The Last of the Pictures

Megan on a locomotive, there were a LOT of them there.

Me in the engineer's seat of a locomotive. The best part of this setup was that there was an entire drawer to my left dedicated completely to an ashtray and cup-holder for your coffee/tea/scotch.

Just in case you ever doubted my parallel parking skills.

More Conestoga Pictures

At the Pennsylvania Railroad Museum. I was pretending that I was riding the train to try out for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

An artistic shot of Megan in the engineer's seat of a locomotive.

Good thing I snapped this picture when I did, because she pulled the break lever so hard that I then went flying through the front window of the locomotive. It hurt.

Megan in front of the "Tahoe" locomotive.

Me sitting on the roof of the Good house, enjoying my morning coffee with the goats.

Riding the Conestoga Wagon

I've spent the last week traveling to visit family and friends up and down the eastern seaboard. While it's tempting to expound on the existential ramifications of my trip--as I did in my recount of the visit to NFA--a picture is worth a thousand words. These are some pictures that I snapped while visiting my great friend Megan Good in Conestoga, PA. Incidentally, the Greater Lancaster area is a beautiful place and I was very impressed in my short time there.

Me in front of the sign for Megan's Elementary School.

Me in front of the sign for Megan's High School (This sign was apparently a gift made by her class, she had no idea). I'm so wet because we'd just gone for a two-hour hike in the rain.

The wood stove in the Good house. I thought this was really cool, it is actually their main source of heat during the winter months. Here's to self-sufficiency.

I'm a terrible bowler, which is why it was both entertaining and confusing to witness myself bowl 8 strikes on my way to a 217. This is about 80 pins better than my previous best. The most fun thing about it was that since I know I'm a terrible bowler I really never thought: "wow, if I practiced I could be really good." Instead I thought: "This is amazing!" P.S. I really blew Megan (Megood) away during our two bowling games, but she got my back in our air hockey matchup.

A Priceless Pearl

Image from www.norwichfreeacademy.com. Slater Museum is in the Background, Norton Gymnasium ("The Old Gym") is centered on the Photo, the lamp in the foreground is on the front facade of the Cranston building (home to all Freshman and nicknamed "The Playpen").

I came back up to my childhood home in Franklin, CT this week. I had planned on visiting the Nutmeg state after graduation to see my family, but it also turned out to be a practical opportunity to help my parents move out of their house. After a couple years on the market and over 35 at this address, Bonnie and Dave Levanto are finally free.

In general, it's been an interesting experience for me. I have many good memories in this house and have known a lot of happiness here. It will be strange coming back to Connecticut and going somewhere other than 12 Southgate Circle. However, the whole concept didn't really strike home until I visited my high school, the Norwich Free Academy, in neighboring Norwich.

I'm incredibly proud of NFA. It was founded in 1854 by the wealthy merchants of Norwich (at the time awash in money from the bustling harbors on the Thames River) and while it was endowed like a private academy it was open to all students in the area. It has a museum on campus, complete with casts of classic works such as the Piéta, the Nike statue from Athens and the front facade from the Parthenon. It has a beautiful, sprawling campus that a substitute bus drive once mistook for a college and over 2,000 students from every conceivable walk of life.

That's all very impressive and most of my friends have heard me brag about it at some point. However, that's not what makes it so dear to my heart. When I attended NFA, I was the 17th member of my immediate family (by the best count of my parents and I) to do so. My great-grandmother attended for three years before leaving to work, all four of my grandparents, my parents, aunt, uncles, brothers and I all graced the halls.

Of course, that's just my immediate family. I couldn't even begin to list all the cousins and relatives that have been part of the NFA tradition. My grandfather, John Friswell, was on the Board of Trustees. My brother Mark was a record-setting basketball player (my individual career was less impressive than his, but I was the captain of a team that it would not be ridiculous to call the best ever to play in the long history of the school...sorry, I had to brag a bit). My Aunt Reggie has taught there since I-don't-know-when, and several cousins have worked there including Joseph (Guiseppe) Levanto, former superintendent and namesake of the Levanto-Alumni House on campus.

Yes, you read that last sentence correctly. When I was a senior in high school, my school named a building after my family. Growing up Levanto, most of my highest ambitions revolved around going to the Norwich Free Academy.

