Thankful to the Fairfield University Quick Center for Screening SING SING Last Night as Part of Their 2nd Semester Series. Powerful Film

As I was credentialing myself as a teacher, I did around 10 hours a week in a women's correctional facility. To be honest, I have no idea how that came to be or any of the details of volunteering there, but I remember all the harsh realities of working there: security checks, guarded inmates coming for English lessons, and straight-up curiosity of the women about the outside world and my place in there. I remember one woman asked me, "You love sweets, don't you?" and I asked, "Why do you ask that?" She said, "I can see inside your mouth. I counted all your fillings." Observant. My dentistry and me have a long history. 

I remember also sharing my classroom experiences, my education, my semester abroad in London, my trust in knowledge helping me to make more sense of the world. I also remember watching documentaries and stories about the theater programs in prison that help to restore humanity in several of the participants. This humanity, without a doubt, was the greatest features of the Sing Sing movie. To be released. To roll down a window. To feel the wind blowing your face while driving down country roads. All of that is priceless and we too often take it for granted. 

Yes, Shakespeare. All the world is a stage. Some of us are born to play tragic parts simply by how we are born and where we are raised. I think about this often...the luck of the draw. Who gets the shortest stick? Who rolls the dice with a little more fortune. 

The movie, as a story, worked, and emotionally I connected. Maybe it's because of the numerous communities I've worked with since, but I repeat the line from a 1998 short story, The Blue Devils of Blue River Avenue by Poe Ballantine in my head all the time...some of us are too lucky to be forgiven. 

I suppose I've taken my luck through the choices I've made to get to where I always wanted to be as a responsibility to help others to do the same...to trust knowledge, what it means to be good, to find the ways to bring joy to others. 

I was reading yesterday about empathy and how some have it (perhaps too much of it), while many have none of it, which I'm sure is easy to label with the DSM 5 diagnostics so many of my colleagues are accustomed to using. We had a town hall yesterday to discuss the University's accomplishments, reflections, goals, and achievements, and within the conversation the words humanity, humane, and humanistic appeared often. I am thinking about these words a lot lately...what it means to be human, but more importantly what it means to be a human for others (which is the mission of our campus and something I've always hoped I was, and am, doing). I suppose we're at a place again, in human history, where such mission is put into question.

Phew. Glad I saw the film. Glad I made the time. Better yet, glad it was made.