e-verities

A Sinking Ship

2010-10-10T22:48:00.002-05:00

One Revolution Play Festival, Center Stages, July 3, 2010

Friday, July 2, 2010, at 7:00 P.M. six writers met at the home of the current Center Stages president, drew prompts from a pile and began writing. We were charged with completing a ten page play by 7:00 A.M., when about forty actors, six directors, and an unspecified number of tech people met at the Center Stages arena to cast, crew, and stage the plays. At 8:00 p.m. the plays were presented to an audience. What follows is my play.

Writer: Ron White
Title: A Sinking Ship
Prompts: mismatched couples & a sinking ship
Setting: a hold in a ship that may be sinking
Characters:
JESSICA, late forties, dressed in short brightly patterned shift wearing cowboy boots. Somehow, on her tall, leggy figure the combination “works.” A brightly but differently patterned scarf is loosely tied around her neck. Her big sunglasses are pushed up on her head. Everything she says rings with certainty and authority.
GIB, even later forties, dressed in beige chinos and a tan shirt. He is as tall as JESSICA, but because he is overweight he gives the impression that he is the short one of this couple. He is certainly shorter in stature. If in every relationship there is a pot and a flower, he is the pot to the brightly flowering JESSICA.
CODGER, late sixties, dressed in what use to be pumpkin colored overalls, a long sleeved blue denim work shirt, and orange work boots. All the colors have been faded and stained to mottled earth tones. His hair is unkempt and his beard is untrimmed, both graying in that piebald pattern that will never look distinguished. You expect him to be trailing a grocery basket with all his world’s possessions.
BENJAMIN, a shadow of a teen, skinny legged black jeans, a hoodie, worn zipped up with the hood up. Arms either perpetually wrapped around his thin frame or his hands stuffed deep in his pockets. He barely raises his head until BRIANNA enters.
BRYCE, Late forties. He never thinks he is out of place, wearing yellow chinos, and a khaki safari shirt and hat. He is ebullient and enthusiastic, to the edge of insincerity. He smiles a lot, for no apparent reason.
BRIANNA, a teen, wearing a khaki safari shirt open over her black t-shirt. Also wearing a black skirt, she carries a khaki safari hat as if she doesn’t quite know what to do with it.

THE SCENE
(We hear the sound of dripping water in a big, empty, metal-walled space, a hold in a ship that has not had a useful purpose in decades. A working ship’s hold would have crates, labeled, ordered, and stacked. This hold, while containing a few old crates and boxes left over from useful life, resembles someone’s attic. Mismatched chairs are piled in corners, among tables, boxes, and an occasional nautical artifact and random junk that only someone who sees possibilities in even the most worthless, useless things would save. Occasionally we hear a metallic thump echo from somewhere in the ship, and at rise, seemingly from everywhere we hear a metallic groan so loud, long, and low the walls seem to shudder and the floor seems to shift.)

JESSICA
(striding into the hold looking over her shoulder)
What was that! I tell you this thing is sinking.

GIB
(entering then roaming around the hold looking in boxes moving chairs, looking behind things)
It may be. Could just be the hull heating in the sun and expanding. Ask the Codger about it.

CODGER
(we hear his voice echoing from down the passageway)
Halooo, where’d you git to? Don’t stray off. Ye’ll git lost an we won’t be able to save you.

JESSICA
I never stray. I’m not lost. Don’t need saving. We’re here.

(CODGER shuffles in, he has a slight limp. He looks from JESSICA to GIB and back, a little too intently. His gaze settles on GIB. What at first looks like the CODGER’S shadow resolves into BENJAMIN, who slips through the hatch and into a corner, sits on a crate, pulls a notebook from his pocket and hunches over it.)

CODGER
You wanted to see this?
(GIB does not answer)

JESSICA
Well,did you? You’ve been asked.

GIB
(on his hands and knees looking into a pile of chairs)
Yes. This was his last berth. I never got his personal effects. He had an old trunk. I thought it might still be here.

CODGER
Well, prob’ly. All we done here since I came is add stuff, never threw anything away. Never know what you’ll need. It’s all got possibilities.

JESSICA
Looks like a bunch of junk to me. Fifteen years ago. It’s probably not here, been too long, and if you find it what’ll you have?

GIB
It’s worth a look to me. It might be worth something to someone.

BENJAMIN
(releases a heavy sigh, and impossibly, manages to slump even further into the shadows. We have yet to see his face.)

JESSICA
Bennie! (a bit too intense) Don’t you start! (BENJAMIN straightens slightly while JESSICA is looking at him, then slumps. JESSICA to GIB) How long will it take? We’re leaving soon, not driving all night.

GIB
Not long. With help. Ben, look there. . . . a black trunk.
(JESSICA rolls her eyes and begins to pace around, occasionally halfheartedly looking around.)

BENJAMIN
“Ah eye t”
(spoken as one syllable, his response is indistinguishable as “right” he slumps over toward the corner, tilts slightly as if to look under one chair and stops)

JESSICA
He never did anything, never fit in anywhere, never accomplished anything.

GIB
He was my father. One hour (looks at watch), we’ll go, found or not.

(We hear a distant ringing, like a ranch house dinner bell ringing)

CODGER
Oop, ‘nother customer. Are ye sayin’ a trunk or a footlocker? Wood or metal? Round top or flat?

GIB
(after a pause) Locker. Metal. Flat.

CODGER
Ah’ll keep thinkin’. (the bell rings again) Be right back. (He takes two steps out, stops, turns, and commands) Stay here! (he leaves)

JESSICA
(drifts toward GIB, stops between him and the pile he wants to explore. Whispering, as if to hide her words from BENJAMIN)

This is not the vacation I planned. If we’re going to look through stuff, I’d rather it be something useful—we passed two outlet malls this morning—something meaningful.

(GIB looks her in the eyes a moment, makes a slow feint left, which she follows to block his way, then he spins left all the way around to his right, walks around JESSICA toward the pile and stoops to look through it. BENJAMIN, who has been watching, barks out a laugh which JESSICA squelches with a dark look.)

I’m tired of you two laughing at me. I will have better. I deserve better.
(the drips, creeks, pops--the sounds of the ship intrude again, culminating in another loud metallic groan, once again, so loud, long, and low the walls seem to shudder and the floor seems to shift.)

I tell you if this thing isn’t sinking, it’s coming apart at the seams.

GIB
Sorry, Jess. Fifty minutes. Promise. (He checks his watch. As he speaks he looks through the pile, he stops, sighs) Ben, that was wrong of me. I made you laugh at her. Sorry. I shouldn’t have.

JESSICA
That’s wasn’t my Bennie. He’s better than that, better than him anyway, aren’t you my sweeeet boy. (She crosses to him and pulls his head to her chest in a hug, he hangs there limply as if his head was impaled on a wall)

BENJAMIN
(emits an inarticulate mutter as she rocks his head side to side)

GIB
Here, help Ben. (JESSICA releases BENJAMIN who extracts himself and crosses to help edge a crate aside so GIB can look behind it.

(sounds from the passageway, people talking, CODGER talking. The sounds get louder as they draw closer.)

CODGER
. . . cargo down the coast of South America and back for thirty years. This’ll be the only exhibition ship honoring the merchant marine. A cargo hold to the left. . .

(CODGER, BRYCE, and BRIANNA enter. BENJAMIN stands taller when they enter.

BRIANNA
I’m pretty sure this isn’t the Battleship Texas, Dad. (CODGER gives her an irritated look.)

BRYCE
(breezy, and confident)
Well maybe not, but it’s interesting none-the-less. (stops as he sees the others, a little over inflected) Well what a coincidence. Jessica, Gib, Bennie!

JESSICA
(Surprise, caution)
Bryce.

GIB
A coincidence?

CODGER
I know where the footlocker is? Nor’east corner. Back ‘o the boxes. A black one, right?

GIB
(turns toward the corner and begins to move junk. Sighing to self.)

Coincidence.(finding the foot locker) Ah! You’re good?
(GIB drags the foot locker to center. BENJAMIN joins him. They kneel, trying to open it)

CODGER
I know where most things are, possibly everything.

JESSICA
(moving toward BRYCE as BRIANNA moves to see what’s in the chest)
What is it?

GIB
(opening the lid, pulling papers and letters, some stacked and tied together with string) My father’s poems.

BENJAMIN
(his first articulate word)
Grandpa wrote poetry?

JESSICA
(JESSICA, snorts and rolls her eyes so only BRYCE can see)
Well that’s . . . good.

GIB
Look, Ben, He wrote this about you when you were born. He use to send poems to us neatly written in his big looping handwriting. I didn’t keep them, barely read them. (BENJAMIN takes the paper, and begins to read, GIB to BENJAMIN, apologetically) Old fashioned stuff, huh? He always said his poems were out of fashion.

BENJAMIN
No, it’s okay. I like it. (BRIANNA, kneels next to BENJAMIN, begins to read the papers with him.) Is it all poetry?

GIB
Looks like a lot of it is. This looks like a stack of journals. I’m glad we found it. (to CODGER) May I have this? Do I need to pay you anything?

CODGER
Looks like the best place for this is with you.

JESSICA
Okay, you found it. Let’s . . .(she drifts off, a first sign of uncertainty)

BRYCE
What are your plans? Bree and I are staying in Rockport. We could all go for dinner together.

GIB
I think our plan is to go on up to San Antonio this afternoon.

JESSICA
We’re on a vacation, we can be flexible. Bryce, do you think there might still be rooms available where you’re staying?

BRYCE
I’ll give them a call and see. (he steps away and calls on his phone)

GIB
Jess, you okay with that?

JESSICA
Sure, it’ll probably be good for Bennie--someone his own age. (to BENJAMIN) Do you know Bree? You go to the same school,don’t you? (BENJAMIN, shrugs, nods, and when JESSICA turns to BRYCE exchanges a direct gaze and smile with BRIANNA)

BRYCE
It’s a done deal. I went ahead and told them to hold you a room. That okay, Gib?

JESSICA & GIB OVERLAP
JESS: Sure,that’s fine. GIB: Looks like it.

GIB
(turning to CODGER, indicating the footlocker) Is this for sale, then?

CODGER
Naa, it’s yours.

GIB
Let’s see if we can carry it out.

JESSICA
Up those ladders? It’s going to take forever.

BRYCE
Why don’t we go ahead and get your room and let them come along when they haul the trunk out?

JESSICA
Uh, okay. (second sign of indecision)

BRYCE
Bree, you okay staying with them, or . . . do you want . .

BRIANNA
I’m okay Dad. (quickly)

JESSICA
Okay with you? (to GIB)

GIB
Probably for the best.

(JESSICA & BRYCE begin to move toward the exit)

CODGER
Le’me show you all out.

BRYCE
We can find it.

JESSICA
Yeah, not a problem.

(they’re gone, once again we hear a metallic groan so loud, long, and low the walls seem to shudder and the floor seems to shift)

I’m telling you this thing is sinking! Don’t hang around too long.

CODGER
I better go with ‘em.

GIB
Let her go. She may be lost, she may need saving, but she won’t admit it.

CODGER
We’ll be outta here in just a bit, anyway. I’ll look for ‘em when we finish.

GIB
Up those ladders with this trunk?

CODGER
Naw, the hold has a winch at the hatch. Come on up and help me drop the net down to the kids. (they exit)

(BRIANNA and BENJAMIN are left reading the poems. They look to see they are alone and then embrace and exchange a kiss)

BENJAMIN
Breee? (laughing)

BRIANNA
Bennieee? (laughing)

TOGETHER
BRI: Nobody calls me that but Dad.
BEN: Nobody calls me that but Mom.
(They laugh, giggle, and tussle playfully)

BRIANNA
And your Mom really doesn’t know anything about me?

BENJAMIN
She knows, I’ve taken out an Annie several times. (they both laugh) Dad knows you, could you tell?

BRIANNA
No, really?

BENJAMIN
He’s good that way. He’s also bad that way. I didn’t know why we were roaming around in this old ship, but I think he wanted me to have Grandpa’s poetry.

BRIANNA
Does he know about . . .

BENJAMIN
I don’t know . . . maybe.

BRIANNA
I like the poems, they’re sweet.

BENJAMIN
As sweet as mine? (she smiles as . . .)

GIB
Ahoy mates, line coming down. (interrupting from above)

TOGETHER
Ahoy mates? (looking at each other, they laugh again)

(a line is dropped from above and the “children” tie the footlocker to the line, it is being raised to the hatch above as the lights fade. The last thing we hear is their laughter echoing in the hold)

Honor Code

2009-06-08T02:39:00.004-05:00

This spring I attended the JROTC spring banquet. In the program, they printed the JROTC "honor code.” I may not be doing the language of it justice since I'm calling it up from memory, but the plain, blunt, sense of it was:

"I will not lie or steal, nor will I tolerate those who do."

I was struck by the bald simplicity of the statement, the knowledge that the students in the JROTC program sign it in order to be in the program, the stark contrast between that simple statement and the baseline morality of many students, and the fact that an open affirmation of the value of honesty and integrity seems largely absent from our school and all other student programs and activities.

Earlier this year, one of my freshmen threw the view that "everybody lies" (with appropriate reference to the TV show House) into a casual, end-of-class, student discussion and shrugged off my surprise when the view lay there unchallenged, a truth so generally accepted by all that it carried the day and settled the discussion.

So . . . After the JROTC banquet I found myself brought back to the question, what is the verity here? Is it somehow a truth that everyone lies? Can that statement carry the label that it denies?

Little Women

2009-03-22T03:47:00.001-05:00

The Beach House

2008-12-29T02:22:00.004-06:00

This is also from Ike.

It is one of several segments I wrote for our production, IKE, the *not so* Great Storm of 2008. In the production several monologues, duets, comedy skits, songs, dances, a few poems and special effects are woven together to make up an evening's entertainment about our hurricane experiences fall of '08.

The idea of building a beach house that would crash during the sound-and-lighting-effects-created hurricane was one of the first images that led us to create the production. In part, it was the before and after pictures of houses on the Bolivar peninsula that led me to make the crash the climax of the show. I also wanted to personalize the "big disaster" of the storm for my students.

My intent was for the beach house to loom in the background through the first act, for it to crash during the storm, and for the debris to be background to the second act.

The storm itself, at first, was going to be represented with sound efects and lighting, but as we developed the scenes, one of the students composed a solo piano piece that we showcased through the storm.

Crashing the house in a way that could be re-set and re-crashed on subsequent nights was a technical challenge, but the students were determined to make it work.

The story of these two scenes was designed to help create another throughline, part of a spine for the play. While not quite whole cloth, the story of the brother and sister in these scenes did not come from any student stories.

"The Beach House, Before the Crash”

(It’s dark with a dim light under the beach house, moonlight cutting through scattered clouds; we hear moderate waves rolling in. A teenage boy is sitting on the sand on the Gulf side of the beach house looking out toward the Gulf. He may not be seen at first. A car is heard from the other side of the house, we see the headlights pull up, stop, and turn off as the engine stops. A car door opens and closes, a girl in her late twenties comes from under the beach house looking around. She sees the boy.)

SIS: Hey (using the word as a greeting) . . . Sorry if I scared . . .
BRO: I heard you pull up.
SIS: (a pause, she looks out into the Gulf) ...'s a storm out there.
BRO: (gentle sarcasm) Ya think? I came to see and hear real surf. It’s about the only time, when there’s a storm.
SIS: I figured. Papa was worried.
BRO: He said?
SIS: No, but he called.
BRO: Oh, (He checks his phone, slumps his shoulders, sighs) I didn't charge it.
SIS: We figured. I told him you were probably here.
BRO: Don't come here as often as before . . . we don't. He tried to keep doing everything just the same, for a while . . . we were out here the whole first summer.
SIS: Not the same?
BRO: In town, he seemed sad. Out here, it was different--good different--but he kept . . .
SIS: . . . remembering?
BRO: No, . . . not forgetting.
SIS: It seemed okay when we came down that first Christmas
BRO: That was good, better even. You and Mike, driftwood Yule Log. (He laughs)
SIS: (She smiles) Christmas with my guys.
BRO: A real "traditional" Christmas Eve, playing Nuclear Risk 'till 6:00 a.m. (Both laugh)
SIS: Mike still talks about Papa's final sweep out of Russia with his ...what? Cossacks?
BRO: No, (imitating a dramatic voice) “Mongol hoard riding across the Steppes."
SIS: Yeah, Mike analyses that game like it was a chess match. He checked out library books on strategy, planning a re-match . . . sooo intense.
BRO: And Papa just plays around, all random, no plan. (Another imitation) "I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
SIS: And he always wins.
BRO: (a little too abrupt) I've won. I can beat him. (He slumps and stares toward the Gulf)
SIS: (she looks at him and smiles) You can . . . you do. (Pause) You remembering . . . or not forgetting?
BRO: Figuring. That Christmas Eve was unscheduled.
SIS: What’d you mean? We did stuff. Tamales, chips, guacamole, black-eyed pea salsa. Our stockings.
BRO: Traditions are not a schedule. It was way different before. She’d plan the whole evening, hour by hour. Instead, you were rummaging around, looking in the top cabinet for a bowl and said, "Hey, here's Risk." And we play for eight hours.
SIS: You miss schedules?
BRO: (too casual, too nonchalant) No
SIS: (pause, a shrug) She doesn't like board games.
BRO: (a low key rant) She doesn't like a lot of things: doesn’t like random, doesn’t like relaxed, you don’t have to vacation with her . . .
SIS: Papa didn't raise us to dislike our mother.
BRO: I don’t . . . I’m just figuring things out . . .
SIS: (over his unbroken line) Anyway, that storm was building for longer than we knew.
BRO: . . . she doesn't like sand, the beach house, Papa . . . Huh? Yeah it's building, Cat four coming off Cuba—what? (realizing she’s not talking about Ike) Oh, uh, yeah. I don’t think she even knew. If it was a storm, we’d ‘a noticed, maybe done something.
SIS: We couldn’t have fixed it. Wasn’t ours to fix.
BRO: (pause) Do you ever feel she doesn't like us either. . .
SIS: (pause, heavy sigh) Yes . . . but I know better.
BRO: I mean us, who we are not what she can make us. She wants’ you to be her. She wants’ me to be . . . I don't know . . . something, something I’m not.
SIS: She loves us, maybe even Papa. She just, I don't know, lost her nerve. She needs to have a plan. It’s the way she’s wired. She doesn't like needing it, but she does. I asked her once, before everything crashed, about how they met. She said Papa was fun in college because she never knew what was going to happen next, (He reacts with surprise) that they always laughed a lot. She wanted that, wanted to be that way herself.
BRO: (incredulous) That's the same reason she told him she was leaving him. I heard her say it, (in a flat, unemotional, voice) --, “I never know what you’re going to say or do next.” —they thought I was asleep. What a wreck!
SIS: (She hugs him) Sorry I wasn’t here when you had to go through all that. (He shrugs) I think she left because she was afraid. Not knowing wasn’t fun any more.
BRO: She tell you that?
SIS: . . . just figured it out.
BRO: She didn't talk with me either.
SIS: She’s afraid for us now, ‘cause we’re also like her--you more than me--She wants to know we’ll be okay, that we won’t wake up someday and be afraid of our lives.
BRO: What's there to be afraid of?
SIS: She doesn’t know . . .
BRO: . . . and not knowing scares her?
SIS: Yeah.
BRO: That’s whack. I’d go nuts if everything were all mapped out. Some stuff, yeah sure, but not everything.
SIS: (she looks at him and smiles) Yeah, sure.
BRO: You flying back tomorrow?
SIS: Haven’t decided, maybe after the storm comes in.
BRO: Staying to take care of us?
SIS: You are my guys.
BRO: Two of ‘em anyway. We’ll be okay. Ike comes ashore here; we’ll drive north until we find someplace fun to stay.
SIS: I’ll call Mike when we get back to the house and see if he can stand to be without me a few more days. If he’s cranking out pages, I sometimes distract more than I help. Let’s go so Papa will stop worrying. (They begin to make their way through the pylons under the beach house)
BRO: Besides, Ike’s not coming here.
SIS: Hope not. I’d like this to stay the same.
BRO: We’re good. Storms never make landfall where the first prediction sets the bull’s eye...
(We hear car doors opening and closing, engines starting, see headlights come on and turn away, as we hear cars pulling away. Finally, it’s dark again, moonlight cutting through scattered clouds, and we hear the waves rolling in.)

"After the Crash"

(Dark again, no moonlight, sound of waves, no lights at all on the collapsed beach house. It has been forced off two of its' pylons and lays amid a rubble of boards and trash. A bouncing flashlight beam, then a second approaches from the street side, upstage of the house.)
SIS: If Papa knew we came out here, he’d die.
BRO: Don’t tell him.
SIS: Not ever! He’d stroke out. He hates snakes.
BRO: I’m not even sure that was a snake. We’re safe now.
SIS: Safe is sitting at the Sonic like you let Papa think we were gonna be, not walking with flashlights in snake land. I wish we could’ve gotten closer in the car.
BRO: Oh wow, it’s totally crashed.
SIS: (Carrying flashlight, coming to Gulf side) Okay, we’ve seen it. It’s a wreck, just like on the website. Let’s go.
BRO: We only saw the street side on the website.
SIS: Well, Gulf side is a wreck also.
BRO: (He comes out) Yeah, it is. But all the pieces are here, mostly.
SIS: And extras pieces from I don’t know where.
BRO: Can we fix it?
SIS: Not enough to fix. Maybe rebuild it. (Gauging the distance from the house to the new shoreline) It’s closer to the Gulf, but we still got land, it’s not into the open beach. (He goes back under, we hear banging) What are you doing! That’s not safe. (Muffled voice) Get outta there.
BRO: (he emerges carrying something) Inside is wrecked too, but look. (Holds Risk box) It was still in the top cabinet, not even damp. Bowls were broken though. (They turn and look at the house for a while, then turn and look at the Gulf. We hear waves)
SIS: (Turning back to the wrecked house) I’m glad we came to see it, but I’m sad. (Pause)
BRO: (Looking at her) You remembering . . . or not forgetting?
SIS: I don’t know, maybe both. Maybe both are okay if you got a reason.
BRO: We got a reason. . . . I’m sad, too. (Trying to be hopeful) So, it can’t be fixed?
SIS: A bunch of this isn’t even ours to fix. We can re-build what’s ours. It’ll be different, but good different, at least until the next storm. (Pause, she looks at him) ‘k? (Verbal shorthand for okay?)
BRO: ‘k. But there won’t be another storm.
SIS: (again, gentle sarcasm) Ya think?
BRO: Not rolling through here. Storms never make landfall in the same place more than once in a generation. (She smiles)
(They turn and stand looking at the house, then briefly glance back out to the Gulf, and begin to pick their way back through the rubble)
SIS: Let’s cruise through Sonic on the way home and get Papa a cherry Dr. Pepper so he won’t think to ask us what took us so long.
(He laughs, they laugh. The sound of their steps fade until they become retreating flashlight beams and we are left hearing the waves on the beach.)

Our Dad is Nuts

2008-12-02T02:40:00.002-06:00

Also from IKE. Pretty much whole cloth. We never named these children.

He: I think my father . . .
She: Our Daddy
He: . . . is not like other fathers.
She: He’s nuts!
He: When I arrived home from school today . . .
She: Everyone else’s parents are rushing around, getting ready for the hurricane . . .
He: He was sitting at his computer looking at numbers, as usual.
She: Our whole house could blow down and he wouldn’t notice unless the internet went down.
He: It wouldn’t do that.
She: The house won’t blow down?
He: No, our connection won’t go down. It’s broadband wireless.
She: Great! He’ll be sitting in the wrecked house staring at the computer. We’re not ready! We’ve got to get ready!
He: I think you’re nuts. When has he ever been not ready for anything. . . . So I go to the study . . .
She: Me too, I go too.
He: I knock, wait a minute and he says come in. He looks up like nothing is happening, so I say there’s a storm headed our way. He looks back at his computer and says “There is storm coming, but I think we’re almost ready for it.” He punches a few keys and the numbers on the screen change.
She: And I can’t stand it, so I tell him that everyone is boarding up their houses, stocking up on food and water, and that even that lazy Mary Grace Crussell next door is hauling their patio furniture into her garage, and that we’re all going to be refugees and that I don’t want to be a refugee.
He: He looks at us a minute like he doesn’t know what she’s talking about, and says “Oh, yes, the hurricane. We’ll be evacuees, not refugees. It’s much better. We’ll go to your Uncle John’s.” I keep standing there looking at him and finally he says, “Well let’s get out the boards.” He’s got these boards he keeps in a rack in the garage, all cut, painted, and numbered. They fit over every window and door in the house. We pull them out and slip them over our windows with these little clips he has for them.
She: I decide to save the patio furniture and go outside but most of it is built-in as part of the patio. I put the chairs in their little house, went to check on Mom, she’s packing a picnic and asking me what book we would like her to read to us in the car, like it was vacation or something.
He: When we finish putting the boards up Dad tells me to get my laptop and a few days clothes packed up and goes back to his computer. He gets out his PDA and seems to be syncing it up with the computer and some new gadget he’s got. Then he goes back to the screens of numbers he’s always checking. I can hear our neighbors cutting boards and hammering them over their windows.
She: I tell mom there’s a storm coming our way, she says she knows and tells me to get the bag she packed for me from my room. I ask her if we have all the food and water we need for after the storm, and she shows me a cabinet I didn’t know we had high in the garage filled with water and canned food.
He: While I’m putting the bags and picnic hamper in the car, Father stops in the doorway of the house, punches a couple of buttons on his PDA and suddenly I hear that monster generator he has in the back yard—it’s in its own little louver-sided house that every one thinks is a pool house—anyway it started up. He says, “Oops, gave it the wrong command.” He hits a few more buttons and it shuts down. I thought he was a little nuts when he towed that thing home from an equipment auction once, but maybe we’ll get some use out of it now.
She: Driving out of town, I ask mom if our house will be there when we get back. She says, “Yes, I hope so” and dad says “if it’s not we could probably turn a tidy profit selling the lot as a scrape-off.” Mom says, “Now Justin (she always calls him by his first name when she’s scolding him), that’s our home, not some commodity you flip for cash.”
He: And he said, “You are right dear.” Which is what he always says when she calls him, “Justin.” Except this time, he also said, “confusing homes with commodities is what brought on this storm . . . that and greed.”
She: I didn’t understand, but mom started reading Eragon, and I didn’t want to interrupt.
He: We drive to Father’s brother, our Uncle John, in Austin and just wait for everything to blow over. Both of them work at home, investments, and so they both spent the whole time on John’s computers, screens of numbers, just like Father’s.
She: When I asked them what they were doing, John said they were, “buying and selling,” Dad added, "mostly selling." Then they laughed that funny way they do . . .
He: . . . they chuckle . . .
She: Anyway, it’s irritating. It’s like they’ve guessed a big secret that no one else has a clue about.
He: We sat at Uncle John’s and watched Ike on TV like most everyone else I guess. Father, John and I sat up all night Friday night watching the weather coverage. I was about half asleep, but as the South wall of the storm moved through Brazoria County I heard an alarm on Father’s PDA go off. He looked at it, punched a few buttons and told John the “power in our house just went out,” but as far as he could tell "the integrity of the house is still unbroken."
* * * *
She: Sunday, I figured we were headed home when I saw Mom in John’s kitchen packing the picnic hamper again.
He: We drove home just like we drove up, at a leisurely rate with Mom reading to us from Eragon.
She: As we got closer to Lake Jackson, we saw more and more torn up stuff. Trees, houses, lots of signs just blown completely away.
He: There weren’t many streetlights working anywhere. As we skirted around Houston, Father called Tony—the guy who takes care of our yard and stuff—and asked if he had crews out working already. Then he started punching buttons on the PDA again.
She: He told me he was going to turn on the power at our house!
He: He logged onto the burglar alarm system to find out if there were any windows or doors broken—he said the house was okay. He also had the generator rigged up so he could start it remotely.
She: If everything worked like it was supposed to, he said the house would be cool by the time we got home.
He: It was.
She: I still think he’s nuts. He doesn’t get excited about anything. We were unprepared. We should have prepared more. We were just lucky. (She leaves the stage.)
He: He gets excited about some things. Like Monday, the 15th, right after the storm, I heard him in his study and it sounded like he was talking to Uncle John. I looked in and saw they were using a voice/picture connection between their computers. I’ve never seen anything on those screens but numbers and graphs. They’ve never acted like that before, either—way beyond chuckling. John was almost giggling like my sister’s friends, saying, “You got us out just in time.” Father shrugged, “We were just lucky we were able to sell when we did.” John laughed, “completely out without a hit,” and logged off.

