How High Can Rocks Fly: Part 2: Do not give rocks to children.

I have to answer the question I don’t know how to ask before I can write something I want to give my students before they take their final exams. 

 For years now, ever since at least 2010 when we lost two people in one class, I have given my students lucky rocks at the end of the semester as tangible evidence of my gratitude for our time together and my good wishes for their future.

 We usually begin Final Exam day with stories and rocks (and for a bit there was a picture thing and once or twice I wore my Harry Potter-looking Ph.D. stuff), but that always left out the student who tiptoed in 3 minutes late, or the students who were so genuinely wrapped up in memorizing the parts of the Treaty of Paris (1898) they were unable to listen.  I don't blame them.

I would not want any student to feel left out, so this year I will give them something to read (this).

One of the reasons I love rocks is they remind me that I have a choice in what I keep and what I leave behind.   

I hope that you all take pieces of this class with you, the good parts, the parts that meant something to you.

 If there were times in the semester when you felt frustrated at me or disappointed in yourself, I hope you choose to put that rock down.

One of the things that makes us human is our ability to question things and to invent stories.  Rocks cannot tell you about the 1968 election and connect it to both the Nixon Doctrine and Watergate. 

No matter how hard they try, rocks can’t tell stories.  Rocks have other uses.

Do rocks worry about being useful? Successful? Important?  Lost? 

Would worrying help the rocks get to where they are destined to go?  

Can rocks fly?  Did this rock come from outer space?  Was it part of a meteor once? 

I do not know. 

I did read once that humans are made of stardust. Stardust pulsing though our veins, connecting us to things that have been and will become. Perfectly amazing. 

https://www.space.com/35276-humans-made-of-stardust-galaxy-life-elements.html

I don’t know how high these rocks can fly, but your rock has flown from where it was and then will end up exactly where it is intended to be, at exactly the speed it needed to go.

There. Question answered.

Now something else.  When I bought the rocks there was tag on the bag with was a notice smaller than a fortune cookie that read, “Not for children under 14. Not for food.”

I shook my head.

Who needs to be told that????

What horrible person would be giving rocks to kids? Or think rocks are food?  

Still, there must be a reason for them to have taken the resources to have printed and affixed those particular rules to these rather rock-like rocks. 

I choose to practice radical acceptance, so I’m going to practice believing that those two rules are crucial.  

Rule #1: Do not give rocks to children.

Whoa. YES! Best rule ever. Brilliant. Profound, even.

If you give a child a rock, they might cry.   They were hoping for maybe candy or your Netflix password or to use your wireless headphones. 

You can’t always tell if someone is a child or not based on their age, but you will definitely know if a person is ready to believe rocks are magic and that you are offering them treasure.   

If they don’t want your treasure, leave them to the universe to learn what they need to learn on their wisdom path today.

Rule #2: Rocks are not for food.  

Yeah. Right! Anyone who has heard the fable about stone soup knows that rocks can be the key ingredient in making a community feast. 

I am aware that more than one hundred students are  waiting for me to finish writing this and post exam grades, so for expediency sake, here is a recap of the story à

http://www.dltk-teach.com/fables/stonesoup/mtale.htm

Our service projects this semester have been our stone soup.  Each student has chosen to use their talents to contribute to a greater mission resulting in something bigger and more awesome than we each could have made on our own.

But OK. Still.  I had agreed to agreeing to the two rules and I’m breaking my rule to follow the rules.

 Good thing I don’t have an editor to answer to. Good thing I don’t have to worry about getting a grade on this essay.  

Rocks are not for food. This is probably the stupidest rule ever.  

If we are at the point where people are eating so many rocks that there are rock shortages and rock overdoses lets reconvene and figure out what bad choices lead our society down that to that path.  Was it Yalta? Was it Perestroika? Can it be connected in any way to blaming Mexico for forcing us to join WW1?

Wait, I am still not agreeing.

Radical acceptance might be against my nature, so I have to practice harder than other people. Here we go.

Do not eat rocks. Be careful what you ingest, be careful that it isn’t toxic or harmful.  Practice kindness to yourself, you are treasure.

