Doubt and Writing

I don't fancy myself a writer, though I enjoy the act of writing very much.  I love crafting a sentence, reading and rereading it, tooling around with structure and word choice until it vibrates in just the right way.  I love the act of forcing myself to organize an argument, to choose a position, to detail an idea, to pin down an emotion.  However, I am plagued by the knowledge that no one, anywhere, at any time, is interested in anything I have to say; that I'm wasting valuable time and resources pretending that they do.  In short, I have The Doubt.

Jay Smooth would say my Little Hater is in full effect.  He would not be wrong.

When I was younger I entertained the notion of writing as a career - but the words in my head simply were not clamoring for release and I chose a different route.  I'm immensely happy in that.  I made the right decision.  I do something I love, something that enables me to spend a good deal of time writing for myself, and sometimes for you.

I've never since thought that I was meant to be a writer and I am doubly sure of this after having devoured the posts on Patrick Eamonn's nascent blog, The Last of the Carter Babies.  I know this because when I read Patrick Eamonn's blog about writing - I realize that I never felt 1/100th of the passion and drive that fuels his artistic fire.  I urge you to check it out, whether or not you write.  Because we all have passions and a fire to fuel.

Parental Units

In response to a (ridiculous and pointless) NY Times article on the epidemic of "bad" parenting in YA lit, Miss Print has opened a challenge to all YA lit readers, lovers, reviewers, &c out there . . . find the "good" parents!  As Miss Print states,

I want a list of “good” parents, “real” parents, parents who could be role models instead of horrible examples, parents readers will like as characters even if they might not identify with them (because, hey, YA books are written for teens not parents).

So let's help her out!

I'm all about this challenge and plan on getting right to it . . . after I snag on to that parenthetical comment and roll my eyes at adults everywhere who are reading books for young adults and getting bent out of shape by the depiction of parents.  YA books are not written for you!  They are written for teens.  They are written from the teen's point of view.  Their conflict and drama and adventure is of the YA world - not the adult world.  Parents are often incidental, even detrimental . . . and that's okay.  It's not an indictment of parenting, it's not a sign of the decline of the teen-adult relationship, it's a way for the teen protagonists to solve their own problems, make their own decisions, develop their independence and grow up.  Coming of age is not a family games night event.

So, in closing, I'd like to offer Julie Just the same advice I dole out daily to my middle-schoolers: Take it easy, killer.  It's not always about you.

Off Topic

Going back to my (Episcopal) roots with this one . . .

Lent has begun in earnest (does Lent ever begin in-earnestly?) and that means that the coffee and lunch table discussion among Catholics and Episcopalians (of whom I know a great deal) will turn to What I'm Giving Up For Lent.  Inevitably the focus will be on food.  With each Lenten conversation my mental list of these forbidden foods will grow: chocolate, cookies, cakes, sweets in general, candy, soda, chips, fried food, carbs . . . and I will stare at my friends, coworkers, and loved ones and silently wonder, "Savior or diet guru?"  Because I'm pretty darn sure that the point of Lenten forbearance is to practice meaningful self-sacrifice, to reflect on our weaknesses and our privilege, and work to live a more charitable and thoughtful life.  If we give up dessert, shouldn't it be to help us remember all those for whom dessert is not an option?  Not because pie is bad (in the interest of full disclosure - I just baked a pie).  The goal of any fast is spiritual renewal and a turning away from worldly things.  Does God want me to be a better, kinder, more patient and giving person?  Or does he want me to drop five pounds?  I'm betting on the former. 

True, self-sacrifice of even the smallest variety can teach us about discipline and self-control, and can help us to think outside ourselves for the moment.  The problem with giving up is that it only lasts for forty days.  Once Hallelujah is sung again, the fast is broken and, often, forgotten.  This is the problem with so much religious showmanship - the meaning and essence are watered down and washed away until it's just another motion you go through because you're supposed to.  There's no (pardon me) meat in it.

So this Lenten season I'm not Giving Up - I'm fixing up.  I'm going to really work on . . . wait for it . . . being less quick to judge.  This is so hard for me, so please bear with me.  Step 1: when someone tells me What They Are Giving Up for Lent, I will engage in actual meaningful dialogue instead of snarking in my head.  It's a start.

Amusing, no?

