Literacy: Reading

Writing about the purposes and standards for reading.

by

Tennessee in Florida

Poets.org tells us that Key West was a location for poets in the early twentieth century.

Over 100 miles from mainland Florida and the southernmost point in the United States, Key West has attracted numerous artists and writers, including Ernest Hemingway, Wallace Stevens, Ralph Ellison, Elizabeth Bishop, Tennessee Williams, Robert Frost, and James Merrill, with its remote location, tropical setting, and wild spirit.

Tennesee Williams came to Key West at the age of thirty in 1941. He bought property on 1531 Duncan Street in the neighborhood of the poet Elizabeth Bishop, who lived at 624 White Street.

Unlike the Hemingway House, Tennessee Williams’ place in Key West is owned privately and inaccessible to the public. However a museum dedicated to his memory has a model of the house on Duncan Street (below). It has a back wing he called the “Mad House,” where he wrote so many of his plays. By all accounts he loved Key West and several of his plays were performed in the local Waterfront Theater.

We saw a Christmas play at the Waterfront Theater, All is Calm. It is true story of a truce on Christmas Eve between the Germans and the British in World War II. It is really an opera performed with Christmas carols and popular songs of the period.  It begins with tentative overtures to celebrate together and ends with raucous and a little drunken singing, as the soldiers consume what is left of their alcoholic rations. The production is really an homage to “peace on earth” and the hope of reconciliation of traditional adversaries.

Tennessee himself was not a dreamer, but an unapologetic realist. Regarding his late conversion to Catholicism, he said, “It wasn’t my idea. I don’t think I wanted to do it, but that happened during my Stoned Age.” Poets.org confirms that “Williams was baptized, with encouragement from his brother and a fair amount of alcohol, at St. Mary Star of the Sea Catholic Church on Truman Avenue.”

His Pulitzer Prize award-winning dramas were A Streetcar Named Desire  and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, both stories of hard-edged characters,  although he said his favorite among his plays was the more sentimental The Glass Menagerie. 

According to Poets.org, the nearby neighborhood of Windsor Lane became a gathering place for poets in the mid-twentieth century.

Near Solares Hill, the island’s highest point at sixteen feet above sea level, is Windsor Lane Compound, established in 1976. The assortment of restored shacks, shanties, and cottages, were once winter homes for writers such as Richard Wilbur, John Ciardi, John Hersey, and Ralph Ellison. On William Street is a Greek Revival house and writing studio once owned by Shel Silverstein.

… Another frequent visitor, Wallace Stevens once wrote in a letter that Key West “is the real thing… the sweetest doing nothing contrived.” Though good friends with Hemingway, one rainy night outside of Sloppy Joe’s bar, the two got into an infamous brawl in which Stevens broke his hand on Hemingway’s jaw. https://poets.org/listing/poet-homes-key-west-fl

This is a lot of lore I did not know when we visited Key West, so we missed some of it. We ate twice at the Banana Cafe on Duval Street, which is not too far from Windsor Lane and William Street, but we were unaware.  These locations were remote from the wharf and the entertainment district of Key West. They were more bohemian and inexpensive. Wallace Stevens wrote:

Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

by

Hemingway: A Local Hero

The story goes that in 1931 Ernest Hemingway and Pauline lodged temporarily in a Key West apartment, awaiting the delivery of his Model A roadster, but the wait was prolonged enough for him to fall in love with the town. He loved the fishing, the beautiful shoreline, the bars, the intimacy of Key West. Pauline’s uncle bankrolled the purchase of a poorly-maintained house on Whitehead Street, and they worked relentlessly to make it a winter residence.

