August 2025 – Dad Gone Wild
5 posts published by TC Weber during August 2025| Dad Gone Wild
“There is only one kind of shock worse than the totally unexpected: the expected for which one has refused to prepare.” ― Mary Renault, The Charioteer Principals who showed up for Metro Nashville Public Schools’ regularly scheduled leadership meeting this... Read More ›| Dad Gone Wild
“Good leadership requires you to surround yourself with people of diverse perspectives who can disagree with you without fear of retaliation.” ― Doris Kearns Goodwin Vouchers and AI: The Two Policy Punchlines Two things that suck the air out... Read More ›| Dad Gone Wild
“The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society.” — John F. Kennedy, in a speech before the American Newspaper Publishers Association, 1961 Three wee…| Dad Gone Wild
The first day of school was always a day of mixed emotions, a fragile balance between fear and excitement, like standing on the edge of something vast and unknown.”— *R.J. Palacio, Wonder The alarm blares like a fire drill... Read More ›| Dad Gone Wild
“I would replace the quality of sincerity with honesty, since one can hold a conviction sincerely without examining it, while honesty would require that one subject one’s convictions to frequent scrutiny.” ― Christopher Phillips, Socrates Cafe: A Fresh Taste of... Read More ›| Dad Gone Wild
“The world is full of people who will help you manufacture tornados in order to blow out a match.” — Shaun Hick In less than a week, Tennessee students will walk back into classrooms for a new school year.... Read More ›| Dad Gone Wild
“Life…is not a simple thread which is only extended in length, it is a large web or rather a network, from interval to interval, casts branches to the side in order to unite with networks of …| Dad Gone Wild
“I was thinking about stabbing myself in the face—not actually considering stabbing myself in the face, but thinking that it would be a physical expression of how I felt.” ― Catherine Lacey, Nobody Is Ever Missing Just like that,... Read More ›| Dad Gone Wild
“And right away her gaze went hard with the anger we always feel at the person who spoils our idea of ourself.” ― Susan Choi, Trust Exercise You’d think that after more than a decade of writing this blog, I’d... Read More ›| Dad Gone Wild
“Love and loss, are like a ship and the sea. They rise together. The more we love, the more we have to lose. But the only way to avoid loss is to avoid love. And what a sad world that would be.” ― …| Dad Gone Wild
“all these are but dreams and shadows; the shadows that hide the real world from our eyes.” ― Arthur Machen, The Great God Pan Much of this month has been spent traveling the byways a…| Dad Gone Wild
“In chess everyone had a pattern, a tendency. Average human players were invariably predictable. They had grooves in their brains, like furrows in a plowed field out in Beulah County. And the trick…| Dad Gone Wild
“The more one pleases generally, the less one pleases profoundly.” ― Stendhal, Love Every discussion about public education policy centers on the belief that it is either a public good or a …| Dad Gone Wild
“Don’t do it, Eleanor told the little girl; insist on your cup of stars; once they have trapped you into being like everyone else you will never see your cup of stars again; don’t do it…| Dad Gone Wild
“I don’t consider myself a pessimist. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel soaked to the skin.” ― Leonard Cohen When my kids reached about nine y…| Dad Gone Wild
“The performance is over.” The audience got up. “It’s time to put on your fur coats and go home.” They looked round. But it turned out that there were no fur coats and no homes.” ― Donald Rayfield,…| Dad Gone Wild
“All Eli had to do was smile. All Victor had to do was lie. Both proved frighteningly effective.” ― V.E. Schwab, Vicious We’ve got a date! Penny Schwinn, the former chief of Tennessee&…| Dad Gone Wild
“Moments in time when the world is changing bring out the best and the worst in people.” ― Tan Twan Eng Forgive me if I am a little groggy today. We are in the midst of our first varsity bas…| Dad Gone Wild
“Their relationship had become like the river – smooth and constant, but sluggish, opaque. They were standing on opposite banks, watching it go by. He dared not interrupt it – smash its…| Dad Gone Wild
“It’s an odd thing but when you tell someone the true facts of a mythical tale they are indignant not with the teller but with you. They don’t want to have their ideas upset. It rouses some vague u…| Dad Gone Wild
