Maverick – A person who thinks and acts independently, refusing to follow the customs or rules of a group.

figurative meaning (noun) – A person who is an independent-minded individual, a nonconformist who refuses to follow the crowd, or someone who doesn’t go along with a group’s established norms.

figurative meaning (adjective) – describes someone or something that shows independence in thought or action.

Generally considered a positive word in the U.S. context, describing an independent, original, and courageous person who challenges norms and blazes their own trail.

An unbranded calf, the idea of rejecting the established herd, though it can also carry a nuance of going against a group’s ruler. The term often implies someone who, despite defying conventions, achieves positive results through innovative thinking and a strong spirit.

Rebel – actively resisting or rising up against established authority, such as a government or traditional norms, by refusing to conform or comply with rules and regulations. This resistance can manifest as physical rebellion, like participation in an armed uprising against a government, or as a personal choice to challenge societal conventions in behavior, dress, or thought.
Resisting authority: A core aspect of being a rebel in refusing to give in to the demands or control of a ruler, government, or other established power.

The reason that I looked up definitions for words like maverick and rebel (and even mustang) is because I visited the offices of the Pasadena Unified School District today (actually yesterday, as I continue writing this today).

I retired from teaching 23 years ago.

I taught for many years (40) most of them in Pasadena. This is my District.

I wanted to keep in touch, renew contact, see how things are going. Some of the people I know are still alive, some even still working.

I’m that dedicated committed teacher altruist who, even after retirement, wants to help make the world better. Education is the way. Teachers are the key.

I have stories to tell, suggestions to make, hours to volunteer in ways I can still manage.

It was Friday afternoon. Many offices closed, people gone home. Others were assembling in conference rooms for meetings. I saw them pass by and assemble as the door closed.

I spent inordinate amounts of time talking with the guard, the border guard at his table at the entrance to the building. “Sign in. Who is it you want to see? What do you want to talk to them about? I’ll direct you to the appropriate office.”

So I told him some of what was on my mind, why I care about it, why my many years with PUSD give me a certain credibility, how in those earlier times I knew practically everybody and was myself not unknown.

He was not just a good (and patient) listener, he was intelligent and articulate, and in conversation of give and take he matched the level of discourse. Anyone new to PUSD will encounter him first, and that sets a high water mark.

I do remember his name.

I wrote it down. He even spelled it out for me and I repeated it back. I withhold it here, out of respect for people’s privacy, even when I have only good things to say.

I gave him my card, and he may read my blog. In which case, he’ll recognize himself. I hope I said things right. When people impress me, I like to say so.

Then I went upstairs, not bothering to hike down the hall to the elevator in the next building, which I well remember.

Many offices, closed or closing, on the right, a multi-office for several potentates, a secretary greeting me, offering me a chair so I could explain my intentions in comfort and be properly directed.

Hearing my name and a bit of my history with PUSD, she looked at me closely, and said, “Marshall?”

“Yes.”

“1987?”

“Yes.”

Turns out she was my student, “the quiet one in the back.” I searched my memory, and dropped another name from those days, Mr. Haussler. She said, “I think so,” which suggested that she hadn’t been in his class but had heard of him.

So I launched into the explanation for my presence. “One of the things I would suggest to the appropriate administrator is to consider the writings of current and former teachers in the District. Haussler’s book is immediately local, teaching a student at Marshall Fundamental Secondary in a surrounding community that will recognize itself – “I know that place! That’s Pasadena! This makes literature real for me!” “

“So… maybe that book in every school library, maybe a high school teacher would order a class set for reading as a break from the “required classics” because we still have the power and ability to choose the curriculum…”

This, it seems to me a very good idea, allows me to modestly avoid mentioning my own book, which doesn’t have the local focus, though it does cover everything from history before language, through the middle of the 20th Century, the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s… and then the future, the near future and then the above and beyond to the outer reaches of science fiction the universe and everything…

So I wouldn’t even have to mention it, though, of course, my blog, and even recent publications, like the current article in Language Arts, are rooted in PUSD…

And all of this brings me to the reason I began this blog.