The famous polydactyl (six-toed) cat was a gift of Captain Harold Dexter. Snowball spawned 59 descendants by best reckoning and they swarm the house today with their own residence and keepers.  They have the usual cat presence of belonging to a place and  ruling it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We were interested in the 1930’s story of Ernest Hemingway, since we had just visited Yellowstone where he was known for his hunting and drinking prowess in the summer at the L__T Ranch in Wyoming. While he was writing The Green Hills of Africa in Key West, he was writing Death in the Afternoon  and To Have and Have Not between 1932 and 1936 in his northern retreat.  Chris Warren, his Yellowstone High Country biographer, claimed he was happiest and most at home with his family during this time in wilderness. He taught his boys to hunt and fish and frequently went hunting with Pauline, who knew her way around a rifle.

A great source on Hemingway’s writing technique, especially in Key West in  1934, is With Hemingway: A Year in Key West and Cuba. compiled from the notes of the hopeful novelist, Arnold Samuelson. He mentored the young writer while he did odd jobs around the homestead and the boat, the Pilar.  A good insight into his writing routine:

Never pump yourself dry. Leave a little for the next day. The main thing to know is when to stop. Don’t wait until you’ve written yourself out. When you’re really going good and you come to an interesting place and you know what’s going to happen next, that’s the time to stop.  Then leave it alone and don’t think about it; let your subconscious mind do the work. , The next morning, when you’ve had enough sleep  and you’re feeling fresh, rewrite what you wrote the day before. When you come to the interesting place and you know what is going to happen next, go on from there and stop at another high point of interest. That way, when you get through, you never get stuck and you make it interesting as you go along. (11)

This explains why Hemingway typically spent the afternoons fishing or hunting without consulting his work.  He had a rhythm that energized his work and depended on an active sporting life.   We had lunch at one of his favorite haunts : “Blue Heaven.”  Nearby he officiated boxing matches at a place called “The Blue Goose.”

Charles Thompson came from an influential Key West family and “taught Hemingway to fish the big water of the Gulf Stream” (High Country, 27).  In turn Hemingway showed Thompson around the big game of Yellowstone in 1932. The following year they traveled to Africa to hunt the really big game. They enjoyed a sometimes competitive, sometime ruthless hunting relationship. Much of the experience is found in The Green Hills of Africa.

In With Hemingway,  Samuelson relates the fishing on board the 38-foot Pilar, Hemingway’s new fishing boat, in which he travels to Cuba. Pilar was a nickname for Pauline and the heroine in For Whom the Bell Tolls.  EH, as Samuelson referred to him, enjoyed helping others hook the marlin and sailfish with him at the helm, as he did landing the fish himself.

 

 

 

 

 

The well-known Key West illustrator, Guy Harvey, drew the story of The Old Man and the Sea early in his career, and his illustrations follow the stairs up three flights in the Custom House Museum. The stairs, with their captions and illustrations, are fascinating to climb, considering you can not find the drawings paired with the Hemingway text anywhere else.

by

Doublethink

From 1984:

Doublethink: To forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. [https://study.com/academy/lesson/doublethink-in-1984-definition-examples.htmlsrc=ppc_adwords_nonbrand&rcntxt=aws&crt=502044578140&kwd=&kwid=dsa-1187583619848&agid=116312175297&mt=&device=c&network=s&_campaign=SeoPPC&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIsZTygvTj9AIVx8izCh1eFw-DEAAYAiAAEgIWTPD_BwE]

I remember reading the novel 1984 in 1960, thinking how hard it would be to apply this technique in a democracy, where facts were available and the media was free to publish them. About twenty years later I taught the novel to high school students hoping to convince them it was a plausible dystopia, that we should guard against this kind of thinking. They believed; they were convinced that people could be brainwashed to believe the opposite of what they knew to be true. And yet I silently struggled to believe this was possible even in our democracy.

As we approach the anniversary to the 2021 insurrection, I am now convinced.  I realize that most of the Republican Party and Fox, its media voice box, have fully achieved doublethink in the sense quoted above. What they know to be true has been repressed, while the fiction that the insurrectionists were tourists and patriots has become their public litany. Their tweeting to Mark Meadows on the day in question revealed a competing and now unconscious version of the story:

. . . according to the records, multiple Fox News hosts knew the President needed to act immediately. They texted Mr. Meadows, and he has turned over those texts.

