

This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, April 23, 2023.

Local Politics

Malik, Mosley and Greer offer best hopes for Akron’s next mayor

April 13, 2023October 9, 2023 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

In the recent Akron mayoral debates, Marco Sommerville‘s performance has underscored my position, outlined in my March 5 column, that he should not be Akron’s next mayor. Luckily, these debates have also shown voters they have a strong slate of candidates to consider.

At the first debate, Sommerville was hubristically ill prepared, as if the debates are a pretense he must endure before becoming Akron’s 63rd mayor. He also churlishly mocked another candidate by raising his hand and making it “talk” like a sock puppet when the other candidate spoke.

At a subsequent debate, in which the questions were provided in advance, Sommerville read prepared answers. For rebuttals to other candidates’ comments, his six opponents (all seated at the same table) watched in astonishment as Sommerville received text messages on his cellphone, which he quickly read before responding.

Adding important voices to the debates are candidates Keith Mills, a high school teacher, and Joshua Schaffer, a cellphone store manager. But neither have the experience to run a city with $772 million annual operating budget and roughly 2,000 full-time employees.

Interestingly, Schaffer routinely doles out pointed criticism of the candidates who’ve worked in local government, with the glaring exception of Tara Mosley and Jeff Wilhite.

Wilhite, a Summit County Council representative, has a command of the issues, an engaged demeanor and, frankly, the dignity that Sommerville lacks. He might have been a serious contender in previous elections, but after decades of white, middle-aged men being mayor, Akron voters are demanding change and his chances of winning seem a long shot.

Malik had the admirable chutzpah to announce his candidacy not only first, but before the current mayor, Dan Horrigan, announced he would not seek re-election. A 2009 graduate of Firestone High School, Malik has an impressive resume, work ethic and detailed plans for Akron’s future.

After graduating from Harvard Law School in 2016, Malik worked with every department and at every level of Akron’s government for two full years as an assistant director in the city’s law department. He’s now in his fourth year as a city council representative. Concerns about his lack of experience are specious.

Two months after Malik announced his candidacy, Ward 5 council representative Tara Mosley threw her hat in the ring. Ward 5 is a long, skinny ward that runs through the heart of the city and encompasses some of Akron’s most diverse and lowest income neighborhoods.

For 10 years, Mosley has exhibited calm and effective leadership while addressing difficult problems not faced in every ward. The past year has proven that Akron can no longer avoid addressing systemic issues of race and policing and Mosley’s time representing Ward 5 gives her a clear-eyed perspective on what needs to happen.

And then there is Mark Greer, who was until recently the Great Streets administrator and Small Business Program manager for the city of Akron. He filed his paperwork to run for mayor just before the deadline.

Greer was very hands-on in his roles at the city, and many small business owners are on record as enthusiastically appreciating his leadership. While his late entrance in the race meant an uphill battle for him to break through the crowded field, his performance in the debates shows he can win that battle.

Like Malik and Mosley, Greer has a deep knowledge of the city’s issues and promise, and well thought-out plans on how to address the former and maximize the latter.

Greer also brings an element of gravitas to the race, which was prominently displayed after Sommerville made a tone-deaf statement at the social justice debate at Garfield Community Learning Center just a mile from where Jayland Walker was shot and killed by police last summer.

That night, Sommerville described — as he has in every debate — technology that allows police to shoot a tracking dart onto cars that flee. Police can track that vehicle without a chase and then, as Sommerville put it, “move in for the kill.” His comment surprised the audience, and yet Sommerville didn’t acknowledge the horror of his own words until asked about it after the debate.

When Greer next spoke in that debate, he stated, “First of all on behalf of anyone who has experienced violence or trauma at the hands of law enforcement, when I heard one of my colleagues say ‘move in for the kill,’ I apologize,” he said. “That is not the language that is going to move this community forward.”

Greer’s response to Sommerville’s painfully gross language — he was the only candidate to do so that night —showed another side of leadership our community desperately needs: someone who facilitates healing.

Akron, we have a group of strong mayoral candidates who are forward thinking. I emphatically encourage everyone to watch the debates on April 5 and April 12 hosted by The Akron Press Club, Ideastream Public Media, Akron Beacon Journal and the Ohio Debate Commission. These will be the most rigorous of the election cycle.

How the candidates perform is not a one-to-one ratio of anyone’s ability to run our city, but it’s as good a test as there is before May 2.

This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, April 2, 2023.

Education

Model teacher leaves lasting impact on children’s lives

April 4, 2023October 9, 2023 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

Wise women have guided me through some of the most difficult journeys of my life. My Ohio State undergraduate mentor and thesis adviser, Susan Huntington, who remains a dear and esteemed friend, is one. Another is Barbara Roman, the attorney who represented me through a more than three-year-long contentious divorce.

But there is a special place in my soul for the woman who immeasurably helped two of my sons.

We lived in central Pennsylvania when my first son, Claude, was old enough to go to school. I enrolled him in the nearby Friends school, which taught the peaceful resolution of conflict alongside reading and math.

The teachers and facility were engaging and warm. There were chicks hatched in classrooms, field trips to farms and a full-time assistant in each kindergarten classroom. And yet my boy didn’t like school. He wasn’t catching on and he was smart enough to know it.

Claude’s peers took to reading the way my second son did three years later — like a switch that flipped. Claude’s teachers told me not to worry. Boys develop slower than girls, they said. He’s bright, they said. He’ll get it in his own time, they said.

But he didn’t. Something wasn’t right. The same boy who could tell me everything about the habitat, habits and life cycle of beavers could not read a flashcard word just seconds after I’d told him the word.

When we moved to Cleveland in January of his kindergarten year, I did not enroll Claude in a school because of his anxiety. Two months later, I filled out an application for him to attend Ruffing Montessori School. After the required evaluation of prospective students by teachers, they rejected Claude because he couldn’t read. Maria Montessori grimaced in her grave.

Claude began first grade at Urban Community Catholic School, which was close to our home and recommended by friends. Once again, he was miserable.

I tried several schools — public, parochial and private. At every school, I asked the educators and administrators, “Why can’t Claude decipher letters and numbers?” They knew, but did not answer truthfully. Private and parochial schools can exclude children who need more help. Public schools saw him as bright and not a behavior problem and, therefore, ignored my concerns.

We ended up at Spring Garden Waldorf School in Copley. I drove my children from downtown Cleveland every school day for over two years before finally moving to Akron.

Claude’s stress evaporated at the Waldorf school, but by the end of second grade, he could barely read. A mother is most concerned about her child with the greatest need and I regularly told myself to focus on my other two children.

The following summer, while on vacation at a Buddhist family camp we’d attended for several years, I met a woman who was a pediatric occupational therapist.

“My son holds his pencil like a violin bow,” I told her.

“You need to get him tested immediately,” she replied, which was something I didn’t know I could do. “Poor pencil grip is a red flag for learning disabilities. And don’t be afraid of diagnoses. Remember, with every diagnosis comes funding for supports.”

Claude was tested the fall of his third grade year and diagnosed as severely dyslexic. I called the local chapter of the American Dyslexic Association and asked for a tutor referral.

“The best person is Pam Kanfer. I’d send my own child to her in a heartbeat,” the woman I spoke with said.

Pam was a teacher at the Lippman Day School and I imagined her country address belonged to a quaint farmhouse. But when we arrived, there was a gate with an intercom pad to request entry. Beyond it was a lengthy driveway that meandered past a pond to a modern mansion.

At the time, Pam tutored students in a home office she shared with her husband, Joe. Many of the books on Joe’s shelves were about Judaism. For my undergraduate degree in religious studies, I was required to study a major Eastern and Western religion. I chose Buddhism and Judaism.

“Is your husband a professor of Jewish studies?” I asked.

“No, Judaism is his avocation. He’s the CEO of GOJO.” My face revealed my ignorance (I’d just moved to Akron), so she told me, “We make Purell hand soaps.”

Within three months of working with Pam, Claude went from not being able to spell his name correctly to devouring early reader chapter books. In 2016, he graduated cum laude with a degree in English literature from the University of Michigan. Last year, he received his master’s in public policy from Texas A&M and today he is a congressional liaison for the EPA in Washington, D,C.

By the time my third child, Jules, was in kindergarten, I recognized that he, too, was dyslexic. His father, with whom I was in the midst of that long divorce, disagreed. I took Jules to Akron Children’s Hospital for testing. They confirmed what I knew. And yet his father refused to help.

Pam reduced her rate for me and, like Claude before him, saw Jules for several years.

In all, I went to the Kanfer home multiple times a week for the better part of 10 years. I watched her children grow up, get married and have children. Joe and I talked about Judaism, shared books and once he asked me which of a few mock-up hand-sanitizer bottles I preferred.

I sat in their kitchen on Pam’s 60th birthday while Jules was in session. The next day, I gave birth to my fourth son. Around that same time, Pam asked me to write a recommendation letter for her as part of an application to a graduate program in reading remediation. The teacher kept learning.

A woman who worked in the Kanfer home, and with whom I often chatted, was impressed that Pam never reacted in anger. Pam was firm, but not dour. She believed in people and in my mind embodied the Buddhist concept of maitri, or loving kindness.

This past January, just a few weeks shy of her 73rd birthday, Pam left this life after a long battle with cancer.

A saying that is (mis)attributed to several people goes something like: Of all the things you can do with your life, none is more important than helping a child.

Were we all to model ourselves after Pam Lewis Kanfer, nirvana might be obtainable.

This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on March 19, 2023.

Local Politics

Why Marco Sommerville should not be Akron’s next mayor

March 26, 2023October 9, 2023 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

My eldest son was a freshman at Akron Early College High School the same year I provided educational outreach at a similar high school in the region. While both schools had the same model — high schools on college campuses whose students take some classes at the host university — the difference between the two schools’ faculties was striking.

Most evenings my son, Claude, regaled me with stories about his teachers. Doc Hensley, a former nun and Army officer who had her PhD in math, replaced Claude’s fear of advanced math with a joy for how numbers do not lie. Larry O’Neil taught world history so energetically and passionately that Claude later wrote a college application essay about him.

At the school where I worked, however, far too many teachers lacked energy or enthusiasm. One teacher, whose students I worked with for several months, never got up from her desk in my presence except to head to the faculty lounge where I’d overhear her complain about the students.

In a discussion with the then-principal of Akron Early College I learned that, unlike the school where I worked, Akron’s school refused to hire teachers based on seniority. This didn’t mean some of the faculty didn’t have seniority — Doc Hensley retired not long after Claude had her. But they were all chosen strictly on their qualifications.

Marco Sommerville has entered the upcoming Akron mayoral race as the hand-picked successor of current mayor, Dan Horrigan and is endorsed by former mayor Don Plusquellic. Plusquellic also tapped Horrigan when he first ran.

Sommerville’s more than 35 years in local politics is touted by his supporters as a reason, if not the reason, for him to be the next mayor. Yes, Sommerville understands how Akron’s government currently works, but few Akronites are pleased with how it currently works.

In the results of a poll released last week and published in this newspaper, “Akron residents resoundingly said they want a leader with high ethical standards, fresh ideas and a clear vision for the city, by margins of 71% or better.” Fewer than half of the respondents prioritized prior city experience in a new mayor, underscoring the desire for change.

According to a political scientist at the University of Akron who reviewed the poll’s numbers, the emphasis on reform in Akron politics is stronger than the emphasis on economic growth. Which makes sense — if our current government officials are inept, ineffectual or worse, how can they successfully plan for and enact sustainable economic growth?

By the numbers:What Akron wants in a mayor and what the next mayor should do

Yet if Sommerville is Akron’s next mayor that’s just what we’ll get — we’ll get four more years of stagnant leadership.

In remarks at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event this year at the Akron-Summit County Main Library, Sommerville pointed out a problem in our community: approximately 10% of Akron’s police force and fire department are Black.

Good governance would have the percentage of Akron’s Black police officers and firefighters closer to 30%, which is our percentage of Black residents. Sommerville’s solution? The empty aphorism, “We have much work to do.”

Why, in 35 years in local government, including several years with his hands on the levers in high-level positions, hasn’t Sommerville developed and deployed a comprehensive plan to rectify the lack of Black representation on our police force and in our fire department?

Perhaps he was just too busy.

Sommerville was the city council representative for the ward I live in when I moved here in 2003. On a mild afternoon a couple of years later, my adolescent sons called to tell me that I could not come home because the police had barricaded the street on our block. Using bullhorns, they told residents to stay in their homes.

Just five houses down from our home, a young man who appeared high on drugs waved a handgun out of a second-floor window for the better part of half an hour. Because our street curves, the man had a clear shot at our front yard.

I have witnessed excellent police work in my neighborhood many times in the past two decades, but none better than that day. The Akron police controlled the situation, successfully protected residents and ultimately accessed the room the man was in and then tased, cuffed and arrested him.

In the days that followed, I repeatedly called my council representative, Marco Sommerville, and left multiple messages at his council office and at his business office. I never, ever heard back from him. Nor did any of my neighbors.

In 2022, several events highlighted leadership problems in Akron’s city government, police department and schools. But calls for Sommerville to return us to the halcyon days of Mayor Plusquellic are like Russians waxing nostalgic for their former Soviet dictators when the often-embarrassing Boris Yeltsin was their democratically elected president.

Akron’s Democratic city government reminds me of Ohio’s Republican state government. Both have been ruled by one party, and many of the same faces, for decades. As a result, officials who do not fear losing their seats pay little mind to the needs of the communities they purport to serve.

Holly Christensen:Wanted: Real leaders in Akron

Under a Sommerville mayorship our city’s potent promise might as well be placed in a lead vault that is then coated in rubber and buried in the deepest part of Summit Lake.

Like some of the high school teachers I witnessed counting down their days to retirement, there’s plenty of reason to believe Marco Sommerville is running for mayor because he believes after 35-plus years in Akron government, his ascension is his reward.

Whether Akron’s voters truly want new leaders with fresh ideas or just more of the same will be determined on May 2.

This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on March 5, 2023.

Local Politics

Wanted: Real leaders in Akron

February 28, 2023October 9, 2023 whoopsiepiggle1 Comment

Both generational Akronites and those recently transplanted here often tout our city’s advantages: great parks, a phenomenal housing stock that’s affordable, arts and culture institution and venues, and a sizable university with many highly rated programs. The weather is neither too hot, nor too cold. And the people are friendly.

Other mid-sized cities located outside the sunbelt have become desirable post-industrial places, hotspots even. Consider Overlook Park, Kansas; Fort Collins, Colorado; Boise, Idaho; Omaha, Nebraska; Madison, Wisconsin and more. But few in this list have the combined geography, climate and arts, educational and cultural institutions Akron enjoys.

Unlike those cities, however, Akron is like a promising runner stuck at the starting block. Without invested, visionary leaders, the city’s potential remains unharnessed and less able to attract people and businesses that would make our community thrive.

Part of the problem is the three-decades-long stranglehold one man had on the top leadership position. Don Plusquellic was so secure in his position as mayor of Akron that when he abruptly announced his retirement in 2015, few, if any, leaders had been cultivated to fill his shoes.

Similarly, Akron’s city council has far too many representatives who have been there for far too long and become ossified to change. Motivated primarily to protect their positions rather than develop a bold, long-term vision of the city, council as a whole does not have what Akron needs.

How long have Akron’s elected officials touted the decommissioning of the Innerbelt to make way for vibrant development along the city’s western flank? A quarter of a century. And yet the road to nowhere remains. It is a concrete barrier between downtown and the neighborhoods brimming with possibilities on the other side.

Yes, some interesting work is happening downtown, particularly on Main Street. But it started before the COVID pandemic and has progressed at a snail’s pace, forcing businesses to close and increasing vacancy rates — stifling, rather than invigorating, downtown. Just who exactly benefits from this never-ending project?

Meanwhile over at Akron Public Schools, where I tutor elementary students, we have a school board with too many members who do not spend real time in the buildings and an administration that, until a teachers strike became imminent, seemed deaf to the concerns of faculty, staff, students and parents.

Three of my children have graduated from Akron Public Schools and I have two more whom I hope will. But I am far from alone in stating I won’t keep my kids in the district if substantive improvements do not happen in our schools beginning now.

A strong public school system is an essential component of a thriving city. Without it, middle-class families leave for better school districts. Without middle-class families, cities become donuts with big holes. Neighborhoods decline, tax revenues decline, the quality of city parks decline, businesses relocate.

A quality workforce is one of the top things businesses look for when considering locating in a community and one of the surest ways to grow a solid workforce is through education.

