A tree better weathers the storm when it has deep roots. So too with people.

Growing up, I didn’t have deep roots. I barely had roots at all. My contact with my father’s side of the family was nonexistent for almost my entire childhood all the way through my first few years in the military. Contact with my mother’s side of the family happened, but not often, mostly due to distances. My grandmother and uncle lived in El Paso, and my aunt and her husband lived either out of state or even out of the country for many years. After my mother remarried, I met my stepfather’s family, and we saw them more often than other extended family members, but not much more.

In high school and later in the Army, I had friends from disparate places. I knew people from Pakistan, India, Mexico, and Japan. I served alongside soldiers from both U.S. coasts and all sorts of places in between. I met Koreans, Puerto Ricans, West Virginians, and Virgin Islanders. What a revelation!

Many of these friends talked of something that I didn’t have growing up. They talked of close family, of their ethnic and religious heritages, and, often, of the music and the foods they grew up with, which often grew out of their culture.

I was jealous. I hadn’t had those things. Sure, I grew up listening to music, but it was mostly the popular music of the 60s and 70s. Of course, I had food, much of it processed or fast. My religious upbringing was spotty, and I had no discernible ethnicity other than “lower middle class white kid”. My friends talked about their cousins, nieces, and nephews. I have cousins. I don’t know any of them. I had no nieces and nephews until after I got married.

So, in a conscious effort of self-invention, I sought what I’d not had. The easiest way to do this was through music. If a friend loved a musician or band, I bought the album and learned to love it as well. I prowled through the dustier sections of my parents’ album collection and found the LPs that seldom got played. I discovered the Blues, the works of George Gershwin, Tchaikovsky, blue-eyed soul, and the rock ’n’ roll of the 50s. From my friends, I found funk and R & B, heavy metal, Tejano, hip hop, new wave, and punk rock.

And, following the musical roots of those genres back through time, I found undreamed of treasures, such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

Tharpe picked up a guitar and started to play when she was four years old. She was born into a musical family, and by age six she toured with her mother as part of a gospel troupe that performed in churches throughout the South. Along the way, Tharpe absorbed the Blues of the Mississippi delta and the jazz of New Orleans, and she joined those uniquely American forms of music to her formative gospel songs.

And, man, but could she play the guitar!

Tharpe’s guitar playing influenced a host of later musicians, including the likes of Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, Eric Clapton, and Keith Richards. The latter two musicians were part of my childhood soundtrack. My stepfather Jimmie is an Eric Clapton fan, and my mother was a Rolling Stones fan. I knew Clapton and the Stones, but I didn’t know that through them I connected to styles of music that originated in the early decades of the 20th century United States.

Jazz and the Blues are distinctively American, and the aspirations and struggles of America’s disenfranchised peoples birthed them both. Along the way, the jazz and the Blues have influenced every other form of American music there is, becoming the first vehicle by which American popular culture spread to foreign shores. In the cities of some of those other nations, American music became the soundtrack of freedom despite various regimes’ attempts at suppression.

This year, I introduce my students to a Musician of the Week each week on campus. Not all of the musicians are from the U.S., but their music usually includes American influences. Most recently, my students met Sister Rosetta Tharpe. They’ve also met Django Reinhardt, Charlie “Bird” Parker, John Coltrane, José Manuel Calderón, and Tito Puente.

Tomorrow begins a new week. Whom shall my students meet next?

Back in October 2020, I started the Knights of the Mightier Pen as a response to COVID-related restrictions putting the kibosh on extracurricular activities. Our Regis Knights needed outlets for their energies, but the school's precautions made the normal after-school activities impossible for a time. I figured that since so much of what we were doing had been moved to on-line formats, why not one more thing? I concluded the first Mightier Pen post with this paragraph:

Each Friday starting 6 November, I shall throw down the gauntlet in the form of a writing challenge. Regis Knights who have chosen to join the Mightier Pen Knights may pick up that gauntlet and complete the challenge. By doing so, a student enters the Hall of Heroes and may even earn the honor of having his work featured in a blogpost.

And, for several weeks, it all worked well. Sort of. Between October 2020 and the end of January 2021, I tossed down a total of five gauntlets. Those who are good at counting may note that five in about four months is not one writing challenge each week. A small number of students answered my challenges with about a dozen submissions. The last challenge, the one from January 2021, remains unanswered. I didn't post again to this site until near the end of April 2021. If the Knights of the Mightier are to survive, we need a reboot.

