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Beginning during the Reagan years, public education began a slide down hill. This was not due to the public school system itself or teacher deficiencies but to politicians, local, state, and national, who needed an issue that affected everyone and, as all children are supposed to attend school by law and all parents with children send them to school like they had to go, this was a common experience that could be exploited.

They ignored the actual experiences of the parents, promoting the idea that at some time after they had left school it all went to hell and it all needed to be returned to the warm fuzzy experience the parents had.

Without a real issue, politicians began to go after education claiming there were problems only they could fix, which was only possible because they had claimed there was a problem and could very conveniently claim they cured the nonexistent upon election without doing more than simply stop talking about it.

To prove the solutions offered were effective, the non educators decided they needed to constantly test kids and the better the test result, the better the solution was that really did not exist. Tests were tailored to guarantee there was a measure of progress even if there wasn’t any real achievement beyond what the levels had been except the measuring tools had changed. It was changing the temperature reading from celsius to fahrenheit claiming the larger number proves it got hotter.

All education became geared to the test, a mortal sin in the minds of teachers, and this resulted in anything that could not be answered by darkening the bubbles on standardized test papers with a number two pencil was dropped from the curriculum.

The often asked question, “Why don’t they teach (whatever) in school any more?”, should actually be, “Why don’t they let teachers teach that anymore?”. There is an actual case of a twelfth grade English Literature teacher being told by his evaluator that it was sufficient for the students to know the definition of Shakespeare related terms as those would be on the test for sure, but it was not necessary to actually see a Shakespeare play to do well on the test, so showing one was not allowed.

A testing industry sprang up, and as school boards did not know, could not know, how to meet the changing requirements of a policy built on sand, in their effort to appear informed, school boards and district administrators spent millions of education dollars on the cottage industry of experts and consultants who were former school administrators who had seen the cash cow on the horizon and not on educating the students.

Part of the solution to all the schools’ ills was the building of self-esteem. This called for a whole other industry based on the proper methodologies and money to be made by the experts in the field that was being invented as things went along and modified as needed to look good without producing any true, unmanufactured results which, if carefully examined is at the very soul of the self-esteem movement.

Those not directly involved with education know it as the movement that ensured every participant got a trophy. You may not have won the contest, but, just look at you. Who’s the good boy?

Children could not fail. They could, but teachers had to come up with every possible way to make sure that, in spite of reality, every child was a winner, no matter what. 

Teachers could not give the actual failing grade the student earned. Teachers were to find alternate assignments they would have to correct along with the other assignments if a student found one too challenging. Teachers were to retest kids who failed the test or did not do the assignment regardless whether it was because of difficulty of task or lethargy of the student until something was found that the student would comfortably agree to do and for which they were required to be given a passing grade.

A student could control the teacher and what the other students could learn by lodging a complaint with the front office that the teacher, something in the curriculum, an assignment, individual or group, offended or threatened them somehow and they would feel better if it were removed. It did not take kids long to realize they were in control but, not knowing how to use their power for their benefit, used it for convenience.

And no one was allowed to correct them or they might feel their stature had been cruelly reduced.

At one point teachers requested that districts install some sort of device to block cell phone signals or at least limit the types of calls, if possible. Parent calling during class to remind a student to get certain groceries on the way home could not be prevented since students would not give up their phones and, since administration took the easy road and offered no support for them, the teachers’ only option would be to try to take away a student’s cell phone and face a possible physical confrontation in class and an angry parent after school, if there wasn’t an unannounced parental appearance at the classroom door during class time demanding why the teacher took the phone away from her child.

Students had wrongly been led to believe that anything uncomfortable or that they did not immediately like could be shut down, and the mindset became that if it really was important to know, they would already know it, and they saw teachers who kept bringing up new things as implying they did not know what they should and were, therefore, stupid in the eyes of the teachers which made them the enemy and from whom the students had to defend their honor with their peers as allies.

The whole idea of school, going where people can tell you the things you need to known to have a good shot at life whether academics, sports, the arts, or a combination of any or all seems to have become a place where you go to defend the depth of your present knowledge which will only be supplemented by what the student and their friends tell each while ignoring all that nonsense the world would like them to learn for its good and theirs. 

The fact checking they do in great numbers is to see if their friends agree or disagree with something and, spending the greater part of their days in schools, fact checking the teachers with questionably reliable sources especially when the teacher does not automatically accept as truth what the student says which in the student’s eyes is an assault became common and class time consuming.

