Why Do I Need English 3? What Good Is Transcendentalism Going to Do Me? I'm Going to Be a Sanitation Engineer.

I had the joy of substituting the other day in an English class, for an English teacher whose work I respect.  I love what she has her students reading and what she has them doing.  Her classes are fun.  For me, anyway.

Maybe not so much for some of her students.  There are a few who are willing to give enough of their energy and effort to try to understand what she is doing and where she is taking them.  Others, not so much.

I read in a recent article about the gap between Asian students and American students.  The strange thing was, this gap doesn't really seem to become apparent until middle school and high school.  Before then, the scores are comparable.  And almost anyone who observes a high school class can probably tell you why.

They don't care.  Not all of them have become apathetic, of course.  There are many who are still invested in their education.  But many are not.  And I have a take on how this came to be.

In current education, the value is not placed on education.  It is placed on what education can bring.  And I don't mean enlightenment or understanding.  I mean a job.  I mean money.

How many times have you told someone on the verge of quitting school or a teenage child not doing well in school that they'll end up flipping burgers?  All the discussions I hear when it comes to education that are aimed at students are geared toward future income.  As if that is all that education can bring.  Not to mention that we are becoming a society of degree holders who can't find a job.

We don't tell kids in elementary that they are going to end up flipping burgers.  We try to make learning fun.  And they learn because, well, because people like to learn.  We like to know stuff about stuff.  But then when these same kids get a little older, we dangle this carrot of success and threaten with the whip of failure, and learning becomes secondary to succeeding.  It is under these conditions that apathy is born.

So one of those students asked me the titular question when I asked why he wasn't doing his assignment.  There were actually a few students involved in the discussion.  I found myself going down the whole job road/ college road without even considering an alternative argument.

I forgot to bring up the other benefits of education.  Just like most people.  Shame on me.

I forgot that being aware of your surroundings, and understanding things around you help you exist in this world.  That education can assist in developing compassion.  That education is crucial to personal development, particularly in small communities in which a broad array of experiences and ideologies do not readily offer themselves.

So why English 3?  Why learn about the Transcendentalists?  Because they were all about learning the place of the individual in society.  This is important stuff.  We, as Americans, value our individuality.  It is one of the tenets on which our country was founded.  And while the Transcendentalists may have taken the idea to extremes, it is only when individuals take ideas to the extremes that we can learn the full potential of those ideas.  You don't have to agree with them.  But you should think about what they said.  At the very least, you should know what they said.  And you should know how what they said affects everything around you.  Music.  Ideas.  Art.  Culture.



Everyone should have their own version of Walden.  A place, an activity, a retreat to ponder the value of their existence beyond how they relate to society in a monetary way.

So when you grow up, you want to be a sanitation engineer?  A cosmetologist?  Those are worthwhile undertakings.  But it is impossible to be only a sanitation engineer, simply a cosmetologist.  You will also be a citizen.  There are obligations that come with that.  Responsibilities.  Privileges.  Know what they are.

You may be a husband.  A wife.  A father.  A mother.  You will definitely be a person, and a member of society.  Be a good one.  Understand what a good member of society is, beyond what you see around you.  There is so much more to know.

I believe in education as a means of personal development.  I believe that reading, writing, and the study of the world around us can help us achieve a potential beyond the merely monetary.  I don't believe that education is only to be found in the classroom, or in a book, but I do believe that studying the thoughts of others will enhance the experiences that we encounter every day.

Sour Mood

I'm cranky.  I didn't sleep well last night.  I made poor nutritional choices today (pie and cookies for lunch).  I worked hard in the yard and Griswolding my house and then cutting some branches off a tree at Mom and Dad's.

I put up the Christmas tree.  I hate that tree.  It's a cheap Wal-mart tree.  It sheds.  We used to get a real tree, but we stopped getting them because they shed.  Now I have an artificial tree that sheds.  I put on the lights.

The kids were supposed to hang ornaments.  They were goofing around, trying to juggle them.  They kept getting distracted.  I had to force them off their computers to take part.  Then the dog took a crap in the living room behind the couch.  At that point, I lost it.  Then my wife banished me up here.

She knows me.

She knows I'm tired.  She knows I've had too much sugar.  She knows the kids are being especially annoying.

Do other people get like this?  I see happy pictures on Facebook, and happy descriptions of trimming the tree.  I think I like literature with a darker tint because it helps me realize that yes, this does happen to other people.

The good news is that I will snap out of this.  I will be happier tomorrow, after a good night's sleep, after this sugar processes through my system.

When I'm in this kind of mood, Bukowski it probably best for me.  There was a guy who understood how the world could crap down the back of your neck sometimes.  He could see that, as much as we wish for the opposite to be true, Norman Rockwell moments are rare and brief.

This was the guy who wrote:

"It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?" 

I can completely identify with this idea.

He said much more.  I think I enjoyed Bukowski more when I was younger, when I needed the reassurance more that the world can be that way.  And that it was okay.  That it could be that way, but that it wasn't important.  There is an Eastern philosophy feel to his work.  He was in the world, very much in the world physically, but somehow he managed to keep himself at a certain level of remove from the world intellectually.  He was certainly an active participant emotionally as well, but had an awareness that kept him at a level of sanity, even at his most insane.  He was able to reflect.

The quote of his that most perfectly expresses this duality of intellect and emotion:

 "Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you've felt that way."

I feel better.  Thank you, Hank.  His friends called him Hank, not Charles, which is the name he wrote under.  Thanks, Hank, for reminding me that even though I'm not perfect, no one is, or should wish to be.  We all have our moments.  And we all live through them.  Maybe my wife will let me come back downstairs now.

Critical Thinking

I substitute teach now.  Substitute teaching is easy, especially if done wrong.  If I just go in, take roll, allow the kids enough freedom to amuse themselves but not enough to cause each other bodily harm or violate school policy, I have an easy day.  If the teacher I'm substituting for actually left a substantial lesson plan, things get a little bit tougher.  I have to establish authority, set expectations, earn respect, and encourage and motivate students who may be more accustomed to substitutes who go with plan A.  A little tougher, but not much.  After all, it's not like I have to grade anything, or do any planning.

Which I hate.  I love planning lessons.  I like reading writing assignments.

So today I substituted, and things took a left turn.  The students were supposed to go to a lab to work on a paper, but the teacher didn't sign up for the lab.  This situation left me in limbo.  Time to improvise.

I've been thinking a lot about critical thinking.  As a teacher, the most important thing I can do is to teach students to be critical thinkers.  In the freefall of the classroom without a lab and therefore without a plan, I decided to have students write a definition of critical thinking.

I asked them, "What is critical thinking?"

I received some good responses, some good definitions.  I also received some bad ones.  "Critical thinking is thinking critically."  Ummm.  No.  "Critical thinking is thinking hard and coming up with a solution to a problem."  Better, but only marginally better.  I received some definitions that emulated definitions from the dictionary.  "Critical thinking is the process of using logic to determine the best course of action when confronted with a situation or problem."  Fancy.  But I still think it misses the point.

In my considerations of critical thinking, I've come up with a working definition that is simple.  For me, the critical thinker can gather not only facts from observations, but also meaning.  Or meanings.  Plural.  But more on that in a bit.

I told the students (seniors) to use critical thinking to give meaning to the results of a study about which I had heard.

The authors of this study took two groups of people, 30 American 6th grade students and 30 Japanese 6th grade students.  Each group was given a math problem to solve.  The math problem was impossible.  There was no solution, but the students weren't given that little bit of information.  Within ten minutes, the Americans had all given up.  The most common statement was "We haven't gone over this yet."  When the Japanese students were given the problem, they had to be stopped after an hour had gone by.  Not one had given up.

The majority of students came up with the following meanings for the results of the study:  Americans are lazy.  Japanese people are smarter.

They didn't think critically.


Their response was based on media messages, stereotypes, what they had heard from their parents, and a general low self-image generated by popular culture and the repeated disparagement of the American educational system.

A critical thinker would look beyond that.  A critical thinker would look at the study from several angles.  The first thing a critical thinker would do would be to break down the study.  The students were given an IMPOSSIBLE problem.  Therefore, the Japanese students were essentially wasting their time in trying to solve it.  That being the case, the Americans were smarter to quit.  Sometimes the only solution to a problem is to walk away from it.

A critical thinker would look even deeper into the study.  A critical thinker would start thinking about what the findings meant in terms of culture.  Eastern culture emphasizes the struggle.  It is glorious and noble to struggle.  The end result is only a secondary impetus to engaging in the struggle.  Whereas Americans?  It's all about the end-game.  Just win, baby.  But also about innovation.  If the traditional means of seeking a solution doesn't work, find a different solution.  Or re-frame the initial problem.  The problem wasn't the math problem.  The problem was they had been given a math problem.  They found a means of solving that problem.

