News with Nuance: June 2, 2023

Your Friday dose of News with Nuance: the week's biggest stories, unpacked + more ..

Hi Readers,

I’m grateful to be back with you today after a week off from News with Nuance to spend some time with extended family in the North Woods. We were blessed with beautiful weather and time together - in a family tradition that’s probably going to wane and change as the kids get older (and MN resort prices go sky high!)

Sometimes it’s easy to get lost in that place between nostalgia for the past and worry about the future, maybe especially in these in-between years of raising kids and also watching parents grow older. I’ve always been someone who feels personally moved by the events in the world at-large (that’s why I write this very newsletter!) and at the same time very moved to prioritize and care for my family.

I think my 30s have been a time of realizing the limits of my own personhood in both arenas: to work for love, justice, peace, truth, and understanding on a broad public level - and also, as my kids grow older, to help them navigate each part of their lives. Recently, I’ve been resigned to the fact that my kids no longer appreciate the “cute” outfits I pick out for them at the store and prefer to only wear athletic clothes and shoes they pick out with Dad!

As the last paragraph demonstrates, I think each and every one of us have the sometimes-difficult task of managing both the seemingly small and seemingly insurmountable challenges of our personal lives, coupled with the broader challenges of the world in general, beset by war, climate change, rising hatred, anger, poverty, and despair. And despite all that, you and I are diving back into the news this week - with nuance - because I still believe there’s ways to put it all together: to care for those close to us and those far around the world. For me, what draws it together is my achingly hopeful and battered faith - in a God who manages to love in that very particular yet universal way.

Thanks for being here in the particular and global with me! Let’s get to the news … with nuance …

The Uvalde, Texas, varsity high school mariachi band, with their teacher

Photo by José Ibarra Rizo, Rolling Stone

The Headline: How a High School Mariachi Team Triumphed in Uvalde

I used to be really attracted to stories like this one, which almost seems tailor-made for a future Hollywood film, and then as I got older sometimes my cynicism got the better of me, and I learned that (with nuance!) these stories about hard-luck kids and teachers making the best of a rotten situation were often more complicated than they seemed. And that sometimes these kind of stories can make it so that distant readers/viewers feel more comfortable about the impact of outside forces and economics on kids in rough situations. Like, see, they’re OK! Teachers don’t need higher salaries or more benefits or support. It’s fine! They just need to be like “this teacher.” I’m thinking here of the 90s movies like Mr. Holland’s Opus or Dangerous Minds. Sidenote: I never realized both of those movies released when I was 10, in 1995! What a year! I still remember them both with affection, and the impact they had on me.

Still, though, as last week marked the 1-year anniversary of the horrific school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where a murderous gunman coupled with law enforcement inaction resulted in the deaths of 19 elementary school students and two educators, I found myself drawn in by this story of the Uvalde High School mariachi team, and its resilience.

After earlier this week re-reading the profiles of the 21 who died in Uvalde, despite my distance from the victims and my lack of personal connection, I found myself weighed down and feeling almost powerless, just as I wrote about earlier this month after yet another school shooting.

What I appreciated about this story from Uvalde is the way it claimed a story of the persistence of life in the face of death. And it didn’t make it seem facile or easy, either. Told from the perspective of band director Albert Martinez, the story didn’t pull punches about difficulty of getting the kids on board after being accustomed to a previous string of substitutes, and mariachi being treated like a “free period,” and technical challenges in competition against larger or more well-funded schools.

I especially liked the detail about Martinez’ personal commitment: waking up and leaving home by 5:30 every morning to drive 70 miles from San Antonio to Uvalde. I had a similar (though slightly shorter) commute to my most-recent church where I served as Pastor. I know that kind of commute is an absolute grind. It’s hard on your mind, your body, your vehicle, your family. It’s not ideal for anyone, anywhere. If you’re doing that kind of commute, you’re doing it because a) your family needs the income; and more importantly, b) you’re passionate about the community you serve and the job you’re doing. It’s most often not highly paid workers who are doing this kind of commute. And still, look what Martinez wrings out of it - not only surviving but helping these kids, bruised by a global pandemic and a local school shooting, to thrive as musicians and young adults.

It should be said, too, that while this is a story about music and traditions rooted in Mexico, it’s also an American story. A Hispanic-American story that too many in Texas government and on the U.S./Mexico border want to erase or subsume into a white-European-dominated American culture. What a gift these mariachi students