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Family Secrets
This week’s Chiggerticky Podcast episode springs from a true story that my grandmother tried to keep from me, but that I nagged out of her just before she died. I invite you to listen to it here: https://gstephensq.podbean.com/e/family-secrets/ If you’ve taken a few moments to listen to any episode of the podcast, I thank you.…
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What Planet Did You Come From?
Middle-school teachers are sometimes tempted to ask students, “What planet did you come from?” The adolescent brain can, after all, seem alien to adults. And let’s face it: thirteen-and fourteen-year-olds can behave like “absolute twits.” If you can still recall, you once behaved that way, too; and if you’re old enough–say, past 60 years–you may…
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Religious People Annoyed the Hell Out of Jesus.
Religious people annoyed the hell out of Jesus. This may be why, when he began his mission, he did not stroll into the Temple with recruitment posters. Rather he went to the haunts of the riff-raff and chose as leaders not the religious but the irreligious–rowdy hot-tempered fishermen, a tax collector, a terrorist, et. al.…
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The arc of bureaucracy is long and bends toward dysfunction.
With apologies to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, I would like to say, “The arc of bureaucracy is long and bends toward dysfunction.” Experience has taught me that bureaucracies (such as those you find in the institutions of religion, education, government, etc.) are a necessary evil. Society cannot exist without institutions. And, sadly, institutions seem…
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“We’re gonna lose!”
As humans, we tend to limit future prospects to what has been possible in the past. And why not? Every bit of our experience has happened in the past. Even what’s immediately present cannot be made sense of until it slips into the past. You can’t make complete sense of this sentence until you have…
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“It’s Because You’re Telling Everybody What to Do”
See where the little red balloon is above? That’s where I lived in Africa for about two years: Kananga, West Kasai Province in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Shortly after I arrived there, I was unexpectedly pressed into community duty when the nearby river threatened to flood a village. With others, mostly Congolese, I began…
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Fear & Loathing in the South, 1963.
In church, they told me it wasn’t the fault of the black people. No, the culprits were instead the godless Yankee communists who came down South to stir up the poor black folks. This gave racist white Christians a sort of plausible deniability: They could hate the godless Yankee communists and yet still (in their…
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The 1960s Were Insane!
By the time the ’80s and ’90s rolled around, a sort of nostalgia for the 1960s was in vogue. Dressing as a “hippy” was quaint, cute, cool. And there came a revival of pop music from ’60s. And while I won’t argue against the value of that decade’s music (I still think it’s great), I…
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Civil Rights Movement Subverts
I’m a white guy who grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, during the Civil Rights era. I remember “Coloreds Only” signs over water fountains, restrooms, and waiting rooms. I remember segregated schools. I remember one day per week (Wednesdays) dedicated to “Coloreds Only” at the local amusement park. I remember the fear and violence: Selma’s Bloody…
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A Sacred Place
Bill and I opened the door, took one step inside and were stopped in our tracks by laser beams shooting from more than a dozen eyes. While the juke box twanged on, the rest of time and space stood still. The pinball machine stopped its pinging and buzzing, the customers ceased their chatter. About fifteen…
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My First Teacher
Last Thursday morning, minutes away from the first-period bell, I was in robot mode, punching pencils into the electric sharpener on the counter of my classroom. You see, experience has taught me to keep on hand a batch of ready-to-use #2s for those hapless souls who come to class sans writing instrument. (Colleagues chastise me for…
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Let’s Trash Grades!
“Lookie here!” the principal shouts into the microphone. Despite the upscale suit, the professorial glasses, and the elegant white hair, the principal is a bona fide Southern-bred good ol’ boy. His big eyes grow big as he pauses for effect and then thrusts his arms outward and downward to indicate two rows of students seated…
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“…and deliver us from ‘the data,’ for Thine is the kingdom…”
I teach eighth-grade English. Last February I spent a training day with colleagues at our school district’s central office where a district official emphatically reminded us that our students’ reading scores are of paramount importance. If our students don’t show improvement from standardized test to standardized test, we were told, then teachers will be held…
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A Great Lesson from the Great White North (Part 1)
February, 1983. We are twenty miles south of Toledo on Interstate-75 north in a ‘79 Ford wagon, hurtling through flurries of snow. We are five Presbyterians from five Indiana churches–two directors of Christian Education (DCEs, they’re called) and three ministers. Our destination? Toronto, to attend the annual North American conference of church educators. “I think…
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A Great Lesson from the Great White North (Part 2)
[Conclusion of a two-part blog that begins HERE.] At a money booth in Windsor station we convert U.S. dollars to Canadian currency, after which we buy round-trip tickets to Toronto. In the waiting area, we settle into seats, five abreast, until our train arrives. Junior seizes the chance to resume his sermon, prompting the DCEs…
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Football Season! Let the Irrationality Begin!
Twelve years ago, as I was teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) to middle-schoolers, two boys—a Venezuelan and a Mexican—entered my classroom furious at each other. Before reaching their desks, they had squared off, only inches apart—fists clenched, eyes bulging, mouths shooting bullets of Spanish. I jumped between them, pushing each away from the…
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Eighth-Grade Boys or “The Goot of God” (Rated PG-13)
To live as an eighth-grader is to see yourself as inferior to almost all who look your way. Despite the bravado and swagger displayed by many, eighth-graders are, deep down inside, quaveringly unsure of themselves. This is true for girls as well as boys. The only difference between them lies in their responses. I won’t…
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The Politics of Teaching Children
Decades ago, an old preacher friend offered me this pearl of wisdom. Purposefully perverting Jesus’ oft-quoted words in Matthew, the preacher said, “For where two or three are gathered together in Christ’s name, there is politics.” Experience has taught me that the two or three don’t even need to be gathered in Christ’s name. They…
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Confederately Confused (Pt. 3)
[Conclusion of a 3-part post that begins here.] Most rebel-flag waving Southerners never stop to examine how blessed they are that the South got its ass kicked in the Civil War. Please allow me to show why they should. Let’s start in 1830 when Michael Tuomey, a young Irishman, immigrates to America and finds his…
Chiggerticky
A Boomer's Lament
Chiggerticky 