The Glass is Half Ful…bright

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Blogging, Community, Early Education, Education, Faith, Fate, Fulbright Program, German Heritage, German language, International community, Languages, Mainstreaming, Marathon training and running, Presidential election, Trisomy 21, Wimbledon

Now that I’m posting only two days a week rather than five — after meeting my goal of writing every day but weekends and holidays for a solid year — the topics about which I could write seem to be overabundant!

Here we are, for example, in the thick of Wimbledon. Do I offer thoughts about the surprises of the tournament that lasts two weeks and is the one time of year when I try to rearrange my life around tennis?

Should I share insights about how my husband and I are preparing our daughter for second grade — for most parents probably not a huge deal, but somewhat uncharted territory for a precocious child who is holding her own with other kids her age but who nonetheless was born with an extra chromosome. Is there more my husband and I should be doing? Is there less?

Perhaps some advice for my followers about wisdom I’ve gained training for my 19th marathon that is less than two weeks away?

Or do I reflect on the astonishing turn of events with the new occupants of the White House?

I’ll pick the latter but for this post only as it relates to a subject near and dear to my heart.

As it desperately tries to make itself credible in any possible way, the Trump administration has again made a proposal that defies logic: a 47% cut to the Fulbright program as one of many painful reductions to a State Department that is every day rapidly losing talent, purpose and meaning.

The program was launched by Sen. William J. Fulbright right after World War II to encourage global study, understanding, and constructive engagement with the world’s community of nations.

I think many of us are trying to figure out if Donald Trump is a nationalist, isolationist, or just breathtakingly shortsighted. I wish he knew some basic facts about Fulbright.

Over seven decades, some 370,000 people from 165 countries — Americans studying overseas, and men and women from other countries attending universities in the United States — have received Fulbrights. They include Nobel and Pulitzer prizewinners and former heads of state.

In the current budget year, 8,000 scholars from the United States have been funded by $235 million from the State Department to study abroad. The Trump administration hopes that amount will shrink to $125 million, much less than universities, governments of other nations, businesses and donors offer to maintain the Fulbright program.

I was once a young man who dreamed of studying and living in a German-speaking country to embrace my heritage and language of my forefathers and foremothers. To my great shock, I received a Fulbright to study in Austria for two years. I stayed for a few after that to work in an embassy. I still have poems from that time that I wrote in English, German, and French. Receiving the Fulbright changed my life. It made me strive to be a citizen of the world and inspired me to make a career of helping young people achieve their dreams through education.

There are thousands of former Fulbrights who have a more important voice than I, but I want to add my words to their efforts to lobby for full funding of the program, perhaps for even an increase, so the world has a better chance to advance.

Angels Among Us: Dr. Alberto Costa and Friends who Create Level Playing Fields

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Advocacy, Alberto Costa, Blogging, Down syndrome, Early Education, Education, Faith, Family, Fate, German language, Gratitude, Iowa, Living in Hawaii, Marathon training and running, Peace and non-violence, Pediatrics, Philanthropy, Quakerism, Trisomy 21

My posts have an Iowa theme this week.

Before my family and I moved to Hawaii three years ago, we had returned to the United States after living in Germany with our baby daughter. We were looking for a permanent home, a safe haven for two dads with their first child. Having lived in community before, an opportunity to work for and reside at a Quaker boarding school and farm in Iowa with gentle rolling hills and gentle, intelligent Quakers seemed to me like just the right ticket to make it back to America.

And even given those circumstances, a ticket to a world full of unknowns.

What would my new job, a new state where none of us had lived before, new pediatricians, new neighbors and community be like? Ben and I would be coming back into the American language and customs and traditions after living pretty much like most native German speakers would during our time in Europe.

We switched languages although I continued (and continue) to speak to our daughter in German. We had started to make inroads in Germany with a promising network of friends, but now we sought connections in the United States.