A critical thinker would go beyond the study, beyond the results of the study, into the reactions of people who had heard about the results.  What is their first reaction?  Is there a secondary reaction?  What do the reactions say about the individual reacting, and does that individual typify the culture, and why?

It all comes down to asking that question.  Why?  This is the question the critical thinker asks that the non-critical thinker doesn't.  What is an easily answered question.  How is a little more difficult.  But Why never has an end.  There are causes with causes, and behind those causes are even more causes.  Why is too daunting for some people.  They are willing to accept the first answer that comes along and look no deeper.  But they never know if the first answer was the best answer.  They will say that it is.  They will believe that it is.  And if they never think critically, they can remain convinced that it is, until someone, often painfully, points out the error of their ways.

Knowing Me

Most people don't know each other.  Unless people spend most of their time in constant contact with one another, constantly filling each other in on all the events in their lives, how those events affected them emotionally, and their responses to those events, then they...



Oh, wait.  That's what Facebook is for.  And texting.

Well, okay, most people (aside from young adults and certain people that most of us will eventually unfriend due to the ongoing drama in their lives) simply don't maintain that kind of communication.  So we don't know one another.  And even those that do publish their lives on Facebook moment by moment are still giving a very subjective narrative about themselves.  If we even bother to read their posts, we can only hope we are reading between the lines correctly.

I have friends on Facebook  I haven't seen in twenty years.  They picture me as they knew me then.  Even those who have known me more recently may not know where I am now and what I am like.  I would like to think that I am constantly changing, constantly trying to be a better person than I was yesterday.  But just because I would like to think that is true, it may not be.  I may be worse.  But I can state with some confidence that I am not the person I was five years ago, ten years ago, twenty years ago...more.

Significant events in our lives change us.

A short list of events in my life which have profoundly changed me, and what I think about them:

At age 23, I quit drinking alcohol.

I had a problem.  I quit.  I have had people tell me they admire me for that, or respect that.  In all truth, it was a matter of necessity.  Drinking is bad for some people; drinking the way I did was very, very bad for me.  If I hadn't quit, I probably would have died.  I'm surprised I didn't.


I appreciate that people admire me for quitting, but the truth is, I took the easy way out.  I read an excellent quote on abstinence which sums up completely my feelings on that.  St. Augustine said, "Abstinence is easier than perfect moderation."  Abstinence from alcohol, tobacco, any addictive substance, is hard to implement, but easy to maintain.  Moderation, on the other hand, is easy to implement, but difficult to maintain.  Over the long haul, I took the easy way out.  I can maintain abstinence from alcohol.  I admire people who can maintain moderation.

At age 30, I was married.

Marriage required me to adjust the way I communicate.  I'm still prone to say what is on my mind, but marriage taught me to wait for the correct time, and to carefully consider my phrasing.  Many of you that knew me as a younger man probably recognized that at the time I was going to have my say no matter what anyone else thought.

  Now I am more careful, because I do care what at least one other person thinks.  When I am having a serious conversation, I am prone to very long pauses so I can say what I mean in a way that will mean something to the person to whom I am speaking.  My wife has told me that some people might not be sure if they like me because I don't talk much, and people tend to distrust that.  Can you imagine me being that way?

At age 33, I had my first child.


My time alone decreased yet again.  This was the first experience in my life where it was mandatory that someone else's needs came before my own.  In most relationships, the other person's needs can often wait, or they can attend to themselves to a certain degree.  It doesn't work that way with kids.  There is only right now.

At age 35, I was fired from my first job.

I had a very good job on a monetary scale.  I hated the job, and it wasn't good for me, but it allowed me to provide very well for my family.  Getting fired from that job was the worst and best thing that ever happened to me.  It caused me to experience financial distress due to the number of bills we had built up in our pursuit of the insanely acquisitive American dream, but it also allowed me to conceive of a world where I didn't dread going to work every day, a world in which I could be happier on a daily basis.  My subsequent jobs weren't much better, but I realized they were only jobs.

At age 40, I elected to go into teaching.


I made the decision, but I had my doubts.  Turns out I loved most aspects of teaching.  The students, the interaction, the inner growth that I experienced as a teacher.  I looked forward to most days at school.  I made a true discovery that most people, even the unruliest of students, can be talked to in a one on one situation and reasoned with.  I learned so much about language, and people, and myself.  I found a calling that would allow me to be happy.  Aristotle said, "All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind."  I found one that didn't, or at least one that didn't degrade my mind as quickly as my previous jobs.  But...

At age 43, I was fired again.

Why was I fired?  It wasn't lack of enthusiasm for the job.  It wasn't due to a lack of ability.  It certainly wasn't anything tawdry or scandalous.  The truth of the matter is, I don't know why.  The administration gave only hints.  I think the closest thing to the truth was that my philosophies and those of the administration were not compatible.  Funny how sometimes the vaguer things are, the closer to true they become.  But the effect of this termination on my personality is still yet to be determined.  I'm still not at ease in my mind with where I am on this.  One way it has definitely affected me is to make me more compassionate towards others who have experienced or are experiencing failure.  And it has made me more accepting of and grateful for my own failures.  We fail today so that we learn how to fail better tomorrow.  I think when we say someone is an unqualified success, we do them a disservice.  To be truly admirable, success must overcome failure.


Me at 45.

We are all the product of our pasts.  Here's a little of mine.  Of course, this is a subjective look at myself and my experiences.  Is there any other way?  There is no doubt that you know me better now if you have read this far.  Later today I may post on Facebook about my experience at Wal-mart, or something I cooked for dinner.  That won't tell you much about me. But the drama?  I'll leave that to the younger people, I think.

The Answer to the Question, How Long Will I Feel Like This?

Many of my friends on Facebook are former students.  Young people.  And I witness daily at least one case or another of a freshly broken heart.   But it isn't always the young people.  I see people my age who go through the same thing, just not as often.  That's probably a good thing, but still...

So many.

Broken hearts happen all the time.  To everybody.  But there is nothing quite so personal or so painful as having one.

I think I suffered from quite a few broken hearts.  Enough that I actually became pretty good at understanding what I was going through, why I was going through it, and what I had to do to make the pain stop.  So here's some advice for anyone dealing with a broken heart:

1)  Let yourself be sad.  You can try anger, you can try righteous indignation, or you can try denying sadness and pretend to be manically happy.  But the truth is, sad is the appropriate response.  You are losing something.  It's okay to be sad.  Sad is part of acceptance.

2)  Once you have gained acceptance, then it is time to realize that while it may not feel that way, you will get over your broken heart.  You have to.  You know that feeling where you wonder if it's even worth it to get out of bed, to go to work, to go to school?  It goes away.  It will.  It takes time, but it will go away.  And you do have some power to make it go away.  The most important phrase I learned concerning how to deal with a broken heart is this one:  "I'm going to have to start getting over this eventually.  Why not start now?"  And then I would get up and go to work or go to school or go for a bike ride or mow the yard.

3)  One of the easiest things you can do to help yourself get rid of a broken heart is:  nothing.  Even if you do absolutely nothing to get over your broken heart, it will heal.  At first, every waking moment will be consumed with the knowledge that you have a broken heart.  Then after a while, you will have to start reminding yourself occasionally that you have a broken heart.  Eventually, you may even go whole days without thinking about your broken heart. Of course, this is the slow method.  This method may take a long, long time.  I don't really recommend it.  There are two other quicker methods, and both work, but the side effects are completely different.

4) Quickest way to get over a broken heart:  Fall in love with someone else.  Yes, you can really do that.  It will be a brittle kind of love, most likely.  Rebound love.  This love will be driven by self-interest.  You don't want to let self-interest do the driving because self-interest has extremely short-term goals.  Self-interest will lead you to pick the wrong partner.  If the wrong partner discovers first that he/she is the wrong partner, he/she will leave you and you're back to square one on the heartbreak thing.  Or eventually that broken heart heals (as it would have done anyway) and you realize that you selected someone to be with for all the wrong reasons and you need to bail, probably breaking that person's heart in the process.  Side effects: broken heart #2 or spending a lot of time with someone you eventually realize you don't love.

