FEELING PROUD AT THE TATTERED COVER

To give you an idea of how important it was for me to see Kathleen Belew read from her book (BRING THE WAR HOME) at The Tattered Cover last night, you need to realize that I chose not to go to a whiskey tasting paired with food at Butcher's Bistro scheduled for the same night.  When I first heard about the whiskey tasting, I immediately called my son-in-law Ken, a fellow whiskey lover, to see if he wanted to go.  He did.  When I started to call to make my reservations, I noticed it was scheduled for April 5, Kathleen's big night at the bookstore.  As it happened, that was the only night in the entire month of April that I had something scheduled.  I called Ken and told him to forget the whiskey night.  I had more important things to do.

After dinner with C. Fite (Kathie was too sick to join us.), we went into The Tattered Cover a little early so I could buy a copy of Kathleen's book and find where we were supposed to go for the reading.  There were maybe thirty or more chairs set up in front of a table and lectern on the bottom level and it was quickly filling with folks.  Nicole Gonzales (I forget her married name.) was there.  Jean-Luc Davis was there, fresh from a jazz tour of Australia.  Kathleen's folks were there and so were a bunch of other people, all armed with questions to ask after Kathleen finished her reading.

I just sat there next to Cindy basking in Kathleen's accomplishment.  I mean the book is a scholarly exploration into the development of the white power movement between Vietnam and the Oklahoma City bombing.  It has one hundred pages of footnotes!  The scholarly blurbs on the back cover of the dust jacket are expansive in their praise of Kathleen's scholarship.  And I'll bet the folks at Fox are apoplectic at Ms. Belew's scholarly indictment of white supremacy.  After all, white supremacy is what Fox is all about.

It was a terrific evening and I drove home happy that I was a teacher and able to work with young people like Kathleen, who in addition to being an author published by Harvard University Press, is an assistant professor of History at the University of Chicago.

The bottom level of The Tattered Cover on Colfax is devoted to young adult literature, middle school literature, and travel books.  As Cindy and I were browsing around waiting for the festivities to begin, I wandered around and found Mike Merschel's book (REVENGE OF THE STAR SURVIVORS)in the stacks.  It was an interesting position for a retired English teacher.  Here I was in The Tattered Cover of all places and two of my students had books on display.  I, of course, attributed all of their success to the fine tutelage they got at good old GMHS and wanted to go over to all those people sitting and waiting for Kathleen to approach the podium and let them know that I was the one who taught Kathleen how to master the Controlling Statement, content in the knowledge that the first thing she did when she finished her research was to reduce the entire thing into that one sentence formula.  I resisted the temptation and sat quietly down.  I even grudgingly admitted that Kathleen and Mike were at least partially responsible for their successes.

When I was driving home, I came to the rather thrilling realization that, yes, I was most proud of these impressive adults, but I remember feeling just as much pride, just as much satisfaction, when they were high school kids bringing down the buddy buzzer bullshit in the library and writing opinion pieces that caused waves among the powers that be.  It was with the same sense of accomplishment that I read Kathleen's succession of one page poem analyses in Advanced Placement.  It was with the same sense of pride that I saw hundreds of kids walk across the stage at Red Rocks.

I never thought I was responsible for all those successful graduates, just like it wasn't my responsibility for the ones that failed, or ended up in jail, or on drugs, or just held down by mediocrity.  Mostly, I just loved being part of it all.

In THE THROWBACK SPECIAL, one of the characters maintains that the biggest part of love is just the willingness to watch your loved one go about his or her daily life.  There are, of course, other things about love, but watching is key.  That's what happens when you are a teacher.  You get to watch scores of young people negotiate their ways through their teens and into adulthood.  That's what I'm really proud of, all that watching.