As previously noted: I sprained my ankle a couple years ago. In December I broke a toe. Also, something seems to be wrong with my heel. This is all on the same foot, the left one.

On Mardi Gras, a pit bull sunk his teeth into my calf. I can still see the marks. It wasn’t a serious injury, but since it was my left calf, it seemed to add to the general drama on that side of my body.

Then, over the last week or two, my knee has been giving occasional flare-ups of severe pain, the kind of sudden pain that make you shout obscenities at the top of your lungs. This seems to happen almost exclusively on stairs. I’m not sure, but I think this is probably the same knee that gave me trouble eleven years ago, just around the time I moved from Bloomington to New Orleans. Which may be the same knee that gave me trouble in high school.

Need I mention that it’s my left knee? It’s as if my lower left limb is under a curse.

Getting back to the foot: I recently bought new shoes in size fifteen. That’s two or three sizes bigger than what I usually wear. Anything smaller just seemed to be uncomfortable. I think it has something to do with the broken toe. I’d have thought it would be healed by now. Maybe it has. Maybe it’s healed funny.

I know of course that wearing a shoe that’s too big might cause other problems, but I really didn’t know what else to do.

The bigger shoe size seemed to help, or so I thought. I took my first long walk yesterday. It became clear that I’ve still got serious issues. I wouldn’t describe it as pain. Rather, I’d say that the front portion of my foot feels swollen and uncomfortable — but only when I walk around wearing a shoe. I haven’t observed any actual swelling.

My orthopedist prescribed an orthotic to help with my heel. It’s like an insole, but it’s custom-made, and it’s supposed to give more support. It’s also expensive, and not covered by my health insurance unless I’m diabetic. I had the mold made a while back; I’m supposed to go get the thing fitted this afternoon. Maybe that will help, but I kind of doubt it. Right now my heel is bothering me less than the front of my foot. I don’t think they’re related, but I suppose it’s possible. Ironically, the orthotic requires me to wear a shoe, and I’d rather not wear shoes right now. Sandals are more comfortable, but incompatible with the orthotic. I’m not even sure what’s wrong with my heel. I’m not sure the doctor told me. I was so distracted with my toe and ankle that I didn’t ask more questions about my heel.

I’m not the world’s most athletic guy, but I do enjoy getting around on my own two feet. I ride my bike to work most days, but I like to walk sometimes as well. So these problems are really bothering me. The confusion is almost as aggravating as the discomfort — perhaps more so. I don’t understand what’s going on or how to fix it. I guess I need to get back to the doctor.

Folds seemed to be doing better immediately after her surgery. But a week or so later she took a turn for the worse. She was lethargic. Then she got more lethargic. She couldn’t make it to the litter box. She didn’t have the strength to eat. She could barely take a drink of water. She was losing weight almost before our eyes.

We took her back to the vet. They gave her fluids intravenously for a couple days but she didn’t really improve much. It seems her kidneys were giving out. I guess this might have been triggered by the surgery. In any event, when I talked to the vet today he made the point that if she was a human being she’d be getting dialysis and would be on the list for a kidney transplant. But since she’s a cat such treatment options don’t exist.

I expressed concern about her suffering and asked if he recommended euthanasia. He said yes.

After I hung up the phone, I thought to myself: This is surely the right thing to do, and I don’t even like this cat, so why am I crying?

So I went there, signed the necessary papers, and then got to hang out with Folds for a while while the doctor treated another patient. She was in a truly pathetic state, skinny as a rail, and unable to stand erect.

I wondered, of course, if I was doing the right thing. I wondered if I should consult with Xy first. She loved Folds more than me. I figured she might appreciate me dealing with this, but then again maybe she’d want to say goodbye? I remembered how she had cradled Folds in her arms for a good hour or more Wednesday night. So I figured she’d said her goodbyes already. Maybe she sensed what was coming.

I stroked Folds’ head. She tried to nuzzle my hand but she hardly had the strength.

When the doctor came in at last he was very apologetic that it had come to this, and he took pains to emphasize that this was the humane course of action, as she wouldn’t have much quality of life going forward.