I’m pretty good at cold writing and calling people. I like reaching out, finding common ground. My husband does, too, but he is more reserved. A Harvard-educated linguist, he devours complex medical texts. We make a good team. I find articles with information I think could be helpful for our daughter, and he reads them after I do and gives me his take. Then we decide if there is a next step.

One of those articles was in The New York Times about a doctor, Alberto Costa, whose life and work changed completely soon after his only child was born 22 years ago.

A physician and neuroscientist, Dr. Costa’s joy that my husband and I met 15 years later when our own daughter came into the world was accompanied by the realization that the marathon of parenthood had suddenly turned into an ultramarathon.

Facing the knowledge that his baby girl had been born with three copies of all or most of the genes on the 21st chromosome, instead of the usual two, Dr. Costa entered a brave new world of disbelief mixed in perhaps with a little grief and urgency.

Dr. Costa’s dreams for his daughter Tyche, like ours for Ellen, now rested on a marathon course filled will all kinds of potential detours and questions. Would their future hold limitless potential? Would they be able to freely and boldly pursue careers, meaningful relationships, compete with other girls their age, navigate social pressures, deal with conflicting messages about how they should act and who they should be? What about their confidence? What about their vulnerability?

I only know that the first time I held my daughter, those questions remained but I felt a new calling: to be my daughter’s advocate, to help her acquire every tool possible for her life toolkit, to go outside my comfort zones at times if she were able to benefit from my doing so.

Reading the Times article about Dr. Costa and Tyche on a cold morning in Iowa, about his decision that after Tyche’s birth he would devote himself to the study of Down syndrome, I realized I needed to see if he were interested in a friendship with our family.

I found an email address for him and sent him a few words about Ellen and her picture. I mentioned that like his daughter, Ellen would be described as “high functioning,” although, truth be told, I much prefer “high achieving.” Why? I don’t always think of myself as high functioning! But I always hope to achieve a little something each day!

I thanked Dr. Costa for his research and offered my modest support for his goals to improving the quality of life of persons with an extra chromosome.

He wrote back! He described his hope that children of our daughters’ generations would gain from his research.

Time passes. My family moved to Hawaii. A few years after we had settled into life here, I began this blog. I wrote Dr. Costa again.

Here is part of his return message:

It is good to hear from you after such a long time.

We have made significant progress … and have learned quite a bit more about the specifics of the biology behind some of the cognitive and other brain issues in persons with DS.

Dr. Costa is raising funds for his research at Case Western Reserve University. Here is the link to his profile and work. I know he may well make the path my daughter follows in her life a little or a lot smoother.

Ben and I feel blessed for all the people we have met since Ellen was born who have gone out of their way to help clear her path, to give her a chance at having equal footing in the marathons she will face.

They sure don’t have to, but we will be forever grateful for the time and love they have given our family.

Sternstunden der Menschheit – Decisive Moments in History

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Advocacy, Blogging, Faith, Family, German language, Gratitude, Presidential election, Stefan Zweig

I first read Sternstunden der Menschheit (Decisive Moments in History) by the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig as a young man. The collection of miniatures about events that changed the world, such as Robert Scott and his expedition to reach the South Pole, is achingly beautiful and as suspenseful as a novel that must be devoured at once.

I have read the book only in its original German, but I am sure the English translation conveys just as stunningly the fateful decisions made in just one day, or even a few hours or minutes that can change the course of history.

I’ve been thinking about Sternstunden der Menschheit a lot lately for two main reasons. The first is the sad realization, brought home every day, almost every hour, that there is very little heroic about the current occupants of the White House. Just one year ago, I was so optimistic about the United States’ trajectory through history.

The other reason, though, is the courageous efforts of writers, artists, scholars, and even politicians who are rising to the occasion to save democracy in America.

It has happened before in history during times of resistance.

I had the honor of living through the end of the Cold War as a very young man who lived close to the border of east and west Europe as the Iron Curtain first slowly and then with a stunning sense of inevitability fell apart piece by piece.

Those were days filled with true Sternstunden, exhilarating, breathtaking moments that define history and the greatness of humanity!

