Back in Tacoma for the Holidays

You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch

You really are a heel,

You're as cuddly as a cactus, you're as charming as an eel, Mr. Grinch.

In my pre-teaching life, I spent six years working at UPS. The holidays were my most chaotic and least restful time of year. It shaped how I view the season today. Combined with my general anti-consumerist bent* (and putting my faith to the side), I'm pretty meh on the festive season. But we live at the mercy of those we love. After what my family has been through the last two years, coming home and celebrating with family was a must. So after fourteen hours sitting in a right-triangle of crying babies, Hope and I touched back down in Cascadia on Monday.

The fifty-five degree temperature change tested the limits of my layering. I departed our apartment in Abu Dhabi in a t-shirt, adding a hoodie at DXB. I donned another layer upon landing, and added a fourth as I exited Sea-Tac into the blowing snow. It’s currently Timberland boots and goose down cold here. But we made it.

Each time we return to Tacoma feels a bit odd. This is now our fourth year overseas and we've signed contracts for year five. So, the earliest we would return, barring an unforeseen emergency, would be summer of 2024. But even that seemingly distant date is unlikely. The trends in public education that caused us to decide to pursue work abroad have accelerated, not abated.  I struggle to picture myself sliding back into my old role. I know there's a future for us in Tacoma but that time isn't now, not yet. 

With all that swirling in my head, on Thursday night I got up in front of an audience of civics nerds and  hosted Adult Civics Happy Hour at the Press Room. ACHH is a series of live events that I began hosting in various forums in Tacoma five years ago. It’s a live community dialogue featuring policymakers, journalists and activists. Thursday's program, the first since the start of the pando, included two panels: one on the local sheriff and one on the upcoming legislative session.

The legislative panel, L to R: yer boi, Rep Bateman, Sen Trudeau, Rep-elect Mena

The situation with the sheriff is telling for where things are right now. The window for meaningful police accountability laws that opened with the mass protests of 2020 has largely closed, with little gained to show for it. Pierce County is a microcosm of the country. Tacoma has four murdering police on a multi-year administrative vacation for a killing they committed in March 2020.  The county has a sheriff that is drunk on power (among other things); he was recently acquitted in a trial where he was charged with making false reports. During the trial multiple witnesses, including fellow officers, indicated he had lied, repeatedly. But he was acquitted by a jury (If you’re not local and want to learn more about this case, I have covered it on my podcast here, here, and here.)

In the second panel, three state legislators talked about the upcoming legislative session. We talked about their policy priorities, what was likely to pass and I asked about my priority issues  as well. The audio from both panels will be on future episodes of Nerd Farmer. 

I acknowledge that it is odd (but also very me) to fly 7,500 miles across the globe to visit family and also toss in hosting a sold out political forum. But we did it—we packed out the venue on a brick cold night. It felt good, like putting on that old comfortable sweater you haven’t worn in ages. 

Giving Flowers

This week the dean of US soccer journalism, Grant Wahl, passed away unexpectedly while covering the Argentina vs Netherlands quarterfinal match at the World Cup. His passing was sudden. He was eulogized by many. I appreciated Dave Clark's tribute in Sounder at Heart. Notably, there was an outpouring from corners of the internet I never expected and a tearful farewell on the Athletic's soccer podcast.

Each time we lose someone like Wahl, gone far too soon, I am reminded that we shouldn't wait until people are no longer with us to give them their flowers. So this week I decided to praise some folks; I want the important people in my life to know how much I appreciate them.

Flowers for Trusting Leadership - When I worked at Lincoln High School, my principal Pat Erwin, had a simple leadership style. He scouted out teaching talent: hired hard-working, committed educators, and empowered them to run the school. He acted more as a GM for a pro sports team than a principal. Our staff planned our own PD, based on our needs. If we needed money for a field trip or a classroom resource he’d find money somewhere in the budget. Major decisions around things that impacted the entire school were made collectively by a site-based decision making committee. He had an open door and faculty could come see him at any time with concerns or ideas. I didn’t appreciate it as much then as I do now, but he often served as a bulwark between teachers and the decisions made by other power centers outside our building. The Lincoln staff under Pat was the best teaching staff in the state of Washington and it wasn’t particularly close. He assembled a great team and gave them a sense of ownership–every student deserves that in their school. 

