There was a flood in Houston, they called the storm Harvey, and the water got close to our house. We got ready to go, packed our bags, but never had to leave. Today we unpacked and put away our things. The piano where we sang show tunes at the height of the flood is safe. We will be able to have another family sing-a-long and that is good. As I packed, I realized how little of what we own really... Read more
Hurricane Harvey has overwhelmed the system and so we are left in God's hands. This is good. Read more
Prayer is the best action one can take in a storm. Read more
Up until now Harvey has been an invisible rabbit to me, but now it will also be a storm here in Houston. Watching people react to this storm has been odd, because they have been manipulated by media to the point of hysteria or ignorance. If you shout apocalypse then the conformists will panic, but the rebels will become immune to worry. Some are terrified and others are complacent. If you were one of the people snatching the last bag... Read more
If you cannot be the best, if nobody is ever going to call you Al, then there is another way. It is not a bad way and there are bad ways, but it is a lesser way. If you can be the best, be the best, but if you cannot, then here is what you can do. But before we admit that we cannot take the high road, we must stop and refuse to take the road to hell, the... Read more
The best teacher I know is called Al and we honor the best students in the college and high school with his name. If you are a teacher, you should wish to be called Al. A very great teacher recently asked me what a class with Al Geier is like. What does he do? I will try to tell you, though in one sense, no class is exactly like another. A Geier class ends up where the conversation takes it and... Read more
We need school ties. That seems odd, since any given piece of clothing is not logically necessary for learning and ties, even for grown people, are a fading part of American culture. Yet we need school ties so much that our college and school has one for each house and the school. Our women and men wear them, some proudly and some because that is the customary costume. This custom is key. We have laws, rules that cannot be broken without serious... Read more
A wise song says that given certain conditions you can “call me Al.” That should be an aspiration for any teacher who reads and tries to understand hard texts with a group of students. I say this because the master of reading texts is named Al, Professor Alfred Geier, and because I aspire to be called Al! In fact, the highest honor our high school or college graduates can win is to enter an order named after Al. The good news is that... Read more
Some old things should be forgotten, yet much that has been forgotten should not have been. No place is this truer than in education. About a decade ago, classical education became a trend in k-12 and higher education and much that was revived should be allowed to die and much is still forgotten that must live. Sadly, nobody thought to ask, as they turned to the past, why the system of k-12 and college as separate institutions is a good... Read more
When school starts, most Americans do not go. We are done, graduated. Thank God. Or should we thank God? Should we ever leave school? The obvious answer is “no,” because who would ever quit learning? The real answer is “of course,” because I meet many people who could not write the papers like they wrote as seniors in college. This frightens me. Why? We may be the first generation ever to have fifty year olds less well read than the... Read more
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