Category: Life

Amusing Ourselves to Death

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Disclaimer: I’m a fan of media. When I finish writing this, I’m heading to watch a couple episodes of Buffy. I own an impressive collection of dvd’s and cd’s–although not as good as my daughter’s. I raised her right, I think. I have oodles and oodles of music on my Amazon cloud, which has some but not all of the same music as my iPod, which still only has part of my collection. I use streaming Netflix and Hulu Plus pretty much daily. I like media.

BUT…..the Mexican restaurant I like now has television screens everywhere I look. So does Applebees and the Beer Barrel. And McDonalds and Burger King. And WalMart. In fact, WalMart has small screens at the end of some aisles, just in case you get bored making your way between the big screens, I guess.

AND….now my high school has random huge screens in hallways. We have enough trouble with kids blocking the intersections between classes; now there’s a constant stream of…I’m not sure what they will play….to distract the human roadblocks even more.

Then I went to put gas in my car today, and the pump was blaring country music at me.

When did America become allergic to silence? When did people become so boring that any entertainment is better than conversation? Recently, I went to a popular restaurant in Lima–one big room–with 8 televisions all on different programs, all with subtitles and sound, AND music was playing as well. Major sensory overload–and impossible to talk. I didn’t even attempt to stop my daughter when she pulled a book out of her purse to read as she ate; conversation was impossible. I sat there reading twitter and RSS feeds; yes, I see the irony in that: more media saturation, when that’s what I’m grousing about.

I didn’t say I’m holier than anyone else in this case. If I could find a Sy-Fy/Alt Bar, playing Star Trek, Star Wars, Firefly, Buffy, and other favs, I’d be there. Especially if they had amazing nachos like Applebees used to have.  But, if my hypothetical bar existed, I promise I’d be there arguing Kirk v. Picard, and counting the times Luke whined–not just sitting there comatose, senses too overloaded to function.

Eating Knowledge

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The story By the Waters of Babylon by Stephen Vincent Benet shows a civilization that has been decimated by “eating knowledge too fast,” as John the Son of a Priest says as he explores the ruins of modern day New York City. John observes that there must be a balance between wisdom and knowledge or a civilization isn’t safe.

I could rant and point fingers about the educational reformers, creating a culture of accountability while neither employing or espousing wisdom. And some other day, I might. But this week at my school, the value of having teachers with wisdom as well as knowledge was made clear.

A young, healthy teacher died suddenly. One day, he was lecturing, badgering kids to complete assignments, interviewing to become principal, even. The next, we were explaining to his students that he died that morning as he was getting ready for school.

Testing can be mandated; work hours can be mandated. Even the content of the classes and the knowledge the teachers possess and impart can be mandated. And knowledge is important–no argument about that.

But students are not widgets or cogs in the education machine. Students are not merely “stakeholders” in the process, either. They are people, with all the weaknesses, issues, emotions, and baggage that our reality shows parade across America’s television screens daily. We can make the acquisition of knowledge more efficient and effective,  but there’s a tipping point where the educational system will become so weighted towards “knowledge” than the human element will be gone–the ability to bring school to a standstill to hold sobbing students, when needed even–and there will be no wisdom left to find in our classrooms. That’s what was most clearly illustrated this week as my school dealt with that teacher’s sudden death.

There is little wisdom in our statehouses and our leaders; our churches and holy places are too often focused on big screen projectors and growing their market share. If we do not want John the Son of a Priest’s tale to be prophetic, schools may be our last hope for finding the balance between knowledge and wisdom.

Charlie and Friends

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When I was pregnant for my first child, my family and friends were somewhat…well,….concerned. I showed no knack for nuturing. In fact, to be blunt, death seemed to follow in my wake. Put me in charge of nuturing, and—wilting leaves, yellowing stems, brown petals.

Plants committed suicide while left in my care. Seriously–I talked to them, played Mozart, watered them (or didn’t, depending on what I thought was needed…if I thought of the plant, that is). I contend that much of this wasn’t my fault.

For instance, consider the case of Charlie, the Norfolk pine tree I got about 8 years ago. A hale, green, festive little tree. I planned on putting it in my family room with a few lights, making the family room jolly (the massive Christmas tree was in the living room).  I bought it early, planning ahead. A few days after I brought it in the house, it started looking peaked–drooping a bit. I watered it. It started looking brown. I quit watering it.

The tale gets sordid from there, involving duplicity and broken dreams–and a second tree dying a lonely death as Charlie I’s proxy. Much later, I found out something that I never would have guessed: some evergreen trees are not outdoors trees. Go figure…

I’d left Charlie, and Charlie II, outdoors in the winter, never dreaming that I’d frozen them to death. I’m still haunted by the image of their whispered, husky voices asking for heat.

But it’s time to redefine myself, so I’m starting by channeling my inner Tom Bombadill. For quite a few years, I’ve had these two plants–a spider plant that my daughter gave me for Mother’s Day, and this other plant that I’ve heard called a snake plant.  (Note: The pictures of them didn’t import from my old blog, but they looked good.)

See how green and healthy they seem? I’ve gotten brave, so in the last few months, I’ve expanded my indoor greenry: a bamboo (I’d killed one in the last year, so this is penance), a Christmas cactus, a Yucca Cane, and—ta da–another Norfolk Pine. I want a rubber tree plant, and maybe an aloe, then I’m done. I will have proved my nuturing skills if none of them go to the great garden in the sky for a long time.

We’ll see about that, though–I realized yesterday that Charlie’s home, a place in my kitchen between the oven and the register, might have accounted for a couple twigs on my floor…I would free him out into the wild, but I know how that would turn out.

Note: 9 years later, Charlie is alive and well and taller than me.

Stone Soup

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Years ago, when I was a much younger teacher, I had a conversation with my Grandma Flo that I still mull over sometimes as I do lesson plans. Grandma knew I was an English teacher, but she was curious exactly what I did. She assumed meant I taught grammar and punctuation, “things that would help kids get a good job,” as she put it.

Well, no, that isn’t emphasized in high school English, I confessed. We did lots of essay writing, but not sentence diagramming and activities like she was asking about. We didn’t even have a grammar or punctuation textbook. She was pretty incredulous at that, and couldn’t imagine what I did with my students.

“We read a lot,” I explained. “And we talk and write about the reading.” That was the simple version, but basically covered everything we did in the 80’s in English classes.

She nodded her head, agreeing that reading is important, yes. “There are lots of good stories out there. Do your students read about Corrie Ten Boom?” She was on a Corrie Ten Boom kick then. I shook my head no. “Well, there’s lots of other good stories. Do you read any of those stories by Dale Evans that you liked?” Grandma remembered when I was in elementary school and read the books by Roy Rogers’ wife that were laying on Grandma’s end table.

Again, I shook my head no. Grandma looked at me, brow furrowed. The stare went on for a long time….possibly hours, the way I remember it. She finally said something:  “Now Jeannine, you aren’t going to tell me you waste your student’s time with made up stories, are you?”

We’d been reading Hemingway. I was starting a Chekhov story the next week. I had to admit to it.

“Well, that’s just wrong. There are so many true stories out there, so many people those kids could be learning about and inspired by. You just need to look at what you do and ask yourself why you’re wasting their time with lies and made up stuff.”

I tried to counter her position: “Grandma, Jesus told stories. That’s what parables are.”

“He surely did tell stories–and they were teaching a lesson to uplift us. And you don’t know that they weren’t about real people, do you? He just didn’t use names because he wasn’t going to air somebody else’s dirty laundry in front of everybody and their neighbor.”

I could have kept trying. I can explain all sorts of literary theory about the power and universality of fiction. I can explain Bruno Bettelheim’s and Joseph Campbell’s and Jung’s defense of the need and purpose for fiction. I could have quoted C.S. Lewis and Susan Sontag.

But it would have been sound and fury; I would have been protesting too much. I knew the look on Grandma’s face. I wasn’t changing her mind on this.

I’ve told that story a couple times to other English teachers, and we chuckle and shake our heads. Of course we read “made up” stories–and find great Truth and meaning in them.  Using my Grandma story as a quirky icebreaker, though,  ignores the bigger issue, and this is an issue that plagues education reform today, but it’s a difficult, messy question: what is the purpose of education?  Why do we do what we do?

Grandma’s mission statement was crystal clear: formal education is to help people get good jobs. With that as the goal, an emphasis on fiction really doesn’t make sense.  When education reformers emphasize the need to educate a work force that can compete globally, they are rallying behind Grandma—21st century jargon as a value-added fun piece.

Or do we need to create citizens who are capable of governing a democracy wisely? Or should the goal of education be to form “educated” people in the classical sense–people who know the classics, who are well-versed in the humanities? Or to provide an underclass that will consume and keep the free market growing?

At the early elementary level, all the purposes are served by similar methods. But by middle school, it’s clear that we’re trying to do a bit of column A, a smattering of column B–it’s the stone soup approach to education. Everybody brings what they have to the pot and throws it in, hoping that it all fits together in a tasty broth.

But if Grandma were sitting down with reformers and politicians who are cooking the educational broth–I have no doubt that she’d look at them with the same furrowed brow, asking hard questions about what we are doing and why. I’d have wanted a front row seat for that!

Have Yourself….

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I miss Sparkle and Twinkle. Years ago–well, not really that long ago, seeing that time is relative–I told my daughter stories about Sparkle and Twinkle, twin elves who lived in Santa’s house at the North Pole. It sounds so simple when I say it that way, but we had a mythos equal to Tolkien’s Middle Earth before Sparkle and Twinkle went into cold storage. My daughter was about three the year I started creating the story cycle; the stories lasted for six or seven years beyond that, I think. I even published a column in the Lima News requesting that Lima respect the fragile belief in the impossible and unlikely in hopes that she–and other kids tottering on the precipice of unbelief–might have one more year of magic.

But Sparkle and Twinkle are gone, and a sense of wonderment and enchantment has sauntered away with them. It’s so easy to be mired in logic, to scoff and debunk. We live in an age, in a society, where the magical is scientific: my phone can do things Thomas Edison, Ben Franklin and Alexander Graham Bell couldn’t even imagine, and my memories are safely digitized, filtered through pixels.

For years, my first Christmas music of the season–AFTER Thanksgiving–has been my ancient John Denver and the Muppets Christmas cd. I take a lot of flak about that from the Denver-grinches around me (and, yep, I invite it). But there’s a method to my madness, a logic in my search for the illogical: John Denver’s joy and wonder and wacky-optimistic-beliefs come through to me in the music. I once saw Frank Oz and Jim Henson (Muppet creators) interviewed about why they worked so often with John Denver; they recounted how even during meetings with the Muppets and their creators, Denver repeatedly addressed Kermit and Fozzie and the gang directly as well as talking to Oz and Henson. The Muppeteers jokingly considered whether someone needed to explain to Denver that Kermit was, in fact, a puppet, not “real.” Many stars who worked with the Muppets had a difficult time talking to the Muppets even in character; they were so acutely aware that they were “playing pretend.” In John Denver’s world, though….magic was real. Sure, Kermit needed Jim Henson to talk and move, but the essence of Kermit, was….well….Kermit.

I want to accept what’s logical but seek the impossible–with a sense of wonderment and openness and joy, of course. There’s a virtue in being able to drop the veneer of reason to seriously imagine Sparkle and Twinkle as teen elves; there’s a solace and joy in making the theologically analytical voices in my head stop long enough to smile at the thought of Grandma finally getting to be under the mistletoe with Grandpa, after a long, patient wait.

But this is a rough era for magic, for belief. Angels and elves alike are dissected on the altar of knowledge and denounced from the podium of facts.

One of my favorite poems–slightly Christmas-themed, Evelyn Waugh’s Prayer to the Magi, seems a fitting close to my homage to Muppets, Elves, and belief:

You are my especial patrons, and patrons of all latecomers,
of all who have a tedious journey to make to the truth,
of all who are confused with knowledge and speculation,
of all who through politeness make themselves make themselves partners in guilt,
of all who stand in danger by reason of their talents.
For his sake who did not reject you, pray always for the learned, the oblique, the delicate.
Let them not be quite forgotten when the simple come into their kingdom.

Evelyn Waugh, Helena

And with that—Merry Christmas.

Summertime….when the living is……well, …….

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When I was little, I wore shorts and sleeveless tops and played outside a good share of the day, screen door slamming behind me as I hustled out the back door. No worry about sunscreen, no discussion about how hot and sweaty I might get–it’s summer. If I got hot, it was expected–it was summer, after all. And I could always get a glass of ice water and sit in front of a fan if I wanted a break from playing–or, at times, sitting outside reading. Surprised? Not if you know me.