Then he shaved her foreleg, found her vein which was shrunken due to anemia caused by her kidney failure, and he injected her with a fatal dose of some barbiturate. I thought I might look in her eyes and see if I could tell the moment of her passing, but she turned her head away slightly, and the drug acted so fast she was dead before the doctor withdrew the needle.

So then I gave the doctor a hug, got on my bike, and rode away to pick up my daughter.

Post Script: This makes six cats we’ve lost in nine years. And yet only the third confirmed death. (The other three cats just disappeared. In some ways that’s more difficult.) I believe this is the closest I’ve ever been to any actual death. I mean I’ve swatted bugs but that doesn’t seem the same.

It seems in our culture we are afraid of silence and emptiness. We fill our days with activities and rush about and chatter a lot, but underneath this superficial noise many of us feel somewhat hollow. If we pause we may get a glimpse of the yawning abyss which frightens us.

I believe that existence is inherently empty — devoid of intrinsic meaning. It’s part of the labor of life to create meaning and purpose. It’s something we have to invent, or let others invent for us.

But I think we should not be scared of the void. We should learn to embrace it when necessary. Perhaps we should even romance it.

I didn’t always feel this way. Here’s the lyrics of a song I wrote over twenty years ago.

It’s the curious nature of curious things
That leads me in the darkness that questioning brings
It seems my whole life I’ve been questioning things

And it takes all my time, it takes all my soul
Sucks it all down in a great big hole
The void of oblivion, the nothingness that I know

This snippet of doggerel is a little embarrassing in its awkwardness, but I think it does a good job of capturing the sentiment of a period in my life, when I was a young man coming through an existential crisis.

I feel differently now. Over the years I have made my peace with “the darkness that questioning brings.” I have come to thoroughly enjoy that “darkness.” And I’m no longer so frightened of the “void of oblivion.” It actually kind of turns me on. From time to time I take a moment to pause, draw breath, quiet myself, and think about nothing in particular. My mind tends to be so hyperactive that it’s actually a bit of a challenge to get to that state where the void presents itself. It can still be scary and disorienting, sometimes, but ultimately it is always refreshing.

The void is full of surprises.

A walk of the Lafitte Corridor hosted by Bart Everson of Friends of Lafitte Corridor and Daniel Samuels of the Lafitte Greenway Steering Advisory Committee.

Early every morning, Akili Academy’s teachers gather for a daily bonding ritual.

Clutching caffeinated beverages, they offer praise to one another for achievements large and small: calming down an upset student, teaching an outstanding lesson on “realistic fiction” to kindergarteners, sorting out unspecified “bathroom issues.”

For the finale, the charter school’s staff pulls in closer for a quick huddle, like a sports team preparing to take the field. “Who are we proud to be?” one teacher asks. “Akili Academy of New Orleans!” they shout in unison, sending their arms flying. They then head to class before the students arrive.

But this is no casual competition or recreational game. It lasts at least 10 hours every weekday, often spills over into the weekends, and, at times, consumes the lives of the mostly young Akili staff.

“I’m totally tired, and if I’m still working this many hours next year, I maybe wouldn’t work a fourth year,” said Francis Giesler, an Akili teacher. Giesler, 24, a 2008 graduate of Loyola University, grew up in St. Louis.

While Giesler praises Akili for its supportive work environment, she gives voice to a nagging concern of school reformers and charter leaders across the city and the country. How can a movement predicated in part on superhuman exertions of time and effort sustain itself and grow in the long term?

As Giesler puts it: “How good a school are you if you have really strong results, but can’t take that model anywhere else because it was solely reliant on the bodies in the building, and kills people after two years?”

If the model kills people after two years, what do they become after, say, thirteen years? Do they become zombies? Or are they just miserable?

A growing number of schools, particularly charters, embrace a “no excuses” or “whatever it takes” attitude toward closing the achievement gap between poor, minority students and their wealthier peers. Poverty isn’t an excuse for school failure. Neither is bad parenting. Or insufficient school funding.