So it was a strange experience to visit yesterday. I still know a few teachers and remember the good old days on campus, but it is just not where my puzzle piece fits anymore. When I checked in to get a visitor's pass, I didn't know a single person in the office. While visiting Aunt Reggie's classroom, I realized that I was a decade older than her students. Worst of all, I'll admit that it did not feel like yesterday that I roamed around as a lost greasie (traditional NFA slang for a first year student, who are officially known as juniors, not freshmen) or stood on the football field during the Homecoming ceremony. The only thing that made me feel like I did back then was my awkward self-consciousness whenever I walked passed a group of giggling girls.

However, this blog post is not really about me. It's about the reason that I visited in the first place. A good friend of mine from my own NFA days, Amy Rygielski, is now in her third full year as an English teacher. This concept blows my mind. Somebody that I clowned around with in the cafeteria and watched play for the softball and volleyball team is now teaching at the school. I'd always said that I'd love to be a teacher, but I felt the only place I could do it and be happy was at NFA. Amy is living the dream.

I sat in on Amy's...ahem Ms Rygielski's...last period class and watched her public speaking students give talks based on an assignment she designed. The kids were really impressive, especially how patient they were with each other while presenting. One student broke into tears while telling the class about his problems at home and family's recent foreclosure notice. Amazing. I never would've done that in school and I was very impressed by how kind and receptive his classmates were.

What was so striking, and wonderful, about the experience was the time was the time I got to spend talking to Amy about her job. She loves it. She told me that she laughed every day and multiple times during and after the class she looked at me and said: "How great is my job?" She spoke glowingly about her students and the opportunities she's had, and remembered with amazement the fated chain of events that got her the job.

The most telling part of her happiness was that it was not all sugar-and-honey. She certainly had her complaints: red-tape bureaucracy, co-worker frustration, challenges dealing with the problems of students, commuting to work and then bouncing over to Rhode Island to visit her still-close group of friends from her URI days. Yet, she just kept repeating: "How great is my job?"

So, thank you Amy (I'm assuming she's not a levantoair reader, so if one of the four of you bump into her you can let her know), for refreshing my soul a little bit during my own job search. You struck gold, but the real magic is that you focus on the most shiney parts even when some of the luster is lost. I'm happy for you.

As far as my own departure from the NFA stage, I'm not worried. My time is up, but the Levanto legacy lives on: Jack Levanto, Class of 2016; Madalyn Levanto, Class of 2019; Frank Levanto, Class of 2023.

But whene'er we see that banner,
And we watch its folds unfurl,
We will cheer for alma mater:
NFA, a priceless pearl.

Doughnut Theater

If you know my brother Ross, then you'll understand. If you don't, I couldn't possibly do him justice here; the best I can say is that being around him is always an adventure. He has his own blog, which I encourage you to read, and he almost always selflessly donates his posts to the interesting exploits of his friends and family. I've been thinking for a while about the fact that this is a darn shame, because he is just too interesting.

Yesterday in Dunkin Donuts I witnessed a little live theater of Ross at his best. We were waiting for our order (nothing too complicated, we both believe that DD has let its menu become far too complicated and should stick to doughnuts, coffee and bagels) when the guy behind the counter started talking to Ross. He was pretty big, with a goatee and a gold chain necklace and I'd judge him to be in his mid thirties. His tone was familiar and friendly, Ross responded in kind--just a little hint of recognition in his voice.

I had no idea who this gentleman was, and I didn't particularly feel like engaging in the conversation. So I listened from the other end of the counter as they caught up with the typical 'how ya beens' of two casual acquaintances reuniting. They discussed the holiday and work and all that fun stuff. At only one point did it get specific:

DD Guy: "How's Tilley?"

Ross: "I'm sorry?"

DD Guy: "How's Tilley?"

Ross: "Ah...She's great!"

DD Guy: "Is she still working at Stop & Shop?"

Ross: "Yeah, yeah."

DD Guy: "She's been there a long time."

Ross: "Well, just having a job right now is a good thing."

DD Guy: "I hear ya."

By this point our food was ready and we were on our way. We both said a cordial goodbye and headed out to the car. The door to the Dunkin Donuts hadn't even swung closed behind us when my brother said:

"I have no idea who that guy was...I have NO idea who 'Tilley' is."

A Few Spoken Words

I had the honor of being the student speaker for my program's "Pre Commencement" Ceremony on Saturday. Though I didn't choose to read from prepared remarks, I took some time this morning and transcribed what I said from the video my mother took during the speech (thanks Mom). The video quality isn't great, so I'm going to see if I can track down a better video to post. In the meantime, for your reading pleasure (it was really hard figuring out how to punctuate some of it), here it is:

__________________________________________________


There was considerable debate as to what my time limit was. It actually changed many times throughout the course of the past few months. I do have a reputation for being a bit long-winded, so if I begin to prattle on too long we decided that the best remedy was that Sophie and Dottie were going to charge on stage and tackle me and drag me off. So hopefully my incentives are in place to actually be brief.