Teachers asked for help in dealing with this increasing argumentation instead of learning but were advised not to make the students feel uncomfortable. 

Also part of the self esteem process was leading students to believe that if something is brought up about which they do not know, it was that person’s way of making you feel bad or their way of saying you are deficient somehow.

I received a written reprimand with the admonition for further action if the offense  was repeated. I had always tried to lighten the most boring information required by the curriculum with humor and joke a lot anyway. I might crack a snarky remark about Shakespeare that most students get right away, some get it later, while there were always those who might never get it. Most people can repeat a joke after hearing it once. Same goes with difficult subject matter if presented in a joke.

This reprimand resulted from a student going to the assistant principal to complain that I had said something  in class that had to be a joke because everyone else laughed but she didn’t, and because of that she was afraid to return to class because everyone now thinks she is stupid. Rather than help the kid understand the situation and that not everyone gets every joke, it was decided that I could not joke in class or face further action because obviously students who do not get the joke might feel diminished in stature.

That is class control.

I fought the reprimand and had it expunged from my record.

That is one reason teachers have Unions. Professionals in the classclassroom should not be challenged because only God knows what will trigger a kid and if the triggering is actually real.

This need not to appear stupid, although no one other than the persons themselves are the ones deciding that, involves proving you are right and the other wrong when there is no need to be either and this often involves unnecessary discussion instead of simple conversation.

Worse, because the default mode has devolved into taking offense, a new topic mentioned or a joke told, if unknown or not understood, means whatever was said had to have been intended as an attack, an insult, and there needs to be a defense.

A casual “I’ll drink to that” when joking with friends should not be the catalyst for a sermon on the disrespect for those dealing with sobriety issues and how that one joke reveals that person’s large, deep, inner core that must be repulsed.

 Asking why the chicken crossed the road results in a demand for defense for choosing that type of fowl and with the intention to see if it was a decision based on insensitivity or a form of personal attack on the audience. 

This all-knowledge-worth-knowing-is-already-known attitude has a second component. If something is learned from a friend that could have been learned from someone not a friend,  any adult or teacher for example, something they should already know and which others expect them to already know, the default assumption is that since they just learned it, no one else knows it and and it becomes their duty to run around giving spontaneous Ted Talks to an already informed audience That is glad they have finally caught up, getting mad because th listeners aren’t taking seriously this earth shaking information that only they are unaware that everyone around them already knows.

The lectures are filed with certitude even in those cases where people’s experiences are corrected by someone who heard about it from a friend whether or not a) they really understood what they learned b) they fully grasped the whole concept and know of it what was true, false, fact, speculation, or simply opinion or c) they are telling something to someone who tried to tell that before while they resisted only to be now the belated prophets.

History is not what it was but must be what is preferred it was and the characters in their histories must be pure and flawless because even one difference of opinion out of thousand is enough to erase a life’s work.

We lose history this way. We get so wrapped up in our need to have history justify ourselves and be comfortable and mythic, we attempt to mold it into your desired shape instead of adjusting to the shape it is as we push away those who were the history because the reality they lived was not as comfortable and trigger free as we would like.

A false and comfortable history is preferred to reality, and God help anyone who tries to reveal real history because it makes us feel sad. And, if one done does not know the history, then there is no history to know

Coddling is easier that way

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Although it might have been missed by the people walking between bars out on the street and those inside them, there was something about that night that any careful observer would have noted. It wasn’t big. It wasn’t ostentatious. It was not announced. It made no noise.

It was a poorly timed action on the wrong night.

It changed the world

As she sat on her chair outside the Stonewall Inn watching out for her boys in all her Marlene Dietrich splendor, it was approaching the final hours before the bars closed and Storme’s earlier activities as a Drag King in other venues had been completed, and, perhaps, as her evening wound down, as she often did, she took her spot like the owner of the shop and greeted passersby, conversed with regulars, chatted with the many street kids, and saw the detail that should not have been there that night, police officers quietly entering the bar.

It was illegal to sell or serve a “homosexual” an alcoholic beverage outside a private location in New York City at the time and bars were not that. This created a system that benefited organized crime who made money and the local precinct so long as the owners made their protection payments. 

Homosexuals needed places to gather and this meant money to be made even if it was on the fringe of legality because Homosexuals had money to spend spend. It is easy to try to explain that a lack of knowledge led to certain abuses, but there were some players whose benefits were enhanced by keeping things as they were.