Daddy's Girls

2008-11-04T00:45:00.004-06:00

Also part of our IKE play, though largely made up of whole cloth, there are tidbits of actual stories here and there. Like "On a Stick," the "Daddy's Girls" sections are essentially long monologues, in this case broken up and bounced between the three girls. The three asterisks in the middle of the monologues and in all of the play's stories represent the storm passage. The "Stick" monologue was broken up and woven through the whole play as one of the connective devices to, excuse the expression, "stick" the whole play together. The stick girls last line, "my sister cried, but I ain't gonna" was the last line of the show.

The girl evacuating alone after her shift as a waitress was a student story, told to me as true, except it was a story about the Rita evacuation. She took the back roads and made it to Huntsville nearly a half a day before her Mom and Dad did via 288 and I45. She also had her ten-year-old sister riding with her. That was possibly a better story than I wrote, but it didn't fit the IKE frame.

The man who cut down a tree, dropping it across a trunk line, cutting off power to a whole neighborhood after it had been restored is a story that went around via email in LJ after Ike. I suspect it is an urban legend.

Muffy's story is whole cloth, though I know a few non-mechanically inclined guys who struggled comically with generators after the hurricane.

We called them Daddy's Girls, but named the segments . . .

My Dad is Nuts

RONNYE My Dad is nuts.

BRANDY My Dad is nuts.

MUFFY My Dad is nuts.

RONNYE So I get home after school Tuesday and he’s already there, got off from work early. He’s running around saying “There’s a storm in the gulf and it’s headed our way.” I’ve never seen him moving so fast. He’s got a pile of plywood and he’s boarding everything up. I get to hand him nails and carry his hammer.

BRANDY When I got home, my Dad had the car packed. And the engine running. Says we’re getting out early, not getting stuck on the road like Rita. It took us twenty-four hours to get to my aunt’s in Huntsville. This time he had this map marked with a special route that goes around all the evacuation routes. He said that was the real problem last time. He joined the Lemmings on the road and got jammed up. He says get in the car. I tell him I have to work. He says the restaurant is probably already closed. I tell him I at least oughtta call. He says okay, so I call. They’re open and want me to come in if I can. I tell my Dad they really need me because they’re shorthanded. So we argue.

MUFFY My Dad is unloading a generator when I get home. I don’t know where he got it, but mom keeps calling it her new couch. He says we’re really going to need it when we get back, after the storm—says the power may be out for weeks, but we’ll be okay because he got this generator.

RONNYE Dad boards up everything, the house, the tool shed, the doghouse, and the garage door windows. I reminded him to leave the front door open so we could get in and out of the house. I thought he’d be mad—he doesn’t have much of a sense of humor when he gets like this--but he just said he wished he had some sandbags, and left the board to go over the front door on the porch.

BRANDY We argue with my Mom and sister sitting in the running car until finally he says I can work my shift if I promise to get right in my car and drive to Huntsville as soon as I get off work. He gets out another map and marks the route for me. It looks like spaghetti. He takes my mom and sister and drives off. I go to work. After work, I call him on my cell. He says they’re some-place-I-never-heard-of “making good time.” I hear Mom say they’re lost again and why doesn’t he just stop and ask directions. He says he has his map and knows exactly where they are, then whispers into the phone, telling me to "be careful of the Needville cutoff," then loudly he says to "be sure and follow the route he marked on the map, and to call him every hour."

RONNYE I asked him why sandbags and he took me inside and made me look at this computerized map that showed Angleton as coastal city if a 21-foot storm surge hit Freeport. He played it over for me, twice—10-foot surge and Surfside is gone, 18-foot surge and Freeport is under water, a 21-foot surge and Lake Jackson is . . . well a lake. He wanted to go to Surfside and see how many sandbags we could make with beach sand and mom’s pillowcases. I told him it was illegal to take sand from the beach, Mom would probably hide all the pillowcases if she knew what he was planning, and that this was a particularly crazy time to go to Surfside, so instead he made us haul most of the furniture upstairs.

BRANDY After I talk to Dad, I toss his spaghetti map in the back seat, pull out on 288 and drive straight to Huntsville, no traffic, no problem. I arrived at my aunt’s an hour before they did.

RONNYE Wednesday morning we load the car and go to Waco to stay with Grandma & Grandpa.

MUFFY We don’t leave until Friday morning. Mom made him check us into a really nice hotel in Dallas. She said if she couldn’t have a new couch, she was at least going wait out the hurricane in a nice spa.

* * *

MUFFY The hotel was nice. I wish we had stayed longer. Saturday afternoon, after the storm passed through Lake Jackson my Dad was in a big hurry to get back home. Driving down from Dallas, we ended up in the edge of what was left of Ike. It was pretty bad, rain, wind, even a little hail. The power was out when we got home. I think dad was glad.

BRANDY We drive back from Huntsville Tuesday the way I went up, straight down 288. I never did find out what took them so long going up. They don’t talk about it. I never did tell Dad I drove up 288 and there was no traffic. I don’t think he wanted to talk about that either. When we got home, there was no power

RONNYE When we get back to our boarded up house there is no power, no air conditioning, the weather is cool outside but the house is hot, muggy, and we just lay around like dead people, hot sweaty dead people. It’s like all our energy was used up getting ready for the storm and after the storm, we lay around in a boarded up house unable to move.

MUFFY When we got back, he went straight to the garage and started fiddling with the generator. He had his nose buried in a book trying to start it, trying to hook it up to the house. It took three hours. Finally, we heard it start and we had power. Everything came on. Then it sputtered and stopped . . . but we still had power. The power came on for our whole end of the street. We were some of the first in Lake Jackson to have our power restored. We didn’t need the generator.

RONNYE We eventually started taking down the boards so we could open the windows. Taking down boards, picking up branches. When the air came on it was like my dad got his second wind. He was out picking up the yard, hauling limbs to the curb. He got so into it he fixed the patio door and the back light—stuff mom has been after him to fix for months.

BRANDY My sister and I had to pick up tree limbs and pile them at the curb. She pretended we were building a fort. I got a call to go in. With everybody, eating out because they had no power, the restaurant really was shorthanded and needed me.

MUFFY That generator didn’t do us much good. I wished he’d gotten something that would pick up limbs and branches from the yard. Maybe he can trade it in on a new couch.

RONNYE Everything was okay--I mean I thought Dad would end up repainting the house or something--but everything was okay until he decided the big tree in our back yard needed to be cut down because “it would probably fall in the next storm.” He borrowed our neighbor’s chain saw and started on the tree, but something went wrong. Instead of falling across our back yard, the tree crashed through the power line behind our house, taking out the power for the whole neighborhood.

He went in the house right after it happened—made me sneak the borrowed chainsaw back into our neighbor’s garage. I think he’s hiding out, trying to pretend the tree fell over because of the storm.

I guess that’s kind of true.

On a Stick

2008-11-01T15:12:00.006-05:00

I'm not a prolific poster, particularly when I'm in the middle of productions--which is most of the time--and especially when my involvement includes writing for a production. Without spending time trying to justify it's inclusion, thematically, in e-verities, I'm posting this and reserving judgment on it's place here for later.

It is a monologue I put together using bits and pieces from three student storm evacuee stories, several events reported in newscast, a little research about "on a stick" foods at fairs, my own memories of working a funnel cake booth at the Brazoria County Fair for several years, and my own imaginings. It is one of several segments I've written for our production, IKE, the *not so* Great Storm of 2008. In the production several monologues, duets, comedy skits, songs, dances, a few poems and special effects are woven together to make up the evening's entertainment. First conceptualized to include only student created work, it has evolved into something broader, including a whole company dance number to a brief excerpt from Gene Kelly's "Singing in the Rain," that delights me every time I see it. If you're nearby, Nov. 6, 7, & 8th, consider attending a performance.

So, the monologue we call,

On A Stick

First, we loaded up Dad’s truck and the van with everything we could haul down from the apartment and headed up to my Aunt’s in Houston. That was late Wednesday. Dad drove back down to work in Galveston Thursday and helped his boss, Virgil, board up his boat shop. Dad does fiberglass work on boats, repairs and stuff. He made a whole boat once, nearly by himself. By the time he got back up to my Aunt’s that night, there were twelve of us staying in the house. I gotta lot of cousins.

Friday mornin’ TV announcers were tellin’ us where we were in Houston had to evacuate, too close to the ship channel. It looked like Ike was going to roll right over us, so we loaded everything back up and drove north to my Uncle’s place south of Tatum. We drove up in our truck, the van and my Aunt’s two cars. Including us, the Houston folks, and some others that just showed up at my Uncle's from the piney woods, there was nearly twenty people bedded down. It was crowded. Like I said, I gotta lot of cousins.

The TV in the workshack was up high. We sat around on the floor, boxes, and workbench to watch the storm roll in over Galveston. In one of the reports, Dad was pretty sure he saw his boss’s boat shop flooded with the roof partly blown off. Maybe also it was on fire, he wasn’t sure. Even if he didn’t see it, the TV said there was six feet of water and mud in the buildings along the bayside and that had to include the boat shop.

Saturday, Dad kept trying to call in and couldn’t get Virgil. By then it looked like Ike was gonna roll right up over Tatum too as a tropical storm. Some of us was sleeping in the shop, and the little boys were outside in tents, so Dad decided we’d ease the crowdin’ and go to my Mom’s parents, Granmaw and Granpaw, in Dell City, Ok. He had to borrow money from my Uncles to buy gas for the van and the truck.

Dell City is near Oklahoma City, home of the State Fair of Oklahoma, and tho’ Granpaw and Granmaw are retired—I can’t remember from what—they run a couple of concession stands at the fair. They’ve run food concessions at the fair for longer than I’ve been alive. Mom said she use to work them when she was my age. It sounded fun. Granpaw said he could use help, so Mom and Dad went to work for him. I didn't get to go, at first. I had to sit around Granpaw and Granmaw’s house and watch my little sister, she’s a first grader. She’s okay. Only sometimes, she’s a brat, but she’s waay better than any of my cousins.

At the fair, Mom was makin’ Deep Fried Twinkies on a stick. Never heard of ‘em before. They poke a stick through a Twinkie, dip it in batter, and deep-fry it. Mom said when the fryer gets going they smell so good you can’t make ‘em fast enough for the people that crowd up. The smell just pulls people to ya. Granpaw says if you could figure out how to sell stuff by smell over TV, you could get "double dog rich." I don’t know what that means really, but it sounds good, I think, at least the rich part.

Mom brought home some broken fried Twinkies for us. They were good, but mom said they tasted better fresh hot out of the fryer. She couldn’t hardly stand the sight of them after the first day. I never saw her eat one.

Dad worked serving Bar B. Q. Baby Back Ribs—on a stick. He says that’s a funny thing about the fair. They sell all kinds of food on a stick. Granpaw says it’s a tradition. Says he was the first vendor to batter dip and fry a chunk of cheese on a stick about twenty-four years ago. He said he started the whole on-a-stick food thing. I don’t know if he really did, sometimes he just says things ‘cause they sound good. He said back then the only thing ya could get on a stick was corn dogs and some kinds of ice-cream.

By Tuesday, Granpaw said they needed more help in the concession stands and he’d rather pay family than foreigners, so I got to go work at the Oklahoma State Fair. I thought my sister would get to go too, but Granmaw an Mom did a funny thing. They enrolled her in the Dell City Public Schools. She didn’t like it much at first, but she didn’t get to choose. Mom told her it was just for right now and that she didn’t want to fall behind and disappoint Mrs. Taylor when we went back home. That’s her first grade teacher; she just loves Mrs. Taylor. That settled her down and she went right off to school without crying.

I fried Twinkies for twelve hours that first day. When one would break, I got to eat it. I ate a bunch the first hour. I didn’t break any on purpose. I was just learning how to do it and sometimes they just fell apart. After the first six hours, I couldn’t eat any more. After ten hours, I couldn’t hardly stand to smell ‘em. Now, it makes me a little sick just thinking about ‘em.

Standin’ over the fryer that long makes you feel greasy: greasy skin, greasy hair, greasy clothes. Grease would drip on the floor—you couldn’t help it when you got to frying them fast. It got so you could skate around on it, but Granmaw doesn't like foolishness while workin'. All the grease smelled like fried Twinkies. After you were good and sick of the Twinkies you got to thinking only crazy people would be buyin’ them to eat. I showered for an hour that first night and washed my hair three times.

My second day, Granpaw said I was working good enough to get a break for lunch and dinner. I didn’t have any money to buy food, couldn’t stand the Twinkies, and don’t really like ribs, so Granpaw taught me about “barter.” He fried up a perfect Twinkie and went to the back doors of the other concession booths, offering to swap for whatever they were making. He got me a turkey leg, on a stick of course. It was pretty good. After I learned how to barter, I could have almost anything I wanted. Sometimes other vendors would come knockin at our back door with something to barter and I didn't even have to go lookin' to trade. Usually I could find someone who wanted one or the other, Twinkies or ribs, so for the rest of the week I just bartered through the whole on-a-stick menu.

I made a list of everything I tried:

Twinkie on a stick, of course.

BBQ baby back ribs on a stick.

Turkey leg on a stick.
Cheeseburger on a stick.

Hoagie on a stick.
Hamburger on a stick.

I think they put some of the stuff on a stick just so they can say it's "on a stick."

Ice cream on a stick, four kinds!

Teriyaki beef on a stick.

Corn dog on a stick.

Pork Chop on a stick.
Pickle on a stick.
Funnel Cake on a stick.
Catfish on a stick.
Popcorn Ball on a stick.

Broccoli on a stick, really gross. Broccoli is still Broccoli.

Cheesecake on a stick.

Baked Potato on a stick.
Spaghetti on a stick, really strange.
Frozen grapes on a stick.
Deep-fried Oreo on a stick.
Bacon on a stick.
Caramel Apple on a stick.
Eggroll on a stick.
Choc covered banana rolled in nuts on a stick.

Gator on a stick, greasy, but taste like chicken.
Chicken on a stick, three different kinds, some of 'em didn't taste like chicken.

Sausage and roll on a stick.
Frog Legs on a stick.
Caramel Pear on a stick.
Pizza on a stick.
Steak on a stick.
Jalapeno on a stick.

Deep-fried garlic mashed potatoes on a stick.
Meatballs on a stick.
Cajun Quail on a stick.
Shrimp on a stick.
Lamb on a stick.
Cheese on a stick.

Fried Coke on a stick. It's kind of like a funnel cake made with Coke syrup in the batter and Coke syrup drizzled all over. Taste okay, but I like my Coke with fiz.

Pecan Pie on a stick.
Fried Marshmallows on a stick.
Deep-fried corn on the cob on a stick, really good.
Fried praline on a stick.
Fried peanut butter, banana, and jelly sandwich on a stick.

Fried macaroni and cheese on a stick. I took some to my sister. She liked them cold, yuck.

And my all time favorite,

deep-fried Snickers on a stick,
I had four one day, was sick all night.

* * *

I’m back now, but not for long. Mom and I came back in the van—spent a bunch of her Twinkie money on gas. We’re gettin’ the rest of the stuff from our apartment. There's not much that's ours. She’s been sneakin’ around actin’ all hangdog (that’s what Granpaw calls it). I think we still owe rent.

Dad finally got Virgil on the phone. The boat shop is closed—Virgil is taking the insurance money and retiring my Dad said. We’re going to be stuck stayin’ on with Granmaw and Granpaw for a while.

My sister is still in school in Dell City and begged me to take Mrs. Taylor this letter.

I’m withdrawing from B'wood today and going to Dell City next week.

The fair’s over, so no concession jobs ‘til next year. I might be able to eat a Fried Twinkie On A Stick again by then.

Dad’s going to work at Sooner Fiberglass in Oklahoma City.

Mom’s looking for a job.

My sister cried a lot, but I’m not gonna.

My Classes This Year Are Great

2008-09-07T04:17:00.004-05:00

My classes this year are great. Once I get the students in class things go well, but it has been a slow start.

The first two days we had three hours of advisory class each day. We did the kind of paperwork and paper shuffling we usually do a little at a time over the first two weeks. I guess it is better for the principal to get all that out of the way quickly, but we seemed to lose a lot of instruction time.

In addition, the principal decided to take the freshmen out both afternoons those first two days for tours of the school, teambuilding, and such. Most of my freshmen came into class on the third day of school expressing relief and happiness finally to be starting “real” school. I guess it is easier for the principal to get all the freshmen in one place for a while to explain how things work in high school.

Of course then the new textbook issuing procedure didn’t seem to work for Theatre Arts. It was supposed to put students in class the first day with books in hand after having been issued from a central point. Well over half of my classes and all of one class had to leave my room five at a time during class to go to an assistant principal’s office to scan their assigned textbook into the computer record. I guess it is easier for the principal to centralize all textbooks this way.

Finally, there was class leveling. Once they get everyone in a class, they shuffle them around so we don’t have one section of forty-five and another of the same class of twenty-five, they “level” so we have two sections of thirty-five. It’s also during this leveling time, I’ve noticed, many students mysteriously end up in sections together with their best friends, students leave classes that appear to be “too hard,” and a class section taught by a student’s favorite teacher is secured. For this reason, there have been many schedule changes the latter half of the second week. I won’t have a stable class list in most of my Arts 1 classes until nearly the end of the third week. It makes it hard to keep up with students, attendance, grades, and hard to create a theatre learning ensemble in each class with new faces popping in and out so often. I guess it is easier for the principal to do it this way.

As I said after I got students into class things went well, though we seem to be about a week behind in our assignments. I’m looking forward--by at least the fourth week of school, certainly--to being able to settle down and concentrate on our learning. One thing seems a little different this year; I don’t seem to have as many troubled children as I did last year.

Some of the classes I had last year were the most challenging I’ve had in my thirty-year career. I had to be so strict with some, just to keep chaos at bay, the class became about discipline not theatre. Keeping control of the class became task one rather than making sure everyone learned as much as they could. Additionally, I don’t believe many enjoyed Theatre Arts 1 last year. I certainly didn’t.

Several teachers and principals commented to me at different times about how the freshmen were “just a bad batch of kids.” I’ve always found that kind of talk offensive. It’s not even a rational thing to say. I have certainly never seen any objective research pointing to any radical change in any measurable trait in students from one year to the next. Change happens more gradually than that.

Rather than blaming last year on a “bad batch” of children, I think it more likely that the slightly frenzied push to force a universally unpopular dress code on the student population and the subsequent loss of respect engendered by such petty tyranny poisoned the school atmosphere. While change happens gradually, administrative dictates seem to drop on us with alarming speed and frequency.

Frequent comments from my most serious and compliant students led me to believe they thought everyone involved in that “no tolerance” “full court press” on dress code violations were fools. I choose not to put into print what my less serious and less compliant student comments were. I eventually came to agree with my students, even as I--fool that I am--did my best to enforce the policy. I am glad to see the principal ease up on the dress code this year. It is probably easier on him to do so. I believe the decision will give us all more time to focus on learning; we’re going to need the extra time to make up for time lost to other tasks. It may even allow the learning climate of the school to improve.

I’ve always tried to hold what I believe is a Christian, scripture-based view: externals are less importance than internals, and ephemeral things have less value than eternal ones. It is hard for children to hear the message that you care about them, want them to learn, and want them in your class if you are—no matter how gently— “always on their case” about dress code violations they and apparently their parents don’t see as significant.

The Boy With the Crooked Smile

2008-07-29T01:28:00.002-05:00

I asked him to stay after class for a moment. I had had it with his disrespect. While the classroom emptied, he sat in his desk, warily. As I began my one-sided “talk,” my mind raced ahead to gather the long list of his shortcomings and my short list of expectations, focusing on the gap inbetween. I found myself, beetle browed, jut jawed, stern postured, finger in mid-point, with nothing to say.

I thought he thought I was stupid, but I couldn’t remember even so much as a mutter from him expressing that. I thought he was disrespectful to me, but why, how? It came to me. It was his smirk.

I would say something to pull a laugh from the class and he would smirk.

I would smile, say good morning to the class, and he would smirk.

He didn’t slouch back in his chair, broadcasting disdain with every slow move. He didn’t hump over his desk, head-down, asleep, unresponsive and slack; until a touch or a shake furied every body muscle, pent-up, poised to explode as he slowly rose and glared, confronting the toucher or shaker. He didn’t chatter endlessly heedless of my calls for his attention.

He just sat up in his desk, straight-backed from his butt to his brainpan, and smirked.

I looked at him, paused, and put my pointed finger away. I couldn’t read a riot act to a kid for smirking.

His brows went up, he looked me in the eyes, briefly, then down and side to side. “What,” he said.

I thought a while. He continued in the silence, “What . . . what! Am I in trouble? I didn’t do any. . .”

I cut him off. “Do you ever find yourself in a situation where a teacher, a coach, or—I don’t know—anyone who’s an authority figure, suddenly goes off on you for no good reason? Like they’re mad at you for something you did, but you don’t know what, and they never tell you. Maybe they use the phrase ‘bad attitude.’”

He left me for a minute, staring straight ahead, eyes focused on something a long ways off, beyond the whiteboard ten feet in front of him. His answer seemed to grow from that distance, like someone hollering out a car window at you as they come down the street.

“Yeah.” His inflection got louder as the pitch went up, a questioned surprise. And suddenly he was back from the distance, looking straight at me, cautiously, distrustfully.

“Come here,” I said, leading him to the mirror on the wall in the corner of the classroom.

“What?” he said as he reluctantly followed to the mirror.

I hesitated, “I don’t really know how to ask this any way but bluntly, but have you ever had a serious head injury or something?”

He pulled back, looked directly at me. “No,” he said, shaking his head, “Why?”

“Because you have a one-sided smile. Look . . . smile in the mirror.”

“What are you . . . no. Can I just go?” He turned to leave.

“Just look in the mirror, smile, tell me what you see, and then you can go,” I pleaded, feeling a little foolish. “You’ve never had a stroke or anything like that have you?”

He looked in the mirror and made his lopsided smile. “The smirk,” I thought, “His normal smile is a one-sided smirk.”

I said, “There, you see how that corner of your mouth goes up when you smile and the other doesn’t move at all? Why do you do that?”

He smiled at himself in the mirror again. “I don’t know . . . habit.”

“Can you smile with both corners of your mouth going up?” He looked in the mirror, looked at me, looked in the mirror again and pulled both corners up, independent of each other at first, but finally together in an awkward, leering smile.

“Like this?” He said through his open mouth, rolling his eyes over to look at me.

“See, you can do it.” I startled him with my enthusiasm.

“This is just too weird.” He was heading for the door again.

“Wait, wait.” I stopped him. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to tell you how you have to smile. You can smile with a frown if you want, but you need to know something.”

“Okay, what?” he said.

“There is something about the one-sidedness of your smile that leads me to think you think I’m an idiot. Your natural smile is a sarcastic looking smirk!” He tilted his head slightly, arching an eyebrow at me, about to speak. “Don’t say it; I think I know what you’re going to say.” I held up my hand to stop him. “Several times this year I’ve found myself irritated at you for no good reason that I can tell.”

I continued. “Maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m too insecure or something, but I bet I’m not the only person who interprets your smile that way. Just consider the possibility you may be sending negative messages you don’t intend to people with that smile.”

He looked at me, looked in the mirror, and looked at me again. He wasn’t smiling. I plunged on, feeling I had gone too far to stop now. “How about you try a little experiment for me?”

“What?” he said.

“Every time you laugh or smile try to make yourself use both corners of your mouth and see if it makes any difference in how people react to you.”

He went back to the mirror and again launched both corners of his mouth upward into a smile; again, they came up alternately, one at a time at first. He looked at his awkward, leering face, gave his head a little shake, and again spoke to me through the open-mouthed smile. “Looks stupid.”

“Not so bad as you think, maybe. You’re just not use to it.” I offered.

He shook his head again, let his smile collapse, and headed out the door. “This is nuts.”

I just let him go.

After that day, he started what I chose to interpret as a gentle tease. Every time I saw him in the halls, greeted him as he entered the classroom, or he laughed at one of my jokes, he would pause for a fraction of a second, launch both corners of his mouth into that goofy, leering smile, and present his face to me, so I was sure to notice. Greeting me in the hallways he would add, “Hello Mr. White,” through the teeth of his frozen open-mouthed smile.

Because of his teasing, I didn’t ask him about the experiment I had proposed until the very end of the year. That day I met him coming down the hall. He grinned his goofy grin and greeted me.

I stopped him and said, “I have to know. Have you been experimenting with your smile on anyone but me?”

He grinned his goofy grin again and nodded.

“Can you tell if it makes any difference in how people react?”

He left me again for a minute, staring straight ahead, eyes focused on something a long ways off, down the hall maybe, but I didn’t turn to look. Again, his answer seemed to come from that distant place.

“Yeah.” Same inflection, same look of surprise on his face, but with less confusion and more humor. With that word, he was suddenly and once again back from the distance.

He gave me a perfectly natural, symmetrical smile and went on down the hall.

The Belief Engine

2008-07-26T01:11:00.003-05:00

I was reading my recent issue of Scientific American (August 2008) and came across Michael Shermer’s opinion column, “Skeptic,” entitled “Wheatgrass Juice and Folk Medicine.” Other titles/subtitles I found on the Internet were:

“How Anecdotal Evidence Can Undermine Scientific Results”
“Why subjective anecdotes often trump objective data”

The column may still be online:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-anecdotal-evidence-can-undermine-scientific-results I accessed it on 25 July 2008.

Writing about a controversy over the possibility some vaccinations cause autism, Shermer alludes in passing to what he appears to believe is the evolved pattern of reasoning our brains use that gives greater weight to anecdotal evidence than to scientific evidence.

“. . . we have evolved brains that pay attention to anecdotes because false positives (believing there is a connection between A and B when there is not) are usually harmless, whereas false negatives (believing there is no connection between A and B when there is) may take you out of the gene pool. Our brains are belief engines that employ association learning to seek and find patterns. Superstition and belief in magic are millions of years old, whereas science, with its methods of controlling for intervening variables to circumvent false positives, is only a few hundred years old.”

My mind leaped to agree with this because the trumping power of anecdotal evidence over research-based conclusions has always frustrated me in my dealings with decision makers on education issues. Additionally, I found Shermer’s characterization of our brains as “belief engines” delightful. Unfortunately, I suspect the reasons for my delight would chagrin him. Finally, my life experience has led me to believe the brain is hard wired to “make meaning,” so I thought, “This guy’s a genius; he agrees with me.”

His conclusions about why our “evolved brains” . . . “pay attention to anecdotes” seemed compelling at first, but after further thought, they appeared to be undercut by his own supporting assertions. I understood him to say millions of years of superstition and belief in magic have evolved brains with a predilection to see cause and effect where it may not exist because “false positives” are benign. He goes on to assert that failing to see cause and effect where it does exist “may take you out of the gene pool.” The assertion he assumes is that through natural selection our brains developed as "belief engines," seeing connections and making meaning even when there was nothing to see or understand.

Does this mean false negatives are deadly?

Is he saying our “belief engines” have served the species well for millions of years only because of the slight statistical advantage we gain by frequently perceiving connections that cannot be supported by science, and in fact do not exist?

Then is he saying “science, with its methods of controlling for intervening variables to circumvent false positives,” a method of decision making “only a few hundred years old,” is somehow to be preferred?

Also he appears to assert that science can distinguish conclusively the true from the false positives, the true from the false negatives and free us from millions of years of superstitious reasoning. Suddenly, the superstitious reasoning that has been evolutionarily successful for us as a species is now unacceptable and should be replaced by scientific reasoning.

