A Few Words....

Insecurities and Undulations

2009-10-02T03:37:00.000-07:00

My wife and I are swimmers.

Well, I say swimmers. I should have said, "My wife and I swim." When a local college built a new sports facility and offered community memberships, we joined without a sign-up fee. We fully expected to look like runway models in a few weeks because swimming, we had heard, was the best fitness activity possible. We have rights to the entire place, including the climbing wall, weight room, walking track, basketball gyms, and tennis courts; but we just swim. Like we were ever going to climb a wall. Hell, I make my wife do that at home all the time for free.

It took the longest time for the Grand Opening. We'd get emails about the event--each one advertising a later date, the last one inviting us to walk through the half completed facilities. For weeks after that, Cindy and I had that look on our faces dogs get when they see their humans reaching for the treats.

On the morning the pool opened, we left the bed at 5:30 and were in the water at 6. Our plan was for me to leave for school from there, so I put teaching clothes in my brand new sports bag just for swimmers which looked suspiciously like the bags for non-swimmers at only twice the cost. It wouldn't be until after the swim that I would realize I had forgotten to pack my panties and would dash home, commando, or free balling, I think it's called, before making my way to the school.

What we subjected the real swimmers to, that first morning, is probably criminal public behavior in several states. Cindy actually wore a swim suit; I wore shorts over spandex undies, leftovers from my running days. We were the homeless equivalent compared to the sleek look of the college-sponsored children's swim team.

We stripped to our swim wear in front of their parents, members of the fancier, more expensive fitness club across town, every one. Then we jumped in, sharing the only available lane and gasped and choked the twenty-five yards to the other end. We held onto the side having completely given up on speech, so desperate were we for oxygen, while elementary-school flip-turning racers splashed water in our faces. After what seemed like twenty minutes, we let go and undulated our way to the other side like two geriatric frogs working their way through a sewer pipe.

That was two years ago.

We're stronger and our heart lung machines are better, but the most noticeable change is our swim suits. Cindy's hasn't changed all that much, although hers are nicer. And I totally understand her feeling that if she's going to be in a swimsuit in front of others then her suit, especially at those prices, ought to take on as much responsibility as possible.

My suit has changed too. My hands continually caught the baggy legs of my old swim suit and Cindy suggested a long-leg Speedo, which is the only kind I’d ever wear. When we swam in The Netherlands, a European family would always show up with a Speedo-wearing Grandpa. His suit looked sprayed on, never completely covered his butt, and held his gibblies in a rock-climber’s grip. And then too, there was the hair, coarse and curly; think Chewbaka. Of course, you only saw that when his floppy gut wasn’t in the way.

My Speedo wasn’t as bad, but we were concerned it would give me something Cindy has always referred to as “penile projection.” She coined this term years ago while watching Olympic wrestling. Even the casual observer can see the size, shape, and religion of the competitors. I imagine it’s a practice designed to help spectators decide who to root for. I’ve always cheered for the under-endowed.

I put on my Speedo and was immediately faced with a decision about my thing. I don’t think women have this problem, I mean, ladies bumps point forward, for the most part. I’m sure there’s the odd lady out there whose one boob points any way it wants while the forward-pointing boob hangs next to it, perturbed, embarrassed. And then women reach that age when they point…well…down. But sometimes guys can look like they’re pointing the way to San Jose and I not only didn’t want to point, I didn’t want the lump at all. However, my concerns turned out to be a moot point; when I landed in the freezing water my thing couldn’t be distinguished from the hair.

We’ve met some interesting people in the pool. Of course we don’t know any of their names. We talk about them through a technique used by fiction writers. A character will describe another character and include something like big ears, and from then on he’ll just call him Dumbo.

Not long after we started swimming, an elderly woman began showing up at the same time we did. She had blonde hair, skinny legs, a tiny butt, and huge boobs. The second or third time we were in the pool together I noticed a small stud in her nose; she’s been Nose-Ring Granny ever since.

Perfume Lady shows up smelling like she showers in Eau du Toilette. I can almost see the cloud she walks in—like Pig Pen from the Peanuts cartoon. Whatever she wears must be oil-based. The other day I swam in the lane next to her. It was like swimming around the Exxon Valdez.

The most interesting person we’ve come across in the pool is the lady we affectionately refer to as Drowning Woman. The first time I saw her swimming I thought she was having a seizure. I watched, desperately trying to remember what little CPR I’d learned.

Her swimming style would best be represented by the word "quiver." I think she’s attempting the breast stroke, the one where the legs kick together like a frog’s would. I saw a couple of frogs kick like she does back in 1971, but they had gotten hold of some bad acid. The whole stroke takes about one second. One day I acted like I had water in my eyes just so I could watch her. I swear, she breathed 43 times in 25 yards. Just imagine a bobble head doll in the pool.

But Drowning Woman has never needed our help; she’s just got her own style. I guess we all do. I’m sure real swimmers look over into my lane and wonder about the terrible accident from which I’m recovering. A few weeks ago, one of those real swimmers was in the lane next to me.

He looked about my age, but that’s where our noticable similarities ended. I spotted him before he jumped in—five-ten, about 225. Whenever anyone swims in the lane next to me I always remind myself that it’s not a competition. You know, like the Normandy invasion wasn’t a competition.

I’d been swimming for over ten minutes when he jumped in. I was in full stride and as I turned at the wall, he was just putting his goggles on. I pushed away thinking what a piece of cake this was going to be.

Then he touched the other wall before I did.

I couldn’t believe it. I’d already warmed up; he was just starting. I’d been swimming for two years, and he had to be forty pounds overweight. It looked like he only kicked when he remembered to, which wasn’t often. And his arm speed wasn’t as fast as mine. But oh how he could glide. In fact, he spent the next twenty-five minutes repeatedly gliding past me.

We swam in adjoining lanes several days before our schedules worked out so we were in the locker room together. That can always be an uncomfortable moment. It's not a huge deal if I see another dude's wang, but it is important that no other guy thinks I want to look, even if I secretly do. Again, women have it so easy. They wear their credentials on their chests. Say to a group of women, "Y'all queue up according to breast size," and they wouldn't even have to speak to each other. But for guys that's not possible. And it wouldn't do any good to ask questions. No one tells the truth anyway. I'm suddenly reminded of my favorite joke from junior high. "Yeah, I'm seven inches, WHEN I FOLD IT IN HALF!"

So, one morning after a swim, I introduced myself to the guy, waiting of course until we both had our underwear on, an unwritten law of the men's locker room. “You can look at my pink bits, but you can’t talk to me while you do it.” This is probably the reason my old girlfriends turned on the water when they peed in the next room. I could know what they were doing in there, but if I could hear it they would be mortified. So I complimented him on how well he swam. I can't remember exactly what I said, but I tried not to make it sound like, "Geez, you swim really well for a fat guy."

"Oh, thanks" he said, "I started swimming when I was four and swam competitively through college." Although you can see a whole lot of the people in the pool, you never really know who's in the lane beside you.

Speaking of seeing a lot of people, along with possibly being the most strenuous exercise, swimming has also got to be the most sensual. Once the goggles are on, everything under the water is crystal clear. Where else can I go to get fit and look at so much skin? "Look at so much" is my pet phrase for gawking like a creepo.

But sometimes I simply cannot help myself. Last summer a co-ed got in the lane next to me wearing a two piece. She must have lost a little weight since be bought the suit because at some point I ended up behind her and by the time she touched the wall, I was looking at most of her butt was showing.

I never know what to do in these situations. Is it wrong to mention it? "Hey girl, you got a real pretty butt." Do I help her cover up? She didn't swim much longer, but I must confess I was behind her the entire time.

A similar thing happened again just last week. The college team was in the pool and a single geezer-lane was open right next to a lane with three females. Of course the girls whizzed right by me in their racing suits, which are usually pretty modest, although I occasionally see one, I think it's called a high cut, where the leg holes come up to the swimmer's armpit. But these three suits were appropriate and pretty modest, almost, except for, well, the blue one.

The girls swam single file and passed me one at a time, not quite at the speed of light, and did their individual flip turn at the wall. I didn't intend on taking notice each time they passed but it was late afternoon and we were under the afternoon sun’s rays, which were reflected in my face each time the girls swam by. This is when I noticed something odd about the blue swim suit. For some unexplained but glorious reason, the natural swimming motion caused the fabric, which to this point had been covering the left butt cheek, to creep up toward her crack. In no time her entire cheek was uncovered. It looked like she was swimming in a body-thong; or half a body-thong.

I think I swam the hardest I ever have for several lengths. And then suddenly practice was over and the girls got out of the pool. Then Perfume Lady showed up and I struggled for breath until I too had had enough.

As for our bodies, well, when we began swimming we eagerly awaited a physical transformation. We dreamed of sleek figures that would require an entirely new wardrobe. But, because we were swimming we thought we could eat anything and we did. Well, we didn't really eat anything. We ate everything. We'd swim and then eat at the Chinese buffet restaurant. All you can eat became don’t stop till you’ve got Who Flung Duck in your nostrils. We became very good at this.