The bar was nothing fancy and nothing like the image in the minds of those born long after, who may not want to accept that it was just a glorified garage with the cistern in the rear only covered with a piece of wood to serve as a table or bench, no running water so the tub of water to wash used glasses was the same water all night just getting dirtier, making bottled beer the better and safer choice. Such bars were the norm in those days. They were not attractive places.

It often served as the last bar you went to at the end of an evening in harder to find but a little less rustic bars more up town, or the soirees limited to the various mini-communities within the greater one.

Homosexuals had a place to go. Organized crime had a good cash flow. The local precinct had a low crime area, certainly the Homosexuals were not going to bring too much attention onto themselves, and some extra cash however it was dispensed back at the precinct. 

There was nothing out of the ordinary going on that, although Judy Garland lying in state uptown had a lot of fans out that night as they had either been to the wake or were just out toasting an icon which helped increase the people in the area. There were no signs of violence, no raucous action emanating from the bar in sound or deed. There were no fights on the street.

Nothing but the typical crowd milling about in the final two hours as the bars were getting ready to close all over the city. 

Storme would have noted this appearance of police, as anyone observant would have, and perhaps thought as there was no obvious reason for police presence this was because, while the payment schedules for protection were like clockwork and discrete, the police showing up so openly on a busy night could mean that a payment was missed and not likely to be paid anytime soon and some sort of reminder had to be given. How big the debt and how serious the offense in delinquency could be assessed by what followed which, in all probability, would have been a warning, a few dirty looks, perhaps an extension, and a promise to return at an appointed time, with, I would assume would be standard, a warning that further delinquency or non-payment could mean trouble and perhaps a change in ownership.

If there were any problem, it was not with the patrons, but the owner. 

Once the message was delivered, there should have been an exit after the outwardly calm tet-a-tet, but it went wrong because there had just been a bar raid a few days earlier and this one was noticeably too soon no matter how discrete it might have been intended to be.

Nothing was happening that would have called for the police, but the questionable nature and timing of the “visit” and the patrons’ objection to the untimely raid created the atmosphere that had the police call for back-up, not that there was activity that needed immediate addressing but perhaps just in case. Their entering the bar as they did, assuming the worst, and, perhaps, as I was to learn from a co-worker whose brother-in-law was one of the the second group of police, relishing the chance to “Bash some Queers”, and the arrival of the police wagon set whole thing off because someone in the bar, perhaps more than one person had had enough.

The blind-wall at the entrance of the bar common to all Gay bars (the usual L shaped wall that kept the people on the street from seeing who was inside unless they too entered because being in such a bar was enough of an excuse for society to ruin your life) kept anyone on the street from seeing what was happening inside.

After the additional officers showed up and entered the bar, the door was closed, perhaps, not so much to keep people in as the people inside were going through the standard procedures those who have been in routine bar raids know, but to keep anyone walking in on what the additional officers had thought would be a scene much worse than it was. It was when the door closed, which was new, that it became clear this was different.

Someone inside, a police officer or a patron, took a deliberate action or even an accidental, unintended one that set off the brawl. It could have been an unintentional or deliberate push, a punch, or an accidental bump. The police were tense as they entered an unknown situation. Quiet patrons, about their normal activity went from dealing with an annoying routine “raid” to a SWAT team-like event when they had been following the procedure of showing IDs and the Drag Queens additionally displaying their three articles of mens’ clothing.

Finding the person in a poorly lit bar with the last patrons of the night packed tightly together with the usual mix of alcohol and other recreational substance and the “demons” they would conjure who was the person who began it all would be like attempting to determine who fired the “Shot Heard Round the World” at Lexington.

Inside the bar, whereas common practice was to mingle with whoever was there while maintaining a safe base for further security in an unsafe world by having your group with whom you most identified, be it because of race, language, longtime friendships, and the like, on this night it was Community as, regardless of anything other than that you were one of us, and even if I absolutely abhorred your very existence on every other night, that night we were on the same team.

I have a Puerto Rican friend, a Newyorican, who saved a White stranger from Long Island who had been knocked to the floor, by stopping to take the time to bend down to help him up and out the door when he would have been out the door quicker and not have been whacked on the head with a nightstick if he had not helped that stranger. The stranger from Long Island then went on and scooped up another person and got him to the door

The blind-wall and closed door guaranteed nothing was seen from the street.

Meanwhile, out on the street, Storme had to yell to the crowd on the who either had not seen any of the activity at the entrance of the bar or just didn’t care, to do something and it did.

