With A Little Help From My Friends

Last Saturday, we continued the Ricca Family Tradition and celebrated our seventh Friendsgiving with almost fifty people in our home. The idea is a simple one: most of our friends will scatter around the state and the country to celebrate the official Turkey Day, and we want to have time to be with them and their families. My Wife and I prepare the turkey and the stuffing, provide dessert and drinks, and everyone brings a side dish to share.

We got up early and dressed the thirty-five-pound turkey, and Tom (as we affectionately call him every year) was in the oven, pre-heated to 325 degrees, at 8:30. He would stay there comfortably for at least the next six to six and a half hours. We had plenty of other things to do in the kitchen and the rest of the house after that. We would check on the turkey periodically, baste it, and make sure it was progressing as we would expect it to.

Around 11:30, when My Wife checked in on Tom, there was a little smoke coming up from the bottom of the oven. Some of the chicken stock we had put in the bottom of the roasting pan had "leaped" out of the pan and was smoking. We carefully pulled Tom out and put him on top of the oven and tried to figure out what to do. Ultimately we decided to use baking soda to stop the smoldering, but that left us in a bit of a bind. How were we going to cook Tom for the remaining three to three and a half hours? And where were we going to cook the stuffing?

We immediately started calling and texting friends. Who was home and could spare their oven for the next three and a half hours? One of our dearest friends got back to us and was already on her way over in their car to help us out. Five minutes later, I was in her front seat, with a cutting board on my lap, holding the roasting pan with two bright red oven mitts. I don't think she drove more than ten miles an hour so that the chicken stock would not spill.

Someone else was offering to cook the stuffing we had already prepared. We brought the two trays of stuffing down the street to their house. Would it matter that Tom sat out of the oven for almost forty-five minutes? I had no idea - this had never happened to us before. We would find out at dinner later that evening.

By all accounts, this was one of our best turkeys we've ever cooked. I don't know if our friends were being kind - although it did taste very good to me. I don't know if this means that in the future we need to take our turkey out for between a half hour and forty-five minutes next year. I don't know if we should plan for something else to go wrong next year.

What I do know is this: Friendsgiving happened in the Ricca House this year, because of our Friends.

Photo courtesy of Mr. Charles Schulz

I Will Ask Again, When Will it be Enough?

How many more children? I want to honestly know the answer. How many more children have to die in schools before there will be enough courage to stand up and say no more?

On Thursday, November 14, 2019, Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California, was added to a list that appears to have no end in sight. At least no end that ensures more reasonable protections for children who are compelled to go to school. There seems to be no end to the failure of courage and leadership that adults continue to show on this issue that fails our children regularly.

The Second Amendment is waved in the face of grieving parents. Imagine that for just a moment. The most natural law is broken, the one that we all accept that we are going to outlive our children. As a dad, I do not allow myself to go there. To imagine that possibility that my own children would die before I do is literally unthinkable. So if that were to happen, and those opposed to more regulation of the gun industry in the United States (the only industrialized nation where this continues to be a consistent problem) were to respond with their empty sympathy while touting the Bill of Rights, I'm not sure how I would react.

We cannot say that this won't happen in Vermont, because it almost did. In February of 2018, a tragedy was averted at Fair Haven Union High School because of the courage of a young woman who, at the time, was not able to legally vote. My in-state colleague Brooke Olsen-Farrell, who is the Superintendent of Schools of the Slate Valley Unified School District, which includes Fair Haven Union High School, told me at a recent conference, "I didn't go to school for this." As educators, we accept that this is a part of our role. Our children must feel safe if they are to be educated. We simply can't be expected to do it with our hands tied behind our backs.

Nicholas Kristof, in the New York Times, shares some sobering statistics when it comes to gun deaths, and it's broken down by state. For households that are estimated to have guns, Vermont is fifth highest in the nation, behind only Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and Mississippi. We have also earned an "F" along with twenty-five other states, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence when assessed on gun regulation. So we have one of the highest estimated number of households to have guns in the entire country, and our control of guns ranks in the bottom half. Not a great combination.

In a few short weeks, the seventh anniversary of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary will be upon us. I was off-campus that day, and as my phone began buzzing with the news, I will share that I selfishly was grateful to look in the rearview mirror to see my own two children securely buckled into their car seats. The following Monday, when a Williston Police Officer was greeting students at their elementary school, I choked up saying thank you to him for being there.

As a Superintendent of Schools, I've dealt with my share of safety incidents. Two were hoaxes, and in one situation, a person, who had allegedly robbed the Vermont State Credit Union, lost his life on the grounds of the school. I've been present to hear the Superintendent of Schools from Sandy Hook in Newtown, CT, speak. I've listened to the pain in Dr. Erardi's voice when he talked about what it was like on that December day in 2012.

When is the reality of the murder of our students going to trump the potential to have to use a weapon to defend oneself? When can we look at this as a public health crisis, and not something that needs thoughts and prayers? When can we expect our leaders to lead?

I never want to be in a position to have to explain to a family that we could not protect their children when they came to school. And I never want to be in a position to hear from my own children's superintendent that she could not protect them.