Before becoming Akron’s chief of police in August of 2021, Steve Mylett‘s last job was chief of police for Bellevue, Washington, a well-to-do, mid-sized city in the same county as Seattle. Bellevue has a median income near $115,000 and its population is 63% white and 2% Black.

Less than a year into his job, it was clear that Mylett’s previous experience and acumen did not prepare him to run a police department in a city with far fewer resources and far greater diversity than the one he’d left.

It is impossible to avoid a comparison between the Memphis police chief’s response to the recent police killing of an unarmed Black man there with Mylett’s response to the police killing of Jayland Walker here seven months ago.

Within days after an unarmed man in Memphis was beaten to death by police after a traffic stop, the names of five of the officers involved were made public. In a few short weeks, those five officers were fired from the department and prosecutors filed murder charges.

Meanwhile, more than seven months after eight police officers shot Walker 46 times, also an unarmed Black man stopped initially for a traffic violation, we still do not know the names of those officers. The officers not only were not fired, they were returned to administrative duties little more than four months after the killing.

Lawsuit filed:Beacon Journal asks Ohio Supreme Court to order release of Akron police records

Akron’s police department owes Akron’s citizens transparency, not obfuscation; accountability, not entrenchment. Without transparency and accountability, neither of which anyone expects from Mylett, our community has a festering wound that will not heal.

Akron has so much promise, but a fish rots from the head down. Our city will not sprint from the starting block and head toward a better future unless we, its citizens, sweep out ineffectual leaders and support the election (or hiring) of people with innovative thinking, energy and a commitment to all of Akron’s citizens.

The primary for the mayor’s race is May 2 and incumbent Dan Horrigan is not running. As many believe the Democratic winner will be our de facto next mayor, it’s important not to forgot this spring’s election.

Akron primary May 2:These eight people want to be the next mayor of Akron

This fall, three school board members will be up for re-election. Look closely at their actual involvement in our city’s schools and decide at the polls if they should keep their positions.

Fall is also when Akron’s citizens choose their city council representatives. As three incumbents are vacating their seats, we will certainly have three new representatives. Hopefully there will be more than those three. Several new voices, many from younger generations, are clambering to replace current incumbents. Listen to what they have to say.

Rise up, Akron. We, her citizens, are her lifeblood. It’s time to clear out the rot and race toward the future we know is possible.

This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, February 12, 2023.

Parenting & Family

New puppy is a fluffy bundle of joy and mischief

February 10, 2023October 9, 2023 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

For 40 years I have lived with German shepherds and Shetland sheepdogs, unfussy working breeds. Usually I’ve had one of each, the protective temperament of the German shepherds complemented by the gladly obedient Shelties. 

I train my dogs to be well behaved, not to do tricks. They follow me wherever I go, inside and out, and ride in the car with me most days, weather permitting. My current Sheltie, the fourth I’ve owned, often keeps my feet warm when I write.

Perhaps I’m a bit boring having the same type of dogs for four decades, but the intelligence and steady personalities of German shepherds and Shelties suit me and my practical nature.

Recently I discovered that old dog owners can learn new things. 

In mid-December, someone gave me a delightful present: a 12-week-old Yorkipoo. Half Yorkshire terrier and half miniature poodle, this 5-pound creature has captured the  adoration of my family like Harry Styles in a stadium full of Gen Zers.

The names we’ve considered for our new boy include Steve, Roger, Frankie, Elroy, Odin. Someone suggested Hannibal and was promptly voted off the naming committee. 

I’ve taken to calling him Henry, which in French sounds a bit like “ornery,” an apt description for most puppies. Meanwhile, my 12-year-old son, Leif, insists upon calling him Ozzie.

When waiting for him to do his business in the January cold, I summon my best Eliza Doolittle and call out, ” ‘enry ‘iggins, go pee already!” Leif, on the other hand, hollers “Ozzieozzieozzie” when he wants the puppy to come. My 10-year-old daughter goes with the flow, calling him Henry when she’s near me and Ozzie around her brother.

It seems people have strong opinions about the names Henry and Ozzie. My neighbors say Ozzie will not do as it reminds them of Ozzy Osbourne. The groomer (who, after 23 years, has known all but my first two dogs) thinks Ozzie is an adorable name, which is what she writes on his appointment card.

After weeks of the Henry-Ozzie debate, we’ve decided he can have two names. Most pets have endearing nicknames and still manage to come when called.

Angus, my 6-year-old Sheltie, mostly ignores the puppy. That is, until I throw a toy. Angus races to the toy and makes it abundantly clear that only he may pick it up. Once he does, Henry barks at Angus, who soon drops the toy. Henry then grabs it and returns to me for another round of fun.

Unlike Angus, my German shepherd, Otto, is as smitten with the wee canine as we are. During more than one virtual meeting I’ve had to explain that the loud moans of pain are those of my 90-pound dog being tormented by a puppy so small that Otto could eat him in two bites but chooses not to. 

On our daily 2-mile walks, Otto glides with long-legged strides that make his speed look effortless. Right behind him, Henry’s short legs pump up and down like mini pistons as he cartoonishly tries to keep up.

Little Henry finds a big friend in Otto.

My eldest son, Claude, was home and worked remotely for two weeks over the holidays. Even more practical than me, we often refer to him as the family monk. So I was shocked (and delighted) when I found him regularly putting Henry on his chest under his sweater where the puppy would sleep while Claude sat in on conference calls and meetings.

Just before Christmas, Claude and I found $5 dog sweaters at Aldi’s. Later that night, he brought Henry to me all decked out in a sweater with “Fa-la-la-la-la” written on the back.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” said Claude, “but I want to buy this puppy more outfits and dress him up.”

We soon did just that. 

I’ve always thought of my Shelties as having big-dog personalities in smaller-sized bodies. I had no idea a far smaller dog could also come equipped with outsized personality and intelligence.

At Henry’s first appointment, my longtime vet and friend Julie Brown-Herold was not surprised by our latest addition to the family. Instead of asking why I decided to adopt my first smidge of a dog, she told me how wonderful all these poodle mixes are. 

“When our golden retriever died,” she said, “I didn’t want another big dog. Our kids are grown, we’re getting older, so we got a little poodle mix, too.”

Up until a month ago, I would never have dreamed of clearing out a dresser drawer for dog clothing. But that’s just what I did earlier this week. I also didn’t foresee buying a sling to carry my puppy around like I used to carry my human babies. 

While my dogs now come in large, medium and extra small, each holds an equal portion of our hearts.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, January 22, 2023.

Education

Akron Public Schools needs to enforce real solutions to behavior issues

January 26, 2023October 9, 2023 whoopsiepiggle1 Comment

When I was in the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grades, teachers often pulled me into the hallway, had me bend over and put my hands on my knees. They then whacked me (as students called it) with a one-by-four wooden paddle that looked like a short cricket bat. Some paddles had Swiss-cheese-like holes to increase pain.

Apparently policies and procedures on giving or receiving whacks were left solely to the discretion of teachers. My parents were never told by the school, nor certainly by me, that I’d been whacked.

What militaristic school did I attend? Milton-Union Public Schools, a rural district 20 miles northwest of Dayton. As for my offenses, which I repeated year after year? Whispering with and passing notes to friends.

Ohio rightly outlawed corporal punishment in public schools in 2009. Being beaten by teachers did not make me a better student, it made me a sneakier one who distrusted most teachers. Only appropriate consequences are effective. That is, when they are enforced.

Teaching has always been hard work, requiring not just a set of skills, but an intensity of mental focus and compassion for students. Think back on your favorite teachers. I’ll wager they cared deeply for their pupils as well as the subjects they taught.

My high school civics teacher, who was also the wrestling coach, worked construction before getting his teaching degree. He thought teaching would be a breeze compared to physical labor. After his first full day in the classroom, he was more exhausted than he’d ever been in his life.

At the same time, misbehaving students have been around as long as there have been schools. One hundred years ago, the little kids in the Our Gang short films were regularly making mayhem in classrooms. Later, movies such as “Blackboard Jungle” (1955) and “To Sir with Love” (1967) resonated because the troubled students and exasperated teachers depicted were familiar to many communities.

At the time of this writing, Akron Public School teachers are set to strike on Monday, Jan. 9.

Today’s teachers continue to work hard — harder than you can imagine if you’ve not recently spent time in a school building. I have observed this firsthand in the classrooms of my children and while working as a substitute teacher and tutor this fall in both high school and elementary buildings in Akron Public Schools.

A vote and survey by teachers union members indicated their biggest issues were school safety and student discipline. One particular issue is how “assault” is defined in the union contract.

The administration wanted to replace “contact” with “injury” in the teacher contract language as a way to determine physical assault.

The research is clear: The policies and programs that reduce behavior problems in public schools only work when school administrations fully support their implementation and continuation.

‘Increasingly not safe’:Akron schools’ staff members say student misbehavior on the rise

Consider cellphones. In response to teacher complaints about students on their phones, the district has told the media that it has a “power down” policy during classroom instruction.

So how does the district’s administration support teachers when students refuse to power down their phones? They don’t.

I was told by several high school teachers that there is nothing to be done about cellphones because the students’ parents call and complain if the phones are taken away. Students scrolled through social media, listened to music with one ear bud and texted while I tried, emphasis on tried, to teach.

I have yet to meet the person busy on a cellphone who can fully comprehend what someone standing next to them is saying.

Without consequences, APS’s cellphone “power down” policy is meaningless.

In 2019, Ohio passed a law that allows any board of education to decide whether to permit students to have cellphones in class.

At the start of this school year, Dayton Public Schools, a city district with demographics similar to Akron’s, required high school students to “put their phones, headphones and watches in a pouch that locks down the phone. The student can keep their devices with them if they are in the pouch. At the end of the school day, kids can release their phones.”

This pouch technology, from a company called Yondr, has been in use in Dayton’s middle schools for several years. According to Lee McClory, the Dayton Daily News’s education reporter, parents, who were informed they had other ways to contact their kids, have not complained about this successful policy.

The Dayton Public Schools administration and school board listened to their faculty and staff and sought a solution that supports teachers and benefits instruction. With this kind of engagement, solving the problem of cellphones in the classrooms turned out to be, as I say to my students, easy-peasy.

Which begs the question, why is the APS administration and school board deflecting the reality of what goes on in its classrooms, even trying to water down the definition of assault, instead of seeking successful solutions? They don’t even have to look far, but they do need to look.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, January 8, 2023.

Uncategorized

Revisiting 2022’s columns

January 10, 2023 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

In my final column of 2021, I speculated that COVID, climate change and the continued existence of democracy were issues the world would grapple with in 2022.

While COVID has become more manageable, minimized exposure to seasonal illnesses over the past two years has made our immune systems easier targets. Flu viruses and RSV are filling hospitals this year much like COVID did the past two.

Still, we’ve come a long way. Last December, the Omicron variant was making its U.S. debut, shutting down many public places and forcing vulnerable populations to shelter at home yet again.

Baby steps continue worldwide in the effort to address climate change and protect democracy. For now, the environment and essential democratic institutions, such as free and fair elections, remain vulnerable.

Here are updates on other topics I wrote about this year:

Book Banning

Book banning continues to grow, which does little to nothing to prevent students from finding said books. What it does, as it always has, is put a spotlight on certain books, causing sales of those books to explode. I purchased several of the most banned books this year, both for myself and others. It felt great.

However, the majority of books parents have had banned from schools are about LGBTQ people and people of color. Banning these books tells children who are not white and/or heterosexual that their stories do not belong in our libraries and, by extension, our communities. Which is a cruel way to also tell these children that they themselves do not belong in our communities.

Putin’s War

Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is a horrific example of power consolidated in a supreme leader. This year also marks the 100th anniversary of Ukraine being forced into the Soviet Union. The world was not paying attention then. This time it is.

The spirit, tenacity and humanity of the Ukrainian people, so exemplified in my friend Allah, whom I wrote about soon after the war began, has done much to garner international support for this country fighting an unprovoked and illegal attack on its sovereignty.

But even with support, tens of thousands of Ukrainians and at least 100,000 Russians have died for one man’s delusions. Furthermore, cities and infrastructure that Ukrainian civilians rely upon for their existence continue to be targeted by Putin.

I pray that this time next year the story of Ukraine will be of its great postwar rebuilding.

Inclusion over ableism

I wrote multiple pieces on equal access and, therefore, equal rights for the disabled. My journey with my daughter, Lyra, a 10-year-old who has Down syndrome, has taught me much. In my lifetime, disability rights have progressed tremendously, yet much work remains.

Lyra’s father sold his house in Akron this fall and bought a new one in Copley so we can have another educational option. At the same time, Lyra was placed for the first time in SAIL (Students Achieving Independent Learning), a newer program at Akron Public Schools for some intellectually disabled students.

Lyra has been so successful in SAIL, we cannot imagine her attending school elsewhere. This is an important reminder that quality public schools are an anchor in keeping people of all socioeconomic levels from leaving cities when they have children.

Justice for all

Akron’s racial disparities and relations were on international display in 2022. As protests were occurring over the police shooting death of Jayland Walker, I wrote about three young Black men spending what ended up being two months in jail.

The three were playing basketball on June 2 in a fenced-in court that has only one usable entrance. They were attacked by four Firestone students with water pellet guns designed to look and sound like automatic rifles. A fight broke out. One of the Firestone four fell back, hit his head and died from a broken occipital bone.

After hearing the account of that night’s events from the Firestone students who’d initiated the attack, the police chief and mayor promoted a misleading narrative. When more information came to light, the three in jail had their bail amounts dramatically reduced and were quickly released.

In October, Donovan Jones, one of the three basketball players, pleaded no contest and was convicted of a first-degree misdemeanor. A trial for the other two will likely occur in February.

Why does Jones have a criminal record for defending himself when the three remaining Firestone students have not been charged for attacking Jones?

Access to museums

After I wrote about Museums for All, a program that facilitates modest fee admissions to museums for families who receive food stamps, I heard from one of my favorite librarians at Akron-Summit County Public Library.

Barb White was the head librarian at the Highland Square branch when my big boys were growing up. Today she’s a deputy director of our fabulous library system. She wrote to tell me that people who do not qualify for food stamps but still cannot afford museum fees can visit area cultural institutions without breaking the bank:

The “Akron-Summit County Library circulates museum passes as part of its Library of Things, and we anticipate increasing the number and variety of museum passes as [our] budget allows. Here’s the link to our Library of Things: https://www.akronlibrary.org/books-more/library-of-things The Museum passes can be found under ‘Recreational.’ ”

As there is a wait for the library passes, it requires planning a visit in advance.

Letters

I try to respond to all letters from readers (except those from trolls, naturally). I usually do so right away, but sometimes it takes a few days or weeks.

I was alarmed, therefore, when I accidentally discovered this fall that Gmail was sending many emails from readers to my spam folder. I presume this has been the case for the entire six-plus years I’ve been writing for the Beacon.

I now check my spam folder regularly, but if you never heard back from me and wondered why, that is probably the reason (unless, of course, you’re a troll).

Also note, if you write me an old-fashioned letter with pen and paper and send it to the Beacon’s offices, it will take several days to a few weeks to get to me, but it will get to me.

Thank you, readers. May 2023 bring peace and wisdom to us all.

This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on December 25, 2022.

Down syndrome · Lyra's Latests

Alzheimer’s research in people with Down syndrome benefits all

January 2, 2023October 9, 2023 whoopsiepiggle2 Comments

The first year of my daughter’s life felt like graduate school on all things Down syndrome (DS). Shortly before her first birthday, I attended the Down Syndrome Congress annual convention where I learned about many interventions and supports that would maximize her potential to live a full — and possibly independent — life.

Holly Christensen:SAIL program a great success in Akron Public Schools

At that 2013 convention, I knew several other mothers. We had met on a Down Syndrome Diagnosis Network’s closed Facebook group for mothers. The groups are organized by the ages of their children with DS. Many of us were meeting each other, as well as many of our babies, in person for the first time.

Information, while powerful, can also be intimidating. With a panicked look on her face, a mother approached me in a hallway and told me she’d just learned that our children would inevitably develop dementia in their 50s. 

In one moment, everything I’d envisioned for my daughter’s life suddenly felt like a large steamship moving out to sea, getting smaller and smaller.

The life expectancy of a baby born with Down syndrome in the 1980s was 25. Today it is 61 and continues to climb. As the number of people with Down syndrome living into old age increased, it became evident that 80% to 90% of those older than 50 exhibited signs of dementia.

In the same four decades, research on Alzheimer’s has increased substantially, including in the DS population. We now know that by their 40s the brains of people with DS will have acquired the pathologies, or physical changes, for Alzheimer’s (such as amyloid plaques) with most becoming symptomatic in their 50s.