Every time someone finds out we swim they always rave a little, "Oh that's so great! That's so good for you!" as though we'd just quit snorting cocaine. It is pretty good for us, I guess, although we aren't ever going to get those new bodies. We'll have to settle for being a little stronger, and possibly living a little longer, albeit in the bodies we've got right now.

Picture Credit: http://amysrobot.com/files/synch_swimming.JPG

Touchy Subjects

2009-09-20T18:55:00.000-07:00

When I began my senior year of high school, a couple months before I turned seventeen, one change in our faculty was impossible to ignore; our district had hired a new football coach. Purportedly to have played pro ball, the man was an obvious victim of a mutinous pituitary; he was in a word, a mountain. Along with his coaching responsibilities, he taught sociology, and that’s where I met him.

I had already grown to a height over six feet, something about which my dad felt a mix of pride and fear, although the only way you’d have known that was from his bi-polar comments. “If you get any bigger, I’m going to need a second job just to buy your groceries,” wink, wink, and then, “It doesn’t matter how tall you grow, young man, I’ll always be able to beat your ass!” But my football coach sociology teacher dwarfed me. I liked him instantly, not only because I knew he could crush my head in a single hand, like a walnut in one of those German nutcracker thingies, and never did, but also because he seemed to genuinely like me, something few other adult males had accomplished to that point in my life.

I was especially intrigued by his announcement that he had arranged for our school’s purchase of a Universal Gym, a weight-laden torture contraption of Machiavellian proportions. Around this device several athletes could simultaneously lift, push, pull, thrust, and hoist weights through the use of wires and pulleys while sweating, stinking, and occasionally, under the stress of exertion, soil their underpants.

I had never been an athlete, unless you want to count that brief stint on the junior high wrestling team when I lost four times; twice by pin. On one of those occasions I went into the historical annuls as the opponent whom the state champion pinned in record time, in my memory, before the referee’s opening whistle had finished sounding. And too, there was my single try-out for the high school basketball team on the same night as the dress rehearsal for Guys and Dolls in which I played Nathan Detroit, the male lead.

But fearing I’d come home one day with one of my body parts missing, or stuck, permanently inside another one, my parents refused to let me play football, the sure route to certifiable manhood in high school. All the girls knew that a guy on the sidelines in a jersey, even if he never played, had a better idea of what went on in the back seat of his dad’s car, and was better at it, than the guys who weren’t. I was so non-athletic in fact that my only contribution to the football team would have been a role in the coach’s demonstration which taught the sound to listen for when breaking the bones of an opponent. My lack of muscle tissue, which would surely have muffled the snap, made me the perfect candidate.

Dreaming future physical prowess, I asked my dad that night if I could stay after school a couple of days a week and perspire with some other non-athletic guys. He paused to calculate the approximate disruption to his own comfort as a result of his assent. After coming to the conclusion that it would mean stopping at the school two or three days a week instead of driving right by on his way home from work he grunted with the same enthusiasm he had ever mustered about my aspirations saying that he didn’t care.

Thus began my foray into a program that would at the most reward me with the sexual favors of high school females and at the worst put a little fear into the hearts of those booger-flicking elementary turds on my bus. Nobody messes with a guy whose shoulders take up an entire bus seat. I stayed after school with other stick figures and made my way around the contraption, introducing something previously unknown to muscles unapparent. We had the place to ourselves, the real athletes now in their respective playing areas, having done their weight work the last period of the day while we studied quantum physics and discussed the craftsmanship of each other’s pocket protectors.

I gave this effort all the energy and determination I had. I strained and grunted, lifted and pushed, heaved and hoed making all kinds of manly weight moving sounds, along with the rest; a staccato cadence punctuated by the crack of weights as they returned to their position in the stack. In a few weeks, I could do fifty sit-ups on the incline board in sixty seconds. Along with muscles that were harder when flexed, I had an inner feeling with which I was totally unaccustomed. I was beginning to feel important, able, and dare I say it, more like a man than a boy. However, my new found self-esteem had the life span of a mosquito in a DDT cloud.

The end began one morning on the toilet. It hurt. That little circular spot so actively involved in the going screamed at me. When I squeezed out the last of the pee squirts I screamed, “Son of a Baptist!” because we were. I had no idea what was going on down there. That opening had always been “exit only” and I was pretty certain nothing had entered. It felt like I had eaten concertina wire, had a little trouble digesting one of the razors, and I’d just tried, unsuccessfully, to pass it.

I certainly didn’t talk to anyone about this. We were a pretty insulated family, made up of clinically insulated people. My mom had never farted in my presence; quite possibly, she had never farted at all. So I didn’t feel like I could just hop down the last few steps in our house, lilt into the kitchen and greet her with, “Good morning Mom, how’s your anus? Mine’s killing me.”

But later that day, I did what Cheech and Chong had recently taught me to call “pinch a loaf” and thought I would die. It felt like what might normally occur after eating a hearty meal of tacks in an acid sauce wrapped in a sandpaper burrito. Then during clean up I spotted blood on the paper. Now, I was no stranger to blood in the bathroom, I mean, I’ve got an older sister. She’d leave her mouse beds in the garbage, folded in half, the ends tied together giving them the appearance of Christmas presents. It wasn’t until years later that she used and flushed white cigars. Like I said, we were Baptists.

In our home, spilt blood always led to confession and I finally came clean with my mom about the bulbous protrusion deep in my rectal crevasse. She scheduled an appointment so I could share this horrifying problem with the single doctor, and every other employee, of our small town’s Dr.’s office.

I walked to the clinic after school on the following day and stood in front of a red-haired girl, seated behind a counter, looking like someone doing homework. She’d probably been a student in the high school coincidentally with me, but I didn’t recognize her and hoped she didn’t me either.

“I have an appointment,” I said when she finally looked up.

“What’s your complaint?” she asked.

I hadn’t come to complain; I wanted something fixed. I just stared at her.

She tried again with obvious impatience. “Why have you come to see the doctor?”

I could see several women of various ages shuttling about behind her, working with files, chatting, staying busy.

“I’d rather not say,” I replied sort of half whispering.

“Well I have to know,” she insisted, her voice gaining momentum, “so the doctor can be prepared.”

I looked at the dimple on her cheek, then into her green eyes. I took a deep breath.

“I’m bleeding from my butt hole.”

After sitting on my injury for a ridiculously uncomfortable time, I was called into an examination room where a nurse took my vitals and told me to take off my pants and sit on the table. She left the room. The paper crinkled when I got up there. It was at this moment I had my first sudden realization; someone was going to come in this room and look directly at my thing.

Even I had never looked at my thing.

When the doctor arrived, he wanted me on all fours, my underpants around my knees. If words exist for someone in my position to make polite conversation, well, I didn’t know them. I remained quiet even when he spread my cheeks for a better look. I listened to his breath rushing past unclipped hairs in his nasal passages.

“Uh huh,” he said, which I took as mental agreement, at the least, that anyone growing a crabapple on his anus would be in a great deal of pain.

“I’m going to take a look inside,” he said. I shuddered with repulsion. He might as well have said, “Excuse me, I’m going to drink from this specimen cup.”

And then he opened a drawer and removed a handgun. No, it was a bird’s head, a silvery metal one, with a long beak, a rectangular opening in the top serving as its singular eye. He held it by the neck.

That’s when I had the second realization. He was going to touch me.

There.

Without warning he greased the hinges on my backdoor and shoved that bird’s face so deep in my pooper I thought it was going to stick out my belly button. The room swelled with the sound of air rushing past my nose hairs. The climax of this intercourse came when he spun the beak so he could see all my secrets through the bird’s-eye.

I regained full consciousness just as he was saying something about swollen blood vessels, probably the result of too much physical exertion. “I’ll give you some cream and the swelling will go down in a few days.” He handed me some tissues without explaining why, or needing to, and then he left in the time it took his rubber gloves to shoot into the trash can. I stood on shaky legs and put my clothes on.

Decades later, I look back without regret on the brief time I was a high school weight lifter. Sad though, when I think about it; the only muscle still bearing any evidence of the effort is my sphincter.

So Long, Frank...We'll Miss Ya'

2009-07-20T04:56:00.000-07:00

Well, he's gone. I wish now I'd been paying better attention. Three books, and probably so many more in him. But who knew?

He was a teacher, a teacher with a story, or stories. And he finally sat down to tell them.

At the end of the day, he's not an icon or a hero or a idol.

He's a model. A model for the rest of us. Especially the teachers. Tell your stories. Get them down now. Find the voice that wants to tell the stories and tell them.

Frank's not telling any more stories, that's for sure.

I Pray The Lord My Soul To Keep?

2009-06-21T12:48:00.000-07:00

We formed a circle in the concourse for a little prayer before Bekah and Josh left for their week in Mexico and our’s with our granddaughter. One of us wasn’t in the mood and Makaleigh Shaye, while in her mother’s arms, repeatedly kicked me on or near the groin while my wife prayed about safety and protection. I hoped for those things, but they weren’t my supplications.