It’s a great honor to be able to speak with you all here today: my new colleagues and our friends and families. But in a way we all have a connection in that we are all students of Public Policy. If you can’t define what exactly Public Policy is that’s perfectly fine. I assure you I can’t really do a very good job of it either.

But Policy is the business of the public; it’s how we take those little bits of ourselves—good, bad and ambivalent—and turn them into a larger community. As I was thinking about what I wanted to say to you all here today, I thought very hard about how I would distill and make concise and break down the two years of experience that I had here; turn it into some useful nugget: something you can take with you, you can carry around in your pocket and pull out as a means to make decisions, to investigate your world and try to figure out how to make it a little better tomorrow.

I stumbled upon what I think is a pretty apt, little, three-word nugget; a bit of advice you can carry with you, something to use to assess your world. Despite the political excitement of the past year it is not “Yes We Can,” it is not “Put America First.” It’s a little, underutilized bit of knowledge that we gain very early in our lives and seem to forget soon after. I haven’t used it enough and hopefully I’ll get more chances.

The three words of which I’m speaking are: I, don’t, know.

It seems a little foolhardy to stand up here after two years of hard study and say that the best that I have to offer you is that I just don’t know, but I find it very applicable in the types of questions that I get to answer. Friends and family come up to me and say: “Brett, do you think the bank bailout’s gonna work?” “Do you think the economic stimulus is correctly put together?” “Do you think that we’re on the right course to make things better in our world—overseas and here at home?”

The honest answer to all of those questions is that I don’t know, and there are a lot of other people out there that don’t know either. And the first step, on the journey of knowledge is to admit that. Those words are not admissions of defeat they are recognitions of opportunity; they are the key that unlocks the door to the next step of our lives.

Great people in our world have dared to say that they didn’t know. In 1962, John Kennedy—standing in a room much like this, except filled with our most brilliant scientists—said to them that as we increase our knowledge, so increases the breadth of our ignorance. Seven years later we landed on the moon, and only because we dared to admit that our ignorance existed. And that’s because “I don’t know” is powerful, but it’s only part of the story.

The entire motto—what I want you to carry with you as you leave here today—is “I don’t know, but I’ll find out.” What’s going to happen to our country? What’s going to happen to us as a people? I don’t know, and few people can claim to, but I will find out.

I know that these types of speeches usually leave people with some type of a “charge” and this might be a tough one to swallow, especially for my more recent B.A. graduates. When I graduated from GW I assure you there was very little in the world that I didn’t know. I had to get married and come back to graduate school in order to figure out exactly how wrong I was. So if you need any less than that, you’re doing better than I was, I assure you.

And I realize that this bottom line—this frame of reference—can apply far beyond the walls of policy and the discussion of things we do in the classroom, but to your entire life. How can you be a good citizen? Or a good friend? Or a good brother, or sister, or spouse? How can you be a good person? How can you apply to your life the values that you want to see in yourself and others?

I don’t know, but I’ll find out.

So if I leave you with anything, I want to leave you with this charge—my colleagues and all our friends in here: find something in your lives everyday—whether it be in your office, or in your home, with your friends, or enemies, or neighbors, or strangers on the street—find something every day about which you can honestly say that you don’t know. What you do next is up to you. But those of us who choose to say that “we don’t know, but we’ll find out” will be those who write the next chapter of our story as a people, as a community, as a nation and as a world.

That’s what I’ve left William and Mary with, and I hope that you walk out of these doors with a little bit of that for yourselves: that we all charge out and find millions of things—because they’re out there—about which to say that we don’t know.

I don’t know if I’m to my limit. I might stand a round for a while.

Thank you very much for having me. To my friends and colleagues: thank you and good luck.

A CrossWord to the Wise

When I was a junior in college, my roommates and I took on a new Hobby: the Friday morning crossword puzzle. At GW, we never had class on Fridays (parents were told it was because so many students had "Friday Internships" but my friends and I always saw three-day weekends as an inalienable right). We'd spend a good portion of the morning sitting around in our PJs and pouring over a crossword.

Of course, the Friday morning crossword became the every day crossword over time. Though true aficionados insist that the New York Times is the standard, my loyalty has always remained with the Washington Post. I now print and enjoy my puzzle for free every day from my computer. I apologize that this is not very "green," but it would be less green to buy an entire newspaper when I only really want one 8"X 8" square buried in the Style section.

