Day 236 Way Moments

August 2, 2015

(If we live with an open and grateful attitude, every day will bring a gift. This is one of 365 gifts during the year I turned 70.)

I have had many driveway moments—times when I have been driving in my car, listening to something on the radio and arrived home in my driveway to sit and listen in the car until the end. This happens with music but more often with special pieces on NPR. 

Yesterday, I was listening to This American Life, which was doing a piece called The Problem We All Live With. I arrived at my destination, the gym, but wanted to hear the rest of it. It was my gymway moment and I quickly downloaded an app on my iPhone so I could go inside and listen to it streaming while I exercised. This broadcast was about school integration in Missouri, but not about the Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954. The excellent piece by Nikole Hannah-Jones was about Michael Brown’s school district. Michael Brown was the unarmed black teenager killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri just last year. As an educator and human being who cares about education and social justice, I was disturbed by what I heard, about how far we have not come as a society. I am grateful for what I learned which will affect the way I understand some future news stories.

Today, while driving home from the gym, I looked up and was struck by a stunning sky. This was my skyway moment. I stopped immediately, got out of the car, and aimed my iPhone toward the sky. It was such a mixture of cirrus, cirrostratus, cirrocumulus, altocumulus and cumulus clouds but I prefer to call them names of animals, feathers, streaks and veils. I saw a prancing pony enter the frame, a skyscape with sweeping delicate brush strokes. Looking upward toward such a sky today made me feel part of a narrative larger than mine alone.

My gift today is an awesome sky.

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Learn more about The Problem We All Live With:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with            
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/31/magazine/the-continuing-reality-of-segregated-schools.html              

> Day 237 Patterns

You can find links to my other posts on this project here:

http://bjschupp.blogspot.com/2014/12/365-gifts.html