beware the ides of march.

"well, the ides of march are come."

though as far as i'm concerned, i'd say every day around here is fodder for a shakespeare play!

the ides of march means it's almost st. patrick's day (fucker.) which means it's almost spring (yea.)

when i was little, around this time we'd start practicing for the may festival...the may festival was a yearly event involving the third through sixth grades of my elementary school...don't quote me on that...in fact i had to call my little sister just to get many of these facts straight...

ah, the good old days when my mind used to be a terrible thing to waste...

basically, the whole shebang was centered around a maypole...the younger grades just did some choreographed dance to music while the fifth and sixth graders actually danced around the maypole with the ribbons until the whole maypole was wrapped in a colorful pattern...

all to 'jimmy crack corn'.

how terribly pagan!...well except the 'jimmy crack corn' part...when i got older and found out what a maypole was all about i was soooo thrilled by our funky little may festival...an elementary school event steeped in paganism!!!...dude!!

but at the time did no one else notice?...or care?...you know they had no idea...because if they did you know there'd be no may festival in short order...

although, maybe not...i mean we still had santa claus in the schools then...and my town still had a sambo's restaurant...when i was growing up, the majority of people and parents just kinda went with stuff...well that's what it seemed like anyway...

not today, though...no sir...it's funny, though...you know with all the campaigns for social awareness/justice, strives for equality, technological and other advances meant to bring us farther than we've ever been, it seems we've been most successful in creating little or no 'wiggle' room in schools these days thus stagnating real growth in awareness...all these amazing tools at our disposal, and yet we have a palpable fear of stepping out of bounds in using them...

there's always got to be some committee to be sure there's not one person who might possibly be offended in the least by the observance or celebration, group or club...

good lord the moment the wrong person or parent gets offended at what something being celebrated or assembled for in the schools might mean then it's all over...maybe not right away, but soon enough...by the time the letter to the editor is written and the news cameras are called out it's all but over...somebody's always getting offended by something and there's always a media outlet at the ready and waiting to be sure the offense gets fast tracked...

of course i'm all for free speech and all the attendant benefits...it's just all the things that don't get said or done as a result of free speech and all the attendant benefits that bugs me...

it seems that with abandoning what might be offensive to some, and not replacing these celebrations, observances, rituals, groups with anything else at all, there is little or no cohesiveness to unite our student bodies...

and no, myspace doesn't count.

a generation of children at loose ends...and we can only guess what will be at the ready to tie them up...

there is so much diversity in this country...instead of homogenizing our schools and communities for fear of offending someone, how cool would it be in our schools to attempt to honor all that diversity?...at least as much as we could?...and good lord not just with the few obligatory posters tacked in the hallway and the few carefully chosen politically correct books facing forward on the library shelves...

but actually honoring and celebrating the days and celebrations and rituals that make us different...and maybe just a little bit the same...

but we don't...we don't because diversity to many is too scary... and because being perceived as different to many is too scary...

i'm just surprised i guess...i'm surprised that the big ol' melting pot is *still* after all these years just about who has the biggest wick....and who's just afraid of getting too close to the flame...

but unlike shakespeare's play, i don't know if there was ever any specific warning for culture at large to heed...though there have been plenty of self-appointed soothsayers along the way...

i know all that has been done (or not) over the years in the schools and communities to eradicate religious, racial, gender, and cultural and otherwise bias has been seemingly with our children's best interests in mind...

but like another great english literary figure said

"the road to hell is paved with good intentions"

indeed.

x.