Are you willing to listen?

By Will Brown

This morning, the New York Times delved deep into Edward Snowden’s past.

The article questioned whether communication between the CIA and the National Security Administration four years ago would have prevented the former contractor from accessing information beyond his security clearance.

The Times’ report also provided a link to a June commentary written by one of Snowden’s friends that provides insight to what type of man he is, and the internal questions that led him exposing programs within the American government that can track cell phone calls and collect material including the content of emails, file transfers and internet search histories.

One’s opinion on Snowden and his actions are immaterial. My question is how many of us would follow our conscience? More specifically, how many of us would follow our conscience if we stood to lose our livelihood, have our character assassinated or much worse?

I’m just a journalist who covers sports for a living. Nonetheless, I learned about one Voltaire quote the hard way while being a little too honest in South Texas. “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.”

At the time, being blunt about the people and events I covered is what I thought was right. Certain segments of the community disagreed, and got editors at the paper to believe the same thing.

In the six months since leaving Texas, I have come to realize my actions pale in comparison to two heroes. One, Snowden, received recognition nearly immediately after listening to his conscience. The second went unrecognized for nearly 35 years, despite the fact their impact on their community was immeasurable.

The former’s actions are well documented. The latter person, S.E. Sanders, was among a quartet who filed a federal lawsuit against the City of Sarasota in 1979 to force the city into single-member voting districts for its city commission. That lawsuit, filed “because I did not think it was fair that three neighbors represented the entire city,” led to changes in local laws, and the city’s first African-American city commissioner in 1985.

S.E. Sanders is my mother.

She and Snowden are the living embodiment of another Voltaire quote: < color: #181818;">“it is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.”

In mom’s case, the authorities appealed the verdict, and attempted to delay the implementation of single-member districts. Those efforts failed, and there has been minority representation at the municipal level in Sarasota for the last 28 years.

Last week she was recognized with the Community Service Award by the Sarasota County branch of the NAACP for her role in the lawsuit. It’s an honor given “to the person or group that has demonstrated by their volunteer work in this community a commitment to improving the quality of life for all humanity without regard to race, creed or color.”

The local newspaper, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune wrote a column about her, calling her one of the city’s heroes. For four African-Americans to file suit against a municipality in the 70s — and winning — was unprecedented, just as a NSA contractor sharing state surveillance secrets and earning asylum in Russia.

“I think Ed already may be a symbol of something much bigger than himself,” wrote Snowden’s friend Mavanee Anderson in the June essay referenced in today’s Times. “As a friend, I admire his courage — this strength of purpose is a very real aspect to his character — but I fear for him. Quite selfishly, I would have told Ed that he didn't have to take this burden on himself.”

Interestingly, Snowden also received an award this month. The Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence, a group the Washington Post describes as an organization of former intelligence officers, honored the 29-year-old for his truth-telling.

It took conviction for Snowden to expose a program he thought pilfered the privacy of Americans. Whether you agree with his methods, or not, none of us should down that Snowden listened to his conscience. As a result he lives in Russia, in secrecy, away from his family and the woman he loves.

Voltaire was a French philosopher and author who has been dead for 235 years. But one more quote of his sums up the difference between those who listen to their conscience — like my mom, Ed Snowden as well as countless others — and the rest of us. “Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.”

Which path are you willing to take?

Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb

What do maggots and teachers have in common?

A friend of mine dropped a Lord of the Flies reference right in the middle of a recent conversation about her working environment.

My pithy response was not forthcoming because I remembered reading the book in 10^th grade English, but I was bored to sleep. I retained none of the book, which was my loss.

What I did remember was my teacher that year, his insistence we read classic works like The Odyssey and The Iliad and that the Isle of Lesbos is how we now have the term “lesbian.” Unfortunately, I couldn’t accurately spell his name.

The staff directory at Booker High School noted he was no longer working at the school. Eventually an internet search revealed I did spell Mr. Kulikowski’s surname properly.

That internet search led me to look at whether other teachers I remembered were still working at the schools they taught me. Though I hardly kept up with any of them, and it’s very likely they have forgotten about me, it seemed like a fun exercise.