Frequency

One challenge a week from me is unrealistic. I know that now. It's not so much that I can't come up with a weekly challenge as it is that each challenge which solicits responses obliges me to devote time to each student's submission. Posting to the site and updating the Hall of Heroes also takes time. It all adds up. Also, our Regis Knights are busy gentlemen and scholars, and this next year they'll be busier as it seems likely that COVID-related restrictions shall continue to vanish, which means their usual extracurricular activities shall return. With all the additional options and demands, this attractions of this project may become increasingly small.

So, when the new school year begins in August 2021, I shall endeavor to post a challenge twice a month. The more leisurely pace affords me more time for reading, site maintenance, et cetera, and affords the students more time to craft their submissions.

Advancement

If you look at the Hall of Heroes, you'll notice that each student has a rank followed by a parenthetical number. For example, Tate C. is a Page (2). This means he's answered two writing challenges. Presumably, by diligent effort, Tate C. shall continue to advance in rank.

But what does this mean?

The three basic steps of knighthood are Page, Squire, and Knight. Knighthood is conferred via the accolade, at which time the squire is dubbed a knight. Within the rank of knight, there are distinctions, such as knight-errant, knight bachelor, knight banneret, et cetera. These distinctions may prove useful for the Knights of the Mightier Pen.

Advancement is based primarily on accepting and meeting challenges. Each challenge earns a point, so to speak. After a certain number points are earned, the Page becomes a Squire becomes a Knight, and so forth.

With the slower pace planned for the coming school year, it makes sense to scale the number of points need to advance downward. (Not that I ever really had any hard, fast numbers in mind to begin with.) I'm thinking three points reaches Squire, and four points reaches Knight. Going this route, I owe Dominic H. a promotion, along with the attendant honors.

Honors

Page: Entry into the Hall of Heroes suffices for the honor bestowed upon a Page. A Page also receives a Coat of Arms, which is displayed in the Hall of Heroes. After this, additional honors ought to be conferred.

Squire: A Page reaching the rank of Squire shall be bequeathed a Certificate of Merit in a public ceremony. Our morning assembly is an ideal venue for this sort of thing.

Knight: A Squire reaching the rank of Knight shall receive the accolade in a public ceremony. This should include the new Knight receiving his nom de plume, an additional title suffixed to his name. (This also gives me an excuse to bring my sword to school.)

Other Thoughts

I like the idea of adding additional ranks beyond Knight. I'll have to hammer out those details. Also, since Knights compete in tournaments, maybe I need to plan some sort of writing tournament? I've never done this sort of thing, so I'll likely need to seek out some expert help.

Huzzah!

Summer time off arrives, and with it arrive new opportunities, chief among them the opportunity to properly understand what leisure ought to mean.

Leisure is not merely time off from labor. Leisure does not just mean sitting around, watching TV, playing games, and giving in to the near mindlessness of clickbait social media and news entertainment. Leisure has a higher purpose. As Josef Pieper's thesis states, "[I]t is essential to begin by reckoning with the fact that one of the foundations of Western culture is leisure" (Leisure: The Basis of Culture).

"Leisure" has its roots in Latin, specifically the verb licere, which means "to be allowed" and is also the root of the word "license". In Greek, Pieper notes, "leisure" is skole, which means school. The classical conception of leisure asserts that leisure is a privilege, a time free from the demands of labor performed for the benefit of others which is then used for benefit of the self.

In short, leisure, properly understood, is time I use to make me better than I am.

The Regis School is a Sacred Heart school, which means the students' labor aims at more than just the acquisition of knowledge (itself a very good thing). The overarching goals of the Regis School put first things first by aiming to educate our students toward "a personal and active faith in God". After this comes "a deep respect for intellectual values".

In short, education at the Regis School, properly understood, includes time that I structure so that others may become better than they are.

During the school year, if I'm a student, the demands of my teachers consume much of my time. My students' school day officially starts about 8:00 a.m. and ends about 3:30 p.m. Before this, students presumably get ready for school. After this, students usually have homework and/or some sort of extracurricular activity. Each of my students has what is the equivalent of a full-time job.

For this reason, I am loathe to assign homework over weekends and holidays, to include over the summer, and there is a danger in this. By signaling that those times ought to be as free as possible from school work may encourage the perception that those times ought to be from learning.

Leisure time should be oriented toward self-improvement based on my talents, my interests, and my honest assessment of my deficiencies. C. S. Lewis compared a bad habit to a bent wire. If I want to straighten the wire, I have to bend it in the other direction. For example, if I know I spend too much time reflexively refreshing this or that social media site, then my leisure time should be spent doing something else.