In another life and time, Postman and I would have had a great deal to discuss. Perhaps we would have done so publicly, in large arenas, complete with cheering audience and five-hour time limit. Alas, destiny precludes it, so I am left to read and digest and respond to no one and everyone all at once. This blog, it is literary - steeped in typography. In its own way, it is also another piece of (mostly irrelevant) information contributing to our culture's information glut. It may even be entertainment.

I suppose, at my core, I am a relativist. My essential quarrel with Postman is not that television has reshaped our public discourse, our sense of truth and knowledge, our definitions of intelligence and information, but that we are in any place to pass a judgment on these changes. Things are not as they were 100-200 years ago. Much has changed, for the better and the worse (e.g. while I bemoan the heaps of irrelevant "news" trumpeted from every corner of the world, I embrace the mind-opening exchange of information and culture). I do not believe that it is possible to get enough perspective from inside today to accurately judge it against yesterday. We need a little distance.

But distance is a luxury that we will never have, for we are here right now, teaching and learning in this quagmire of headlines, tweets, texts, hypertext, moving images, and typography. Sure we can lament the "fall" of print, the "rise" of imagery, the shorter attention spans, the perceived decrease in complexity of thought and lack of exposition, the "reading problems" and learning disorders that Postman argues did not plague the students and educators of yester-century. Or we can work diligently and thoughtfully to provide kids today the best ways and means to process, analyze, reflect on, and thrive in and shape (for the better, the meaningful-er, the serious-er!) our culture.

On Media and Messages

A medium, by definition, is "an intervening agency, means, or instrument by which something is conveyed or accomplished; one of the means or channels of general communication, information, or entertainment in society, as newspapers, radio, or television."  Since it is impossible to transmit our ideas and emotions directly from mind to mind, we are are forced to use a carrier substance - language.  Often that language is then floated along in a secondary carrier, paper and pen, radio waves, cathode ray tube, tweet, text . . . . so that in the end the essence of what was thought or felt or dreamt is squished and squeezed and folded and deconstructed and reconstructed to fit the confines and purposes of the conveyor.  Thank you, Mr. McLuhan.

I love language.  I love polysemous words, the nuance of context, the subtle shift between shiver and quiver that opens up a whole new world of understanding and interpretation.  I love that we are unable to directly convey our thoughts and must pour them messily into linguistic containers and carry them on media's shaky cafeteria trays from table to table.  I love the work of analysis and interpretation that comes with deeply reading a text and I work everyday to pass that love on to the students I work with.

This love translates directly into a love of graphic novels.  Talk about nuance!  There is so much to synthesize!  As McCloud discusses in Understanding Comics, comics require the very active participation of the reader.  The reader must buy-in and construct meaning from the myriad linguistic and artistic tools employed by the author/illustrator - from words to pictures, from blank space to camera angles.

Perhaps because I love a good double-entendre, I take no issue with the idea of media impregnating our messages with their own.  Two messages for the price of one!  It is when we stop recognizing this that problems arise.  When we take for granted that the containers and conveyances are passive and idle, then we fall into the trap of assuming (wrongly) that we can use tools without them using us.  Thank you, Mr. Postman.  Tricky stuff, indeed.

Haiti

I'm not about to go a rant about Pat Robertson or David Brooks, in particular, or victim-blaming, in general.  I just don't have it in me right now. 

I'm simply urging anyone and everyone to help.  Here's a list of NGOs currently working in the disaster relief effort.

And I'm hoping.

It's been ages

And I'm sorry about that.  Fall into Winter 2009 will forever be remembered as the semester that did me in, which, considering my debaucherous past, is saying something!

Today I was passed a link to a NY Times article on geekifying our high schools.  Looking at the link and description, I hesitated to even click through.  Afterall,  I can still taste the disgust that I felt at Wired's short take on the subject of geek culture in high schools.  But click through I did, and I was pleasantly surprised to find an even-handed article on how we've been teaching high school computer science and technology classes all wrong . . . and some promising examples of how to do it the right way.  More theory and critical thinking, less word processing and spreadsheets!  More creativity and a better view of the big picture, less code-writing drills!  Woohoo!

Technology shapes and is shaped by humanity.  We both use it and are used by it.  A clear understanding of how new technologies function and evolve is critical to a future aided, rather than controlled by, technology.  Improving high school tech course: step one.

On an entirely different note - here's a collection of short fiction by New Jersey native Patrick Eamonn.  Funny, poignant, at times disturbing glimpses into the lives of a series of no-one-in-particulars from our own Garden State.