I’m all for prayer; I know well how it can bring comfort, especially when the prostrate need it. But I also know the play-book is silent on prayer averting tragedy. Planes go down, cars wreck, diseases creep, mistakes happen, and plenty of it occurs under the heavy blankets of prayer. It’s the way of this world; there’s plenty of pain, enough to go around. Everybody dies, most folks before their loved ones are ready, even more before they are…not to mention the despair that everything but death brings.

And when tragedy exhales, someone has to be strength. There has to be a shoulder, a rational thought, a spark of hope, an eye on the sunrise. And that isn’t easy when loved ones are grieving, when in the grip of grief.

In fact, nothing less than Herculean faith, courage, and strength will scaffold a father when the possibilities my wife prayed against become realities. So that’s what I prayed for; not the life I want, but acceptance and endurance in life I get.

Happy Father's Day.

Amen.

For The Want Of An Idol

2009-05-21T19:03:00.000-07:00

On the day the nation would learn that Kris Allen was the eighth American Idol, here in Conway, Arkansas, his hometown, a hullabaloo was brewing. The last of the “how can we make a buck off someone else’s success” holdouts capitulated and arranged on storefront sidewalks “support Kris Allen” t-shirts with their business name on the back. The sign outside Bob’s Grill, “Bob’s Grill Rock’s With Kris Allen” flapped in the breeze with a rapper’s disrespect for grammar. And it seemed even more lawn signs, obviously from the same language-impaired marketing firm, associating a local magazine with Allen, “Magazine 501 Love’s Kris Allen,” appeared throughout the town.

While “Idol fever” made a swift mercurial rise among the city’s residents, the downtown area slowly transformed into a party/watch arena from which moments would be threaded into the evening’s national broadcast on Fox. The parking places on the pavilion side of the street were blocked for broadcast trucks and crew while shoppers and patrons of the local eateries looked for parking elsewhere, further away. Visitors to the County Courthouse discovered much of the parking in front of the building taken up by organizations planning to raise money for themselves in honor Allen’s rise. Further away, Stoby’s restaurant set up their own small pavilion for giving away cheese dip, also in support of Allen, a fact they made nationally known in hopes of raising sales of the dip in grocery stores of surrounding states, that hope having been printed in local papers.

In the evening hundreds, if not thousands of people gathered in watch-party venues to celebrate his eventual crowning. People who had never met him personally, and who were as unknown to Allen as a recent moment’s worth of privacy, cried, screamed, hugged and high fived each other and in other ways celebrated an accomplishment with which they had precious little to do. And yet, it appeared they had, or at least they wanted to have been connected in some way to this success. So frenzied were they in their attempt to siphon some of Allen’s glory that even the casual observer, much less the student of human behavior, could not but wonder why.

And the simple reason is we taught them to.

Not “we” the educational system, but “we” the generations of the last sixty or so years. We’ve taught everyone younger than fifty that the highest honor bestowed upon anyone is fame at the world-wide level.

It probably started with Elvis. By the time we could actually see his hips on television, our nation was in love not only with stars but stardom too. Sensing the public’s willingness to part with money in the quest for following other’s recognition, the media has done little else than fuel the fire with magazines and television shows wholly devoted to what the “stars” are doing, where they’ve been, who they were seen with, whose designer clothing they’ve worn, who they’ve slept with, cheated on and so on. Readers and viewers swoon with a jealousy over stars' attention while at the same time they gush with gratitude for the fact they’ve actually got someone to swoon over.

The great difference, of course, between the stardom of someone like Elvis and many of today’s stars is that Elvis really was cutting edge. He did something that, though the mere outward expression of the rhythm in his own heart, was to a majority of the teenaged world outlandish, outrageous, irresistible, and unknown. The Beatles did the same thing. They too were the real deal, while many if not most of the stars of today just aren’t. Current society so craves attention it will elevate a person like Paris Hilton to internationally known status because she is so incredibly good at “being known for being known.”

Enter American Idol.

It’s a simple formula; hold a national competition, narrow the field to a few truly talented people and then hype the experience to the point that not just any person, but even people who claim to be religious, who attend church and say they know God don’t have the slightest problem calling another person on the planet an idol. Today’s television viewers are so hooked on the concept of stardom, fame, and international attention that they’ll allow producers and talent and media moguls to actually tell them who to worship.

So the country participates with the folks who really stand to make a few bucks off this enterprise by watching the show, the advertiser’s commercials, and by voting through the telephone text method. During this year’s final, almost 100,000,000 votes were cast. At ten cents a vote that’s a cool million for this round alone. The total votes through the final rounds might gross a half a billion dollars worth of text messages. Of course, a sycophant would probably pay an exorbitant fee for an unlimited number of texts, considering the seemingly unlimited number of votes he or she will cast through the season. However, regardless of the cost to the voter, they vote and vote with absolutely no regard to the cost borne by the one they’re voting for.

That’s right, there’s a cost to being an Idol.

And this year we might just discover what that cost involves. For Kris Allen wasn’t already a rising star just needing the boost an accelerator gives a car-battery’s charge. Allen was the music minister of a medium sized church in a medium sized town. Can he allow his faith to poke through the veneer of stardom? Not hardly; just ask Miss Prejean about the patience of glitz and glamour for real, honest conviction. He married last September and probably auditioned for AI a month later. As unknown as his plans before being exalted to international status is the certainty that those plans are on hold for a year while he performs his duties of an Idol. And will his marriage go on hold too?

Stop anyone on the street who’s followed Idol and ask that person to name four of the last seven winners. It goes something like this: Well, there was Carrie Underwood, and that guy who looked like Howdy Doody, oh wait, he didn’t win. Yeah, that’s right; he lost to that big guy who reminded me of Luther Van Dross, what was his name? And if this is the fate of our latest Idol, for what will we have made him endure it? Will we even wonder why as he slides into the obscurity that has kidnapped so many of the others?

A year from now, “We Love Kris Allen” t-shirts will line our city’s landfill because he’ll be “last year’s idol.” The desperation for borrowed coolness doesn’t tolerate obsolescence. Hopefully, a year from now Kris Allen will be in a better place than his trappings. Only time will tell.

Well You Can Call Me "Butterfly"

2009-04-04T15:53:00.000-07:00

Geez, am I ever bewildered by social networking. Way back when MySpace made its splash on the social computer scene, I figured it was for kids, or the terminally lonely. But then Facebook stepped up and everyone I knew couldn’t believe I didn’t have my own page. “At the very least,” they said, “people who know you can find you and keep track of you.” I didn’t bother pointing out some very good reasons why people who knew me couldn’t keep track of me at the present moment.

So I gave in, and then the friends came. You see, within Facebook, I can be friends with people so now I belong to an intricately interwoven subgroup of the Facebook community. And I’m not only friends with people I know of, but barely know, I’m friends with people who are also friends of these people I barely know. Oh yeah, I get around.

But Facebook, as it turned out, was only the beginning. Our National Writing Project site has a Leadership Ning, and of course I belong, and yes, I have friends there too. In fact, I can’t email another member through our Ning unless we’re friends. And then, I had to create a “network” within our Ning for those of us who work together on a special project.

Our E Anthology team formed a Ning for our book study, and yes, I had to create more friends. And read discussion comments. And blogs.

Then a friend invited me to join the English Companion Ning, which is technically for teachers of English, of which I am not, technically, and which I will never be, actually. But I do hope, one day, to teach writing at the college level, so I joined. And now I have friends there, although I actually know all three of those people. And there is a group within the Ning for National Writing Project people and if I could figure out how to join it I would but I don’t know why. As it is, I can’t keep up with Facebook and the Nings to which I belong. I can’t possibly read the zillions of comments flying around my cyber living room. I can’t follow the lives of all the friends in my cyber neighborhood. And yet I can’t stop myself.

Today I was invited to join the National Writing Project Ning for site leaders. And I did. And I made a friend. And I actually know this person. And she’s formed a group.

And for some insane reason, I signed up for Twitter, which is a real time social network. Twitter was created so people could know when other people scratch themselves, have a lustful thought, or stand in line at Walmart, which could potentially happen all at once. People can sign up to follow other people’s twitters so they never miss a riveting message like those above. And I have never, ever sent a twitter, I mean, does anyone want to know I’m folding my laundry? Really? And you want to know the weirdest part?

I have one follower.

Where have all the students gone?

2008-12-05T15:12:00.000-08:00

In my last post
about the product of the public school not actually being the students, as is commonly thought, I forgot to mention something which I think is important. So important, in fact, that I can’t believe I forgot it. Let’s just say I ran out of time.

In that post I suggested that any business intending on longevity has to exercise some control over the raw materials out of which the business will make their products. I used the example of a McDonald’s franchise which must purchase beef, buns, and tomatoes. That franchise must have the right to reject any of those myriad raw materials to ensure the quality of their products.