Reflexively refreshing this or that social media site adds little value to my life. It doesn't make a better man, a better father, a better teacher, or a better husband. One could argue that it detracts from progress toward those goals. Odds are really good that if I stopped posting on Facebook or MeWe that very few people would notice. Life for most of my hundreds of friends, many of whom I've never met in real life, would go on as before. Social media sites don't do much other than feed morsels to my ego. The likes, shares, and comments, no matter how superficial, reinforce the illusion that I've connected in a meaningful way to another person.

​The truth is this: Just about all I've really done is continue to provide data to be sold to advertisers, who are then better able to target me with solicitations for products that algorithms indicate I might purchase. Surely I can do better, and so, this summer I've put together a simple schedule that might help keep me focused on being active both mentally and physically. Today is day two of that schedule, and this blogpost, once written, revised, and posted, is a goal accomplished.

Little by little, I strive to straighten a few bent wires.

​Last night, Friday, 14 May, I attended the commencement ceremonies of the 2020-2021 class of 8th graders at the completion of their final year as Regis Knights. Thirty young men stepped forward in turn to receive their diplomas. Many of them received other honors as well, but all them had finished the same course of studies as the others. All of them had struggled to attain the academic skills Regis offers. All of them had struggled to live up to the ideals to which Regis Knights are called.

Walker Moore, Student Council President, gave the commencement address to the assembled faculty, staff, and families, speaking both for and to his fellow students. Mr. Moore quoted the most famous part of President Teddy Roosevelt's "The Man in the Arena" speech, reminding us that "credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood". It is right and just that those who struggle to achieve should receive the honors they are due, and Mr. Moore's address spoke well about the rewards of effort, about the challenges yet to come, and about the enduring nature of brotherhood forged in shared struggles.

Earlier that day was much like any other school day. I met with four English classes, including the two 6th grade classes. These classes have not been part of my schedule most of this year, but those 6th graders will be in my English class next school year. It seems fitting they get a chance to experience what awaits them in my 7th grade English class. I also met with my current 7th graders, who, come August, will step into the places left vacant by the outgoing class of 8th graders. In those classes, working from James Baldwin's The Story of Siegfried and G. K. Chesterton's "The Chief Mourner of Marne", I made demands of my students.

Among those demands? Reflection on and discussion of the nobility and necessity of manual labor. We observed that custodian's Latin roots mean guardian and protector. We talked about which occupations might be classified as manual labor and which ones, such as English teacher, might not be. Like young Prince Siegfried, the young Knights in my class sought to understand work often viewed as menial serves more than just a valuable function. Such work itself becomes ennobled by the heart of service with which it is performed.

Other students confronted the stark difference between human charity and Christian charity. They started to see that agreeing to forgive something that society thinks is forgivable doesn't require much in the way of love or courage. I can easily forgive things that I don't think really require forgiveness. At the same time, I can just as easily not forgive those things that I think are unforgivable. Either way, I enjoy the the warmth of own mercy and justice, the fires of which are stoked by my pride.

In all four classes, I also saw a common occurrence. When given hard questions to answer, many of my students ask me to approve the response, in effect grading the work before it's completed. I refuse to do this. I note that the worst thing that can happen is that the answer will be wrong, that it will get corrected, and then the student will have learned something. This response seldom satisfies. For too many of my students, what seems to matter most is success.

This is a grave error. As President Roosevelt observed, "To judge a man merely by success is an abhorrent wrong". When success becomes the standard, then it isn't long before notions about right and wrong, good and evil, become irrelevant. To sharpen the point: If the thing that matters most is the grade on my report card, why not get all of my answers from someone else? Why not cheat?

President Roosevelt listed "the qualities which mark a masterful people", by which he meant a people fit for liberty, a people who can be trusted even when those in authority are not watching them. He said these qualities are "Self-restraint, self-mastery, common sense, the power of accepting individual responsibility and yet of acting in conjunction with others, courage and resolution...." The two qualities I most note are self-mastery and courage, which surely go hand in hand. Courage is not a lack of fear; it is a mastering of fear.

Many of my students seem genuinely afraid of getting any grade lower than what's necessary to make honor roll. Indeed, I have had students flatly express this to me. A grade of X is acceptable, but a grade of X minus one is not. A grade of X minus one equals failure to achieve honor roll status, and that's unacceptable. The inference seems to be this: not being on the honor roll is dishonorable.

To the extent my inference is accurate, the results appear clear. A grade on a sheet of paper becomes the measure of success. The amount of effort put into achieving that number is secondary. The student who sees the end of his education as achieving the highest grade possible may learn to denigrate his own self-mastery and courage. He may become the kind of man who judges his own worth and the worth of others "merely by success".