5) Not so quick way, but quicker than doing nothing:  Devote your time to growing.  If the heart is a muscle (and I'm talking figurative heart, we all know the literal heart is a muscle), then when it is broken and healing, you need to devote yourself to working out the other strengths you have in order to compensate for the one that is healing.  Work on your friendships.  Spend time with people who you like to be with.  Work on your inner life.  Go places, do things, see things.  Do interesting things, even if you don't feel like it.   Go on a wild cave tour.  Ride in a hot air balloon.  Eat a sea urchin.  Read a book that you have always thought you should read but never have.  Strengthen relationships within your family.  Build something.  As you do this, your heart will heal.  And when it has healed, you will be a stronger, more interesting person overall.

I don't claim to know everything about how to get over a broken heart.  I only know what has worked for me.   To answer the question, "When will I stop feeling like this?" is not a simple answer, and the answer isn't really satisfactory.

You will stop feeling that way when you do.  And when you decide that you want to stop feeling that way badly enough to do something about it.

Where the Bananas Are

My latest addiction is Stumbleupon.com.  I can spend an hour easily jumping from one item to the next, constantly looking for items of interest.  When I signed up for an account, I was asked to list my interests, and one of those interests was quotations.  I love a well-constructed phrase that provides insight into the working of the human psyche or human society.

Of course, many quotations are meant to be inspirational.  I was perusing a website the other day that was filled with inspirational quotes when it occurred to me what I was doing, and why.

First it has to be understood that I am an unapologetic believer in evolution as a concept to describe how human society has been shaped. The development of the human language was a key factor in the success of humans as a species (7 billion strong and growing).

Before our current success, we had to survive.  Communication was key in our survival.  Of course, that isn't limited to just the human species.  It is key to many species, and the impetus for communication within a species deals with two main topics:  where food may be found and warnings of danger.

These concepts are only important to species who live communally.  We qualify for that.  Solitary animals usually only have two types of communications:  this is mine (stay away) and it's time to reproduce.  I guess we have those as well, but that type of communication is generally self-evident, I think, and doesn't lend itself to my current topic.

What does lend itself to my current topic is dancing bees.  Bees are a communal animal, and they have a means of letting other bees know where to get the pollen.  Upon returning to the hive, bees who have found a good source of pollen will do what is known as either "the waggle dance" or "the round dance."  The waggle dance tells the other bees the pollen is some distance away, the round dance is a shortened version of the waggle dance that tells the other bees that the pollen is closer.  If the pollen is really good, the bees dance harder.

Another animal behavior that lends itself to my topic is meerkat barking.  They live communally, too, and when they are out foraging, one meerkat will stand guard.  If the sentry spots something hinky, he barks, and everybody takes cover.  Then, once everyone is safe in the hole, the sentry will go out, barking constantly as he checks everything out.  When everything seems to be in order, he stops barking, and everybody comes back out.

Bees dancing to share food sources and meerkats barking to warn of danger.  I think the human language began with our primitive ancestors trying to convey similar concepts to one another.  We just got real good at it.  We developed a language capable of expressing both concepts in many ways, shapes and forms.  And as simple as these concepts seem, I want to take them down a step further.  I want to completely simplify the underlying idea.

There is food here:  At the most basic, this idea can be simplified to I can lead you to sustenance.

Danger approaches:  The root idea behind this is I see something you don't which will cause you harm.

In the first idea, sustenance can go beyond physical sustenance.  We, as humans, have progressed beyond just struggling day to day to find nourishment for our bodies.  We have reached a point in our development in which spiritual, emotional, and existential nourishment is much more difficult to come by than a bunch of bananas.

We have also moved past warning each other about approaching creatures which may be trying to eat us.  Our warnings usually have more to do with self-destructive behaviors, or warnings against misconceptions on where sustenance as understood in the first idea may be found.

Now think of every inspirational quote you have seen today, either on Facebook or wherever you get your inspirational quotes.  Does it offer sustenance or a warning?

I love quotes.  I love the simple expression of complex ideas inherent in the best quotes.  But I think the complexities of this world go far beyond what a simple quote can tell us.  We need to read, we need to try to  understand more than these simple quotes that we see all day can express.  We have moved beyond the simple bee dance and the meerkat bark.

We can't just throw quotes back and forth and hope to convey to one another the broad range of sustenance available and dangers present in today's society.  We have to read, we have to talk to one another, we have to truly communicate in order to really understand each other.  There is sustenance everywhere, and we can tell one another how to find it.  There is danger every where, and we can keep one another from falling prey to it.  But first we have to understand one another, and that has to come from a deeper level of communication than can be expressed in an internet meme posted on Facebook or Stumbleupon.  We have to remember that the inspirational quote can only tell us where the bananas are.  It is up to us to go get them.

Elegy for Robin Melton

This weekend, the world lost one of the truly great people I have known.

Robin Melton grew up in Billings, Missouri just like me.  She was in my brother's class, a year older than me.  She lived about a block from me.  She had a great yard for whiffle ball, and I remember playing there.  I remember her mother had one of those purple martin houses, and there was a particular bird living there which Robin pointed out.  She said he was very rare in this part of Missouri.  He looked to me like any other bird, but she knew he was special.

I wonder if Robin knew how special she was?  I think she did.  But she never held that over anyone.  She was intelligent, athletic, and beautiful.  Many people are at least one of those things.  She had the good fortune to possess all those attributes, and one more.  She was kind.

I was the kid brother tagging along when I went to her house.  Robin was impressive then, even before we all went through adolescence and realized the incredible beauty she possessed.  She played baseball on the boys' baseball team, and excelled at it. As a kid brother, I was used to being rejected by my brother's older cooler friends, but Robin welcomed me as an equal.

Growing up in a small town, there are rarely any of the cliques you will find in larger schools, but common interests do have a tendency to produce groups which spend more time together.  Robin was an athlete and a cheerleader.  She ran with a popular crowd, and she was usually at the center of that crowd.  She still made time for everyone that wanted to talk to her.

Years later, after I had gone through various life-shaping events, I ran into Robin.  She and my wife served on the board for the local Habitat for Humanity together.  My wife was as impressed by her as I have been for most of my  life.  We would see Robin at various events, or even just out shopping, and she always made time to say hello.

I even had the opportunity to interview for a job with Robin once.  I was between jobs at the time.  She knew I had a degree in English.  In the interview, she told me she had some wonderful scientists working for her, but they just couldn't write.  She tried to justify the additional expense of a writing consultant by exploring other areas where I might be able to pitch in.  Unfortunately, I had no back-hoe experience to go with my English degree, so the position didn't materialize.

She did ask me one question in the interview, though, that I have carried with me.  When I told her that I just hadn't found a job that I felt would make me happy and challenge me, she asked me why not.  She appeared to be honestly confused by the concept.

I think she spent her whole life challenging herself and succeeding, always moving forward.  Living any other way was not even a consideration.

In this part of Missouri, in any part of the world, Robin was one of the rare ones.  I have known a few people who have accomplished great things.  But I have never known anyone who did so with such grace, with such kindness, with such beauty.

What I've Been Reading (and feeling guilty about)

I've been reading THE CLASSICS, or at least trying to read the classics.  There are many books which I feel I should have read that I haven't yet.  I'm trying to make up for that.

Most of these books are available free on my Kindle.  Moby Dick and The Brothers Karamazov are two examples.  I'm trying to read both.

But I have to admit, I've bogged down in Moby, and I fear the same may happen in The Brothers.  My life is lived in short bursts of activity.  Not often do I have the time to just sit and read and concentrate and spend a good amount of time thinking about what I have read.

All these wonderful time saving devices in my house, and I have less time than ever.  Or so I tell myself.  Even when I may have the opportunity, I feel guilty for indulging myself.  I always feel like there is something else I should be doing.

I should repaint the trim in my house.

There is a lot that could be done in the yard.

There are all kinds of projects I could be doing at the farm.

I need to go visit family more.

I should be spending more time with my kids.

I need to be working on my novel.

I should be doing more to find a job and help support my family.

Please don't think these reasons are in order of importance.  They just occur to me in random order, so I wrote them that way.

One day last week, I didn't feel well.  It started as a minor stomach thing, but was exacerbated by the fact that I didn't have any coffee in the house.  If I don't get my dose of caffeine in the morning, bad things happen.  That day, I somehow lost the drive to do anything else except read.  I read all of The Moon and Sixpence by Somerset Maugham.  If you haven't read him, you should.  Particularly The Razor's Edge.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself.  Between bouts of napping my way through a migraine and reading, the entire day got away from me.  Of course, guilt set in later, but I did enjoy myself.  I just needed the excuse of not feeling well to avoid the guilt long enough to read.

