Sporting a Fresh Cut and My "I Was Just Ordained Online...The Wedding Will Be Just Fine" T-Shirt for Wednesday's Marathon. Now for Upstate NY Travel

I did it. I made it through a turbo class in-person, after a spur-of-the-moment switcharoo of a school district not to be allowed in a school - these bomb threats are real and scary. Kids and teachers are processing them, and buildings need to play it safe. I get it. We shouldn't be living as we do in the greatest nation ever to exist in the world, but when we factor back to the histories of our public schools, the inequities in our funding, a nation built off the exploitation of populations of people, and the anti-Department of Education sentimentalities of many in our nation, it's hard to make sense of what schools, especially urban schools, are living through right now.

Cities aren't the only ones getting the threats. Our systems are craving normalcy, support, protection, and trust for educating the beautiful young people we work with. Our politics, however, have gone in the opposite direction (and I'm signed up for the Vicki Soto 5K to support future educators in memory of the teacher who lost her life at Sandy Hook). I would write enough is enough, but the truth is nothing is being done about it. It is stressful and aggravating, and all I could do is try to make sense of it philosophically, historically, and intellectually with my students who wondered, "Why aren't we working with kids like we planned, too?"

I'm afraid it all goes back to the core of the nation: The Problem We All Live With, Birth of a Nation, segregation, and competing narratives of what democracy, freedom, and opportunity mean to different people. To live it, is to see it first hand.

I am, however, taking a short break and heading to my niece's wedding this weekend to be with family, the treasure of love and joy, and the greatness of human togetherness.

Also got my haircut, and although I'm not officiating this wedding, I sported the t-shirt gifted my Dave and Kris after Justin's wedding, "I Was Ordained Online...The Wedding Will be Just Fine."

I'm sure it will. Prayers up, World. We need them to restore GOOD in our every day. I'm ready to be with loved-ones for an extended weekend - I need them and a celebration of goodness.