A better metaphor, possibly, is that of a computer company. One of the components of a computer is the hard drive where information is stored. However, a hard drive must offer more functions than just the storage of information. It must also be able to be formatted, the process of compartmentalizing the entire drive for the logical storage of information and erasing information already on the drive if that case exists. A hard drive must have save capabilities for storing information and a good one should be able back up information in case something damages the working portion of the drive. Once the computer has been constructed, the user should be able to make the computer display the contents of the hard drive, and should also be able to manipulate the contents as well.

The connections between the student and the computer are obvious. Computer companies can’t sell computers with bad or broken hard drives, and they won’t stay in business long it they try. They reserve the right to reject inferior hard drives and other materials for the sake of their products. As I said in the last post, schools can’t do that. This fact seriously weakens the argument that an educated student is the product of the school.

As I began this post I said there was a second understandable reason for the argument that the student is not the product of the school. Let’s stick with the computer company metaphor. Let’s imagine a computer company that annually puts some computers on the market which are top of the line. These computers represent say, the top three percent of all the computers the company produces. One might wonder why the best products of this company are reduced to a single digit percentage.

However, that fact is not as alarming as the knowledge that half of the computers that enter the market will have to endure a serious upgrade if they are to function at a higher level, and about 20% of the products left the production line before they were actually ready for the workplace and will enter the market doing the lowest level functions.

Again, one is left wondering how this company can stay in business, when the most significant fact about this company’s product development is revealed. At the close of every business day, computers take a break from downloading information onto their hard drives and leave for private residences. They return the next day, but spend the weekends in those homes as well. Not only are the products gone for the evenings and weekends, they are out of the factory for weeks at a time, both at Christmas and during the summer.

Most alarming is the fact that the computers not only stay in homes during this time, but the content of their hard drives is accessible by every person who comes in contact with the product. Other people can add to the content, erase content downloaded in the factory, or replace factory-installed content. Not only can others alter hard drive, any part of the computer can be damaged while it is outside the factory.

With this knowledge, it is understandable that many of the computers coming from this factory can’t work at all or don’t work well. In light of the development practices of this company, what is truly amazing is that three percent of the computers leave the factory able to function at the highest levels.

The Business of Educating

2008-12-03T14:51:00.000-08:00

For the longest time, and I'm talking about my 30 year career, I believed that the "product" of the public school was an educated teenager. The graduate was the product and the customer was the grateful community.

I don't think that way anymore.

What needs saying first, is that if we are going to think at all about a public school in terms of product and customer, then we are thinking about the public school as a business. And it's about time we did. Now I know the Superintendent has always thought of the school as a business. He or she sits in the big office and juggles federal funds, title (enter Roman numeral here) funds, daily attendance rates, and the occasional angry parent or disgruntled teacher. But for the most part, It's about the numbers to a Supt. and numbers mean business.

But it's well past time that the entire community began thinking about the public school as a business. Because the business of education in America is failing, as bad as an American auto maker, and for just as long if not longer too. And if our educational system is a business, then we had better know what our product is and who our customers are, for if we can't identify those components and agree on them, we've got a snowball's chance in July of survival.

So for years we've thought the product of the American school system was an educated child, but when a business model is applied to schools, that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Can anyone imagine a McDonalds serving hamburgers with moldy bread and freezer-burned beef? Of course not. But that's what they'd be serving if they had no control over the raw materials from which their finished products come. If they couldn't reject bad bread and beef, they'd be serving inedible food to their customers. So they reject bad raw materials at the entry stage.

No component of the food service industry will accept less than best materials from which they make their products. However, they do accept all customers and serve them as well as they possibly can. In stark contrast, the public school takes all students at age 5 who can show legal residence in the school's district. It doesn't matter whether the child has ever been read to, can distinguish a number from a letter, was raised in an environment of love, understands the concept of another's feelings, sharing, taking turns, or can respond to their own name. The public school takes them all. In fact, the Court has determined that the school district is required to accept children who cannot see, hear, speak, walk, or any number of physical challenges, and even those who have criminal records. How can these be the raw materials for a school system's products?

They sound a lot more like customers, don't they.

But that's a different post.

When did we fall so far behind?

2008-11-29T16:59:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid, the coolest things were happening at the pubic school. Way back when TV was crappy we had film strips that the teacher's pets got to advance as long as they paid attention, and regular kids got to read the slides. They we got the upgrade to the combo model with the cassette tape, and then the Cadillac that would automatically advance the slides too.

We had it all, 16mm films with projectors, pianos, band instruments, basketball hoops, and tether balls. We had a gob of stuff normal families couldn't afford, right down to fooballs, basketballs. And that seemed to be the case even when I left the country in 1988 to teach overseas. Technology had advanced some, but I was still making worksheets on a mimeograph machine. I saw my first computer two years before I left, there were three huge and clunky one-piece IBM's that read programs off a cassette tape in DOS language. Our school also had a few VCR's and televisions on which to show educational videos to our students. Only the wealthiest students had VCR's at their homes and a few families owned a computer, but at this time, most folks were still wondering what was the point. Because I was a teacher, we got a discount from APPLE and we bought an APPLE IIE with a printer. It cost us $1,300 at a teacher's discount.

When I came back to the states in 1996, one of the first things we purchased was an Acer home computer. Compared to today's computers, it was clunky too. We already owned a VCR and a CD player. But the real change was that it was very common for middle class families to have all these things too. The really strange thing was that when I started teaching again in the fall of 1997, the school had hardly any of these things. The library had a handful of VCR's for teachers to fight over and a few computers. Our school had a single computer lab. In a few years, our family purchased our first DVD player, a couple of years before the school would have one.

In today's world, our students wake up in a room where they have their own TV and DVD player. They have an IPOD with a dock for listening through speakers. They have their own computer in their room with an internet connection. However, the most dynamic technological device they own is their cell phone, which in many cases is as powerful a computer, with internet connection, as our old Acer computer. Oh yeah, they get into their own cars and drive themselves to school.

In many, many cases, our students leave their personal world which is highly technological and step into an archaic, broken down techno-deprived school world. We can't compete...well, we haven't been competing for a long time and it's pretty obvious by our drop out rates and our ACT scores and college remediation rates the price we're paying because of it.

A Freakanomics Question

2008-11-28T14:30:00.000-08:00

I recently read the book Freakanomics and was encouraged by the authors to do some thinking and ask questions about the commonalites between two seemingly disparate systems. So hear's my freaky question.

What does a 700 billion dollar bailout and mandatory school attendance laws have in common?

They both prop up failing systems.

Take the Detroit 3 for example. They've had all these years to watch imports take over the auto market in this country, they could have invested their money in research into how foreign car makers do it. They could have worked on alternate fuel autos. At the very least, they could have worked toward developing more fuel efficient cars.

But what did they do?

The funneled money up to the top in huge salaries and bonuses. Then they flew to Washington in separate lear jets (as though car-pooling was also an asian innovation) and asked for even more money so they could keep their companies in business, supposedly to avoid laying off employees.

What does all this have to do with mandatory school attendance laws?

Years ago, when farmers wanted to keep their children home to work the farm, the government knew those kids needed to be in school and passed laws to keep parents from denying their children an education.

Public education has had even more years than the Detroit 3 to watch foreign nations better educate their children. They've watched tests scores fall while advancements in technology soared without being invited into schools. They've had years and years to reinvent how children will be educated in this country and yet very little has changed. So why aren't educational leaders sitting in front of Senate sub-committees begging for relief?

Because students are required by law to go to school.

Regardless of how boring, how unengaging, how ineffective they find school, it is still better than sitting in a juvenile detention center. If school attendance was no longer mandatory I wonder how many students would show.

How would our classrooms change if students were not required to enter, but would only come if they wanted to? How would parents' attitude toward school and the preparation of their child to attend if their child's desire to be at school was the only way they could get the free babysitting they desperately want? How would students approach to school change if their poor behavior and lack of effort landed them in a county work/school program where they studied for 4 hours and served the county for another 4?

We can't change the law because parents would keep older students home to babysit the little ones and to keep an eye on aging parents.

American public schools have got to learn to compete, not with the children of other nations, but for the interest and enthusiasm of our own children because our buyout is not going away.

Can Anyone Around Here Tell Me What It Means To Be A Teacher?

2008-10-23T18:27:00.000-07:00

I don’t come here very often, not near as much as I should. I get writing ideas while I’m swimming. What’s a guy to do? I can’t post at school because the state blocks non-educational blogs and it doesn’t matter how great the idea is while I’m driving home cause when I finally get there I’m too damn tired to think, much less write something down.

But today was a red-letter day for demonstrating what it means to teach and it happened in my room and yoga was cancelled tonight (without warning, I discovered after I reached the library, rrrrggg). So I’m here…telling my story.

I’ve got a student in my room; let’s call her Joanne, since I don’t actually have a student in my room named Joanne. She’s raising herself with a little help from the person in whose house she lives; it’s a far too often told story about kids who’ve been abandoned by their parents. When she got back from a disciplinary visit to the office, I asked if she was going to be suspended. “Well, I will if I don’t bring a dollar to school tomorrow,” she replied.