I recently interviewed Dr. Elizabeth Head, a neuropathology core co-investigator at the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at University of California Irvine. While she collaborates with researchers studying Alzheimer’s in the general population, her research is focused specifically on the Down syndrome population.

This win-win approach, in which anything learned about Alzheimer’s by either research team benefits everyone, is encouraging. But what about treatments unique to people with DS? Will today’s research yield treatments and therapies that will minimize my daughter’s likelihood of developing dementia?

Dr. Head’s answer is a cautiously optimistic yes. Her team and others are conducting longitudinal studies, in which volunteers with Down syndrome participate for many years, discovering relevant data that are the building blocks for future treatments. 

Using biomaterial from the DownSyndrome Achieves biobank at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, the many scientists in Dr. Head’s team look for biomarkers to identify who is on the trajectory to developing dementia and — just as important — who is not. Only the DSA biobank is open to all qualified researchers and not specific to one institution.

Dr. Head’s observational studies, as well as others occurring around the world, suggest that 10% to 15% of people with DS are resistant to dementia even when the brain pathologies associated with dementia are present.

“Knowing which brain proteins may be involved, we can then perhaps develop interventions and some of those interventions will be more effective based upon the age of the person,” Dr. Head said. “What works for someone in their 40s might not work well for someone in their 30s.”

In recent years, scientists have determined that the brain remains plastic throughout our lives, including in old age. This means that there isn’t an age for which potential interventions for improved cognition should no longer be studied.

Perhaps the best news from Dr. Head is that just because a family didn’t begin interventions for their loved one with DS as a baby or small child does not mean that person is on a trajectory for something bad later. 

Many studies looking at treatments for Alzheimer’s in people with DS are occurring now, with more in the works. There is great promise that in the coming decades a diagnosis of DS will no longer mean that dementia is nearly inevitable. 

There is also a growing body of research that, as with the general population, lifestyle choices can minimize the likelihood of a person with DS developing dementia. These lifestyle choices, which can be implemented today, include a nutritious diet, exercise, rich social interactions and continuous learning. 

Dr. Head encourages families to include simple exercises like walking daily, eating nutrient-rich foods and having adults with DS continue to learn new skills. She suggests taking classes, such as cooking (another way to increase healthy meal options) or learning to play an instrument.

“Nothing should be held back from people with Down syndrome,” Dr. Head said. 

The donation of biomaterial of people with Down syndrome, such as blood, is modestly painful but significantly impacts the work of Dr. Head and her team as well as other DS researchers around the world. I strongly encourage people with DS to donate biomaterial for this and other research. 

Families know how hard their loved ones with Down syndrome work from the first day of life. Their levels of cognition and independence have the potential to be maintained throughout life by supporting the important and exciting research occurring today.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, December 11, 2022.

Local Politics

Akron’s lame-duck mayor is deaf to residents’ concerns

December 12, 2022October 9, 2023 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

Akron has a lame-duck mayor assuming carte blanche to proceed with a development along White Pond Drive. This proposed development doesn’t pass the sniff test.

The proposed development by Triton Property Ventures would create nearly 250 units of housing, a mix of townhomes, apartments and houses, along with retail spaces that have been likened to Hudson’s First & Main shopping development.

Why that development? Why that location?

White Pond:Development plan drives wedge between residents, Akron city officials

There’s plenty of shopping, including a Whole Foods, Acme and several restaurants just a few blocks from the proposed site. The proposed development is also on a section of White Pond Drive that is the primary thoroughfare for West Akronites to get to Interstate 77. Yet a traffic study for the development has yet to be conducted.

According to nearby residents, the area is a wetlands with several endangered species.

Under James Hardy, the Horrigan administration’s former director of integrated economic development, Akron produced a State of the Canopy report in 2020.

The report identified the trees on the White Pond acres as essential to managing Akron’s stormwater, pollution and summer heat. Most, if not all, of the trees would be cleared away if the project is approved.

Meanwhile, for the better part of a quarter century, city leaders have said that the Innerbelt freeway will soon be decommissioned, opening up land ripe for mixed-use development like what Triton proposes for the White Pond green space.

Would it not make more sense to create a housing and shopping development on the land taken from predominantly Black residents by eminent domain half a century ago? Where a meaningless road cuts off downtown from the west side, development akin to Columbus’ Short North District could fill its place.

Furthermore, like many Rust Belt cities, Akron remains full of vacant lots and abandoned houses more than a decade after the Great Recession started with a housing bubble that blew up. Why not direct developers to fill these lots with affordable housing, which would also stabilize neighborhoods?

All of this certainly deserves a communitywide conversation, which makes the mayor’s resistance to doing so alarming. He has publicly suggested that the citizens opposed to the White Pond development are outsiders, which is outlandish and ironic given that the developers are themselves not local.

Dan Horrigan has refused to be interviewed by the press on the White Pond development, instead directing reporters to a letter his administration wrote to be sent to residents near the development.

This begs the question: If there’s nothing to hide, why is he not talking? The mayor’s obfuscation and dismissive attitude toward citizens’ concerns gives the impression he has something to hide, whether or not that’s the case.

City Council members Shammas Malik, who would like to replace Horrigan as mayor in 2024, and Russ Neal, who represents the ward where the development would occur, are both on record calling for the development process to slow down so the city can engage in discussions with citizens over their concerns.

How did Akron end up with a leader who ignores its citizens?

Horrigan replaced former Mayor Don Plusquellic, who’d held the position for nearly 30 years, in 2016 after winning a campaign in which few viable candidates ran. Horrigan had been the Summit County clerk of courts since 2007, an important administrative job ensuring the proper processing of the county courts’ paperwork. Before that he was Ward 1 City Council representative for seven years.

At first, Horrigan’s lack of experience seemed unimportant. Akronites were relieved for the end of Plusquellic’s arrogant attitude and self-created dramas. And Horrigan further allayed any concerns by filling his new administration with people with notable skills, ideas and energy.

However, after Horrigan’s re-election in 2019, the wheels soon came off his administration’s bus. The most impressive and effective members of his administration left one by one. This brain drain exposed Horrigan’s limited abilities in matters small and consequential.

Last summer, Akron became infamous in international news. Police Chief Steve Mylett’s and Mayor Horrigan’s responses to the deadly fight near the I Promise School and the police shooting of Jayland Walker too often were uninformed and dismissive, which only escalated citywide tensions.

By summer’s end, many saw Horrigan as unqualified to meet Akron’s needs. Thus, it came as little surprise when, on Oct. 4, Horrigan announced he would not seek reelection in 2023.

While Horrigan’s announcement caused many Akronites to sigh with relief, having an already weak mayor become a lame duck for the next 15 months is problematic. The passion Horrigan expressed for Akron when he first ran, and which seemed genuine, is no longer present.

A week after Horrigan announced he’d not seek reelection, Mylett reinstated the eight police officers who shot Walker to administrative duties, citing a staffing shortage.

In a city that just lived through a summer of protests, curfews and deep discord, the ensuing feud between the police department and leaders in the Black community has been public and contentious. Rather than intervening, Horrigan’s silence has been deafening.

Somehow Akron unwittingly replaced an arrogant, drama-creating mayor with a negligent mayor. Our city deserves better. Akron needs a competent, committed leader willing to address not only its problems but its potential with intelligence and passion. Instead, we have a placeholder mayor who refuses to engage with the citizens he was elected to serve.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, November 27, 2022.

Education · Lyra's Latests

SAIL program a great success in Akron Public Schools

November 27, 2022October 9, 2023 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

SAIL students attend a general education classroom, as well as specials (gym, art, music) with neurotypical peers, and return to their SAIL classroom with its dedicated intervention specialist for additional instruction. Some students require an aid, others do not. The time spent in the general education classrooms provides positive language and behavior modeling, along with academic instruction.

In the decades after World War II, families in America and other countries whose newborns had Down syndrome were told it was in everyone’s best interests that the child be placed in an institution immediately, usually never to be seen by the family again.

Warehoused, neglected and often abused, frequently for the duration of their lives, these people did not develop to their full potential, but not because they had Down syndrome. Institutionalization was a self-fulfilling prophecy of low expectations.

That study was one of the early steps in rethinking what it means to have Down syndrome and reconsidering the wholesale institutionalization of this population.

(Now is a good time to grab a paper and pencil to write down some of the many educational acronyms I’m about to spell out. Ready? OK.)

In 1975, Congress passed what is now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), requiring public schools to no longer restrict children with intellectual and/or physical disabilities from attending.

 IDEA also requires public schools to provide a “free, appropriate public education” (FAPE) that includes five provisions: appropriate evaluation, individualized education plan (IEP), least restrictive environment, parental participation and procedural safeguards.

In the decades since, as children with intellectual disabilities now mostly remain with their birth families (or are adopted by other families), and early interventions in speech, physical and occupational therapies have become commonplace, previous assumptions of what a Down syndrome diagnosis means have been decimated.

And yet, as a mother of a child with Down syndrome, I am not always confident that I am providing my daughter, Lyra, with the education she needs. In hindsight, her first three years of life — when I was panicked about her correctly learning how to walk, talk and use her hands — seem like a cakewalk.

Shortly after her third birthday, Lyra became a preschooler at Akron Public Schools’ Early Learning Program, which enrolls kids with and without disabilities. For three years, Lyra was in a classroom with fewer than 10 students staffed by several adults, and received regular therapies along with academic instruction.

Holly Christensen's daughter Lyra holds up affirmations that she chose herself. — Lyra holds a list of affirmations she chose for herself. *Photo courtesy of Caroline Kajder*

 At age 6, Lyra began kindergarten in a general education classroom at Case Elementary. Her IEP called for her to work with an intervention specialist (what we used to call a special ed teacher). That educational structure is called “cross category,” or “cross-cat” for short, as the children are instructed in general education and special education settings.

Then, in 1964, a longitudinal study compared a group of infants with Down syndrome who were institutionalized to a group who were raised at home. Eight years later, findings showed that the children who were raised at home functioned at higher levels of “mental, motor, and social development on nearly all outcome measures at 2, 5, 6, and 8 years of age.” 

Sometimes Lyra’s intervention specialist would “push in” and provide supplementary instruction to Lyra in the classroom. Other times Lyra would get “pulled out” and taken to her intervention specialist’s room for lessons.

Still, kindergarten in a classroom with one teacher and more than 20 students, many of whom had never attended preschool, was challenging. Lyra repeated kindergarten the next year and for the first time an aide was assigned to help her stay on task.

That seemed to be just what Lyra needed. The results of standardized tests conducted just after winter break of her second kindergarten year indicated Lyra was on track for the first grade the next fall.

Two months later, COVID hit and Akron Public Schools, like many urban school districts, went 100% remote for 12 months.

 Last month, testing of K-12 students revealed that children nationwide regressed in math and reading during the pandemic. This is regardless of whether a child was in states like Texas or Florida, where public schools were mandated to reopen early in the pandemic, or in states like Ohio where the districts were allowed to remain closed for a year or more if they so chose.

That said, children on IEPs lost more ground than their friends without an IEP.  Trying to have my then 8-year-old with an intellectual disability learn via a computer screen was absolute folly.

 Lyra’s academic work ethic also regressed, which became readily apparent when Akron reopens its school buildings in March 2021.

Thus, at the recommendation of her school team, we agreed to have Lyra attend second grade in a multiple disability (MD) classroom (formerly called special-ed classrooms). MD classrooms do not follow the same Ohio curriculum as the general education classrooms and the longer a child is in an MD classroom, the more difficult it becomes for her to switch back.

Lyra’s experience was mixed. She relearned academics, and how to work in class and follow a structured day. But she was also one of the highest performers in a class where she was one of the youngest students. That is not a good thing. I felt as though I had failed my daughter.

 Last spring, I asked Lyra’s IEP team about Akron Public Schools’ new SAIL program, which stands for Students Adapted Individualized Learning, and if she met the criteria for placement. SAIL students must be able to work in a general education classroom without being disruptive, which Lyra is.

Developed by Tammy Brady, the district’s special education director, SAIL is designed for the few students whose abilities fall betwixt and between MD classroom and cross-cat placements.

 Currently, APS has five elementary and three middle school buildings with SAIL, serving children from across the district. Each elementary building has two SAIL classrooms divided by grades: one for kindergarten through second grade, the other for third through fifth grade. Each class can have a maximum of 10 students.

Lyra does math with seeds she scooped from a pumpkin in her SAIL class. — Lyra working on a math lesson in her SAIL class using seeds she scooped from a pumpkin. *Courtesy of Caroline Kajder*

 This fall, Lyra was placed in a third- through fifth-grade SAIL classroom at Resnik. At the end of each school day, her SAIL teacher sends an email telling us about Lyra’s day. For the first month, I teared up every time I read these daily reports.

Her teacher regularly comments on how hard Lyra is working, how well she is doing in math (she’s working with numbers in the thousands) and reading (she nails the third grade vocabulary). We also hear how well she’s interacting with other students in her general education and SAIL classrooms.

With the addition of SAIL classrooms, APS is more fully in line with the federal requirements of IDEA. Though a program still in its infancy, SAIL is showing great promise and is something the district can be proud of having developed.

As a society, we’ve come a long way since the days of my childhood, when I never saw people with intellectual or physical disabilities in the public schools I attended. By simply keeping beloved family members with intellectual disabilities at home and providing them with an appropriate education, today many of these people grow up to have full, and often independent, lives. As it should be.

Uncategorized

Finding common ground requires interaction

October 31, 2022 whoopsiepiggle1 Comment

“Holly, we love you. You’re a smart lib.” I laughed when a Toledo midwife told me this on a recent Zoom meeting with several other Ohio midwives, who nodded their heads in agreement.

Being a Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, is not the same as ticking off a preset list of requirements. Or, as I often tell my college students, never trust anyone who tells you anything is a simple, binary issue. People are complex, issues are complex and, as a result, so is history.

Holly Christensen:Protecting community midwifery for all Ohioans

In his 2000 book, “Bowling Alone,” author Robert Putnam claimed “our stock of social capital – the very fabric of our connections with each other, has plummeted, impoverishing our lives and communities.” As an example he pointed out that while more Americans were bowling than before, fewer were doing so in leagues.

It is important to seek out situations that are not just echo chambers of already held beliefs. In a recent New Yorker article, “Can Pickleball Save America?” the increasingly popular sport is described as “transcending socioeconomic lines” and “bringing Americans out to meet other Americans in ways they normally wouldn’t.”

The pickleball players I know are evangelically enamored with the game. Similar to tennis and pingpong, pickleball was designed for adults and kids to play together. Baked into the rules is being friendly, while size and strength matter little. Recently a tiny grandma in Pittsburgh made news when she won a pickleball doubles match. Her partner and the other two players were all Pittsburgh Steelers.

To say I’m not athletic is an understatement, so, for now, pickleball is off the table. But I am a Democrat with a strong commitment to social justice. I also have Libertarian leanings.

According to the Libertarian Party’s website, “Libertarians strongly oppose any government interference in your personal, family, and business decisions. Essentially, we believe all Americans should be free to live their lives and pursue their interests as they see fit as long as they do no harm to another.”

Holly Christensen:Museums for all should not be a secret

Like other so-called alternative choices, such as chiropractic care (love it), locally raised food (love it) and home schooling (not for me), home birth appeals to those on the far right, the far left and many along the spectrum of the two.

In the mid-’90s, I worked on protecting the legal status of Ohio’s community midwives for over two years, becoming friends with legislators, midwives and home birth mothers, many of whom were very conservative.

Holly’s sons Jules and Hugo hold their new brother, Leif, moments after watching his birth in 2010.

Many Democratic legislators were resistant to the continued practice of unregulated community midwifery in Ohio. They then feared a two-tiered system of health care delivery based upon the historical lack of access for poor pregnant women to birth in hospitals prior to the enactment of Medicaid in 1965.

Today, in what first looks like an about-face, some Ohio Democrats hope to expand midwifery care to address the unacceptable maternal and infant mortality and morbidity rates of Black mothers and babies. But they would have done so by regulating community midwifery out of existence by criminalizing non-licensed midwives. Their bill, House Bill 402, was introduced in September 2021, then quickly fizzled.

Republican state legislators remain largely uninterested in regulating community midwives. So it was surprising that in one of his final pieces of legislation before he retires, Republican state Rep. Kyle Koehler of Springfield sponsored a bill similar to HB 402.

