There has been a lot of fear mongering about the caravan of people headed toward the United States. President Donald Trump has whipped people into a frenzy about how dangerous this group is while providing little evidence.
My mother worked for twenty-seven years at the Middletown Psychiatric Center. Most of her career was on the geriatric units. Over the years, I got to know a few of the patients. I always liked talking with Adalaide, even if she didn’t talk much. Just as I entered my teenage years, she passed away. I wrote this poem about her a decade later, sometime between 1993 and 1995.
Every day I wake up and think, “today I am going to write about that thing in the news from yesterday.” The thing I am thinking about is one of several that came up, but I decided I would research it the next day and make a well-informed post. Then, I read the news and find another six or seven new things to write about.
Mr. Rosen taught 11th grade English, but his class was about so much more than grammar, spelling, and punctuation. We read Alive By Piers Paul Read and learned to look at the world differently rather than being repulsed by people who had to make impossible decisions. He read, then interpreted, Shakespeare – Macbeth to be exact – into his own brand of humorous English. He was a DJ on WPDH during the Christmas holidays. He encouraged us to use our imaginations. Most importantly, he introduced us to Walter Mitty.