Now, I’m sitting here debating whether to turn on the air conditioning. It’s a bit over 80 degrees in the apartment, but I have windows open and a fan going. In fact, I spent part of the afternoon putting the screens in the doors and rearranging the minuscule living room so that I would have a better cross breeze. I like fresh air and all that.

But…my hair is hot. Sweat is trailing down the back of my head, dripping onto my t-shirt collar. My feet are hot, too. My socks are a bit damp, and my ankles itch. Maybe I should take a shower. Maybe I should buy a pair of shorts. Or…I could turn on the AC and be comfy cool, thumbing my nose at Mother Nature’s hot flash. Summer–ha. No reason for us to be anything but cool as Kerouac.

Being me, this isn’t a question of personal comfort (or Beth’s comfort, either; she can deal). If I turn on the AC, am I perpetrating a system that creates soft, weak people, people who are disconnected from nature and the natural rhythms that our foremothers honored? My Cherokee and Iroquois ancestors survived in less hospitable surroundings than I’ve ever encountered (well, except for my junior prom. No native ever braved that–but I have faith they could have). Am I buying into a consumer mindset that is creating unsustainable expectations about the pampered quality of life I should have?

The personal is the political. Think globally, act locally. Both true. Both cliches I believe. This is a moment that tries men’s souls, the summer patriot, etc (Yea, Tom Paine is sticking out his zombie-tongue at me). I do believe that I should not turn on the AC, that a good person–one concerned about the environment, one interested in connecting with nature–wouldn’t mind the rivulet of sweat trailing from her ear down her bra…but right now,….well…I’m going to go sit in the Lotus position under my maple tree, decide what Thoreau would do.

Pretzel Logic: Why Do I Write?

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Why do I write? Or, more precisely, why do I careen my thoughts across cyberspace (albeit, irregularly)? I’ve been pondering that lately, although I should admit that mulling over meaningless quasi-philosophic questions is one of my most effective ways to procrastinate from grading. A while back, I decided my blogging and other forms of inflicting my ramblings on people was a sign that I needed some perspective…and maybe a life…and maybe a hobby that didn’t involve assuming people wanted to know my every thought.

Is blogging sheer narcissism? Am I vain enough to believe that I may say something profound, something so compelling that people should hang my words on their refrigerator? Do I think I’m as amusing as Jon Stewart, and every bon mot should be recorded in hopes that he stumbles upon me and whisks me away to be a staff writer ? (Well,….um….yeah) Or that I have the capacity and wit to create an image or phrase worthy of repeating? On the rare occasions that has happened, it’s a real ego stroke, I’ll admit. But still–that’s too rare to be a major motivation. I think. I hope. Wow….it would be as pathetic as Oliver Twist if that’s my major motivation.

Which is why I kept thinking about the topic. Then it hit me that those questions all presumed someone read my brain-droppings. When I wrote for the Lima News regularly, I knew that I had an audience. I was stopped at the grocery by people who liked my latest column–or by people who vehemently disagreed! I got the occasional note from someone who enjoyed a specific column, and I often had interesting discussions with people who wanted to share their ideas and reactions. I liked that. Ok, I’ll concede that at least a part of my reaction may have been from the ego lift of people seeking me out to respond, but I thrive on interesting conversation. That really was fun. I miss those conversations with strangers and near-strangers, in fact. But when I write here? I think I’m my main reader, too–this site is not exactly tearing up the bandwidth. Which makes me question why I do it, which leads back to the idea that, yep, it’s narcissistic.

Then a couple days ago, I read an article from a columnist for a news magazine (not sure if it was Time or Newsweek; I read both). He was talking about technology and social networking (another topic I’m thinking about frequently), and commented that although public writing is a narcissistic act in some ways, in another sense it is an attempt to build community in a society that has lost most traditional vestiges of community; that the modern equivalent to Solomon’s Portico and Emerson’s Lyceums is found online, and that participating by reading, writing and/or commenting was the same as discussing at the town meeting or other more traditional venue.

That logic works for me. Instead of being a sad, self-absorbed wanna-be writer, I’m participating in the intellectual life of the community, perhaps even creating a tribe of thinkers, swatting at the issues and dilemmas that pester modern people. So I’m deliberately planning to write at least once a week here, treating it as much like a commitment as I did my newspaper column. That’s my plan. Check back on my progress (note, I’m assuming audience again. Hi Mom!Hi Dad!)