I need to read more.  Before life became so complicated, I read so much.  When I was a teenager, when I was in the Army, when I was in college, I read so much.  For anyone who thinks all their time is being absorbed by high school or college or the military, you have no idea.  Have a family.  Have a home.  Even without a job, I have no time.  I always stay busy.  There is something about the age I am, and my circumstances, that makes me feel guilty when I do things by myself which I enjoy.

My Lack of Gratitude for Where I Am Now

Sadly enough, the first thing that hits me when I wake up each morning is the fact that I don't have a teaching job.  I wake up, and there is that moment.  And then the moment of disgust with myself for my own self-pity. I then get up, get my children around to go to their summer day camp, pack their lunches, get myself ready for my day, and take them there.  Or sometimes my wife takes them.

I really don't think self-pity in my situation is appropriate.  What I should feel is gratitude.  I have a job.  In many ways, it's a good job.  I go in at a time that is convenient for me.  I work on days that are convenient for me.  I am making a monetary contribution to my household, albeit not a very large one.

On days when I don't go to that job, I go help a friend remodel his house.  I get to spend the day with people I like, and I get to learn new skills.  While this endeavor doesn't make a monetary contribution to the household, it has allowed me to replace the carpet in my house (badly needed) in exchange for my labor.  Very nice carpet, too.

And I have the opportunity to do what I have always said I wanted to do.  The flexibility of my schedule allows me to write.  I am not emotionally or creatively drained by either job.  In fact, they seem to be inspiring me on some levels.  I'm writing a novel, and it is going well.  I like it.

My future is uncertain, and I don't like that.  But everyone's future is uncertain.  The uncertainty in mine is just a little more apparent.

Will I get my novel published?  I don't know.  Will I ever be allowed the opportunity to teach again?   I don't know.

I need to concentrate on what I do know, not on what I don't.  I know my wife loves me and supports me.  I know I have more time for my kids now.  I know that writing makes me happy.  I know that there are people in my life who believe in me and value me.

I read today about some of the tenets of Eastern religion and philosophy.  We should not concentrate on the product of our efforts, but on our efforts themselves.  Success and failure are in many ways not in our control, and are actually only a matter of perception.  The only thing we can control is what we do and how well we do it, and we should approach what we do with a certain level of dispassion in order to ensure the quality of our work.  This goes against much of what we learn in the west.  We are told to do things passionately.  There are drawbacks to this.  One of those is our reaction to failure.

I'm afraid that failure is inevitable.  I will fail.  But failure is not the end.  Failure is an opportunity to learn.  Too much emotional investment will result in not gaining all lessons to be learned from that failure, or lessons learned too late.

Maybe this novel will never see the light of day.

A certain quote makes more sense to me now.  I am not trying to be published.  What I am doing is writing.  Publication is not the goal.  Writing well is the goal.  The quote I refer to is, "Do or do not.  There is no try."

I will continue to apply for teaching jobs.  This is something I can do.  I can't control the outcome, but I can continue to do this.

I will continue to write.  And I will submit my writing for publication.  This, too, is something I can do.

And I thank everyone who helped create this opportunity for me, no matter the role, up to and including my own.

Head Lice and Other Tragedies

To what extent is it healthy to be able to let go of things beyond individual control?

I always try to think about this sort of thing in two ways.  First, I consider it from a secular point of view.  I would think that most psychologists and psychoanalysts would consider it perfectly healthy to be able to just dismiss the circumstances and move on.  Then I consider it from a more religious stance, and I remember the line from the AA meetings:  Let go, let God.  We can't control everything, and too strong an inner need to attempt to control everything leads to madness, and in that madness, self-medication.

So what brings up this topic at this time?  My daughter.  She was due to begin camp today.  We had everything packed, she was all ready, and then we arrived at camp.  She checked in, then checked in with the nurse.  And the nurse found head lice.

I was horrorstruck.  I had seen the signs at the day camp where Audra and Jackson are spending their days this summer that they had two confirmed cases.  "Doesn't affect me,"  I thought.  "My kids are clean."  Guess what?  That doesn't matter.  I was still operating under the assumption that only dirty people get lice.  So not true, I found out.  But this isn't about me.  This is about my daughter.

My wife broke the news to my daughter like a doctor breaking the news to a cancer patient.  "I'm so sorry," she said.  I watched Audra's reaction.  I also watched her for a reaction to the news she has head lice (had - first stop was Walgreen's for a lice treatment kit and we are still washing every bit of washable fabric in the house and spraying the rest).

There was maybe a flash of disappointment as the news hit home...and then she was off and playing and joking with her younger brother again like nothing had happened.  And I wondered, is this healthy?

I didn't want her to have a fit.  Or break down in tears.  But a little more disappointment seemed a little in order to me.

Of course, this is also the girl, who upon being told that her errant behavior in kindergarten made both me and her mother very said, "Oh, do what I do.  If something makes me sad, I just don't think about it."

And she still doesn't.  I wonder how it is to be that way.  Everything in my life that has ever hurt me or disappointed me or caused me emotional pain seems to within arm's length at any given time.  I can distinctly remember the pain of being rejected by peers as a child and by employers as an adult with just a casual foray into my memory.

This doesn't seem to exist for my daughter.  And I wonder.  Will she be happier than me?  I certainly hope so.

Prufrock, or that damned snickering eternal Footman.

The entire poem is here: Prufrock

This is the poem that often runs through my head.  It is the song that, while I recognize its flaws, I will probably always consider it my own special song.

T.S. Eliot.  A genius.  And I don't consider him a genius because of "The Wasteland," that work of his that gets so much attention.  That poem is for smart people.  When I have to refer to footnote after footnote to catch references in order to even begin to understand it, then I have a hard time putting any kind of emotional investment into it.

Ah, but Prufrock.  I get this poem.  It speaks to me, and affects me.  The language is simple, the main character is...well, me, and conversely the me I'm glad I'm not.

I have seen a poster utilizing one of the lines from the poem as a caption, "Do I dare disturb the universe?"  This line, in isolation, is inspirational.  In the context of the poem, however, it is a sad statement concerning the doubts that assail each of us when we consider endeavors that will draw attention to ourselves.  Sad, because for the main character of the poem, that answer is no.  And while this is a great line, it is not the line that keeps me awake at night.  Sometimes, yes, I do dare to disturb the universe.  Maybe not as often as I could, but universe-disturbing should probably not be a constant labor.

The line that always gets me is "and I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker/and in short, I was afraid."  Oh, poor Prufrock.  He knows there will be no posterity for him.  He never asserted himself, he never pushed anything to a conclusion because he was afraid the answer would be no.

Fear is awful.  Fear of failure is worse than failure.  Failure teaches.  Failure hurts, but it is also an opportunity for growth.  Fear of failure is simply paralysis.  Nothing changes, nothing gets better.

I regret most often the times I didn't try because of fear of failure.  Currently, I'm experiencing a lot of failure, and it hurts.  But I also believe that I'm growing.  Even at this late date in my life, I'm growing.  If nothing else, I'm growing more compassionate for others who have faced failure.

But what if I had tried harder earlier, what if I hadn't let the fear of failure stop me?  Where would I be?  I don't know, and that kind of speculation is really pointless.  Regret is useful only to the extent that it drives us to not repeat the circumstances that brought about the regret.  I must try now.  That is all that matters.

I will disturb the universe at times.  I will eat a peach.  And yes, the mermaids will sing to me.  I may fail, but those mermaids damn sure will be singing for me.

Things To Think About When Writing a Zombie Apocalypse Novel

So I've been writing a young adult zombie novel.  This gives rise to some serious and not so serious considerations.

Serious consideration:
What do zombies represent in the American consciousness, the zeitgeist, the deeper meaning?
I've done a little reading considering zombies.  I'm talking the George Romero-Night of the Living Dead zombies, not those wimps from the Caribbean and Central and South America in The Serpent and the Rainbow.  Werewolves represent the onset of adolescence, vampires represent awakening sexuality, so what about zombies?  To me, they represent the transition from adolescence into adulthood.  We go from being  lively, curious, and emotional to a dead, grasping, emotionless, decaying state.  I addressed this matter to a PhD friend of mine, and she pointed out that zombies want to eat living brains in much the same way the current educational system wants to transform children into "productive members of society."


Not so serious consideration:
If zombies eat, do they also poop?
Okay, so I've been thinking way too much about how zombies could really function.  So much so that I have to occasionally step back and remind myself that animated corpses are impossible.  I've read quite a bit about possible causes of a zombie apocalypse, and I've formulated several ways I could justify their existence in a work of fiction.  But the simple fact of the matter is that it just doesn't matter.  Too many people overexplain causes.  I've determined that the majority of people don't care about the how or the why, they just want the what next?  That's not to say I don't address it in my novel.  But it really isn't important.  I guess I'm a story teller, more interested in thrusting people into difficult circumstances and seeing how they deal with it rather than dwelling on the scenery and vehicle for the action.  See also this: Do zombies poop?

