Harvard Class of 2016

It's that time of year. Caps and gowns and celebrations with family and friends, awards and diplomas and happy tears as all the hard work pays off.  Dawn Loggins just graduated from Burns High School in North Carolina and is on her way to Harvard. When she visited the campus in April, she just knew. "I just could not picture myself anywhere else, at any other college," she said.

It has not been an easy road for Loggins. She grew up in the midst of abuse and neglect, with cockroaches and no running water and sometimes no electricity either. Her parents had problems with drugs. When she was a very little girl, she didn't understand that other people didn't live that way, wearing the same clothes every day and not bathing for months. The other kids would call her dirty and it made her cry. But Loggins is smart, and she began to picture a better way for herself. "When I was younger," she said, "I was able to look at all the bad choices and make a decision for myself that I was not going to end up like my parents."

Loggins worked as a janitor at her high school, and the staff at the school showed her a lot of support. She showered in the locker rooms, and had her clothes washed there. They encouraged her academic efforts as well. When she was 17, her parents abandoned her and she was homeless. She could have ended up in the system, but she wanted very much to have stability and graduate from Burns. So the people of Lawndale, North Carolina rallied around her and made sure she had what she needed. A home with a family, food and stability. Her supervisor at work traveled with her to Harvard in April so she could see the campus, the trip financed by the generosity of her "village." She turned 18 (legally an adult) during the second semester.

Loggins has a full ride at Harvard; tuition, room and board, and the school has offered to help place her in a job on campus. Since her story has been on CNN, there has been an outpouring of generosity from folks everywhere. She doesn't want the money, because she plans to keep working and she knows she will be fine. But she has set up a non-profit foundation for homeless students where the money can go, and she hopes that her story will shed some light on this very real problem in America.

There are some truly wonderful people in Lawndale, North Carolina, these folks who became a village for this young woman. She had a lot of help along the way, but really it all started when she was just a little girl, when she looked around and decided to picture a different way of life. She is thankful for those who showed her love and support, but let's not be distracted from the most powerful part of the story. For when it's all said and done, Ashley Dawn Loggins made this happen for herself.

Susan

Mr. Rogers Remixed

The late, great Fred Rogers. I love him. Love. him.

I couldn't find who wrote the song. If you know, please tell me so I can properly credit.

Susan

Converted

"Each falling down is a calling to be converted, to become more fully ourselves, and we cannot do it if we simply get back up and go back to the same way of being that led us to fall in the first place." Ada María Isasi-Díaz

Those of us who have been on this planet for any length of time will find a need to be converted. The Free Online Dictionary gives this definition of convert: to change into another form, substance, state of being; transform. One of the dangers of becoming middle-aged and older is that we might be resistant to change. My grandma would have called it "being set in your ways." So life gives us these little gifts, these places where we fall down, these opportunities to be transformed. To find a new way of being.

Are you familiar with Isasi-Díaz, this woman I have quoted, who passed away last month? As a little girl, she wanted to be a Roman Catholic priest, but of course as a female, she could never be. So she found a different way to be, and with that, she changed her world. You can read more about this fascinating woman here.

Susan

Hanging out with the Wrong Crowd

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great ones make you feel that you, too, can become great." Mark Twain

We teach our children to be careful about who they hang out with, and we take a dim view of their friends who we feel might be a bad influence. But you know, that really never ends. As adults, we need to take care of who we spend time with, too. Inevitably we become like those around us. Everyone has an influence on us, no matter if we are fourteen or forty. Marshall McLuhan said, "We become what we behold."

How about you? Do you surround yourself with people who help you become all that you can be? Or have you been hanging out with the wrong crowd?

Susan

Innocence

Jury selection began yesterday in the trial of Jerry Sandusky, the Pennsylvania man accused of raping young boys. I wrote about him and his former boss, the late Joe Paterno, here. While there are some serious flaws in our criminal justice system, one of the great things about it is the right to a jury of our peers. I was born and grew up in Pennsylvania, a place where football is practically a religion, a place where Penn State football and the man known as Joe Pa are both larger than life. That makes what's going on there a little more interesting to me, I suppose. The venue is Centre county, right there in Nittany Lion territory. I am counting on the Pennsylvanians who end up sitting on that jury to be fair minded.

I think one of the good things that has come out of this is that people are realizing that boys can be raped. While that has seemed like a given to me, I have found that not everyone thinks that way. There has been this prevalent feeling among many, I think, that when we hear about little boys being molested, it is something called "fondling." Fondling in and of itself would be a horrible violation, but it is rape. Anal rape.  And being forced to perform oral sex.

Whether or not Sandusky is found guilty of these crimes remains to be seen. Another wonderful thing about our system is the presumption of innocence. He is going to have his day in court, perhaps as early as Monday if jury selection goes as planned. There will be no videotaping, which is probably a good thing for me, because I would be tempted to spend way too much of my time watching it and I think the negative energy would not be good for me.

Boys just have a special place in my heart, I suppose because of my two sons. In America we sometimes treat them differently than little girls, like they are less fragile and not so easily shattered. But they aren't. Their innocence is something to be fiercely guarded.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Sandusky himself had his innocence violated when he was a small boy. Abuse does not happen in a vacuum. So this is a good thing, right? This trial in Pennsylvania where the world receives a little more light on this sad subject. I am telling myself that. I am telling myself that something good is coming out of all that. It must.

Susan

Tiananmen Square

It was twenty-three years ago today that the Chinese government killed its own people in the June Fourth Incident. Older people like me remember it vividly, but think about it. That was in 1989. There is a new generation born since then, perhaps many who don't know what that day was all about. I think it's important that we tell them.  I think it's important that we remember. I think it's important that we never forget.

Susan

Photograph by Jeff Widener

The Superficial

When it comes to shopping, I am a browser. A window shopper. I like the experience of looking at pretty things. I don't have to buy them to have fun shopping. There is a store near me that I especially enjoy. The merchandise is unusual and ever changing. The sales people are available yet unobtrusive. The store smells good, like fresh air and flowers, the lighting is soft and the temperature is always nice and cool, even on a hot day. It just makes me happy to go into that shop and look around.

I work in retail myself, in a store in a very affluent area. We are told to ask each customer as they arrive at our cash register, "Did you find everything you were looking for today?" Many times they reply something like, "Well, I didn't need anything, but look at all I'm buying." Some are almost apologetic at buying all that stuff. I figure their consumption fuels our economy and gives me a job and if they aren't taking food out of their kids' mouths to buy that stuff, what's the harm?

Maybe what they are feeling is the superficiality of it. Now I like beautiful things in my home and flowers on the table and lovely clothes and sparkly jewelry just as much as the next girl, but all that stuff is just the window dressing of what is hopefully already a meaningful life. We could have all the things that money could buy. But if the stuff is all we have, then I would have to agree with the words to this song: that life's a bore.

Susan

"Ain't Got You" written by Alicia Keyes