“I penetrated the outer cell membrane with a nanosyringe.” “You poked it with a stick?” “No!” I said. “Well. Yes. But it was a scientific poke with a very scient…| Dad Gone Wild
“Random acts of kindness were certainly scarce in this place and sometimes came from the most unexpected source.” ― Kathryn Hughes, The Key I continually watch the aftermath of the shooting …| Dad Gone Wild
“Why do we have to make such terrible decisions for our whole lives when we are too young to know what we are doing? The big mistakes are hung around your neck and you have to wear them forever.” ―…| Dad Gone Wild
“The horse is brown or chestnut or one of those other technical terms horsepeople use to make it clear that they know stuff other people don’t; the freemasonry of the hoof.” ― Nick Harkaway, The Go…| Dad Gone Wild
“Not for the first time Marianne thinks cruelty does not only hurt the victim, but the perpetrator also, and maybe more deeply and more permanently. You learn nothing very profound about yourself s…| Dad Gone Wild
“I have known heaven, and now I am in hell, and there are mimes.” ― Nick Harkaway, The Gone-Away World I opened up one eye and squinted as I looked toward the window. Looks like the son was …| Dad Gone Wild
“Virtue was vanity dressed up and waiting for applause.” ― Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North I try to produce a new Dad Gone Wild piece every Friday. It’s important t…| Dad Gone Wild
“Death cannot be experienced either by the dead or the living.” ― William T. Vollmann, Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means Wednesday morning I was working…| Dad Gone Wild
“One of the grimmer realizations of Sarkis’s youth had been the discovery that knowing you were being an ass did not actually stop you from continuing to be an ass.” ― T. Kingfisher, Swordheart &nb…| Dad Gone Wild
“Belief has nothing to do with truth.” ― Percival Everett, James If you are just about anywhere in the country, outside Califonia, I hope today finds you warm and cozy curled up in your home…| Dad Gone Wild
“This is how you hustle the arcane. Skirt the rules but don’t break them.” ― Victor LaValle, The Ballad of Black Tom Twenty four is now a wrap and it is off to twenty five. Reading through m…| Dad Gone Wild
“People don’t want children to know what they need to know. They want their kids to know what they ought to need to know. If you’re a teacher you’re in a constant battle with mild…| Dad Gone Wild
“education at all levels, from small children through to young adults, is of such fundamental importance to the flourishing of the community under any form of constitution that it must be publicly …| Dad Gone Wild
“She stared at the television. “Why is it that after all the bullets have bounced off Superman’s chest, he then ducks when the villain throws the empty gun at him?” ― Percival Everett, I Am Not Sid…| Dad Gone Wild
“The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that when nations are strong they are not always just, and when they wish to be just they are often no longer strong,” ― Andrew Roberts, Chu…| Dad Gone Wild
“That’s all I’ve ever dreamed of, Mr. Bones. To make the world a better place. To bring some beauty to the drab humdrum corners of the soul. You can do it with a toaster, you can do it …| Dad Gone Wild
As I travel along on this journey of educating myself on and advocating for education policy, I come into contact with quite a few politicians. The ones who I would count as friends of public educa…| Dad Gone Wild
Here we go again. In Tennessee, like many states in the Union, we test our students using standardized tests every April. In May and June, the results come out and the questioning begins. The last …| Dad Gone Wild
“Her handbag, he said, was found on the scene. I made a mental note to carry out a thorough spring clean of contents of my own bag before throwing myself in front of any trains.” ― Graeme Macrae Bu…| Dad Gone Wild
“I think that success in life is largely a matter of luck. It has little correlation with merit, and in all fields of life there have been many people of great merit who did not succeed – Popper” ―…| Dad Gone Wild
“Daylight tricks you into thinking what you see is truth, lets you go through life thinking you know everything. But the truth is we are sleepwalkers. We walk through the night that is chaos and da…| Dad Gone Wild
“Don’t blame the boss. He has enough problems.” ― Donald Rumsfeld Everybody talks about how tired parents are during the infant years of child-rearing. I’m here to tell you they …| Dad Gone Wild
“You have ability and people who don’t never forgive you for it. Your very existence is a constant reproach to them.” ― H. Beam Piper, The Works of H. Beam Piper (27 books) Earlier thi…| Dad Gone Wild