The exterior rebellion erupted as the interior one was in full swing and it was one community-wide swelling of action in both places as people began to act with some becoming more prominent than others as the evening wore on.

We know of some people as they had a presence and could easily be seen in the crowd. We do not know of a potentially more heroic person because they were on a side street with little lighting and fewer fellow rebels. The greatest hero of the evening might be totally unknown.

The amazing thing about Stonewall was that it was not organized and no one gave directions or usurped the power of the community by becoming a self appointed leader who would control the night.

Although the raid could be seen as a dark comedy of errors with a positive ending, it was the last straw of a fed up community and every participant took their part according to whom and what they were with everyone equally fed up with how the people in the bar and out on the street, all of them, and those like them all over, were being treated.

The community, regardless of any differences, race, color, creed, national origin and known gender variants acted spontaneously as one, not in groups.

This was a time, when it came to ice cream, that we thought Howard Johnson’s with its 28 flavors was the pinnacle of ice cream variety until Baskin and Robbins blew us away with 31. Then, if it can be believed, along came Ben and Jerry and all ice cream hell broke loose. These flavors were probably around when the world had known only chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla, but they had to come out of the freezer, and, as that happened, no new flavor diminished that of the existing ones or of any being or to be introduced. it was 1969 and even Gay people had a lot to learn about gender variants.

Stonewall was during the Howard Johnson days of gender.

On that night, though, that was irrelevant. A Community was acting as one.

My Puerto Rican friend attended a gathering of those who were there that night in June a few years later and got to meet the person who he had only known as some kid in a wide-striped shirt he helped get off the floor and who had only known him as some guy who helped him up and out when the door opened.

It had people helping people, strangers helping strangers in a total act of Community with no one leading but all knowing that the Community was tired of it, would have no more of it, and acted accordingly.

That is what makes the real Stonewall more amazing than it is allowed to be seen as people fight over who started it as if they just cannot accept that the Community started it and Communities can act as communities.

Stonewall was the Big Bang that started a movement, and, like the Big Bang, it happened in a moment as one singular event with all elements equally involved. Whoever, whatever, whether there was a name for it not, or even if the known names were correct was irrelevant because WE were there.

Us.

There were no credits at the end, just more work. 

The Rebellion was spontaneous and united.

During the time after the Stonewall, there was a demand and attempt to create community, which we saw we could be that night in June.

We had a flag based on shared virtues regardless of any differences among us. Every person can have those virtues regardless of race, color, national origin etc.

Now the flag represents groups within the community, and not the complete Community as one as I do not see anything for Asians or Indigenous People unless they are not considered as important or someone decided they fit into one of the other stripes, a subcategory if you will. 

With each generation Storme gets pushed into the shadows for the hero du jour and has gone from her Drag King self to a young Lesbian, then a Trans woman who was not there that first night, next a young Black person of ever changing gender, finally arriving at the apex of the rewriting as a young white boy from the Midwest who came to town just in time to meet everyone who would be at the  Stonewall that night and be the one to throw the non-existent brick that set the whole thing in motion.

The truth is shouted down by those who prefer what they have heard over what they could know and people are creating, modifying, and defining events according to how they would like them to have been and erasing what actually was.

In this endeavor we do to ourselves what the greater community had been doing.

We cut up the community and demand separation and thus we divide ourselves for the convenience of others.

A Stonewall veteran was told by someone in the audience born way after 1969 that his account of his experience that night could not be true as it did not match what his equally young friend had texted. The speaker had explained that, although people may have been at the same place at the same time, their experience depended on where they were and what was happening around them in the bar at the time, and, even if much of their stories would be the same, their individual role would control the details.

A famous Non-Binary author speaks at the city’s Lyceum. It may have been advertised as a community coupe, but, not only was the lecture poorly attended, embarrassingly so with a low Community turn out, but the only response to the scant coverage of it  was not about the substance of what was presented but that the person who did write about it confused a pronoun or two and was castigated for that, not thanked for presenting to the public coverage of the event and lecture nor was the substance addressed .

Regardless what the person had said, it was easily brushed aside by those who chose to comment on and condemn the person for the pronoun error when, as essential as the proper pronouns are for Trans and non-Binary people, allies dispensing advice and sermonettes about pronoun usage which distracted from what was important, the message they would have received had they gone to the lecture.