Serious consideration:
By the time I finish this novel, will zombies be passe?
There is a chance that could happen.  Recently, we've gone into and out of the vampire craze, and are well into the zombie craze.  I looked at direct-to-Kindle published books on zombies.  There's only, like, 700 of them.  Of those I sampled, some were awful, and some were quite good.  There was everything from historical zombies to romantic zombie stories to adventure and horror.  But I'm not writing just to be riding the wave.  I think I have something to say.  I think I'm writing a good book that happens to take place in a zombie apocalypse.

Not so serious consideration:
Why don't characters in zombie novels and movies know that they are facing zombies?
My wife asked me this question the other night.  We've watched The Walking Dead, Zombieland, and she is currently reading David Moody's Autumn series.  I like Robert Kirkman's (creator of the graphic novel upon which the television series The Walking Dead  is based) response to this question:  The novel/series takes place in an alternate world where George Romero never made Night of the Living Dead .  From a writer's point of view, this almost has to be the case.  Post apocalyptic novels have been written, certainly many inspired by the Cold War.  But a scenario in which the dead rise and walk?  We all think about how we would deal with it.  Many of us know the "rules" and survival techniques.  But what fun would it be to write that?  Actually, it might be fun to write that, and have the biggest zombie survival experts fail miserably, while the bumblers survive and thrive.  Oh, wait.  That's been done in Shaun of the Dead.

Serious consideration:
How much can I change the "rules" and still appeal to zombie apocalypse fans?
Things we know about zombies:
They eat people (sometimes specifically brains).
They can only be stopped by destroying their brains.
In large groups they are unstoppable.
They move slow.
And of course, all these rules have been broken at one time or another by one author or another.  So I think I can change the rules quite a bit and still have a zombie novel.  My apocalypse, my rules.  The only thing I have to have is dead people who refuse to go gentle into that good night.

Not so serious consideration:
Why I must never use the word "zombie" in my zombie apocalypse novel.
'Cause it's low rent.  That word is not used in any zombie novel of substance I've come across.  "Zombie" is a term applied by fans to all the creature-driven works of fiction inspired by Romero who was in turn inspired by Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, written in 1954, well before the more recent Will Smith debacle which butchered the key idea behind the novel, which was that we never really know who the monsters are, especially when they are us.  Zombie is a cheap term for a complex representation of human hopes, fears, and nightmares.  But everybody knows what you are talking about when you use it, so go on ahead.

The Artist at Work

I admire artists.  I admire people who can draw, and sculpt, and carve.  Those are what most people think of when they think of artists.

But those aren't the only artists.  Those are the artists that probably get the most recognition for being artists.  What I admire, though, are the everyday artists.

I admire people who can conceive of something that doesn't yet exist in this world, and then throw their whole being into creating it.  I have been privileged to know a few artists like that in my lifetime.

I spent the earlier part of my week helping a friend put in a wood floor in a house he is renovating.  I enjoyed learning how to do something I had known how to do before.  My friend had done floors for a living prior to having his back broken in an accident, and while he couldn't work as hard or as long as he had in the past, he was very capable of showing me a few tricks.

And he was capable of creating art.

He conceived of designs and and imagined how they would look.  He either had the necessary skills to make the designs happen, or improvised on the spot how to make the images in his mind come to life.  I'm sure he was in a lot of pain while doing it.  It would have been much easier to just lay the floor in simple straight lines.  If he had done that, I could have completed it myself in a day and a half after he showed me the ropes.

Instead, he took the time to make the hundreds of extra, meticulous cuts.  Some boards had to be cut five and six times in order to fit just right.  Instead of me doing it by myself in two days, it took three people three days to finish.  And it was beautiful.

He kept saying over and over how beautiful it would be when finished.  I thought it would be nice, but I had no idea how beautiful it could be.  Turns out, it was stunning.  He took a great amount of joy in his creation.  I was glad to be there to see the process, to see the joy in the act of creating a thing of beauty push him past the pain.

Evaluations, Decisions, and Consequences, or How I Spent My Vacation

I just returned from vacation.  We elected to drive this year rather than fly.  The consequences of this decision were both good and bad.

Good:  We spent a lot of time together as a family.  We set our own agenda.  We counted a lot of Volkswagen Beetles.

Bad:  We spent less time at destinations and more in between, and we didn't have an agenda, really.  Freedom is a worrisome thing.

As a direct result of setting our own agenda, we made some questionable decisions.  We drove from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina to Kittyhawk, North Carolina.  We did this by the land route.  There are other options.

Myrtle Beach was itself a questionable decision.  Picture the worst aspects of any tourist trap, magnified by a thousand.

After leaving the mini-golf mecca of the South, we went to Kittyhawk, NC on the Outer Banks.  This is an incredible area.  The further off the beaten path, the better it gets.  We went all the way north, up to Currituck.  There, we saw the Currituck Lighthouse.

The next day we were to leave to go to my sister's in Richmond, VA, which was about a four hour drive.  With that short of a travel time, we went back to Currituck the next morning and attempted to rent a jeep to go driving on the dunes, but they were booked up.  So we decided to go south and see the Brodie Lighthouse.  After Brodie, we decided what the heck, we'd continue south to see the Hatteras Lighthouse.  After that, how could we not continue on to see the last of the NC Outer Banks lighthouses on Ocracoke Island, which is as far south as roads go.  We were getting further and further from our final destination, but enjoying new experiences and seeing the best the Outer Banks had to offer.

To get to the Ocracoke Lighthouse, we had to take a 30 minute ferry ride.  This was nice, and fun, but the day was getting away from us. We had to make the decision at this point to drive all the way back up, probably a time saver and better roads, or take a two and a half hour ferry ride to land in a Wildlife Refuge in the backwater of North Carolina.  We took the ferry option.

On the ferry, my wife struck up a conversation with a 90 year old man who had been in the CCC and built some structures on the Outer Banks in the 30's.  The structures were all gone, but he didn't seem to mind.  He spoke over and over about decisions he had made in his life, and his lack of regrets despite the hard times.

On the drive that evening, I asked my wife to remind me at 9 p.m. how much I had enjoyed the day and driving down the Outer Banks.  I had known my decision would put me driving later than I wanted.  When I'm near the ocean, I love to wake up before dawn and walk the beach as the sun comes up.  This is not conducive to good late night driving.

We arrived at my sister's house in Richmond at 11 p.m.  I was exhausted.  I had earlier made a decision to be uncomfortable, even miserable, in order to see and experience things I had never experienced before.

It was worth it.

I equate that decision with other decisions I have made in my life, especially more recently.  I elected to move from a fairly secure job and take a chance on a new career as a teacher.  I knew there were things about me, my personality and my outlook, my philosophies and beliefs, which might cause me problems in a public school environment.  But I don't regret that decision.  It was worth it, and it is still worth it, even in my current situation.

I equate what I am going through now with those last few hours of driving in the darkness.  There is a destination for me, even if it is not clear right now.  I am uncomfortable, I am nervous, I am worried.  I am dealing with the consequences of my decisions. I am aware of mistakes I have made, but I don't really have regrets.  I'll keep driving on until I get where I am going, and remembering the wonderful experiences that I have had.

I Must Try to Remember

Yesterday was a rough day.  In the morning, I received notice that I hadn't gotten a job I was fairly sure I had a good chance of getting.  Then, when I attempted to go to my back up plan for the upcoming school year, I found out I had managed to screw that chance up as well.

Everything external to myself seemed to be trying to indicate that I should give up my dream.

I was awash in self-pity.  Worse than that, I hated myself for being awash in self-pity.  I can't stand when people wrap themselves up in their own little universes of self-pity and fail to understand why they suddenly feel like the whole world is against them.

But at 44 years old, I have learned a thing or two about how to deal with adversity.  I am a person who seems to be predisposed toward putting myself into situations where failure is always an option, and sometimes it seems this is the option I'm most likely to take.

The first and best thing I do is to give myself permission to be sad.  It seems sometimes that we forget it is okay to be sad.  There is a big difference between sadness and self-pity.  Sadness is "things are not good, and that makes me feel bad."  Self-pity is "things are not good, why do bad things always happen to me, I don't deserve this, I'm a good person most of the time, nothing good ever happens to me, everyone else is happy except me, etc., etc."

The key difference here is sadness is much more finite.  I am sad, I have a reason to be sad.  Now what?

