April 1, 2020

 

Dear Parents and Guardians,

As we are now in the middle of Week 3 of virtual teaching and learning with our teachers and students, I am hopeful this communique’ finds you and your immediate and extended family members and friends healthy and staying safe.

In recent days, a good friend of mine, a retired Assistant Superintendent of Schools in Vernon Township, in fact, shared the following “And People Stayed Home” poem with me. The poem was written by Kathleen O’Meara in 1869, over 150 years ago, after the Famine in Ireland. The poem reads like this:

 

And people stayed home

and read books and listened

and rested and exercised

and made art and played

and learned new ways of being

and stopped

and listened deeper

someone meditated

someone prayed

someone danced

someone met their shadow

and people began to think differently

and people healed

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and in the absence of people who lived in ignorant ways,

dangerous, meaningless, and heartless,

even the earth began to heal

and when the danger ended

and people found each other

grieved for the dead people

and they made new choices

and dreamed of new visions

and created new ways of life

and healed the earth completely

just as they healed themselves.

 

Please be healthy and stay safe.

 

Sincerely,

Dennis J. Mudrick

Principal