“Quote, ‘Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy,’ Laura Ingraham wrote.

“’Please get him on tv. Destroying everything you have accomplished,’ Brian Kilmeade texted.

“’Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol,’ Sean Hannity urged.

“As the violence continued, one of the President’s sons texted Mr. Meadows.

“Quote, ‘He’s got to condemn this [shit] ASAP. The Capitol Police tweet is not enough,’ Donald Trump, Jr. texted. [https://libguides.union.edu/c.php?g=1126166]

Today the invasion of the Capitol has been whitewashed as a demonstration of frustration for a fraudulent election, making the probability of repeated violence over election disappointments more and more likely.  The violent facts are losing their shock value in order “To forget, whatever it was necessary to forget” as Orwell described the process of “doublethink.” All this is taking place in the backdrop of a fully functioning media that replays the video footage of the insurrection at every possible opportunity.  The ability of elected Congress-persons to underplay this story even as it is being investigated, is stunning and disillusioning. Their version of events is a competing and potentially undercutting version of the report the Select Committee will eventually broadcast and document.

What about voters? Will we succumb to doublethink and repress our own memories of the terrible violation of the Capitol on January 6? Can we ignore what we know to be true by a conscious act? Can we execute doublethink?

To know and to not know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them . . .

[https://study.com/academy/lesson/doublethink-in-1984-definition-examples.html?src=ppc_adwords_nonbrand&rcntxt=aws&crt=502044578140&kwd=&kwid=dsa-1187583619848&agid=116312175297&mt=&device=c&network=s&_campaign=SeoPPC&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIsZTygvTj9AIVx8izCh1eFw-DEAAYAiAAEgIWTPD_BwE]

If we honestly probe our memories, can we minimize the most widely broadcast event in recent times? Surely it will take an exhausting amount of conscious energy to transform what we know into what we want to forget. Yet our leaders and opinion broadcasters have set the example for us. We can remember what we choose to remember and transform what we wish to remember differently.  Doublethink can make it all happen, as preposterous as that seemed to me sixty years ago when I first read 1984.

Seventy-two years ago George Orwell witnessed doublethink in Nazi Germany and Communist Eastern Europe. That is how we know it can still happen today. Even in a democracy.

 

by

Keys to Happiness

We came to Key West for its sunshine and its scribes: Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, and our lately-discovered Judy Blume. We found a mecca for the thirsty and the barefoot, a stomach-gurgling range of food, a rainbow of cultures and personalities, and a contagious loss of scheduling.  It’s not that we stopped planning for places to visit, but they were not hectic plans: we saw Hemingway, and Williams and Blume days apart, and only found Blume’s bookstore, ” Books and Books,” by a referral from a trolley tour driver. Earlier we met the father of the docent of the Tennessee Williams museum, because he told us his father would be marketing pottery that evening at a celebration at the Custom House.  The father was transparently proud of his boy, who had recently acquired the job. Seemed like a small town.

Blume smiling while signing a book

Blume at a book signing

Pelican Diving for Fish

Like these authors,

we found the weather, the sunsets, the rampant roosters and chickens, and the kamikazi pelicans all delightful.

Each day we spent more time wandering the streets on foot, sipping on Margaritas at Jimmy Buffet’s at one end of Duval and returning for the pork and duck at Banana Cafe at the other end of the street.

We witnessed multiple sunsets around Mallory Square with hundreds of our closest acquaintances, and we began to hang out at small shops on the wharf for ice cream and Americano coffee.  We felt that we belonged in these places, even though there were many too loud and too crowded for our comfort. The point is that there are places for everyone’s comfort and digestion even if you are not disposed to take off your clothes at the Garden of Eden or drink under the influence of amped up instruments in certain tight places.