And the correct answer to that, for me, has always been, "I have to get over this sometime, why not start now?"  This is my mantra to replace the litany of self-pity.  The next is, "What do I do now?"

This morning, I revisited plan B.  I went to the place that told me I had no chance, and asked for one more.  I was not told yes.  But the hard no became a soft no, contingent on someone else's decision.  It may not happen, but I prefer "may not" to "definitely not."

And then I began formulating plan C.

So at what point do I give up the dream?  I've got the rest of the alphabet, and then I guess I can go to the Greek alphabet.

I may sound optimistic, but that's not really the case.  My optimism has always been of the post-Modern variety.  I don't believe in absolutes, and my particular brand of hope carries within it the possibility of failure.  What I do believe in is the importance of individual perception (again, post-Modern in nature).

Many people who look at me and where I am now would see me as a failure.  Sometimes that voice of self-pity comes through and I see myself that way as well.  But this perception of failure is, like most things, temporary.  There will be a change.  And if I don't feel I'm a failure, the perceptions of others shade toward irrelevancy.

At some point in my life, I will regard myself as being successful again.  There will be some event, some accomplishment, some recognition that I have succeeded.  It is an unfortunate aspect of my personality that I will probably not expend a fraction of the emotional energy I have put into being sad at this moment into being happy in that moment, but I must try to remember.

Responsibility? Yes, I'll Have Some

Today, I'm thinking about responsibility.  I have become aware of several incidents recently in which the people involved have done everything in their power to push the blame onto someone else.  Not some of it, all of it.

This strikes me as wrong.

Bad things happen to people which are beyond their power.  I do believe this.  However, if a person is involved in a situation, there were choices made which allowed the situation to happen.  Those choices may have been made without enough knowledge to foresee the consequences, but the choices were made.

I'm not talking about accepting fault.  For example, if you are driving, legally and safely, and someone else hits you through their own carelessness, you do not have to accept fault.  But you did make the choice to be driving, and therefore you knew you were taking a possible risk of being hit.  This is responsibility.  And you will have to deal with the consequences.

This is a light version of responsibility.  This is a situation in which you took a calculated risk and things did not go in your favor.

There are other, far riskier choices people make.  Sometimes we make risky choices for what we believe are good reasons.  If I were to see a man hitting a woman, or someone weaker than himself, and I chose to involve myself, there is risk involved, and I will willingly accept the consequences of this choice.  I am responsible for that decision, and I accept what may happen to me.

I have made many such decisions, and the consequences have not always turned out in my favor.  I choose to help people, or do what I believe is right, even against conventional expectation.  This has cost me jobs sometimes, and other important things in my life.

Sometimes, I see later that those choices were not best for me, and with more information and understanding, maybe not even best for other people involved.

I make mistakes.  And I accept responsibility.  If I were not to own my choices, I could not learn from them when the consequences negatively affect me.  When faced with a similar situation, I may adjust my response based on previous experience.

In order to continue learning, to become a better person, I must understand:  The responsibility in any given situation in which I find myself is, to a greater or lesser extent, mine.

Six Blocks

On Friday, my wife and I went to St. Louis for a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert.  The concert started at 8:00.  We planned for her to pick me up at my workplace in Strafford at  4:00 and we would be on our way.  Unfortunately, as usual, things did not go exactly as planned.  She didn't pick me up until closer to 5:00.

The trip up was hurried, but uneventful.  Yes, we sped.  She drove the first leg, but we did the Jedi mind trick that seems to work on cops, at least until it doesn't.  We made sure to not exceed 7 mph over the speed limit:  "These are not the speeders you are looking for."  The fact that we were in a Traverse, essentially a mini-van that pretends it isn't, made us a little less likely to be pulled over.

We arrived at the motel, the Millenium, at about 8:00.  We elected to just park and walk to the Scottrade Center, which was where the concert was taking place.  We asked the check-in clerk at the Millenium how to get to Scotttrade.  We were given three options:  the shuttle, the Metro, or a taxi.

Barb and I looked at each other.  We asked about walking, but she looked at us quizzically and said, "But it's six blocks.  Maybe seven?"  This seemed to put it beyond walking distance in her mind.  We left, thinking maybe we would take one of her options, but back out in the open air, walking still seemed the best option to us.  Except we hadn't asked directions for walking.

So we parked the car in the parking garage, and exited the parking garage.  A panhandler asked me for a dollar so he could go buy beer.  I appreciated the honesty, I guess, because I gave him a dollar.  I also asked him which direction to the Scottrade Center.  He appeared to be homeless, surely he would know how to walk around downtown and where things were.

He pointed us in a direction, but he warned us it was six blocks.  I couldn't help thinking to myself, does no one walk in St. Louis?  Of course, we were worried about missing the beginning of the concert, but it had become something of a point to prove that six blocks was not an insurmountable distance on foot.

We started walking.  Downtown St. Louis is a nice place.  There are gardens, and parks, and fountains, and best of all, there are maps every so often.  We located one of these, and the homeless guy had not pointed us in exactly the wrong direction, but he was close.

It was, as always, hot and muggy.  I confess, I may have perspired a bit in the walk, but it was not unenjoyable, and it certainly wasn't the Herculean task portrayed by the motel clerk and the panhandler.  We made it, and the opening band hadn't even wrapped up yet when we got there.  We weren't that impressed by them, anyway, but we only heard two songs.  Then there was that strange, equipment shifting intermission between musical acts, and RHCP blew the lid off the place.

After the concert, we walked back to the motel.  Another six blocks making it a total of twelve blocks walked that evening.  It may have even been more, because we probably wandered an extra block or two on the way there until we got our bearings.

And this leads me to my point, I guess, despite my wandering a bit.  We become accustomed to a certain way of doing things, or we impose limits on what we will do based on societal norms.  We allow ourselves to be limited.  Barb and I were ignorant enough to believe we could walk that six blocks, and we did.  It was not really that much of a task, and yet to natives of the area it was something that just wasn't done.

We can laugh at them for their self-imposed limitations, be we need to look at our own lives as well.  What limitations do we impose on ourselves based strictly on what the people around us do?  Of course, we should keep in mind morality and not harming others when we try to push the boundaries of those things that just aren't done, but there are experiences out there waiting for us if we just take a moment to ask ourselves:  why don't we walk that six blocks?

The Value of a "Worthless" Degree

Tomorrow I graduate with a Master of Arts in English.  I have mixed feelings about it.  I am glad to have it finished, but I am pessimistic about the value it holds for me professionally.

I have a Master of Arts in Teaching already, and now a Master of Arts in English.  And no job. 

Other than teaching, I'm not sure that anyone would look at a resume and see the value of a Master's degree in English for other jobs.  It does show intelligence and commitment.  I did the work required to achieve the degree.  Of course, it took me eighteen years...

Am I more intelligent for getting the degree?  No.  In my case, definitely not.  I completed most of the program except my thesis a long time ago.  Whatever knowledge I gained from the program I have carried around for almost two decades without a sheepskin.  I finally sat down about a year ago and decided to write my thesis and be done with it.

So what is the value of this degree?  Maybe someone will see it and be impressed.  But that's not a high level of value for me.  I already have one Master's degree.

For me, the value of the degree is completely personal.  I proved to myself that I could do it.  I can look at that diploma, and I can see that I completed that thesis.  I completed a major writing project and did it well enough that I was asked several times if I was going to shop it around to be published.  Instead of just knowing that I can probably do it, I have proof that I did it.  And that means a lot to me.

For me, the value of the degree is the confidence it provides.  I have this.  I did this.  I can do more.  Watch me.

Lateral Drift

I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance recently.  In it, the author used a term which I had never heard, and a concept I had never considered.  The term was "lateral drift."

Lateral drift occurs when an individual is faced with a problem and there is no apparent solution.  Despite repeated tries to overcome the obstacle, no forward progress is made.  At this time, efforts to move forward stop, and the individual enters a state of lateral drift.

The author made lateral drift a positive state of being.  It is not precisely giving up, but a state of relaxation which allows the individual the presence of mind to consider different options, although not necessarily consciously.

I suppose we all enter a minor state of lateral drift once in a while.  When we try to remember the name of our cousin's girlfriend in eighth grade and can't come up with it when we see her at the mall and she remembers our name and we strain so hard to remember hers while she is talking to us but it just won't come...and then remember it three hours later when it doesn't really matter any more.  We have relaxed, and then the answer, or the solution, will come.

I would like to think I'm in a state of lateral drift right now, professionally speaking.  I have a problem.  I really, really want to teach.  I'm constantly thinking about it, pushing for some way to get a position.  I'm afraid my letters of interest to hiring principals and my follow up phone calls give off the slightly distasteful emanation of desparation.  The fact that last year and this year I have applied to fifteen schools and haven't gotten a single interview only fuels that fire.