I’ve participated in virtual meetings with Rep. Koehler and he sincerely hopes his legislation will help address the plight of Black mothers and babies in Ohio. I don’t think it will, but I respect him and believe his efforts arose from earnest concern.

Meanwhile, the very real problem of Black maternal and infant mortality and morbidity needs real solutions and HB 496 is not it.

Working closely with Ohio’s state legislators, both Republicans and Democrats, has taught me not to make broad, iron-clad assumptions about people in either party. At the same time, working with other citizens on community midwifery has taught me that the common ground shared by all Americans is not as small as what cable-TV talking heads would have you believe.

Once the midwifery legislation is settled, perhaps I’ll reconsider joining a pickleball league and get to know people who are diverse in multiple measures over a game known for how fun it is. I know a few retirees who’d love to teach me (and you and everyone) how to play.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, October 16, 2022.

Uncategorized

Protecting community midwifery for all Ohioans

October 14, 2022 whoopsiepiggle1 Comment

Community midwife Pam Kolanz with Brittany Kash and Kash’s two children and newborn, Theodore, the day of the baby’s planned home birth in North Olmstead. *Photo courtesy of Julie Ann Johnson*

Benjamin Franklin once wrote, “Nothing is certain except death and taxes.” However, prior to both death or taxes, one must first be born. And throughout human history birthing women have been attended by midwives. Today, this remains true in most countries except for the United States where the majority of women are attended by obstetricians.

That said, a wide array of midwives do exist in the US. Nurse midwives practice mostly in hospitals and birthing centers under the oversight of doctors. 

But an array of non-nurse midwives, also known as lay, direct-entry or community midwives, practice under laws that vary from state to state. These midwives specialize in the care of mothers and newborns, with the understanding that much of what a nursing degree entails is not relevant to their practices.

Holly Christensen:Museums for all should not be a secret

Because I had a mother who birthed my two younger sisters at home, I was familiar with midwifery when I became pregnant with my first child in 1993. The same two midwives attended the home births of my first two sons in Columbus while my last three were attended by the same midwife in Northeast Ohio.

In 1996, while I was pregnant with my second son, community midwifery in Ohio was suddenly jeopardized. In an advanced-practice nursing bill, the State Medical Board tried to have the State Nursing Board take on the oversight of community midwives.

The State Medical Board mislead the nursing bill’s sponsors when telling them that community midwifery remained only in Ohio’s Amish communities. An early draft of the nursing bill would have made community midwifery, outside of a religious community, a felony for the midwife and a misdemeanor for the birthing mother. 

The bill’s language was so aggressive most community midwives were afraid to speak out for fear their names would be collected and they’d be charged with a crime should the bill pass. Instead, home-birth mothers became the face of community midwifery at the Ohio Legislature. 

As the founding director of Ohio Friends of Midwives, I informed the sponsors of the nursing bill that the Amish are not unique when it comes to home births with midwives. Furthermore, the majority of midwives attending Amish mothers are not Amish themselves.

The criminalizing language was stripped from the nursing bill and a legislative study council, of which I was a member, was created to help state legislators better understand how community midwives practice in the state and what, if any, regulations should be considered.

Holly Christensen:Investment of time with oldest friends pays huge dividends

The study council met monthly for 12 months, heard testimony from some in the medical community opposed to community midwives and testimony in support of community midwives from sociologists and nationally recognized community midwives, including Ina May Gaskin, who for many years taught several birthing techniques to obstetrical students. 

But it was the testimony from families who had birthed children with community midwives that perhaps had the most impact on the study council.

At the July meeting supporters filled a large hearing room and the hallways at the Statehouse. The turnout was higher than at any previous public testimony event for any other issue in the state’s history. A second session of testimony was scheduled and equally well attended.

In the end, the Direct-Entry Midwifery Study Council decided to leave community midwifery legal and unregulated in Ohio. The Ohio Department of Health created a registration process for community midwives to sign verifications of pregnancy and live births, including birth certificates, and the ODH supplies newborn screening tests to community midwives.

Also, under the Ohio Administrative Code, community midwives are allowed to practice at exempt birthing centers, of which there are currently six operating throughout the state.

In the 25 years since the study council submitted its final report, Ohio’s community midwives have continued to attend women throughout the state, serving families from all backgrounds, educations and incomes, in rural, urban and suburban communities.

And they’ve done so with remarkable outcomes. 

One reason for this is that mothers with high-risk pregnancies, the definition of which is debatable, are referred out to obstetricians. But secondly, the Midwifery Model of Care, which provides a wholistic approach with pregnant women, consistently results in better outcomes.

While doctors and hospitals have an important role in maternity care, the current system in America needs improvement. The statistics for infant and maternal mortality and morbidity in the U.S. are unacceptably grim. In 2018, the U.S. ranked 32nd among developed countries for infant mortality, while preventable maternal deaths rose nearly 200% from 1993 to 2014.

When the statistics for Black mothers and babies are removed from the U.S. data, however, the numbers noticeably improve, revealing a complex problem that was the subject of an entire issue of The New York Times Magazine in 2018.

Holly Christensen:Color my world, or at least my home

Here in Ohio two recent bills propose to radically change the way community midwifery is practiced in the state. Sponsors of both bills claim their legislation will address the unacceptable outcomes of Black mothers and infants by expanding midwifery care. 

Of the two bills, House Bill 496 seems to have the most traction. As written it requires the licensure of community midwives with the goal of providing care in birthing centers, and possibly hospitals, where Medicaid is accepted. But it would also criminalize the practices of all non-licensed community midwives.

On June 9 of this year, while listening to the local NPR program “The Sound of Ideas,” I was stunned to hear two supporters of HB 496 claim that Ohio doesn’t have what they called “granny midwives” (a condescendingly quaint and grossly inaccurate term). I called the show and informed the host that Ohio has, in fact, more than 100 community midwives practicing everywhere in the state.

In response to my call, one of the guests, who had just claimed community midwives don’t exist in Ohio, stated that these very real midwives can’t bill insurance, so Ohioans pay for them entirely out of pocket. This is also not true. I’ve given birth to five children at home in Ohio and all were covered by whatever private medical insurance I had at the time, including my last birth in 2012. 

If the practices of community midwives, who are currently legally recognized in the state of Ohio, become criminalized, many women in Ohio will continue to birth at home, particularly in Plain communities, but without the benefit of a midwife. As a result, maternal and infant mortality and morbidity will increase. 

One way to bring the Midwifery Model of Care to mothers on Medicaid without criminalizing community midwifery is to enlist the assistance of what are known as doulas. As pointed out in the New York Times Magazine issue on this topic, when doulas, who provide preventative and supportive care to mothers, work alongside obstetricians, outcomes improve. 

But the simplest solution would be to make licensure optional for Ohio’s community midwives as other states, such as Minnesota, have done. 

There is no reason for Ohio’s legislature to endanger one population in an effort to help another population. For as long as Ohio has been a state, community midwives have been attending birthing women with great success. Their practices present no problems that need solved by criminalizing their profession.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, October 2, 2022.

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Museums for All should not be a secret

September 29, 2022 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

When I moved to Cleveland in 2000, I was three months pregnant and my first two sons were just 6 and 3. Living in the city with children was phenomenal. Edgewater Beach was within walking distance from our home, the downtown library was our branch and my boys regularly roared around the Great Lakes Science Center, especially in winter months.

We also spent many summer afternoons at the Cleveland Botanical Garden’s Hershey Children’s Garden. Created in 1999, the children’s garden was the first of its kind in Ohio and an impressive addition to the more traditional botanical garden, which was free to the public, mostly outdoors and closed in the winter.

 Magical is a clichéd modifier, but when young children are allowed to engage with the elements — digging in sand, filling containers from an old-fashioned pump so as to water plants or each other, sitting on a floating section of a bridge on a pond filled with frogs — most are actively delighted.

On a blanket spread on a grassy hillock, I’d unpack sandwiches, fruit and water. While my baby sometimes napped, his brothers climbed the treehouse or tried to catch frogs alongside children from a wide variety of ethnic and economic backgrounds.

 Then, in 2003, the Cleveland Botanical Garden began a major expansion. An underground garage was added along with two massive interior biomes, one featuring desert plants, the other rain forest flora.

 As a result, the gardens are now open all year, but they are no longer free. Admission is $16 for anyone 13 or older and $12 for children ages 3 to 12. An annual membership for a family of four is $100. And because it now has a cafe indoors, picnicking is no longer allowed in the children’s garden.

For all that was gained, the loss of access to the botanical gardens for many people, especially children, was crushing.

Ample research highlights the benefits of educational institutions such as museums, libraries and historical sites for children. Achievement in reading, math and science are higher in children who visit them by the time they are in kindergarten. These children also have, according to a 2018 study conducted by the U.S. Department of Education, “a greater appreciation of art, higher tolerance, and stronger critical thinking skills.”

 But research also shows that children in more affluent families are far more likely to visit these institutions. And the greater income inequality is in any given state directly correlates with a greater disparity in attendance.

In many columns on holiday gift giving, I have encouraged the gift of museum memberships to young families because I know firsthand how spending time at such institutions imbued the lives of my now-adult sons. They regularly tell me so and, yes, also rue the changes at the Hershey Children’s Garden.

But not all families have relatives who can afford to purchase a gift membership. In a perfect world, we as a society would support these institutions and make them free to all. Everyone benefits when children have experiences that engage their imaginations and intellects.

 This is why I was pleased to discover a discount program when I recently took my youngest two children to the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery in Dayton. At the entrance counter, an employee listed the various ticket discounts since we are not members.

The list was mostly predictable — military members, AAA members and the like. She then asked if we received any food assistance, telling me that with a valid SNAP card (food stamps) up to four members of a household can gain admission for just $2 a person.

Boonshoft is a member of Museums for All, an initiative of the Institute of Museum and Library Services. According to their webpage, museums4all.org, “Museums for All invites low-income visitors to feel welcome at cultural institutions.”

Created in 2014-2015, Museums for All includes over 900 institutions in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and the Virgin Islands, all offering reduced admissions ranging from free to $3 for up to four household members.

The program is only effective, however, if those who need it know it exists. I encourage school districts to make families aware of Museums for All and identify which area institutions are participating members.

Over 60 Ohio institutions are participating members. Here in Akron these include the Akron Zoo, Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens, Hower House, Hale Farm & Village, Akron Art Museum and Akron Children’s Museum.

And just up the road, the Cleveland Botanical Garden is also a member of Museums for All and, therefore, once again an inclusive institution where cost does not prevent any child from delighting in play at the Hershey Children’s Garden.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, September 18, 2022.

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Transitions of eldest friends

September 2, 2022 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

Lying on the back seat of my mother’s car as she drove to Rike’s department store in downtown Dayton, I mused over my impending birthday. I was about to turn a double-digit age for the first time. I also considered the marathon few complete between 10 and a triple-digit age.

This past May, I wrote about two friends in their late 90s: Barbara Campbell and Bascom Biggers. Barbara began sending me handwritten letters in 2017, a few months after I began writing this column. For three years, our relationship was strictly epistolary. Then, when she moved to New Hampshire in 2020 to be near family, we began talking regularly on the phone.

Barbara turned 97 this past March. In June, I sent her a card with a clipping from this paper, a satirical op-ed in which the writer wondered what version of the Bible that Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene reads, because her copy is clearly different than his.

Over the years, Barbara has sent me many clippings from newspapers and magazines, most of them humorous. Sadly, she never received my last letter. After a brief illness, Barbara died on June 25. I’d never seen a photo of her until I received her obituary. She looks as infectiously delightful as she always was in her letters and our phone conversations. 

Barbara chose happiness over sadness, gratitude over bitterness. She lost her first husband and one of their sons within a matter of months. The year before she moved, she was struck by a car while walking from her own car in the parking lot of her apartment building, which left her with lingering pain. 

Rather than complain, Barbara spoke graciously about the people in her life and all she enjoyed. Her avocation was to make people laugh; even in her final days she was telling jokes during dinners at her assisted living community. When we discussed challenges, such as COVID and other unpleasant news, she always ended by saying, “It’s in God’s hands.”

If there is a heaven, Barbara is there giggling with those whom she’s reunited. I miss her voice, her abundant encouragement and joyful commentary. Every conversation with Barbara was like receiving a bright bouquet of homegrown flowers.

Bascom Biggers III takes a portrait with Holly Christensen on his 100th birthday. — Bascom Biggers III with Holly on his 100th birthday

I have met centenarians, but never have I had a dear friend turn 100. That is, until last weekend. I’ve written several columns about Bascom, with whom I became friends when he was but a spry 86.

Except when I’m in Michigan during the summer or, in recent years, when COVID rates spike in the region, I see Bascom every other week. I arrive at his home mid-afternoon and often stay until 10.

We talk nonstop about everything from politics to pets. And, like many a senior, Bascom reminisces about what Proust called les temps perdus. His mother, Rose, born in 1901, was intelligent and capable. She led a stifled life as a stay-at-home wife and mother. 

Bascom adored Rose and by the time he was an adolescent, he was perhaps her best confidant. Knowing him, it’s easy to imagine Bascom tried to make his mother happy when her circumstances, proscribed by the times and her station, left her bored and unsatisfied.

His father, Buck, was tenderhearted, which Bascom didn’t realize until he was a young man. Buck had steely gray eyes that could stop a child in his tracks. But when Bascom was fighting in the European theater in World War II, his father’s letters referred to Bascom as “my darling boy” and, clearly concerned he may never see his son again, expressed just how much he loved him.

Perhaps it’s simply the function of age, but I wonder if his relationships with his parents are what made Bascom such a ruminator. He reads widely, maintains a core circle of friends and is more engaged with life than many who are decades younger. However, his ruminating often extends into overthinking, which in turn impedes his happiness.

Last Saturday, on his 100th birthday, Bascom and I sat on his living room couch where the largest wall of the room is almost entirely glass, minimizing the separation of the indoors from the surrounding forest where his home is situated. 

After an hour, we left to have dinner with his friend Laura and her husband, Michael. (Laura does all the things, which are many, that allow Bascom to stay in his home.) Or so Bascom thought. In reality, several friends were waiting at the restaurant and we pulled off a surprise party that I was not confident the guest of honor would enjoy.

He loved it. At times the noise made it hard for Bascom to hear, but he told the group it didn’t matter, their love was as clear as could be. Then, when we returned home, he promptly began worrying if it was OK if people loved him more than he loved them.

In my birthday card to Bascom I wrote, “I wish I could help you fret less and laugh more.” I also included Mary Oliver’s poem “A Summer Day,” which ends, “Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?/Tell me, what is it you plan to do/With your one wild and precious life?” 

It is a question worth asking every year, even for those lucky enough to reach triple-digit ages.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, August 21, 2022.

Civil Rights

The silence of friends

August 7, 2022September 25, 2022 whoopsiepiggle5 Comments

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

On a recent evening, I stood in the middle of the basketball court behind the McDonald’s at 390 W. Market St. The rectangular court has two hoops on each of the long sides and one at each of the shorter sides.

At 9:30 p.m. bright lighting floods the court in an otherwise dark parking lot, making it difficult to see much outside of the court, which is entirely enclosed by a high fence, 10’ in some sections, 12’ in others.

The only usable entrance into and out of that rectangular cage is in the northwest corner. The people playing basketball in that court on the night of June 2 were shot at with rapid-fire water pellet guns like fish in a barrel. In order to escape their assailants, they first had to move toward them.

Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, who died in 2015, was an ardent opponent of the death penalty. He once wrote, “I tremble at the thought of how I might react to a killer who took the life of someone in my own family. I know that I might not be able to suppress my anger or put down a desire for revenge.”

There is a particularly painful grief that comes with burying one’s own child. It’s not the natural order of life. But it does happen. Untimely deaths due to disease, auto accidents, drug overdoses, suicides, drownings—at my age I’ve known them all.

And, of course, there’s violent death. In 2017, a friend whom I first met in the fifth grade was killed by her husband of 30 years. I still easily cry when thinking what her family lost with one gunshot.

“This society should strive for something better than what it feels at its weakest moments,” was Cuomo’s response to what he knew would be his own desire for revenge.

From the beginning, the language surrounding the events at that basketball court on June 2 has been loaded. The police said race wasn’t involved and then proceeded to publicly judge the three Black suspects they eventually arrested.

The New York Post reported that “[The three] allegedly ‘punched’ and ‘assaulted’ each of the four victims.” How is it that the four who started the altercation are the victims? Did they shoot at the unsuspecting three and then just stand there? Of course not. They allegedly recorded it for a TikTok challenge and, rather than fleeing, fought with those they’d assaulted.