We did not take a sunset cruise or lie out on the beach. We did not go snorkeling or take a glass bottom boat to get up close to sea life. We did ride the stair well of the Court House Museum and followed the tale of Old Man and the Sea  through Guy Harvey sketches over three flights.  And that would show the kind of adventure we followed here. Every day happiness and fair weather. We are grateful for every day–all eight of them.  We head home content to face the less friendly weather of St. Louis.

 

 

 

 

 

by

Worst Are Full of Passionate Intensity

How often have I quoted the lines of the Yeats poem the worst are full of passionate intensity, because the most violent, conspiracy theorists have entered the mainstream of the Republican Party, outrageous attacks have been leveled at principled representatives  right down to school board members defending the curriculum achieved by consensus among their teachers.

Fred Upton, R-Mich has regularly received death threats for voting for the infra-structure bill, and yesterday released a profanity-ridden phone call making threats on his life.

Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington at a House Rules Committee meeting. An aide told Fox News his office has been getting death threats after voting for the infrastructure bill.
Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington at a House Rules Committee meeting. An aide told Fox News his office has been getting death threats after voting for the infrastructure bill. (AP)
President Trump led the way by referring to the 13 Congress-people who voted for the infra-structure bill, as “Rinos” (“Republicans in name only”).  Trump is a significant enemy of bi-partisanship in Washington. He tried relentlessly to initiate a similar infra-structure bill under his own administration, and yet he sought to undermine the completion of this one. He is a significant destructive force in national politics.
Below the opening lines of Yeats’ poem, The Second Coming, which seem prophetic for this time in history:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

(W.B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”)

President Trump could have been the falconer in the Yeats poem, but he has chosen to break with the leadership of a democratic government, including President Biden, Reps. Lynn Cheney, Lindsay Graham (who voted for the bill) and even Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who spoke in favor of the infra-structure bill. As Trump can not hear the “falconer,” the above voices of reason and bi-partisanship, Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.
The ceremony of innocence is drowned. These ceremonies include the electoral college confirmation of a new President, the passing of the infra-structure bill, the defeat of merely allowing debate on the Voting Rights bill.  These are the basic ceremonies of democratic governing, not partisan celebrations.  The attacks on these “ceremonies” have come from within the government, from elected representatives, not only crazed citizens. The center cannot hold.
The best lack all conviction. The falling aside of prominent moderates, now refusing to run for re-election, signifies the best who “lack all conviction.”  The moderates jumping the sinking ship include: Pat Toomey, R- Pa, Rob Portman, R-OH, Roy Blunt, R-MO,  Richard Burr, R-NC, and Adam Kinsinger, R- IL.  The undertow of struggling against the blood-dimmed tide has become too powerful for courageous Senators and Congressmen. It may be unfair to say they “lack all conviction,” but to the casual observer, they represent an ominous trend, a brain drain on the U.S. Congress. We needed them most when they decided to retire.
Even the sitting President, the falconer-in-chief, has a muted voice, trying to unite instead of lead. His intentions are good, but the consequences have made the Yeats prophecy more threatening still: mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, and the pronouncements of an ex-President get more attention than the present one.  And since the ex-President is only intent on breaking down the world order, it leaves the “Build Back Better” message in tatters.  At this point the inclusion of the Minority Party has run amuck. Therefore the Majority Party needs a strong voice of leadership, a falconer who can speak above the “mere anarchy.”
These are the final lines of the Yeats poem.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

They seem to predict a redemption and a political savior, nothing like the biblical one.   “Slouching toward Bethlehem” describes the progress of redemption so well. We are long-suffering for the leader, the coalition, the new voice to arise and speak truth with authority.  You need more than a popular election or celebrity to assume this role. Your hour must “come round at last.”

God willing, this hour will be soon.

by

To Kill a Mockingbird

We came to New York to reunite with some friends and to see Jeff Daniels, as Atticus, in To Kill a Mockingbird.

 [As a side note the two best meals I had that week were cooked by our friend Mitch Leibowitz (chickpeas first, then salmon) with honorable mention to the English Beef Stew at the Director’s Irish Pub on Thursday night].