 Do not feed rocks to people. Do not feed anything harmful to other people. They, also, are treasure.

 Wish for yourself health and protection; offer the same wish for everyone else.   

Now I see it.

The people who bagged these rocks took the time to wish their rocks would do no harm.

Bless their hearts.

I’m almost ready to finish this story and grade that stack of exams that looms next to me on my desk, but not until I answer the question I’m still figuring out how to ask.

(continued)

(there are only 3 parts, then I really really have to grade.....)

How High Can Rocks Fly? (Part 1): We don’t know what to do.

I’m watching TV while grading exams.

Actually, I’m watching TV while sitting near exams that need to be graded.  It is a show about people fixing up houses and I just want to watch it all the way until the end and see if this mess becomes a home.

 It’s hard to tell if these particular people are especially stressed by logistics of demolition and construction or whether the TV cameras and production crew are making them nuts, but they are cracking under the pressure.   

They spent way too long on decorating projects and are especially stuck when trying to install a single wooden shelf in an otherwise empty room.

“Oh no! Noooooo! Wait ....no! This won’t work!” One says to the other as they almost install the shelf, measure something, then halt their efforts.  They mumble at each other, exasperated, then one turns to the camera and says, “We need a 2-foot board.  I bought one that is 30 inches. It just won’t work. We don’t have time to go buy a new one. We don’t know what to do.”   

The show cuts to commercial with a big truck landing in something and splashing water at camera and I turned the TV off.   I hope someone helped the poor people figure out how to use a saw. 

I’m ready to grade exams now.

But first I have to get the answer to a question that I don't know how to ask. 

(continued*)

Would You Like to Teach Today?

The best part about research is following whatever shiny fact catches my attention.

There is no right or wrong on this journey, only information.

I am thirsty for more and more, and I will keep going until I get the signal to stop.

In between all of this, life goes on.

 I am on the phone with my Mom telling her this and that and the other thing, then saying how I just have to know more about our DNA.

If you didn't  know, in case I don't discuss this, I was obsessed with DNA as a pre-teenager, reading everything I could find about it at the (tiny) Pompano  Beach library.

 I remember taking a Health class in summer school which was being taught by a coach who mostly read out of a textbook.

One day he read to us that an amniocentesis (pronounced by him "Ammocensus") "was a disease pregnant ladies got."

I threw my 14 year old hand up into the air and explained how it was a procedure to collect amniotic fluid to be used for.... before I could finish my articulate explanation of my life passion the teacher interrupted me to ask, "Oh well, would you like to teach today?" and I think I might have said YES but I equally might have known to look down with shame and just sit in the chair and make the time pass quickly earn the credit to graduate.

Maybe some of you guys had awesome science teachers as teenagers, but I remember being the girl in the back of the room reading the textbook while the biology teacher talked football with people walking in and out of his classroom.

One day the teacher stopped his football talk and asked "Soldani! What are you reading back there??" and I held up the book and said "Chapter 8, there are cells dividing and I love it!" and he said, "Don't let me interrupt you!" and talked more quietly about football.

So then last night I am pretty sure I found -- was given??? ---  the biggest, shiniest treasure in my family history.

 I  might have found the thing that is making me see myself and my ancestors' place in all of this differently.

I am following every lead on this, and I will bring it back to you when I'm sure (meanwhile I'm like YES YES THIS HAS TO BE TRUE LET THIS BE TRUE).

It wasn't what I was looking for and it wasn't even where I was looking and as a history professor I laugh at myself for not seeing this sooner.

I  have been lecturing on this topic for years (omg decades, what?) but I  never once considered it was my story, too.

Our story.

Reverend Carman

I don't want to write, I want to go back to my research because I just found my ancestors who lived in Harlem New York in 1662, when it was New Amsterdam. This is a win in some family history Bingo game I am playing which has no rules and will probably never end.

This isn't enough, of course, I need to find out more -- where they came from, who their neighbors were and whether they quickly left Harlem.  I would rather have too much to do than ever be bored, so I am grateful for this shiny happy productive distraction.