Thinking of those I knew back then, I asked if she knew or remembered Bill Bibbiani.

She said, “I don’t think so.”

But it’s too late now for me not to think of him.

His office had been around there, maybe on the same floor. He was essential to the District and wore many hats. He became a force on the School Board after I retired. He was a personal friend.

I miss him.

People knew him as “Bib.”

He was intellectually aggressive. People came to him for answers to problems. He spoke without rhetoric or jargon. He as a man of the people and talked their language.

Everyone respected him, and some people even feared him because he spoke the truth.

He was like the Doctor, keeping the system healthy, at the heart of the enterprise, pumping the money and controlling the flow like blood through the veins and arteries reaching every part, organ, cell, keeping the teachers active with a living wage, nourishing the students in each classroom node with life-giving knowledge.

He was like the virtuoso organist, sitting at the many level console, his busy hands and feet playing all the keys, pulling out the stops, the music swelling in glorious complexity reaching all ears in the cathedral of greater Pasadena.

He was like the quartermaster overseeing the troops before they left on the dangerous journey through the desert wastes of urban life, checking the sufficiency, food packed for sustenance, the range of clothing for all weathers, the full canteen.

He was the master mechanic who knew the function of every part of the machine, how each worked together, could fix any breakdown, could invent new parts as needed, as we rolled smoothly in the school vehicle along the road of life.

He was the master artist muralist, with the range of brushes, all colors, broad strokes for the outline, individual brushes for the close tiny fine details of each little pre-school baby, the inclusion of parents in the picture, and we were all in the mural, could find ourselves in relation to very other part as we saw the full picture and our own place in it.

He was also notorious for making up bad jokes which he would inflict upon anyone who came near. I was often the victim.

I could tell one which I remember, but I would have to act it out. Maybe on my vlog…

Bib challenged authority and the status quo when it was wrong and didn’t measure up.

He was not afraid to speak up and out, and got things done.

He lived modestly, in a house on Hill Street just down from where I lived when I was in the eighth grade.

And he was famous for riding motorcycles, even repairing them. His hands did not just push pencils. He had his own gang of bikers, a club he would lead on rides around and across the country.

When he died, too young, in his 50s, I read about it in the newspaper. The day after the funeral service, bikers assembled on Hill Street, about a hundred of them, and revved their engines in his honor, tribute, memory, respect, and love.

He was one of the most satisfyingly complex people I have ever known. An intellectual rebel, a maverick, like me, but not timid or shy.

He was a role model, how to be and not to be at the same time.

But for me, I’m afraid of the motorcycles. They’re powerful and heavy and go fast. I don’t see well enough, even with goggles. And my reflexes, I know this from tennis, are not fast enough and I would miss the turn.

The motorcycle is a roaring heavy beast. I tipped a parked one over once when I tried to turn the handlebars, and quickly tipped it back up before its owner noticed. He saw me and said, “Wow! That’s 600 pounds you lifted!”

But what I wanted to write about, talk about, think about, is the way Bib was a rebel.

I’ve thought about some of this before, written about it in my blog, how art is rebellion, how every artist is a rebel, and conversely, every rebel is an artist.

They (we) resist the status quo, rebel against the non-existence of the art they (we) wish to create. They (we) stretch the boundaries, resist the givens.

What is true for artists, is true for inventors too. In fact, anyone who does or makes anything new is a rebel.

The factory worker on the assembly line is making something that didn’t exist before he made it. He rebels against its non-existence.

Every new young generation famously rebels against the old ways of the world that need to be stretched and surpassed and expanded to include them.

In fact, now that I think of it, the mind is a rebel every time it has a new thought.

It all comes down to inertia.

Inertia is the ultimate of immovability. But life itself is motion. Motion is change. Without change, life ceases to exist, and life rebels against its nonexistence.

And I still like living.

I hope to do it as long as I can. Life is a holy miracle.

Bill Bibbiani was a friend I wish I knew better. He provoked thought, got us thinking. That’s what I did in my classroom, but he was the invisible hand reaching every classroom in the system.

I’m in good company.

Thank you, Bib, for bringing it up.

A little more about my friend, Bib: