EDUCATIONING

WON'T

We pat our school teachers on the head and send them off to do the dirty work of the age: raising our children.

They aren’t paid nearly enough.

And we have all agreed to accept that fact. You have, I have, the teachers have. We won’t pay them enough is what we mean.

We prefer to spend money on the hardware of schooling...the facilities, the computers!, those magical white boards that can be written on with magic pens.

And we like to compensate the people who run the schools. We pay most of them two or three times as much as the teachers. Because they break up the fights, argue with the parents, and stand charge of teacher meetings.

This is the way we want it to be. We should quit acting as if a fix is imminent. It is not. We—all of us—like it this way.

SPORTING

Youth athletics dominate the extra-curricular terrain of middle class America.

Been that way for a while, I think. And there is a subtle (imagined?) sub-narrative to it all: “If you can hack it, hang with us, maybe even excel at sports...you will be accepted.”

It’s a societal exit exam. Do well in sports as a kid, you’ll probably do OK in life.

Athletics didn’t take with the two oldest. We tried. It just...didn’t take.

I wonder if they felt detached from their bodies and minds as they ran around rye grass fields kicking and hitting and throwing. I wonder if they watched me on the sidelines and thought: “What gives, Dad?”

Today I wish I had it back...the practices, games (not that there were that many). I wish we’d spent that time cutting trails in the woods and building tree house forts and hiding out.

X-ACTIVATED

FALLING

The Civil Wars (band-name for “folka” artists Joy Williams and John Paul White) have been writing songs, recording, and performing for just over a year.

Last night at The Evening Muse in Charlotte’s bohemian NoDa neighborhood, the pair presented a career-making set of original songs and one cover—a rearrangement of “You Are My Sunshine” that would make a birthday clown stab himself in the heart.

The Civil Wars sings and plays music to make the whole family weep: teenagers, mommies, pap-aws. This is deep south heartbreak—spare, desperate, tormented—set to whispering, tongue-in-groove harmonies that make you glad to be alive...no matter how much being alive kills ya.

Post-set, as John Paul and I chatted at the merch table, that flittering pixie with the revival choir voice and granny smile, suddenly shushed us:

“Madi’s starting her set!”

Joy nodded toward the stage. We looked. Madi and Kyle were starting.

"Yes'm."