Even if I were to stipulate to every thing he said: his assertions about superstitious belief, his apparently logical assertions that false positives are benign, that false negatives are evolutionarily deadly, and his assertion my brain, my belief engine, evolved in a way that makes it prone to believe things that that do not exist; even if I were to accept all of this as true I’m not sure I would be willing to replace my belief engine with scientific skepticism.

The conclusions of science are always subject to modification, change, even total reversal when new data is discovered or old data is reinterpreted. As I understand it, science never, by its essential nature, claims infallibility. The short few hundred-year history of science would refute such a claim.

Shermer appears to assume the superiority of scientific beliefs over any superstitious beliefs even though science is subject to error and expends no small part of it’s energy pointing out what it reasons to be “false negatives” (based on current data, subject to change). I can’t embrace the assumption that scientific beliefs are superior. It sounds too risky. After all, false negatives are deadly.

“We only seek justice, we don’t necessarily have it.”

2007-09-21T20:05:00.000-05:00

Criminal law, the beginning of my sad, unhappy year in law school—I know nothing about the law and I have the grades to prove it. Others were hiding out. I was actively listening. My facial expressions interacting with everything Richardson said.

Early in the semester, we came upon a few cases with holdings that seemed unjust. He would point out the apparent injustice, smile, shrug, and say: “We only seek justice, we don’t necessarily have it.”

Richardson had spotted my reactions and hit me twice with questions about these apparently “unjust cases.” I could give the summary and holding correctly, but Richardson would skewer me for my judgmental thoughts on the holding. He’d ask me to summarize the case, and in doing so, my face would tell my dissatisfaction. He followed with questions exposing my thoughts about the holding. I would inevitably--and stupidly--say I didn’t like the holding because it was wrong. He would smile; point out my opinion of the law didn’t change it, and once asked, “Are you familiar with the concept of compromise?” Steaming a bit, thinking he was baiting me, I said, “I’m humiliatingly aware of the concept of compromise.” It was a weak response, revealing I’m sure to most in the room, that I deserved baiting. He smiled, shrugged, and continued.

After those first hits, I listened and took notes, trying to mask my thoughts and feelings. I no more wanted to invite questions with facial expressions or body language. Though I never learned to mask completely, Richardson turned his hits to my classmates the rest of the semester and I thought he had forgotten about my narrow thinking and about me.

At semester’s end, in his last lecture, expounding on another apparently unjust holding, he stopped abruptly. Looked directly at me and said, “You don’t like that, do you, White?”

“No, because it seems wrong to me,” I said. Thereby proving how little wisdom I had gained that semester.

He began the phrase, all familiar gestures and inflections, “We only seek justice, we don’t necessarily. . .”

I leaped on it, overlapping “have it,” obliterating his pause, smile, knowing look, and shrug with the words: “I’ve been waiting for you to say that again all semester.”

The slight stir in the lecture hall threw him off his timing. My classmates were emerging, making the subtle shifts needed to bring themselves out of hiding and into direct line of sight with Richardson. He raised his eyebrows, looked directly at me, again, and . . . waited.

“Because,” I threw into the silence, “If we accept that statement as true, we not only guarantee never to have justice, we also reduce number of times we might approach justice.”

At least that’s what I thought I said, what I wanted to say. My only clear memory is sound coming out of my mouth over the heart in my throat. I hope that’s what I said.

Richardson smiled, shrugged, and went on to the next case.

I like to remember that moment as some kind of victory.

I think if we believe something is impossible we make it so. If something is in fact impossible to attain and it is a good thing, it seems to me we increase the good by reaching for it.

Nice Is Different Than Good

2007-09-09T21:17:00.000-05:00

Good is the verity.

Or perhaps, to phrase it as the ancient philosophers did, "the good."

Many today cannot differentiate "nice" from "good."

Because of this, still others focus on being nice to hide the reality that they are not good. It's an easier task, less effort, less character demanded. It's facile but quite pleasant. When they are very bad, they make a point to be especially nice, confident no one will notice the stark difference.

Eventually, they cease to notice the flat plain of "nice" lacks the deep dimensionality of "good."

On Choosing Riches

2007-07-20T16:24:00.000-05:00

Being on the cutting edge, has never really been one of my goals, but I've been reminded again during the i-phone release how challenging it is to even stay current in anything (technology, style, fashion) without a lot of money (this is also sometimes pejoratively called, "keeping up with the Joneses," but the phrase is so out of fashion—not current at all).

Many years ago, one of my students, the daughter of a medical doctor with a successful practice, was talking to me in her senior year about how much she was thinking she would enjoy being a teacher.

I *gently* suggested she also consider in her thinking how much she enjoyed her car (a brand new, fully loaded, cream-colored Pontiac Grand Am with matching leather interior, as I remember), the new and very stylish cashmere sweater she was wearing, her harp playing (as I remember her instrument cost more than my car and seemed to require an SUV just to haul it around), being able to participate in dressage competitions, and the many other financial amenities she enjoyed as the good doctor’s daughter. She barely paused in her catalogue of the anticipated joys of teaching, but seemed a little put off by my suggestions at the time. Ultimately she chose a nursing career, married a doctor, left nursing, taught classes at her church, bought and competed with a top dressage thoroughbred, and became a parent volunteer in the schools her children attended, most of these choices, by the way, were identical to those her mother had made.

The girl may have been happier as a public school teacher. She may even have had a greater impact on many more children, but if she grew to be anything like her mother that isn’t necessarily the case. As I remember, her mother was one of the principal organizers of our Project Graduation, a program staffed and funded by parent volunteers that has benefited several thousand Brazoswood students for more than a decade. A vow of poverty is not an absolute prerequisite to doing good or for that matter to being an artist.

I encourage my students as they are thinking about colleges/careers to consider whether the financial rewards of being a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or maybe some capitalistic/corporate career might be a better choice for them. Many of course want to act or work in “the business” and are surprised when I appear to discourage it. I tell them they would be more likely to afford all the gadgets they have, the kind of clothes they wear, and the activities they enjoy in a career where more than just the top ten percent earn income above the poverty level. Those who assert they will be rich and famous as actors usually face a Socratic style string of questions designed to bring them to the realization that what they really want is to be well-known, powerful, and rich. Whereupon I suggest they consider dealing drugs as an easier path to their life goal. I believe they get the point, though they seldom acknowledge it.

On the other hand, I also ask them to consider the lives of some of my doctor friends, who--it has always seemed to me--do not like being doctors and would rather spend their time doing something more artistic. Unfortunately, my friends also seem to really like all the stuff that can be bought with a doctor's income and can’t quite make the choice to leave it all. There is nothing inherently wrong with choosing a career that increases the likelihood of a wealthy lifestyle (excepting of course the doubtful morality of choosing a career dealing drugs) if it is a choice, but at least one of my friends seems to have backed into that life without making it an intentional choice, and so is grouchy and apparently unhappy so much of the time I feel sorry for him. He seems trapped.

I tell my students that of the hundreds of ways to move into the future there are at least two widely separate ways they might want to ruminate on as they make their career decisions.

(Way #1) Take control and make choices using your best judgment.
If you later find you don't like your choices, either choose to make the best of them with a good spirit (imminently possible--people do this joyfully every day) or summon the courage to take control again and change. Make different choices.

(Way #2) Fall into your future without actually making choices.
Here may lay a sad morass. If you later decide you don't like it, you feel trapped. Or since it wasn’t your choice in the first place, you may fall into denial. You claim to like it even though you really don't. Subsequently you begin to feel inexplicably trapped and miserable. After living that nightmare for a while, it’s almost inevitable you will decide (or in the case of the self-denier, "come to feel") your situation is someone or something's fault other than your own. After faulting anything and or anyone but yourself, you decide (or "come to feel" again) your misery is beyond your control and you are helpless. Finally, you are in full-blown unhappiness. You build unhappiness and resentment toward your situation and everyone you know, and begin to blame others. You spew blame indiscriminately, hitting those closest to you hardest and most. You freak out. You never really know why.

On the other, other hand, another friend told me once if he “had known in college what [he] knew now” he would have gone to dental school in preparation for taking over his father's practice. He and his wife seem to have struggled their whole lives because the career he chose, youth minister, just did not turn out to be the one he, or possibly, they together, could be happy with. Same thing with his wife, she was in the top five or so of her graduating class and never seemed to land in a career where she was comfortable. I think her degree was in teaching but the closest she ever got to that was teacher aid. They have always seemed to drift along from one job--as opposed to a career--to another without really settling in anywhere. To the best of my ability to discern, my friend has kept a pretty good spirit, but he does regret some of his choices.

I don't necessarily recommend my students choose to make the bucks so they can then do and have the things they desire, but it is something they should consider. It is a choice many people make. I think it's a valid choice. It's not the choice I made.

I never expected wealth when I chose teaching. I expected to be frugal on some things so I could spend on others--which is what I have always done. I really believe--and this is so much more a truth than the flippant joke it seems to be--the only true way to be rich is to spend less money than you have, so you always have more than you need. If you can't do that and be happy with the choice, then you should make another choice. I also figured a creative person could always find way to do and have the things he desired even if he didn't really have the bucks to buy them straight up.

Therefore, when I wanted new technology for my children, my family, and myself I went out and took extra jobs. Some of those jobs brought in extra money; others just gave us access to technology we couldn’t afford to buy. Our computer use was never cutting edge, but as I look back, I believe we fell into the category of early adopters.

Over the years, my fondness for travel was filled by all the little short trips my family made to interesting places close by--an exploration of Houston or Galveston is rich if approached creatively. Actually, someone who looks at the world with openness and kindness can find exploring Clute an interesting travel. My fondness for New York City and broader travel was fulfilled by leading student tours and managing to make some travel job or education related.

My desire to do creative work has been filled many ways: by my private writings, by directing, and working on high school and community plays--and to a certain extent by "coaching" original creative work by students. Among my creative writing students are poets and several playwrights, two others write regularly for newspapers and one is a regular columnist. Two of my students have had several short plays performed by other groups, that is they were not self-produced. I still expect one of my young playwrights to produce professionally some day. Several of my acting/theatre students have and/or are now working professionally.

My desire to be a positive blessing for other people has been filled not by big financial donations to charities and causes--though I make many small financial donations--but by teaching at school, church, the Center For The Arts, and by the choices of performance literature I have always made. For a while, I was an elder at our church and that was a good thing, I believe.

If I have regrets, they’re not because I trapped myself in a life I hated and blamed on others.

I did after all at one point take charge and dump teaching to go to law school, thinking my family would be better off if I made more money. I made the choice. In law school, I decided the things I did with my life and my time with my family were more important than the money I could make working as a lawyer sixty billable hours a week, a goal I discovered usually required many more hours than sixty. I took charge again and dumped law school, another choice. Ultimately, not finishing my PhD was yet another choice I made for my family.

The regret I do have is that for a while, I let the vagaries of life shadow my spirit and keep me from doing things I have always chosen to do joyfully, but it’s only a slight regret. I still choose to live under the pall of life's vagaries, but I don't let that keep me from doing things that give me joy. I'm still heart-broken and soul-sick, but rather than that state being the terminal tragedy of my life, I see it as the other side of the great joy I had in great love. There is no regret there and no deep fear of future pain. I believe people who wall themselves off from emotional pain also brick up their capacity for joy. I’ve been hurt. I will probably be hurt again, but I will also love again. It’s my life, my choice, my pain, and also my joy.

October One and Thirty

2007-07-16T13:12:00.000-05:00

A brief video created by my son and several of his friends.

Pain, Joy, and Becoming Numb

2007-07-10T05:24:00.000-05:00

I believe pain is inevitable, even necessary, but that suffering is a choice. My feet hurt right now, but I don’t allow that pain to steal my power to choose. If I yielded my will to that pain, I would soon be suffering, even suffocating.

On the other hand, I don’t ignore it, either. Pain alerts me to problems I need to address. So tonight, I treat the cause of the pain. I take some simple steps to bring the swelling down, knowing it will return, if not tomorrow then another day. I also know when it returns I will treat it again.

It would be dangerous to ignore the pain, pretend it’s cause does not exist, and not treat it. If I did that, I could accelerate myself into a downward physical spiral towards even greater pain, ultimately until I’m left, literally without a leg to stand on. I could also travel that same downward spiral with drugs that numbed the pain without treating the cause.

It would also be dangerous to recoil sharply from that pain, determined never to feel it again. That choice would lead me to my bed, elevating my feet, alternating heat and cold packs on them, and never again doing anything—like walking or sitting—to cause my feet to swell and give me pain.

I believe my choices are the same with both physical and emotional pain. I acknowledge and treat pain’s cause, doing what simple things I can. I do not ignore it; pretend it’s not there or that I don’t feel it. Finally, I do not flee, determined never to feel pain again, making myself numb to its warning.

I believe I cannot allow myself to become a bit numb to pain without also becoming a bit numb to love and joy.

I’ve already had a chance at that bottle and turned it down.

2007-06-11T00:43:00.000-05:00

“Houston woman convicted of killing her husband by running over him with her Mercedes in a hotel parking lot after finding him with his mistress.”

The Clara Harris case was a tell for our whole society. Our perverse fascination for murderous revenge was exposed in the detailed nation-wide coverage of the story that stretched from the day she ran over her husband, through the murder trial, to the wrongful death suit months later.

Clara, the now-infamous Dentist’s wife, tracked down her cheating husband with his mistress at a Houston motel and ran over him in the parking lot multiple times with the family Mercedes. Her stepdaughter was sitting in the front seat at her side, begging Clara not to kill daddy. The daughter, 16 at the time of the murder, is quoted years later as saying: “Anyone who shared my ride in the car that evening, seeing my dad’s face as he was about to be hit, and experiencing the horrible feel of the car bumping over his body would understand that this murderess deserves no sympathy.” The police and witnesses confirmed Clara did not stop after running over him once, but ran over him repeatedly, some witness accounts claim as many as five times. Surprisingly, a significant percentage of the subsequent public response claimed she should not have been convicted, that the cheating husband got what he deserved.

One miserable day—in the nightmare two years between Connie’s “I love Bruce,” and “I’m leaving”—our family was touring Greenwich, England. At her insistence, I was trying to put on a good face. The raw bleeding agony of her betrayal kept pushing into my thoughts, leaving me blindly stumbling through the day, totally overwhelmed by the cold aching reality beneath what I saw as her fake smiles, fake laughter, and fake ministrations to our children. Every pose she struck seemed a mockery of motherhood. She looked into the eyes of our children and pretended we were the same happy family I always thought us to be even though I knew she held the absolute conviction I was such a bad husband, such a bad father that her relationship with Bruce was justified.

It should have been a delightful family day, but violence kept forcing its way into my thoughts. I alternately wished to kill myself, then Connie, then Bruce. I would mentally hurl the thoughts from my head, trying to enjoy some moment of the day, but the bloody wishes would push back in and cycle through my mind repeatedly. Reoccurring throughout that day of disorienting madness were a few clear thoughts: “I won’t be that kind of father.” I held and still hold the conviction that every bad choice parents make can multiply the bad choices their children will ultimately make.

That’s why it’s so hard for me to imagine why Clara took her stepdaughter along on the vehicular homicide that killed the girl’s own father. I thought, "Who would do that to a kid?"

That day I pushed my thoughts away from violence by thinking, “What kind of father would do that to his children?” Not the kind I wanted to be. By the end of the day, clinging to the desire not to hurt my children, I careened away from those obsessive, murderous thoughts, and, for the most part, never went back to them.

Sometimes I think Connie and Bruce owe me a trip to England with the kids, at the very least a pleasant day in Greenwich to replace the one their choices robbed of me, but most of the time I think I owe myself that day because allowing those thoughts to steal it from me was my choice, my weakness.

By the time we went to England, Connie had agreed for me to go see a marriage counselor but had refused to go herself. Later she agreed to go to the counselor herself, alone. Much later, she agreed to go with me to a few joint sessions. Her mantra on the drive up each time was, “It won’t make any difference.” Prescient that. During the sessions, she would most often decline to speak. Lots of silence there. On the drive back from a session, she would explode, angry outbursts that seemed to come from deep within, but were disconnected from anything in the session.

Occasionally she would curse at me. She cursed like a pre-teen trying to learn the low art. Words dropping out of her mouth, stumbling into the air poorly timed with awkward inflections. Cursing was so atypical of her it silenced me. I had no response to her cursing, didn't know what to say and didn’t dare laugh at its awkwardness.

Prior to the England trip, the counselor I was seeing pulled out of me the fact I was not sleeping at all. Earnestly telling me sleep deprivation could cause psychosis and that I should avoid psychosis if possible, this counselor, who was so proud of his homeopathic methods, immediately whipped me over to a psychiatrist for sleeping pills and anti-depressants. To get these pills, I had to have a thirty minute face-to-face session with the shrink at least once a month. The next time I went to see him after the England trip with its’ miserable day of murderous thoughts I mentioned it to him. I had never had thoughts like that before and I worried they were a precursor to something horrible. I told him I had a day where I was obsessed “with thoughts of suicide/murder.” After a brief pause, a direct, wide-eyed look, and a blink, the shrink said, “You mean murder/suicide, don’t you.” I laughed and said, “Yeah, I guess that would be the correct order wouldn’t it.” I think my laughter was a good sign. The shrink seemed to think so. I hope it was a good sign. Everyone survived the day alive, anyway.

A Mark Twain short story, “The Man Who Corrupted Hadlyburg,” thematically asserts man can’t claim to be good until he has the choice to be evil. In the little pitcher* days my cousins and I shared, surreptitiously absorbing our father’s words from outside their conversation circle, I heard one of my seven uncles joke about being “a better Christian” than his brothers because he had remained abstinent his whole life though he “knew [he] had more chances at a bottle” than they. The assumption beneath his joke was virtue not subjected to temptation was not authentic. It was my first intimation of the labyrinthine complexities of good and evil.

An anonymous comment on “e-verities” asked me if I “believe in revenge? Do [I] believe it is ever justified?” I though about that question for a while, reading back through what I had written about forgetting wrongs verses revenging them, trying to determine if there was a subconscious warm-up to, or a lengthy justification being built for some act of revenge I had yet to take.

I concluded I haven’t been planning revenge, even subconsciously, but decrying it. It's true many victims seem to have a gnawing need for revenge, but I really believe the only true victim of our bad choices is ourselves—left helpless in the face of ultimate, inevitable, consequences.

Others, hurt by our choices, are only victims if they choose to be. They desire revenge the same way a drunk desires a bottle, but they need something else, something healing, something that will take them out of the downward spiral of revenge for wrong, revenge for revenge for wrong, revenge for revenge for revenge . . . Well I guess this pattern is also eternal, but I wouldn’t call it a verity

My reply to “anonymous” was: To take revenge is to take spiritual poison. I’ve already had a chance at that bottle and turned it down. The dark eternal consequences of choosing revenge are more abhorrent to me than the ephemeral rush available to me in taking revenge. The real eternal verity here is not revenge or forgetting, but forgiveness.

*little pitchers , first the surreptitious attentiveness of my cousins and myself was noticed, then silent arch looks passed from uncle to uncle, and one would say, “little pitchers have big ears.” This was followed by winks and knowing looks all around, a heads together volume reduction, and a change in subject. Still, we heard quite a bit.

I don't know where the verity is in this.

2007-04-02T05:56:00.000-05:00

It occurs to me I have been struggling, unsuccessfully, for five years not to look pathetic, not to look like a post-divorce cadaver, moving zombie-like through the world without interaction.

I make feints at engaging—trying to “move on” as goes the popular phrase—but it seems I run into many blank walls; little incidents where my energy, time, and emotions disappear into the bland flat surface without a ripple, without apparent effect or affect.

I stare blankly at those moments and struggle against the urge to go home, close my door, and not come out.

I don't know where the verity is in this.

Forgetting Lies

2007-04-01T02:04:00.000-05:00

How can you forget love? How can you forget someone you’ve loved? I think I can understand how you could forget someone with whom you’ve shared a brief moment, a passing fancy, a wink, maybe even a dalliance—daydreamed or real, but forgetting someone you’ve loved?

How can you forget someone you’ve trusted completely, someone from whom you’ve withheld no intimacy, someone to whom you have made yourself totally vulnerable? How can you forget someone for whom your habit of supporting, encouraging, and forgiving is so much a part of you that you find yourself—inexplicably and foolishly--forgiving them of the deepest, most fundamental, and shocking betrayal even as they are in the act of that betrayal.

Perhaps my life experience is just too limited, or I have some deeply ingrained and unrealistic concept of love, but forgetting love is outside my personal experience.

Of course such an absolute view of love also creates its own problem. One who holds this view, thinking they love and who later comes to believe they don’t love, rather than doubt the longevity of love or admit to an inconstant character may doubt the validity of their earlier feelings. The words expressing this doubt come out as nonsense.

For someone to say, “I don’t love you anymore. I’m not sure I ever did,” is for them to emit a collection of nearly random sounds, apparently intended to be words, but that do not make meaning. I’ve read these words so many places, heard about them as a relationship exit line so many times that I think they simply must be on someone’s top ten list of trite relationship phrases. There’s as much meaning in the phrases, “I don’t think my heart beats anymore, I’m not sure it ever has,” or “I don’t think I breathe oxygen anymore, I’m not sure I ever did.”

This of course is ephemeral nonsense. Love is the eternal verity here. Moreover, as inexplicably foolish as it seems, the very essence of eternal love includes forgiving even those who betray and reject in the very act of betrayal and rejection.

“You can break his heart.”

2007-01-28T02:08:00.000-06:00

. . . Miss Havisham to Estella on introducing her new playmate, Pip.

This character from Dickens’ Great Expectations is at the same time implausible and believable. Rather than forgetting her tragic rejection (leaving it behind, and moving on—what a boring plot device that would have been, not Dickinsonian at all), Havisham wallows in grief. Floating restlessly through her mansion, time-frozen at the moment of her betrayal, living for decades amid the rotting wedding feast and dusty decorations she never allowed to be cleared, all the clocks of her life stopped at the tragic moment her fiancé abandoned her at the alter, Havisham’s obsession finds its expression in proxy revenge.

Estella was the only new thing, the only growing thing in those decaying rooms. Estella was raised to wreak Havisham’s vengeance on all men, cultivated to be a heartbreaker, to leave others at the alter as Havisham had been left. Estella was purposed and trained for vengeance without a thought given to her own joy, happiness, or fulfillment.

Eventually, after nurture in Havisham’s shrine to regret, even Estella becomes as frozen in time as the dusty wedding relics cluttering the mansion. She becomes a two dimensional prop, raised for a single purpose, kept shallow, not allowed to deepen and develop. She is frozen at the point of freshly ripened beauty when hearts are stopped at her very presence, before a hint of anything but compliant bliss is allowed to edge into her personality. Wide-eyed and worshipful in a way no woman could ever be, beneath her bosom where her heart should have been is a cold throbbing ice water pump. Cold steel forcing ice water through her veins as she first enthralls then devastates the men she encounters.

At maturity, Estella realizes the trap she is in and is briefly rueful, but ultimately is incapable of feeling the pain of her own cold simulacra of life. She has no hope for change, but only knows her life is not one anyone would choose. She became a beauty trained to break hearts, raised to revenge, Havisham’s proxy revenge.

Revenge by proxy, frequently using innocent and helpless children, is a regular theme in literature and, unfortunately, in our society. Anyone who has experienced first hand or watched helplessly as those full of hurt and anger try to fill a child’s mind with poison knows this to be true. It may be that the horrors of proxy revenge presented in literature are a way we distance ourselves from the emotional horrors committed by us.

In the Robinson Jeffers’ version of the Greek tragedy Medea, there is a moment when the inescapable fall towards destruction pauses, all action gasps to a stop when Medea, after howling in agony through most the play about her husband's betrayal, after sending vengeful wedding gifts to her husband's new wife that burst into flames and reduce her to a charred smoking lump, ends her tirade against Jason, Creon, and the world to look into the face of one of her sons and say: “Would you say that this child has Jason’s eyes?” and then, “tenderly but hopelessly,” says, “They are his cubs. They have his blood. As long as they live I shall be mixed with him.”

These are some of the most chilling words in all literature. They are followed by Medea’s Nurse begging her to flee from the "horror of horrors,” but Medea doesn’t flee. She commits bloody slaughter, killing her sons, saying it is necessary because it is the only vengeance against her husband that equals his betrayal.

A convention of Greek tragedy is that a highborn person is brought to total destruction by hubris. There is, perhaps, no place lower than murderer of your own children, and perhaps there is no hubris greater than to believe your children should die for your revenge. However, I believe the real horror of all horrors, beyond bloody slaughter, is to poison a child’s mind with hurt and anger. That horror can stretch into eternity.

Not Forgetting, Displacing

2006-12-17T00:22:00.000-06:00

Listening in puzzled silence, I sat across the table as an old acquaintance justified his “special friendship” with another man’s wife as the way “these things happen.”

He interrupted himself in the middle of a bland enumeration of the reasons he thought his friend should leave her husband, break up her family, and marry him, to recount how his wife had left him fifteen years earlier for another man, a person she chose because he was more compatible with her interests and temperament.

He mentioned his ex-wife without a flicker of emotional pain in his words or on his face. “Here, finally, is someone who has moved on successfully,” I thought.

He saw in his “special friend” a person more compatible with himself than his first wife. He said he was more compatible with his friend than her own husband was. He began to enumerate their compatibilities, but shifted into a catalog of incompatibilities between him and his ex-wife. From that list, he began itemizing the similarities between his ex-wife and his friend’s husband. On that subject, his tone moved from tepid to luke-warm. The inventory of characteristics shared by his ex and his friend’s husband grew. His tally concluded with the assertion people like he and his friend could never be happy married to people like that. He assured me he was grateful his ex-wife had helped him realize this.

As he went through his catalog of similarities and differences, compatibilities and incompatibilities, I had to remind myself his wife had left him years earlier for yet another man and not for his friend’s husband. I became lost in the tangled morass through which he was leading me, wandering like a dull docent, directing his hundredth tour, a bland off-hand reference to the exemplary qualities of his friend, then, displaying an ever-so-slightly more spirited affect, recounting the shared traits of his ex and his friend’s husband.

At a loss for words, I managed to say, “These things do happen, but I think it’s not the best way or the only way.”

“No it’s not the best way, but it is the way,” his eyes shifted down, he nodded briefly, “Besides, we can’t help it; it’s just the way. . .,” his voice drifted up into a tentative query, “. . .these things happen.”

Not Forgetting What Lies Behind: Nice Revenge

2006-12-16T02:05:00.000-06:00

Forgetting is not all we can do in response to life's tragedies. Forgetting may be our best choice, in many ways it is our easiest choice, but it is not compulsory. In a society that honors reciprocity over an agape-grounded golden rule, we are free to harm others--with revenge. Though the word “revenge” is harsh, so harsh we find ourselves wanting to deny it is imbeded in our culture, it still recieves aprobation. Our culture aproves “nice” revenge, tolerates displaced revenge, and is facinated by proxy and murderous revenge.

We like to cover our harshness--as we do all our ugliest urges--with a nice veneer. One veneered ugliness is whitewashed with the phrase, “Living well is the best revenge.” This is "nice" revenge, a witty quip held up as the positive response to betrayal and rejection. It has all the characteristics we honor. To live well is to move on, leave behind, forget about the tragedy. It is affirmative, positive, and gives us a cultural hero: one who is apparently healthy, wealthy, happy, and successful. We smile and laugh at the irony and justice when those betrayed or rejected find new and better relationships, but that smile is only a muscle twitch away from a grimace, and the same muscle contraction that powers a belly laugh also powers a racking sob.

Living well to show one has “moved on” is false, even pretentious. Eagerness to live well pushes people past loss without healing, without closure. Showing a good new life is easier than building an actual good life. Wounds remain, suppurating beneath happy veneers. Years after pain people become flushed and tearful when surprised by old remembered agony, even though they have by most external signs moved on to new relationships and lifestyle successess. The veneer of a good new life is thin and easily breached, easily undermined. The need to proudly display the new life leads one to ignore and avoid problems that should be addressed so new relationships may be truely as good as they appear. Additionally, living well to achieve revenge is an empty, ephemeral choice. T.S. Elliot underscored this when he wrote, “to do the right thing for the wrong reason is the greatest treason.” Evil motives for even the best actions poison the doer. The treason is not to others, but to one's own character. As harmful as hidden untreated wounds, the internal poison of revenge grows and festers until it cracks through the shallow surface of the good new life and reveals it to be pretense.

