Rabbi Ben Ezra
This is a column on public education in general and is not meant as a reflection on any particular school or system. My wife, Janice, who is my editor-in-house, said this column was okay but not many would be interested in this topic. I think she is right, as usual.
I have a friend, slightly older than I, who told me that when he was a boy that he never told his parents when he got a spanking in school, for his father promised him another one when he got home, and he was as certain as the sun rises that his Father would deliver. 
She did not make eye contact with me, but I had the sense that she knew that I was observing her. I had pulled into a service station that sold Sunday papers and sat there for a few minutes as I sought to drive away the cobwebs of sleep before entering to purchase a newspaper. She had pulled alongside and parked and carried her billfold in her hand. I did not know her but I had seen her before at the same service station, getting a paper.
I was playing golf in Florida in early March of this year when my cell phone rang and on the other end was Ed Raleigh, one of my closest friends, calling from Breathitt County . He said that an article and poem that I had written had been published in the Kentucky Retired Teachers Association News.
I knew that I had not submitted an article to KRTA and did not immediately recognize the content of what Ed was describing, but as he continued to read what had been published in the News, it gradually dawned on me as to what might have happened. When I send Rabbi Columns to the BCV to be published, I copy various persons, one of whom is Mary May of Wolfe County who is also a board member of KRTA. She apparently suggested it.
A friend told me that his wife, Ann, was fussing at him about some issue when he bravely told her, “Now just you remember that my Mom lives only a mile across the river and she can still make mighty good biscuits and gravy!”
I experienced something similar recently. Please allow a bit of background. Most everyone likes my wife, Janice, but she can be fiery, especially toward me. She tells me that I am intelligent but that I do not have much common sense and that I do not know which end to hold a screwdriver, that I can’t see road signs nor read a road map and on and on and on. And she is mostly right!
A disclaimer: The following Rabbi was written by me on November 28, 2003, for another newspaper. It forms a backdrop for my direct questions to Ms. Meagher.
The speaker for Rotary, Superintendent Patrick Clore, had just given a stimulating program, reciting programs for which the public schools were responsible today, well over 50 as I recall, in contrast to reading, writing and arithmetic, when he first began his career as a teacher.
Shortly before Christmas, I began gathering information on the early days of the Morgan community, interviewing several persons who had intimate knowledge of this once thriving community. Some shared documents from their personal files and I have begun putting some things together but it is turning into a much larger task than I envisioned.
There is richness about the early history of this community that is intriguing. For example, Ms. Lois Wilson, who still lives on the outskirts of Morgan and who taught many years at Morgan High School, sent me some files in which there was fascinating information about a beekeeper who lived across the highway from her farm. He was known in the community as Bee Jimmy Moore.
I began this trilogy on handicapped persons by saying that shortly before Christmas I had encountered within a week three persons who were severely handicapped thru no fault of their own and that they had and were coping remarkably well, astonishingly well. Their stories were so compelling that I felt constrained to write their profiles, not to solicit sympathy for them, because they were not seeking such, but to encourage others in like or similar situations and to communicate their needs to the public at large and to the medical community in particular that they might research techniques and methods that would allow greater service of these individuals to their fellow comrades, a service which they are already performing admirably against staggering odds.
Within a week, late in 2007, I encountered three persons who had encountered debilitating health problems due to no fault of their own. Remarkably, astonishingly, they showed a positive acceptance of their conditions, had endured enormous pain and suffering, and were making the best of their handicaps. After talking with each of them, I wanted to slap myself for ever complaining about anything!
Their stories are so compelling that I had to write about them, and some have graciously consented to their publication, not that they are soliciting sympathy, but by sharing, they may be an encouragement to others in like or similar situations and to alert the medical community that may result in better treatment for their conditions.
First my apology to Bobby for linking him to something which he opposes, as do I, but this Rabbi is about two subjects and I thought this headline was an effective attention getter.
Why Bobby Deaton? He recently wrote about a subject that I had been considering just as I preempted him on evolution. Although some disbelieve, Bobby and I have never collaborated, and are often startled when one writes on a subject the other is considering, frequently simultaneously. No, I am not going to say that great minds run in the same channel!
“Somehow, not only for Christmas,
But all the year through,
The joy that you give to others,
Is the joy that comes back to you.
And the more you spend in blessing, the poor and lonely and sad,
The more of your heart’s possessing,
Returns to you glad.”
- James Greenleaf Whittier
