Friday, August 04, 2006
The Flanagans; the Cubs
I leave International House and the city behind, driving up Martin Luther King drive to the Loop and then turning left, underneath the post office and onto the Eisenhower Expressway. Which is, as those of you who are following along in your Rand McNally's will note, I-290, but those are the directions I have from Joe.
Joe Flanagan was one of my classmates in the teaching program at Chicago, and he and his family live in Elmhurst, Illinois. He describes it as the epicenter of the metropolitan area, and I laugh, but he's basically right, geographically. We've been trying to get together, but between his schedule and my lack of same, it's taken a while to get on the same page. The Cubs ticket that I foolishly bought before talking to him is further messing things up. So it turns out to be breakfast at the Flanagans'.
Which is a total treat. Joe and Nancy have three beautiful kids who serve to remind me that it's been way too long since we've seen each other, since I've met none of these kids before. But as I explain to Nancy, there was this flameout in my teaching career, and then I pretty much pulled up the drawbridge for a while, at least as far as Chicago friends were concerned.
We talk about the usual things friends talk about when they haven't seen each other in a million years - what we're doing in careers, who we've seen or haven't seen, what the price of housing has meant to our residential lives. Joe serves up breakfast, and then we drive over to the school where he's the chair of the English department.
I have no real way of judging these things; maybe it just proves how much we're products of the same department. But Joe talks to me about what he's doing, the battles he's had with administrators and teachers alike, and in the middle of it all I just kind of blurt out, "Man, you're doing it the right way."
I spent a year in a school where the English "curriculum" consisted of a list of disconnected works and a grammar book from the Pleistocene era. Hearing Joe talk about the theory behind what he's doing with his department - and "theory" here means nothing more grand than having thoughtful reasons for why you're doing what you're doing, for having a plan - reminds me that once upon a time this is what I believed in more passionately than anything else. And makes me glad, at least, of the privilege of knowing and studying with one of the very best teachers and educators out there.
I don't know, maybe schools all over the place are full of Joe Flanagans. That's not been my experience, though.
Somehow, I manage to convince Joe to go to the baseball game with me. He's less than enthused about the prospect of seeing John Mabry in a Cubs uniform. It turns out they're playing a doubleheader, thanks to the rain last night, and we make it to the corner of Clark and Addison in time to see the end of game 1, a 10-2 loss to the Diamondbacks. Game 2 is quite a bit better, although Joe still wonders about the mindset of the Cubs fans around us whose enthusiasm is undiminished by being 18 games under .500 at the beginning of August.
Still, it's Wrigley Field. Baseball nerd that I was and still may be, I delievered my junior speech on the beauties of Wrigley Field, and nearly every one of them holds today. Around the fifth or sixth inning, Joe leaves to take charge of the kids while I stick around until the end. I move out to the seats in the sun, way down the right field line, a perfect if distant vantage point to watch a suicide squeeze play out. But mostly I look at the grass and the ivy and the brick walls and the scoreboard and feel sad that sooner or later they're going to stop playing.
I take the L back downtown, walk through Marshall Fields one last time before it becomes Macy's, and then go to the wrong train station. Eventually I make it back to Elmhurst, where Joe works a small miracle in the kitchen and we stay up talking until Nancy comes home from her band concert. In the morning we make biscuits and go our different ways, promising that it won't be ten years until the next time.
Joe Flanagan was one of my classmates in the teaching program at Chicago, and he and his family live in Elmhurst, Illinois. He describes it as the epicenter of the metropolitan area, and I laugh, but he's basically right, geographically. We've been trying to get together, but between his schedule and my lack of same, it's taken a while to get on the same page. The Cubs ticket that I foolishly bought before talking to him is further messing things up. So it turns out to be breakfast at the Flanagans'.
Which is a total treat. Joe and Nancy have three beautiful kids who serve to remind me that it's been way too long since we've seen each other, since I've met none of these kids before. But as I explain to Nancy, there was this flameout in my teaching career, and then I pretty much pulled up the drawbridge for a while, at least as far as Chicago friends were concerned.We talk about the usual things friends talk about when they haven't seen each other in a million years - what we're doing in careers, who we've seen or haven't seen, what the price of housing has meant to our residential lives. Joe serves up breakfast, and then we drive over to the school where he's the chair of the English department.
I have no real way of judging these things; maybe it just proves how much we're products of the same department. But Joe talks to me about what he's doing, the battles he's had with administrators and teachers alike, and in the middle of it all I just kind of blurt out, "Man, you're doing it the right way."I spent a year in a school where the English "curriculum" consisted of a list of disconnected works and a grammar book from the Pleistocene era. Hearing Joe talk about the theory behind what he's doing with his department - and "theory" here means nothing more grand than having thoughtful reasons for why you're doing what you're doing, for having a plan - reminds me that once upon a time this is what I believed in more passionately than anything else. And makes me glad, at least, of the privilege of knowing and studying with one of the very best teachers and educators out there.
I don't know, maybe schools all over the place are full of Joe Flanagans. That's not been my experience, though.
Somehow, I manage to convince Joe to go to the baseball game with me. He's less than enthused about the prospect of seeing John Mabry in a Cubs uniform. It turns out they're playing a doubleheader, thanks to the rain last night, and we make it to the corner of Clark and Addison in time to see the end of game 1, a 10-2 loss to the Diamondbacks. Game 2 is quite a bit better, although Joe still wonders about the mindset of the Cubs fans around us whose enthusiasm is undiminished by being 18 games under .500 at the beginning of August.
Still, it's Wrigley Field. Baseball nerd that I was and still may be, I delievered my junior speech on the beauties of Wrigley Field, and nearly every one of them holds today. Around the fifth or sixth inning, Joe leaves to take charge of the kids while I stick around until the end. I move out to the seats in the sun, way down the right field line, a perfect if distant vantage point to watch a suicide squeeze play out. But mostly I look at the grass and the ivy and the brick walls and the scoreboard and feel sad that sooner or later they're going to stop playing.I take the L back downtown, walk through Marshall Fields one last time before it becomes Macy's, and then go to the wrong train station. Eventually I make it back to Elmhurst, where Joe works a small miracle in the kitchen and we stay up talking until Nancy comes home from her band concert. In the morning we make biscuits and go our different ways, promising that it won't be ten years until the next time.
