Dear Freire Friends-
A year ago today I was in Jamaica with Joe, Shirley, Maria, Myunghee, and Suhun celebrating Joe's birthday. Since it was his special day, we decided to cook him the finest Italian dinner ever- spaghetti's Jamaican style! We had such a great time that evening, and I will never forget how much we laughed! Joe, Maria, Suhun and Myunghee played cards all night, while Shirley and I watched Dallas the entire time! Joe would get up once in a while to grab a glass of Jamaican TING, because we couldn't find Canada Dry Ginger ale in Jamaica! Joe would then wonder over to where Shirley and I were watching TV and break out into the greatest Jock Ewing imitation I had ever heard! We laughed, oh we laughed.

it has been 20 weeks since Joe died, seems like 20 minutes...seems like 20 years.  Words cannot thank you all enough for your support and love.  We have finished the traveling "Joe show," in that there will be no more memorials in public.  We had an amazing time in San Diego with beloved friends and colleagues and will post that celebration in the next week or so.

Last Monday on my three hour drive home from NYC to Boston after Joe’s memorial celebration, I was speeding through the dark, iPod blaring through my car stereo, bouncing from one ambient yet upbeat song to another and trying to make sense of my experiences with Joe and the critical pedagogy world, not just from that night, but over the past months and years.  I kept fixing on and then shifting from the word “closure,” which just felt so… wrong.  There was a certain lingering sense of security from being able to share my memories and grief with others, but by no means did I feel, “closure.”  This wasn’t an ending; it wasn’t a book being shut and re-shelved or a letter being sealed; it was something else.

I first met Joe in 2005 while I was Canada Research Chair in democratic learning at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. He had recently accepted a Canada Research Chair in critical studies at McGill University. At the time, I was organizing a regular colloquium series in the department of education at Concordia and invited Joe to come speak about his work to faculty and students with the expectation he would decline my offer due to the extraordinary demands on his own time. Of course I was wrong. Not only did he accept my invitation to speak but took the necessary time to answer all questions about his work from those who joined us on that particularly frosty winter afternoon.

I will always have Joe in everything I do. Without his guidance, I would not have opportunities to speak as in this Op-Ed running today in my city paper: http://www.greenvilleonline.com/article/20090103/OPINION/901030317/1008

Continuing to grow the critical space—paul thomas

On top of being one of the most intelligent and erudite human beings I have had the pleasure to meet and get to know, Joe was the most humane. When others here write that Joe was down to earth, so un-assuming and not presumptuous, they hit the nail on the head. How many of us owe Joe how much? I know I owe my academic publishing career to Joe. I was lucky enough to thank him for that in person, but I thank him again in spirit.

I didn't learn about Joe's passing until yesterday. Though I am devastated (and feel somewhat guilty about that as I didn't know Joe as well as some of his other students, and my heart oh so goes out to Shirley and the kids) maybe the manner in which I learned about Joe's departure will help shine a light on the man's humanity for those who didn't know him.

Usually, when I write my blogs I try to appear polished and clever.  Today I am feeling very unpolished and unclever (though slightly more polished and clever than yesterday), so what follows  is just me honestly coping along side all of you as we simultaneously grieve and celebrate Joe.  In the spirit of the theme of my blog which Joe was so happy with, I want to share with you an excerpt from a journal entry I wrote back in April shortly after I had had a long phone conversation with Joe.  I believe it illustrates well the contradictions we live with daily, and how Joe just had a way of making the world seem alright (and often more than alright) when it was anything but alright.  To put it into context, he and I hadn't spoken in over a year, but we reconnected when I contacted him looking for advice about a book I wanted to write.  We began our conversation with him apologizing to me for not replying sooner, because he had been in the hospita

 It was exactly two years ago today. I woke up to the light from the Florida sun peeking through the blinds of my Aunt’s home in Orlando where my family had traveled to spend Christmas. I picked my head up from the dining room table, took off my glasses, rubbed my eyes, and looked up to the eyes of my sister Monique staring down at me. She had seen me sleeping, had made me a cup of tea, and pulled the blinds to the side to let the sun in. There she stood, looking down at me with a cup of tea in her right hand, with her gleaming white gap toothed smile forming into a whisper. “Shhh be quiet, don’t wake everyone. I settled back into my seat as she gave me a pat on the back and walked out of the room and told me to keep working.

At the opening of my presentation at McGill’s EGSS conference last year, I quoted Freire’s Pedagogy of Hope:   

“Within an understanding of history as possibility, tomorrow is problematic. In order for it to come, it is necessary that we build it through transforming today. Different tomorrows are possible. The struggle is no longer reduced to either delaying what is to come or ensuring its arrival; it is necessary to reinvent the future. Education is indispensable for this reinvention”. (Freire, 1997)