The main course was Aaron Sorkin’s Mockingbird.  I have to confess a little disappointment with his version of Harper Lee’s moving story of racism in the post-Depression deep South. A little too much Sorkin and too little Harper Lee.

If you were a fan of Sorkin’s Newsroom or West Wing you would recognize a certain plot line in his To Kill a Mockingbird. An Idealist meets the harsh reality of politics or southern poverty and becomes a hard-fighting pragmatist. I would argue that the novel is more understated and compassionate.  That’s how it won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize: with a broad humanitarian theme of “walking around inside another person’s skin.”

That theme is stated in the current Sorkin version of the novel, but it gets some opposition from a “fight for justice” theme that the novel promotes less.  Jeff Daniels’ Atticus is a laidback country lawyer who gets angry after his epic trial and has a physical face-off with the over-played villain of the story, Bob Ewell. The result is an enlightened Atticus who is ready to take a few swings for justice, as his news director character, Will McAvoy, in Newsroom would have.

In the stage play Atticus begins from the premise that people are willing to be changed by a good trial argument. The evidence, that Bob Ewell was his daughter Mayell’s attacker and not the poor Black Tom Robinson, is overwhelming, Atticus shows uncharacteristic optimism going into the trial.  His expectations do not match Harper Lee’s Atticus, who is the sober pessimist on all subjects and especially on the subject of changing the traditions of Maycomb, Alabama. Atticus in the novel would never be carried away by a good case he had planned for a jury trial.

Sorkin’s Atticus, like President Bartlett on West Wing, believes in the system and the basic goodness of human beings.  He is bitterly disillusioned by his defeat in the trial to save Tom Robinson from a rape conviction, and later has a physical confrontation with Bob Ewell, as Ewell baits him in front of Atticus’ house.  It is an outbreak of pure anger, which you will not find in the novel version of the story.  It appears that pure racism can only be opposed by the physical anger of righteous men in Aaron Sorkin’s world.

The overwhelming theme of Lee’s novel is that “you can’t a know man without walking around some time in his shoes.”  Atticus spends a lot of time explaining the racism of Bob Ewell and John Cunningham to his children, so they don’t hate these “white trash” characters for their apparent disdain for Black folk. The novel is more about empathy than retaliation.

And the framing story around the novel is the reigning fear the children have for the reclusive Arthur (Boo) Radley, who at the end turns into their savior when they are attacked by Bob Ewell in a late night ambush.  In the closing scene Scout and Jem are stricken for their suspicion and fear of Boo and reach out to him gratefully for his rescue from a murderer.  Boo, even though he is a white privileged character, has become the victim of prejudice in the novel, and the conclusive example of the need to “walk around in man’s shoes.”

In the play, what the audience most remembers is the closing argument  in the courtroom from Jeff Daniels, as he challenges us to rise against prejudice wherever we find it. The final words of the play are the same as those we hear at the beginning when the judge enters the courtroom, “All rise.” Aaron Sorkin is less committed to understatement  and empathy than Harper Lee.

I love Jeff Daniels, so it pains me to say he was not cast correctly to play an aging, frail attorney, who keeps many of his opinions to himself, and who reveals his sharpshooting skills only in a desperate emergency. In the novel he is touted as “One-shot” Finch, but we only know this because a rabid dog is charging him and the sheriff has come to the scene without his distance glasses. After Atticus nails the dog with one shot, he never picks up a gun again in the story, even when Bob Ewell shows up armed at his house. Atticus believes in the struggle, but it is a non-violent struggle.

Daniels cannot conceal his broad shoulders and more solid build, so he cannot faithfully represent the more lanky Finch, who constantly asserts he is too old for physical activities in the novel. The actor I have always considered for Atticus is “Law and Order’s” Sam Waterson, who played a similar character to Atticus on a television ripoff of  Mockingbird “I’ll Fly Away.” Waterson has the shaky voice and lean build needed for the character of Atticus, who is superficially weak, but powerful in conviction and determination. Daniels is good with the wry humor, but he is an imposing figure, no matter how you dress him, a character it is hard to underestimate.

