Thursday, January 30, 2014

* Tweet Clamantis in Deserto


No one is more surprised than I am  to find myself running for the school board. A few weeks ago a friend called me to say there was a vacancy on the school board and asked if I would run for it.  I replied,
That's like asking a bull in a china shop to become a canary in a coal mine..  I don't know if I can TWEET."


When I started to think about that I googled "tweet" and discovred that 500 million tweets occur on Twitter every day including the Queen of England and Oprah, the two richest canarys in the world.

So even if I was able to stop knocking over shelves of china and become a caged bird sweetly tweeting a warning that the education system was filling up with poison gas from Washington or Montpelier or the Governor's Conferences, nobody would hear me.

To recoin Dartmouth's motto, I wouldn't be a Tweet clamantis in deserto.  Nobody would hear me not because I was the ONLY voice tweeting in the desert but because there were a zillion tweets drowning me out.

I want to tell you a story.  

A few weeks ago i was subbing for a class in Hartford High. One of the tenth grade girls was the daughter of a student I had 25 years ago.  When I told the class I had taught in this school for 25 years but retired 2 years ago, she asked "What did you teach?" I said, "English".  She shot back, "Why WOULD you come back?"


Without thinking I said words I had never said or thought before, "Because my heart is here."

And that's why I want to be on your school board. 

I'll try not to break any china, or tweet too loud or too often.  

But I want to be where my heart is.










Wednesday, January 29, 2014

* Thank you, readers! 243,068 page views.


1102 posts, last published on Jan 29, 2014 - 

* PK Lookalikes (12)

Secretary of State  John Kerry

Actor Karl Malden




My grandmother, who was unduly proud of her looks, used to say that  this type of ruggedly  shaped face  (above) had "a mouth like a torn pocket."



My grandmother in her Rebekah gown at 60

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

* In Memory of Pete Seeger, Dead at 94

Sunday, January 26, 2014

* Reprise: Identity Confusion


I'm Nobody! Who are you? (260)

  by Emily Dickinson  Emily Dickinson

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –  
To tell one's name – the livelong June –  
To an admiring Bog!


WHO AM I ANYWAY?  
(September 9, 2012 post)




theantiyale 0 minutes ago

An Open Letter to Ava Kaufman, Jeff Gordon, and Past/Current Yale Daily News  Editors:
Please stop messing with my identity.
“ImportImages” deserves a serious, not a flip, reply even though, unlike myself, s/he hides behind an pseudonymous username
Ava Kaufman’s article Lulz at Veritas in the Weekend magazine last spring suggested that by signing my name to my posts (all 1965 of them !) I could not be classified as a troll. ("Some would argue that Keane isn’t a troll precisely because he identifies himself as Paul Keane”) http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2012/apr/20/lulz-and-veritas/
Jeff Gordon in his essay for English class about The Anti-Yale "For God, For Country and For Yale,"  suggested that by signing my name and degree I am invalidating my critique of Yale elitism: “When Paul Keane criticizes Yale, he signs his name with the very authority it granted him.” http://theantiyale.blogspot.com/2010/02/for-god-for-country-and-for-yale-by.html
Not wanting to be a “troll,” of either digital or fleshly ilk, I continued signing my name and degrees.
Obviously it sounds pompous to “ImportImages" (and to others).
This is ironic, since I have lived in Vermont for 28 years and Vermont has absolutely no regard whatsoever for pretension of any kind.
Yale has more respect up here as a lock company than as a a degree awarding institution. In fact, I have never used my degree in those 28 years in Vermont.
I am in effect a Closet Yalie.
And that’s the other reason I refer to my “years” at the divinity school in my Anti-Yale posts.
The snobby downtown undergraduate clubby Yalies do not consider any degree other than the undergraduate degree to be authentic.
You are a Yalie only if you graduated from the undergraduate experience.
Indeed, four years ago when I began The Anti-Yale, there was an extreme reaction of contempt from posters to any opinion coming from  Holy Hill or a graduate of Holy Hill. The Divinity School was a place for big hearts and soft heads. Its curriculum was trivial and its impact in the world nonexistent.
I sought to reverse that opinion with The Anti-Yale (726 posts, 146,000+ views as of today) http://theantiyale.blogspot.com
The Pope and Margaret Farley put the lie to that opinion, as I mentioned in my letter to the YDN published Friday. [below]
So who am I ?
PK ? Paul Keane, M. Div ’80 ? The Anti-Yale? A Vermonter?
Even I don’t know anymore.
PK
Closet Yalie
PS:
I am running---or , rather, I am standing still --- for the Vermont legislature, so that fact, along with my recent retirement after 25 years as a Vermont public school teacher, adds to my identity confusion.
0