Flowers for Excellence and Professionalism - I have an amazing pair of colleagues in Abu Dhabi, to protect their privacy we’ll call them LeBron James and Minnie Driver. My admiration for them is bottomless. Jord… er… LeBron might be the hardest working person I have ever taught with.  She leaves me in the dust when it comes to organization and long-term planning. I love to sit with her and revise unit plans and assessments. She’s a good thought partner, principled but also pragmatic. Our collaborative sessions are efficient, productive, and (I think) we maintain a good distribution of labor and responsibilities. I can be honest with her if I think a task is wack and needs to be redesigned;  she is honest with me, if she thinks I am being ridiculous (which I often am). 

Minnie Driver is perhaps the most efficient person the Lord has ever created. She is the consummate professional–she knows when a meeting should be an email–when she has a meeting they are brief and focused. When I go to her with a professional dilemma or seeking a sounding board, she provides nuanced takes that are grounded in best practices and her deep experience in the classroom. She's the only person in my professional life who regularly makes me go "man, I gotta get my stuff together." She is organized in ways that I don’t even bother to aspire to, because there’s no way I’ll ever be on that level. Minnie is that dude. If she decided to leave our school, I’d start shopping around myself.

Flowers for Courage - Anti-Blackness is real. Sexism is real. People who hold anti-Black and sexist views online are often very loud about their opinions and travel in rabid digital packs. Few people I know have faced more abuse from online mobs than Shana White. She is the moral compass of the faction of justice-centered educators that I view as my fellow travelers. She is courageous–I am constantly in awe of her dogged commitment to speaking truth to power. In the face of threats, waves of harassment, even a months long suspension from Twitter for fighting back against a particularly egregious right-wing troll, she remains unbent and unbowed. If everyone in our profession had her courage, our schools would be a much better place. We need more people like Shana.

Dune Hits Different When You Live in Arrakis

Being from Tacoma, there’s a near civic obligation to like Frank Herbert’s Dune. He has roots in my hometown. He went to the high school where I used to teach. There’s even a park named after his book. I think the park was going to be directly after him but he was posthumously milkshake ducked.** 

Unlike the rest of my nerdy adult friends, I didn't read Dune at thirteen. Instead, I spent my teens reading Tolkien (like a respectable person) and then took a very regrettable near decade slide into the Ryan-verse (I acknowledge the error of my ways). Okay, that’s not quite true. I tried to read Herbert when I was younger and found it dull and impenetrable. I also vaguely remember watching David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation of the book. It was bad then; upon revisiting it last year, it aged like buttermilk.

I have a theory about great books: You have to read them at the time it’s right for you. I loathed Gatsby in grade eleven. But when I picked it up while backpacking in Colombia, it became one of my favorite novels I ever read. I couldn’t read Dune when I was younger. Now that I’m older, living two hours from the desert that serves as Arrakis, it hits different. Herbert imagined an entire universe and a history (spanning 15,000 years) as deep as anything ever put to paper. Dune is remarkable–it’s white-savior nonsense, but it’s white savior nonsense par excellence.  

But however good the book is, Denis Villeneuve’s film is better. When it came out, we went opening night… and the next day… and then the following weekend. I was absolutely mesmerized by the way the film looked and sounded. This wasn’t how I envisioned it from reading the book, it was better. That never happens! The sets, the music, the costumes, the dampness of Caladan, the Zimmer score, the menace of the Sardaukar–all of it, perfect. 

They started shooting Dune II in UAE’s remote Liwa Desert earlier this month. So the cast and crew are all  in town. My wife and I even made a half-hearted effort to find the set deep in the desert. This past weekend, I went to a talk given by Patrice Vermette. He’s the Academy Award winning production designer for Dune and the sequel. 

Vermette, during his talk - Photo by Yer Boi

He was joined by Mary Parent, who co-produced the film. I was struck by Parent’s immersion into Herbert's lore; she talks about Dune with the depth of a r/FrankHerbert moderator. The two hour talk was a treat. Vermette is the MJ (or choose your own G.O.A.T.) of what he does. It’s rare you get to be in the presence of literally the best person in the world at what they do, especially not in such an intimate setting.

I have been thinking about the talk all week. He contrasted, with some pride, his work with some of his contemporaries. At length he discussed his hesitancy to use CGI, instead preferring to use practical effects when possible, but also how this clashes with the realities of modern studio filmmaking. It was a good metaphor for the everyday compromises and tradeoffs we make in life. Trying to please everyone is a one-way trip to an ulcer and an aneurysm. We have to make the decisions that work and sometimes make peace with the results.