Oaxaca-The Year After: Somebody threw a gernade

The here and now... and what and why

Complacency is a trap. At least that’s what I was thinking when I up and left the comfort of a Yankee prep school gig, where I taught music, amongst other things, for 28 years. There was also that life long career as a composer, musician and artist.

First, it was a year in St. Thomas, USVI, working as a reporter and shooting photography and then, a year in San Agustin Etla, Oaxaca, Mexico.
Time passed.
More time passed and a year back in the Athens of America followed by a hasty return to Oaxaca where it is all happening.
A couple of years in San Sebastian Etla and now, just down the road in San Pablo Etla. Life is good.

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For additional photography please visit my flickr page.
You can find my music on Jango (World & latin - Worldbeat) and at iTunes and most online stores.
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If you are coming to Oaxaca, please contact me for tours or advice.

Saturday, September 29, 2018

Somebody threw a gernade

Ouch, my head and heart...... Again, I am sure I am not the only one thinking about the senate hearings in El Norte. Thinking and remembering.... What was I doing 35 years ago? Oh... I was teaching at a prep school and was very plugged into that world. I still am, as I follow the lives of many former students. What else is Facebook for? I started teaching in the late 70's, so they are contemporaries of the people involved in the hearings.

So it is easy for me to imagine the incident. The partying and drinking sounded like things I heard on a regular basis. C'mon, get real, kids weren't that different then from how they were when I was a kid or from how they are now. You remember, right? Drinking, partying, sex are constants through human history. Bad things did and do happen. I lived through some of them. I saw what it did to kids... and what it didn't do. Not only what it did to them, but what it did to me, as well. Some painful memories...

I remember feeling like a dinosaur in the late 90's, when I talked to 14 year-olds about an incident at another school that rattled the prep world. This was a generation that thought that oral sex was kinda no big deal. After all, this was after Clinton and "I did not have sex etc..." There I was, a "child of the 60's", pretty much shocked by their attitudes. Social mores had changed.

As I say, I know the prep school world and it is pretty much a bubble. They like to handle things themselves. Yes, now we hear stories about lots of inappropriate stuff, but really, it likes to keep its dirty laundry unto itself... like The Church. But stuff definitely happens..... the things I remember.... memories, all generated by these hearings in the here and now.

Again, I'm sure I am not alone in remembering and thinking about, to the best of my ability, every relationship and interaction I can remember, to examine if my own behavior can withstand the scrutiny. We are our own harshest judges. As I said, ouch, my head and heart.

However, I am glad I am not like all those angry white guys we've seen for way too long. It must be horrible to be them carrying, so much anger and ignorance of their privileges.. History will not be kind. Tick-tock, mofos.