Elizabeth DeOrnellas

Advice

Tomorrow’s the first day of school – a new year, a new team, and new courses are all in store for me. In preparation, I’ve been thinking about one of the questions we used during our team building exercises: What advice do you wish you’d been given as teenager? Here’s my attempt at an answer:

I wish someone had told me that I’d always feel I have something to prove. That having a chip on your shoulder makes it even more important to seek balance. That sometimes the world throws you off-kilter, and that chip is the only effective counterweight.

I wish someone had told me that I’d never be comfortable being on top. That restlessness is both a blessing and a curse.

I wish I’d been told that life isn’t linear. That the danger of singular pursuit of goals is that your goals become singular. The higher you climb, the steeper the ground beneath you becomes – until you find yourself at a precipice, with only a binary choice: Jump or Back Down.

I wish someone had told me that it’s OK to retreat and lick your wounds. That sometimes that’s the only way to get clean.

I wish I’d been told that you don’t have to like yourself to love yourself. That it’s possible to acknowledge your own weaknesses, to recognize the ways in which you’ve engendered hurt – and still approach yourself with forgiveness and compassion.

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Orlando

Only when I’m dancing do I feel this free …

This one’s for the girls

Fierce

Fabulous

And forgotten

By those who think it takes royal blood to be a Queen

Those who don’t understand that true Pride is earned

Through jeers and judgment

This is for those whose love is a battlefield

And those who were there

When the beats turned to bullets

This is for those who are always on point

Those who slay

We want to remember you that way

Free

From the hatred and the fear

Still dancing

Teaching Vision

Working on a Teaching Vision for school – current draft is below – feedback is welcome!

I want my students to ask, “Why?”

I want them to understand that asking questions is more important than finding answers.

I want my students to learn that true empathy is difficult.

I want them to try to understand.

I want them to discover that understanding takes effort.

I want my students to be comfortable feeling uncomfortable.

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Lessons

This is the year I learned that listening and hearing are two different things.

The year I realized how difficult it is to decide when context matters.

The year I learned there can be value in a one-way conversation, provided it’s honest enough.

This is the year I learned that not wanting to hurt people means swallowing a lot of truth.

Truth gives you heartburn.

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A People’s History

Finally finished reading Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States – I guess April’s not bad for a New Year’s Resolution. Read it if you haven’t; reread it if you have; it’s the kind of book that changes your perspective. Out of everything Zinn has to say, here’s the part that will stick with me:

But with all the controls of power and punishment, enticements and concessions, diversions and decoys, operating throughout the history of the country, the Establishment has been unable to keep itself secure from revolt. Every time it looked as if it had succeeded, the very people it thought seduced or subdued, stirred and rose. Blacks, cajoled by Supreme Court decisions and congressional statutes, rebelled. Women, wooed and ignored, romanticized and mistreated, rebelled. Indians, thought dead, reappeared, defiant. Young people, despite lures of career and comfort, defected. Working people, thought soothed by reforms, regulated by law, kept within bounds by their own unions, went on strike. Government intellectuals, pledged to secrecy, began giving away secrets. Priests turned from piety to protest.

To recall this is to remind people of what the Establishment would like them to forget – the enormous capacity of apparently helpless people to resist, of apparently contented people to demand change. To uncover such history is to find a powerful human impulse to assert one’s humanity. It is to hold out, even in times of deep pessimism, the possibility of surprise. (634)

The State of Our Union

There’s something about this current election cycle that feels disjointed. We’re entering the part where the horse race becomes real, but it still feels as if the parties are running on two completely separate tracks.

I’m obviously not the only one meditating on how the country got so divided. In the middle of our nation’s most stage-managed political event, our President sounded a note that rang with an almost wistful honesty:

“A better politics doesn’t mean we have to agree on everything. This is a big country — different regions, different attitudes, different interests. That’s one of our strengths, too. Our Founders distributed power between states and branches of government, and expected us to argue, just as they did, fiercely, over the size and shape of government, over commerce and foreign relations, over the meaning of liberty and the imperatives of security.

But democracy does require basic bonds of trust between its citizens. It doesn’t work if we think the people who disagree with us are all motivated by malice. It doesn’t work if we think that our political opponents are unpatriotic or trying to weaken America. Democracy grinds to a halt without a willingness to compromise, or when even basic facts are contested, or when we listen only to those who agree with us. Our public life withers when only the most extreme voices get all the attention. And most of all, democracy breaks down when the average person feels their voice doesn’t matter; that the system is rigged in favor of the rich or the powerful or some special interest.

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What we talk about

I’ve been trying to figure out if I have anything worth saying about Tamir Rice.

He was 12.

I keep coming back to that.

There is a conversation to be had about how the failure of gun control and the insidious impact of systemic racism combine to create a law enforcement culture based on fear.

There’s also a conversation to be had about how we protect our kids. All kids. Especially those whose innocence is stolen by a world that still, too often, sees skin color first and humanity second.

To all those thoughtfully engaged in that dialogue, I thank you. Tonight, this is all I have to add:

Our country is hurting. Every time a child dies, the cut bites deeper.

At this point, the only people I blame are the ones who can’t see the blood.

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What Fight the Power Means When You’re the Adult in the Room

Have you ever wanted to break something?

I have a recurring fantasy about smashing wine glasses. It doesn’t have anything to do with potential metaphorical implications – they’re just small, and thin, and, if you’re going to do it, the point is shattering.

Not sure why that particular vision has stuck around my head so long, I just know that if I was to ever direct a scene in which metaphorical catharsis turned literal, that’s what the heroine would be doing.

Of course, here’s the problem with that – in said scene, you eventually end up with a crunchy carpet of broken glass, and, if the theoretical heroine is anything like me, she’d then feel obligated to sweep up.

That’s my main issue with rebellion. I’m all in favor of window smashing and flamethrowing – except I know how much work it takes to get to the point where you own a window, and I’ve seen how long it takes the scars to heal when someone gets burned.

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10 Things About the Bay

Is it too early in December for year-end Top 10 lists? I think not. My “I’ve been in California a year” moment passed in November; so, in honor of said milestone, here are 10 Things I’ve Learned About the Bay:

There are bins of skateboards in the thrift stores.
Some time in November the temperature hits the 60s, and people start to talk incessantly of “winter.”
Tree trimming three palm trees takes a week, and the resulting trees look like chewed-on toothpicks.
Water sports with a following include synchronized swimming.
Hoodies really have become acceptable corporate attire.
Yoga is the only religion no one questions.
Tech companies not only fill the roads with charter buses; they fill landlord’s rooms with people who need a weekday work apartment, while their family lives in the mountains or by the beach.
Carpool lanes are sometimes on the right, and apparently every traffic lane doesn’t need its own light.
California schools have a thing for bears – also banana slugs and trees.
Micro-climates are real. Be prepared.

The Fire Next Time

The Fire Next Time, from the inimitable James Baldwin, is a book in two parts:

-My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation

-Down At the Cross: Letter from a Region in My Mind

The first letter is only seven pages, and it is what (in format and content) most directly influences Ta-nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me. It’s the kind of communication that seems too well put together to be worth picking apart. Go read it.

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