Comments

ImportImages 1 day, 20 hours ago

Mr. Keane, I don't think folks here trivialize the Divinity School in its own right. As you point out, it's a place full of brilliant people who make significant contributions to their field. What YDN commenters mock is your flaunting of your Divinity School credentials by way of asserting your authority on all matters Yale-related. Most of the discussion on this website is centered on undergraduate life, and the fact that you own a Divinity School diploma is, more often than not, besides the point. It's really too bad that you insist on reminding us you own an M.Div. Mostly I stop reading your comments when you begin a sentence with, "When I was a student in the Divinity School in the seventies..." which you inevitably do. Your insistance on this point obscures the fact you can actually add to the discussion regardless of your resume. Your comment on Noah Chases' column today, for example, was actually interesting, and it had nothing to do with the Yale Divinity School.
2

theantiyale 1 day, 19 hours ago

Sorry.
When in Rome do as the Yalies do.
One needs to rub the secret password three times to gain entrance to the inner sanctum. Oh--I meant inner santorum.
Feel free to ignore me.
My words have had 144,000+ views on the real source of my credentials, The ANTI-YALE.
PK
0

RexMottram08 1 day, 18 hours ago

That gas leak sound you hear? Just more hot air coming from the Divinity School...
1

theantiyale 1 day, 17 hours ago

I only sign the Yale MDiv when I address phonies.
0

theantiyale 1 day, 11 hours ago

“In a largely anonymous community of disembodied voices, TheAntiYale is an exception to this rule. He deliberately signs comments with his real name and identifying information: Paul D Keane, M.Div. ’80, M.A. (Middlebury ’97), M.Ed. (Kent State ’72), B.A. (Ithaca College ’68). Some would argue that Keane isn’t a troll precisely because he identifies himself as Paul Keane”
Lulz et Veritas
0




Margaret Farley’s influence


Letter to the Editor
Yale Daily News:


The New York Times (“Vatican Scolds Nun for Book on Sexuality,” June 5) recounts the Vatican’s displeasure at the book “Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics” by Sister Margaret Farley and puts the lie to all of those on the Yale Daily News web site’s posting board who have mocked and trivialized both the Yale Divinity School and its curriculum.  (“Vatican ScoldsNun for Book on Sexuality,” June 5) 
Sister Margaret was a respected faculty member when I was a student (’76–’80) and continued to teach there until her retirement a few years ago.
It is clear from this article that her influence (and, by extension, Yale Divinity School’s influence) has had a world-wide impact in the realm of religious ethics. The Vatican finds that to be the case and attempts to snuff that influence out.
I suggest that those who would criticize Yale Divinity School and its curriculum need to look closer at the history of its leadership in the religious and ethical revolutions of the world which proceed quietly, unseen by the media but felt by millions.
Paul Keane
June 5
The writer is a 1980 graduate of the Divinity School.

Saturday, January 25, 2014

*Yale Fathers and Sons: Former Yale Divinity Dean Rights Gay Wrongs




I am no fan of Dean Ogletree.  He was quite rude to me when I dropped in to his office in 1986 [perhaps 1996--see below]  to ask why the  Macintosh Fellowship at Yale Divinity School   had once again---for the 
second time in three decades --- fallen into disuse after I had managed to get it restored in 1980. "What's your concern? Who are you?" he demanded of this intruder who was not in his appointment book, alumnus or not.

When I told him Macintosh had been a family friend and my parents had named me after him, it was an irrelevant triviality to the brusque dean who seemed completely

uninterested in the fate of this former faculty member's memory and Fellowship. As long as I was not a blood relative who could sue for recovery of the improperly used fellowship funds (an accounting which the Macintosh estate's executor, Professor Julian Hartt, had said he would demand of  Yale only a few years before) Dean Ogletree could not to be bothered. Hrrrmph.