“Do you want me to tell you what happened?” she asked. “No,” I said, “I want you to sell your story to me for a dollar.”

While Joanne laid out the tale of a group of students leaving the office one day with an extra fiver in change and knowing the office’s mistake but buying a coke for each one of them instead of taking it back, I slipped a dollar bill out of my billfold and sealed it in an envelope.

JOANNE’S EMERGENCY DOLLAR – TO BE USED IN CASE OF AN EMERGENCY

I wrote on the front while telling her I wasn’t about to let her get suspended for three days (which added to her earlier 3 day suspension would put her over the limit and cost her all her credits) over an effing dollar. Except I didn’t say effing. It was a no brainer really, for while much of the rest of the sophomore class drives parent-provided cars and can always find a few bucks in their pockets and will buy a coke whenever they want one and sometimes even when they don’t, Joanne never sees money. The perks in her life are limited to food, a few pieces of clothes, and enough toiletries to make her presentable. Her emergency dollar is in her binder.

When the class period ended, another student, a senior, who I’ll call Tonya, because I don’t have one of those either, showed me pictures of her new puppy. She’s wanted a dog for a long time and mom wouldn’t spring for it so she pooled all the money she’s made from her minimum wage job and got the dog, some food, and dish to put it in. The food, I mean.

When I got home today I asked Cindy if we were ready to let go of our dog paraphernalia we’d kept since we lost our Golden Retriever a few days before last Christmas. We still had Gabriel’s water and food dishes, grooming stuff, and the big travel carrier he rode in from the Netherlands. I looked through it all as I put it in the car and I was okay with giving it away until I saw the royal blue leash. I wrapped the end of that around my hand countless times; it was literally the thing that bound us together whenever we were out of the house.

But tomorrow it will all become Tonya’s, if she wants it.

There. Now that’s what it means to be a teacher.

Save the Officers! (shoot the soldiers)

2008-09-18T15:37:00.001-07:00

As a follow-up to my last post where I used the word "shit" in the title which was really a stretch for me, I'd like to say the following.

My wife reminded me today that back when the Savings and Loans collapsed, some people went to jail. We've heard nothing about jail time for the folks who managed the mortgage companies that are being bought out.

"Well, the S and L people actually broke the law." I said.

We discussed how the CEO's of the mortgage companies (and insurance companies, and any other companies that go under during this crisis) are going to be well taken care of. They didn't break the law.

"But they didn't do their jobs! Their jobs were to run the company and keep it solvent for the benefit of their customers and their stock holders!" My wife said.

I have to admit that she's right. It was the higher-ups, possibly the highest-ups, who were supposed to watch the trends, the markets, and the money. They were the ones who were supposed to know how vulnerable variable rate mortgages were, and they were the ones to create customer profiles so they didn't write a bunch of high risk mortgages. They didn't do their jobs...

But they are precisely the ones who will be taken care of in the crisis. The number crunchers who sat across from the borrowers and signed and initialled papers, who soldiered their companies, weren't supposed to be responsible for, take the heat for, or lose their jobs over, the incredibly shoddy way business was conducted, but they will.

When the allied forces entered Germany to restore humaness to humanity, foot soldiers were forgiven. They were merely following orders and the allies, knowing how vital that is to any mission, forgave them. It was the officers they rounded up, tried, convicted and executed. It was the "ideas" folks, the thinkers and planners, the one's who stood to gain the most from their own greed and lust for power who faced a very real kind of "firing" squad.

Oh, that we might forgive our soldiers and go after the officers at the end of this financial holocaust.

Government Irresponsibility, or why the taxpayer keeps eating shit

2008-09-18T15:37:00.000-07:00

My wife, Cindy, told me of an interesting change. Financial institutions have always offered each other loans at the end of a day of trading on the stock market. You know, some company ends the day a few thousand dollars in the red and a friend covers their losses until the next day when the debtor pays the loaner. When Merrill Lynch folded, this practice ended. The growing problem is that loaners no longer see borrowers as solvent enough to pay their bills. Ultimately, it's a matter of trust. Amazingly, the financial security of our nation boils down to a virtue.

"What caused this problem?" Cindy asked. We agreed it was greed. Too many people in our country want something now even though they can't pay for it. The poor can't afford to want, the middle class can't afford to over extend. In other words, it's not us. Cindy summed the entire thing by saying, "How could anyone think we can put a Republican in the White House...again?"

Anytime we read "the government bought out..." like some company's bad debt, they do that with tax payers' money. The term "eat it" is saved for the people who actually suffer the loss, and we taxpayers are eating it and have been for a long time. Our legislators have the right to inprison us if we don't pay our taxes, and then they spend the money in such a way as to keep their seats. The answer is not to vote them out of office because the lines of people waiting to take their places for the same perks are long and restless. Hopefully, a president is coming who can stick his finger in faces on both sides of the aisle and say shame on you, and can then kick them in the privates.

We don't have a true royalty in our country, but politicians, celebrities, and the ultra rich will do. I don't know if the French had it right, so many years ago, guillotining the aristocrats, but there are some days, I must admit, that I would stand in line in the rain for my turn to sharpen the blade.

From Biblioignorata To Books: Or How I Became a Reader

2008-09-11T17:20:00.000-07:00

My story of how I became a reader begins with the confession that I have no recorded memory of my first reading experiences. No memory of reading as an elementary student endures. I must have been reading, for that is when I learned to read, but I have no memories of that process either. My bedroom did not contain a bookshelf; I owned no books which I might have put there. This situation is completely understandable considering my personality. I was a busy child; a play-until-you-drop sort of kid. Doing, always doing, if I were to gain an hour or two with my dad, I wasn’t going to be like Scout in the lap of Atticus; I wanted him outside throwing a baseball or wrestling. Instead of reading, I filled my days terrorizing the neighborhood with other children, riding my bike, kicking my football, throwing kites into the telephone wires and pestering my older sister, which I was good at. I remember several close calls at reading or being read at when I was a kid, but my life at the time was summed up by the word motion. If an activity didn’t involve at least one major muscle group, I wasn’t interested.

My dad was career Navy, and I spent most of my time trying to make new friends and stay a step ahead of bullies. In the middle of seventh grade, I enrolled in my fifth school and entered a deep depression after several rounds of beat-up-the-new-kid. My junior high counselor saved my life when she enrolled me in the school choir the day after I confessed that music was all I really gave a hoot about. Not long after, I started taking drum lessons with the band director and learned to read. Music that is-and I discovered I had never known a more satisfying mental activity (I would discover it again while learning to read the symbols of algebra).

This is not to say I didn’t experience any random acts of reading; two dance vividly in my memory. For some reason one night, probably the result of one of my father’s seemingly unending “Son, you represent the good name of this family in everything you do,” diatribes, I actually read my science assignment. I felt really good the next day because I knew some of answers in class; a feat which had eluded me all year. Several days later, however, my science teacher was leaning over me, bent backwards over a table in the room, his hot, acrid breath spouting something in my face about the broken beaker on the floor. Hell with him, I thought. That was the last time I cracked my science book, except of course, to glue some of the pages together later in the year.

I had nursed a suspicion since the year began that my eighth-grade English teacher felt she was superior and doing us all a favor for enduring our presence at great personal sacrifice to her. I was certain of this fact when she introduced the book we were to read as a class. She had chosen Agatha Christie’s, And Then There Were None, which I now understand is typical Christie fare; ten folks go to an island and take their turn at corpse de jour. It was a stretch at best to think our adolescent minds could keep up with the subtle themes of mystery and murder, and those from the pen of a British author no less. However, on that hot and sticky Wisconsin-afternoon in my third-floor English classroom, Christie’s work became incomprehensible to even the brightest mind.

My teacher read the first chapter to us as we followed along in our own paperback copy of the book. I was with her for the first few words and then was lost as a vegan at a weenie roast. Now, I didn’t take a lot of pride in it, but I knew I could read, and when I can’t accomplish something I know I can do, well let’s just say that my room at the time was littered with remnants of broken drumsticks. So I interrupted God’s gift to literacy education with my confession of what most certainly must have been ignorance on my part.

“Oh, I’m reading every other line so it will go faster,” she said.

“Oh, that’s why you sound like a jabbering derelict and are an embarrassment to your profession,” is precisely what I did not say, dispossessing the vocabulary I now enjoy, but exactly what I would like to have replied. Needless to say, I did not return to Agatha’s thriller with any regularity.

My high school years were basically more of the same. I remember my English teachers’ enthusiastically great expectations that I would read such stories as Gunga Din, A Tale of Two Cities, and Romeo and Juliet, but my response was most often, “Ma’am, thou dost expecteth too much. I didst not readeth the assignment for it boreth me grievously.”

Two personal reading memories from high school have endured; one marked by failure, the other, pure joy. At the beginning of one summer, I found Capote’s In Cold Blood in our house and immediately began reading it (reading a book as soon as summer begins is a pleasure I still enjoy). I did just fine as Capote explained the doings of that doomed Kansas family. Then I was suddenly in a car with a couple of hoodlums. Then just as suddenly and without warning, I was back in Kansas. Dorothy didn’t show up to tell me when I was and wasn’t in Kansas, so I finally gave up. Looking back, I think I was just too immature a reader to follow even the simplest literary forms.