“A heroic society is almost a contradiction in terms.” ― Jane Ellen Harrison, Ancient Art and Ritual This weekend marks the kickoff of high school football season in Tennessee, As such, it a…| Dad Gone Wild
“I told her the world was full of nice people. I’d have hated to try to prove it to her, but I said it, anyway.” ― Jim Thompson, A Hell of a Woman I don’t think we ever truly app…| Dad Gone Wild
“The problem, kid,” Shorty said, “is there is no one on either side of the fence keeping measurements about what you do. God is an idea, and the devil is us.” ― Joe Lansdale Laws…| Dad Gone Wild
“We are all very anxious to be understood, and it is very hard not to be. But there is one thing much more necessary.’ What is that, grandmother?’ To understand other people.’ Yes…| Dad Gone Wild
“Poles had a dark joke in 1944, about a bird which falls out of the sky into a cowpat, to be rescued by a cat; its moral, they said, was that “Not everyone who gets you out of the shit is necessari…| Dad Gone Wild
“There is still, I think, not enough recognition by teachers of the fact that the desire to think–which is fundamentally a moral problem–must be induced before the power is developed. M…| Dad Gone Wild
“I know the word “incompetent” from my father. He uses it when there’s something political on TV, or when he and Uncle Miki are quarreling about something political they’ve …| Dad Gone Wild
“There are no self-proclaimed villains, only regiments of self-proclaimed saints. Victorious historians rule where good or evil lies.” ― Glen Cook, Chronicles of the Black Company it seems l…| Dad Gone Wild
“There needs to be an error code that means “I received your request but decided to ignore you.” ― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol These continue to be strange times that we are living in. Soci…| Dad Gone Wild
“If we’re to be at war, we might as well entertain one another.” ― Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose the Time War Fourth of July serves as a marker for the middle of summer. In polit…| Dad Gone Wild
“Always trust strangers, it’s the people you know that let you down.” ― Andrew O’Hagan Last week the Tennessee Department of Education released the data from this year’s st…| Dad Gone Wild
“People do not change, they are merely revealed.” ― Anne Enright, The Gathering Summer is definitely upon us. And when I say upon us, I mean upon us, as most of the nation suffers under extr…| Dad Gone Wild
“When it comes to paying contractors, the sky is the limit; when it comes to financing the basic functions of the state, the coffers are empty.” ― Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disas…| Dad Gone Wild
“We are embedded in habit. We dread the truly new, the truly emergent. We don’t fear the end of the world—we fear the end of the world as we know it.” ― Ray Nayler, The Mountain in the Sea I…| Dad Gone Wild
“I have lifted the rock and seen the worms writhing underneath.” ― James Hynes, Sparrow Summer has officially started in the Weber household. It’s a welcome but mixed change. Kids may …| Dad Gone Wild
“I’d never been one to give up on lost causes, maybe because I was one myself.” ― Abir Mukherjee, Smoke and Ashes It’s official. As of yesterday, I am the proud parent of two hig…| Dad Gone Wild
“If you want to write, you can. Fear stops most people from writing, not lack of talent, whatever that is. Who am I? What right have I to speak? Who will listen to me if I do? You’re a human being,…| Dad Gone Wild
“True development does not respect comfort.” ― Tom Crewe, The New Life The irony of Metro Nashville Public Schools honoring Jelly Roll the same week my son was being told, “he didnR…| Dad Gone Wild
“But you must live your own life eventually. You have one chance only.” ― Sebastian Faulks, Birdsong Going to kick the morning off with a little good news. Actually, a little great news. I k…| Dad Gone Wild
“That is my problem with life, I rush through it, like I’m being chased. Even things whose whole point is slowness, like drinking relaxing tea. When I drink relaxing tea I suck it down as if …| Dad Gone Wild
“For who can say which is the more empowered, them or us, if we can speak to each other successfully across the chasm of time and difference? Do we ourselves not become wiser and stronger every tim…| Dad Gone Wild
“The ship is always off course. Anybody who sails knows that. Sailing is being off course and correcting. That gives a sense of what life is about.” ― Michael Meade Tennessee’s Commiss…| Dad Gone Wild
