If you motor to the end of the lake and cross the portage you will be in a State that is on fire. I am sitting in a sun room of a lovely cottage looking towards Minnesota and when you are in this position, a position of quiet and calm and beauty, you can fail to understand that a short distance away there is mayhem and sleeplessness and injustice.
I've sat in this sun room over the past few days reading Dave Badini's book Keon and Me. Is there anything better than reading a book in a sun room on a bucolic lake with chaos a long boat ride away? In the book, Badini attempts to accomplish two things; he wishes to bring his hero, Dave Keon, back to the Maple Leaf fold and he wants to vanquish a bully who tormented him throughout school.
I was bullied for a while in school. I will call my bully, um let me see, I will call him... Greg Puchalski (sometimes I don't have a very good imagination for names). During my teaching days I went to a lot of workshops about reconciliation and forgiveness. I went to more than my fair share of conferences on bullying and peace keeping. In those libraries and conference rooms, in those board offices and church basements, there seems to be sound, peaceful solutions to the bully.
I don't want to ruin Badini's book for you but he attempts to emulate his hero Keon for a long time by not fighting his bully. When I was bullied, I took it for about a year. I have a vivid memory of finally confronting my bully (I call him Greg Puchalski). It was not particularly heroic or romantic and certainly not poetic. I stumbled on my words and I am pretty sure I was crying or at least I had something in my eye. My voice got stuck in my throat but I think my desperation, my anger promised a violence that if unleashed would not be controlled. I would inflict as much damage as my 117 pound frame could inflict. It wouldn't be much but it would be everything I had. I remember it as righteous.
There's a breeze coming from the south, from Minnesota, into this sun room, over the keys of my computer. It is cool. Just down the lake from here, a man died under the knee of a bully. A group of people have taken to the streets after a 400 year bullying. They have tried everything. They did what Badini did for a time, what Keon did during his career; peaceful protest, quiet resolution, civil, organized, disobedience.
Some of it worked but most of it did not.
400 years plays in nine minutes. People have decided enough. They are confronting a history, and it would be the height of arrogance for someone like me, sitting in the position I am in, to decide how or when or what they should do.
When you are sitting in the sun room, you don't judge the people who are forced to live in the shade.