When the Firestone students (who, along with Ethan Liming, broke multiple laws that night during their water pellet shooting spree) called 911, they said nothing of Liming being beaten to death. But they used that term in their later affidavits, and it has stuck.

Given the factual evidence that’s been presented, what occurred that night was a deadly fight among seven young men. Liming’s autopsy results do not comport with being repeatedly kicked as his companions later claimed. Yet the media persists in misleadingly calling it a “beating death.”

A grand jury recently lowered the charges for brothers Shawn and Tyler Stafford and their cousin Donovan Jones, all of whom have been held in the county jail since June 11. The new charges of involuntary manslaughter and assault are more appropriate than the original murder charges.

The county prosecutor’s office stated it has more information it has not yet made public. For now only one side of the story, and little else, has been readily available, which is why I reached out to the families of the three in jail. I’ve also spoken with neighborhood residents who witnessed various portions of the night’s events.

Among other things, I was told that Shawn Stafford, who is 5’5” and 135 pounds, was punched and knocked to the ground by Liming, who was 6’1” and 165 pounds, as the two fought one another. The grand jury findings seem to support this account for Shawn received the most serious indictment—two charges of involuntary manslaughter.

The three basketball players’ accounts of the events should be given the same weight as those of the Firestone students, but few have been interested in finding out that information.

I’ve received many emails telling me I am brave to have written my last two columns. I don’t consider examining the prejudgment of the police and the lopsided reporting by the media as inherently brave, so the encouragement begs the question: What there is to fear?

We live in a society with a criminal justice system that is not uniform, but instead metes out different treatment based on ethnicity and wealth. And pointing out this wide-open secret, like the elephant in the room that it is, riles up the enemies of equal rights.

Yes, I’ve also received plenty of emails that are slurries of racism and misogyny.

More concerning are people who don’t see their own bigotry when they refer to the Stafford brothers as “thugs.” Or when they tell me I’ve vilified the Firestone four by pointing out that they broke laws, initiated the night’s events and willingly engaged in a fight when their final victims (they’d shot at others that evening) refused to be bullied.

The letters that concern me most, however, are by White people who tell me my last two columns put to words what they’ve also thought, but can’t tell most of the people they know.

The late congressman and civil rights activist John Lewis encouraged folks to “get in trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble.” There remains much work to be done, much necessary trouble to cause, no matter how uncomfortable it may feel, to make ours a nation that treats all citizens equally. Silence in the face of unequal justice is complicity.

Postscript:

On Thursday, August 4, Summit County Judge Tammy O’Brien, a Republican, reduced Donovon Jones’s bail to zero (he was required to sign a letter stating he’d return for trial), Tyler Stafford’s bail to $5,000 (of which he needed to pay $500 to be released), and Shawn Stafford’s to $25,000 (of which he needed to pay $2,500 to be released).

The false narrative on the fight created by Akron Police Chief Stephen Mylett and promoted by Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan never added up under the slightest inspection. But area journalists did not ask the obvious questions and simply reported the false narrative as though it was fact.

Without giving it a second thought, far too many found it acceptable to sacrifice the lives of three Black men as payment for the life of a White man who attacked the three without provocation and from whom they defended themselves.

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Diverse, welcoming Akron now openly divided by race

August 4, 2022 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

All cities have personalities and for more than 20 years I have told anyone who will listen just how friendly Akron is. People from all backgrounds and ethnicities regularly engage with each other in their neighborhoods, jobs and stores in ways you don’t see in all cities.

African Americans account for just 13% of the nation’s population but comprise nearly a third of Akron’s residents. It’s statistically likely for Black and White Akronites to have the opportunity to get to know one another.

That’s not to say it’s perfect. In 2011, a secretary at Firestone High School told me that the student one of my sons, who was then in the eighth grade, would be shadowing was Black and asked if that was OK.

“Why on earth would you ask me that?” I demanded.

“Because other parents have complained in the past when we haven’t told them,” she replied.

Recent events have exposed deep racism in Akron

Yet, unlike Akron’s Black community, I was surprised (and deeply saddened) when horrific events in our city this summer exposed a deep vein of outright racism in some White Akronites and far too much White fragility in others.

My last column was about the deadly fight on June 2 in my neighborhood. I pointed out that the police and media prejudged the cases of the three young men arrested in the death of Ethan Liming, without acknowledging the alleged crimes Liming and three others had committed when driving down West Market Street shooting water pellets at unsuspecting strangers in multiple locations.

The U.S. Marshals, however, created an online poster that makes it seem like they hunted down three scary criminals (according to their attorneys, none of the basketball players have criminal records) when all they did was arrest the basketball players in their homes.

Furthermore, little information has been given about the lives of the three who were simply playing basketball in the West Hill neighborhood.

According to a relative of the three, Shawn, 20, and Tyler Stafford, 19, are brothers and Donovon Jones, 21, who has significant hearing impairment, is their cousin. Shawn is a prior shooting victim with pins and wires in his leg where a bullet was removed. He is also his mother’s caretaker.

The way someone views the deadly fight seems largely dependent upon the color of their skin.

On the Akron Beacon Journal’s Facebook page, most of the hundreds of comments to my last column are by White people, many of whom describe the deadly fight in ways that are impossible to know, if not completely false. Many also share grotesque notions of what they think should happen to the three basketball players being held on $1 million bonds.

Conversely, nearly 200 Black folks shared the same column on their pages with comments like this one: “Perspective! This article was definitely needed.”

I’ve raised five children in the neighborhood where the fight occurred, three of whom graduated from Firestone in the past decade. I’ve thought long about that fight. The narrative started by the police, promoted by the media and exploded by social media mobs does not add up.

There were four young men in the Firestone group who attacked three young men playing basketball. Four to three, not three to one.

The Firestone youths’ activities that night are remarkably similar to yet another godforsaken TikTok challenge. After pulling up in their car after dark, some of the four from Firestone group ran at the three unsuspecting basketball players while shooting them with pellets.

What did the others do? I suspect they filmed it for TikTok.

When the basketball players realized, after first running away, that it wasn’t metal bullets hitting them, they turned around and immediately understood they had been assaulted as a joke.

The basketball players then approached their assailants, but the Firestone teens didn’t hop in their car and drive away. A fight broke out.

What exactly happened in Ethan Liming’s death is unclear

What happened next, and this is very important, is unclear. Attorneys say that at least one of the basketball players was injured when his face was smashed into the asphalt. A Firestone teen called 911 and said a friend was knocked unconscious during a group fight — not a beating or stomping death — and was still breathing.

A preliminary autopsy report listed the decedent’s injuries, including a broken occipital bone (the only bone broken in his body), black eye and a single footprint on the chest wall. This list leaves open a number of ways in which the injuries could have been sustained.

If video of the fight exists, perhaps who did what in that fight will soon be learned. But it won’t explain why four young men launched a surprise attack on three strangers, a violation of several Ohio laws including aggravated menacing, disorderly conduct and inducing panic.

A little over three weeks after the fight, eight Akron police officers shot 46 bullets into the body of an unarmed Black man who is accused of firing one shot from his moving car as they chased him for purported traffic and equipment violations, neither of which are capital offenses.

Akron, we have a serious race problem and it runs from the top on down. Now what? Consider South Africa’s post-Apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Committee. It taught the world that healing racial divisions only happens after systemic racism is addressed head on, eyes wide open.

I pray that we here in Akron have the courage to face our systemic racism head on and make desperately needed changes to our laws, policies, minds and hearts.

This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on July 24, 2022.

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Justice for all in Akron deadly fight

July 24, 2022 whoopsiepiggle1 Comment

One evening when I was 14, five of my friends and I decided to play “ding dong ditch it.” Not an uncommon pastime for bored teens in the 1970s, we rang the doorbells at random houses and then ran away, our bodies giddily awash with adrenaline.

We were lucky we didn’t die that night.

At one house, we rang the bell on two occasions separated by about 15 minutes. The second time, the owner came out and chased us with a rifle. The house had recently been burglarized and the owner suspected the culprits of that crime had returned to strike again.

The frontal lobes of the human brain are responsible for executive functioning, which includes impulse control, judgment and the ability to plan out steps for a desired goal or outcome.

Unfortunately, however, frontal lobes do not fully develop until the early to mid-20s (later for males than females), which is why parents often ask young adult children who’ve done something reckless, “What were you thinking?”

“What were they thinking?” is a question I’ve heard and certainly thought when considering Ethan Liming and three of his friends driving around West Akron the evening of June 2, shooting at random strangers (as far as has been reported) in multiple places with water pellet guns.

Their fun ended when these four Firestone High School students targeted three young men, ages 19, 20 and 21, playing basketball at the courts next to the I Promise School. Assuming they were being shot at with real bullets, the young men ran. When they realized that was not the case, they turned back and a fight ensued.

In a news conference, Akron police stated that Liming didn’t deserve to die. Those words land like concrete. The job of the police is to investigate. It’s up to the courts to consider the evidence and make judgments.

Furthermore, the three young men playing basketball didn’t deserve to be terrorized by four young men who pulled up in a car at or after sunset (8:53 that night), jumped out and ran toward them while blasting two water pellet guns. 

And yet most of the reporting on this tragedy has painted Liming, who was white, as a good young man while leaning heavily on the engrained racist trope of the Black male criminal in the portrayal of the three basketball players, all of whom are African American.

 If you’ve been following this case, ask yourself what you know about the three who were playing basketball. Are they related? Where’d they go to school? Are any in school now? Who do they live with? Where do they live?

At most we know one of them has been employed at a warehouse for over two years. I doubt he is any longer after our county prosecutors and a judge decided that the three young men who were assaulted while playing ball are such a threat to society that they are being held in jail on $1 million bonds, or what lawyers sometimes call “publicity bonds.”

According to Emily Bazelon in her book “Charged,” only two countries have cash bail bond systems: America and the Philippines (hardly a paragon of justice). The rest of the world simply expects people who are charged to show up at court because if they don’t a warrant for their arrest will be issued.

I live two blocks from the I Promise School and presumably some, if not all, of the three young men playing basketball that night live in my neighborhood. I believe they should be released until trial.

Let’s talk about my neighborhood. 

In 20 years of living in our neighborhood, my family has witnessed several gun-related incidents. The most recent was on a sunny afternoon last summer.

My eldest son, Claude, was driving in the first block of Oakdale Avenue, just one block west of the I Promise School. In the span of no more than 15 seconds, the car ahead of him stopped, a man wearing a backpack walked from the curb to that car, briefly spoke to the occupants, then turned away. A passenger in the car held a gun out of his window and shot the backpack man in the lower back. The car peeled away.

My son called 911 and then, along with other witnesses, aided the shooting victim.

In my neighborhood, the basketball players had every reason to believe they were being shot at with real guns containing real bullets.

If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it’s a duck. When it sounds and looks like bigotry — be it racial, gender, ability or more — it is. Best way to check? Play screenwriter and change up the scene.

What if my three (tall, fit, white, blond) sons in their 20s had been playing basketball at the I Promise courts that night when the Firestone four pulled up in their car and began shooting? And what if, in the ensuing fight, one of the two young Black men in the car with Liming had died? Do you think my sons would be sitting in the county jail under $1 million bonds? I don’t.

And what if my (tall, fit, white, blond) sons legally carried handguns? With our state’s whack-a-doodle gun laws, my sons could have killed each of the Firestone four and used the “Stand Your Ground” law as their defense. No doubt they’d be cleared of all charges, if any were even filed.

Or let’s say the four Firestone males instead drove to a basketball court in upscale Bath and jumped out, pellet guns a-blazing, at three white males. Again, if in the ensuing fight Liming had died, who would be in jail today? Anybody?

Or, if you would rather not consider hypotheticals, recall what actually happened to a Black 12-year-old playing with a toy gun in a Northeast Ohio city park with his sister in broad daylight in 2014. A 911 dispatcher received a call of a “guy” with a gun, and two seconds after police pulled up in their patrol car, one of the officers shot Tamir Rice dead. Two seconds.

Yes, Ethan Liming’s family and friends are deeply grieving his loss. But so are the families of three youths who were minding their business, playing basketball on a warm summer’s eve when they were assaulted by a carload of young men with guns that first appeared deadly.

What would you have done if you were the three playing basketball? What did the Firestone four believe were the possible outcomes when running at three strangers while shooting them with pellets? I doubt they thought it through. And now seven families and six young men must live with the tragic consequences.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on July 10, 2022.

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Color my world, starting with my home

July 7, 2022December 23, 2022 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

“How many houses have you had in the three decades since we met?” my friend Jen asked me this spring. “And you made them all so inviting. You have to come to Philly and help me with our new house.”

The answer to Jen’s question is six, none of which have been new construction. Built to last, costly details in older homes — like ornate brass escutcheons behind glass door knobs on solid hardwood doors — are rare in contemporary housing.

And the quirks of old homes, which they all have, charm me. I have a house with oak floors throughout except for the smallest bedroom, where the floor is pine. The bedroom’s door is solid oak, but the interior of that door, unlike any other in the house, has a pine veneer, presumably so that when the door is closed the wood of floor and door match.

Some old homes reveal messages from prior times. The house I had in central Pennsylvania was built in the 1880s by Quakers who owned significant interest in Thomas Edison’s electric company. When removing modern (and ghastly floral) wallpaper, I discovered the largest bedroom once had been two rooms. Workers removed a middle wall and then signed a remaining one with the date: 1917.

Today I own two homes, which I’ve named after the families who lived in each for several decades. In 2003, Herman Dreisbach was 88 when I bought the home he’d inherited in the 1940s from his uncle, the first owner. Next door lived Claire Cressler, an artist who became a dear friend and regular guest at our dinner table. He died at age 97 in 2008.

I moved into Cressler House two summers ago and have had more fun making it mine than any previous house. For one thing, it is the first house I’ve purchased as a single person. The contents of the home and any remodeling choices are mine alone. I’m not frustrated by someone else’s clutter nor need I negotiate color choices (oodles of purples!).

Secondly, and unlike the Arts and Crafts Dreisbach House, nothing in Cressler House is precious. In the 1950s and ‘60s, Claire and his wife, Gloria, sought to modernize the home. They took photos of themselves gleefully removing all the quarter-sawn oak paneling, pillars and fireplace mantel with crow bars.

That’s not to say that the Cresslers didn’t make choices I enjoy. Claire built a midcentury modern floor-to-ceiling sandstone mantel to replace the 1906 original. And the wallpaper in the front entryway is so groovy cool friends regularly use it as a backdrop for photos.

But the cheapest and easiest way to change the look of a house is paint. Walls rich in color encourage different moods and make art pop, and I have no fear of bold colors.

Standing in front of the seemingly endless array of color palettes at a paint store, however, can be overwhelming. I recommend, as step one, winnowing the choices. I have a few tricks for that, starting with two tips I picked up from Martha Stewart. The first is that green — not white or beige — is nature’s neutral and its various shades are often a good default when struggling to choose.

The second is to let the colors in paintings, rugs or textiles guide you. I’m regularly surprised by what I find when looking closely. For instance, I think of the Persian rug in my office as navy blue. But it also contains a good bit of coral pink and Pacific blue, colors I wouldn’t automatically put together.

I used the glorious 1960s entryway wallpaper, a dark terra cotta with black and reflective-gold abstract flora, as my starting point for choosing colors on my first floor. Farrow & Ball’s Down Pipe, a charcoal grey, in my high-ceilinged living room not only honors the dramatic wallpaper, it makes the room feel cozy — especially when entertaining guests in front of a roaring fire on a winter’s eve.

Feng shui, an Asian approach to creating healthy spaces, was a bit of a craze in the ‘90s and includes recommendations for certain colors in certain sections of a home. It’s not magic and installing purple Armstrong vinyl-composite tile in the prosperity corner of my house hasn’t generated winning lottery numbers. But it sure ties the room together.

I like to see photos of real spaces painted in the colors I’m considering. Farrow & Ball’s palette is my go-to and their website includes multiple photos of spaces, indoors and out, painted in each of their colors along with others that coordinate.

The color of one room should complement the colors of the adjacent rooms to avoid dissonance. The dusky lilac of F&B’s Brassica in my bedroom is accented by Sherwin William’s Camelback (my only non-F&B color) in the hallway, which looks great with F&B’s Vardo (peacock teal) of the bathroom.

Only once have I immediately repainted because I didn’t like a color once it was on the walls. The room looked like the inside of a cantaloupe.

I enthusiastically encourage everyone to consider painting white walls in vibrant hues. It can change not just how your home looks, but also how it abides.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on June 26, 2022.