I also quibble with the decision to assign adults to the roles of Scout, Jem and Dill. In the novel they are profound young people, but often act childishly. The actors who play them, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Hunter Parrish, and Noah Robbins, all convey their roles effectively, but the wisdom, the “out of the mouths of babes” effect that Harper Lee uses to effect in the novel, is less striking coming out of the mouths of adults. The critical scene, where Atticus sits guard outside the jail and the hooded clan members show up to lynch Tom Robinson, conveys less of the vulnerability of the children who arrive to protect Atticus, partly because it is hard to see them as vulnerable children. Keenan-Bolger, who plays Scout, is almost as tall as Mr.Cunningham, ring leader of the Klansmen.

I hate reviewers who complain that a play is not a successful rendition of the book, so it is not fair for me to carp about this play, which, after all, is effective as an Aaron Sorkin version.  My problem is I like the Harper Lee version better. I like the understatement and the broad theme of learning to understand the aliens in our lives.  The final scene where Boo Radley is unmasked and becomes the rescuer instead of the monster makes more sense in the novel than the play. I wish Aaron Sorkin was more willing to walk around in the shoes of the original Atticus and his creator, Harper Lee.

But Sorkin has a message he is not willing to understate: a passion for justice needs a determined aggression. The titular theme of the novel “It is a sin to kill a mockingbird,” is not assertive enough in Sorkin’s universe.

 

 

 

by

Clyde’s

We sat five rows from the front of the compact Hayes Theater Friday night. It was the perfect vantage point to see the entertaining, but relatively unheralded play we had come for. I only knew it was written by the Pulitzer-prize-winning playwright, whose Intimate Apparel I had seen four summers ago.

The battle for the souls of human beings takes place in the kitchen of a sandwich shop at a truck stop. Only Lynn Nottage could imagine such an earthbound scenario for salvation. Four ex-cons are condemned to work  for Clyde in a sandwich shop by their last-chance mentality. They have no one else who will give them employment, so they suffer the abuse of a curvy, heavy-set, African American woman.

Clyde wants the usual truck stop fare dished out in rapid-fire orders, tuna fish, ham-and-cheese, turkey, but her employees dream of exotic sandwiches with organic spices inspired by their mentor Montrelous, played by William from “This is Us,” Ron Cephas Jones. Rafael (Rez Salazar) is a mercurial Latino, who has vivid dreams of sandwiches with wonderful spices (many unknown me) that come from exotic lands. His recipes come out almost as a challenge.

Letitia (Kara Young), is a single African American mother with a desperate on-again, off-again relationship with her ex, and visions of sandwiches she could make with organic spices on whole-grain bread.  Each time the characters expound their visionary sandwiches, the lights go low and time seems suspended in honor of their creative geniuses.

Jason is a tattooed white late-comer to the kitchen, who takes no pride in his work and just wants to stay out of trouble long enough to get a better  job.  His residual inmate anger is closer to the surface, and he finds the sandwich recipe ritual silly. He slops the mayo and mustard on his sandwiches indiscriminately.

Clyde haunts the kitchen as a bullying manager, who reminds each employee they are one whimsical move from the street. She is large, dressed in skin-tight apparel that emphasize her majestic curves, with a voice that could dress down a drill sergeant. She also has the drill sergeant’s tendency to demean and discourage her subordinates. The atmosphere of the kitchen effectively reproduces the prison these employees have known too well.

At the other extreme Montrelous offers encouragement and hope for his fellow employees, as they invent their recipes. He wears a Nehru suit with a fez-like hat, all in subdued colors, a dramatic contrast with Clyde. When it comes time for him to confess his crime to the others, it appears to be no crime at all.

