DON’T KNOW WHAT TO THINK... DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO... about some of the items on my worry list. I’ll focus on the one that rose up in-my-face today downtown where a rag-tag bunch of tired, confused-but-trying-to-look-confident folks were obviously wondering what and when engagement will come between them and at least two dozen uniformed San Diego police officers.

So, there it was... the San Diego road show production of the drama that is playing in major U.S. cities. There they were... the players, protagonists and antagonists (you decide which are the antagonists and which the protagonists) representing ideas and people, the 99% who watch snippets of the drama on the evening news and the other Americans, the 1%, who by all accounts are basically disinterested in the whole business, waiting for the plot to develop.

I was down there a month ago when the whole thing started with a parade. It was called a march, but I know the difference between a parade and a march and what happened that day was a parade, a celebration. The fourth or fifth act that was playing at the Civic Center today was not a celebration. There was no music; but if there had been, a dirge would have been appropriate. How will the play end? I don’t know, and I don’t even know what to hope for... except to hope the players don’t hurt themselves and each other before the curtain falls.

Another problem, which I won’t go into today, perplexes me as much as the Civic Center play does. That problem, also a drama, is being played out in classrooms and administrative offices and school board chambers all over America. The players in this drama are known, the conflict has been introduced, but the plot is stalled because schools were developed to address the educational needs of teachers, administrators and parents when they were children. The pupils who now surge into the nation’s classrooms are unlike their parents and teachers, unlike them in fundamental, perhaps biological, at least neurological ways. Their brains are wired differently. Yesterday I learned from my friend Clyde Yoshida that there is already a name for these new, different people. They are called digital natives. A digital native is a person born during or after the general introduction of digital technology and has been interacting with digital technology from earliest childhood. The plot of that absurdist play will develop around what schools will do to address the needs of this generation of digital natives. The denouement, the finale, won’t come soon. There will be more conflict. Clyde, one of the very best teachers in San Diego or anywhere else, is one of the players. Because he is bright and creative, he will adjust; but the adjustment is almost certain to be painful. I hear the pain in a poem he wrote and posted yesterday on his BLOG (http://cyoshidaart.blogspot.com/).

Defiantly Being Me
Clyde Yoshida

A crazy world.
I’m in a noble profession
that is plagued without integrity.
It pulls me in directions, this way and that way,
as I sink into a sea of gray.
A fathom below the forthright air. 
It’s dark and tenuous 
with prismatic, changing light
that distorts the truth.
The shark patrols to take my heart,
to consume my mind 
and chill the flesh.

Escape, elusive above and in my head 
The source of light and air tempts 
my lungs and persistent longing
to chart my own course.
A murky silhouette spans the ceiling 
above the distant, lucid surface.
It is a bridge that links the fragile heart 
from despair, my missing smile 
to the laughter and inner optimist.
That joy makes me recognizable
and signals my arrival like 
gulls above the tide.

The sea shall not take me.
My spirit will not walk the plank or mutiny me.
The icy, sunken shipyard will never be my home.
I will out-swim the greedy whirlpool 
spiraling to absorb my pure, unsalted soul, 
to make me wreckage set adrift with no mind of its own.

But I will scrape together these bones
to resurrect the heart and brain.
A half century devoted to obedience
I lament like childhood lost.
The rest of life is thrown to me
like a life preserver
tethered to awesome powers
to restore someone I recognize,
starting with the smile, 
my smile.