The reading experience I cherish from my high school years involves one of my
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When I’m reading for pleasure, and the book is great, I read like I eat with two exceptions-a pair of eyes replace the forks and there’s a lot less grunting.
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parents’ periodic books they received from the good folks at Reader’s Digest. Each book contained several stories in condensed version. The story I read featured a relatively new writer who, in this third book, spun the tale of modern medicine’s attempt to help an epileptic patient. Doctors implanted something in his brain which he could trigger to avoid an oncoming seizure. However, firing the implant flooded his brain with euphoria, and the urge to over-stimulate himself eventually led to his undoing which is why Michael Crichton called him, The Terminal Man.

I couldn’t put that book down and read non-stop for hours that summer on our back porch. Reminiscing on the way I read that book, I realize I began a reading style that has its way with me to this day. When I’m reading for pleasure, and the book is great, I read like I eat with two exceptions-a pair of eyes replace the forks and there’s a lot less grunting. In a word, it’s voracious.

I took my read-as-little-as-possible habits with me to college and struggled in courses such as psychology and music history. But one of my teachers assigned The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and my reading ideology changed again. Alex Haley’s writing held me spellbound. Malcolm X was a real person who wore Zoot Suits, and konked (straightened with chemicals) his hair. He was a Black man who tried to be White, became a Muslim, justified murder and when he returned from Mecca, renounced the very men who led him to Mohammed. His life ended when he was murdered by Muslims while speaking in a church.

I wasn’t reading about a make believe person with a trumped up medical condition. The bizarre events of his life were even more intriguing because I knew they really happened. Once while konking his hair in a public bathroom, Malcolm used too much chemical and his scalp was suddenly on fire. The only immediate relief available was a dunk in one of the toilets. He talked about getting a very clear picture of himself in that moment; he wanted to look White so badly he stuck his head in a toilet. This event really happened and it was at this moment, I now understand, I became enamored with nonfiction. I now placed high expectations on my reading material. I decided it must instruct, inspire, or inform. From now on, I only wanted to read what other people had endured or learned.

My conviction was further emboldened when I read, Flowers in the Attic. I became totally engrossed in the lives of those children forced to live in an attic. Eventually I felt a desperate longing to know if the story was true. When I began the second book in the series, I realized I had been reading fiction. Disappointed and let down, I accepted I’d been duped by a story teller. All that time I’d been playing with imaginary friends and didn’t even know it!

I married a worm right after I graduated from college…the book variety. Cindy could read for hours at a time and would finish two or three books a week. We offered each other the mutual respect of true love; I never disdained her for reading fiction-she didn’t treat me like a doofus for hardly ever reading anything.

I married a worm right after I graduated from college…the book variety. Cindy could read for hours at a time and would finish two or three books a week.The first book I ever owned was a Thompson Chain, Red-Letter Edition, King James Bible, given by my parents on Christmas Day my senior year in high school. My name was emblazoned in gold lettering on the black genuine cow hide leather cover. I was so proud of that Bible-the way it looked and felt, not of the opportunity to read it. After we married, I figured I should read it from beginning to end and did, although I nearly died in First Chronicles.

Even though I didn’t read with Cindy, something changed in my personal habits at the conviction level. I began what Christians often call a devotion, or quiet time, during which I read books by Christian authors. I read the popular writers at the time such as Keith Miller and the British Colonel, Ian Thomas, then years later, Steve Farrar, Neil Anderson, and John Eldredge. Reading these writers wasn’t much different from reading Malcolm X. I read the lessons they’d learned about the spirit life.

I became a Teacher Consultant of the National Writing Project and all the notions of myself as a reader and writer were destroyed in the whirlwind of the organization’s cathartic ideology.This pattern of reading nonfiction in the mornings, never reading fiction, staying active during the day, and vegetating on television in the evenings, remained relatively unchanged for the next twenty years, apart from the books I read to my children when they were young enough to sit in my lap. Oddly enough, while I did all that reading to make myself a better spiritual person, I didn’t do any reading to make myself a better professional person. In the first few years of my career, I received the newsletter from the Arkansas Choral Director’s Association, but was so jealous of the featured directors I didn’t read any of it. Later, I did basically the same thing as a member of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

In the summer of 2004, my reading life took another, remarkable turn. I became a Teacher Consultant of the National Writing Project and all the notions of myself as a reader and writer were destroyed in the whirlwind of the organization’s cathartic ideology. Apart from learning I was a writer, I learned I could read as a writer. I could notice and think about those elements the author had used to tell the story.

I also learned that fiction has just as an important place in reading as nonfiction. I soon read The Secret Life of Bees and realized that although the characters are fictional and there is no wall chucked with little prayers on scraps of paper, the story elements aren’t. Bees is the story of a longing for mothering, coming of age, faith, and several other real issues pertinent to the human condition. The events which happened to the characters in the book may not have happened to the author, but the events were not as important as the themes the events belonged to.

The most important “conk me on the head with an anvil” discovery was that there was a great deal of nonfiction on shelves in bookstores than those dealing with the spiritual life. I could read what others had to say about anything I loved, and my passion at the time was writing. I doggedly scoured Ebay listings for books by Anne Lamott, Natalie Goldberg, Julia Cameron, Ted Kooser, and others. Their works line my bookshelf.

About this time, a friend suggested I read Stephen King’s, On Writing. I don’t read in bed at night like my wife does; by that time in the day my pillow is wooing and singing the sweetest songs. But when King’s book arrived, I decided I would put it by my bed and see how long I could stretch those summer nights. My experience in that book was rewarding, redeeming, and hilarious. I constantly had to put the book down and laugh, sometimes until I cried. “Hey Cindy, you’ve got to hear this!” and I’d read sections to my wife stopping intermittently to laugh uncontrollably. There’s something exhilarating about reading well written work about something I love, written by someone who loves it as much as I do; it’s as good as any fiction experience. The other impact that book had on my life? He said he was always listening to books on tape. To date I’ve probably listened to over two hundred books while driving between Conway and Vilonia.
There’s something exhilarating about reading well written work about something I love, written by someone who loves it as much as I do; it’s as good as any fiction experience.
I began my masters in professional and technical writing in the summer of 2006. My first course was Dr. Jensen’s creative nonfiction with an emphasis on biography. I was quickly introduced to the memoir, a previously unknown genre to me. It’s one of my favorite genres to read; it takes me back to my Malcolm X days. Memoirs almost always instruct, inspire or inform. I don’t just read them for enjoyment; I plan to finish my masters with a memoir and I read them to learn how the genre is crafted.

Although several chapters remain in my life, I have to admit I’m about to enter the last major part. I’m over 50, looking forward to retirement from teaching public school, trying to figure out how I can maintain the lifestyle “to which my wife has become accustomed,” and I’m thinking I’ll give teaching writing in college a shot. I have four courses left in my masters program, and to top it all off, I’ve recently discovered the joy of reading. Not just the joy, but the importance and rewards of taking in another person’s thoughts and life encounters. Most importantly, I now know that reading is the fuel of my writing and I can expect to see the influence of those I’m reading woven through my own written work.

I have many hopes as I settle into the eventide of life. I hope one day I can read as many library books as my wife and that neighbors will notice my unkempt yard and over grown garden and think, Yeah, a reading junkie lives there. But most of all I just hope I keep on reading.

The Greatest of These is Love

2008-09-10T17:03:00.000-07:00

I grew up singing hymns in Southern Baptist churches. The chorus of one of my favorites, How Great Thou Art, begins with the words “Then sings my soul.” The pitch on the first two words is the same, and then it rises on each of the words “my soul.” If the organ is really loud and enough singers belt it out with gusto, I can nearly have an out-of-body experience.

Another favorite hymn from my childhood is Blessed Assurance. The chorus begins with the phrase “This is my story, this is my song.” Through my high school years, and on into college, I gave increasing attention to the stories and songs that sang in my soul. I graduated with a music education degree and taught the subject for several years. However, I now realize my life-long yearning has always been to write those stories and songs, rather than to sing them.

It’s a spiritual experience when my pen skates across the page; my soul breathes and words appear. Every other compulsion in my life: hunger, sexuality, and fatigue, to name a few, all remind me that I’m a physical being. In writing alone, I find the evidence that I’m, as John Mayer sings, “Bigger than my body gives me credit for.” I’m actually a spiritual being in a physical world. And why wouldn’t I be? God is the great Author of all; made in his image, aren’t I most like what he intended for me, when I’m writing?

In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott’s treatise on writing, she says, “Your job is to see people as they really are, and to do this, you have to know who you are in the most compassionate possible sense.” When my writing life began I composed stories about the people and memories I love. In writing about them, I expressed my love. I wrote about the night I asked my wife to marry me and the feelings we shared the day our last child moved out on her own. There were many stories about my children as well: school experiences and vacations, the highs and lows of their lives. Love poured through my pen like tears from a father, having finally found his prodigal.