When I was young the word Queer was a weapon. It was the thing you did not want the kids at school to use to label you. It was chosen by others for its negative connotation and used accordingly to deny employment and housing, publicly humiliate people, and was the word most often heard while getting beaten and for some it was the last word they heard as they were beaten to death.

It was a word we had to live with and through, whose resulting treatment we were supposed to just endure.

I was 19 when Stonewall happened and was as far removed from it at the time as anyone could be, but when I found myself and became who I always was, I had the word “Gay” because WE had chosen it. It was not assigned whether we liked it or not, and I could leave Queer and all its baggage in the past as I moved forward.

I have been called divisive now, out of touch, part of the problem because I ask those younger than myself who have never dealt with the word as older people have, to call me “Gay” and not Queer” only to get a Ted Talk about my disrespect for the community and my being a detriment to progress.

I have been re-assigned a title other than Gay by people who are not me, disregarding what the word means to me.

Those younger than I demand that I once again accept an assigned term, not the one of my own choosing that I had spent decades erasing because it was not a chosen title but a one-sided assigned term that dehumanized us enough to clobber us with and justify treating us like dirt so the future would not be treated as we had in the past and could build on battles won.

I have been told that I have no option. 

The word was justification for the attempted genocide by inaction of the 1980s. 

Just let’em die, then we’ll be rid of’em.

I am being told I must again accept the word being applied to me and that my objections are obviously not worth consideration as there is either acceptance of the term or being a pariah for violating my keepers’ rules, while at the same time being prevented  from quietly sipping my drink because after 38 years teaching middle and high school English, I used a standard pronoun and earned a living podcast.

There are enough elders in the Community who are seeing history rewritten and their own roles erased when the young members of the community could be learning real history.

The common approach to learning history seems to be to ask an older person about the past for the sole purpose of having an excuse to interrupt and wax eloquent with faulty information or to correct the old guy and impress friends who have no idea how wrong the info is. 

And sadder, they see what had been a Community fracturing as people fight for their stripe to be the star.   

I recently was corrected for the supposedly faulty information I had added to a conversation about someone from many years ago that a small group was reminiscing about. I was kindly forgiven because, as I was visiting from out of state, my sources could only be secondary. The topic of the conversation was actually me doing something 15 years before when I lived in that state and when that person was a mere child and I, more than anyone, would know the details.  

For me, a giant irony is that those attempting to reclaim a false history or replace the real one with it like to dress up the statues in the park across from the Stonewall because they symbolize the white-washing of the event because the statues are painted white. The statues get painted various skin tones, are dressed according to who wants to make a statement about exclusivity, with some wanting the white men removed entirely and replaced with what will be impossible to settle on as there will not be enough space for all the required statues.

However, if those being vocal took the time to actually research, they would find the statues were made by a Portuguese artist known at the time for his solid white statues, using Portuguese friends as models.

It has been decided, apparently, that the Portuguese were not there and Portuguese are not considered to be a real minority or even worth recognition and inclusion, and, like the Asians and Indigenous People are left off the “Progressive Flag” because they either don’t fulfill some arbitrary requirement or aren’t in vogue at the moment.

More exclusion in search of the star.

I miss the Community.

I wish the need to fracture was not so strong.

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When my significant other and I left the state of Massachusetts back in 1985, it was not due to any rejection by family and friends because I am Gay. I had gone through an interesting road to self acceptance and in the process first saw that my sources of information were limited and, although often attempting to help, caused more inner confusion. I needed to learn what Gay was, who I was as opposed to who and what type of Gay person I was expected to be as opposed to actually being without more information of varying truth being well intentionally offered but off the mark and too often influenced by opinion, impression, and a faulty foundation of weak facts. 

I needed to find the real me and not the allowed me.

In California I found myself in many ways.  I became a well known cartoonist, worked hard and was recognized for it when it came to the fight for Gay rights, workers rights, and minority rights, started a city-wide video program in Los Angeles public schools that is still going, helped influence the outcome of the teachers’ strike in ‘89, and as a member of both the L.A. and Long Beach Gay Men’s Choruses, with all that and more got to hobnob with people from the homeless to governors.  

I once actually successfully addressed the need for the Los Angeles Unified School Committee to make condoms available to students during the height of the AIDS Pandemic at a gathering of Baptist pastors who originally opposed the idea but accepted that as long as they loved that sinners have the opportunity to come to Jesus, an opportunity lost if they died in sin, while sex out of marriage might be a sin, a condom might keep some kids safe until they found the Lord. 

Condoms could save souls

Allowing condoms would be erring on the side of salvation.