But to overcome these obstacles, a school’s staff and students must work harder — in the evenings, on weekends and through the summer — and give up some of their personal lives for their jobs.

Arguably nowhere is this trend so pronounced as in New Orleans, where charter schools mushroomed after Hurricane Katrina and hundreds of ambitious young educators like Giesler now live and teach. A looming question facing school leaders is how to maintain momentum as teachers and administrators inevitably grow up, burn out or move on.

Of course not all schools provide such a supportive environment, but the general approach of overloading teachers seems to be ubiquitous. Our schools are currently running on the efforts of the young and idealistic. Of course one has to wonder: What about the not-so-young, the veteran teachers who’ve been around the block, whose idealism may be a bit ragged, but who also have the experience and (dare I say it) the wisdom? Actually I don’t wonder, because I’m married to such a teacher, and I’ve seen what this trend is doing to her first-hand, and it ain’t nice.

“You’re going to run out of people willing to work an 80-hour week,” [principal Sean Gallagher] said. “Everyone here is single; no one has a kid. That’s just not (replicable). I want us to look like something any school in New Orleans could do. Right now, we’re not there.”

Gallagher said he tried to recruit a diverse teaching staff: young and old, novice and experienced, natives and transplants.

But the time commitment proved a deal-breaker with most veteran, New Orleans educators.

At one recruitment fair, a job-seeker stopped by Gallagher’s table.

“Longer school day? Longer school year?” the man asked.

When Gallagher nodded, the teacher quickly walked away, saying, “Don’t need to talk to you.”

We’re not sure but we think the job-seeker was our friend James. I remember when he did that.

Educators will probably always debate the importance of experience, some of which boils down to the contrasting philosophies of school leaders. Some emphasize the importance of building a family-like school culture, where children can develop lifelong relationships with teachers who attend their churches, live in the neighborhood and might even have taught their parents. Others say they care about continuity, but will do whatever it takes to build a high-performing school, even if that means higher teacher turnover.

A growing group of educators and policy wonks say they are not particularly concerned about chronic teacher turnover in urban schools, as long as there’s a pipeline of bright workaholics to fill the vacancies.

And with Teach for America, that pipeline looks inexhaustible. These kids are too young and fresh to realize they’re being exploited. Maybe it’s a viable model; maybe our schools are so screwed up that we have to resort to such measures; I really don’t know. But I do know that it sucks to have the terrain shift beneath your feet, so to speak. It sucks to have your chosen career slowly turned into something you can no longer do. We seem to be moving in the opposite direction from the reforms we truly need.

“I don’t think turnover is inherently bad,” said Andrew Rotherham, publisher of Education Sector, an education policy think tank. “Planned turnover or turnover you can deal with without yielding quality is fine.”

Translation: It’s OK to use and abuse people so long as there’s more fresh meat to victimize tomorrow.

Others stress that more value should be placed on making teaching a viable career for those who do not meet the typical Teach For America profile: young, well-educated and unattached.

Andre Perry, CEO of the University of New Orleans’ charter school network, said he worries about relying too heavily on young teachers from out of town. He notes that schools that burn out their teachers after a few years must repeatedly reinvest in replacements. “It just seems inefficient,” he said.

Perry encourages school leaders to foster the notion that “teaching is a way of living” that can coincide with having a life outside work.

“We are not creating that enough here in New Orleans,” he said. “It’s such a brutal lifestyle. We’re so focused on performance in such a specific way that we’ve become robots.”

Perry’s quote brings tears to my eyes. “Such a brutal lifestyle.” It resonates because I’ve seen Xy ground down over the years by the increasingly unreal regimen. It’s like an endless demand for more that can never be filled. It’s never enough.

The kicker came at the very end of the article.

Still, Giesler can’t imagine ever balancing her 31 students at Akili with a child of her own.

“I couldn’t imagine doing this job with a kid,” she says. “I really could not.”

And that is really what clinches the decision for Xy. She feels like she’s missing out on her daughter’s childhood.

And so that’s why Xy has decided to seek a new career after thirteen years in the classroom.

Needless to say, if you’re interested in this topic you really should read the whole story.