When I began telling my stories, however, I didn’t realize how little I loved myself. With each story, I fell in love with my main character who was always me! One of my first stories was about running in my first two marathons. The man in that story had his flaws, for sure, but there was also something compelling about him. I finally accepted the strand of goodness woven through the heart of my blundering hero who, in spite of it all, was one of the good guys. He was a good husband and father, a valuable friend to anyone. Most importantly, writing about him opened my eyes to the truth that he had always possessed these traits. Writing introduced a love of self I had never known.

The essence of writing is love.

Writing led me to renewed perspectives of the people in my life. Suddenly, I was aware of goodness in others that had always been hidden. As I wrote about people, I could clearly see their motivations, the good intentions behind what they did. Writing continues to teach that the people who cross my path are characters in the story of me, and worthy of love. My writing even went so far as to help heal my childhood wounds and offered peace with my family. Through writing, I’ve learned to love others, just as I learned to love myself.

I also write as a scribe; a record-keeper of the truth. I own a history given to no one else. I must chronicle the truth known only by me. No one else can tell the delight of my wife’s affection, the joy of raising my children, or the thrill of teaching my students. I alone am able to recount the truth of my unrequited loves in junior high, the power of my accomplishments, and the pain of my failures.

Along with love and truth, writing is also about power. My pen possesses the power to turn a perpetrator into a hero, a priest into a villain. An adolescent can bear remarkable super-human abilities and an assassin can save a stranger’s life. Through writing I have the power to raise the dead to life, infiltrate the government with alien creatures, or concoct a potion that restores youth to the aged.

My writing has power over readers too. In his book, I Am a Pencil, Sam Swope tells of a student’s story where “the treacherous scorpion snatches a dog’s brain and sticks it in his pocket.” Swope wonders, “Isn’t that what writers do, pocket brains?” With reader’s brains in my pocket, I can change their minds, or at the least, influence their thinking. Writing can illuminate a previously unseen perspective, revealing flaws or restoring dignity. With words, I hold the power to heal a broken heart or break a haughty one.

I must admit, the pervasive power of writing includes a stronghold over me. When creative ideas are flowing, an hour or two can easily pass without my notice, as if the muse has put my mind in her pocket. Nothing captivates my mind like language and its articulate use to express concept or feeling. The search for just the right word, which can turn a phrase from entertaining to laugh-out-loud funny, arrests my attention like nothing else can. Writing is a powerful distraction from the woes and worries of the average day.

An essay on the reasons why I write would not be complete without a paragraph or two regarding my pen and journal. There’s an undeniable thrill, as evidenced in my step, when I leave Office Depot with a brand new pen. I’ve tried them all; the snap-top ball points, fine-tip gel-pens, 1.0 millimeters vs. 0.7 mills. I’ve even sought out those with the ergonomic grips designed to protect me from damage to my ligaments and tendons in the most frenzied bouts of journalistic scribbling. New pens, like new love, inspire passionate writing.

Just as stimulating as the feel of new a uni-ball Gel Impact, is the fragrance and potential of a new journal; especially if she’s bound in leather. Those blank pages just beg to be impressed and pressed upon. “Come chart the unknown with me,” she invites. Journals without lines are uniquely irresistible, promising acceptance of whatever the mind conceives no matter how far outside the box, how distant from the rule of linear thinking. A blank journal is as seductive as the surface of a newly-opened jar of peanut butter, and just as willing to let you make your mark.

In fifty years I will probably be nothing more than a memory in the minds of the people whose lives I’ve been privileged to touch. In another fifty years, everyone who knew me personally will be gone. Finally, those who have only known of me will pass on as well. I find even deeper appreciation and meaning in my writing as I face the truth in the New Testament book of James: “You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” The moments of my life can be more than mere footprints in the sand, subject to erosion by the winds and waves of time. With my writing, I can make my life a love offering to the unborn generations of my family and beyond.

The reasons I write are power, truth, and love, but the greatest of these is love. When the back cover finally turns on my life and my body falls those last six feet, let it be said of me, “He loved enough to write.”

Home, Sweet Hope

2008-09-09T17:28:00.000-07:00

I was born in Newport, Rhode Island.
I lived in Pennsylvania.
Moved to the Philippine Islands.
Lived in Garden Grove California, and began school.
Did grades 3-5 in Okinawa.
Went right back to Garden Grove.
Moved right away to Huntington Beach.
In seventh grade, moved to Sun Prairie, Wisconsin.
Started college, but moved to Fort Smith, Arkansas.
Finished college in Fayetteville got married and moved to El Dorado Springs, Mo.
Two years later, moved back to Fayetteville.
Years later, moved to England.
After two years, moved to The Netherlands.
Moved back to Conway, Arkansas.

When I met my wife, she was living with her parents in the second house they’d ever owned. She knows Fayetteville like the back of her hand. She can tell you stories, she can show you the hospital where she was born, and the church she attended until we married there and moved away.

I on the other hand can only hope to find my residences on a map. I know Fayetteville well, and Ft. Smith faintly. To none of those other places have I ever returned. Rhode Island, Wisconsin, California, and here I live in Arkansas, an average distance of 1,300 miles from any of them. I have never seen the hospital where I was born, or any school I attended from the day I left it.

Some men my age find themselves wishing they could go home. And I, I wish I had one.

What the heck

2008-09-07T18:55:00.000-07:00

Well, I did watch alot of those fricken olympics. As my friend Monda would say, "Don't get me started."

I'm in survey of nonfiction at UALR. I'm in a class with readers, big time. Oh yeah, one of them is a published author too! We shared our reading stories. Mine was funny. What I found was that all of them see nothing wrong whatsoever in just sitting and reading. For hours. While everything else goes undone.

What I realized is that I was raised in a culture where self worth is drawn from accomplishment. The measurable kind. And observable too.

So my whole adult life I've been a weed-pulling, grass-mowin', garden-planting, doer. And you know what my wife did during all that? Read. She did the stuff that had to be done, but when relinquished from requirement she sat down with a good book.

So I'm going to start trying to be more like her. I'm going to recreate myself as a reader. I'll find something else to give me a sense of worth, there's plenty to choose from, I mean I've got a wife, two kids, a son by marriage, nearly another, and the cutest granddaughter.

Skuze me, I gotta go read.

Yeah, But I Don't Have To Watch

2008-07-10T15:10:00.000-07:00

Would you to to a party at a guy's house if you were pretty sure he was beating his son and raping his daughter? Me neither. Some folks would say, "But you might be able to do some good while you're there, you know, convert him or something!"

The only way I'm buying that is if we go in with guns blazing, grab the kids, and kick the guy in the nuts on the way out.

Or, would you accept a five million dollar payout from a casino if they paid it to you in paychecks? If, instead of cash, they gave you the paychecks of the sorry schlubs whose brain chemistry is structured just right for their victimization? I can year the argument now, "But after you got the money, you could do so much good with it! You could feed the children of those poor bastards!" Right, and any moment Brittney Spears could open a day care for orphans. But I digress.

If we can see the idiocy of the previous examples then what in the hell are we doing in the Olympics in Bejing? China's record on human rights still isn't so good. It isn't enough that entire businesses like Hobby Lobby and much of Walmart thrive off the trinkets made in sweat shops; before the fourth of July holiday, news media reported the U.S. spent 187 million dollars on fireworks from China!

And for what? A few seconds of thrills?

Dara Tores, 41 year old mother, returns to the pool in the Olympic games. All totalled, she'll spend less than 10 minutes in the pool.

And for what? A few minutes of thrills?

This has gotten personal. Western news media will not receive permission to take cameras into all parts of China. Conditions for all Chinese will not be on our televisions. All we'll see are the happy few, strategically placed at the party by the guy who routinely beats his sons and rapes his daughters.

I can't cancel the party or keep folks from going, but I sure don't have to watch television coverage of the event, pretending that no one in the house is suffering.

It's Eudora's fault...

2008-07-09T18:54:00.000-07:00

We're in the summer institute. Stephanie read that bit from Eudora Welty's book. Then she asked, "What was your introduction to books?" The room fell silent. Pens scratched on papers. My pen did this:

It was 1975
I fell in love
With a vessel of
Passions and
In waters churned
Lay books.

"You've never read
To Kill A Mockingbird?"
Unmockingly exhaled
As easily as
"I'm hungry."

Their bony spines
From library shelves
Stared at me
Dared me
Scared me.
"I'm not a reader"
Lovers' confessions
Intellectual pillow talk.

"They're kissing cousins,"
She mused
"Reading,"
"And sitting still."

There they were,
Caught in the
Whirling power of this
Person,

Books

And I sat still.

******************
July 15, 2008. Thirty years.

What I learned this Summer...