I really came to like the me I was able to become.

However, at one point the stars aligned in such a way that after giving into addressing my own needs and not those of others, I fell madly in love with someone whose baggage was carefully stowed out of sight and only came forward when all else was lost.

Long story short, I found myself at one point standing at the highway exit at the end of the Walker Avenue exit ramp in Oklahoma City.

I intended to gather what was left of California and head back East to face those who would see the final failure without any real knowledge of the life I had been leading, and this seemed to be grounds for a very awkward homecoming.

In spite of any attempts to know the whole story, those at home certainly could not avoid seeing me leave, getting updates in writing and catching up on vacations without witnessing anything, and seeing a total failure came home, and I could not fault anyone who might have seen the whole adventure as a mistake, perhaps influenced by all the negative Gay stuff they “knew” about.

I knew they had no idea what it had really been all about.

I would have returned home, but not as me, but as a false impression of a failure with nothing to show for the effort, not because it did not exist, but it had happened a continent away.

I was  working as a food server at a posh cafeteria in the rich section of town and some days as a substitute teacher building my reputation in the field and using that time with the help of the State Department of Education to reassemble my complete professional file as some parts, due to the size and multiple departments in the Los Angeles school District had been sent to the many buildings to which various parts of my file had been forwarded over the years by central administration. When most of it was gathered I faced the choice of going home with what I had and dealing with all that would entail, or, getting a full time teaching position for at least one semester to shore up what I had of my file and recorded experience leaving me with options upon return.

And so, I rode my pawn shop bought, rather pink bicycle to school headquarters with my papers such as they were and decided if they offered me a job and I got it I would stay, or, if not, steel myself for my immediate future and the loss of control over my life and the loss of the real me that could result.

I would be returning to people’s expectations again.

As it turned out, one of the middle schools in the district had been found to be out of compliance with a State Special Education requirement because of district actions not any of the school itself, and this could be fixed, and should have been earlier, by hiring an additional Spoecial Education teacher, but for the usual school district administrative excuses this had been put off until the notification arrived from the state that an inspection in two days could result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and I walked in the Human Resource Office with my Masters Degree and certifications in English and Special Education with emphasis on the “learning Disabled”.

The school was on my way home from school administration and convenient to stop in if only to go through the motions and I fully felt, the next morning I would be out on the interstate with my thumb out.

The school sat diagonally on its corner lot and had been designed by Solomon Layton known locally for the buildings that characterize the state from banks, to schools, and even the state capitol building. The area was to be the upscale neighborhood, and to this end no expense was spared for a building dripping in Art Deco with parquet floors in the library with its reading area with a working fire place, ceilings throughout the building covered in designs that would make Tutenkiamun jealous, a broadway worthy stage, and all manner of appointments that gained it the title of the country’s fanciest middle school in the country whose friezes above the doors completed in 1932 look strangely like a row little Empire State Buildings of glazed terra cotta. There were huge tableaus on the facade of the building that depicted the four major subjects, English, History, math, and science, along with art and industry.

It was built with a few shades of yellow brick arranged in such a way that a cursory glance revealed a simple brick wall, but mindlessly looking at it would slowly reveal the design hidden in the bricks.

It was built in the style popular in Los Angeles and out of place on the plains.

It is a very impressive building and one I am happy to say I eventually played a major role in getting on the historic registry and safe from architectural molestation.

As I came to it from the South, its facade covered the whole scene before me.  I braced myself  for the choice about to be decided, and walked slowly up the walk from the corner to the front door.

It was big, but not huge, and it stood long dead at its post by the front entry doors with their heavy oak panels and beveled glass. I only saw it when, taking that last breath before, anticipating an equally strong breath upon exiting. High above on a ledge to the right of the doors stood the Art Deco lamp.

It had to be eight feet tall of long green-veneered copper and brass on its lower half and a white glass cylinder at the top wtih a small crown-like cap at the top of it.

I like Art Deco and there was just something about that irrelevant lamp that made me hope I would be hired by the principal even before I saw any on the building’s interior or the people and programs within.

There had been art deco in all its glory in L.A. from architecture to the memory of the butchest man ever entering the Paradise in Long Beach, California, and having his Erte inspired headdress entangled in the rope spider web at the Halloween soiree..

And here, at a decision point, was a totally out of place art deco lamp.

Based on that, I entered the building.

That was this day in 1994.

And that is why all of my Oklahoma experience and any good I may have done there was because of an art deco lamp.

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