The entire story emerges from the kitchen that alternates as heaven and hell with lighting and sound to produce the atmosphere.  The souls of each of the three younger characters seem to hang in the balance.  Without giving away too much, the dramatic lighting and sound effects become the focus of the action as the story drifts to a denouement.  The kitchen becomes the setting for ultimate spiritual drama.

At the very least you can leave with some very exotic sandwich recipes, but that was  hardly the attraction for me.

 

 

by

A Living STEM

The collaboration of STEM professionals and K-college education must be one of the brightest prospects for St. Louis, as Dr. Corey Bradford and Vice Admiral Robert Sharp predicted in their column on Wednesday (Post-Dispatch, November 19).  It promises jobs and community redevelopment through the National Geospatial Agency in a neighborhood that desperately needs both.

Education is not only about qualifying for jobs; it is about literacy and citizenship.  Reducing STEM education to meeting the demand for jobs does not bode well for either science or education.

Science-Technology-Engineering-Mathematics (STEM) professionals have been recently frustrated by contempt for their expertise and by a market-driven culture.  Science is in desperate need of wise and articulate advocates like Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Dr. Fauci has shown us that we need more than scientific expertise to advocate for science and a healthy society. What he brings to public discourse is what science educators, grant coordinators, legislators and parents need to make a successful collaboration like NGA and Harris-Stowe State University.  Dr. Fauci understands

  • the relationship between science and other disciplines (e.g. the economy)
  • the importance of making science relevant to lay people
  • the language that helps lay people understand the science
  • that compromises are necessary to meet common goals

None of this is taught in a pure STEM program, so a communication gap between scientists and laypeople is inevitable. Politicians like President Donald Trump and Rep. Rand Paul can take science hostage, undermine its credibility and force it to do their bidding.  The United States may not be entirely successful fighting the pandemic, but where would we be today without an Anthony Fauci to make the stakes clear and speak truth to power? Don’t we need more scientists like him?

STEM programs should include more than technical skills, they should be for communication and advocacy. STEM graduates need these skills to be responsible parents, let alone engineers or a science teachers.  They need these skills to write grants and speak at the Board of Education for a STEM curriculum. They need these skills to improve public relations of NGA in the neighborhood and to campaign for a tax-increment for computers. They need these skills to counter an anti-science diatribe on Facebook.

Dr. Fauci is a precious and endangered resource: his ability to speak and write for all stakeholders is a rare outcome for STEM education. We have plenty of experts in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), but few can speak to lay people with clarity and conviction. We have an army of scientists in the Food and Drug Administration, but few can negotiate with the demands of politicians and the marketplace.  Dr. Fauci represents the best of what our education programs should develop: an articulate and patient understanding of science and society.

We should promote, not just STEM, but a Living STEM program that cultivates literacy, ethics, and collaboration:

Literacy

  • critical reading of political and education documents and media
  • rhetoric and communication

Ethics

  • critical reading of biography and fiction
  • discussion of case studies about science and society

Collaboration

  • writing and speaking on project teams
  • teaming with lay citizens

Naturally not everybody can become Dr. Fauci.  But STEM students can aspire to achieve his skills as a leader and advocate.  If we remember that experts and lay people share community goals and public resources we understand the need for a Living STEM, with roots, branches, and channels to connect them.

 

 

 

by

Ambiguity and the Authoritarian Predisposition

My first real discovery as I was student teaching at a technical high school was that not all teenagers enjoyed reading with the analysis of modern, relevant texts such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  We would read a couple of pages of dialogue out loud, and then I would ask why Butch said this or why Sundance did that, and I would be dismayed by the silence of all but maybe two guys in the class.  It was an all-boys high school in a small city in Massachusetts.

After a couple of days plodding through the story, one of the boys astonished me by asking, ” When will we study grammar in this class?” “Yeah, yeah,” affirmed other voices.

“Do you mean you’d rather study grammar than Butch and Sundance?”