Will you please help?

Photo courtesy of thinkingthirty.com

Related Post: Enough

The Democratic Process

This past week, two critical votes happened in my life; one professional and one personal. First, the professional one. The Town of St. Johnsbury passed a $3 million bond for school safety improvements, a new boiler, as well as system and control upgrades for one of the youngest school buildings in the state of Vermont. The vote was very close: 411-400.

The idea of a bond has been a part of my professional world in St. Johnsbury since I started serving here last year, part-time. The Board has been thoughtful throughout the entire process. As far as I know, there were no other schools that had a bond vote this week, so after the thirty day reconsideration period, we will be working with our architects to prepare Requests for Proposals to be considered as early as January 2020. The Board is hoping that with no other schools putting out RFPs at that time, we will benefit from highly competitive labor rates.

As Superintendent of Schools, I cannot try to persuade any voter how to vote. In the words of Joe Friday, "Just the facts ma'am." So I spent time over the past few weeks in St. Johnsbury establishments with a sign that read: I'm Brian Ricca, Superintendent. Ask me about the bond vote on Tuesday, November 5. I was in the public library, I was in two different coffee shops, I went to a lunchtime spot and spent an afternoon in a bookstore. Some people were surprised and had no idea about the bond. Some people were not even St. Johnsbury residents. But by far, the number of people I spoke to were thoughtful and considerate, even if they disagreed with the idea of the bond. I had conversations that were respectful, engaging, and thorough, again, even if we disagreed.

In my personal life, on Wednesday of this past week, we had a meeting of our neighborhood association. We have lived in the same neighborhood since 2010, and it has been a joy to watch our children grow up in a place where they are close to their friends and can ride their bikes to school. The association was considering what to do with the common tennis courts, and we've seen e-mail messages for months, letting us know we needed seventy households at the meeting to make a decision. In a neighborhood of 139 houses, we needed a majority to be present to move the discussion forward.

With two young boys in our home, we had an interest in the courts being resurfaced and in one of them being turned into a multi-purpose court, with more options than just tennis. To be sure we had a quorum, for the two weekends before the meeting, our family went around to houses and checked in about the meeting. We talked about the option we were hoping for, and if folks were in agreement but couldn't attend the meeting in person, we asked them to sign a proxy.

I arrived at the association meeting with thirteen votes, one for my house, and twelve proxies. We had a majority of households present, and the meeting began. After much discussion and debate, a motion was put on the table, and it was seconded. Further discussion and debate followed until finally, someone asked if we could vote. The vote was counted, and the motion passed!

I know that not every vote is going to go my way, and not every outcome in an election is going to be the outcome that I hoped for. But given the polarization that we see on the national, and somewhat on a state, level, there was really something very fundamentally American about the way these past two elections played out. And it's given me something else.

Hope.

Photo courtesy of www.nhpr.org

Be the Light

Last night, we gained an extra hour of sleep so that as we go forward in fall and begin to think about winter, we have more daylight in North America. Having been born in New York and lived no further west than Chicago, I'm used to cold, bitter winters. I'm not a terribly good skier, but I enjoy the snow. I love the way the snow clings to the evergreen trees in our yard. I do prefer warmer months but the cold doesn't bother me. What I really don't like about these upcoming months is the lack of daylight. Driving to work in the dark, driving home from work in the dark. You can keep the cold and the snow, but give me some more daylight.

The great news for me is that I get to work with children, and I get to work with people who have committed their lives to serve the children and families of St. Johnsbury. Children don't notice the lack of daylight, or if they do, it doesn't show. They do notice when we change our clocks, and I'm very grateful that my own children are a little older so that this impacts them less than it did when they were toddlers!

I'm sure that if we spoke to our students and asked about the lack of daylight in the winter and the vast amounts of daylight in the summer, they would admit they notice it. But for the most part, this is an adult thing. What I'm writing about is not something that I gave a great deal of thought to when I was growing up. Although, I have an uncle who still calls my father on December 22 and asks if he's noticed how much longer the days are! He does the same thing on June 22, except then, he asks if he's noticed how much shorter the days are...

So since this is something that really only lives in the worlds of adults, and because I have the great fortune to spend my days around children, as we go forward into the time of year when we have the least amount of sunlight, I am making the following commitment: Every time that I begin to complain about the lack of daylight, I will do something to make someone else's day brighter. I pledge to light our St. Johnsbury world with the smiles of others so that while we may not see the sun as much in the coming months, we will see our students' and colleagues' faces brighten more. Never underestimate the power or the infectious nature of just one smile.

When you have the great fortune of spending your days around children, you are reminded of what it is to be childlike. To look at the world with wonder and awe. To find joy in swinging on a swing. To feel the exhilaration of playing with your friends. To scream with delight while sledding down a hill. To be out of breath, after running in the snow, bundled up to your ears with winter gear. Not wondering once when you will see more sunlight.

As adults, we have a choice.

Be the Light.

Photo courtesy of www.deerhorn.com