It's 6:25 in the morning. Summer. A small park somewhere in Japan.
A boy walks in rubbing his eyes. A little card hangs from a string around his neck.
He's seven. School is out. And he got up at six on purpose.
By 6:30 the park is full.
Kids. A couple of tired dads. And grandmothers standing in the back in their aprons.
Then the radio starts.
The same broadcast. The same piano. The same calm voice counting one, two, three, the way it has every summer morning since this began back in 1928.
And the whole park starts to move. Together.
The seven-year-old. The dad. The grandmother who did these exact same stretches when she was seven.
Three generations in one little park, arms up, arms down, breathing in the morning at the very same moment.
It's over in a few minutes.
Then a man walks down the line with a stamp.
One stamp on the card. One small mark, just for showing up.
The boy looks at it like it's made of gold.
He'll be back tomorrow. And the day after. All the way through August.
There's no app for this. No points. No prize that actually matters.
Just a card, a stamp, and a country that decided a long time ago that the day should begin together.
Somewhere out there right now, a grandfather is standing beside his grandson in the early light, doing the same simple stretches his own grandmother once taught him.
The radio plays.
Nobody is in a hurry.
And for a few minutes, a whole country breathes in at the same time.
I would give a lot to have grown up with that.
@jenteach13 I put my desk in the back of the room, students faced front. If I ever got to sit down, they didn’t know if I was watching them. Worked like a charm when they took a test. Also, constantly walking around the room while teaching kept them on their toes. Don’t be predictable.
“If we want the world to live in peace, we must begin with ourselves.
“Enough with insults, enough with bullying, enough with all those things that wage war between people, between communities, between countries!” — Pope Leo XIV
Ladies & Gentlemen, we present to you the largest single trunk live oak in the whole universe 😮🌳
The tree lives in Iron City Georgia, which didn’t exist when the tree germinated, & nor did the US
"It's not enough to read a book to your kid and then sit there looking at your phone. Your kid is going to want to look at a phone if that's what you're doing... children have to see you reading books." Acclaimed novelist Ann Patchett tells me why she's "evangelical" about the importance of reading and protecting books. "Book banning is a terrible thing. And it's an extraordinary waste of time... it takes up the energy that we need to make children safe from guns."
@goodreads I was able to witness it firsthand as a teacher with one of my 10th graders. I’ll never forget it. Her fury at being drawn into a book, and then her realization she’d become a reader, was remarkable.