Teachers may be undervalued and underpaid, but they have immense value in our society. It seems incomprehensible that the starting teacher’s salary is just $35,672. What’s worse was the legislatures that used the recession as cover to slash funding for schools, eliminate classroom positions and devalue public education.

Not every teacher is a memorable one, or someone worth exalting. There are parasites in every profession.

But as I looked back at the four public schools I attended I saw many of the people who molded my life are still molding the lives of others.

My fifth grade teacher, Dwana Washington, is still teaching at Emma E. Booker Elementary as a data coach. My seventh grade Social Studies teacher, who was the son of one of my Sunday School teachers, has probably been teaching my entire life and is still at Booker Middle School. Mr. Kulikowski is gone, but there are others who still remain at Booker High School. Meanwhile Skip Arrich, the hilarious physics teacher and very accomplished soccer coach — who once promised to let me start at striker if I aced his test — has been at Rockledge High School for at least 35 years.

The 90s seem like an eternity ago to me. To those professionals, it was probably back when they had fewer gray hairs and more control over their classrooms, but I digress.

Thinking about spending a couple decades at the same place is a bit mortifying. Though a handful of people have suggested I become a teacher, I immediately respond I’m not mature enough to teach.

I like learning, but was not a great student. I like sharing ideas and information, but abhor the prospect of teaching. Longtime journalist Bill Moyers may have summed up my attitude earlier this week in a conversation he had on “Charlie Rose” when he said “journalism has been a continuing course in adult education.”

Not all of us can be, or want to be, journalists. But Moyers struck a chord. Those of us who care to learn something every day should thank those who initially made learning fun — teachers.

Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb

Fish Fanaticism

There has always been a hat.

The first one was a teal adjustable hat I bought at Woolworth’s. I wasn’t a fan of the black stripes stitched into it so the cap rarely left my closet.

There have been others, adjustable hats, warm-up hats, vintage hats and more. But, through the years, I have always had a Marlins hat.

The caps serve as my connection to a team and a sport that captivates my attention only long enough to elicit frustration. For 20 seasons my relationship with baseball recedes and flows like slow waves to shore.

On occasion there is a high tide and the Marlins are having a successful season. In others the sea is gone, revealing shells and other undesirables that are masked by a winning season.

Through it all, there has always been a baseball cap.

It’s a relationship born out of proximity, and a lust for leaning my baseball fanaticism on some team I could relate with. Atlanta appeared to be an alternative universe to an inquisitive baseball fan in Southwest Florida. Miami felt just as foreign, but at least it was in Florida.

Spring training in Sarasota brought all the stars to me. But once April came, the players and teams were only as tangible as the television or newspaper box scores would allow.

That hideous teal cap made Charlie Hough, Benito Santiago and Jeff Conine more than names in a box score. Even if I was never closer than a box television in my bedroom, the Marlins seemed to be a team there for my own summer entertainment.

A collection of errors has hindered any ability to see this routinely mediocre team in person. But, the hat has always been there. In the good years and the bad, the hat has been a tether to a team teetering along in the National League.

Every April my optimism would heighten that this would be the year. They would flirt with my emotions for five weeks, only to go on a losing spell, stinking like rotten citrus as May drifts toward June. Father’s Day would be the barometer for the rest of the season, saving cranks like myself from suffering through summer’s dog days in the fabulous Florida sun.

I was never too good at baseball. My swing had a hitch in it. My throwing motion was never consistent. Plus, I always took circuitous routes to fielding my position.

Personal shortcomings never hindered my Marlin-inspired mania.

Mr. Marlin winning the All-Star MVP award in ’95 was the highlight of my summer. Meeting Charles Johnson six years later was such an experience I nearly hyperventilated. Little compares to dressing up as Marlins player — hat and all — for a Halloween party days after Craig Counsell floated home.

It’s been nearly a decade since Josh Beckett tagged out Posada to shutout the vaunted Yankees. Since then, there have been occasions, large and small, to proudly wear the hat of a team that defiantly represents Florida — whether it’s the booms, the busts or the steady promises for future growth.