New Bike

2006-11-28T00:25:00.000-06:00

“It’s finished,” The clink of one wrench being exchanged for another accompanied the voice from behind the couch. The taller one saved his work, closed his laptop, and glanced over at the earnest figure methodically testing each nut on the bike one last time.

“Are the handlebars still slipping?” The taller one came around the room-dividing couch, knelt down, and began gathering wrenches into their box. He paused with a handlebar-nut-sized wrench in his hand.

The short one shook his head, “no,” as he reached up and gave the handle bar a torqing push-pull. “The bolts are tight now, see?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” He got up off the floor and stood, looking even smaller next to the big two-wheeler. He began to back-and-forth it awkwardly into a turn.

“You want to ride it now?” The tall one stood, looking at the eager struggle moving the bike toward the front door. “It’s dark.”

“No traffic. No one will see if I fall over.” He put down the kickstand, opened the front door, and began to wrestle the bike onto the porch.

“What do you want me to do?” Helping lift the back wheel over the doorsill, the tall one checked the street for traffic. It was dark and empty to the end of the block on both ends, a single pool of street light in the middle of the block a few houses down. “Should I hold it for you?”

“Maybe,” the short one paused at the top of the driveway, stooped to raise the kickstand with his hand, made a feint at straddling the bike, hesitated, and kept walking toward the street. “I think I better get on at the curb.”

Trailing after, the tall one checked again for traffic. It was late, quiet and dark, no neighbors to be seen.

The short one was standing on the curb with the bike in the street, trying to use the six-inch rise to help him clear the seat as he made a full attempt to straddle, but he hit the back of the seat with his left leg, leaving it stuck on top of the back tire, nearly losing his balance.

The tall one quickly stepped forward, reaching out to steady the bike with a handlebar, and helped him get his leg over the seat.

Recovering, the short one took a handlebar in his right hand, put his left foot on the pedal with his left hand, and balanced himself in the seat, his right toe just touching the curb.

Standing on the left, the street side, the tall one held both his hands out, ready to steady something. “I don’t know what to do here. Should I walk along beside you?”

“I don’t know, let’s see.” The short one pushed off the curb and began to pedal slowly. The tall one kept pace walking along side. After two slow pedal revolutions, many bursts of tiny steering corrections, the tall one moved to a brisk walk, and the short one settled into a balanced ride.

Suddenly his left foot slipped from the pedal and began dragging the ground, pulling the bike left, the handlebars slipped a few inches, and the bike and rider fell over to the right.

The tall one hovered and reached, grasping the bike, grasping the short one’s arm, trying but failing to halt the crash. He bent over, hoisted the short one out of the bike wreckage, and onto his feet.

The short one babbled, “That didn’t take long. I wonder if I tore it up." He began to breathe quickly. "Brand new bike,” shaking his head side to side as he stood the bike on it's wheels, checking it for damage, “first ride shouldn’t be the first crash.” He stood still for a moment looking down at the bike, then wrenched the handlebars back into a right angle to the tire and sighed; "I’ve bought a bike I can’t ride.” Earnestness drained out of him, leaving him slump shouldered.

The tall one said, “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” embracing the short one in a silent bear hug.

The short one noticed the the pool of light around them in the middle of the dark street, middle of the block, and began to laugh. “The neighbors are going to think we’re both drunk.”

“Nobody is watching,” said the tall one.

They pushed the bike to the curb where the short one climbed on the bike again and pushed off. With the tall one jogging alongside, the short one rode slowly down the street, finally making a big "U"-turn to head back to the house, up the drive, to a shaky dismount.

“You did it,” the tall one said. “Yaaay Daddy,” making a quiet moc-croud cheer.

“Yeah,” said the short one.

__________________________________________________________

I’ve been struggling.

A downhill slide, the aging Polio survivors’ deteriorating physical ability—possibly post-Polio syndrome—sucks at my energy, limits my choices, reduces my productivity, and, once again, hobbles me. Dispirited by betrayal, I had drifted away from workouts and healthy eating. By last spring I ballooned up to two seventy-three and began struggling to haul myself around on crutches. Finally emerging from an emotional fog, I found myself body blocked, crashing into new physical limits.

Worried I wouldn’t be able to continue teaching, that I wouldn’t be able pay for my son’s college, and doubting the dependability of my ex-wife’s promise to help him. I decide it is urgent for me to recover some of my mobility. In mid-June, I went back to the gym and pool. Slowly, I began to get stronger, to lose weight, but the process was very slow and school started in early August. I needed to get around quicker. Teaching is more than sitting at a desk and tossing worksheets at kids, especially teaching theatre. I began using a wheelchair at school.

Therefore, I’m back to my old trade-off. It’s the same old situation. I use the wheelchair to go faster, because a walk to the mailroom is over ten minutes, a walk to the restroom is several minutes, to the lunchroom and back takes so long I have to bolt my food. However, a few weeks using the wheelchair “only when necessary” and I believe I can perceive deterioration.

Sometimes the “only when necessary” stretches from when I walk into the studio theatre in the morning and sit down in the wheelchair by the back door to when I park it by the back door that evening on my way home. I spend more time in the chair than I think I should and as a consequence I don’t feel I can stand up as long as I use to, or that I can walk as far.

I can’t tell if there is a causal link between this perceived deterioration and the wheelchair use. It could just be part of the general downhill slide. So I struggle, emotionally and physically.

I decide I need another exercise mode, one that will work my legs to compensate for the exercise I lose when I use the wheelchair, so I begin looking at bicycles. Up until five years ago, I rode a bike regularly. At Texas Tech, it was a major part of my transportation, but even then, I was unsteady on it. In order to pedal with full leg extension I had to place the seat so high that getting on and off was precarious. To others, I seemed perilously close to falling each time I climbed on and off.

I began to be concerned I would have to give up riding altogether until I found a bike with a different frame configuration, one placing the seat closer to the ground, an Electra, a beach cruiser with what they call “flat foot technology.” The pedals are forward of the seat rather than beneath it, so I could push the pedal with my right leg fully extended. I shopped around for six months and bought a used one.

When the Electra arrived, I found I could reach the ground with both feet as expected, but the pedal position meant I couldn’t balance my left foot on the pedal as I was accustom to doing. It would fall off, and because the seat was lower, drag the ground. My first disastrous half-block-followed-by-a-fall in front of my son was briefly redeemed by a ride back to the house. The next night I made myself climb back on and ride around the block, alone. I managed to keep my foot on the pedal by holding my leg with my left hand. That, however, left only one hand on the handlebars, precarious in its own way. I haven’t tried to ride it since.

I think I’m afraid.

Class Rank Manipulation

2006-09-13T22:59:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure when this phrase became a pejorative, but I keep hearing our lead counselor sneeringly intone the phrase when referring to students who try to fill their schedules with classes that carry extra grade point weight (more than 100 points maximum) and avoid classes that can only be averaged into their GPA at 100 points.

The counselor also derides students who express concern about and strive for the difference between a ninety-six class average and a 100 average.

The sneering comments are recurring phenomena. The emotion in the voice, frequently the volume in the voice, and certainly the denigrating tone in the voice seems more intense than the events would seem to merit.

School policy sets up a target, a sign of excellence, expressed in a cumulative grade point average computed to two decimal places. Policy allows students to select their classes. Additionally, the school assigns higher maximum grade points to some classes than to others.

When students consider the maximum grade points as part of their class selection criteria and attempt to load their schedules with those classes, this counselor invents and applies a pejorative phrase and spews it around like a poisonous criminal charge.

Is it appropriate to belittle students for making choices school policy allows in order to achieve a goal the school dangles before them? I think not.

Change the policy, or stop spewing poison.

I don’t know why this bothers me. Perhaps I just feel sadness when I hear a counselor speak with such harsh emotion about the children in our charge.

It’s as if the counselor has forgotten what it’s like to strive and work hard for the highest level of learning, for the top grades and highest academic honors. I remember working hard to be a “top student.” Surely, this counselor does also.

Even when I get a little irritated at some kid who is angst-ridden over the difference between a 98 and a 100, I try to counsel them about the superior value of deep lifetime learning over ephemeral accolades, rather than make light of their concern.

To belittle hard working students in a loud emotional voice would place me in the rancorous crowd of sour under-achievers who seek to elevate themselves, not by hard work, but by tearing down the best efforts of others. Surely, our lead counselor has nothing in common with that group.

Lesson Plans

2006-09-03T15:49:00.000-05:00

This is an ephemeral venting of frustration.

I modify lessons every year, sometimes every class and every period to help students learn; but I loathe being required to make massive changes (that ultimately boil down to awkward format changes) on plans to fit into ever-changing documentation requirements generated by administrators who come in and out of the school and the district as if by an ever-turning revolving door.

The task takes away from the time I have to modify plans to accommodate individual student needs and to make lessons better for my students.

We don't seem to be as free as those who harm.

2006-08-02T03:58:00.000-05:00

We don't seem to be as free to make bad choices as those who harm us with theirs.

We are free to Havisham the clocks at grief’s apogee, flit through cobweb clotted rooms, past desiccated feasts, by moldy vermin-tunneled cakes, and empty our lives into dusty bitterness, but only by ignoring sotto voiced approbations from friends, family, and loved ones. They note—with sad regret—we are “failing to move on.”

No one seems to note—with regret—the jilting fiancé, the leaving partner, the unfaithful spouse. The betrayers receive one-line mention hidden in mounds of detail about the bitterly time-frozen Havishams of life.

"Forget what is behind and reach toward what is ahead."

2006-06-26T19:40:00.000-05:00

I recently had dinner with a friend I had not spent much time with in several months. She sent me a note the next day expressing how "glad" she was I "seem in better spirits.” She then paraphrased from Phil 3:13: "Forget what is behind and reach toward what is ahead,” concluding with, "That is all we can do."

There was poignancy to her final words that touched me. I'm reminded we all have been hurt in ways we may never share even with those close to us.

My second reaction to her note, however, is that forgetting is not "all we can do." Certainly, we are free to respond to the vagaries of life in many ways. I think, rather than saying forgetting was our only choice, she was recommending forgetting as a desirable way, perhaps the best way to deal with disappointment and pain.

I'm not sure I agree with her. Of course disagreeing with her also puts me in disagreement with Paul, but as my friend herself told me over twenty-five years ago, "It wouldn't be the first time, and disagreeing with Paul does not automatically mean you disagree with God."

So, forgetting, while it may in fact be the best way to deal with the vagaries of life, is not all we can do. We are free to respond in many ways.

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2006-06-23T15:26:00.000-05:00

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"Should we receive good from God, and not evil?"

2006-06-17T09:47:00.000-05:00

This phrase (from Job 2:10) haunts me a bit. It is troublesome in part because it is possible to extract from it the idea that we sometimes “receive evil from God”--which throws me into cognitive dissonance--and in part because a friend recently asked me if I thought God allows evil in the world so we can suffer the consequences of our sins. The core issue here is an old one and a big one, the problem of evil; how do we reconcile our concepts of God with the presence of evil in the world? I don’t have the answer to the big question, but the perspective given me by Job’s story has helped me keep my bearings when thrown into its' proximity.

First, word studies seem to urge the meaning of “good” and “evil” in this passage towards our contemporary use of “good” and “bad,” and away from “good” meaning divine perfection and “evil” meaning it’s opposite. Language scholars agree Job is not saying that we receive things from God that are anti-God, contrary to divine nature. So perhaps there is some comfort in translating the phrase as, “shall we accept what we like from God and not also what we don’t like?” But seeking that comfortable translation sidesteps the big question and also steps away from the events recounted in Job.

That translation trivializes Job’s experience. His trials go beyond minor misfortune. He has lost his wealth, many servants, his children, and his health. He still has his wife—poor comfort there; her response to these tragedies is to tell him to “curse God and die” (2:9). This is a lot of grief for a man who is pure and upright, who fears God and turns away from evil (2:8). We are inclined to think God's man will not face these tragedies. In fact, that's Satan's accusation: Job is God's man because God protects him from tragedy. It is easy to understand why Job might refer to these apparently capricious calamities as evil. Still, the passage says, “In all this Job did not sin, nor did he charge God with moral impropriety” (1:22). When lesser spirits would curse God and die, Job keeps his integrity, and--I think--his faith. Satan was wrong about Job.

Still, whose actions were these, God's or Satan's? I don’t have evidence or book-chapter-and-verse authority to answer that question. I do reason from my view of God that nothing happens unless he at least allows it, even though that view doesn’t ease my discomfort. I’m uncomfortable with the thought God may be allowing evil to exist, but—oddly enough—don’t feel that discomfort at a deep faith challenging level. When I’ve encountered those who point at such apparent inconsistencies and say, “I can’t believe in a god like that,” I’m always in agony more at their lack of belief than at the reason they offer to justify it. As quoted earlier, one sign of Job’s faithfulness was--even though overcome by inexplicable tragedy--he, “did not charge God with moral impropriety.” I understand Job’s choice there. I feel his choice, even though I have never been able to communicate it very well, especially to those who find such situations faith challenging. I wish I could.

Several teachers have emphasized God only allowed Satan to harm Job. They stress that God did not harm Job directly. This difference seems to ease discomfort for some. The text seems to support this interpretation, but the difference doesn’t seem significant to me. Certainly it wasn’t to Job. Regardless of causality, Job found himself bereft, wounded, in ashes and subject to the comfortless yammering of his wife and friends. To emphasize the difference seems to me to reveal insecurity, as if faith would fail if God had harmed Job directly. In fact, the small moral difference between refusing to stop harm and actually causing harm seems more like the small hook on which the weak hang self-justifying rationalizations than a pillar of theological insight into God’s nature. I think distinguishing causality here is ultimately no comfort.

In a lifetime of thought, reasoning, belief, and prayer, I have been unable to explain the existence of many phenomena I’m tempted to call evil. From the minor personal distraction of mosquitoes to the worldwide irritant of rampant materialism, from the tragedy of international warfare to the personal misfortune of polio, many things give me pause, particularly when I allow my perspective to shrink down to the ephemera of this world. Do we suffer these harms to build character, as consequences for sin, to serve some good only God can see? I think the answer to each of these questions is both yes and no. For the most part, I am untroubled by the ambiguity of these answers because no single answer is the tripwire of my faith. At the risk of being charged with intellectual flabbiness, I try to trust in the ultimate goodness of God even while twisting in agony over personal tragedies. I think it is possible to praise God through tears.

In contrast to Job, I remember the example of Adam and Eve—who may very well have been brought into a world without evil, or pain, or any of the other ills that give rise to the “big question.” In this idyllic existence, Eve listens to Satan who questions God’s motivation by saying Adam and Eve were commanded not to eat from the tree to deprive them of something desirable. In a heartbeat, Eve doubts the beneficence and superiority of God and chooses disobedience. The consequences of that choice—which Adam followed, apparently without hesitation—were significant. They were significant for Adam and Eve, for their family, for the generations that followed them, possibly even for all humankind. From the cushy ease of the garden, Eve appears quick to doubt and disobey. From the depths of tragedy that an ephemeral perspective would easily label evil, Job, though he feels and expresses grief and anger, does not disobey. He does not lose sight of the eternal.

The Preeminent Verity

2006-06-09T02:19:00.000-05:00

Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds
by William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is the ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 Corinthians 13
(NIRV)

Suppose I speak in the languages of human beings and of angels. If I don't have love, I am only a loud gong or a noisy cymbal. Suppose I have the gift of prophecy. Suppose I can understand all the secret things of God and know everything about him. And suppose I have enough faith to move mountains. If I don't have love, I am nothing at all. Suppose I give everything I have to poor people. And suppose I give my body to be burned. If I don't have love, I get nothing at all.

Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not want what belongs to others. It does not brag. It is not proud. It is not rude. It does not look out for its own interests. It does not easily become angry. It does not keep track of other people's wrongs.

Love is not happy with evil. But it is full of joy when the truth is spoken. It always protects. It always trusts. It always hopes. It never gives up.

Love never fails. But prophecy will pass away. Speaking in languages that had not been known before will end. And knowledge will pass away.

What we know now is not complete. What we prophesy now is not perfect. But when what is perfect comes, the things that are not perfect will pass away.

When I was a child, I talked like a child. I thought like a child. I had the understanding of a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.

Now we see only a dim likeness of things. It is as if we were seeing them in a mirror. But someday we will see clearly. We will see face to face. What I know now is not complete. But someday I will know completely, just as God knows me completely.

The three most important things to have are faith, hope and love. But the greatest of them is love.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

While these passages may allow an interpretation that love is something that "happens" to one, or something "found," I think it more likely eternal love is a choice. Love is not an external force sweeping us off our feet and out of control, not something we "can't help," not subject to the vagaries of time, wealth, or status. It is not a part of the ephemeral, ever changing, world, but a part of the eternal spirit of God.

Ontological Proof

2006-06-05T00:40:00.000-05:00

Rene’ Descartes

Descartes, as I understand it, in his Discours de la méthode (1637), was attempting “to unify all knowledge as the product of clear reasoning from self-evident premises.” Following the 11th century work of St. Anselm, Descartes added his reasoning to something called the “Ontological Proof.” It appears to be an attempt to assert the existence of God rationally. I find the proof compelling for that very reason, rationality reaching to explain what many rationalist appear to consider irrational.

There are different versions, possibly translations, of the proof. What follows I owe once again to Dr. Tom Morris’, Philosophy for Dummies. In short, the proof says, “God's existence is inferred directly from the fact that necessary existence is contained in the clear and distinct idea of a supremely perfect being,” or in a longer version as a construct:

1. Whatever I clearly and distinctly perceive to be contained in the idea of something is true of that thing.
2. I clearly and distinctly perceive that necessary existence is contained in the idea of God.
3. Therefore, God exists.

Morris writes, “Descartes compared the ontological argument to a geometric demonstration, arguing that necessary existence cannot be excluded from idea of God anymore than the fact that its angles equal two right angles can be excluded from the idea of a triangle.” The ontological proof asserts God’s existence is as obvious and self-evident as basic mathematical truth.

Descartes and Morris point out this proof is intuitively both compelling and unsatisfying. I am less troubled by the ambiguity of their responses. In fact, Descartes ambiguity is part of what I find compelling about the proof. He is represented as believing the most compelling proof of God is primarily experiential, making rational proof just an addendum to faith already embraced, and not evidence bringing the unbelieving rationalist to faith. He presents rational argument asserting God’s existence is “obvious and self-evident,” but draws his faith from what he perceives to be God’s actions in his life.

To me it is as if Descartes recognizes the inherent weakness of rationality. Rational conclusions are only as valid as their supporting data. Rational conclusions are subject to the changes brought about by new data, more complete data, or a new understanding of old data. Rationality is ephemeral because it is totally dependent on evidence from an ephemeral world. Rationalists claiming to have found something eternal or universal, by that very claim, step onto metaphysical turf and away from their core belief, for nothing in the rational world can be eternal or universal.

I believe, by presenting rational proof as secondary to the faith engendered by experiencing God in his life, Descartes asserts faiths’ supremacy. The faithful are sure their hopes will be fulfilled and are certain of things they do not see. The faithful are irrational. They develop faith by believing others testimony about God, by responding to the loving acts of God in their own lives, by making leaps of faith, by any or all of several inherently “irrational” actions. When the faithful step into their core beliefs, embracing the certainties hopes will be fulfilled and that the unseen exists, they embrace the only things eternal and universal accessible to anyone in the transient ephemera of this world.

Surgery

2006-05-31T08:22:00.000-05:00

Blogging from the Dentist's chair because I can.

While I appreciate the care and skill of my dentist, and admire the business acumen that has build his practice, I cannot sit in the chair for him to work on my teeth without thinking of the scene from the Neil Simon play The Good Doctor (adapted from a Chekhov short story entitled "Surgery" I believe). In the play an apprentice dentist does every painful maladroit thing imaginable--a nightmare dental session, but the effect of the scene is comic. I mentioned it to my dentist once and, as personable and charming as he is, he couldn't quite cover the distress he felt at what to him must have been yet another stereotyped dental nightmare. When we produced Little Shop of Horrors, I didn't even mention the dentist character. My dentist doesn't deserve the discomfort.

Actually, my dental sessions have always been so painless and uneventful that a different kind of comedy comes to the fore. More than once as I'm sitting in that chair, mouth stuffed with cotton and tools with both the dentist and his assistant staring intently at me from their little rolling stools, I begin to laugh. It seems so ridiculous for two grown people to be so intent on my teeth. It seems even more ridiculous for me to submit my teeth to such scrutiny.

Class of 2006

2006-05-27T20:28:00.000-05:00

I'm sitting at Hopper Field watching/listening to the roll call of graduates, my son's classmates, as they graduate from highschool.

A big climactic moment for many, but for my son and most of his friends it's the beginning of the education that is likely to define the rest of their lives more than anything they have experienced so far.

Leo Lindy's is Gone

2006-04-28T13:49:00.000-05:00

At least it's not where it used to be.

For the last ten years, when I've been in New York I've made it a habit to go to Lindy's on Time Square, sit in one of the window seats, linger over cheesecake and coffee, and people watch.

Today I wandered up and down the west side of Times Square, thinking my mind had slipped a cog and my memory was not to be trusted. Finally I propped myself against a window, huddled over my Treo, Googled "Leo Lindy's" and learned it was on the block at which I was staring . . . except it was not to be seen.

The storefronts along the block were a uniform, shiny aluminum and glass, rather than the jumble I remembered--Lindy's had been some kind of black tile--the windows down the block now looked like a 1950's mall, identical and bland.

I gave up my search and hobbled into the Marriot, headed towards a restaurant called "The View" that some magazine had said, "Gave an unparalled view" of Times Square from its rotating dining room. It was closed.

I eventually wandered to the eighth floor into the "Broadway Lounge," where I got a table at a window overlooking Times Square peopled with scurrying 1/4" tall people--what would that be--a hundred feet below. So much for people watching, I could count bald spots, I guess.

I started to rant here about how even something as innocuous as people watching had, rather than watching people eye to eye, become instead something where you looked down from such dizzying heights there was no possibility of personal interaction.

It was pointed out to me that Starbucks still had seats facing out windows at pedestrian level. That diffused my rant. I like Starbucks--like their pastry and cookies more than Lindy's cheesecake, though I didn't find a Starbucks with a good view of Times Square.

Not to slight the Leo Lindy cake, apparently it's world famous, but it's too gummy for me. The--now defunct--Sandy's Sweets in Lake Jackson made a cheesecake much more to my liking, and it was far from world famous.

That's Still Not It

2006-04-17T05:14:00.000-05:00

Simply doing what is right because it is right is also an incomplete answer (from previous post). It doesn't address all I think and feel about why I try to do what is right. My desire to do what is right is also a love response. I love God and try to do things to please him. It is feeling and emotion based. It's a reciprocal arrangement, but not an equilateral exchange, not barter. I don't love God hoping he will bless me. I love him partially out of desire to serve a greater good and partially out of gratitude for blessings already received.

Oddly enough, I feel that love response, that gratitude for blessings received, even though by some assessments I have not been particularly blessed. I’m not blessed with wealth, honor, or authority; at my physical best, I hobble along on crutches. Of course, others would count me blessed. In our age’s shifting sea of values, all assessments are slippery and subjective. As I ponder the apparent on again, off again status of my personal blessings, I begin to wonder if gratitude for them truly motivates me.

Maybe we're back to doing right for its own sake, or perhaps we're back to Job again, this time looking at Satan's taunt:

"Is it for nothing that Job fears God? Have you not made a hedge around him and his household and all that he has on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his livestock have increased in the land. But extend your hand and strike everything he has, and he will no doubt curse you to your face!"

Satan was wrong. Yes, Job was blessed, and in less ambiguous ways than I, but ultimately Job remained faithful even when he was, from an earthly perspective, unprotected and greatly harmed. Reading the account, we are hard pressed to discern Job's motivation for faithfulness. What was it he said? "Should we receive what is good from God, and not also receive what is evil?"

Job's response appears to me to reveal an unshakable conviction that God's actions, however they appear in the moment—even if they appear evil—are ultimately and eternally right.
Contrast this with the ease Satan's mere suggestion to Eve--another of God's children who had a hedge around her--that God was keeping something desirable from her turned her toward disobedience. His words were, “God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will open and you will be like divine beings."

I think Satan was wrong in a way that reveals his nature. His taunting was based on the assumption that Job's primary interest was self-interest, just as his strategy with Eve revealed his own desire to be "like divine beings." In Eve, Satan found a soul mate. In Job, Satan found God's man.

Selfish Isolation

2006-04-09T22:22:00.001-05:00

Because I once had the temerity to hint . . . to imply . . . and finally to gently suggest that one of my oldest and dearest friends appeared to be making a major life-changing decision without considering her husband, children, family, friends, her fellowship of believers, or the teachings of the God she professed; I found myself vilified by her as self-righteous, blind to my own sinfulness, and out of touch with God’s will. This all because she knew God wanted her to leave her husband and marry the man she now loved.

I was stunned into silence. This was too close to home for me and my friend knew it.

She asserted her decision concerned only her husband and herself, and had nothing to do with her children, family, friends, the man she now had given her love to, or her church. There would be no lasting consequences for anyone else: “People might be sad at first, but they’ll forget about it after a while. No one cares, they’ll act like it never happened, and kids are resilient. It won’t affect them.”

I tried to process her assertions and accusations through the emotional fog created by feelings welling up from my own past and the feelings I had for the others who loved her. I felt the pain her husband and children would feel, the sadness of her family, friends, and church.

Achingly aware of my own sin, I knew, more than she could ever know, that my only righteousness was grace given and undeserved. The only self near any righteousness I had was my sinful self. I couldn't imagine why she appeared to think my sinfulness--whether admitted or denied--could validate or justify her choices. I concluded misery isn't the only state that loves company.

I didn't know how my friend knew God wanted her to leave her husband and marry another man. I have no response when someone asserts such direct and specific guidance from God. When I pray and ask for guidance that degree of specificity has seldom been my experience. I had read in the scriptures that God hates divorce, even as I concluded from other passages that he gives grace to those who choose it. I have also read enough scripture to avoid saying, "God wouldn't do that, and he would never let that happen.” I've read Job, what do I know? I wasn't around when God spoke everything into existence.

She added that Christianity was at heart selfish, because believers did good in order to receive a heavenly reward and blessings from God. That rang wrong with me, like a bell choir playing a song with one bell just a little out of tune. Christianity was selfish, she said, and I thought, "Well, she’s right, rewards and blessings are promised.” I did not offer a response, couldn’t find the thought, the words to counter what she said. I let the statement stand between us as if it were unassailable truth, even as it echoed falsely in my mind.

The longer I thought about it the louder the false ringing. I've decided her assertions were suspect. Christianity isn't selfish. Rewards and blessings are promised, but I knew I hadn’t tried to do the right thing all my life just in order to get a blessing, or to get some future heavenly reward. That wasn’t my motivation. I believe in God. I try to be what I think of as God's man. I try to honor him with my life, but I have always tried to do what I thought was right in God’s eyes, not as a barter, but because to do otherwise is . . . well . . . wrong.

It seems so simplistic to say it that way, but that’s the plain fact of it. There are blessings and rewards, but they are consequences, not results of right choices. We can’t barter our feeble good deeds with God for his blessings. I try to please him in response to his love, out of gratefulness for the blessings he's already given me, but I don't expect to earn any reward. Our relationship is not based on what secular law calls a bilateral contract.

Besides, doing right is its own reward. I wish I could testify to that truth because I have always done what is right, but I cannot. I miss the mark, fall short, and still I know trying to do right is the best way to exist. It is the true way and to do otherwise is wrong. Maybe it is not so antithetical, so black and white. Maybe there is grey, but still, striving for the center--the most correct--is worth the effort for its own sake.

I also believe one of the verities is interdependence. There are consequences for other people in every choice we make. The lie is that individuals are alone, that the consequences of our choices fall only on us. This only appears true if we narrow our perspective to the briefest ephemeral slice of time and space, if we cripple our perceptions with rationalization and self-deception. My friend's assertions were suspect because she had carefully walled up a place in her mind, blocking out all other valid considerations, until it seemed to her the thing she wanted most to do was the only thing she could do.