It's been almost six years since I slowly started this addiction, and I've become much better. People argue that doing crosswords makes your mind better at solving problems and keeps it "young." I don't know about that, but it certainly makes you better at doing crosswords. Over this time, I've found that there are a lot of lessons about the world in general that I've taken from my puzzling habit (pun not intended) and I'd like to take this opportunity to share:

1) Getting Started Doesn't Take Much.

When I used to try a crossword puzzle as a teenager, I would typically go through the Across clues and get maybe three or four. There are usually 35-40 clues in the Across section, so my ten percent success rate used to be quite discouraging. I'd then just give up. In college I realized something: three or four is enough. Then you go through the downs and you get three or four of those. Sure, you've still got a long way to go, but now there are some letters on the board to help you along. If those letters can help you get just a few more then you're off and rolling. Don't be afraid of a slow start.

2) Specialized, Not Useless Knowledge.

When I'm doing the puzzle and I'm confronted with a four-letter word for "Bits of Food," the answer is obvious: "O-r-t-s." How about a four-letter word for "Spread?" That would clearly be "O-l-e-o." Is orts not a word that you use in your daily life? Could you pick oleo out of your grandmothers fridge? For me: No and no. I have never in my life called a friend to see if they wanted to go find and ort or two for lunch and I've never used a margerine-like product that said "Oleo" in big letters on it. This doesn't matter, these are words that are incredibly useful in getting some momentum going and they appear a lot. Many people will define knowing words like this as "useless knowledge." Absolutely not, this is specialized knowledge. Be proud of your specialization. How useful to the outside world are most of the things we've learned while doing our "real" jobs?

3) Admit When You're Wrong

You were so sure that "C-o-u-c-h" was the five-letter answer to the clue "Sofa." You're still sure of it even though that was twenty minutes ago and you haven't been able to match a single word through "couch" that works. Well, I know it's hard but it might be time to rethink your decision. When you do, you'll discover that there's a backless type of sofa called a divan. D-i-v-a-n, five letters! Scratch out couch and move on, you'll find the rest of that little section will finally start to fall into place. Good things happen in life when you can admit that you were wrong.

4) Change Your Perspective

Puzzlemakers often try to use clues that could have different interpretations, meanings or parts of speech. Invariably, we all have different snap interpretations of each word we read, especially with no larger context to help us out. A clue might present you with "Punch ingredient." Well, I was a bartender so I immediately think of one of my favorite rum-based drinks, a Planter's Punch. R-u-m. Sadly, this inspired answer doesn't fill the four-letter space available for it (and neither will vodka, gin, or whiskey). As it turns out, this "punch" refers to "A blow with the fist," well, there's one ingredient in a knuckle sandwich: a fist. F-i-s-t. Don't lock your mind into one way of doing something when plenty of others might work better.

5) Fresh Eyes See Better

I rarely finish a puzzle in one sitting. Usually I can get about three-quarters of it done before hitting a wall. So I put it down. When I come back to it later in the day, those answers that just seemed impossible now pop into my head. Of course, there always might be some stubborn leftovers. No sense being ridiculous, I always give myself three chances to sit down with the puzzle, after that I'm probably not going to make much more headway. That's when I pass it off to someone else, and their new eyes (and new perspective) typically can blow through what's left with no problem. Be patient and enlist help, it doesn't take anything away from the effort you gave.

6) Some Days You Just Get Killed

I would say I finish (filled and all correct) about 20% of the puzzles I start. For another 70% I can whittle them down to the last few letters (two or three blank spaces) before running out of momentum. Not too shabby, I think. However, there are those remaining 10% where I just get obliterated. I take my three separate tries and can't get more than four or five answers, period. This is always tough to swallow, but there's nothing I can do. The puzzle wins. I print out a new one the next day and try again. As I'm sometimes fond of saying: "Sometimes you're the windsheild, sometimes you're the bug."

7) Tomorrow Never Dies

Besides being the title of a pretty good James Bond movie, this is also a good final crossword lesson. You finished today's puzzle? That's great! You couldn't fill in a single letter? I'm sorry to hear that. You tried to do the puzzle but some guy on the Metro insisted on reading over your shoulder and shouting out answers and ruined the whole experience? I HATE THAT! Regardless, take your joy or sorrow for what it is and remember that the paper will print a new one tomorrow.

In life, each day is a new set of blank squares and unread clues.