As I’ve grown up with the Marlins, the hats have changed. My fanaticism has never wavered, even when the team is floundering in fourth place.

Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb

Is it picking nits to call winners “World Champions”?

When something does not make sense to me, I usually make a funny face and ask a question: sometimes to the closest person near, or to no one in particular.

Otis Nixon ending the 1992 World Series with a bunt was one of those instances. Three weeks away from my eighth birthday, I asked my dad why he would bunt since the probability of him reaching base was very low.

The Braves were the closest thing to a major league baseball team in Southwest Florida at the time, so by almost obligation I rooted for them. (It didn’t hurt that the headmaster at my school — Edwin Gleason, a genial gentleman with an English accent — was an ardent Braves fan, who had a child-like smile on his face when molasses-slow Sid Bream beat Barry Bonds’ throw from left field earlier that month for the Braves to even make the Series.)

As Toronto danced in the infield of Fulton-County Stadium I sat there in my room as disgusted as a seven-year old who never played organized baseball could be.

Some time during one of my periods of stewing and snarling at no one in particular, my mother must have mentioned the fact that Toronto were not the “World Champions” as many broadcasters and newspapers reported.

With the Texas Rangers or the St. Louis Cardinals two wins away from baseball immortality, I cannot help but recall those consecutive Octobers where the team I wanted to win didn’t, and I sought for every excuse or plausible explanation for why it didn’t happen.

But back in 1992, I thought maybe there was some way Atlanta had won the series. Instead, her point was that it was impossible to designate the champion of a league featuring only American and Canadian teams “World Champions.” (Just the look on my headmaster’s face in the opening weeks of November was enough to convince me that the Braves indeed did lose for a second straight fall.)

Every morning the next year, I would borrow the Sports page of the Sarasota-Herald Tribune in the hope that someone had knocked Toronto out of first place. When Chicago faced Toronto in the ALCS that fall, I of course rooted for the White Sox, not solely because I despised Toronto, but in part because I went to a few White Sox spring training games earlier that year.

When Toronto won the World Series again, we were in Denver for a family trip. I missed Joe Carter’s Series-ending home run because after driving from Florida to Colorado with three smart-alecks my parents wanted to grab food at a decent restaurant.

Again the topic of World Champions came up.

On that cool Saturday night I was more annoyed that I missed such a dramatic baseball game, but as we walked down the street toward our hotel I again asked how the Blue Jays could be World Champions. For all we knew there might be a team somewhere else in the world better than them. At least that was my hope because I really, really didn’t like Toronto.

I was already aware that the 1904 “World’s Series” was called off because John McGraw thought his Giants were the best team in the world, so there was no point in playing the Boston Americans because it was a formality. But then, as is the case now, when something does not make sense I continue to ask questions until an answer satisfies my curiosity.

My dad said that was the way things have always been. He didn’t know why it was called the World Series. My mom said they should come up with another name. Neither answer was good enough, so I kept pressing for a sufficient answer.

The answer I sought never came, at least that October. Though the Braves eventually won the World Series two years later, so much had changed. My parents had more pressing concerns than the silly questions of a 10-year old with a smart mouth, I no longer attended the school where Mr. Gleason was the headmaster and most depressing of all, I was committed the perpetually hot-and-cold Florida Marlins.

The Braves mini-dynasty was proof that part of baseball’s mystery is not its timelessness, but the fact games always leaves us with unanswered questions.

Do you get by with a little help from your friends?

What would think if I sang out of tune? Would you stand up and walk out on me?
Angeline Taylor is a dear and true friend of mine, even though she knows I am not much of a singer.

It’s been this way since June 11, 2007 when both of us were forced to endure a monotonous orientation for our new jobs at the Tallahassee Democrat.

It all started because I started writing jokes on a sheet of paper to relieve the monotony and got a high from her laughter at my highbrow humor.

Sunday, Angie sent me an e-mail telling me a 20-year old woman allegedly killed her good friend, Shannon Washington, for no apparent reason. Considering both of us are proud Florida A&M graduates with ties to the Sarasota-Bradenton area we stewed at the prospect of a friend allegedly putting a knife through her friend’s neck.

