So there haven’t been too many new posts here recently, but I’m not going to apologize. I try to keep my writing on this site relevant and readable, and I haven’t had much to address of late been able to formulate anything meaningful of late. There’s a lot on my mind–I started, and discarded, a post called “Our Failing Affluent Suburban Schools,” if that’s any indication–but I’m trying not to get all shrill and annoying here. So.

Yesterday I retreated to Manhattan with some old friends to get lunch and watch Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten. I’m a sucker for rock hagiographies–I was the biggest Behind the Music fan in my circle of friends–but for once, this is about a deserving subject. Joe Strummer is a fascinating person to know about. His posh background never prevented him from empathizing with people of other races or social classes (the film points to the Clash’s cover of  “Police and Thieves” “Police and Thieves” as the moment when punk opened its arms to black people).  And toward the end of his life, after some post-Clash depression that rendered him almost completely nonproductive, he formed a new band, the Mescaleros, that explored folk music from all over the world in service of Strummer’s always political, always optimistic lyrics.

Not everyone is going to change the world, or even give the world a couple of great songs, like Joe Strummer did.  But there are plenty of people trying, and to me that’s really important.  In the teaching profession, we tend to get stuck in our own rooms, hemmed in by state-mandated testing, intrusive administrators who just don’t get it, dumb committees we didn’t ask to be on, parents who are lied to by their children, children who are lied to by the television, colleagues who should’ve retired fifteen years ago, and all sorts of negativity.  But there needs to be room for creativity, for idealism, for all that sort of thing.  I’ve been down about my job recently, for rather personal reasons, but I keep thinking that someone in my classroom, if not a future Joe Strummer him- or herself, will at least get what he and his colleagues tell us.

Speaking of Strummer’s colleagues, do you know Billy Bragg?  I’ve become a huge fan of his in the past couple of years.  He and Strummer were friends.  And even if they weren’t, they were.  Know what I mean?