The grief of everyone who cared for my friend and her family was palpable when she left her family, and sadness moves through them like recurring waves of darkness still. No one, except her ex-husband perhaps, continues to be overwhelmed and drowning in the darkness of her choice, but waves wash over them still. A no longer celebrated anniversary or birthday, a smiling face missing from a table of family pictures, a sweet memory of a time and association that will never be again, the dry black hole of doubt in the part of their hearts formerly filled with the certainty of that love. All these things well up and wash over them momentarily, occasionally, calling up sadness ranging from a brief pause, a sigh, perhaps a tear hidden from those around them, or an unexpected sob that springs out in a solitary moment to hijack their present well being and take them back to that past deep sadness. I've seen it in others. I've been a hijack victim. The darkness doesn't go away. People move on, but the sad shadow trails after them.

To believe you can be so isolated, separate, or alien that the consequences of your choices fall on yourself alone is to believe a lie. Even the most selfish isolation ripples dark waves through the world around you. What you do affects all for good or ill in ways you cannot predict and in ways you may never know.

Taksation Without Representation

2006-02-21T08:11:00.000-06:00

TAKS testing day @ B'wood and this year I'm assigned A Hall Down boys restroom duty. I suppose I can imagine a more meaningless duty, but there is something about the assignment thst seems to bleed all imagination from me.
Actually it is a necessary duty, if not particulary significant or frought with meaning. It's one of those "in case" jobs. I'm not perched outside the boys restroon because high school boys need or want assistance, but because some one of them might want to do something disallowed, like -- I don't know what -- exchange answers, look at a crib sheet, hide in a stall and terrorize some unsuspecting student into a state of catalepsy, causing them to fail the test.
There are so many "in case" situations, so many possibilities for deviant behavior, that you can't possibly anticipate them all. People, in this case test directors and principals, make their best decisions placing guards and watchers who may be able to intervene or, more likely, who's mere presence may prevent someone from attempting wrongdoing knowing an incident is as likely to happen beyond the perview of a guard as within it. As you sit and stare at the hallway, it is too easy to pick at the choices made. I would rather be at work on the rather long list of tasks that I always have at this time of year.
I wonder how seriously the students are taking this? They seemed really wired as they came in.
Okay so one thing I've found out is it is hard to hold the shape an form of a piece of writing in my head well enough to write coherently. I can't tell wherw I've been and direct myself where to go only seeing five six wor lines of text. At best this Blogging by thumb typing on my Treo has the fragmentary style of an old-style newspaper story.

Hurt Feelings

2006-01-26T00:22:00.000-06:00

Avoiding emotional pain probably should not be a high priority in life. Certainly, a life free from emotional pain is not an absolute value, not one of the verities. If I flee all emotional pain, I flee human interaction. I have hurt before; I will hurt again. I choose to make myself vulnerable to being hurt when I care about other people, and when I choose to love. Though this choice makes me vulnerable to pain, my personal experience is that it also opens me to joy. The risk of pain is the price of joy.

Some are so fearful of emotional pain they flee from all feelings. I have actually been with one timid little mouse who twitched back from the height of joy, disoriented by and fearful of its strength and power. The timid and fearful flee so far from their feelings they are lost. They deny all feelings, forcing them into a bland midrange, indistinguishable one from the other. When feelings do wash over these timid souls, they are blindsided. I believe it is better to risk pain, or actually to be hurt, than to deny all feelings. Both joy and sadness come to us via the same channel. Avoiding agony pushes away joy.

In fact, I believe feelings will out, to use an Elizabethan turn of phrase. Feelings will not be denied forever. The only choice we have is whether to acknowledge them in proximity to their causes (where we can deal with them in a healthy way), or to have them surprise and confuse us because they have returned to us disconnected from their source events. Inevitably returning from their hidden darkness, denied feelings overwhelm and push us into actions we do not understand, could not predict, and cannot control. We can only squeak in concert with the timid mouse, “I don’t know why. I can’t help it. It’s just the way I am.”

Red Noses

2006-01-25T21:46:00.000-06:00

Red Noses

Stupid in America, How Lack of Choice Cheats Our Kids Out of a Good Education

2006-01-15T01:19:00.000-06:00

It struck me several years ago that for my entire professional career I have endured regular news reports proclaiming the poor quality of the American education system. Invariably, the ills these reports cite seem plausible and possible to me, but are outside my personal experience. Perhaps I am blind, failing to see problems around me. Perhaps I always have taught in those rare, exceptional, schools where the ills of our education system do not exist, but I do not think so. I use to be quite exercised over these reports, but there seemed to be nothing I could do to stop them. Eventually, I included research on school effectiveness in my regular personal studies, tried to do the best work I could with my students, tried to exert as much positive influence as I could in my school and I.S.D., and tried not to take the criticism personally.

Friday night a television program entitled “Stupid in America, How Lack of Choice Cheats Our Kids Out of a Good Education” (link below, and also at: http://www.reason.com/hod/js011306.shtml) was presented by John Stossel on 20/20. It joined the career long chain of negativity I’ve had to endure. Unlike much of the negativity, the program did offer a solution to the multitude of ills facing American schools, voucher schools.

"’It's just like, do you get a Sprint phone or an AT&T phone,’ . . . Why can't kids benefit from similar competition in education?“ My answer to this is they may. However, there does not seem to be enough objective evidence to prove conclusively that they will. Offering even less evidence than exists in current education research, Stossel’s report makes a strong emotional case, gives a few examples, makes many unsupported assertions, but does not prove “lack of choice cheats our kids out of a good education,” rather it claims there is a single simple answer to a complex problem.

The answer to the question, “Why can’t kids benefit from similar competition in education?” is possibly they can. However, because educating just one child is more difficult, complex, and important than choosing a cell phone service provider, such competition is probably not the solution.

Teaching a whole classroom of children is incrementally more complex than educating one child, and educating all of America’s children deserves and requires the kind of thoughtful lifetime commitment that many people, myself included, have made, keeping us at work in public education for decades. That same commitment will keep many of us working to provide the best education we can for as many children as we can for many more years, long after Stossel has moved his intense emotional focus to the next topic, winning the “unusually good ratings” that seem to validate him.

Certainly, life is precious and short.

2005-12-27T15:18:00.000-06:00

I recently read an estimate that an average person living in a developed country has approximately 30,000 days to "experience [his] existence." The estimate was followed by the assertion that 30,000 days is all the time a person can "rationally" expect to have. Any expectation of any existence before or after this 30,000 days was labeled impossible to prove and therefore irrational. The emphasis was on "rational thinking" which the writer embraced as descriptive of his beliefs while hotly rejecting the term "atheist" as pejorative. The writing leads me to begin wondering.

If you only had 30,000 days to “experience your existence,” and then that was it, no more, none. You knew this, rationally, to be a fact; then it seems to me it would be rational to conclude that you would make all life decisions with this fact foremost in your mind. I am not quite sure exactly what those life decisions would be, nor that it is rational to conclude everyone would make the same decisions (the history of rationalism does not support that expectation), but certainly for many this 30,000 day limit would influence their decisions.

I can’t help but wonder though, whether those life decisions would change if there was a possibility, a mere possibility, that you might have an infinite amount of time, a quantity of time that makes 30,000 days shrink into insignificance; an eternity, let us say, to “experience your existence.” Certainly, the history of man’s past rational conclusions leads us to consider the possibility that at this time, we may not have all the facts concerning our existence. There may be existences beyond our 30,000 days we yet know nothing about. I think a rational person, for considering all possible contingencies is certainly rational, might modify his initial decisions when considering this possibility.

Another thought occurs. What if the life decisions you make during your 30,000 days determine the quality of your eternal experience? That is a belief held by many, in a variety of faiths, both in the present and throughout all recorded history. Certainly, it is not rational to conclude that even the most massive of mass delusions could influence that many people through history to such similar conclusions. It seems more rational to consider the possibility, even the merest possibility, that how you choose to live during your 30,000 days determines the quality of your experience for all eternity. Would the possibility of an eternity determined by your 30,000-day existence make it seem even shorter and even more precious? Possibly precious is too weak a word. Would not the life choices you make become crucial?

What if you came to believe—for belief may be what would be required, because the “rational” arguments against this are persuasive—what if you came to believe this eternity was a certainty and not just a possibility? How would your choices change then? How important would those choices become? Are we forced, rationally, to consider this possibility also?

I am beginning to sweat just a bit. Who needs this kind of pressure? I am beginning to wish rationalism had a better record of accomplishment. The history of rational man is full of rational certainties reversed when more data was discovered. With that track record, it seems rational to make life decisions considering the possibility that what looks like irrational belief now will become rational truth when we have more data. However, as we continue to give weight to more and more "beliefs" in the name of rationalism the clarity and certainty of rationalism seems to blur more and more. There is comfort in the certainty that given all significant data, rational men will inevitably get the answers right, but that is cold comfort for me. History is long, but I only have 30,000 days.

Furthermore, a great many believe the whole point of the 30,000 days you have, the reason you have them, is to prepare you for, and give you an opportunity to, experience the best eternity possible, and—here’s the kicker—the quality of that eternity, they believe, is determined by the decisions you make, the things you choose to believe during your 30,000 days. Is it not the most rational path to consider this possibility also? How odd that rationalism so forcefully pushes us to embrace irrationalism.

That is it! That is enough! Too much to consider! Do I have to get all this right? What happens if I mess up, have a weak moment, get a little tired, distracted, or just do not make the best, most rational decision about something? Have I blown the whole thing? My 30,000 days are diminished by these lapses in rationality; they may be destroyed by just plain wrong conclusions—of course only because I didn’t have all the facts—and finally there is still the merest possibility my eternity may also be screwed up by my bad choices.

It seems to me rationality collapses because it is rigid, unforgiving, and ultimately, cannot carry its own weight. The most rational thing for me to do is to make what rationalists may consider the very irrational decision to believe in a loving, forgiving God—even when I cannot always see his love in what he does or does not do. It seems best for me to give God my faith and service during my 30,000 days and trust to his love for the quality of existence I experience for eternity.

Certainly, life is precious and short, but is it all we have? I believe not. I think it is rational to believe there is more.

Truth du Jour

2005-12-24T08:36:00.000-06:00

“What you say may be true for you, but it is not for me.”

Car crash, whiplash! That “my truth” is separate, distinct, and disparate from “your truth” crashed into me with such force my head popped back and forth at the whip/tip end of my flailing body. In that swirling blur, I had something like a chicken’s last thought, that final, squawking half idea as grandma gave a last twisting flip, popping the head off the body, sending it into beak-open, surprise-eyed oblivion, “Squaaaaak doooo yooooou meean?” >pop< But my head remained on my body. I found myself something short of a miraculous, but bodiless, coming-to-consciousness on the compost heap. I was traumatized, but ambulatory, with a perpetual pain in my neck.

Truth is . . . well . . . truth. I may be wrong about what I believe to be truth; you may be wrong about what you believe to be truth, but our errors do not make or unmake truth. Just because you believe something is right or wrong, does not make it so. To call truth false is a lie. To call a lie truth is a lie. I can call some truth “absolute,” some “eternal,” and other truths “conditional” or “ephemeral,” but those labels are merely tests, filters to separate lies from truth, for if I know a thing and know it to be neither absolute nor eternal I know it is not truth.

It would certainly be useful to me to believe truth is relative. If there is no absolute truth, then there are no moral absolutes and I can easily justify all kinds of bad behavior. Any choice to fulfill my personal desires can be justified as true for me regardless of who else I harm, and I can shrug off the pain of those hurt by my choices. I can say they deserve their pain because they cannot find it in their little hearts to be happy for me. I can declare them narrow, judgmental, and intolerant. I can assert their joy-killing beliefs will lead them inevitably to sadness and despair. I can even elevate relativism to the level of virtue and drape myself in a flag emblazoned with the slogans, “Tolerance” and “Pluralism,” and assert a claim for the moral high ground. I can call truth false and lies truth. I can lie, but it is not an enduring or believable lie. It will out eventually.

When I assert there is no such thing as absolute truth, my words simply “don’t mean,” as Gertrude Stein phrased it. What is it that I am saying? “The absolute truth about absolute truth is that there is no absolute truth.” The statement is tautologous, prima facie nonsense at best. Pick at the prim, white, shallow facade of the assertion and fingernails scrape into a greasy black layer of justification. The slightest pressure more and a finger plunges into the rotting filth of selfishness long covered over and hidden from view. The stench assaults the nostrils and I rush off to cleanse hands with hot water and soap.

As long as that lie is at the core of my values, there will always be a hint of the stench of moral decay about me. In my presence people’s nostrils will flare, they will glance around furtively trying to locate the source of the stench. If the visits are short enough, their friendship more shallow than the facade, and the facade remains intact, they may never know source of their discomfort, but the length of their visits will abbreviate and the time between visits will grow.

The false banners of “Tolerance” and “Pluralism” draped about me do not hide the stench either. The verity in tolerance is found in respect for others' beliefs. I embrace this truth when I respect individuals and seek to understand them as they express and live out their beliefs. I do not respect any belief if I think one is just as good as another, or just as bad as another, that no belief accurately represents reality in any meaningful way. What I call “my truth” is actually a truth du jour with pragmatic utility rather than eternal value. If my truth’s only value is that it is mine, then no other truth can have value because it is not mine. As the stench grows thicker, it ripples the light and the words on the banners shift in and out of vision, we see the word “Tolerance” really reads, “Indifference” and “Pluralism” reads “Particularism.”

e-verities

2005-12-19T03:31:00.000-06:00

At his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in Stockholm, Sweden in 1950, William Faulkner, hoping to be heard by young writers, said:

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed--love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, and victories without hope and worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

He spoke these words at a point in history when it seemed the USSR and the US stood glaring at one another with trembling fingers poised over buttons that could destroy the world many times over. They caught my attention two decades later, during a summer spent immersed in many other Faulkner writings for which he is more famous. That he identified “love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice” as truth, universal and lasting, reinforced my hope moving-toward-belief that there were things in life that were not “ephemeral and doomed.”

Decades later still--when I found myself reeling, doubting, and feeling doomed even more so than when first forming my beliefs--Faulkner’s words were recalled to me via wordplay encountered surfing the Net. A line in a Publisher’s Weekly news story used, or coined, the word, “e-verities” and brought to my mind Faulkner's “eternal verities.” About that time, some of my students introduced me to blogging, and on an impulse, I began a blog to explore verities. I thought the word, “e-verities,” an appropriate title because the “e” could be an abreviation for “eternal,” “ephemeral,” or “electronic.” The ambiguity of the word reflected the ambiguity of the values being explored and the medium where the exploration was to be recorded.

This post attempts to refocus my purpose. I began e-verities to examine values like those listed by Faulkner: love, honor, pity, pride, compassion, and sacrifice, asking if they are truth, asking if they are eternal, asking if they last beyond this ephemeral and doomed world.

Accessibility

2005-12-04T22:15:00.000-06:00

The week before Thanksgiving, with much inner trepidation and hesitation, I chose to attend Thespian Festival in a wheelchair. I borrowed a loaner from church, and my students hauled it on and off the yellow dog, the school bus, each day for me. The boys would set it up and I would climb down and into the chair, leaving my forearm crutches behind on the bus.

The reason for the trepidation is what I perceive to be a trade off. Each time I've chosen to use some additional assist, I got the desired result—increased mobility—but ultimately lost ability, a classic one step forward and two back. When at age thirty I first began using a cane—to go faster, I told myself—I did not expect to require it for basic mobility at thirty-five, or to need two canes for longer walks by forty. When I began using crutches for occasional longer walks at forty-five, I did not expect to require them to get across the room in my own home at fifty-five.

So as I climbed down off the school bus and into the chair that first morning, I couldn’t shake the dark conviction that I had better be planning ramp construction for my home, and shopping around for a wheelchair I can haul around in the WRX. The therapy and corrective surgery I endured through my childhood had as its goal moving me out of braces and off crutches. Going into a wheelchair is like giving up on a life-long struggle, worse even, a retreat behind my starting point. The only wheelchairs I ever remember using were the obligatory ones required by the hospital when checking out after surgery, and a dim, possibly imagined, memory of using one during that eighteen months I was in the hospital when I first came down with polio.

In my experience, there are no surgeries, assistive aids or techniques that make you "as good as new." No Dr., medical equipment salesperson, vocational counselor, or occupational therapist will use that phrase, not a wise one anyway. Wisdom aside, no one who attends to the advice of Counsel will say “good as new." In this age of litigation, such careless phraseology is an invitation to being sued. Even though I'm not sure anyone would really believe the phrase today. I wouldn't, but perhaps my experience is not normative. I believe all that technology, modern medicine, and modern science can do for the handicapped is “mitigate damage,” a legal term meaning to make better, but not to make whole--a long way, in fact, from "as good as new."

I felt deep reservations about leaving my crutches on the bus almost every time I did it. I didn't trust the chair to get me everywhere I wanted to go, even though I can't get everywhere I want to go even using the crutches--certainly I can't get where I want to go as fast as I want to go using them. It wasn’t logic that made me want to hang on to them. It was an emotional compulsion.

Logically, using a wheelchair was the best decision. I could move around with more ease and speed. In fact, I liked the speed. I haven’t been able to go so fast in decades. I was not as tired at the end of the weekend as I have been in the past. In many ways, I could monitor kids better because I was more mobile. Speed and mobility does not seem to be the choice many people make. I noticed a couple of students at the Festival who were temporarily in wheelchairs. For the most part, they allowed themselves to be placidly pushed around from place to place by a friend. When I reach a point where I have to be in a chair all the time I don’t think I will suffer being pushed around, set off to the side where I can see, and allow myself to be moved to the next overlook as the group and the action move on as long as I have any other option. Who would want to be like that, to be—what—furniture, baggage, a burden to others without even the usefulness of furniture or baggage? That’s pretty strong language as I see it appear on the screen from my fingertips. My logical best decision is still emotionally uncomfortable.

Emotion is probably why I feel it is such a production to haul the chair on and off the bus, but the places that aren't accessible to someone in a wheelchair are objective fact. At one point on our trip, we took an hour and a half at a mall for lunch and shopping. I spent most of our free time locating and using an accessible restroom, locating the lone elevator so I could get to the food court, negotiating a plate of food and a drink to a table, eating, and bussing my own table. At each step, I clocked myself so I could be sure not to get out so far that I didn't have time to get back to the bus by deadline.

Wheeling back to the bus, I estimated I had enough time to browse a bookstore. In the store, I noticed two things right away: First, the aisles between the bookshelves were wide enough to negotiate in my wheelchair. Second, stacks of books had been added to the aisle floors, increasing the books on display--it is after all the beginning of the Christmas shopping season and the more product displayed the greater profit potential. At one turn, I found myself with a book tangled in the wheelchair spokes. It was inadvertently captured during a tight turn through aisle book stacks.

A Doctor once told me a physical difference was a significant life change if you had to modify your lifestyle to accommodate it. If I can’t get lost in books in a bookstore without having my attention yanked out of the books and onto the path my chair is threading through the shelves, then my browsing days are over. I can shop, but not browse. On the other hand, in recent years tired feet and weak legs curtailed my browsing. Later, as I wheeled down the mall, passing strolling shoppers on my way back to the bus, it occurred to me that drink-in-hand strolls do not happen in a wheelchair. It was an odd thought though. Since I have been on crutches, such a stroll has been out of the question, also I do not remember ever strolling drink in hand even when I had a free hand to hold the drink rather than a crutch or a cane. Are these lifestyle changes or minor inconveniences?

If strolling, browsing, clocking my travel time, and always keeping the path to an accessible restroom in mind are minor inconveniences, some of the other trade-offs are potentially major. Spending the day in a wheelchair makes my feet swell more than usual, requiring more prone-with-elevated-feet time to recover. In addition, after the first day, my back hurt in the evening, on into the next day, and continued to hurt until a day after the trip was over. There may have been some additional strain on my back from pushing or sitting in the chair. Finally, after three twelve-to-fifteen-hour days in the chair, I perceived myself to be weaker--less able to walk, though that perception could have been a kind of hypochondria, a negative assessment prompted by my emotional reaction to what I perceived as giving up. In fact, I cannot objectively prove a cause and effect association between any physical setback and the use of any new assist. The physical setback could be caused by age, weight, the illusive post-polio syndrome, or I don’t know what—barometric pressure, maybe? Well, I did say potentially major.

What is truth here? I think the truth is about limited accessibility, but not the kind of accessibility the ADA addresses. My last three months in Abilene nearly thirty years ago I worked as a night shift custodian in the old downtown Timex factory. Three of us were responsible for daily sweeping, dusting, trash emptying, and window cleaning along with a rotating schedule of larger jobs. We were busy. There was really too much to do. I learned quickly that if we did not clean as well as someone I never saw thought we should have, we had to suffer a motivational talk from our supervisor. The result of a couple of motivational talks was a brisk work pace and a little compulsiveness about cleanliness. After two weeks, I noticed that my perspective on my environment had changed. On a walk through a classroom building at school, I noticed every scrap of paper on the floor, every smudge on the windows, etc. etc. I didn’t feel compelled to run around cleaning up everything in sight, but to a certain extent my perceptions were hijacked by my job. This is what I mean by limited accessibility.

When a leisurely lunch and relaxing stroll in a mall is consumed by things like potty runs, transporting a meal to a table and then to the trash, long runs to the lone elevator in a city block, etc.; my perceptions, thoughts, and energies have been hijacked by minutia and I’m left with limited access to my own faculties. I appreciate what the ADA attempts to do. It does help, but like all other assists it is a mitigation of damages. Accessibility is limited and can never be made as good as new.

Just Because I Can

2005-11-17T09:55:00.000-06:00

I'm posting from the registration desk of the Texas Thespian Festival.

What is Memory?

2005-11-06T23:29:00.000-06:00

His name was Bruce, I believe, and I really do not remember much about him other than one fourth-grade day he challenged me to meet him at the bike racks after school to fight. It is as if he appeared in my memories of elementary school saying those words and disappeared after the conflict was over. I do not remember why he wanted to fight me. I do not remember him seeming angry with me even as he challenged me. Nor do I remember being frightened, surprised, anything but ready to meet him. I was ready to fight. I guess I was angry with him at the time he challenged me, but I have no memory of anger. I was certainly mad at him after we met that first time at the bike racks, and I remember why.

Maybe he did not like the way I looked. Now that I look back on it, I must have looked like an unusual kid in the fourth grade. I walked on crutches and I rode a bike to school. It is odd that I do not remember this specifically but I guess I lay the wooden crutches across my bike’s basket, climbed on and rode away. The certain memory I have is that I had the crutches before I climbed on the bike and after I climbed off.

What may have seemed odd to people then was that I could ride a bike at all, but it did not seem odd to me. My left leg and foot just took a free ride on the left pedal because all my motive force came from my right leg. After becoming an adult, I encountered people who expressed amazement that I could ride a bike, but I do not remember anyone saying that when I was a kid. Maybe they thought if they called it to my attention I would suddenly be unable to ride. However, I do not think their amazement would have immobilized or surprised me because they would be expressing amazement at something that was obviously easy and common for me.

It was not just crutches across my bike basket either; I had just begun playing the trombone. I took it back and forth from home to school faithfully so I could practice every night as I was told to do. I remember putting the trombone case across the top of my bike basket. It always reminded me of an airplane wing. I have no memory of it, but I must have put my crutches across my basket in the same way. Seems to me like I used to hold the case, and I guess the crutches, on the top of the basket with a bungee cord. I really do not remember using the crutches all the time in the fifth grade; they were such an extension of me I seldom thought about them.

That huge basket seemed to fit the big beast of a bike I rode. It had what I later learned to call balloon tires, full fenders, and a wide stamped metal tank that housed twin battery powered headlights between the front tire fork and the seat. The bike had come from Sears and Roebuck, a Christmas present, but I bought that basket myself with allowance money and money I got from deposits on bottles I collected from the roadsides and cashed in at the neighborhood grocery store. I bought that extra large basket specifically because it would hold many bottles and I would not have to make so many trips back home while collecting.

To get back to Bruce, I really only have two days worth of memories of him—the two days I met him at the bike rack after school at Wiley Post Elementary School, to fight. Oh, but I cannot tell you any more about Bruce until I tell you something about Wiley Post.

Unlike Bruce who I thought of as a foreigner—a northerner maybe, Wiley Post, after whom our school had been named, was an Oklahoma boy and a famous pilot—though I don’t think he had Indian blood like most of us who attended his namesake school, or like his friend Will Rogers. Post’s plane, a hybrid Lockheed Orion-Explorer writers have termed a “beast,” had the same clunky oversized wing-look my bike had with a trombone case and crutches bungee corded sideways across the top of the basket.

Another thing about Wiley Post was he had a patch over one eye. I always wondered how he could fly without the depth perception two eyes provided, but never asked anyone about it, almost as if I did not think anyone had noticed and I did not want to bring it up lest he be deprived of his chance to fly. Of course, by the time I knew of him he had been dead for several years and could not ever be deprived of his chance to fly, but that did not seem to matter to me. I kept quiet about it anyway.

Because of that eye patch maybe, as I remember, he had a kind of set back, squarish look about his gaze and even about his stance. His squarish, squinty, one-eyed look spoke volumes to me of his bravery in the face of the adventures I knew he must have experienced.

Bruce, on the other hand, had a bean shaped body and a bean shaped head—reminded me of two white navy beans, a small one stacked vertically on top of a big one. His black hair was cropped close. He had button eyes, and walked with a slight tilt forward, as if his forehead always preceded him everywhere he went. He was neat, precise, earnest, bland, and one day for reasons I cannot remember, he challenged me to “meet him at the bike racks after school” to fight.

The day he issued the challenge, I remember being in a crowd of other kids, but I do not remember any of them noticing or commenting on the challenge. I went to the bike racks after school--and here is one of the strange things about this memory--there was no one else there, just Bruce. I have no memory of other kids, no one was there getting bicycles and heading home. Nor were there, in my memory at least, teacher cars parked anywhere. This does not seem possible to me. I have been teaching for over twenty-five years, there is usually at least one teacher car at a school, especially right after school. I do not know why I have no memory of any one else at school. I do remember Bruce being there, standing by the bike racks, waiting. He was wearing a Boy Scout shirt.

We use to do that—wear our scout shirts to school on days we had den or pack meetings. I do not remember anyone wearing a full uniform to school, but scout shirts and blue jeans were a common, if not official, scouting uniform. Bruce was older than the rest of us. We were little fellows, little blue-shirted, yellow-scarved, Cubs. He was brown-shirted, a Boy Scout.

He was waiting by the bike racks as I walked up. I do not remember feeling anything but ready--no fear, no excitement, nothing. Bruce showed no signs of emotion either. He glanced at me in a blank, bland, unemotional way and began walking toward me, looking down and to my right, not meeting my gaze. I almost turned to look to my right when he began talking. He said, “I can’t stay and fight. I gotta go to Scouts.” Simultaneous with the word “Scouts” he punched me in the stomach, turned around and walked away at his steady, plodding, forehead first pace.

I felt emotion then. With the wind knocked out of me, and my stomach hurting, anger and frustration pumped inside my head as I looked at his retreating figure. I did not even try to go after him. In spite of the obvious fact that I could not catch him if he broke into even the slightest run, chasing after him never entered my mind. I have no memory of what happened next. I guess I loaded up my bike and rode home.

At that time, I did not know the meaning of the word “irony,” but through my head-pulsing frustration and rage, I knew the feeling of the word. Bruce did not have time to stay and fight because he had to go to Scouts. Somehow, the hypocrisy of his statement cooled my anger. Even though to many he won that fight--did damage to his enemy and escaped unscathed—I thought his hypocritical statement was a sign of cowardice, both because fighting at the bike-racks was a very un Boy Scout thing to do, and because in uttering it he took a cheap shot and walked away.

I do not remember telling my parents, teachers, or anyone about the “fight.” I did not talk about it until I saw Bruce at school the next day. To my memory we were in the same place, same crowd of students, with the same words said, except this time it was me challenging him. I remember some heat in the words I hurled at his bland face. At the bike racks after school, it was almost the same scene again. Again inexplicably, we were alone, no students, no teachers in sight. Once again, he was waiting. However, this time as I came up on him, he did not advance on me to hit and rationalize. As I stepped up and squared off to face him, he looked to my right again, except this time his eyes were raised looking at some distance behind me. I turned to look over my shoulder and saw my mother rounding the drive that circled up to the school.

It is another inexplicable memory. My mother never picked me up from school. She worked. My memory does not tell me why she was picking me up that day. Maybe there was more general knowledge about the previous day’s “fight” that my memory holds. As soon as Bruce saw her, he turned to walk away again. I remember another flash of anger as I looked at his retreating back. Taking a few steps forward I raised one of my crutches high over my left shoulder with both hands. At the highest stretch of my preparatory move, I remember hearing my mother scream, “Ronnie, no!” At her scream, I paused. Bruce paused. Everything seemed to pause, all the absent students, teachers, even the empty schoolyard. The pause seemed long, thoughtful on my part. But it could have only been a heartbeat, because I brought the flat side of my crutch down across his upper back before the echo of her “no!” drifted into the silence.

“Huh,” was the satisfying sound Bruce made as the solid force of the blow pushed air from his lungs. His arms flew out and he fell forward. A second breath was expelled as his chest hit the ground, “huh, huh!” He got back up immediately, seemingly unhurt. Again, memory fails me. I have a dim memory of him shrugging off my mother’s earnest queries as he turned, eyes averted, towards his home. I have a half memory of my mother scolding me in the car all the way home, but I remember no further consequences, no conferences with teachers, other parents, principals . . . nothing. After that second meeting at the bike rack, I have no further memories of Bruce . . . nothing.

Can memory be truth if it fades in and out like distant music on the wind?

The Cowardly Trencher Once Again

2005-10-24T13:09:00.000-05:00

October 17, 2005 between 9:00 A.M. and 6:00 P.M. the Cowardly Trencher pulled into my yard once again, spun his tires, and dug a double trench through my nearly recovered lawn.

Pathetic

Vacuous

Poisoned with self-induced spite

Ephemeral and even more transient than the blast of noise his stereo spits as he spins and sprays the grass and dirt in a shower across my drive..

The Slam Book

2005-09-26T00:05:00.000-05:00

Looking at the referring URLs for e-verities visitors in the last week, I came upon a link to http://www.ratemyteachers.com/ . I was reminded of something from my junior high years.

A little over forty years ago, I remember hearing about and seeing an occasional glimpse of something called a "slam book." I remember a spiral-bound notebook decorated outside with glued cutouts and crayon drawings. On the inside, there was one name on each otherwise blank page. The book was passed around and comments were written about the students named on each page. There may also have been some kind of legend identifying the students making comments.

I don't believe I ever read a slam book or even held one in my hands. This was for two reasons. First, junior high principals judged the books to be mean and hurtful in spirit, and therefore confiscated every one they found. Second, the students making and passing them around seemed to me to be part of the "in-group.” Whatever that phrase meant in reality, it had a clear meaning to me. The in-group was not any group that associated with me. In fact, I was so far from being part of any in-group that I was untroubled by the distance. I don't remember ever wanting to read from or write in a slam book. The books and the opinions in them didn't concern me, and I was unconcerned about what the in-group opinions of me were. I reserved my agonies of insecurity for closer relationships.

It now occurs to me the principals may have judged wrongly. The motivation for making slam books was probably more insecurity than meanness. In social groups substituting pretense for openness it seems there might be an aching desire to know what others really think. In fact, in such social groups there might also be an aching desire on the part of in-group members to say what they really think of others.

I suppose students who feel they cannot honestly express negative feelings or opinions about their teachers without fear of unfair reprisal have a real emotional need for the anonymous slam book outlet of RateMyTeacher. In fact, Michael Hussey, developer of the site says one of the reasons he created it was because as a student he had “nowhere to go for constructive criticism without fear of grade retribution." The fear Hussey shares with his anonymous high school raters is possibly the most significant teacher criticism offered, because any teacher reprisal for such expressions would be unprofessional, unethical, and in my opinion immoral.

A cheap-shot rebuttal to this articulated retribution fear would be to say Hussey and the students expect to receive what they know they would dish out. I would rather rebut their criticism by encouraging them to be authentic and open about their feelings and opinions. I would further encourage students to avoid giving anonymous criticism. Anonymity is frequently a prima facie reason for ignoring criticism, and by definition ignored criticism cannot be constructive. Finally, I encourage any criticism, even if anonymous, by posting a link to this cyber slam book below.

The verities here are honesty and transparency, what some have called authenticity. Living authentically brings the eternal part of your being into the here and now. To hide behind pretense (for example, by hurling anonymous criticisms from behind a barricade of false propriety), elevates the ephemeral beyond its true value and crowds real value from your life.

Lovely Rita, hurricane, where would I be without you?

2005-09-25T18:12:00.000-05:00

Monday I go to school to teach the SAT prep class at 7:00 A. M. thinking they will settle down and get to work so I can finish uploading my grades to the mainframe. They don’t. Once again many are tardy and two of the regular tardies have to talk their way through the days test section. I’m pretty proud of myself because I’m running ahead of schedule and won’t be going up there at 4:30 A.M. Tuesday to finish exporting grades at the last minute. Suddenly I’m getting “Disk Full” messages from the server in central administration, so I can’t finish my grades. At first, the message is that the grades will not save anywhere, but I manage to force a save to my computer hard drive. I finish recording assignments and do all the necessary steps except for the exporting. Though on days when a third of the class arrives late, I can spend most of the period just delivering the days assignment instructions individually to the tardy students, helping them determine the sections they need to make up. With so many trailing in, making sure my attendance is accurate, takes no small part of the period. After class there are always several of the SAT tardies doing makeup work and asking questions about missing sections.

A1 begins, but less than thirty minutes into class there is a fire alarm. I send all the students to the parking lot and take up my duty station at the door. Through our haphazard emergency communication system of Principals yelling down the hallway, I discover this was an actual alarm set off by one of the sensors in a utility room. The students are outside for ten or twenty minutes before we get an all clear message shouted to us. The students come in jazzed. I struggle for their focus for the remainder of the period, send them on their way and watch my A2 class come in just as jazzed.

Less than thirty minutes into class the fire alarm rings again and we evacuate again. This time the shouted message down the hall is that we have a bomb threat and we will have to keep the students outside until the building is searched. We move the Choir, Dance, and Tech Theatre kids under the shade trees knowing they will be outside a while. After forty-five minutes or so, we get the all clear, but as soon as we are in the classroom, we are told to stay in lockdown. From somewhere I get the message they are bringing in bomb sniffing dogs to check the building. We stay in A2 until about 12:30, nearly an hour longer than usual. They extend third period a bit to get all the students through lunch. We end the day with an abbreviated A4 period.

I get very little exporting completed the morning of such a crazy day even after technology fixes the “disk full” problem, but I turn off the classroom lights during my A3 planning period, retire to my office, and finish exporting grades. After school, I go home and begin watching the Rita storm track. On my way into my neighborhood, I notice HL&P trucks working on our power lines and find every clock inside my house flashing.

I have a Center stages board meeting at 7:00 P.M. that drags on until after 9:00. I go home and am caught up watching the weather reports. Going to bed about 2:00 A.M., I re-set my flashing alarm clock, but wake up at 7:08. I’ve missed the beginning of my SAT prep class! I don’t get to school until 7:45, the end of the class. The students have taken a walk, but I have Three Theatre I students hoping to make up declined performances at the last minute. I open the grade program to upload grade changes for the students, but the computer says, “file full” again. About five minutes before grades are due, the problem is apparently fixed once again and I export the class containing the students who made up their performances that morning. At 8:00, the fire alarm goes off again, but the principal gets on the P.A. and tells us it is a faulty sensor. Turns out the alarms had been going off periodically since about 6:30 A.M.

It’s another crazy day. Students are jazzed again. Rita is in the middle of the Gulf, turning into a category five monster that looks like it is pointed straight at Freeport. I fumble through, actually getting the day's lesson done with the Theatre Arts I classes, and am pleased to hear the district announce school will be turned out for the rest of the week. I hang around school for over an hour backing up my school files to a CD and go home with the intention of grabbing a few things and going to Houston.

At home, my malaise sets in. I decide to leave Wednesday morning. Most of the night I watch weather reports that seem to say Freeport is the Rita bull’s eye. I’m awakened Wednesday by the sound of neighbors boarding up their houses. I get up and begin to putter and dither. If I had not promised Veronica, Roger, and Suzanne I would go to Houston; I might have schlepped around and procrastinated myself into staying in Lake Jackson. I’m headed toward another brown funk—a dorky day. I can’t remember the way Suzanne referred to that when I mentioned it, something like, “not a good mind set.”

I stay with Roger, Suzanne, Christopher, and Laura for the rest of the week, watching constant news updates hour by hour. What first looks like a category five storm aimed for Freeport eventually resolves itself into a category three storm going in at Sabine Pass on the Texas/Louisiana border.

This afternoon I came back home. The house is untouched by the storm that earlier in the week seemed destined to cover it in a twenty-foot storm surge. The B.I.S.D. storm holiday has been extended to Wednesday. By the time it is all over we will have missed a week of school--days we will have to make up later in the year.

Career Milestone

2005-09-13T04:33:00.000-05:00

Her name was Paula.

She was in my Advanced Theatre class over nineteen years ago. She walked into my classroom at Open House this evening with her two high school age children.

She said a lot of nice things--my class was her favorite, I was the only teacher she even remembered, etc. etc. She is trying to persuade at least one of her kids to take Theatre.

The children of my former students are attending Brazoswood.

I'm certifiably an old guy.

Fingers and Thumbs

2005-08-23T04:33:00.000-05:00

Christianity is not known for its diversity, for its tolerance of those who do not conform to group norms. This is our culture’s general perception of Christianity even though the most casual survey of groups calling themselves Christian reveals a surprising diversity of worldviews and lifestyles.

Unfortunately, this Christian diversity sometimes separates itself into homogeneous groups over differences difficult for the general culture to perceive. These subgroups then behave toward each other in ways ranging from benign neglect to open, violent, hostility. Tolerance is highly valued in contemporary culture, and the Christian history of intolerance is a fatal affront. Even the most tolerant and broadminded members of our culture withhold their acceptance from such narrow-minded sectarianism. The only thing the tolerant cannot stand is intolerance.

Accepting this cultural perception of Christianity on its face, I assert that for most individuals personal interactions with Christians are not close encounters with the narrow kind. Face to face, Christians—from as many of the groups claiming the name as I have personal experience—seem more interested in understanding God’s word and in following it’s tenets, than they are in playing a self-righteous version of king on the mountain. Christians actually seek to practice ideals of behavior such as, “Love those who hate you,” a choice contrasting sharply those broadminded people who cannot tolerate the intolerant. While understanding and following God’s word may not be the highest value for these diverse Christian groups, it seems to be an important value.

In fact, in my forty years as a believer I personally have never come face to face with one of the most damning of the general cultural views of Christians: that they celebrate and bolster their self-righteousness by being joyful about the impending or actual destruction of those they deem unrighteous. I simply have not had experiences validating this view. Christians in my personal experience are too acutely aware of their own failings to be anything but uncomfortable with the idea of anyone else "getting what they have got coming to them." These Christians typically rely on grace and strive for perfection rather than claim perfection and withhold grace from others.

This is not to say there are no self-righteous Christians, joyful at the destruction of those they deem sinful. Christians are not perfect; hence the felt need for grace.

Nor is this to say my personal experience is normative. It is not. My faith fellowship is what many would label fundamentalist and sectarian. My heritage is the “anti” congregations of the “non instrument” Churches of Christ, though I have been a member of more mainstream (if these labels can mean anything) Churches of Christ as an adult. Additionally, for the last three decades of my life I have made a personal study of what now seems to me to be the peculiar differences that divide Christians. While I have not been a world explorer of all things Christian, neither have I been cloistered in a sect.

I believe my experience with Christians has not been sheltered from their bad behavior. Certainly, my experience as a Christian has not been sheltered from my own bad behavior. Self-righteousness, judgementalism, and intolerance exist among the Christians—and also in my own heart--but they are not typical attitudes. These attitudes are not characteristic. As a lifelong insider among the fundamentalist sectarians, I believe my non-normative experience would more likely place me in contact with those our culture would expect to be self-righteous, judgmental, and intolerant than the norm. I believe my view of the group’s characteristic behavior is more accurate than the views of outsiders making conclusions based on brief encounters or secondhand information.

Finally, this is not to negate my earlier observation that the rich diversity of Christian groups treat each other with the full range of negative behaviors. It is not unusual to find group behavior falling short of high standards of individual behavior practiced by members of the group. I further assert these negative behaviors are not typical even though the general culture perceives them to be. I believe Christianity is far more diverse and tolerant than the general culture judges it to be.

I submit that diversity is a basic tenet of Christianity. It remains a basic tenet of Christianity in spite of the appearance that Christians divide themselves into homogeneous sub-sects and gaze on one another with suspicion. One of the most compelling arguments for diversity presented in our culture--for like it or not Christianity is part of our culture--comes from an extended metaphor in Christian writings, the one-body metaphor, in First Corinthians, 12:14-20. It is normative for Christians to look to passages like this for standards of behavior to follow in their daily lives. It reads:

Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body. (Net Bible)

The larger context of this passage reveals the metaphor to be part of guidelines about using spiritual gifts, leading some Christians at first glance to limit the passages’ application to “spiritual gifts.” However, a look at the lists in the chapter (12: 8-10 and 28) to define “spiritual gifts” from context broadens the metaphor’s application.

To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues.
* * *
. . . in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues. (Net Bible)

Some of these talents, skills and abilities, these “spiritual gifts,” are miraculous and others are non-miraculous. Mislabeling all spiritual gifts in this passage as miraculous, wrongly limits it. The inclusion of non-miraculous gifts, “faith,” “teaching,” “administration,” and “helping others,” rightly broadens the passages’ application. In another “one body” passage, Romans12:6-21, the list of gifts includes even more non-miraculous, non-religious activity. From these examples, I argue that every aspect of Christian life utilizes spiritual gifts. It follows that the tolerance, acceptance, and diversity presented in the metaphor also extends to every aspect of life.

The one-body metaphor gives an ideal behavior for both the group member who feels alienated from his group and for the group seeking to alienate one of their group. The ideal tells me I cannot deny my place in the group because I am not like them nor because I do not have the position I honor. The ideal also tells a group they cannot deny a place to others merely because they are different. More importantly, the one-body metaphor emphasizes the crucial need for diversity, the homogeneous body can accomplish little, and the diversified body can accomplish much. The body is strong because of diversity not in spite of diversity.

The example is clear. The eye cannot hear. The ear cannot see. All the diverse parts of the body are important. To extend the metaphor further, we note that physiologists and anthropologists say the "opposable thumb" is key to the hand’s remarkable utility and strength. The "opposable thumb" is a characterization that seems inappropriate for something creating utility and strength. The whole concept of something in opposition being positive seems counterintuitive. Thumbs look different from fingers, are placed on the hand differently, and approach hand tasks from a different angle, yet if all these things were not so, the hand’s utility and strength would be diminished.

The application of the example is also clear. The person whose appearance is different, who sees things differently, and who approaches things differently, from a very different perspective, can greatly increase group utility and strength. In fact, that “thumb” may be the person essential to group success. There is no stronger argument for diversity.

However, more needs to be said about opposable thumb. Thumbs actually work in opposition to the fingers? Surely it is foolish to extend the “one body” metaphor this far. It is stretched to the breaking point. It is counterintuitive for a group to embrace a member who is so different they appear to work in opposition to the group. It is counterintuitive for an individual to think he can be an effective member of a group so obviously different from himself. Yet, that is precisely what the one-body passages assert.

During my student days, the college library hung a sign just inside the entrance: “People who work together can have anything they want, including a quiet library.” It's a truism that working together for a common goal in the same spirit, enables success. The one-body passages of Romans and Corinthians also talk about working together for a common goal in the same spirit. Diverse people who accept the shallow conclusion they are too different from one another, and begin treating each other as strangers, all pursuing varied goals, at cross-purposes with one another will not have anything they want. A diverse group of people all pursuing one goal, yielding to one another, respecting the diversity of viewpoints, skills, and approaches, while working together for a common goal, in one spirit, can, as the sign in the library said, have anything.

By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. (NIV, John 13:35)

In-service, Day 1, Poor Judd is Dead

2005-08-07T05:27:00.000-05:00

8:30 A.M. Ethyl and Imogene?

Who in the world are these people?

Student Council paid these two to come in and talk to the staff? Full costumes, makeup, props, scripted comic whatever. Actually, I'm thinking it is improvisational in places, 'cause I just saw them fumble the hand off. Imogene's mike keeps going out and in.

"Imogene" looks and sounds like a history teacher from Freeport I taught summer school with ten years ago. She told me in the faculty lounge at lunch one time that people "like me," alluding to my long hair, would give opinions "like that." I don't even remember the subject or opinion, but the comment stuck in my memory. You remember how people treat you long after you forget what you've talked about. Suddenly this last year this nemesis from the past was one of the teachers who shared my classroom. As we reacquainted ourselves, she made a point to complement me on what I had "done with the program." I got the sense she was trying to make up for her past comments.

These performers may be giving us an attempt at comedy rather than trying to give us some kind of message. I've just noticed they are doing many lines, comic lines, without connecting physical reactions. Actually, that's Imogene who is so frozen. Turns out, she was a Theatre teacher. Another reason I should not try to act in community productions.

I'm thinking that maybe they are trying to send us a message using negative examples. The first skit is in the chairs in the center, and then they go to the tables on the side. Full prop set-up. However, they need to be elevated so everyone can see them. Too big an audience for a floor level performance.

"Imogene" also looks and sounds like one of our counselors that later was in our lunch party. She said then several people thought she was the performer at first. This was not really a compliment, I don't think, but the faculty person didn't seem to pick up on that.

Okay I guess the intent is to make us laugh and brighten our spirits. The APs have time to fill during campus workshops and so there is pressure to fill the slots, regardless. There is no comprehensive plan and no needs assessment by the teachers, so the APs choose what is at hand. I guess motivation is a better choice than others they could have made.

I remember developing and presenting workshops for Region 10 during the years I worked there. We would take interest inventories from staff in the region and then I would get data and prepare in-service presentations on the identified needs, but there was a lot of discretion in the selection. Even with extensive needs assessments, I'm not sure the exact people who identified the needs ever were delivered the workshops they identified.

The performers are now calling some of our faculty members to the stage and giving "awards." I wonder if these are set ups or improvisational? The first two teachers are hamming it up and I can see the performers struggling to keep the segment going in the planned direction. No set-ups here. The teachers are being too cute, so the performers are having a tough time keeping up the premise. Now they have one of the APs up. She will play it straight. After the first two teachers, the performers dropped off the script long enough to say, "I don't want to call anyone else up here. This is the craziest school I've ever been to."

Now they are doing a back stage change (al la Greater Tuna, except not as fast).

It's 9:14 A.M., and they are scheduled to go until 9:30 A.M. so I think we only have a bit more to endure. I'm thinking there is an intended message after all, about the dedication and devotion of teachers who are not recognized for their work and achievements. They picked a mythical "Dorothy Watson," who dies in the course of the play, and talk about all the things she did for students. Then suddenly the characters are deciding to retire and going over the things they can do on teacher retirement money. Substitute teaching? Now they are back to all the things Dorothy Watson did for which she received no honor while living.

They are digging a deep hole of sadness here.

At 9:20, they haven't made the change. I wonder where the inspirational part is coming in.

Okay here it is, at 9:23. There are hundreds of people of people at the Dorothy Watson funeral. Everyone is recognizing her decades of devotion. Watson's students have gone on to do great things, etc. etc.

Except it is getting too sentimental, too cloying for me, and it is not motivational for me to think of recognition received only over a tombstone. Reminds me of the song from Oklahoma in which Curley tries to persuade Judd to commit suicide by telling him how much everyone will be sorry for how they treated him while he was alive.

At 9:25 one performer, Melissa by actual name, begins to make a personal testimonial about her thirty years of teaching. She talks while taking her wig off, falsies out. At 9:29 the other performer, Rhonda, comes out and makes her testimonial. She talks of the teachers who helped her grow up. Now she talks about her acting partner, her high school drama teacher.

We're into 9:31 and the other lady is making her final send off, the serious message---a baby bird metaphor. The set-up includes make-up mirrors. They are stripping make-up and making these final monologues/testimonials.

Ended at 9:41.

So it looks like Rhonda is going around doing these humorous performances with her former high school Theatre teacher, Melissa. Inspirational, motivational presentations to boost morale etc. etc. etc.

My morale is not boosted.

Poor Judd is dead.
A candle lights his head.
He's looking oh so pretty and serene,
And folks are feelin' sad,
Cause they use to treat him bad,
And now they know their friend is gone for good.

Ephemeral stuff, this, except for the bit about people remembering how you treat them longer than they remember what you've talked about.

Tale from the Tech Booth

2005-07-29T12:31:00.000-05:00

So I'm up at Centerstages helping to light a show and an acquaintance, one of the regulars out there, drops by the tech booth to chat. As we talk theatre stuff and inconsequentials, she steers the conversation toward the subject of Connie and Bruce. This is a pattern I have grown to recognize. I begin to pull in my emotions and prepare for an uncomfortable moment or two.

It usually begins with commiseration, "I don't know how you got through it," or some such. Then a gentle tugging, an attempt to pull out my feelings, i.e. "It must have been rough," etc. I usually try to be honest without being explicit or detailed.

This time I said, "It was the worst thing I've ever been through, and it's probably obvious I'm not completely through it yet."

She said, "I don't know Connie very well, but from what I know of Bruce I can't find it in me to respect the man."

"I'm sure he has his good qualities, but he is not one of my favorite people right now," I offer, "I guess everyone would expect that opinion from me."

"Well, I don't think much of him, going after another man's wife like that, and there was that other married woman he was also seeing at the same time he was seeing Connie."

I'm stunned. I wonder what this is all about. The acquaintance doesn't seem to be eyeing me to see my reaction. I judge she is just venting her own feelings. I manage to tell her my feelings and then stop, "I'm sorry to hear that. It makes me sad."

"Well," she said, "I may be wrong--maybe it wasn't while he was seeing Connie, but it was just before she left you."

"I still love her, and I hoped at least one consequence of this mess might be she would be happy." I shut myself down.

I kept myself from saying more. I was about to spill over. I've decided if talking about it could have saved the marriage, then it would have been saved, because I have a lot of words. They flow from me as if I have what my mother so crudely use to call "diarrhea of the mouth." I'm glad I didn't let myself be pulled into giving details.

"I don't know," she is dropping into a tone of wry regret, "a man who doesn't respect other's wedding vows probably won't respect his own. I couldn't be happy with someone like that."

I have nothing to say. I don't dare open up any more. After a brief silence we drift back into conversation about inconsequentials.

Afterwards, I'm sad for days.

Like a Ghost Who Continues to Haunt You

2005-07-27T23:17:00.000-05:00

Okay, so what is now years ago, I'm in what at that time was a rare argument with my then-wife, Connie. I think I know her better than I know anyone else in the world. I know I love and trust her more than anyone else in the world. She is saying unbelievable, never-heard-before things to and about me: "I don't love her." "I never was a good husband or father." "Bruce (her "special friend") will be so much better a father for our son than I." At one particularly low point she said she "wished I was dead." I am reeling in shock at what she is saying, at her never before seen or heard vitriolic anger.

I manage to form words I thought would console her, or defuse her, or something her, "You are upset, you can't possibly mean what you are saying."

She explodes, "Don't tell me what I mean. The only time I say what I really mean is when I'm angry. The rest of the time I say what I think I'm supposed to say."

"So unless you are angry, you are not really telling me truthfully what you think?" I'm dizzy, heart palpitating, veering between crying in frustration and laughing at the absurd statement.

"Yes, I have to be angry to say what I really think!" Discussion ended. No more words to be said or listened to.

So today, here I am listening to phone messages from her inviting me over to her house tomorrow afternoon for an informal birthday party she is giving our son.

But there is still more background:

For the last two years Connie and Bruce have ignored me whenever we meet in public and no one we know is near. However, when there are observers--people we know--nearby Connie and Bruce are civil, even cordial.

In addition, the other party she had for my son recently was a cast party for one of my play casts last year. I found out there was a party when one embarrassed kid asked me if I would be upset at students who went to the "secret party." I pretended to know all about it, feigned exhaustion as my reason for not attending, and reassured the kid it wasn't really a secret party.

Finally please note: While we were married Connie never was comfortable hosting a cast party. Out of a hundred productions, I can count on one hand the times we hosted my students.

So with the swirling nightmare above as context, today I find myself listening to her recorded messages to see if she sounds angry so I can decide if this is a sincere invitation or something else.

I wryly decide she is probably insincere because she doesn't sound angry. After a moment the absurdity of this whole convoluted nightmare hits me and I begin to laugh.

More than one consoling person has told me--with a direct gaze and falling inflections--that, "Divorce is like a death" * pause, deep look * "You have to go through the stages of grieving."

If that is true, then an ex is like a ghost who continues to haunt you long after death. I don't believe exorcism is one of the stages of grief. It should be.

Where the pygmies rule, everybody else has to crouch.

2005-07-26T10:09:00.000-05:00

I believe Richard Mitchell's writings are out of print. They are worthy reads. Check the link for internet copies. Below is a short excerpt from one of my favorite sections. Though the metaphor is not original ("Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies." Honore de Balzac), Mitchell's use of it to describe our schools is dead on.

Where the pygmies rule, everybody else has to crouch.

"For years, I have been looking around for the key, the master metaphor, the one striking analogy that would clarify and dramatize the nature of our schools. They are . . . like some island nation in which the traditional, mild, but inefficient governance once exercised by a genteel but effete and distracted aristocracy has been taken over, without any bloodshed at all, by bands of persistent pygmies from the unexplored interior. The less than worldly aristocrats, far more interested in watching for comets and collecting Lepidoptera than in zoning rules and customs control, were not displeased to accede when the pygmies drifted in and offered to do all the hard work. It seemed such a good idea at the time, but by now the pygmies are in charge of everything, and the bemused aristocrats, whose ancestral estates have been converted to miniature golf courses, find that they are sipping their soup out of very small spoons."

Mitchell, Richard. The Graves of Academe. Accessed 25 December 2004.

Character Below the Belt

2005-07-12T18:01:00.000-05:00

Bland buttocks untouched by light.
Flaccid, blank mange moons,
Balling beneath, puckered waistband, beige belt.
An ash ass undistinguished from the

Moon face ascendant,
Obverse facing, obtuse face,
Crowning brittle, black, comb over,
Wisping, above the pale forehorizon.

Below, blank craters and black pebble pupils.
Slow blink blinding as
Parsing lips push out:
“I’m so, so, sorry . . . We couldn't help it.”

Self-absolving, self-absorbed,
Slipping responsibility,
Fleeing free will,
Avoiding agency, guilt, blame,

Character slumps below the belt.

Job and Losing Children

2005-07-08T12:41:00.000-05:00

Recently I read a poem as part of the funeral services for a girl who grew up in our congregation. Though she was nearly thirty when she died, my strongest memories of her are as a young teen. I have known the family for nearly two decades and watched the girl grow up. The event filled me with feelings and fears of loss.

Reading the poem was surprisingly difficult. I felt for the parents' loss, but the strongest feelings came because I couldn't separate the event from the possible loss of my own children. I was nearly wrecked emotionally. I have always lived close to my emotions and have only recently had urges to bury them or hide from them. Because my emotions tend to be on the surface, they do not usually surprise me, but recently, I have been startled by a rush of feelings coming from nowhere to hijack me. When I stood in front of the congregation, my old performance focus asserted itself, but for two hours before I began to read I was a sweating, heart-thumping wreck. After the funeral, I couldn't shake the malaise that set in.

Rolled into this was an e-mail from my oldest friend about the death of a young person from his congregation and the grief of the parents. The grief and loss put my friend in mind of Job. He mentioned this to the father of the lost child. The father responded that he hoped he was not like Job. My friend asked me if I thought Job had a good ending.