Only later did I find out the deceased lived in same apartment complex I lived in during my last three years of school.

When sharing the story with other Rattlers, they collectively expressed similar bemusement. The sentiment was to state their intention to pray for Washington’s family then ask “who would do something like that?”

It is far too early to speculate on why Washington was killed. However, the incident should encourage us to think about who are our closest and truest friends. And only the person staring at you in the mirror can define friendship.

I have gone clubbing with friends. I have confided in friends. I have gone to church with friends. I have consoled friends. I have committed crimes with friends — if you consider underage drinking and changing the prices at a gas station lawbreaking. I have fornicated with a couple female friends. I have played sports with friends.

No true friend has every led me to get mad enough to wish them ill will, or think to execute the harm myself. As my girlfriend continues to remind me, the opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference.

In our haste we elevate people to positions in our lives they do not deserve. Other times a person is in our life for a reason or a season. We have to figure out where everyone fits in our fragile emotional existence. Otherwise, some serpent of a person might come up and strike when you need them the most, or least expect it.

Periodically I come up with a purge list; a collection of people whose reason and/or season has passed and its time to detangle my relationship with them — even if it hurts. The first time Angie heard of this list she expressed a bit of amazement at someone in their early 20s eliminating people that by my own definition “don’t teach me anything.”

I learned a lot about people this summer when I didn’t have a job. Many people were incredibly supportive, yet there were some who ignored, or were too busy, to pay attention to calls and messages from 941-961-0044.

A college acquaintance recently stated on her Facebook page “I’ve learned in life that it is a small world…and that positive relationships, whether personal or professional, will take you far.” A sentiment that was rich because more than one person has told me how much this acquaintance uses people. (I didn’t find out the hard way, until after I could no longer write business features about her organization.)

Is this person an awful person for not being collegial after leaving Tallahassee? Not at all, but she is an illustration that not everyone is good for you — even if they are good people.

The book I believe in speaks of the true vine, one in which “He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.”

Rotted relationships will shrivel and burn when the furnace of life fans flames of failure, bereavement, illness, joblessness and other fiery moments. Friends might not douse the flames, but the best ones bear the burns of someone who is willing to endure an inferno to rescue you.

I get by with a little help from my friends, Yes I get by with a little help from my friends, With a little help from my friends.

Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb

Where is home?

My brothers believe home is where you lay your head. But they are far more gregarious than I am. When they enter a room their peers instantly take note. Me, I am more inclined to slip in and observe my surroundings before being the fulcrum of attention.

This week a handful of people have asked where I’m from. The obvious answer is Florida. But, unless I am pressed I never provide a city. No one has yet to inquire further, but the idea of how to answer that question was one that led me to ask “where is home?”

Is it the ritzy city of money and retirees that hardly acknowledges it has a black population? Or is it the small town where nostalgia for it trumps all other memories? Perhaps the city that educated me and went from the bane of my existence to a begrudging enclave of peace.

My two outgoing brothers — one who is five years younger and the other who is 15 years older — would quip something about Victoria, Texas being my new home and I better get used to it. There would also be an unrepeatable joke from both that would make me laugh with politically incorrect delight.

As large as Texas is, it feels so quiet when I come home from work. Unlike Florida there is not a foundation of friends to lean upon in person here. I think it was mother who said it was a chance to reinvent myself as a journalist and become a better person since the only thing people out here knew about me is what I told them.

Outside of a summer in Shreveport and my two weeks in South Africa, I have lived in the most unique of the 50 states.

People have asked whether I am homesick or miss my Whitney. Honestly, I have not been away long enough to truly miss either. But I do know I will be reunited with both again.

#LifeinTexas, as I am fond of tweeting, is a learning experience. Not all of us are fortunate enough to have a chance to sink or swim, become a man or a mouse. It is a chance to figure out if I am going to be person or the pork.

I was a closeted emo kid for high school and early college, spending countless hours writing about feelings, emotions and other things interconnected with the eagerness and angst of leaving home. After A Decade Under the Influence of amateur then full-blown adulthood I realized Coming Home, wherever that may be, is not selling out.


Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb