How Baseball Leads to Profound Moments
This past summer, my son was offered an opportunity to represent the United States and play baseball in Belgium and Holland. Naturally, I took one for the team and volunteered to chaperone him on the 10-day tour. I had never been to the Continent, only to England and Scotland, and was eager to collect more stamps for my passport. I knew that traveling to these medieval cities and touring the places that I had only taught about would impact me, but I just didn't know how much.
Our first day, we took a day tour to Bastogne and spent time at the Battle of the Bulge Museum and the memorial there dedicated to the paratroopers and Patton's 3rd Army who fought and saved the town. Standing on top of the memorial and scanning the panoramic views of the village around us, I couldn't help but sense the honor and sacrifice so many made to hold that town. I can still smell the air, feel the breeze in my hair, and the pride I felt as I watched my 12-year-old son read the plaques dedicated to those men who fought so bravely to save the world.
It just so happened that the museum, which if you haven't visited I highly recommend, was also hosting an exhibit that contained art painted on sections of the Berlin Wall. It also had cars from East Berlin that were painted and represented the attitudes of the artists and their conceptions of liberty, freedom, confinement, denial and oppression. The pieces took my breath away...the visions these artists expressed on the symbol of the Cold War were hauntingly beautiful yet also loud and defiant. I will never forget them.
Our first baseball game wasn't until day 4 of our trip, and we arrived to my delight to a ball field that looked like it was built right after World War II...which it was. It was right next to the local airport that was still in use and I could visualize the GIs playing ball, teaching the Belgians the art of the game, sowing the seeds of peace and fraternity while healing the wounds of occupation and oppression for so long.
There are so many moments from this trip that moved me, but the one place that I will never forget and will always keep in my heart was the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. I really have no words to express the sorrow, the inhumanity and the anger I felt as I moved through the house. The last room which held her personal diary, her writings, her stories instilled a sense of loss and sadness in me that I still can't express in the right words. It brought back memories of my grandparents' friends, one of whom had numbers tattooed on her arm. I didn't understand then what they meant, and I wish so much that I still had my grandparents here now so that I could understand what their friends went through. So I could continue to tell their story. The Anne Frank House exemplified Humanity. Life. And it showed what happens when we forget that we are all human and we all should see each other as mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters. Humans.
July 2019
Randee Wittkopf, 46, high school social studies teacher, mom, wife, sister, daughter and lover of the Humanities
how-baseball-leads-to-profound-moments
The Power of Myth
Ron Eisenman shares how a PBS television series encouraged him to pursue his passions and turn to the humanities to help him make sense of the world around him. His engagement with "The Power of Myth" helped to connect seemingly disparate cultural contexts by illuminating the shared elements of the stories we tell about ourselves.
"The Power of Myth" (PBS television series)
1988
Ron Eisenman, public high school social studies teacher, Rutland, Vermont
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Nola
My Humanities Moment occurred in 2005, the year that hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. I lived in New Orleans pre-and-post Katrina and lost my house to the “Great Deluge.” I helplessly watched 85% of New Orleans proper fill up with water due to the 28 levee breaches throughout the city. The widespread flooding in New Orleans and other Gulf Coast communities in 2005 caused nearly 1,400 deaths and forced several hundred thousand people from their homes. Americans watching television were shocked by the plight of residents stranded by the flooding: the squalid conditions in the evacuation centers, the lawlessness in the streets of New Orleans, and above all the unsatisfactory response of emergency management officials. Frankly, I didn’t fully appreciate New Orleans until I almost lost her.
Prior to Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans residents typically evacuated in a haphazard manner, sometimes packing important documents, gassing up the car, or simply seeking refuge in a neighborhood bar to ride out the storm with other strangers. Dealing with hurricanes was a way of life in New Orleans, a rite of passage for a transplant like me. In fact, I didn’t take Hurricane Katrina seriously and only chose to evacuate last minute after a friend cautioned me to “not just walk to the Superdome as a backup plan.” I eventually evacuated to Delaware to be with family and to attend the University of Delaware because Tulane University experienced extensive flooding. While I experienced incredible demonstrations of generosity, I equally encountered numerous insensitive and ignorant people, whom upon hearing I was from New Orleans, rudely questioned why I lived in a “fish bowl.” I distinctly recall one moment in which a stranger suggested that New Orleans be completely bull dozed and its residents be forced to migrate to higher ground. In the eyes of this naysayer, New Orleans didn’t matter. It was in this moment that I finally appreciated New Orleans for all its flaws and that it was a city worth fighting for.
2005
Melissa Tracy, 34, Social Studies Teacher
nola
How MTV Helped End Apartheid
I first discovered what being a global citizen meant when I was just thirteen and a part of the MTV Generation. MTV debuted in 1981, but in rural Virginia I didn’t get my MTV until 1986. It was the era of the super group. The famine relief charity, Band Aid, had surprised everyone with the hit “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” That was followed with the spectacular success of “We are the World”. The idea of the super group wasn’t new, but this super group was like nothing I had ever seen.
Every face that flashed by seemed either fascinatingly original or historic or both like Dylan, Miles Davis, Springsteen, Pete Townshend, Run-DMC, Bono, Kurtis Blow, Joey Ramone, and The Rolling Stones! These were just a few of the musicians that created United Artists against Apartheid. A super group formed not just for charity, but for protest. I didn’t know most of the artists, but with the ones I knew I was immediately hooked. These weren’t new wave singers or pop stars, these were rockers and rappers. These were my heroes singing about a place called Sun City.
In the days of no internet, my only choice was the public library where normally I used the children’s section, but this time was different. I went and met the adult librarian and explained my interest in South Africa and Sun City. She led me to a card catalog and then taught me how to look up things on microfilm. Here I discovered the horrors of apartheid. She directed me to Archbishop Tutu’s calls for stiff sanctions on his own country in the New York Times.
What was I to do? I had to write my first letter to my representative, supporting something called the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act. I received a nice letter thanking me for writing in support of the measure and behaving in such a fine civic matter. I was so excited, this is what democracy was supposed to look like. You write a letter and your bill gets passed! To my disbelief, President Reagan vetoed the bill, and then Congress overrode his veto!
That summer MTV played the video “Biko” by Peter Gabriel in heavy rotation and I committed to raise awareness about apartheid. The song had a new video to coincide with the release of the movie, Cry Freedom. A fantastic film about the life of the slain leader Steve Biko, starring Denzel Washington. “Biko” was such a powerful song that it inspired me to join Amnesty International and buy my first Free Mandela shirt to wear to school. Its lyrics with their harsh simplicity cut to the core of his murder. Gabriel’s performance at Live Aid 1986 for Amnesty was absolutely mind blowing. I wanted to show my classmates the injustice of apartheid and the brutality of this racist system. While I had never traveled to South Africa, I could feel the pain of people trapped in the townships forced to suffer under an oppressive government. Then the day came in 1994 when Nelson Mandela was elected president of South Africa and apartheid was over. As Mandela was fond of saying “What's past is past. We look to the future now.”
I felt a sense of triumph and purpose, I had been a very tiny part of a cause greater than myself and I had been on the right side of history. I had been teaching for 16 years in 2003, when I had the chance to watch with awe as Gabriel sang to a packed stadium in Cape Town “Biko” to Mandela. My humanities moment was being awakened to the world outside my doorstep by the global revolution of music television and empowered to help make it a better place.
Artists Against Apartheid Video - Sun City
Spring of 1986
Patrick Touart, born 1973, public school teacher, Pittsylvania County Virginia
how-mtv-helped-end-apartheid