Call me an optimist, but I believe the world and especially the United States right now have extraordinary potential for many more Sternstunden.

 

Things in Your Life No one Can Ever Take Away From You

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Blogging, Childraising, Civil Rights, Community, Faith, Family, Friendship, Fulbright Program, Gay marriage, German language, Gratitude, Growing up gay, Parenting, Writing

Dear Readers,

The beauty about a blog is that ideas swimming in your mind can become actual posts — and then they are no longer wandering around like aimless sleepwalkers!

While ironing, I thought about achievements in life that no one can ever take away. I love to iron, but that is not one of the achievements! I hope they are in the right order. I’m sure I will rethink them in the following days and I know some will change in the years ahead.

I am asking, Dear Readers, if you could share a few of yours with followers of this blog. After all, it is called Tennis, Trisomy 21 and Taking in Life Together.

1. Becoming a father to my stunning girl
2. Becoming a better parent
3. Meeting my husband and being married for 15 years through thick and thin
4. Staying close to my immediate and very extended family. My many cousins are like my siblings.
5. Striving to be a decent friend with so much gratitude to my friends who have stayed with me
6. Being open to faith and staying flexible with it
7. Becoming an advocate for Civil Rights
8. Writing and publishing poetry
9. Finishing 18 marathons
10. Keeping my promise to my grandfather that the German language would always be part of my life
11. Bonus: Discovering tennis
12. Bonus: Receiving a Fulbright. To this day, many years later, I still can’t believe it. Like tennis, it changed my life and I’m so lucky it happened when I was still young!

 

 

It Doesn’t Just Happen in the Movies!

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Civil Rights, Faith, Family, Friendship, Gay marriage, Gay parenting, German language, Growing up gay, Harvard, Schoenhof's

After 161 years of business, Schoenhof’s Foreign Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts, will close in less than two months.

It is the end of an era for the oldest and largest bookstore in the United States that sold just foreign language books. High rents in Harvard Square and online booksellers made it tough for Schoenhof’s to continue.

For years, hundreds of miles away, I had ordered books over the phone from Schoenhof’s as a teacher of German and as a member of many German book clubs. I met a fellow German teacher at a language retreat 15 years ago. We became friends, and she invited me to visit her in Massachusetts. She also set me up on a blind date that was so bad that I could only laugh after it was over.

I was all set to take a train back to Baltimore when I noticed Michelle’s book bag. “Oh, Schoenhof’s,” I said. “I’ve always wanted to go there.”

In less than an hour, we did. I was a little underwhelmed. Schoenhof’s was smaller than I expected. I was hoping to order a latte, but there was no coffee bar!

But there were plenty of books in plenty of languages and dozens of interesting people reading and purchasing them on that summer afternoon when I had told myself that if love were in the air, I would need to find it somewhere other than Massachusetts.

Except that it soon stared me in the face!

Working as a cashier at Schoenhof’s ground floor that afternoon was a young man. I turned to Michelle and said, “That guy is the most gorgeous person I have ever seen in my life, man or woman.” She encouraged me to speak to him. I told Michelle that my voice would probably crack. Besides, I didn’t think he was gay.

Michelle literally pushed me in the direction of the guy. I spoke. My voice cracked. He had long hair. I told him I was growing mine. He mentioned that he was studying Celtic languages at Harvard. I told him I was fascinated by Celtic languages even though I knew very little about them! I introduced him to Michelle and as casually as I could and said that I would probably be visiting her again in the next few months.

The next day, I went back. The Celtic scholar was again working the cash register. I told him I was going back to Baltimore and gave him my email.

A few days later, I desperately needed to order a book from Schoenhof’s. The Celtic scholar answered, but told me he had many customers.

I went back outside, determined to create the finest garden in Baltimore. Then he called back. I’m going to make a long story short: we’ve been together ever since.

So a thousand thanks to Schoenhof’s, to language nerds, to men and women who love different cultures, to my friend Michelle, to the Harvard Celtic department, to my husband and to our gorgeous daughter who was born seven years ago this May. We married in one of the few states at the time that let us become a legal couple the year before Ellen was born.

It doesn’t just happen in the movies!

 

Yes, She Persisted!

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Advocacy, Civil Rights, Community, Early Education, Faith, Fulbright Program, German Heritage, German language, Growing up gay, Presidential election

I worked three jobs during college and tried to save money by taking a lot of credits each semester, but I received my degree and later was awarded a Fulbright scholarship — still one of the biggest surprises of my life.

I was lucky. I grew up in a home of modest financial means, but education has always been important to my vast family. I have so many cousins that if we all lived in the same area, we could have our own village! One of most prominent buildings would be a library. All of us love to read.

As a white male of Northern European heritage with a good education, I have had a few doors opened easily for me. As a gay man growing up decades before our country was led by a man I consider to be our finest president ever, Barack Obama, I have also had a few slammed shut in my face.

I took an unconventional path to find my voice when I was growing up. Early on, especially when I spoke English, I was often mocked. I quickly realized, though, that my voice was more respected in writing, usually in poems and in articles I wrote for student newspapers.

This became my norm: I knew that if I spoke, my chances increased greatly of being taunted, sometimes, I’m sorry to say, even by members of my own family. If I wrote, though, I often gained respect.

The first time I visited Germany, I was a young teenager who was part of an exchange program. Along with about 20 other students, I attended a reception with our teacher, chaperones, and host families the first evening we arrived. Among the German guests was an attractive, athletic young coach of the regional tennis team. Our teacher and several students spoke to him in German. He answered back in English. He then turned to me and asked me in German why I was so quiet. I answered in German but fully expected him to move on quickly. I was also terrified that he would realize I was gay. Instead, he looked at me for a while and kept speaking German. Then he smiled and said, “You’re one of us, aren’t you?”

It was the first time in my life where I felt my spoken voice made me in appealing in any way. Encouraged, I decided the language of my ancestors would be one of my languages for the rest of my life, a promise I later made to my grandfather.

I had tasted confidence during that exchange visit which, by coincidence, was to a city in Germany about 15 miles from a farming village where my forefathers and foremothers lived before many of them left for the “New World.”

That memory sustained me, even in times of doubt, as I continued to find my voice in English and German. Perhaps it was predestined that my written and spoken voices have helped me become an advocate for Civil Rights, particularly for those who face discrimination.

Thank you, Bavarian tennis coach from long ago. Thank you, Elizabeth Warren, for standing your ground in the Senate yesterday and for reading the words of Coretta Scott King. Thank you for giving us courage. We need to be persistent!

I’m Hearing Voices!

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Faith, Fulbright Program, German Heritage, German language, Gratitude, Growing up gay, Presidential election, The '80s, Writing

The ’80s were a decade of confusion for me as I tried to find my way to manhood.

Was I straight? What if I were really gay? The notion that I might be some of each never occurred to me. For a while, I even joined a monastic community to try figure out my identity. I prayed a lot.

Holding a degree from a fancy journalism school, was I going to work as a full-fledged journalist? Having unexpectedly received a Fulbright scholarship, I decided to continue my studies in Austria where I gained the experience of a lifetime as an embassy speechwriter. I also, though, wrote as a freelancer. I even made it onto one masthead for a national publication as a Contributing Editor. I was overjoyed!

But back to the confusion: living in Austria as a young man of Bavarian heritage, I grew close to the branch of the family that chose to remain in the “Old World.” Then one day a cousin asked if I were gay. For a young man climbing out of his teens, for that matter any man, that was a terrifying question in the ’80s.

So I avoided the question as best I could: I went out on a total of five dates for the entire decade! The rest of the time I worked, studied, read, went to movies, slept, played a ton of tennis, and lived most of my life in German!

Consequently, I never knew how Ronald Reagan actually sounded when he was president! Nor, for that matter, did I even know movies like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off existed.

I wish I could live in another universe where I didn’t have to know what Donald Trump’s voice sounds like. Much as I try, I’m not always as quick as I want to be in hitting the mute button. When I’m not near the television but I still hear his voice, or Mike Pence’s, or Kellyanne Conway’s in my head, I run to the computer and turn on Swiss Radio. It’s not quite the escapism I had in the ’80s, but it helps in this new era of confusion!

Oh, Those Headlines!

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Blogging, Faith, German language, Presidential election

During the peak of the presidential election, especially in the last weeks leading up to 8 November, it was hard not to check the headlines every few hours.

Early in October, I thought the election result was a sure deal after video was shown of Donald Trump and Billy Bush having what a few of their defenders called a “locker room chat” about women. Then, surprise, 11 days before the election, the FBI director notified Congress of a new email probe potentially related to Hillary Clinton’s personal server. By November 6, guess what? There was no criminality in the FBI’s review.

The pre-election headlines, though, were followed by a sense of what I knew was temporary blissful calm while President Barack Obama still led our nation. Even then, though, I let out a gasp or two a day when I learned about Donald Trump’s latest tweets.

Now, 10 days since the new occupants of the White House moved in, I’m gasping a lot more. The headlines in the past 24 hours, whether about Donald Trump firing the acting attorney general who would not defend his executive order blocking or suspending the entry of immigrants and refugees into the United States, the new Supreme Court nominee, even the Treasury secretary nominee’s foreign money links, precipitates a condition I’ve dealt with most of my life: vertigo.

Since January, I’ve made it a practice not to watch news or read headlines after 8 in the evening. My last hour of consciousness is devoted to Bunte, the German equivalent of People magazine. My cousins in Bavaria are horrified by this habit that I’ve had for decades. I once told them that I also love to read the classics, but that after a day’s heavy menu of headlines, the lighter fare offered by Bunte helps me drift into the gentle journey of night.

I’m a hopeless romantic: Part 2

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Blogging, Faith, German language, Growing up gay, Movies, Novels

Well, yesterday’s post was a bit intense, so today I will lighten up!

Now that readers know I’m a hopeless romantic, I thought I would list my favorite books and movies:

In English:
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

In German:
Briefe an einen jungen Dichter by Rainer Maria Rilke
Désirée by Annemarie Selinko

In French:
Trois couleurs: Rouge (Three Colors: Red) by  Krzysztof Kieślowski

In English:
The Bridges of Madison County by Clint Eastwood

I’ve been lucky to have lived in three languages pretty well (although French is a feeble third; I also made short-lived attempts at Russian and Ancient Greek). It opened worlds for a gay kid from a small town who for many years felt inadequate and like he did not belong. Books and movies made me forget my daily struggles, let me live a dual existence: that which I needed to do, and that to which I escaped.

As a hopeless romantic, I cried after reading or seeing the aforementioned — and I saw Rouge eight times (yes, 8), and The Bridges of Madison County four times.

Dear Readers, so I can expand my horizons, what are your favorite movies and books? Please share!

Our Best Teachers

Tags

Childraising, Down syndrome, Faith, German language, Mainstreaming, Parenting, Trisomy 21

I’ve always believed children are the best teachers around. Now that I’m a parent, I know it.

My post for today has very few written words. It does, though, contain a link to a video I would love for readers to take a look at in case they have not yet already: https://ca.news.yahoo.com/woman-becomes-argentinas-first-teacher-with-downs-190955925.html

Footnote: The link was sent to me by a cousin who is the mother of my one of my husband’s former students. Long before I knew we were related, I felt a closeness to her. I just figured we had a lot in common. One day, she asked me to help translate a birth certificate in German from one of her ancestors. I saw that we shared a family name generations back that was different from both of our last names. Then I noticed that the name was from a hamlet in Bavaria where I still have cousins whom I have visited. After a little more research, we verified that we’re related — one of many reasons why I believe that our lives can be changed a great deal by that which is not immediately before our eyes.

A lot can happen with an open and bold heart. The young woman in the video link in this post is proof of that.