Friday Philosophy: Maybe it’s the water

Someone sent me an item last week about a transitioning transwoman (video at the link), a high school mathematics teacher in West Linn, OR.  On the face of it, this wasn’t a huge story, but it struck me as a huge coincidence.

Currently I have hardly slept for two days because every time I lay down, I have to cough.  The moving that is finally over apparently left my body in a run down state and I caught something on the first day of classes on Wednesday.  So I apologize if my current delirium causes any disjointedness.

Think of it as stream of unconsciousness.

A few facts about West Linn:  This town was originally named Robin’s Nest, then Linn City, before merging with the towns of Willamette, Bolton, and West Oregon City to become West Linn.  When I lived there, the largest industry was the Crown-Zellerbach paper plant.  There used to be an actual downtown, but that was before I-205 was directed right through it.  In many ways, it became a bedroom community.  We lived in a townhouse apartment up the hill on Sunset Avenue, overlooking the smokestacks.

I grew up in Lake Oswego, OR, the city (then a town) immediately to the north of West Linn on the banks of the Willamette River.  Now a place inhabited my mostly quite wealthy people, our family could barely afford to live there.  We lived in what was called the First Addition of Oswego, as it was named then (before it merged with the town of Lake Grove).  Our neighbors consisted of, among others, the elementary school custodian, the local cobbler, the projectionist at the local movie house (as kids we used to go watch cartoons in his attic for a nickel), and a few beauticians and hair stylists.  In other words, it was where the tradespeople lived.  My father was an electrician and Mom was a copy editor at the local weekly newspaper.

On the other hand, Jerry Zimmerman’s grandparents lived at the end of the alley.  Some will recognize him as a back-up catcher for the Twins.  And Don Schollander, winner of 4 gold medals in swimming at the Tokyo games in 1964 grew up three blocks away (he was a little league teammate of my brother).  And, what I like to point out is that our house was almost exactly halfway between the houses of Poet Laureate William Stafford and two-time Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling.  Those houses were about 5 blocks in either direction.

Cool stuff.  Of course, at the time, Mr. Stafford was just the father of one of my classmates and a teacher at Lewis and Clark College and Mrs. Stafford was my younger brother’s first grade teacher.  And Pauling hadn’t lived there for decades.

I ran away from there to dodge the draft in 1967.  But I was eventually tracked down and scooped up by the FBI in Vinita, OK in 1971 and forced into the Army (it was either two years in the Army with pay or 5 years in the Oklahoma State Penn without pay, and by then I had a family).  After spending my time at Fort Leavenworth as a correctional specialist (prison guard) and being awarded a Presidential Commendation from Nixon for my unit’s work in the Prisoner Pay section of the Finance Office there, I was discharged at the rank of Spec 5…which is as high as one can get in two years.  I was raised to do any job well if I was going to do it at all.

The Willamette Meteorite fell between West Linn and Lake Oswego, near a place we locals call Wanker’s Corner.

After my discharge, we returned to Oregon and I pursued my education under the GI Bill. After spending a few months as assistant manager of the Sambo’s restaurant in Lake Oswego, I attended Portland Community College’s Sylvania Campus, built in the crater of a dormant volcano, and Portland State University…all while living in West Linn.  

I knew we would get back to here eventually.  And we will again.

After undergraduate school I attended the University of Oregon to earn my MA in 1978 and PhD in Mathematics in 1981.

Aside:  My primary therapist when I transitioned was a dear man named Kurt Wilhelm.  At our first meeting he commented that it made perfect sense to him that I went in to the field of mathematics, a field devoid of gender.  I’d never considered that.

Jumping forward in time, it was somewhere around the beginning of the century when one of the other grad students in mathematics while I was there also transitioned from male to female.

So maybe it is the water?  I hope it’s not me.

Reaction to Ms. Kintz in West Linn has been mixed, to say the least.  On the one hand we have this:

While understanding the complexity of this situation, we believe we have a teachable moment for ourselves, our students, and this community.

–Principal Lou Bailey, West Linn High School

On the other hand the commentary at various online reposting sites has definitely included the screams calling for the enforcement of bigot rights.  You can read some of that here.  But you might also find, wrapped amongst the filth, some statements like this, which comes from one of Ms. Kintz’s former students:

I’m a recent West Linn High School graduate who had Nick Kintz as a math teacher for the entirety of my high school math career. I’d just like to say that I am extremely proud of West Linn for embracing this unconventional situation not as an endorsement of one value over another, but as a chance for the entire WLHS community to learn and to grow.

Nick was an engaging and eccentric teacher who genuinely wanted us to do well, and I have no doubt that Nicole will continue to teach with the same enthusiasm and compassion for her students. In my opinion, she deserves all of our support.

Anyone who has lived there will tell you that West Linn is a bubble: it’s filled with money and materialism and people who will do anything to protect this comfortable way of life. In high school, all we wanted was to escape that bubble to a world full of challenges and diversity. I believe that this “upset” is one of the best things that could happen to West Linn, because we’ve grown too accustomed to the bubble. We need to be challenged. Our views need to be questioned, and our tolerance needs to be tested. We talk big in this town, but in reality our wealthy, largely white community is not as accepting as we’d like to think we are. It’s high time for us to step outside our bubble, and I commend WLHS for taking this first step.

The bigots always claim that it’s about protecting the students.  But what I want to know is, who is protecting them from the attitudes of the bigots?