Relaxing a little certainly couldn't hurt.  In some ways, I should be enjoying myself now.  I work when I want to at a job that has gotten more interesting and rewarding for me.  I substitute once or twice a week and interact with some pretty interesting students.  And now I've been hired to help a friend renovate an investment property he bought when I'm not working elsewhere.  There's no real money in any of the jobs, but I enjoy the problem-solving aspect of working at the trucking company, the social contribution and interactions of substituting, and the satisfaction of hard physical labor.

I like physical labor.  It frees the mind.  My mind is in its most creative state while I'm using my muscles.

So, in my current situation, I think I'll relax.  I'll laterally drift.  I know I want to solve the problem of finding a permanent teaching position, but I need to find the joy in where I am now.

In Survival Mode

I had forgotten.

I was talking with students in a class the other day.  Younger students.  I noticed early in my first year as a teacher how resistant students at a certain age can be to new ideas.  It was interesting watching them outgrow it as they grew older, but in those first years of adolescence, new ideas are even more uncomfortable than they are for older people, I think.

I haven't read much on it anywhere, but I formed some theories, and further observation hasn't shown me the flaw in my theories.

In a young adolscent's world, so many changes are taking place.  They are changing.  The way they are treated and regarded by adults is changing.  I came to believe that it was very, very important to them to find ideas and ways of looking at the world that seemed indisputable, inarguable.  Any new idea or different way of looking at things threatened this comforting constancy they had found, and was to be rejected, and even ridiculed.  This is a defense mechanism.  With time, with maturity, with confidence, most will outgrow this to a greater or lesser extent.

My observations showed me that adolescents who came from homes where they felt secure, who had some degree of confidence that change was not always going to  come as the result of difficulties (marital, economic, health, all the problems that threaten families), were likely to be more accepting of new ideas and different perspectives than the ones they currently held.

Then there were the kids in survival mode.  Students who came from homes that may have been supportive, but were also full of change.  Divorce.  Custody battles.  Foster children.  Kids with parents who were there one day and gone the next.  These students not only rejected new ideas, they rejected any possible form of change as much as possible.  Change is uncomfortable to all of us, but it is necessary.  Without change, there is no growth.

So how to teach to students who refuse to grow, to change?  It's not easy.  And sometimes, sometimes, it may not even be possible.  That is hard for anyone who really desires to teach to admit, but it is a truth every teacher faces at one point or another.  For those students, the teacher has to take whatever small inroads into educational growth can be produced.

But the important thing is to be there.  If nothing else, be as constant and as consistent as possible.  Like the student, and let that student see your approval every chance you get.

Prepare the Ground Before Sowing the Seed

The teacher of the year in the Springfield, MO school district (largest school district in the state) said that she believed that education is built on good relationships with the students.  Interestingly enough, I talked to a principal today who said that what he looks for in a teacher is someone who builds good relationships with students.  I agree wholeheartedly with both sentiments.

As a teacher, I strive to build relationships with my students.  These relationships need not be friendly, or close, but they should be based, as the best relationships are, on trust.  I want my students to trust that I am giving my best effort, and that they are safe, and that I do have their best interests at heart.  On my part, I would like for my students to do their best, and be courteous, and respectful of my wish to help them and their classmates achieve.  I understand that they may come from a place where trust does not come easily.  My role in the relationship is to overcome this reluctance.  This is what is difficult, and also rewarding, in being a teacher.

Strangely enough, I can't help but believe that this belief is part and parcel of the reason the administration at my last teaching position released me.  They probably would not view it that way, but since my intents and goals were not a part of any dialogue I was involved in, I really am unsure how they would have viewed it.

The long and the short of it was, I had a student who could be difficult.  He was likeable in many ways, and intelligent, but events in his life had given him some trust issues which I had to overcome as a teacher.  This student was very interested in the military.  He asked me one day if I had any tattoos from my time in the service.  I said yes, and he asked to see it.  This was in class.  My tattoo is on my chest, visible when I wear a tank top (if I were to wear tank tops, which I don't).  I had shown my tattoo in previous classes, and didn't think anything of it.  Apparently, however, one of the students in class reported that I had shown my chest in class to a member of the elementary faculty, who told the superintendent.  The next day, I received an e-mail from my principal, asking if I had "bared my chest" in class.  I told him it only required me to pull down my collar slightly, and yes, I had shown my tattoo.  Nothing more was said, but several months later, my contract was not renewed.  The principal felt it was the tattoo incident which had lead to this state of affairs.  So be it, I thought.

Fast forward several more months, almost a year.  I encountered the student to whom I had shown the tattoo at a gas station.  He told me I had been his favorite teacher, and that he had decided after being in my class that he wanted to be an English teacher.  I am unsure he will follow through on this career path, but his willingness to even consider it shows me a high level of engagement in what I was trying to teach, which was my goal in the first place.

I do believe that good education is founded on relationships.  Before true education can occur, a positive, trusting relationship must be in place.  A good analogy (and I love analogies) would be that before a plant can grow, before a seed is planted, the ground must first be prepared in order to ensure the fullest bloom and the finest fruits.  Without the relationship, the students will do only the bare minimum necessary.  Mediocrity will be the result, and while I have not mastered the ability to foster a good relationship with each and every student, at least I am trying.

The Nature of Human Pleasure

I started thinking the other day about human pleasure.  I'm not talking strictly physical, although that is a part of of it.  I'm talking about the general idea of actions and a state of being that allows us to describe ourselves with the broad adjective "happy."

In my mind, I divided pleasuree into three areas.  These divisions are physical pleasure, social pleasure, and then existential pleasure.

Physical pleasure is obvious.  Sex, eating, scratching an itch, a cool drink on a warm day...all these and much, much more are the lowest form of pleasure in my mind.  This sense of pleasure is brought about primarily by satisfying our own needs, our physical needs, our basic survival needs.  This level of pleasure is usually enhanced by our bodies telling us "Good job, you did something necessary for survival."  Our bodies do this in the form of endorphins.  Unfortunately, our bodies are stupid.  When we eat, endorphins are released.  Every time.  So if nothing else is making us happy, we eat and then overeat.  The results of giving in completely to physical pleasures are never good.  When we try to find our happiness chemically, be it through a state of euphoria from chemicals naturally occurring in our bodies or if we introduce artificial chemicals for the same result, we are damaging ourselves.

The next level of pleasure is social pleasure.  This can be directed inward or outward.  We receive pleasure from recognition of our peers, and also for contributing to our peers' well-being.  We are happy when we are well thought of, or when we are thinking of others and doing for others.  In this context, we often are happy when we are doing "right."  Doing right generally means acting in a way that strongly promotes proper social interaction.  I'm not sure if there is a chemical correspondence in this area, but since people are essentially  hardwired to be gregarious and seek out the company of others, it is essentially the same.  I think this kind of happiness is often felt by the religious; those who are happiest in religious settings.  Of course, too much of this pleasure can also be harmful.  We can strive too hard for peer recogition.  We can also give too much of ourselves for others.  As a society, we point to those who give selflessly as being individuals to emulate, but there may also be a proper balance.

The next level of pleasure is the most difficult to achieve.  This is existential, or pure mental pleasure.  We perform acts or are aware in ways that do not directly benefit us physically or socially, but seem to strike a chord within that produces a quiet pleasure.  Outside artists are good examples of this state.  They often create works of art with no intentions of selling or achieving societal recognition, but take pleasure in the creation.  We can also achieve this state by simply taking pleasure in observing the world around us.  I sometimes can reach this state when I'm thinking.  When I find a way of perceiving the world that seems to fit, I am happy.  This kind of happiness will not have a person shouting from the rooftops or dancing in the street, but this type of pleasure also seems to me to be least likely to do any damage or have any negative effects.  I would also imagine that this type of pleasure is to be found spiritually by the truly devout.  This type of pleasure could be described as being at peace with one's self, at one with nature, feeling in harmony with the universe, or feeling God's love.

I don't believe we should deny ourselves all physical pleasure, but recognize it for what it is: a means to an end, but not the end itself.  Physical pleasure is our body rewarding us for staying alive.  The staying alive is the important part.

Social pleasure is every bit as important as physical pleasure to our well-being.  Do for others, and be happy when your actions and abilities are recognized.

Take existential pleasure when and where you can find it.  It is too rare, too precious.  Reward yourself by recognizing when  your are smiling for no particular reason.