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June is a balm for these trying times

June 28, 2022 whoopsiepiggle2 Comments

After the 2020 election, I took a much-needed break from the news. But only a few months later, it once again dominated my daily brain diet. From the local to the global, there’s been a lot to consider.

During the school year, I can hear I Promise School students at recess from my house. It was on those same playgrounds that a Firestone High School student was beaten to death on the evening of June 2.

My three oldest sons grew up in this neighborhood and graduated from Firestone. As a neighbor told me the next day, we see crime in our city neighborhood all the time, particularly sex workers and drug houses, but a kid getting beaten to death?

I’ve spent most of my life in Ohio and for much of that time, it’s been a swing state with robust politics. But for a number of reasons, not least of which is gerrymandering, that is no longer the case.

Republicans have controlled the Ohio legislature for over two decades. This year, the Republican majority on the Ohio Redistricting Commission played a game all too familiar to most parents: If you don’t get permission from Mom, slink off and try Dad.

When Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, also a Republican, along with the three Democratic justices on the court, rightfully refused to accept the unconstitutional legislative district maps the commission submitted, Republican associates filed a lawsuit in federal court. Astonishingly and wrongfully, the two federal judges ordered one of the unconstitutional maps to be used in the next election cycle.

Elected officials intentionally circumventing the Ohio Constitution, which they swore to uphold, is a cancer on our democracy. Every citizen should be concerned about it metastasizing.

Rampant mass shootings make America a country in which going to school, religious services, grocery stores, hospitals, concerts and more a life-and-death gamble that was inconceivable in my childhood.

The satirical online magazine The Onion runs a headline after each school shooting that best describes America’s ludicrous political coma on its gun problem: “No Way to Prevent This,” Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.

Meanwhile, 2022 is poised to be a banner year for rolling back constitutional rights, starting with Roe v. Wade, and quite likely thereafter many other so-called cultural issues. We need a better term than “cultural issues,” which implies that the legal recognition of equal rights for people who are women, Black or Brown, LGBTQ or non-Christian is as optional as going to a museum or listening to classical music.

Globally, I feel like I’ve gone into a time machine to World War I and II. Reports from Europe of atrocities and war crimes perpetuated on civilians, often accompanied by graphic photos, pour in every day. Yes, we have not been as moved when other countries are war-torn, including when our nation, like Russia, was the unprovoked aggressor. But that does not justify apathy in the case of Ukraine.

And then there are the more abstract concerns of climate change and inflation, which seem to have smashed into each other at the gas pump. Might sky-high gas prices spur a conversion to less driving and more electric vehicles? We’ll see.

It’s a lot, but teaching university freshmen has taught me that not everyone reels from these paradigm-shifting times. In fact, many are blithefully unaware of the state of any affairs.

Nearly half my freshmen this past semester could not tell me what country Vladimir Putin leads. And almost to a person, the same students did not know what country Adolf Hitler led. “Why should we know that?” asked one.

Is there somewhere between the blissfulness of ignorance and the existential dread that accompanies an obsessive attention to dystopian headlines to find balance, and therefore sanity?

Buddhism teaches that control is an illusion. As I’ve grown older, I take in the news more dispassionately, which is not to say I don’t care, I care deeply. But if I am constantly angry, how effective am I?

A goal of meditation is to remain present in the moment, to keep your mind from galloping like an untrained stallion miles away from where you are sitting and breathing.

There are other ways to cultivate mindfulness, including the month of June. For as poet James Russell Lowell wrote, “And what is so rare as a day in June?/Then, if ever, come perfect days.”

Indeed.

The past few weeks, I’ve planted several flats of vivacious flowers, two dogwoods, two azaleas, two rose bushes and several herbs. The floor of my front porch, which I had rebuilt last summer, has a fresh coat of paint and new rugs. I sit out there with coffee most mornings and wine most evenings, listening to classic jazz and reading.

Holly Christensen relaxes on her porch with her dog Otto. — Porch reading with my German shepherd, Otto.

On my porch loveseat, the beauty of summer flora surrounds me. Plants grow without worry of crime, legal rights and wars. I gauge the wind by looking at the leaves high up in the tall trees surrounding my house. I howdy-do my neighbors who sometimes join me on the porch for a visit.

Before the Buddha attained enlightenment, he was tempted and tormented by the demon Mara, who represents death, rebirth and desire. Mara sent beautiful women and aggressive armies in an effort to thwart the Buddha’s imminent nirvana. In response, the Buddha touched the earth with his right hand and called on it as witness to his transformation.

Spend as much of June outside as possible. Get your hands into the earth either by planting or weeding. Take in all that fills the natural world and will continue to do so when this time, as with all others, passes.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on June 12, 2022.

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Investment of time with oldest friends pays huge dividends

June 10, 2022August 14, 2022 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

I don’t usually take phone calls when I’m in meetings or with friends, but there are exceptions. One, of course, is any call from one of my children’s schools. Also, from anyone over the age of 90. 

Elderly friends have been a mainstay in my life, possibly due to my long and close relationship with one of my grandmas. After my mother left my father and me when I was a toddler, my father’s mother, who was an elementary school teacher, kept me during the summer and picked me up from day care during the school year.

Grandma was a talker, something my mother and stepfather churlishly joked about whenever they interacted with her. But I loved Grandma’s stories about people I’d never met (usually distant relatives) who lived in places I’d never been (usually Utah, or other parts of the West).

More:Holly Christensen: Generational effects of COVID coming into view

As much as the elderly love to reminisce, I revel in their recounted pasts, for even stories told many times can offer new bits with each retelling. The oldest among us have witnessed and experienced a world most of us can only imagine. And when they die, they will take their memories with them.

That’s the poignancy of having dear friends who are in their 90s or more. They have no terminal pathology other than mortality itself, a fact they intimately encounter each day.

Several years ago, I received a letter from a Beacon Journal reader named Barbara Campbell. We corresponded regularly until January 2020 when she moved to be near her son and his wife in New Hampshire, fortuitously settling into her new apartment just before COVID-19 debuted in America.

Barbara, who recently turned 97, still sends me encouraging notes, often filled with clippings of funny or warm-hearted stories she’s read, but now we call more than write. Like most of my older friends, she often starts by saying, “I won’t keep you long, I know you’re busy.”

I’ve written before about my dear friend Bascom who will turn 100 in August. I tell him frequently that I can’t imagine my life without him in it. Like Barbara, age has not diminished Bascom cognitively. In fact, I don’t think anyone discusses all manner of things as well as Bascom does.

If only it could stay this way. However, ignore it though we might, everything is transitory. 

I thought of Roger Angell as my friend the way many readers do of writers whose essays they regularly read. (David Sedaris and his siblings almost feel like my cousins having read his essays for 30 years.)

I was introduced to Angell, perhaps best known for his books on baseball, in February 2014 when The New Yorker published his essay “This Old Man.” After reading it, I immediately sent it to a friend who teaches nonfiction writing courses, telling him the essay is about as perfect as it gets.

“This Old Man” meanders through seemingly scattershot subjects but then Angell — as all philosophers and writers strive to but seldom succeed in doing — pulls together his observations on living, dying, loving, losing and remembering in such an approachable manner that you don’t see him sneaking up to make you suddenly chuckle or sob over a scene your mind momentarily inhabited. And for a few moments, while reading the essay, everything about being human makes sense.

I went on to read many of Angell’s essays, in part because he kept publishing them. I’ve even found time for some of his pieces on baseball, which among all sports is the one I find the least dull (yeah, go figure).

Virtuoso writers are not limited by a reader’s preexisting interest in a topic. No, they make the topic compelling by subtly tricking you into thinking you’re reading about X, when really you’re falling for the achingly familiar existential pang of aliveness.

Besides, when Angell wrote about Babe Ruth or Joe DiMaggio, it was often from memory as, having been born in New York City in 1920, he’d watched them play in situ.

Without minimizing the work involved in writing well, Angell came by his talent naturally. His mother, Katharine Sergeant Angell White, was the first fiction editor at The New Yorker, a position Angell himself held for many years, starting in 1956. His father was a founder of the American Civil Liberties Union and his stepfather was author E.B. White.

In one of my writing courses at the University of Akron, students must pick one important event from their lives and write about it. Many choose to write about the death of a grandparent. I understand why. For most of them, it’s the first deeply felt loss they’ve experienced.

But inexperienced writers tend to get stuck in superlative circles polished with grief — he was the best grandfather, she baked the best cookies, he gave the greatest gifts, and so on. Rather than approaching the story at the front door, I tell my students, try sneaking in a side window. Write about something less obvious, like your grandad teaching you how to change a car’s oil/tires/battery.

Angell does exactly this in his essay “Over the Wall.” His wife of 48 years, Carol Rogge Angell, died in 2012, and in the piece, he describes all the things that she doesn’t know, from election outcomes to weather and sporting events to the lives of their children. And in so doing, Angell avoids sentimentality while showing the tugging vacuum created by Carol’s absence in his daily life.

Angell, who would have been 102 this fall, died May 20. Do yourself a favor and read some of his essays today. Right now, in fact. Many are readily available online, given his recent departure.

And if, like me, you are lucky to have friends in their 80s, 90s or even 100s, block the door against life’s myriad demands and schedule regular calls and visits with them. And while you’re at it, print out a copy of “This Old Man” and give it to your senior friend. I guarantee it’ll be a hit, if not a home run.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on May 29, 2022.

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In-person event is a sign of returning normalcy

May 20, 2022 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

Back when street lamps were powered by gas, someone went by foot at day’s end and lit them one by one. Last week, it felt as though each of Akron’s trees had been similarly visited when leaves erupted seemingly overnight on branches long bare.

It’s hard not to feel renewed by each spring, but especially this one. Not only because it marks the end of one of the hardest winters in years, but also because the worst of the two-year COVID pandemic may finally have receded with this year’s snow piles.

In the past few weeks, I’ve seen repeated announcements of various events being held in person for the first time in three years. Dances, fundraisers, fish dinners, pancake breakfasts and, next Saturday, May 21, the annual Race for Case.

Ten years ago, Craig Sampsell, one of Case Elementary’s interventionists, along with two other faculty members, Sarah Core and Jen Victor, organized the first Race for Case to raise money to create a computer lab, purchase iPads and a smart board for the building.

In the years since, the Race for Case has funded inclusive equipment (read: accessible for kids with physical disabilities) and a rubberized surface for the school’s playground, as well as a greenhouse slated to be built at the end of this year.

According to Sampsell, the proceeds from this year’s race will fund “school assemblies focused on social emotional learning as well as science, math and reading. We want to create the fun and joy of going to school again and increase the opportunities for our students to interact with outside resources. We will also see if we can fund a school-wide field trip.” 

According to a recent New York Times piece by David Leonhardt, in the 1990s and early 2000s, the United States increased both accountability and funding for public schools. “Typically, the funding increases were larger for low-income schools than for high-income schools. That may help explain why racial gaps in reading and math skills declined.”

In the decades since, the data on funding increases for low-income public schools indicates that greater funding does, in fact, result in better outcomes, and not just while kids are in school, but long after they’ve graduated.

The primary metric businesses look at when locating in a community is the quality of the workforce. This alone should cause all legislators, regardless of party, to prioritize maximum funding for public K-12 schools.

Unfortunately, that has not happened in many states, including Ohio. As a popular bumper sticker reads: “It will be a great day when our schools have all the money they need, and our air force has to have a bake sale to buy a bomber.”

Until schools have all the funding they need, supporting them with fundraisers, like the Race for Case, remains important, if not vital.

This year’s race is the first of 10 in Akron Promise’s City Series Neighborhood Races. People who participate in four of the series’ races will be awarded medals. Rest assured, you don’t have to be a competitive athlete to take part. Participants ranging from those in baby buggies to elders using canes can run, walk or stroll the course.

Unlike in years past, when the race started and ended at Hardesty Park, this year it will be held at the school (1420 Garman Road). There’s a 1-mile race that starts at 9:30 a.m., followed by the 5K at 10. Registration is online at bit.ly/race4case5k and will also be available onsite that morning.

Perhaps best of all, at least from the perspective of the kids, after the races, there will be a carnival with inflatables and games for all ages.

In 2018, my third child (who identifies as “they/their”) was at the time a junior in high school and came in second at the Race for Case. We were excited for their last year on Firestone’s cross country team that upcoming fall, believing they had a strong chance of making it to the state championships.

Jules Christensen hugging their older brother Claude after the 2018 Race for Case

But that summer, they developed mononucleosis, which dragged on for many months. Eventually a rheumatologist diagnosed my tall, fit 18-year-old with chronic fatigue syndrome. That 2018 Race for Case was the last 5K they will likely ever compete in, making the event especially poignant for us.

In the past two years, all of humanity learned how that which is taken for granted can suddenly end, or at least go on hiatus. As much of community life finally resumes, I can’t think of a better way to celebrate this spring than by coming together to have fun raising money as an investment in some of our youngest citizens. 

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Generational effects of COVID coming into view

May 17, 2022 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

As we get to what everyone hopes and prays is the tail end of the first global pandemic in a century, history expects at least some of us to describe the experience for those who come along after all survivors have passed.

Over the past two years, I have described not only my family’s experience, which is similar to what many families across the planet have experienced, but also what has been happening in communities. From schools to restaurants to travel to masks and vaccines, I’ve written about an array of pandemic topics as the novel coronavirus evolved in wave after wave. 

If anyone feels that life at this moment is like the movie Groundhog Day with spring portending the end of masks and (knock on wood) COVID as we’ve known it, much as it did last spring — you’re not alone. But there are some key differences, particularly in schools.

This time last year, it had only been a little over a month that Akron Public Schools had reopened buildings for in-person instruction. And the University of Akron was ending a third semester taught largely in hybrid or fully remote sessions. 

This school year, because of prudent measures taken last fall, both APS and UA have had buildings open, the majority of students in classrooms and, for the past few months, optional masking. 

As a parent of a child in APS and a faculty member at UA, I could not be more relieved to finally be at this point. And yet I’m at a loss for where far too many of our students are.

I teach both freshman composition courses for UA’s English department and a seminar on thesis writing for graduate students in arts administration. The difference between the two groups is striking. 

I assumed a fair number of freshmen would not be COVID vaccinated as the university did not mandate the vaccine until after the fall semester had ended. Which is why, two weeks before classes began, I got my booster shot.

Boy, was that the right call. While all of my graduate students were vaccinated, more than half of my freshmen were not.

Given that younger people are more likely to experience milder cases of COVID, my undergraduates’ low vaccination rate was, while concerning, not alarming. I cannot say the same about their academic performance. 

I have in the past described my despair that so few undergraduates at my city university seldom (if ever) watch movies or TV programs. As for volitionally reading magazines, newspapers or — queue up an angelic choir—books? Fuhgettaboutit.

And yet, with a lot of exposure, prodding and encouragement to dive deeply on topics that most interest them, I have for years been able to engage the majority of my freshmen. 

That is until this spring, which was the first semester we resumed normal requirements and deadlines. 

While my graduate students continue to produce work that is always passable and at times truly impressive, my current undergraduates remind me of people in a land where they don’t speak the language and I’m their only interpreter and there’s not enough of me for each of them.

Weirdly most freshmen attended all classes and seemed truly engaged. And then the majority of them didn’t do the work. Multiple times in class I’ve sung the refrain from U2’s song “One”: Did I ask too much? More than a lot? You gave me nothin’ now it’s all I’ve got.

At first I thought it was me, for it is the responsibility of leaders, which teachers are, to inspire.

But in the past few months, I’ve heard the same concerns not only from other English professors, but across UA’s departments and from friends teaching throughout the country.

APS teachers tell me they are seeing the same. 

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when regular school attendance in New Orleans Public Schools was not possible for the better part of a year, data soon revealed significant negative consequences including increased dropout rates and an average drop in performance of two grades.

Today we must ask how many students have been negatively affected by all the measures we had to take in order to mitigate COVID? And what should we be doing as a community, a society and a nation to forestall a lost generation?

The pandemic and all it wrought has been hard on everyone, but not uniformly. For those under the age of 20, the past two years comprise a significant portion of their lives.

Now that the virulence of COVID is waning, the lasting repercussions are becoming visible. A top priority needs to be finding solutions to aid students who have gotten out of sync with what they need to succeed in school, and perhaps more.

This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, May 1, 2022.

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Ah, spring, a season of flowers and litter

April 30, 2022 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

Today’s elders telling children how winters were far worse back in their day is perhaps truer than ever before. This winter, however, was an exception that proved that fact. 

Siberian scrill, hellebores and daffodils are welcome signs of spring in Holly’s backyard

Living in the north, I prefer a white winter. I find sensorial pleasure in the muffled silence, nighttime brightness and diamond-like sparkles of landscapes buried in several inches of snow.

As for shoveling — the cause of many backaches and heart attacks — honestly enjoy the vigorous activity in a season when the weather too often coops everyone up inside their homes. 

This year, the snowfall was not only substantial, it didn’t melt much between storms. Driveways soon resembled canyons. The first major winter storm, over Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, deposited 14 inches in my neighborhood. Shoveling it felt great, until it didn’t.

Even with a couple of helpers, I shoveled the deep snow for the better part of two hours that holiday weekend. By evening, both my thumbs, which were diagnosed with arthritis a few years ago, throbbed. 

For the most part, arthritis only limits my chances of getting picked for a jar-opening team, which is to say I’m rarely inconvenienced by the calcifications located where my opposable digits connect to my hand. 

I wore hand braces, took ibuprofen and rubbed liniments into my thumbs for weeks after that first major storm. And yet a pulsing pain woke me most nights. 

I eventually relented to steroid injections. Also, as a preventative measure, I became the proud owner of a snowblower, which of course means we won’t get much snow next year. (Feel free to thank me.)

Extremes elevate appreciation. Color is a welcome delight after the browns, grays and whites of a long, hardy winter.

Last week, my backyard was suddenly awash with the saturated blue of Siberian squill. My 12-year-old son cried out, “Look at the flowers!” when first spying them after a week with his father. The early flowers fill my lawn but will be long gone before the mower makes its annual debut.

Get inspired by the top 2022 design and decor trends, go on a tiny-home tour, and explore Bridgid Coulter’s mindful approach to sustainable design.

Meanwhile, across the city, some unsavory things also have sprouted up.

In March, receding snow released troves of trash onto the streets, sidewalks and devil strips. Where spring flowers generate smiles, loads of litter seemingly confetti-bombed throughout Akron are a dreary counterpoint.

Keep Akron Beautiful is doing its best to address the litter but, like so many things, the pandemic has interfered. In the years leading up to COVID, the nonprofit assigned hundreds of workers with court-ordered community service hours to pick up litter. In 2021, it had only 39 community service workers, down from 577 in 2019.

On April 23, Keep Akron Beautiful is holding a cleanup event at Summit Lake (meet at the Summit Lake Community Center, 380 W. Crosier St.) from 9 a.m. until noon. But the helpers won’t be visiting my neighborhood, which is why I now carry a grocery bag on my evening strolls. I’d not get many steps if I grabbed all the litter I see, but a little each time adds up.

Something else also sprung up in every Akron ward this spring: speed tables. Unlike speed bumps, speed tables are flatter and tapered. Apparently a 2020 pilot program found speed tables reduced speeds by 23%. 

Over the past few years, the city has implemented several traffic-calming measures. In many cases, lanes on busier roads have been reduced from four (two in each direction) to three — a lane in each direction with a turn lane in the middle.

While some residents complain about the reduced lanes, it’s hard to argue with calmer, safer traffic flows. 

That said, I’m not a fan of the speed tables. Who sees speed tables and says, “Gee, what a lovely neighborhood”? Nobody. 

But more importantly, speed tables are not as effective as some would have us believe. 

Drivers zoom up to the elevated sections, slow down to go over them only to accelerate again on the other side, something I learned 20 years ago when I sat on a traffic-calming committee in Cleveland. 

I’ve been watching people drive on Akron’s streets with speed tables. Not only do I see the zoom-slow-zoom behavior, plenty of cars fly over the flattish impediments at 10, 15, or even 20 miles over the speed limit. 

Narrowing streets is one of the best ways to calm traffic on streets suffering speedsters. (Hence the reduced lanes on Copley Road, Exchange Street and Memorial Parkway.)

For residential streets, allowing parking on both sides is a free and easy option. This naturally narrows any throughway, causing most drivers to proceed with caution.

Another attractive way to narrow residential streets is to create pinch points by bumping out the devil strip at the same place on both sides of a street. And unlike speed tables, pinch points don’t have to be removed in the winter for snowplows.

Let’s tidy up Akron and rethink those speed tables so the blossoms alone are what catches eyes. For isn’t spring, especially after a cold, snowy winter, just grand?

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, April 17, 2022.

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More inclusion, less ableism

April 7, 2022 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

Recently I saw a photo of yet another young woman with Down syndrome who has become a model, in this case for Victoria’s Secret.

“Do you think she’s had cosmetic surgery on her eyes?” I asked my friend who happens to be an eye doctor.

“I was wondering the same thing,” he said before asking, “What do you think of that?”

Down syndrome, the most common chromosomal disorder, is caused by an extra copy of the 21st chromosome. It causes intellectual disabilities (from mild to significant) and a variety of physical features, including epicanthal folds, which is a prolongation of the upper eyelid fold.

I didn’t know the term “epicanthal fold” when I looked at my daughter moments after her birth and blurted out, “Her eyes looked kind of Downsy.”

Why would someone with DS undergo eyelid surgery if it was medically unnecessary? Perhaps because epicanthal folds, which vary from person to person, can make it easy to identify someone’s diagnosis of DS.

The summer of 2018 my daughter, Lyra, was old enough to join her brother at the summer day camp in Michigan that he’d attended the previous two summers. Five minutes after I dropped them off on their first day, I received a call from the camp director.

Lyra with her brother (and best buddy) Leif.

“Lyra stepped in a puddle and needs a dry pair of socks. And, frankly, we’re just not set up for her,” she told me.

“What do you mean you aren’t set up for Lyra?” I demanded more than asked, causing the woman on the other end of the line to sputter.

To see my daughter’s features is to know she has Down syndrome. And ascribing outmoded or patently false notions about what it means to have DS is still far too common, especially among people my age or older.

Lyra talks, reads, sings and plays like, well, other children. And she will happily outsmart anyone who mistakenly assumes she’s incapable of performing a task and let them do it for her.

There was a new camp director the second summer Lyra attended. She and the counselors have not only accepted Lyra, each is excited when assigned to Lyra’s group for any of the eight weeks of the program. Several email me throughout the year for Lyra updates and one wrote a paper on inclusion, with Lyra as an example, for a college course.

Like all bigotry, ableism, or the discrimination of people with disabilities, is learned. Probably the best way to unlearn bigotry is through regular interaction with people whose ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation/identity and/or abilities, are different than one’s own. Through conversation and interaction it becomes undeniably apparent that we are all “more alike than different,” which is the motto of the National Down Syndrome Congress.

Policies that embrace inclusion, in which people with disabilities are not sequestered, but included in typical classrooms, jobs and more, benefit everyone. Yes, Lyra’s DS effects her cognition, but that’s not a reason to have her in a room down the hall from her typical peers.

In inclusive settings my daughter’s abilities in everything from speech to somersaults improve. At the same time, her typical peers learn how to have a friend with a disability, how to be occasionally helpful without infantilizing. They also come to know my girl for the person she is and not the diagnosis she has.

This alone is reason enough to include people with disabilities in any setting. But beyond increasing compassion, and thereby reducing bigotry, typical kids who have a peer with DS in their classrooms have been shown to score higher on college entrance exams than students who do not have the advantage of having a classmate with DS.

We recently enrolled Lyra in the aftercare program at the Shaw JCC. When the program’s director expressed concerns about meeting Lyra’s needs, I was reminded of Lyra’s first year at summer camp.

But instead of resisting Lyra’s enrollment, the JCC has increased its aftercare staff by one and welcomed training from the Summit DD Board to ensure they are able to meet the needs of all the children in the program.

And therein lies something about advocacy that is often overlooked: it can result in an improved situation not just for one child, but everyone involved with that child.

The answer to my friend’s question about what I think of people with DS undergoing cosmetic surgery is complicated. History is filled with marginalized people attempting to “pass” in order to avoid discrimination and even violence.

When she’s an adult, my daughter may seek cosmetic surgery so as not to be unfairly assessed based upon misguided or even cruel assumptions. But I hope not because it’s a severe and frankly unfair solution to the societal problem of discrimination.

Meanwhile, I will continue working to make the world a place where my daughter and others with Down syndrome are seen not as their diagnosis but as the full humans and assets to their communities that they are.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, April 3, 2022.

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Making masks optional in Akron schools was the right decision

March 24, 2022 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

Like a lot of children, my 9-year-old daughter, Lyra, relies on routine to make life predictable and easier for us both. Conversely, changes in her routines can understandably take a minute. 

When I tell Lyra on the first warm spring morning that she needn’t put on a hat, scarf and mittens when getting ready for her school bus, she does anyway. I chalk it into the “pick your battles” category and she heads out overly dressed the first weeks of the season.

Lyra and her dog Otto after sledding on March 12. Three days later it was 70 degrees in Akron.

Knowing this, I was surprised last Monday when I told Lyra she no longer needed to wear a mask to school. She made no attempt to grab a fresh one from the basket where I’ve stored them for nearly two years.

Last August I wrote a column supporting Akron Public Schools’ decision to mandate masks when the buildings reopened for the 2021-2022 school year. At the time, COVID’s delta variant was engulfing Summit County where many of the school districts that initially did not require masks soon returned to remote learning due to significant outbreaks.

In spite of my family’s best efforts to support Lyra’s remote learning during the full year APS’ buildings remained closed, her education stalled. Thus, my biggest fear this school year was a return, even temporarily, to online instruction.

Now, seven months later, we must ask: Do the risks of contracting COVID (including hospitalization and death) remain greater than the educational risks associated with remaining masked? When can we reasonably, as we eventually must, choose to end mask mandates?

One of the courses I teach this semester at the University of Akron is rhetoric. I tell my second-semester freshmen in this course that it is like a microcosm of college in which they will develop critical thinking skills. They learn how to find reliable data from credible sources, which they must read more closely than they are used to in order to analyze the effectiveness of each piece’s arguments.

Rhetoric students also come to recognize fallacious arguments such as a red herring (Before allowing ice fishing shanties, we must first consider if they’ll increase prostitution) or an ad hominem (While Michael Cohen’s testimony to the Senate was impossible to disprove, we shouldn’t listen to him because he’s a confessed slime-ball). 

Whenever I teach this course, I assign articles on current events for rhetorical analysis. Last month, my students read multiple op-eds and one New York Times newsletter on when school mask mandates should end.

The difficulty in determining a specific date to end mask mandates, which must take into account many variables that change daily, was ideal precisely because there is no one-date-is-perfect-everywhere solution. 

Here’s what we learned: Each new variant of a virus quickly supplants the previous one and typically successive generations of any virus are more transmissible but also less harmful than earlier ones. Which is to say, we are quickly getting to the same territory with COVID as the annual flu.

Furthermore, there is evidence that masks impede education. Of course they do. The decibels at which I lecture from behind a mask are just shy of screaming. Beyond making instruction difficult, masks also hinder social connectivity. Younger students are reportedly taking months instead of the usual weeks to make new friends when masked.

Politically, at least two extreme camps exist on masking. One is the camp that believes all masking was always pointless. The other holds that we should wear masks until the risk of contracting COVID is zero. As with most binary approaches, both are overly simplistic.

Now that children ages 5 and up can be vaccinated, now that the omicron contraction rate has peaked and, as with previous variants, dramatically fallen and given that future variants will most likely continue to be milder than those that have come before, it is time to end mandatory masking where it makes sense.

Hospitals and medical offices will understandably continue requiring masks longer than stores and schools do because people who are medically compromised or fragile are more likely to be in medical facilities.

Last summer, after vaccines were available and COVID rates subsequently dropped, many believed we were done with masking. Then the delta variant debuted in America. That’s when I pitched our cloth masks for disposables, mostly for the sake of ease, but also because they had proved to be more effective.

I heartily pray this spring is the real end of the pandemic as we’ve known it for the past two years.

Akron Public Schools surveyed its families in the weeks before revisiting the district’s mask mandate. As a parent of a child in the district, I took the survey and answered yes, it is time to make masks optional in our city’s schools.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on March 20, 2022.

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Global power and the Ukrainian fulcrum

March 6, 2022 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

Shortly after I moved to Cleveland in 2000, I became friends with Alla, a Ukrainian woman in her late 20s whose son was the same age as one of mine.

In her small house, the high shine of the wood floors made the old cliche of eating off them seem reasonable. Though normally soft-spoken and reticent, when Alla strapped on her accordion she embodied energetic merriment, transforming her tiny living room into a dance hall for our combined four boys who pirouetted and jumped to her music.

Alla immigrated to the United States with her family when she was a girl and a few years later her father died of brain cancer. I asked if she thought it was due to radiation exposure from the Chernobyl disaster. She said no, but who would want to live with that specter and what else it might bring?

A year after we’d become friends, Alla lent me a slim book about the Holodomor, or Great Famine. In 1929, Soviet leader Josef Stalin collectivized agriculture in Ukraine, confiscating farms and homes. Production dropped, unrest grew and Stalin, rather than fixing the problem he’d caused, brutally doubled down and confiscated food supplies.

Between 1931 to 1934, nearly 4 million Ukrainians died because of Stalin’s genocidal famine. At the same time, the Soviets worked to dismantle the Ukrainian language, culture and religion in an attempt to Russify the nation. Many who resisted were executed or sent to the Gulag (forced labor camps).

Filled with firsthand accounts of the Holomodor, I found my friend’s book hard to read to the end, which is why I did. Twenty years later, I remain haunted by one particular victim: a woman found dead with her infant at her breast where it suckled in vain before also dying.

Alla, whose parents were born more than a decade after the Holomodor, carried her people’s collective memory of what Soviet occupation had wrought and wanted others to know too.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was the first time the world as I knew it changed. The second time came 10 years later when terrorists flew hijacked planes into the World Trade Center towers. The third is the current pandemic.

Now the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine by Russia has begotten a fourth global watershed moment in 30 years. The geopolitical future of the world is on a fulcrum and what happens in Ukraine will decide which way it tips — toward democracy or authoritarianism.

As Russia amassed a warmongering number of troops and armaments along its border with Ukraine in the first weeks of 2022, experts equivocated whether Russian President Vladimir Putin would invade a sovereign nation without provocation.

Of those experts, Alexander Vindman, the former director for European affairs at the U.S. National Security Council, who, like Alla, immigrated from Ukraine to the United States with his family as a child, has proved most prescient. The transcript of his Jan. 10 interview with NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly reads like the playbook for Russia’s invasion and the global response.

I’m not alone in lately recalling author William Faulkner’s words: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

To know Ukrainian history is to know Ukrainians will fight any invasion and attempted occupation mightily and indefinitely. Ukrainians are not Russians. Ukraine is a sovereign nation for which the Russian government has no credible reason to invade, bomb and occupy. Large numbers of Russian citizens, who have risked imprisonment to protest Putin’s war, agree.

After I moved to Akron in 2003, I saw Alla less frequently. When we last spoke on the phone in 2009, her second son was a toddler and she’d recently given birth to a daughter. She always had wanted a large family and I was happy for her.

Alla told me that, like her father, her sister had died of brain cancer since we’d last talked and that she, too, had had a tumor removed from her brain, but assured me she was fully recovered. We talked easily for an hour, mostly about our children, before hanging up.

When I called her cellphone several months later, her husband answered. He was disconcerted when I asked for Alla. She and her daughter had both died — Alla from cancer, the baby from complications of the treatment.

Instantly I realized that Alla’s call, conversational and upbeat, had been a farewell. Her quiet, determined bravery in the face of death now seems essentially Ukrainian. Ukrainian bravery, on full display in the face of Putin’s orders to take their country no matter the cost of human life, is humbling.

Just as COVID went from a distant news story to a pandemic that upended the world, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has placed the world order quite suddenly in a seminal situation.

To Ukraine, its people, and the future of democracy, I say Солідарність, or solidarity. In this moment, Ukrainians are the vanguard protecting the free world. They deserve the full support not just of NATO allies, but all democratic nations.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, March 6, 2022.

Civil Rights · Uncategorized

Banning books an exercise in fear and folly

February 20, 2022August 7, 2022 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

In 1994, I purchased a copy of “The Wild Party” after hearing an interview with Art Spiegelman about his illustrated version of the Gatsby-esque poem by Joseph Moncure March.

It’s a dark little book, written a year before the Great Depression, in which a gin-soaked party spins out, well, wildly and ends very badly for most of the attendees. 

Last fall in a piece in the New York Times Magazine, Mark Harris wondered if March knew the world was on the cusp of change when he wrote his poem, considering “there are few things more glamorous than the belief that we are living through the end of an era — and there are even fewer times in recent history when we haven’t believed it.”  

Certainly COVID has made everyone feel like we are living at the end of something, which may be contributing to the current increase in book banning. If the school board in Tennessee that recently nixed Spiegelman’s anti-Nazi graphic novel “Maus” ever saw “The Wild Party,” it might try eradicating the author’s entire canon.

In his recent article, “My Young Mind Was Disturbed by a Book. It Changed My Life,” author Viet Thanh Nguyen wrote:

“Those who seek to ban books are wrong no matter how dangerous books can be. Books are inseparable from ideas, and this is really what is at stake: the struggle over what a child, a reader and a society are allowed to think, to know and to question.”

Like Nguyen, I own some well-written books, published in prior decades, that contain representations of people we recognize today as inappropriate, if not downright racist. These include several of Dr. Seuss’s books as well as the entire collection of Tintin comic books, all of which my children loved reading.

Yes, there are portrayals of people in those books that are completely unacceptable —my children know this because we’ve discussed it. As a result, I trust their intelligence and compassion to recognize negative stereotypes anywhere and question why they are allowed.

I’ve never understood why some parents, in something of a cyclical manner, want to ban books. New York Times parenting columnist Jessica Grose believes it’s about the illusion of parental control, though “delusion”  may be more appropriate.

A 2019 survey reported that “more than half of American children owned a smartphone by the age of 11.” On that little screen, children can see many things they should not. Tell me you have parental controls on your child’s smartphone or, better yet, refuse to give them one? Great, but what about their friends? 

There is no shortage of books on how to talk to kids about pornography, and sex in general so children won’t turn to online porn as a form of sex education. And for good reason. In 2008, when smartphones were still novel, 90% of boys and 66% of girls had viewed online pornography before they were 18. 

Before the internet existed, children clandestinely read and shared books low on literary value and high on prurience. I was delighted that Grose, who’s easily 15 years my junior, revealed passing around “Flowers in the Attic” with her friends as a child.

V.C. Andrews’ “classic” was equally popular when I was a girl. An actively evil grandmother locks her grandchildren in the attic while the passively evil mother seeks a new husband after the death of the children’s father, indicating that children are a deal breaker in snagging a man (so much misogyny to unpack there, whew). The story then devolves into a penny arcade of various horrors, including incest.

The books being banned today, however, are not pulpy paperbacks. Many are literary classics dealing with difficult subjects, such as the Holocaust and slavery. Should works on violent, dehumanizing events in history be sanitized?

I’d counter that teens, who live in the real world in which atrocities are reported daily, safely learn to deal with the complexity of life when they read about bad things happening to good people in books.

Enslaving another human being has no upside for the enslaved and there were no “good masters” in the United States or elsewhere. When Toni Morrison wrote visceral accounts of the abuses committed by enslavers in her book “Beloved,” she drove home why parents would go to extremes to prevent their children from being enslaved. 

Spiegelman’s graphic novel “Maus,” in which Nazis are cats and Jews mice, is not a work of fiction. It’s a postmodern rendering of Spiegelman’s father’s experiences as a Polish Jew who survived the Holocaust. 

While some books are banned for violent content, others are banned for telling the stories of people who are not white, or not heterosexual, or not Christian.

Nonwhite, nonheterosexual and non-Christian children are inundated with books about people who are not like them. Why wouldn’t they want to read good books about people with whom they can identify? 

As for children who are white, heterosexual and Christian, how are they harmed when learning that not everyone experiences the world and life as they do? Good books about people from nondominant parts of society are additive, not subtractive.

The only risk in reading something written from the perspective of someone who is, in some way, different than the reader, is that of cultivating empathy. In my book, that’s something to embrace, not fear.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, February 20, 2022.

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Long friendship is rich in unexpected ways

February 6, 2022February 7, 2022 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

“Your friendship may well be lifelong,” I tell students when I see them hit it off in my classes. That they might also become close with each other’s families is an added bonus I let them discover for themselves.

In the winter of 1992, I met Jen Tressler in a plant pathology class on Ohio State University’s Ag campus, where students working on degrees in agriculture and veterinary medicine were seemingly sequestered.

Our professor was nearing retirement and while I cannot remember his name, I easily recall his face. Generous eyebrows, as dark as his thick hair was white, valanced his bright eyes. His nose, below which he wore a generous smile, was sturdy enough for the occasional tug he gave it. Syrian grandparents were elemental in the overall composition.

Plant pathology fulfilled a capstone science requirement following two courses in botany. We studied plant diseases, their vectors and how to reduce or eliminate them. Not surprisingly, the roster was largely filled with men intending to farm after college. 

The oddballs in the course, Jen (who was also taking the course for the capstone requirement) and I sat together. A few weeks into the quarter, we felt as though the class was sponsored by a major pesticide company — the solution given to almost every disease and pest was to apply noxious chemicals.

Jen and I discussed alternative approaches to pesticides with our professor. His eyes twinkled as he listened closely before suggesting, as any wise teacher would, that she and I teach a class on the subject.

I’m not sure what, if any, impact our hourlong presentation had on the other students, but it cemented our friendship.

After we graduated from OSU, Jen worked at an organic farm in Kansas before spending two years in Honduras with the Peace Corps, where she taught farmers sustainable practices. When she returned, she met and married Milan, they changed their last names to Marvelous and settled in Philadelphia.

For eight years, Jen and I stayed connected through landlines and letters written with ink and paper. But since January 2000, when I moved to Northeast Ohio, Jen has visited me regularly when she stays with her parents, who live in Painesville. 

That same year we taught a class together, Jen’s parents drove down from Painesville and took us to lunch. I found her mom, a first-grade teacher who is now retired, very energetic and engaging.

But it’s Mr. Tressler who I’ve come to know over the years.

Until 2003 I lived in Cleveland, just off the Shoreway exit for West 49th Street. Mr. Tressler, who worked in facilities for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, stopped by for coffee and a chat whenever he was called out to Max Hayes High School, just blocks from my house.

Born and raised in Reading, Pennsylvania, Mr. Tressler comes off as no-nonsense and a bit crusty. I’ve only heard about his temper, yet understood it to be as readily available to him as a favorite hammer is in the tool belt of a carpenter. 

So, too, is kindness. Once, on a sleety January day when I was 8 months pregnant, Mr. Tressler changed a tire on my Toyota Sienna (no easy feat), on the Route 8 ramp behind The Chapel at the University of Akron.

Like many seemingly gruff characters, scratch the surface and you’ll find Mr. Tressler a softie, especially with his family. That’s become even more apparent in the months since he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

After moving to Akron, I’ve met up with Jen and her dad many times when they come to town for our tag-popping emporiums. In case you didn’t know, Akron has killer thrift stores — clearly better than those in Philadelphia or Cleveland.

A couple of weeks ago, I met up with Jen, her eldest daughter and Mr. Tressler at Village Discount on Waterloo Road. 

“I’m pretty sure he’ll remember you,” said Jen on the phone earlier that day, making my stomach drop.  

But, boy, did he. 

Much of the afternoon, Mr. Tressler reminded me of things I’d forgotten until he shared them. Like a lunch years ago at a downtown restaurant where he loved his hamburger.

“I have dementia, you know,” he told me when he struggled to remember the name of the restaurant. (It was The Lockview.)

Never overweight, but of sturdy, Ukrainian stock (Jen’s daughters call him “Gigi” and her mom “Baba”), Mr. Tressler is now considerably thinner. As a result, the blue of eyes, so much like those of my friend, really pop and he looked dashing in his Carhartt jacket and brimmed felt hat.

After thrifting, we ate lunch at my house. I told Mr. Tressler his eyes were as brilliantly blue as those of Paul Newman’s. He wanted to know if Newman was still alive. 

“Sadly, no,” I told him.

When they left that afternoon, Mr. Tressler, whose first name I only recently learned is John, lingered at the doorway after Jen and her daughter had gotten into their car.

“Well, it’s been good knowing you,” he told me, holding my gaze with his own.

“Take care, love,” I replied as I struggled to stay dry-eyed in the face of Jen’s father, a man who long ago became my friend, too.

This was published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, February 6, 2022.

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Rules have changed on making a living

February 3, 2022 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

I am one of America’s 7 million working-poor citizens. My youngest two children and I are on Medicaid and for a few months each year we qualify for food stamps. Like many families living below the poverty level, I receive the Earned Income Tax Credit. Last year, a portion of my EITC, through the Child Tax Credit, was disbursed for six months in a row. 

Created as part of the Biden administration’s COVID relief package passed last March, the CTC gave monthly payments to qualifying families starting on July 15. Through its Build Back Better bill, the administration wanted to extend the CTC but with the bill stalled, the original deadline held and payments ceased. 

When it became clear that December’s CTC payment was, for now, the final one, proponents decried the loss. According to a study conducted by Columbia University, the CTC payments reduced the U.S. child poverty rate from 16% to 12%, or about 3 million children.

The detractors of the CTC fall into roughly two camps: Those who blame the poor for being poor and others who deem the CTC as an imperfect solution to child poverty and, therefore, should be abandoned without first implementing anything better. In other words, the old “letting perfect be the enemy of good.”

Blaming poor people for their situation is nothing new. And, yet, in recent decades, those who do have become more strident. For most of the 20th century, plenty of conservatives knew intimately that poverty is not essentially a character flaw. After all, many of them lived through the Great Depression and the lean years of World War II.

In 1964, the Johnson administration introduced its War on Poverty legislation, which sought to solve the endemic problems that leave so many citizens behind in the world’s richest country. Instead, in the ensuing decades, legislation created by politicians of both parties (I’m looking at you, Bill Clinton) was more of a war on poor people.

For three decades, I have worked hard and played by the rules.

A first-generation college graduate, I took a smattering of classes after high school, only getting serious at age 21 when I enrolled at Ohio State University. I graduated five years later in 1992 with two bachelor’s degrees and paid off my student loans in less than two years.

But then the rules on moving up in life changed.

Federal funding for higher education, starting with the G.I. Bill in 1944, helped create the largest middle class in the history of the world. For several decades, the halls of higher education were no longer the exclusive domain of the rich.

That tide changed starting with the Reagan administration. Using data that showed college graduates make more money over their lifetimes than those with only high school degrees, funding to colleges and students was slashed. This has continued until it is now nearly impossible to earn a bachelor’s degree without an insurmountable mountain of debt.

In 2010, I graduated from Kent State with an MFA and $30k in student loan debt. It has since mushroomed to $40k even though I pay more than the minimum payments. 

Like many Americans, I am a gig worker. I teach at the University of Akron, I write freelance, I proofread for court reporters and I own a rental property.

Also like many American workers, I didn’t choose this, but have few alternatives because American employers have moved positions at an ever-accelerating pace from actual employment to contract work.

Why? It’s simple. Employers don’t have to pay contract employees living wages or provide them with benefits. This is a profit-driven strategy not only adopted by large companies in the commercial sector, but throughout the economy.

A prime example is my work teaching at a university.

Based upon a review of best practices, the Modern Language Association recommends that part-time faculty receive, as minimum compensation, $11,500 for teaching a three-credit-hour semester course. Shoot, I’d be thrilled with half that.

As adjunct faculty, I make just under $3,000 for a three-credit-hour semester course, which is about $127/week (after deductions) for a position that requires a master’s degree, the same one I suspect I’ll die before paying off. In order for freshmen to learn to write successful academic papers, my students write, and I grade, a lot.

As a result, I earn less than $5 an hour teaching.

This scenario is not unique to my university or even Ohio. Colleges and universities nationwide are ever increasingly replacing what were once full-time teaching positions with adjunct faculty who receive subpar pay and little to no benefits.

This and other forms of indentured servitude is why, in this post-vaccine phase of the pandemic, workers are not flocking back to demanding jobs that offer no possibility of earning a living wage.

From the rearview mirror, I would agree that some of the choices I made early in life resulted in me having less income. But, in the world as it was then, there was no way to foretell this.

Research shows that families receiving the CTC spent it mostly on food and education. I used to buy reliable transportation — the base-model, used car I purchased last June. It was a godsend to set up a car payment to occur a few days after the monthly CTC payments hit my bank account.

So yes, the CTC, which simply provided some of the EITC funds monthly instead of in one lump sum as a federal tax refund, is not a solution to decades of rising economic inequality.

But it helped America’s working poor families make monthly ends meet in an economy that, after 1979, no longer rewards the hard or smart work of the majority of Americans. That the CTC should be maintained, even at amounts lower than those paid in 2020 as a part of COVID relief, is a no brainer.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, January 23, 2022.

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Where will we be a year from now?

December 30, 2021 whoopsiepiggleLeave a comment

Is this what you expected life to look like a year ago?

When my children were all young, the changes I noticed from year to year were often typical milestones: first steps, potty training, starting school, riding bikes.

In those labor-intensive years coated with more body fluids than I care to recount, raising children felt like my major contribution to the world. It still does.

Three of my children are now grown and contribute to society. They are active citizens who participate in our democracy and in their communities. They also know how to cook and clean a home, and I’m fairly certain they regularly do both.

In times of great change, however, simply contemplating one’s life at the end of the year seems remiss.

We are about to embark on the third year of a global pandemic; the effects of climate change are no longer a distant cataclysm; and liberal democracy, of which this country has long been the world’s leading example, is looking precariously wobbly.

Alone, each of these can overwhelm anyone paying attention. When dished up together, as they are, it might feel as though the best course is to rock to and fro in a fetal position.

But I suggest otherwise.

We can’t wish away COVID-19, a warming planet or an assault on democratic values. They are here and must be recognized and addressed with thoughtful urgency.

And consider this: positive paradigm shifts can, and often do, occur alongside or just after major calamities. According to Stanford professor Walter Scheidel, the worse a pandemic or plague, the more it results in leveling societal inequalities.

It’s hard to know how long the COVID pandemic will prevent economies from returning to the way they were (if they ever do), but what is clear is that many workers no longer accept wages that leave them below the poverty level and often working in unsafe conditions.

I worked part-time at World Market, a retail store, for five years and even with sterling reviews I never received a raise larger than 25 cents an hour. When I left in 2018, my hourly wage was less than $10. This holiday season, new hires at World Market started at $13 an hour.

As a freelance writer and adjunct faculty with the University of Akron — employment that paid living wages just a generation ago — I work hard for little. When receiving government assistance during the first year of the pandemic, it gave me previously unknown financial capacity, and what I reasonably should always earn.

Endless fires in California, rapid increases in U.S. sea levels and tidal flooding, devastating December tornadoes in Kentucky — the time to sit back and chit-chat about the impact of and solutions for climate change is past. Yet only recently has it been possible to inject the topic of climate change into any serious political discussions. 

Yes, many corporations that deal in fossil fuels, as well as the politicians they lobby, give little more than lip service to seeking paths away from combustible energies to those that are renewable, but the shift has begun. Individuals, communities and states that recognize the consequences of ignoring the facts are moving ahead with changes. It’s still too little, too late, but the tide is shifting.

Dissatisfaction with government and societal status quo abounds on both the left and the right, but how to address that dissatisfaction divides the nation. Autocracies have always existed elsewhere, but not in the United States, long a beacon of democracy. That is, for now.

In the current issue of The Atlantic, Barton Gellman reminds us that just six days into this year, “insurrectionists injured scores of police officers and trashed the hallowed building revered as the citadel of our democracy. Chanting ‘Hang Mike Pence,’ they threatened the sitting vice president’s life. They bashed police officers with poles bearing the American flag. They carried the Confederate battle flag through the Capitol rotunda. They despoiled the building with their urine and feces.”

That all Republicans are not unified in pursuing and prosecuting all participants — including those in government — of this treasonous assault on our government is horrifying, but hardly shocking. 

The title of Gellman’s article is “January 6 Was Practice” and in it he outlines how we now live in a country in which only one of the two major political parties, the Democrats, is willing to lose an election.

Dispiriting as this is, American citizens of all political persuasions have stopped passively observing government and have become active participants, proving that election turnout is greater in countries with significant discontent, if not outrage, with the way things are.

This time last year, I easily imagined the pandemic would by now be behind us and I was buoyed by an incoming president’s commitment to addressing climate change and systemic inequality.

Today, I am certain of only two things: the times are a-changing and these changes challenge us all. When looking back next year, the world will be different, and hopefully better, than it is now.

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Column changes

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Attendance

Discipline

Bridges

SOAR

Placement in a different building

Chromebooks should stay at school

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Book Banning

Putin’s War

Inclusion over ableism

Justice for all

Access to museums

Letters

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Recent events have exposed deep racism in Akron

What exactly happened in Ethan Liming’s death is unclear

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