However, he seems suddenly much more human to me now in 2014, almost three [or perhaps two, see below] decades later, when he risks his frock and fame to stand by his gay son. (see recent New Haven Register article below).  


Perhaps if Macintosh had not died childless and had had a blood son, Mr. Ogletree would have risen to that occasion 28 years ago.


Kudos to him.



Paul Douglas Macintosh Keane

M. Div. '80




 My Term as Dean at YDS



Ogletree, Thomas 
1:37 AM (1 hour ago)

Dear Mr. Keane, 
Greg Sterling transmitted your e-mail to me.  I did not have time to read it until yesterday, but I discovered that you may be forgetting who was dean of the Divinity School when you came to YDS in the eighties.  Actually, Lee Keck was dean at that time.  I did not come to Yale and begin my service as dean of the Divinity School until the summer of 1990. After my term as dean, I continued to  teach at Yale until my retirement on the first of January in 2009.  So I am not accountable for the things you found troublesome when you visited YDS.  Just thought I would bring you up to date.  
Regards, 
Tom Ogletree

   






On Mon, Jan 27, 2014 at 12:40 PM, Paul Keane <pkvermonter@gmail.com>wrote:

Mr. Thomas Ogletree, Dean Emeritus
Yale Divinity School

Dear Dean Ogletree:

How the decades do congeal.
It is quite possible that it was 1996 not 1986.  I will change the date on my blog and post this clarification.

Actually. It was you---decidedly you.  I'm sure it was nothing you would remember. Yale Deans are so busy after all .

No, it was not Dean Keck. 
Dean Keck was a good and loyal  friend to me.

I  will never  forget  his consummate  thoughtfulness: when he took me privately into his office  in 1984 (in a highly  pressured moment five minutes before a convocation for some distinguished lecture in Marquand Chapel as a courtesy to my adopted grandfather, Roland H. Bainton)   to tell me that  Dr. Bainton had died the night before on campus.

That courtesy  prevented  my having to hear it cold from the pulpit as he notified the YDS community at whatever distinguished lecture was about to begin in Marquand . 

The lecture is long forgotten. The courtesy is not.  A good lesson.

Then there were a couple of interim acting deans, Aiden Kavanaugh and Harry Adams among them.

I recall Dean Kavanaugh taking me into his office and proudly showing me Jonathan Edwards' presidential furniture which he had rescued from a Yale warehouse.  I suppose it has been banished again since then  to the same fate as Macintosh's fellowship. 

And Dean Adams---bless his soul ---actually arranged  the Marquand ceremony and Common Room  reception for  the  unveiling of the vandalized  Macintosh portrait which I had arranged to have restored (at no expense to YDS)  in 1980 I believe, although it could have been 1979.

It may have been 1996 that I appeared unannounced at your office  although it probably was the early 90's.  I was visiting my father in Mt. Carmel from my home in Vermont.  
He had dispatched me to  YDS to inquire about Macintosh's Fellowship

     
While the decades may have faded, the rudeness and arrogance of your cavalier dismissal of my family's concern for Macintosh and his legacy did not fade.  

My mother and father were impoverished New Haven residents in Macintosh's youth group at a church on the wrong side of the tracks.  He and Hope Macintosh brought them into his Yale circle. 
Both of my parents were fatherless and Macintosh (who was childless) served a paternal role in their lives. 
Yale arrogance was not Dr. Macintosh's cup of tea.

     
No, it was not Dean Keck who brushed me off.
It was decidedly you, whose face and tone I recall quite well as you swept me from your august YDS presence, leaving me  to report my meeting to my then widowed, septuagenarian  father in Mt.Carmel. 

He was annoyed at the Yale  arrogance; I was used to it, frankly.

Sorry about the chronological confusion.  
While I regret our encounter, apparently in the 1990's not 80"s, I do admire your guts in championing your son's dignity  as  a human being in 2013 / 14

    
Christianity  has crucified gay people long enough.  
Time to end it.
Good for you.

Peace.

Paul D. Keane
M.A., M.Div., M.Ed.

PS "Widowered" not "widowed" ?

Cc:

Harry Adams, Dean Emeritus
Gregory Sterling, Dean
The Hon.Craig Henrici


 



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