I'ma School You on Schoolin'

For over a week, a simple bit of slang has been bothering me.  See two guys in the park, preparing to play ball.  One says to the other, "Get ready.  I'm going to school you."

Language always means more than it says.  This is not an example of one man saying to another, "I'm going to teach you so that you can play ball better."  What this man is saying is, "I will humiliate you."

Are you starting to see?  School = Humiliate.  This is what happens in schools all around the country every day.  Students are humiliated.  Before you think you are reading the rant of some rebel stating that all teachers are sadists like the teacher in Pink Floyd's The Wall, let me state that this is not what I mean at all.  Since I have begun teaching, I have met few teachers who do not work hard every day to try to improve the lives of their students.

I'm talking about the system.  The grading system.  Give a student an A, whether that student deserved one or not, and the student is happy.  Some students rightfully expect A's every time.  They learn, master the lesson, and produce legitimate proof of that mastery.  Other students do not.  They may have learned it, and chosen not to produce proof of mastery.  They may have not completely learned the lesson.  They may not have learned the lesson at all.  So we give them an F.

To me, F does not say try again.  I have a feeling that F says try again to any student.  F says only one thing:  you failed.  Ask any student what F stands for.  They will tell you.

We need to get rid of F.  Of course, that may also mean getting rid of A.  And there goes all that money we give our children for getting A's.  As much as we all love our letter system of grading, I think it is time that it goes.  We should establish our expectations of a lesson, and there should be only three possible outcomes:  Mastery, Competency, and Try Again.  There will be students who will push themselves to achieve mastery, or students whose abilities and backgrounds lend themselves to more easily achieving mastery in some areas.  Wonderful.  Let's celebrate this, but discreetly.

All students should achieve Competency.  If we are unsure what competency looks like, then we shouldn't be teaching the subject.  We draw clear parameters and minimum expectations.  These may vary from student to student depending on ability level based on pre-assessment, but the parameters must be there.

And there will always be Try Again.  This is not shame.  This is not humiliation.  This is not schooling.  This is education.  Try Again does not mean for the student to try again without further instruction.  Try Again applies to the teacher as well.  If a student does not achieve competency, then this is just as much if not more the teacher's fault than the student's.  If the student does not care enough to Try the first or second time, this is a flaw in our education system. 

There Has to be More Than the Carrot or the Stick

So much of our society is based on a carrot/stick motivation, and the most obvious purveyor of this method of motivation is the educational system.

For those not familiar with the metaphor, it is based on plowing.  You may have seen the cartoon with the donkey plowing with a stick dangling a carrot on a string out in front of him.  That might be one aspect of stick/carrot, but it is not the one I have in mind.  The one I have in mind is the reward/punishment aspect.  If the mule plows well, he receives a carrot.  If he doesn't plow well, he is beaten with a stick.

Our entire grading system is set up this way.  Students are offered an A and accolades for performing to teachers' expectations, and receive an F for not meeting those expectations.  This in turn translates to positive or negative treatment at home.

Punishment is meted out when students receive an F.  That is the stick.  Of course, studies in conditioning show that once the negative stimulus stops, eventually the student will return to the state of affairs prior to the punishment.

Rewards are given if students meet or exceed expectations.  This is the carrot.  Those same studies show that once the rewards stop, often the behavior which merited the reward.

Of course, we also can incorporate the dangled carrot metaphor as well.  We tell students that if they make good grades, they can get scholarships, etc.  Nice carrot.  If they get scholarships and go on to college, they can get a degree and then get a good job.  Nicer carrot.

Educators will tell you that in an ideal outcome of those scenarios, eventually students will internalize the motivation through some magical process, and become intrinsically  motivated.  And this does happen for some students.  Often, these students go on to become teachers, and, since it worked for them, they will also apply it and perpetuate the process.

I'm more concerned with those students who do not.  Students should not be treated as mules.  There are many students who immediately understand that the dangled carrot is not the promise of the carrot.  There are students who never internalize the motivation and who stop performing once the stimuli, positive or negative, stops.

There are also students who learn to always expect the stick.  Just as students internalize the positive aspect of the reward, there are others who internalize the negative aspect of the stick.  They come to believe that they will always, eventually, get the stick.  I believe the term for such students is oppositional defiant. 

Of course, developmental studies show us that younger children are not complicated enough to think beyond the carrot and the stick.  They perceive the entire world based on the effect on themselves.  That is a given.

But shouldn't an aspect of education concentrate solely on reaching those students for whom the carrot and the stick don't work? 

Students should be encouraged to develop into the people we want them to be.  Not mules, whether they are good mules or oppositional defiant mules.  That is what our current system does.  There has to be a better way.

Too Many Revelations...

I e-mailed my master's thesis to my committee last night.   The stories were done, in the sense that I was tired of looking at them and could come up with no further corrections.  Or maybe it was the fact that each change I was making didn't seem to improve them, or maybe even that each change I made improved them immeasurably but required me to make further changes throughout, so that the sense of it all was lost.  Anyway, I was tired of looking at the damned thing.

The stories gave me less difficulty than the critical introduction.  I had to display what I had learned in the MSU writing program.  This was not made easier by the fact that I had completed my coursework for the degree almost twenty years ago.

Each time I sat down to work on my critical introduction, I had a new revelation about my work.  The best thing to do would have been to seamlessly interweave those revelations into the introduction to produce a coherent whole, but apparently that was not to be.  My revelations at times conflicted, or at the very least were not complementary.

For example, last night's revelation was that plot is an artificial structure in a story.  What is real is character. In order to achieve pure mimesis, a story should not have a plot.  This, of course, seems absurd on the face of it.  Plot is one of the essential elements to story.  That lead me to the further thought that plot is created by the reader, just as meaning is created by the participant in life.  So meaning in life is an artificial construct.  Of course, the fact that it is artificial does not lesson its importance.  We must create our own meaning in life.  It is what is to be human.

So a good story for me allows the reader to create meaning, and construct plot and purpose.  This would allow a story to better achieve mimesis.  And the meaning created may be the same for many people, because we are all shaped by relatively similar influences.  But the meaning will vary for some.  And a writer's job is to give meaning to those who want it, and put in the possibility of various meanings.  In order to achieve this, stories must be left to some extent open ended and full of possibility.

So anyway, I have brilliant leaps of logic like this (often spurred by a paradoxical consideration of Stephen Crane poetry and Douglas Adams tomfoolery).  Then I try to explain it, and then tomorrow I could reread that or listen to something else that would set off a new train of thought and I'd be gone on that again.

Thinking is fun.  Everyone should do it, but maybe moderation in thought is as important as moderation in everything else.

No War Here on "Wars On ..."

Is it just a media term?

In the 60's, Johnson's administration declared a war on poverty.  I don't think we've won that one.

In the 80's, Reagan's administration declared a war on drugs.  That one isn't going very well, either.

For the new millenia, Bush declared a war on terrorism.  The outcome is kind of hazy there, too.

Since then, in the media, there has been a war on just about everything:  The right accuses the left of a war on religion, the left accuses the right of a war on women, there was a documentary about the educational system's war on children (http://www.thewaronkids.com/), there is a war on intellectualism, a war on family values.

I believe in the power of language.  All this talk of war makes war an acceptable state of being.  I prefer peace.  It seems to me the use of the term "A war on ..." makes war seem like a desirable past time, be it against something like drugs or something like religion or women's rights.

This may seem picky.  I may be oversensitive to language and the nuances of meaning.  I will admit there are certain terms I find unacceptable, and certainly usages of acceptable terms in unacceptable ways that chap my posterior.  "War on" has just made its way on to that list.

I think it's in the bombastic nature of our language today.  We overuse superlatives.  I blame the media, the internet, and the constant stream of information that everyone is exposed to every day.  To get our attention, the media has to use more and more words of power, and with the overuse of those words, the power is lost.  Pity.  So many wonderful words that were once useful in describing singularly power emotions, actions, and concepts now can be borrowed and used for whatever mundane purpose we wish.

Listen, people on the right.  There is no war on religion.  While many things I have read show that we are becoming a more secular nation, no one has started bombing churches on a regular basis.  If there was, church bombings would certainly be less newsworthy.

Listen, people on the left.  There is no war on women.  There are certain people on the right who have beliefs that differ from yours on how women should deal with the issues of reproduction, but the extremists that resort to armed action are still rare.
 
So please, no more "Wars On ...."  Can we just call them what they are?  They are simply issues.  Let's say we are addressing those issues, not declaring war on them.  Inflammatory language is no way to begin a civilized discussion on the issues on which we disagree.

And please let's not start any more wars.  You hear me, Rick Santorum?  Address the issue, but don't declare war.