One of the biggest outcomes of my research is seeing the relentless forces pushing people around from generation to generation.  Sometimes I can give the event a name (look dad! 17 of your relatives left during the French Revolution!) and sometimes I just can't (why did both of these parents die in 1698? who raised my orphan ancestor?).  I can also see family size crash from 10 and 12 babies to 2 or 3 babies across the centuries, but that's for another discussion.

I have continued to compulsively line up rows and rows of ancestors making sure everyone has parents and grandparents and have found more than one set of cousin marriages in Colonial New England, 19th century Creole New Orleans and on the Kentucky frontier.

Each time I thought I was tired, that my brain was numb and the all the names started blurring together.

Each time I zoomed back and checked names and shook my head at the connection.

Notice one set of grandparents for the couple Jacob LaRue and Phoebe Hodges

Today's treasure is that I can officially announce that I found two ordained Reverends.  This is a big deal because  I always have believed our family has been Roman Catholic since the church was founded.   Seeing ancestors in Colonial New England shook my certainty, and now seeing actual Baptist preachers in my family seals the deal. 

My favorite ancestor discovery today has been Reverend Joshua Carman who was preaching in Kentucky in the late 1790s and early 1800 and decided to kick all the slaveowners out of the church. 

 This got  him in a little trouble and it made him new friends, I'm sure.  Abolition didn't become a HUGE movement until the 1830s, so this man was (in my humble fan-girl opinion) waaaaay ahead of his time. 

He continued to stand firm for the immediate abolition of slavery and apparently moved to Ohio and or Pennsylvania where his fervent anti-slavery, immediate emancipation  preaching is more welcomed.  

One document claims that Joshua Carman preached to Abraham Lincoln, but I'm not to sure about that.  I think my connections to the Mayflower and William Penn (which you are patiently waiting for, thank you) are more solid and possible and also interesting.   Today's research showed me that one of my relatives definitely said he saw Daniel Boone's brother once.  That was a moment.  Yay for him.

My research keeps going back to someone I'm not related to by blood, but whose story calls to me and whose name I refuse to tell you so you won't get ahead of me as the story unfolds.

 Let's call him him Louis Gastinel.

 In 1860 he was in a workhouse in New Orleans, listed as a mulatto; by 1865 he was in Law School in St Louis (how? who sent him? the church?) and in 1880 he listed in the New Orleans  city directory is a lawyer not listed as a mulatto.

 In 1890 he marries my Cuban-born, New Orleans raised 3rd great grandmother, Rosalie Elizida Santo Domingo who was widowed in 1870 and lost both of her French-born Creole parents by 1880.

Rosalie and Louis were only married for two years before he dies, but I'd like to think this marriage was a huge deal for both of them because they liked and respected each other very much and the  time together was some of the happiest two years of their lives. 

But I digress. 

My research has also took me off of ancestry and in one of my adventures I found listings of impoverish orphans brought to the church or to the city and where they were sent (St. Mary's, St. Vincents, etc).   

I felt pulled read the column listing who brought the orphan/widow, and one name kept coming up, Rosalie Santo Domingo's second husband. 

This is an example of what I found, but this screenshot doesn't show L. Gastinel bringing kids.  You get the point, right?

I am guessing he did this as part of his work as a lawyer and counselor, and because he was a professional this is a life path he chose.  

I am guessing he chose to be a man of service, a helpful good man who connected people who needed help with people who were called to help.  

There is a moment in 1870 that my father's ancestor Achille Soldani (spelled Achall Soldom Soldoni in 1870 archive) is listed as being at St. Mary's while Louis was a fixture,  coming and going from several orphanages, giving hugs and asking kids if they're saying their prayers and brushing their teeth (because what else could he ask them? whether they want to live in an orphanage??).

Rosalie Santo Domingo Michot Gastinel never met her great-grandson -- my grandfather -- Gerald Michot Soldani, but she really might have met the orphan Achille Soldani, and in my heart, they  laughed together when they met.