My first thought was, I don't know. Our Wednesday night class has been reading through Philip Yancey's book Disappointed With God, a topical study on spiritual alienation drawn from Job. I've given our study only fragmentary attention, but after the funeral, I went back, looked at Job, and decided I may have never given it any close attention. I remember reading bits and pieces; maybe I've even attempted to read completely through it in my personal study. Several years ago, I read the Bible in one of those congregational programs, Read Through the Bible in One Year. I'm sure I ran my eyes all the way through Job with some level of consciousness then, but I have no memories of the text details. So what do I know about Job? Perhaps I'm too ignorant to have an opinion.

I've had contact with the book; why do I not remember it? I've read about Job, heard my good friend preach a sermon on Job, and discussed the book with him before. I've been in the play J.B, Archibald McLeish's poetic dramatization of Job. (During rehearsals, when a question about the biblical source came up, i.e.: "Did Job's wife really tell him to curse God and die?" The director would answer--in this case, "yes"--and say, "It's somewhere in Ecclesiastes." At that time I couldn't remember anyone anywhere in the Bible saying, "curse God and die" and went digging through Ecclesiastes, to discover Job wasn't there; he's in Job). I've listened to other sermons from it, but didn't retain any comprehensive detailed knowledge, probably some kind of avoidance on my part. In fact, that may be the significant question. Have I been avoiding thoughts of Job for my whole life? I want to be God's man, but Job? He's not the role model that leaps to mind. The price he paid for faith was fearful. My petty struggles have nearly overwhelmed me. I'm afraid I couldn't be a Job. In that sense I'm like the grieving father, I hope I'm not like Job.

I do think Job has a good ending, but I think how good the ending seems to a person depends somewhat on their personal emotional perspective. One who has just lost a child may not wish to be like Job, mindful of the other things Job lost. Being like Job would mean many more losses to come.

There has been a time recently when the merest passing thought of losing my children, or my parents sent me into a heart palpitating panic. I was loss sensitized. The loss of Connie, our marriage, my family--at least as I had always thought of them; also, the loss of my life, as I had always thought of it. These losses were almost more than I could bear. They took me to the edge, where I remain, occasionally glancing into the abyss. The idea of more loss immobilized me. I could barely see through the loss I was experiencing. The prospect of further loss blanked out everything.

After a deep loss, one can't see through the grief and pain to any ending, good or bad, and the thought of further loss is unbearable. In my experience, strong emotion can blind one even to a visceral reality, can blind one to an obvious-to-others truth, and certainly can blind one to the intangible belief that situations will end well no matter how bad they look in the present. It's in this black pit that one encounters thoughts of suicide, the abyss below the blank grey future.

Then too the "good" ending of Job involves what appear, superficially, to be replacement children, "And he also had seven sons and three daughters." (Job 42:13) I have no problem with replacement possessions, but I feel no other children could fill the emptiness created by the loss of Phillip or Veronica. While other children would be their own blessing, at best they would be a kind of mitigation of heart damage, not a doubling of, nor a replacement of the blessings of being Veronica's and Phillip's father.

These are strong feelings and I'm afraid they exaggerate earthly experiences above their true status. To God, I'm sure, the earthly relationship of father/child is ephemeral, brief. So regardless of how I feel, the important qualities of the love I share with my children must be the eternal ones, and not those qualities and experiences dependent on physical, earthly proximity. I understand scripture to say our eternal relationships are most important to God. Compelling evidence of this to me is God sent his son Jesus to earth to be tortured and die at the hands of those in open rebellion to Him. It is my understanding this sacrifice was made so everyone could be reconciled to Him for eternity. It is my feeling that this sacrifice could only be made when the true verity is eternal love and not earthly physical associations. Sitting in a puddle of my earth spattered feelings I stretch to embrace the eternal qualities of love.

In his e-mail, my friend's final view of Job is precise, clear, and on target. As is frequently the case, he's a pillar anchored in bedrock and I'm a wood chip on the waves. He wrote:

In the end, God calls Job, "my servant." He said Job had spoken what was right concerning God. Job's brothers and sisters comforted and consoled him over all the trouble God had brought on him. Then God blessed him. I don't want to be noticed by Satan, but if a lot of bad things happen to me because I was noticed, I want God to say, "my servant."

This then is the good ending of Job: to have God say, "My servant." I think this would be a good ending to any task, experience, or even to a life.

Going out With a Lie

2005-06-29T01:23:00.000-05:00

What is the truth? It's near the end of the semester and once again I see students who leave the lab with a lie rather than a grade. As the final deadlines near, students who: slept in class, surfed the net, shortcut or skipped the tutorials, and rushed into multiple attempts guessing mastery test questions, begin to see the consequences of their choices looming. They then begin to exhibit elaborate rationalizing behavior.

Girls who have 100% attendance begin to talk about child care conflicts, sick babies, or suddenly uncooperative parent or grandparent babysitters. These comments increase in frequency as it becomes more obvious they cannot pass the class. Coming down to the wire they are absent, perhaps even missing a final exam worth the points needed to pass.

People who have insisted on absolute independence throughout the semester, suddenly cannot do anything without a teacher at their elbow, approving their every choice, suggesting possible answers--a mental/emotional equivalent of guiding their hand as they write. This behavior is most often followed by comments or gestures suggesting they are not being helped if the teacher is not at their side immediately or does not have a ready list of suggested answers for each question.

Possibly the worst behavior, at least most disturbing to the learning environment, is the student who begins to push his behavior boundaries, possibly even pushing the "teacher's buttons" to create conflict in class. Students are very adept at detecting what behavior they can exhibit that will draw the teacher towards his own worse behavior.

Without conscious intent, these students build reasons, rationalizations, to which they ascribe their academic failure. I'm not sure whether they truly believe these constructs themselves, or whether they perceive the lie while they avoid it.

I still believe the real apocalyptic battleground of this age is within our individual hearts. If it is so easy, if it is perhaps an innate ability, to construct rationalizations to avert responsibility of and consequences for our own behavior, then the battlefield of the heart is lost. The defeat we avoid facing is "not our fault, beyond our control," and we secretly claim a kind of victory, but the victory is a lie. While we believe the lie, we are lost to the truth, defeated utterly, and a path back to the truth is less possible.

Only Sith Deal in Absolutes

2005-06-10T06:20:00.000-05:00

Struck a nerve!

As of this date and time, a Google search gets 10,000 hits, on that phrase or it's many permutations, i.e. "Only a Sith. . . Only the Sith . . . Only a Sith Lord" etc. etc. "deals in . . . deals with" etc. etc.

A bumper sticker is available with some permutation of the phrase, your choice of style: "with or without a picture of George Bush."

Some of my favorite phrases recalled from looking at way less than 10,000 hits: Philosophy, who needs it? * What an absolute thing to say. * It's just light and sound! Stop trying to make it into something else!

Of the ones I read, many were apparently honest reactions to the movie, the phrase, the ideas they present.

Some of the reactions followed what I believe may be an inherent human tendency for many of us, to make meaning. Our minds eschew meaninglessness, so we seek to make meaning out of all stimuli. It's possible we sometimes try to make meaning where there is none.

More disturbing than individuals on a quest for meaning where there may be none, are those with an apparent agenda who latch on to any popular event and spin it to mean what they want it to mean.

I wonder if Blogging merely increases the quantity of spin in the universe. Is entropy possibly each atom becoming so absorbed in its' own perspective that it spins off into the icy black isolation of deep space, ultimately unaware of anything else? Talk about going over to the Dark Side, wow.

Verities Sans Eternity

2005-06-01T06:38:00.000-05:00

I was reading "Making Ethical Decisions" from the Josephson Institute of Ethics web site. Stumbled onto it doing research for curriculum writing at school. I was drawn to it for some reason. Perhaps it was the apparent certainty of the views, a longing for the certainty of my fundamentalist upbringing, or even curiosity. I perceive a disconnect when someone is earnest about abstract values but absent a view of eternity. The disconnect reveals my own narrow perspective I know, but it persists.

"Not all lies are unethical, even though all lies are dishonest. . . . Occasionally, dishonesty is ethically justifiable, as when the police lie in undercover operations or when one lies to criminals or terrorists to save lives."

This reasoning is the first tell that the highest value of the writer is human life. Later he goes on to say, "But don't kid yourself: occasions for ethically sanctioned lying are rare and require serving a very high purpose indeed, such as saving a life . . ."

In the choice between doing good or doing evil, this is doing good by doing evil, it could be called dry water, or bright darkness.

I know what you're going to say: "Only a Sith would speak in such absolutes." Well, perhaps you weren't going to say that. It's hard to imagine any situation, or movie even, in which that statement makes sense--certainly no situation or movie in my experience.

In the battle against evil, when good steps onto evil's battleground, picks up evil weapons, and begins to wage war, the war ends. There is only one side. Evil has won.

Ending Badly Because of Betrayal

2005-05-30T19:44:00.000-05:00

Betrayers betray. Regardless of their rationalizations--"it's what I did, not who I am"--one is what one does. More betrayal is almost inevitable.

In the short time of a lifetime the new togetherness will likely end in betrayal, or if surviving, it could be pockmarked by years of betrayals, a kind of Brectian purgatory, more hell than happily-ever-after.

Eternity for the unrepentant betrayer brings inevitable justice--another bad end.

God's forgiveness is always available, but embracing that mercy seems to require admission of wrong if not actual repentance, and their rationalizations preclude either.

Of course these limits on forgiveness are constructed from logic. In the sphere of God's power, one should not be so foolish as to place conditions or limits on God's forgiveness. God's power transcends man's puny logical constructs.

Hope does endure.

The Illusion of Control

2005-05-29T01:14:00.000-05:00

Is happiness, or the good old basic American right to pursue it, one of the eternal verities? The notion that happiness can be pursued, caught, and kept assumes one has a measure of control over one’s own life and feelings that may not exist. One of the mantras of the $160-an-hour listeners, the psychologists/psychiatrists, is: “We are responsible for our own feelings. We choose our own feelings. We control our own happiness.”

Do the paid listeners believe this mantra to be truth or do they merely pronounce it true as part of a treatment protocol? Certainly, change is less likely if the patient, sitting on the cushy couch, writing checks for the opportunity to fill listening ears, is unhappy, wants to be happy, and believes he is incapable of making himself happy. So paid listeners chant the mantra, and the check-writers receive what?--hope, perhaps even actual empowerment.

Faith listeners suggest it is self-deception to think one has that kind of control. While the context of their mantra is metaphysical/philosophical, perhaps it is more likely to be true. It carries more authority because it is untainted by self-interest. One is not required to pay them to hear their mantra: “You can control only whether you do evil or good.” The choice to do evil or good in even the smallest actions has infinite, eternal, and universal consequences, but at the personal level only a few potential emotional consequences: happiness, sadness, an emotional flatness that is neither. Possibly personal happiness ceases to be a preoccupation when one concentrates on doing the right thing. A focus on the choice between the über-values of good and evil may push the obsession for personal happiness into a more appropriate perspective.

Doing good without concern for personal happiness is one of the eternal verities. Though the phrase “doing good” seems so non-specific and subject to personal interpretation as to appear meaningless, if one assumes the possibility that “good” may exist, that it is a worthy thing, and that it may actually be done, then a view of how unselfishness raises even the least “doing good” to the level of the eternal verities becomes clearer. The taint that drags any action out of the eternal and into the finite is self-interest, selfishness. Happiness, joy, and the abundant life are not evil, but grasping them may be. At their happiest, most joyful, and most abundant they are by-products of “doing good,” and cannot be the goal.

The same writings that codify and objectify the specifics of “doing good” assert the superiority of that choice over the pursuit of happiness even as they identify the joyful abundance inevitable in a selfless life. The way to lose happiness is to pursue, catch a hold of it, and try to keep it. To gain that which is greater than happiness, one must break off the pursuit, refocus on doing good and allow all ephemeral and empty seductions to slough away from life like the excreta they are.

The Cowardly Trencher's Return

2005-05-27T01:32:00.000-05:00

This week, motivated by the Cowardly Trencher's return, I checked a name that had come to me against the student car database. I got a hit. It turns out "the name" drives a tan 1997 Chevy Z71, matching the description of the truck I saw drive across my lawn last June.

My memory of his behavior in my class leads me to conclude he is capable of a stunt or two like the trenchings, also he was a sneak--not a kid with much honor or courage. I wouldn't have thought he had the concentration to keep it up this long.

We'll see what happens. The police knew his name from some other incidents. The question now is what to do with the knowledge. The information is probably not enough to convict him for more than the one time I saw, even though he may have been doing this for nearly a year. I think to get him the help he needs we need to gather more evidence and arrest him when we can prove this is a long term pattern of behavior.

Dos Tipos de Ciudado

2005-05-27T00:06:00.000-05:00

Watched the whole thing on Turner Classic Movies this evening. It was made in the early 50's, I believe. It seemed liked a Hispanic Hope/Crosby road movie written by Moliere, almost as interesting for the core plot elements it didn't talk about as it was for those it dealt with openly.

"Honor" was one of plot engines that drove the story. Found one of the verities embeded in the dialogue:

“You two are together because of a betrayal. It will end badly.” Jorge Negrete in Dos Tipos de Ciudado

Sleep Is a Brief Visitor

2005-05-25T04:00:00.000-05:00

It's 9:30 P. M. and I'm sitting at my computer writing in between sleeping. I would drop off, head bowed, otherwise sitting upright in my chair. Phillip is studying. Suddenly I hear him say, "Dad, Dad." I wake and look over at him. "Maybe you better go to bed."

So I begin a sloth-like move toward bed. As soon as I lay down, I'm more awake. I read, get sleepy, turn off the light about 10:00 P. M.

One-thirty A. M. I wake. I lay in bed forty-five minutes. I get up, come here, turn on the TV, and begin to drift aimlessly on the internet. I read through the most recent blog posts of my students, and drift to writing here again.

Sleep. Please come back. Sleeeeep, perchance to dream . . . Again.

The Cowardly Trencher Returned Today

2005-05-19T22:19:00.000-05:00

I have no words for my feelings about that.

Vocabulary Based Dialect Identification

2005-05-18T16:19:00.000-05:00

Your Linguistic Profile:

65% General American English

20% Yankee

15% Dixie

0% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern

Part 3: I Don't Think I Can Do That.

2005-05-02T01:47:00.000-05:00

So, six months into the tragedy I am enduring Connie and Bruce seeing each other for hours every week. By then, Connie has agreed to go to a counselor with me, saying, “It won’t make any difference.” She is still my wife, but she won’t work with me with the counselor on our marriage. Her apparent purpose in attending is to try to convince the counselor that our marriage is over and to get the counselor to convince me to—I don’t know what—leave her and the kids maybe? I am in a crazy state of despair. I can’t figure out why she hasn’t left and yet won’t stop seeing Bruce. I keep hoping she is staying because she hasn’t really made up her mind to leave.

I know Bruce’s former boss, I guess he’s the person who held the title director of intellectual properties out at Dow before Bruce. He had retired and moved away from our town. I had always known him to be an honorable man with high moral convictions. I had also heard Connie tell me how much Bruce respected him. In a fit of despair, I called this man one evening and told him about Connie and Bruce. I asked him if he would consider calling Bruce and asking him to consider not seeing Connie for six months so we can look at our marriage without the distraction of him standing outside of it and inviting Connie to leave. Sound familiar?

This man of integrity, former elder of a Church of Christ, told me how sorry he was that “this thing had happened.” However, in response to my plea he said, “I don’t think I can do that.”

3:00 A.M.

2005-04-24T03:16:00.000-05:00

So two nights running I'm sitting here staring at the screen at 3:00 A. M. No sense to be found in this. Reason, purpose, meaning. The kids have a word for it. Meh

Part 2: I Don't Think I Can Do That.

2005-04-11T02:45:00.000-05:00

So it was still January, in my hallway talk with Bruce I heard him say he couldn't help himself--he could not end his relationship with my wife. Even so, after that Connie seemed to thaw incrementally, or perhaps I was hoping for the best so strongly I imagined it. I told her I thought we owed the kids our best effort to save our marriage. I asked her to stop seeing Bruce for six months and go to counseling with me. I told her that after six months of counseling I would step aside if she still wanted to leave me for Bruce.

She said, "I don't think I can do that."

Part 1: I Don't Think I Can Do That

2005-04-09T10:29:00.000-05:00

So it's mid-January after the mid-December discovery of Connie's relationship with Bruce. I am in the worst pain of my life.

I try to talk to her, but she says she can't talk about it. In the evening, if we are in the same room, she drifts silently away. She is dead to me. In public, she pretends everything is okay. In church, we sit together as a family like we have for over a decade and a half. In the evenings, she is gone several hours a week at string quartet practice, Symphony practice, Symphony Board meetings, Symphony committee meetings, string quartet performances, and Symphony performances. All with Bruce. She speaks almost normally in front of Phillip at home, but does not talk to me when we are alone.

I'm reeling, staggering through emotional white noise, blinded by emotional pain. Several times a day I'm locking myself in the faculty restroom and sobbing through the class breaks. When the bell rings, I go teach class. At night, I can't sleep. Each night Connie climbs into our bed, refuses to talk about "it," turns her back to me and goes immediately to sleep. After an hour or so listening to her even breathing, I get up, clean, launder, read, pray, sob, cry, or sit leadenly in front of the fireplace. When morning comes, I shower and go to school.

So like I said it's mid-January and we are presenting our Winter Cabaret performances. Bruce's daughter is one of my star performers. He attends the performance. I am in a pain bubble, distant from the events around me, but smiling, meeting parents, congratulating the students--all the little details of a performance night. After the program the parents begin to drift away, and the students begin strike. I notice Bruce is headed toward the parking lot. I catch up with him in the hallway, and ask if I may speak with him.

He stops, glances around, and looks at me. I tell him I understand how he can be in love with Connie because I love her too, but that she is married and what they are doing is wrong. I tell him I'm sure he is a man of integrity and honor, and I expect him to do the right thing.

He moves his head closer to me and tilts it slightly to the side saying, "I am so. . . so. . . sorry this has happened. We didn't choose this. It just happened. We couldn't help it."

The tear pressure behind my eyes is enormous. I squeeze out, "Apparently there are things wrong in our marriage that I didn't know about, but I still love Connie and want to try and save our marriage--to try to keep our family together. I ask you to stop seeing her for six months so we can work on our marriage without you standing there inviting her out. If she still feels the same after six months, I will step out of the way." I stand there, looking at him, controlling the tear pressure.

After a pause, he says, "I don't think I can do that."

The largest play contest in the world.

2005-03-31T01:20:00.000-06:00

Each fall about twelve hundred Texas high schools begin requisite paperwork to enter the University Interscholastic League One-Act Play Competition. In March the competition begins in earnest as part of the UIL Academic Spring Meet. For all schools there is a District competition. For many there is a preliminary competition called Zone. By May, four levels of competition later, forty schools begin the three-day state competition. After those three days, fifteen schools have been identified as first, second, and third place plays in their divisions, essentially saying two-thirds of that fifteen are not as good as the first place plays, yet the UIL asserts "in a well-run one act-play competition there are no losers." This, of course, is total crap. Losers abound even in a perfectly run competition. This year we were losers.

We responded well to the judge's decision, but it was a shock. Even this old twenty-one year veteran had the wind knocked out of him by the decision. In my opinion, this was the best production I've directed in a decade. The students also felt like they had a winning play. Parents that attended the competition thought we certainly would advance. The judge had a different opinion. In a three school Zone, we were the third place Alternate Advancing Play. We stood, we clapped for the first and second plays' coaches, we smiled, thanked the hosts, climbed on our bus and went to dinner, but we felt like losers. I imagine, in spite of our best efforts, we walked like losers, and our vocal inflections sounded like losers. We did not advance to District. In my twenty-one year history, I have advanced lesser plays to Regionals.

The contest was well-run, but we were losers.

This is Texas

2005-03-09T03:46:00.000-06:00

So what happened is Bruce Story, who had been my wife’s stand partner in the civic symphony for fifteen years, suddenly seems to be around a lot, seems to be spending extra time with Connie, seems to be the frequent subject of her conversations. Suddenly she is serving on the symphony board as secretary to his president, suddenly she is in a string quartet with him, and suddenly she has extra rehearsals and performances. Suddenly she is real interested in doing gym time, real interested in dyeing the grey out of her hair, facial creams, wrinkle creams.

I notice Connie's growing concern over unimportant and secondary signs of ageing. I tell her I love her and care more about her than about wrinkles and gray hair. Her reaction is startling. She displays anger in response to my assurances of love. I'm startled and puzzled, but I love her give her space on the issue.

Suddenly the poor, lonely, divorced Bruce is invited over to have dinner with our family. Later, he goes on a business trip to Japan and returns with presents for the family. It is a tea set, Japanese teas, candy. . . other gifts. Connie places the tea set on display in our living room.

Suddenly in November she stops telling me she loves me. My “I love you’s.” receive an “I know.” rather than an “I love you” response. That same month Bruce’s daughter tells a room full of my students within my hearing that, “Mr. White’s wife is my Daddy’s girlfriend.” I’m thick. I’m clueless. I cannot imagine what is happening, but something is happening.

So in December one evening Connie seems to be sneaking around the house, acting odd. She is taking stationary into the bathroom and locking the door. She comes out with a note card in a sealed envelope. I ask her what is going on. She says, “nothing.” I say she is “acting strangely.” She says I am “not allowing her any privacy.” I ask, “what is the note card.” She says she has written a note to her “special friend.” She says it’s “for Bruce.” I ask to read it. She says, “no.” I ask her, “what kind of note could she be writing to another man that her husband can’t read.”

She says nothing. The truth is out. I'm thick, but I'm not igneous.

So now I think: This is Texas, at the very least I owe Bruce a punch in the mouth.

Because this is Texas, I think he should be happy to take the punch in the mouth in lieu of shotgun pellets in the butt.

After all, this is Texas.

Honesty

2005-03-09T01:14:00.000-06:00

Don’t be confused. Honesty is independent of loyalty, love, faithfulness, and certainly of greed, lust, and selfishness. It is it’s own verity. Loyalty is stripped of it’s virtue when it motivates lying. To lie because you love fills the heart of love with filth. Lying to demonstrate faithfulness is oxymoronic.

It is fantasy to believe a person to be honest if he lies only for very good reasons. It is worse than fantasy. To believe that is to believe a lie is truth. Honesty is respect and reverence for truth. Someone who will lie for you will lie to you, so don’t believe someone who tries to flatter or honor you by lying for you. That person lies and is not to be trusted.

The “lie for a good reason” is the first dilution leading to the total moral dissolution expressed in Pilate’s deep, doubting question, “What is truth?” When you no longer can see truth, when you begin to doubt it’s very existence, you have reached inevitable consequence of lies.

My Left Foot

2005-03-09T00:10:00.000-06:00

Where this begins, maybe, is with my left foot, but it's not an inspiring story about a palsied guy who performs creative miracles with a paintbrush grasped between the toes of his left foot. Those stories are part of the literature the able-bodied find inspirational, "If the cripple guy can do that, then I--for sure--can get off my duff and accomplish something." Inspirational? As soon as I began to encounter the stories in junior high Language Arts textbooks, I hated them. Super cripple stories, after reading them, I felt expected to do something extra-ordinary to overcome my limitations, or, perhaps, as compensation, to show myself worthy of the sacred trust given me by my handicap, the duty to provide an inspiration for the able-bodied.

My left foot does not have a full complement of muscles--it is, perhaps, the weakest appendage on my body. I am not possessed of the supernatural character, determination, grit, stubbornness, or whatever it takes to be an inspiration to the able-bodied, and this story is not about overcoming, but about being overcome.

So. My left foot does not have a full complement of muscles. Because of this, taking a step with this foot requires more friction between the sole of the shoe and the floor than is needed by a fully muscled appendage. Most don't realize it, but feet are dynamic. They grab the ground during even the simplest saunter. Toes grip and flex; weight constantly shifts from the heel of the foot, to the side of the foot, to the toes and back. You are walking down the hall, a friend calls from behind, you look over your right shoulder, stop, and turn to answer. You are oblivious, but your left foot has just made a series of complex adjustments carrying your weight, changing your momentum, and balancing it--all without your conscious attention.

My left foot doesn't do that. While I have some flex and control in my ankle and big toe, basically, I lift my foot an inch from the floor and throw it forward by raising and moving my hip. My left foot lands on the floor in the direction I am moving and, if it finds friction, stays where it landed. I push off with my right foot; my weight is carried over my left foot in a kind-of pole vault--like the stiff old days of pole vaulting without the flex and launch of the modern poles--until my right foot lands again and takes my body weight.

Where this now goes is into the fine arts faculty restroom. Down the hall from my classroom, is a small uni-sex restroom with a sink in one corner, mirror over the sink, commode in another corner, drain in the middle of the floor, fire alarm on the wall, and a lock on the doorknob. Added to the lock on the knob is a slide bolt on the door--you raise the little knob, slide the little bar across the door crack into a loop of metal on the facing, and the door is locked, even to someone with a key. This was added after the new fine arts wing was opened and we, through surprise and error. discovered that while a lock in the doorknob keyed to open with faculty room keys kept randomly curious students out, it did not prevent faculty from walking in on each other and, not incidentally, exposing anyone in the restroom--full commode view--to randomly curious eyes, roaming the halls.

One day just before my post-lunch bunch of freshmen arrived for Theatre Arts, I went to the fine arts faculty restroom. Remembering to latch the little bolt, I took care of business, flushed the commode, and began washing my hands in the sink. At that point, if this event had been a movie, there would have been a soundtrack playing that low pitched, steady, tension-building music that lets you know malevolent evil, viscerally manifest is poised to spring from nowhere and gut the clueless innocent. The long, low sounding, bow drawn across upright bass strings would have oozed through the air as the backed up sewage carrying flecks of human feces oozed through the floor drain and slowly spread across the floor to lap at the edge of my left foot.

Focused on the mirror, I was combing my hair, smoothing the wild grey beard hairs into concert with the darker and more sedate ones, admiring my oatmeal colored Orvis travel coat and matching slacks in the mirror. The one-minute bell began ringing. I heard quickened steps outside the door, students sprinting to class, hoping to slip into their seats just before the tardy bell. I lifted my left hip and threw my left foot into the growing pool of effluent, launched my body weight into the pole vault as I turned from the mirror toward the door, and felt my left foot slip wildly away from where it needed to be. It felt like a rubber hose, non-existent, the feeling you get when you put your weight on a leg that's asleep, but without the intense tingle to remind you the leg exists.

Adrenalin kicked in, and as my brain got the alert I was in free fall, time began to crawl. From the drain, I saw the deepening brown pool oozing, chunks of feces and strings of toilet paper in suspension. I saw my left foot slowly shoot away from the rest of my body, scooping a slow motion spray of chunky wetness towards the door. I saw the pool grow incrementally in my line of sight as I realized I was headed for a belly flop right over the drain.

In one of those amazing adrenalin fueled moments, which seem to crawl a single frame at a time, my brain and body worked in concert to perform the only ballet I will ever dance, the mid-air contortions I perform in free fall in order to land with the least damage. My falling ballet feels like those slow motion films made of cats held by their feet and dropped. I twist as I inch toward the growing pool of effluent, spreading my arms, trying to position myself to catch myself with both hands and right knee. I miss the tripod catch, belly flopping the effluent up on the walls, but immediately push up and hang there, dripping brown wetness. The one-minute bell ends and I hear increased activity in the hall as students begin the literal last-minute scramble for class.

I try to stand using my usual strategy: pushing my butt in the air, placing my feet on the ground, ending with a forceful push-up that vaults me into an upright position. When I push off, my left foot slips away again and I do another flailing ballet, another belly flopping splash. The chunky effluent hits the walls, the door, the sink, my face, my open mouth. I squirm through the pool to the cripple bars on the wall around the commode. I pull myself upright, but still can't get my left foot to grip the floor enough to stand. I put it down, and it slides away each time I attempt to put weight on it. I suspend myself upright with my arms gripping the bars, the sink, the doorknob.

The tardy bell rings. The last runners sprint into the classrooms. The halls are silent. I consider staying in the locked restroom until evening just so I don't have to show myself to anyone, don't have to let anyone else see me, smell me. From down the hall I hear the noise level in my classroom increase, unsupervised students, freshmen after a sugar-filled lunch. I can't hide out.

With my cellphone, I call the assistant principals' office and ask the secretary to send one to my classroom, "There is no blood, no one is in danger of any harm--yet, but I need someone to cover my class now." I open the door and carefully walk down the hall toward my room, placing my left foot carefully with each step, trying to drag the wetness off the sole of my foot so I can get traction again. My usual limp becomes an exaggerated foot-drag, a smelly Quasimodo lurching down empty halls.

I'm twenty feet from my classroom when Mr. Barnes comes around the corner at the other end of the hall hurrying toward my classroom. He hesitates briefly when he sees my dripping brown wetness carefully moving down the hall, "What happened to you?"

I say, "Someday this is going to be a funny story." As we draw closer, about to meet at my classroom door, I see the moment he first smells me. He stops dead, he arches back and his head snaps up as if to escape the smell.

"Is that what it smells like?"

"Yes, the faculty restroom is backed up. I slipped and fell in it....twice. I'm going home to clean up. This class is yours."

I walked through my classroom, briefly told the students what had happened, got in my car, went home, straight to the washing machine in the garage, and stripped off everything directly into the wash. I steamed through a long hot shower, scrubbing every part of my body red. Out of the shower, I gargled with mouthwash and briefly considered pouring it into every orifice of my body. Instead, I got into my robe, fixed an adult beverage and sat in my den, considering whether I would go back to school.

Inspirational, huh, only in the sense of putting other bad days at school in perspective. My worst day at school up until then did not include belly flopping in fecal matter.

It's now the benchmark for a bad day.

—a good week. Now if sleep would only come.

2005-01-28T04:00:00.000-06:00

Went to bed at 10:30 p.m. Woke up at 2:00 a.m. I hope four hours a night is not going to become my norm. I'm a zombie all day. I'm a daybie all zomb. D'm a iayzie all bomb . . . budda puh da blang . . . zibluh?

I won $20 Thursday night at the annual Teacher's-Credit-Union-membership-meeting-and-cash-giveaway, got a free barbecue dinner also--that's what woke me at 2:00. Net profit for the evening: $25 in cash and food. Last year I won $50 or $100 dollars—can't remember which.

Also, I spent the meeting and dinner with a pretty blond lady. We were lunch buddies, a whole table of us always ate together, though the group has broken up a bit with schedule changes this year. One day last year I misunderstood a comment she made at lunch, concluded she was a divorced lady, and asked her out. She was gracious about declining and telling me she was married, but since then she has been particularly friendly. I don't think she is secretly interested in going out on her husband, rather she is flattered to have been asked out. I, in turn, am flattered that she apparently found my invitation flattering. *flash of image: butterflies flattering across a rainbowed sky* Guess we have gained mutual affirmation as a result of my misunderstanding and invitation. Anyway, she came into the auditorium, saw me sitting down front—I hoped to have shorter trip to the cash table during the drawing—and went out of her way to sit with me. She had been dropped off at the meeting, so I gave her a ride home.

It was nice to be with someone. I know, *sigh, glance at floor* I should have found someone to sit with, been all pro-active and positive, but sometimes I just don't muster. It's easier to gaze straight, avoid eyes and faces, purpose in and collapse alone; takes muster to brave the uncertainty of another's space.

So, after a delightful evening Wednesday *gaze, glaze, smiles*, an evening of validation from the friendly, but married, blond lady Thursday—plus free dinner and cash, and the total stranger *looks over shoulder, leans forward, placing back of hand to side of mouth—an aside—saying, All senses of "stranger" apply.* who has cold-called me at school *pause* twice *pause and blinks* introduced herself, and is suggesting—without asking directly—we "go for coffee" this weekend, I'm feeling less troll-like and reclusive—a good week. Now if sleep would only come.

Fifty-five, Single, Readheaded, and Rich

2005-01-26T01:02:00.000-06:00

...so I am going home via Wal-Mart about 7:30 p.m. and Ellen calls. She wants to come over. I have three things to buy, so I tell her I will be home in twenty minutes. I go into the store and the little greeter/ pass-you-a-basket also is standing behind a cabinet of locked metal drawers that look like the place they lock up the cashiers’ drawers between shifts—she has new duties. It occurs to me that a kicker could back his truck up to the doors, lasso the cabinet, and drag off a box full of cash.

I notice that all of the cripple cars have plastic bags over the control boxes. I was in the store earlier in the week at the other door half-a-block away and all of the cars had dead batteries—that clerk said she thought they all needed new batteries. I thought this did not bode well for my quick trip for three items. The girl reads my body language and says, “Do you want a car?” I said it looked like they were all dead. She uncovered one control and said. “I think this one is okay.”

I took the cart, left her my crutches and hummed off to grab the quick three items. At the furthest point from the door, the cart goes dead. I’m left sitting, regretting leaving my crutches. Fiddling around, I discovered if I pushed the lever all the way, I could reach up to the product display racks and pull myself along. The cart was only mostly dead. With a muscle assist, the cart powered along. Eyes flicked toward me even more than they usually do as I shop through under full power. I’m sure it was an odd sight, me pulling myself along, reaching ahead from shelf to shelf, aisle to aisle.

I got within sight of a door and found a wheelchair with attached basket. I commandeer it, abandon the cripple car, zip through the checkout and headed for the house, calling Ellen in route. My twenty-minute trip had taken over an hour. I was hacked. Somehow, it seems worse to give you a cripple car that takes you into the bowels of the store and dies, than not to have them available at all.

I decided that was it. I wasn’t going to marry Sam’s daughter. I would have been just what she needed to bring joy into her life, but I wasn’t going make him happy by redeeming her. He obviously doesn’t care for his handicapped customers, and doesn’t deserve for one of them to bring happiness to his daughter. Not that I even know her. As a flippant defense against people’s pity and their well-meaning, sincere attempts to mate me with someone who “would take care of me,” I began to tell everyone that I was looking for a redhead, fifty-five, single, and rich. In the right company, I would pause and add, “come to think of it, a nice change would be someone with a bosom.”

One day, Jen e-mailed a picture of a redhead who fit the description. It was one of Sam Walton’s daughters, but the picture was of her being taken into jail on a drunken driving charge. Since that time, my comic patter has been to say I was going to drive to Bentonville and woo Sam Walton’s daughter, that I was going to straighten out her troubled, unhappy, but wealthy life with my pure love and wise ways. But not now, he can’t, or won’t, keep his cripple cars running.

Who's The Most Pathetic?

2005-01-23T03:10:00.000-06:00

Friday was the last performance of the play featuring my son. I knew many were planning to attend the last performance. About 6:00 p.m., my stomach was in a knot, bulking toward being in a boulder. My hands began to shake; my body developed the booga-boogas. In an hour-and-a-half in my theater, watching the plays I would have my parents, Connie, Jean--Connie’s mom, several B’wood faculty members and Center Stages folk.

I began to realize, I had no idea how my parents would behave, nor was I sure of Connie’s behavior. Usually she “doesn’t see me” in public, but after the last performance of my last play "not seeing me" stretched to include inviting my whole play cast over to Bruce’s house for a cast party and keeping it secret from me. However, the presence of her mom usually means Connie will actually acknowledge me and speak to me rather than look through me as if I were invisible. Included in the faculty/theatre group were some of the “well intentioned friends” who had first come to me with the news that “something might be going on” between Bruce and Connie during that nightmare two years she and Bruce were in a relationship before she finally moved out.

Some of those people had come to me with intense concern, telling me I “needed to know.” Oddly, later, those same people seemed to avoid me and place themselves in close proximity to Connie and Bruce when we were all at Center events. During Connie and Bruce’s, affair these people talked as if they were "on my side" even though they seemed disappointed I would not join them dishing dirt about Connie and Bruce. After the divorce, they seemed to choose “the other side.”

As my stomach knot grew boulder size, I realized I was on the edge of coming unglued. I called to make sure some of my friends were going to be at the show to make sure I would not be alone. I did not want to be in the middle of that mix alone. I was afraid I would melt down. Becka came, entertained my parents while I walked around and played host. She sat with me during the show.

The most surreal moment came after the show. Jean crossed the floor to speak to my parents, and mom struck up an easy, familiar, conversation with her. Connie walked up, stood directly in front of me and began to speak directly to me, making small congratulatory talk. There was something strange about the way she was standing. She seemed to be holding her car keys in an odd way.

Maybe I was imagining it, but she was facing me squarely, telling me she “liked the play” etc. etc. but her elbows were bent, hands in front, holding her car keys in both hands, almost as if she was about to present them to me as an award. I noticed the key on top—she had one hand holding the top as if it were a product she was displaying for a commercial, and the other hand supporting/cradling the part of the key that goes in the ignition. I noticed it was a car key with a jagged groove in it, rather than jagged edges. She kept holding the key as if she was going to present it to me, while making non-specific positive statements about the show.

I looked her in the eyes. She seemed to be concentrating on my face. I nodded, glanced around, listened to her generic “it was good” statements, watched her face, wondered why she was holding her car keys that way, and eavesdropped on my parents and Jean talking about Jean's knee replacement surgery. I wondered, idly, at the pleasantness of my mom’s conversation, heard her say something to Connie and was relieved that she was being pleasant, not calling Connie a slut or anything like that. However, at the same time I was irritated at the bland politeness of their conversation. In the middle of all that, I realized the key Connie held poised in her hands was to a new car.

It was not a Honda key and it did not have the Toyota logo that would match Jean or Bruce’s cars. I suddenly got a flashed mental picture of a girl with a new engagement ring holding her left hand in an obvious manner hoping someone would notice and ask about it. I slowly and thickly began to believe she was displaying her new car key for me to notice, and maybe comment on. I am probably wrong about that, but the thought persisted.

The moment passed. Everyone cleared the theater, murmuring bland pleasantries, and I began to feel sad. I do not know who is more pathetic: me for still loving her, or her for trying to build a happy life out of consumer goods.

Against All Natural Impulses

2005-01-17T01:36:00.000-06:00

Against all natural impulses, she took slights and disappointments inside and held them. If she had sipped a foul tasting drink, she would have spewed it out. She never would take a drink, find it bad tasting, and, rather than spit it out, hold it in her mouth until it became increasingly more bitter. Nor would she, when she could no longer stand the bitterness in her mouth, swallow it and hold it inside until it festered into poison and infused her whole body. Yet she took emotional slights, swallowed and brewed them inside until poisoned. When full of poison, she spewed all over those closest to her, all over those who loved her. Against all natural impulses.

Celebrate Joy

2005-01-02T17:18:00.000-06:00

November my daughter asked about the Today’s English Bible we used in Bible Hour when she was little. I remembered the book, but couldn’t find it on the shelves at home. I went looking on Amazon Marketplace:

$7.00 Good
Seller: VVVV (Safe buying guarantee)
Rating: 4.9 stars over the past twelve months (45 ratings). Seller has 49 lifetime ratings.
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days; Ships from United States.
Comments: 1976 American Bible Society, hardcover, Donor Edition. Pages clean with no markings. Pages have a wrinkled effect at outer edges.
_____________________________________________________________________________
From: Sage
Sent: Sunday, December 12, 2004 2:52 PM
To: VVVV
Subject: Good News Bible on Amazon

Does this one have a vinyl cover they called “gold” (possibly looks slightly yellow green)? If so, I want it.
_____________________________________________________________________________
From: VVVV
Sent: Sunday, December 12, 2004 3:02 PM
To: Sage
Subject: Re: Good News Bible on Amazon

The color sounds the same but the cover I wouldn't call vinyl. It's a hardback...does have gold lettering. I hope that helps...best wishes. VV
_____________________________________________________________________________
From: Amazon.com Payments
Sent: Tuesday, December 14, 2004 12:47 AM
To: Sage
Subject: Your Amazon Marketplace Purchase

Dear Sage,

We're writing to confirm your purchase of the following Amazon Marketplace
item from VVVV: 1 of Good News Bible: Today's English Version/362Nbg

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Date: 13-December-2004
Order #: *****-******-*******
1 of Good News Bible: Today's English Version/362Nbg by [$7.00]
Buyer: Sage
Seller: VVVV
Shipping & Handling: [$3.49]
Your Total: [$10.49]
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Thank you for making your purchase via Amazon Marketplace.
_____________________________________________________________________________
From: Sage
Sent: Tuesday, December 14, 2004 12:54 AM
To: VVVV
Subject: RE: Good News Bible on Amazon

Just got the Amazon web to take the order. Must have been jammed up yesterday. Thanks for the e-mail, it helped. Be well.
_____________________________________________________________________________
From: VVVV
Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2004 6:26 AM
To: Sage
Subject: Re: Good News Bible on Amazon

Your Bible is in the mail...I wondered what it was that is so special about this Bible to you. Just noisy. VV
_____________________________________________________________________________
From: Sage
Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2004 9:38 PM
To: VVVV
Subject: RE: Good News Bible on Amazon

When my daughter was very young, my ex-wife and I always taught Bible class and children’s Bible hour together. My daughter grew up with us as her teachers. As she grew older, she co-taught with us and later with me. The line drawing illustrations, the heft and feel of the binding, and even the pages that tended to go crinkly at the edges on that particular “Donor’s Edition” were all parts of her earliest Bible lessons at church and at home. I remember her commenting on all of those things as a three, four, and five year-old. In particular, she liked the simple illustrations. Some of her early drawings were attempts in that spare style.

Now she is a young married; she and her husband co-teach children’s classes and are anticipating starting a family. She mentioned needing a Good News Bible to help prepare lessons. Our family copy left when my wife left and is unavailable to us now. I think my daughter’s reasons for wanting that translation to prepare lessons for their little students go deeper than its readability, so I am gambling a few bucks that the book you sent is the same edition, exactly--binding, pictures, and crinkly pages. If it is, I believe it will be a happy reminder of some childhood feelings she wants to pass along to her students.

Yes, I’m a sentimental sap. Thanks for letting me know it’s on its way.
_____________________________________________________________________________
From: VVVV
Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2004 4:37 AM
To: Sage
Subject: Re: Good News Bible on Amazon

Oh, I love your story. I hope it is what you wanted, please let me know. Your daughter will love your thoughtfulness! Sorry about your pain otherwise. You did a good job teaching and preparing and your joy is watching your daughter follow in your footsteps. No greater joy is there than to see your child follow the Lord. It is a priceless reward for your many years of teaching.

Have a great Holiday! VV
_____________________________________________________________________________
From: Sage
Sent: Saturday, January 1, 2005 10:00 PM
To: VVVV
Subject: Re: Re: Good News Bible on Amazon

The Bible arrived just in time. I received it as my son and I were packing for our trip to my daughter’s home. It is exactly what I wanted.

I noticed her sitting with it Christmas afternoon for quite a while, flipping through the Old Testament, looking at the illustrations. When she noticed me watching her, she mentioned her strong memories of being read to as a little girl. She was smiling. Her smile was my best present.

The book was packed perfectly and arrived in excellent condition. Thanks for the quick delivery, and for your e-mail. You reminded me of a joy I should celebrate. My holidays are still diminished, somewhat. They may always be, but your sensitivity and encouragement brightened this one for me.

Thank you. Sage
_____________________________________________________________________________
From: VVVV
Sent: Sunday, January 02, 2005 12:03 PM
To: Sage
Subject: Re: Good News Bible on Amazon

Thanks, what a great story! Snif! VV
_____________________________________________________________________________

The Cowardly Trencher

2004-12-11T22:51:00.000-06:00

Beginning the first week of June 2004, someone began “trenching” my front yard. The "Trencher" pulls into my yard in what is probably a four-wheel drive truck, flooring the gas pedal and spinning the tires, stripping the grass and topsoil away. Through the summer, Trenching occurred about once a week. Trenching occurred different times of the day and night, different days of the week.
One summer afternoon standing in my garage, I looked up to see a metallic/tan truck with the big red letters spelling out “Z 71” on the left rear side of the bed, driving out of my yard across the lower part of my driveway and into the street. When I gave the truck description to the police officer, he said, “There are a lot of those in town.”
After the first time or two, I began to report every event to the police department. In November, after one more daytime trenching, I talked with a police officer at the station about these incidents and discovered that not all of my reports to individual officers had been entered into the main computer at the police department.

Trenchings

1. Week of June 5-11, 2004. Discovered on my return from vacation.

2. June 16, 2004, between 9:00 and 10:30 p.m. I heard a loud engine revving, and as soon as I got to the front yard, I found the grass stripped, the yard trenched.

3. June 21, 2004, at 4:45pm a late model pick-up truck, a Chevrolet with a large red Z 71 on the left rear side of the box. It was driving west, maybe followed by a white older Suburban.

4. June 22 or 23, 2004, between 9:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. Trenched.

5. June 25, 2004, 12:15 to 12:45 a.m. Heard engine roaring and tires squealing. From the skid marks, it appeared to be heading east. I reported it to the police on 6/25/04.

6. June 27—July 3, 2004, yard was trenched. I gave my only copy of the details to the police. This was a bad idea because:

7. July 4—July 10, 2004, yard was trenched. Details lost to police.

8. July 11—July 17, 2004, yard was trenched. Details lost to police.

9. July 18—July 24, 2004, yard was trenched. Details lost to police.

10. July 25/26, 8:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m. Trenched. Left my written report of everything to this date with the officer.

11. Two Trenchings in August, reported to police, but did not make a personal copy.

12. 2nd August Trenching.

13. Two Trenchings in September, reported to police, but again did not make a personal copy.

14. 2nd September Trenching. Looking at my yard after one of these events, I suggested to the policeman that I was going to have to catch the Trencher or grant him an easement.

15. Two trenchings in October, reported to police, but did not make a personal copy of the details.

16. 2nd October Trenching.

17. Nov. 2nd Election Day trenched between 8:00 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. reported to the police. During conversation with police officer at the station, I found out not all of my reports had been entered in the computer.

18. Dec 9, 2004, Between 8:00 p.m. & 6:30 a.m. Trenched. My neighbor thinks she heard a car at 9:00 p.m. Reported to PD at 6:30 a.m. Another neighbor, sweet, demure, proper, and quite elderly is incredibly angry. She talked of wanting to wait for the Trencher with a gun.

The cowardly Trencher is angry. He is, I think, angry at many more things/people than me. For some reason, I have become the focus of his anger. Possibly the one bright moment in his life, when he feels (as it turns out totally in error) he can "get back" at all the "thems" that hamper and hold him down, is when he drives into my yard, cranks up the engine of his big truck, pops it into gear and strips the grass and an inch or so of topsoil off two narrow strips of my lawn with his spinning tires. When he goes out and about in his life and encounters what must be inevitable discouragement, disappointment, failure, he feels badly and it occurs to him to go drive through my yard again. For a brief adrenalin-filled moment, he feels in control of something again. Actually, it is a good sign that he now only comes through about once a month. It means, hopefully, his life isn't quite so miserable and pathetic as it was when he felt a need to come tearing through every week.

I've felt all along his problem is he is full of anger that he can't face directly for some reason. Of course, I don’t even know if it is a “he.” I think he/she/it just doesn't have the courage to come up to a cripple guy and tell him off, or punch him in the face or . . . something.

Of what could he/she/it be afraid? I try to imagine what he fears. Possibly, that I will lift a hand off a crutch handle and punch her, or that I might hit it with a crutch? Perhaps he is afraid I will kick her with my good leg. Maybe it plans an assault and/or insult followed by a run away taunting and he is fearful that I will chase her down, catch it and insult him back, or maybe beat her to a pulp. If it is so angry at me that lawbreaking is his choice outlet, then surely she could explain the reasons for its anger to others well enough for them to all join him in prosecuting me. Surely, she is not so angry over something so small that others cannot see the wrong in what I have done. Surely, I have broken some law, or boundary of propriety and it can call in others to help him make me pay, for my wrong.

On the other hand which is worse, this frustrated pathetic being who destroys my lawn, or my ex. A wife I loved, respected, and trusted, spending two years of our marriage involved with another man. Finally leaving our family and home, divorcing me, she marries him, and has a second church wedding a block south and twenty-eight years later than her first church wedding. I wonder if it was complete with showers, receptions, gifts, and thank-you cards.

Now enthroned in an impressive house, well-entrenched in the community as the wife of wealth, fulfilling sham propriety, propping a façade of respectability, she never speaks publicly to me, neither her or her, now often absent, husband. They simply do not "see" me in public places. She funnels public gifts to our children, while, to me, she refuses child support and college money for them.

I think, as a victim, I prefer trenching to rape.

Bastory

2004-12-06T01:00:00.000-06:00

bastory

\Bas' to ry\, 1. Begotten and brought into the world in an unnatural and secret way; a perversion of nature, legitimate in appearance, but fundamentally illegitimate. Alien and against all nature, but with the outward appearance of humanity. See Angel of Light, n, note.

2. Fundamentally lacking in genuineness; spurious; false; adulterate; -- applied to things which resemble those which are genuine, but are, in fact, antithetical to all that is true, legitimate, honest, and pure. See Father of Lies, n, note; and also Satanic, adj., note.

3. Of an innocuous make or proportion but deadly in effect; as, a Bastory mushroom (poison), a bastory bomber (a young mother who quietly and secretly straps explosives to her cuddled child for detonation mid-flight while nursing).

4. A medical book, detailing antidotes to poison with deadly poison embedded in the pages, killing all who touch it.

Bastory friend insinuating into a spouses affections, seducing, and manipulating the spouse into shattering the hearts of children, family, and friends by breaking from and abandoning, them all.

Bastory step a person appearing to be a model, if innocuous, step-parent, but who is possessed by such a fundamental disinterest in children that the emotional chill is palpable.

Bastory confidant who poses as a spiritual, moral, person, but counsels sin and betrayal by characterizing them as Godly, the true will of God: "God wants you to be happy; he wants you to divorce your spouse and marry me."

A Trust Betrayed A

2004-12-05T23:44:00.000-06:00

When absolute trust is betrayed absolutely,

when a twenty-five year history, a pledged lifetime, and a warm place in the family heart are abandoned tearlessly

with a slow shrug and flat toneless words, drifting without articulation from between tight lips,

"I don't love you anymore. I don’t know if I ever did."

Maybe you drop into a block of granite,
crack hard immobility and black rock blindness?

After eternity,
granite fades to fog,
a chunky igneous fog.

You emerge,
incrementally,
from the gelatinous haze,
imbedded crystals scraping you clean but raw.
The fog clings, cuts, and scrapes, resisting your coming out,
a sloth slowly slipping into lighter black, darkest grey,
thinking every day, “Things are really starting to clear up."

Looking back from weeks later and clearer still, the former fog--thick, heavy, and lowering--no longer passes for the clarity it seemed. Trying to see further back is impossible, impenetrable.

Further back in the black granite fog, cold and inorganic, the scrapings of your skin, blood, heart, and hopes are drying on the lightless crystalline flecks, petrifying in the frigid, igneous, heart of absolute betrayal.

You cannot see the way clearly, how you emerged, how you even knew the way.

What odds a miracle?
What’s the proportionate expression?
What’s the chance you emerged self-powered?

A fractional ratio: zip over none.

Planning Lessons

2004-10-31T21:46:00.000-06:00

Do you mean why are the plans hard or why are the assistant principals so hard-nosed about making us turn them in?

Plans are hard for me to write. I am never at a loss for something to do with students. I have the curriculum pretty much committed to memory. I attempt to teach my students so much more that what it requires, yet to sit down and put it all on paper in advance and then follow it with any kind of precision is almost an alien activity for me, as if I were suddenly required to describe everything I did yesterday in a language I do not know. I can fill in the blanks, give them some kind of written lesson, but as I write, I know it won't shake out that way. The meaninglessness of the whole thing makes it even harder for me to finish them.

I don't know why plans are so hard to write. I have come to believe they simply are not hard at all for some people. Some both write and follow the same plans for decades. I had one law professor who told us he taught Property Law from notes--the core of which--he took three decades earlier during his student days. The mental processes of those who can do that are incomprehensible to me. While plans are not the total bane of my existence I have struggled with meeting requirements for written plans my whole career, nearly thirty years.

I wonder what Jesus' lesson plans looked like? Were they better or worse than Socrates'? Maybe that's the real reason Jesus and Socrates were killed, no documented delivered instruction to students, no paper trail proving apropriately modified instruction for at-risk students. Who would have been at-risk, Peter, Judas?

Absolute Trust Betrayal

2004-10-31T21:34:00.000-06:00

Absolute Trust Betrayed Absolutely

Chronology

May, 1998, Veronica graduates from high school.

June, 1998, Connie decides she does not love me.

August, 1999, Phillip enters sixth grade.

September, 1999, Connie stops saying she loves me.

December, 1999, I discover Connie has been in a relationship with Bruce Story for several months. When I confront her about it, Connie tells me: “I don't love you any more. I’m not sure I ever did. I love Bruce.”

January 4, 2000, 25th Wedding Anniversary.

January, 2000, I ask Bruce to stop seeing Connie for six months to give us time to work on our marriage with a counselor. He says, "I don’t think I can do that."

January, 2000, I ask Connie to stop seeing Bruce for six months to give us time to work on our marriage. She says, “I don’t think I can do that.”

January, 2000 to October, 2001, Connie and Bruce continue their relationship while Connie remains married to me and living in our home.

August, 2001, Chris and Veronica marry.

September, 2001, Connie tells Chris, Veronica, and Phillip she is leaving me.

October, 2001, Connie moves into an apartment and files for divorce.

June, 2002, Divorce final.

August, 2002, Phillip enters high School.

March, 2003, Connie marries Bruce Story

October, 2004, I begin blogging on e-verities.

Several-Second Delay

2004-10-15T20:42:00.000-05:00

During Thursday’s Presidential debate, walking room to room, from a radio broadcast to a television broadcast, a several-second delay became obvious. The radio played the debate before the television. Live television delays its’ broadcasts several seconds so they may be cut off to protect viewers from seeing, for example, a pierced and bejeweled body part, impetuously exposed by a live performer.

Why did television time-delay the debate? Possibly to protect viewers from seeing one candidate run across the stage to drag down the other’s pants. Would Bush or Kerry be most likely to pants the other? Would the panted candidate attempt a counter-pant?

Would the Secret Service agents assigned to each candidate hurl their pant-clad legs in hand’s way? Would the agents join in the counter-panting and defensively wrestle each other’s pants to the ground? Would President Bush’s agents out-rank Kerry’s and order them to back off and . . . uh, pull up their pants?

It didn’t happen . . . probably. There were no detectable gaps in the broadcast. However, the President and his advisors may be in a war room right now, planning a preemptive panting to safeguard the security of the Presidential privates.

Watch the Tower

2004-10-10T01:19:00.000-05:00

Young woman rings my doorbell. Juggling a red leather Bible and an overstuffed planner she introduces herself and the boy wandering around her. Says she is reading encouragement from scripture to those who wish to listen.

“May I read for you?”

I say, “Yes.”

Deftly juggling planner and Bible, she reads from Ecclesiastes. Her voice is serene and assured as she reads God created man to live forever, but he is trapped in a world of decay and death.

“Not very encouraging,” I think.

She levels her brown eyes at me and asks, “Do you believe we were made to live forever?” The boy’s eyes wander everywhere; he shifts and shuffles around the doorway.

Glancing at him, I say, “Yes.”

She shuffles the planner above the Bible, opens it, and angles a copy of The Watchtower slightly towards me. “Would you like to read more about God’s plan for us to live forever?”

I say, “No. I’ve read The Watchtower before and I don’t think I want to look at it again right now.” I’m lost in her brown eyes, wondering if the boy is her son, hoping he is her little brother.

Concern creases her brow, “Do you have a problem with The Watchtower, because . . .”

“Not really, and it would take time to talk about right now, but thank you for the encouragement.”

Pausing mid-sentence, her eyes glance down to the wandering boy, “Thank you for letting me read.” She takes the boy’s hand, turns, and walks down the sidewalk toward the driveway. Her walk is serene and assured.

The boy twists to look back as they go; his brown eyes settle on me, searching.

Glancing at her walk, I think, “Yes.”