2008-07-07T09:04:00.000-07:00

I just finished a really cool course in my masters work at UALR. The course was called Working with Writers and I learned a lot about working in a virtual environment. I also learned a ton of new technology including wikis, RSS feeds, and chat rooms. In my first virtual group we took on RSS feeds along with wikis, email, blogging and chat rooms. We actually made a wiki for our group and turned it in for grading. If you'd like to see the wiki we made go to:

http://coolgroup.wikispaces.com/

I feel so much more capable on the web, but I still only know a thumbnails worth!

My Toe Is In The Water

2008-07-05T15:18:00.000-07:00

Why did I quit posting to my blog?

I felt competition.

That's first. I looked around as some other blogs. Pictures, links, contests. I pulled a Peter, started looking at the waves, got insecure, looked at my blog through the eyes of my critics. I felt like I had to pour in many hours to make it cool enough to compete, cool enough for people to like it, to like me.

And there it is.

My blog became, in my mind, another reason people might not like me.

"Have you seen that pathetic blog?"

Well, no it's not pathetic...now. But I was afraid that if all I did was put up writing...my thoughts...then it would be a pathetic blog and I wouldn't be cool. Once again, my critic has my ball sac in the death grip. She's threatening to twist it, twist and wrench, until the thing pops off in her hands, and then you know what she'll do with it?

Eat it.

Critics are never happy until they've consumed your essence.

A Great Day In Sheridan

2008-03-14T03:33:00.000-07:00

I got to work with some truly wonderful educators yesterday in Sheridan. I presented on “Teacher As Writer” to second grade teachers in the morning and third grade in the afternoon. I read a couple of my pieces and snippets of books about writing by writers such as Stephen King, Anne Lammot, Judith Barrington, and Deborah Cameron. We followed that with a writing prompt asking participants to write about something they were feeling at the moment. Here’s my own response to the morning prompt:

Yes, I am so delighted. I’m sharing with other educators, it’s about writing of course, what else would I share about…and that delights me. But I think what delights me even more is that after 28 years in education I have something to share. I’m not burned out, broken, beat down, holed up in my classroom, nursing a career of wounds perpetrated by parents, students, and agenda-laden administrators. I remember thinking early in my career I might not ever have a valuable contribution to my craft. I’d go to inservices like this one and hear older educators talk about some cool idea we could use and I wondered…will I ever have a cool idea to share? Then I joined the National Writing Project and realized I was a writer and that I always had been. So many educators don’t realize this…and that’s my cool idea.

And this from the second:

Woah, I’m tired. I’m not prepared for the “over fifty” changes taking place. I hear the bed calling some nights at 8:30. The images of me in pictures on the walls point and laugh as I admit I just can’t stay up as late as they used to. I can’t remember a whole lot of junk I used to and some of it isn’t junk-sometimes I look right into the faces of people I’ve known for a few years and the name just won’t come. I don’t burn calories like I used to; my body is creeping toward the apple shape of my father’s. Like his eyebrows, mine too are slowly edging toward one another above my nose, and speaking of the nose, I’m shaving or trimming in there a lot more often, which must have made my ears jealous for they too are now longing for scissorial attention.

The best days of my life used to exhilarate me – I could go for hours. Now those same activities, exciting as they are, drain me. Of course, I love my life, but there a few things of old I miss, and a few new visitors I just don’t care for.

How I Spent My Snow Day-Or, A Few Things To Do On A Day Off

2008-03-08T06:49:00.000-08:00

Cindy and I went to the most tedious movie we’ve witnessed in some time. It was not just tedious, the boom mic appeared in at least a dozen shots, in one the entire arm was visible. On top of that, the theatre next door must have been showing THE HISTORY OF BOMBS or something like that. Our theatre rumbled and at times our seats shook a little. Our only (well, not really, I’ll share others) redemption was that we went on a snow day and paid matinee prices.

Atonement is the story of a tragedy which befalls a young couple when the younger sister of the girl in the couple (Keira Knightley), makes a knowingly false accusation against the young man in the couple, played by James McAvoy. After being separated by prison and then war, it appears they get back together. That’s another redemption, a little twist at the end, but if you’re anything like the moviegoer I am, you’ll be ticked that it took so long to get you there. I hope I haven’t spoiled the film for you if you haven’t seen it, but that is basically the entire plot. There are no subplots.

There are three other redeeming elements in the film. The first is the appearance by Juno Temple, an up and coming actress from England. We first saw her as the daughter in Notes On A Scandal. You can’t miss her on screen. She’s a cute kid and the naturally wavy hair makes you wonder how a mom ever got a comb through it. Another redeeming element is the soundtrack. My friend Monda would love it. The music is peppered with the percussive sounds offered by the clack of a manual typewriter. I’d say the soundtrack is enough to drag you to the theatre, but please, only at matinee prices. The final element is that the younger sister who makes the accusation is a writer.

In fact, writing is given plenty of screen time in this otherwise bore of a film. However, a word of warning here; you’re going to see the C-word big as life, all forty feet of it…more than once.

So, apart from getting a new phone with functions I don’t understand, swimming two-thirds of a mile, eating for the second time in a week at the Mean Bean café, and studying for my master’s course, that’s my snow day. I hope you enjoyed yours.

In Joy

2008-03-05T14:34:00.000-08:00

I’ve been swimming, you know, and since I’m a man, the most natural thing for me to do in the pool is to wonder if I can swim as fast or faster than other men my age. I sometimes wonder if I could complete a triathlon, if I could compete in my age group, or maybe finish first in that group.

I think I’ll write later about my general theory that men, for the most part, are verb competitive while women, for that same most part, are noun competitive. So, since I’m a man and now a swimmer, and verb competitive, I announced to my wife one night while doing the dishes that I was going to participate in some triathlons this summer.

At first she asked when I was going to start running again. Six years ago I started training for marathon races. I ran the LR three years in a row, trained for a fourth I didn’t run, then ran the half the next year with my daughter. I stopped because I was sick of devoting so much time to running-all of it away from the house-all of it away from my wife.

Then she said, “It sounds like you’re going to be gone a lot.” And that’s when I took a lesson about enjoyment.

In July, Cindy and I will celebrate 30 years of marriage. We’re really comfortable with each other. We laugh at the same things and enjoy many of the same activities, especially watching movies together. The next best thing to being able to hang out together all day is coming home from work, drinking a cup of coffee (a pleasure Cindy doesn’t enjoy) and working the crossword from the paper together. Then we prepare dinner together, eat it (or eat out, another favorite activity) and watch some favorite television. She might cross-stitch, I might do work on the computer or study my masters coursework; but what we do we do together. Then one of us says something like, “Can we go get in the bed now?” and off we go, retiring for the day, together.

I wanted to investigate triathlons purely for enjoyment’s sake, never realizing that enjoyment could threaten the ones I already have. Do I need another enjoyment in my life, especially one that could cause the loss of something I’m already enjoying?

Hardly.

This is probably something I’ll have to keep my eye on the rest of my life. You know what? Protecting myself from losing supreme enjoyments by giving merely good ones a shot is another thing I could be the best at.

But hey, it’s not a competition.

The Power of Happy Opinion

2008-02-23T13:02:00.000-08:00

I just realized...
I will probably live the rest of my life with the knowledge that there will always be someone, somewhere, who thinks I’m evil. I’m pretty sure my parents do now as well as my sister and her husband. He once said he couldn’t bring himself to speak my name, but I really don’t care very much about that.

While growing up, our parents' opinions define us. We're good boys and girls if our parents say we are. It's terribly difficult to think we're good when our parents don’t. This is probably a good thing. Maintaining parents’ happy opinion helps children make wise decisions. However, there comes a time when children must be released from the defining opinion of parents.

My girls were raised with a view toward independence and self image, self worth, self dignity, and self respect. When the natural time came, they told us they were released from the death grip of our opinions. But for children who are raised in homes with a high degree of control and parental management, this day never comes.

Looking back on my emerging adulthood in my parents’ home, I see my attempts to become an independent agent. However, when I made decisions contrary to my parents wishes, their swift and severe response boiled down to, “If you don’t repair what you have done, from this point on you will live your life outside our happy opinion of you.” I was always terrified and got back in line.

My one regret in this life is that I didn’t stand up to my father sooner. The very first time he insinuated my girlfriend’s family was “white trash” (for enjoying catsup on their fried fish), I should have stood up and said,

“Dad, we’re leaving now. We’ll come back to visit again but you should know this: I’m forgiving you this one time for what you’ve just said. If you ever do it again I’m going to kick your ass or you’ll never see me again.”

I would have to have seen myself as a different person to say it. Sadly, although I was being influenced by several people, the only person who would have been able to convince me I could kick my dad’s ass…was my dad. Of course, he wasn’t about to break the spell. I did eventually tell him to bugger off, but it took me nearly 50 years. I was at least 30 years into my adult life.

Now I live in the same place I would have been if I’d stood up to him at 19. It’s a high price to pay, but in return for this opinion of a few people I’ll probably never see again, I get my self respect, dignity, worth, self image, the whole lot. No one is ever going to disrespect me, my wife, or my children without hearing about it from me, and possibly, even at my age, suffering a little violence.

I just wish I’d paid sooner.