PS: It strikes me that this issue is appropriate to contemplate on International Women’s Day as the teaching and rearing of children has been historically deemed as “women’s work” in our culture. That teachers are chronically overworked and undervalued is perhaps not coincidental.

Of course we had to get my dad some appropriate attire for the trip back home.

I’ve lost track of how many stints they’ve done, how many hours they’ve logged. The scope of the cataclysm here is such that even as we approach the five year mark there is no lack of work to be done.

Our cat Folds is going under the knife today. I feel ambivalent about this. The idea of cat surgery seems sort of ridiculous to me. How did we get to this point? Folds was living in the shed behind our previous house when we purchased it in 2002. She moved into our house in 2003. I evicted her in 2004 but she wormed her way back into the house later that year. We took her with us when we evacuated for Katrina; she disappeared for a month, hiding underneath my in-laws’ house. Her health has never been the same since. The vet says she has a hyperactive thyroid, so we started giving her methimazole in larger and larger doses. It seemed to help somewhat, but she’s hardly the picture of health and happiness. The vet eventually suggested surgery to remove one of her thyroid glands. I was surprised to calculate the cost of surgery to be equal to just about half a year’s worth of medication. From a strictly financial perspective, then, it would seem to make sense, assuming she lives another year. She must be at least ten years old. She looks about one hundred. (The photo above was taken before her health declined.) Of course there is always the possibility she might not survive the procedure. That would be a great relief to me, actually. I don’t particularly like Folds. She gets in the way around the house, constantly sneaking underfoot, and she tracks litter everywhere, especially into our bed. She’s got a nasty disposition and doesn’t seem to particularly enjoy being alive. Yet she seems so pathetic we can’t bring our selves to turn her out.

Indeed, our situation with all three of our cats raises ethical questions I have difficulty in resolving. What exactly is our obligation to Folds, and our two other cats? I don’t feel that we adopted any of them, exactly. It seems more like they adopted us. They were all volunteers. Archer, for example, was abandoned by her owners down the street back when we were living uptown. We started feeding her, and took her with us when we moved, and she’s been with us ever since. I don’t feel an obligation to care for every stray cat that comes down the street; that would be a full-time job. But at some point Folds and Archer and Crybaby crossed the line and became part of our household. At some point we felt obligated to care for them. It’s not a matter of personal attachment. I don’t care much for Archer, and I actively dislike Folds. Crybaby is OK, but to tell the truth I haven’t been able to love a cat since Lucy disappeared. Archer and Folds have not adapted well to life in our new house. Archer might be happier as an outdoor cat, but that raises other problems. Because these cats are old and have issues, I can’t imagine we’d find anyone who wants to adopt them. I couldn’t turn them out on the street. Euthanasia seems wrong. So in a sense I am waiting for them to die. It’s not really a good feeling.

If there is, as you believe, a benevolent Creator who is all-knowing and all-powerful, then surely He wants me to be the best person I can be. Surely he wants me to be true to my heart and my reason. After all, if He exists, then He is Author of my cognitive faculties. It’s inconceivable that He would want me to go against the best and only lights I have. It’s beyond imagining that He would give me a rational intellect but wish me to go against it. It’s absolutely incomprehensible that He would create in me a sense of moral purpose and integrity and then demand that I ignore these on pain of death, indeed, under threat of eternal damnation. Preposterous!

And yet, I worry that you worry about me.

I was talking with a Theology prof here at the University. He said one thing he always respected about Martin Luther was his call for us to trust in God’s goodness. Perhaps that thought provides some solace, if indeed you fret over the ultimate disposition of my immortal soul. If God is good, then perhaps this is all a part of His plan.

This sculpture mysteriously appeared on the Lafitte Corridor last week, just in time for the Urban Pathways conference tour. I was surprised and touched. It’s worth nothing that Friends of Lafitte Corridor did not solicit or commission this sculpture, though in retrospect I’m pretty sure I know who made it. It is, quite simply, yet another indication of the community’s desire for the greenway project to move forward.

[Photos by Joseph Brock]