“Yeah, grammar is fun. Diagramming!”

This was my first discovery that the teaching methods textbooks did not prepare me for the variety of students I would encounter in my career.  Certainly they did not anticipate freshmen boys in a technical high school. Tech students liked questions with one answer.  They liked the order of diagramming, even though grammar was a lot more complex than they had been taught in the past. There were surface structure and deep structure and context to be considered, but they had been taught the English language was reducible to diagrams.

I realize today that my first class as a student teacher was probably over-represented with students of an “authoritarian  predisposition,” as psychologists name it. They preferred the apparently more orderly world of grammar to the evidently more ambiguous world of character analysis. They liked order and organization more than diversity and complexity, as Karen Stenner describes it:

Authoritarianism is a deep-seated, relatively enduring psychological predisposition to prefer—indeed, to demand—obedience and conformity, or what I call “oneness and sameness,” over freedom and diversity. Authoritarianism is substantially heritable—about 50 percent heritable, according to empirical studies of identical twins reared together and apart, a standard technique for separating out the influence of nature vs. nurture.. https://psmag.com/news/authoritarianism-the-terrifying-trait-that-trump-triggers

Stenner describes this predisposition without value judgment, but believes it helps explain why a certain percentage of voters remain loyal to certain political leaders regardless of day-to-day misstatements and missteps. They identify with the predisposition behind the politics. Stenner, a political psychologist and behavioral economist, was cited in Anne Applebaum’s unsettling book, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism released this past summer (2020).

As a career English teacher I have discovered we treat language with the same predispositions as we treat politics and the economy.  Language may be literal or metaphorical, transparent or ambiguous.  We read language as “originalists” and “fundamentalists” or we read it as “contextualists” and “literary theorists.” For some readers the first and last books of the Bible (Genesis and Revelation) are literal moments in time that explain our origins and our ends. For some they are are narratives symbolic of our struggle with good and evil and the pivotal role of God in our history.  To a large extent our personalities determine how we interpret what we read and how we use historical documents to shed light on our present circumstances.

In the originalist reading of the U.S. Constitution, the language “the right to bear arms” means every kind of weapon imaginable. To the contextualist, the wording does not anticipate the AK-47 in the hands of private citizens. Therefore the law or amendments have to clarify the language for the present day.  This is an act of finesse with language that many authoritarian predispositions will not tolerate.

In the literalist reading of The Revelation to St. John there are all kinds of signs for our present day even though the book was written nearly two thousand years ago. Chapters 12-14 is replete with mythical beasts who are expected to represent anything from the Roman Catholic Church to the European Union, to the Roman Empire. Much more speculation as to what the “Mark of the Beast” represents, because “no one can buy or sell who does not have that mark” (13:17).”  The prospect of having credit card identification on our bodies has caused all kinds of furor about “the Beast” controlling our lives. The Beast also bears the number “666,” and we know how much mischief is associated with that fateful numeral.  Conforming ancient texts to modern contexts is a tendency of the literal reader.

The possibility of numerous interpretations of texts can not be tolerated by the authoritarian predisposition. To them, the text is sacred and opening up its possibilities is tampering.  If we accept the dispute of how to read as a psychological one, we can understand why argument or evidence may not be received well by those of this predisposition. It is the discomfort and disconnect of our method of reading that is alarming, not the mere facts.

Stenner argues that the divide between the authoritarian predisposition and libertarian predisposition is not moral or intellectual, but cultural and psychological. It requires mutual tolerance and understanding to bridge the divide:

It is important to recognize that authoritarian predisposition is another way of being human and not intrinsically/necessarily evil. It is a natural variation in human “political character,” largely heritable and relatively immutable, and, most importantly, pretty much immune to—and, in fact, more likely to be aggravated by—democratic experiences/socialization and the promotion of multiculturalism.  https://psmag.com/news/authoritarianism-the-terrifying-trait-that-trump-triggers

For those who have tried to convert their friends by apparently rational argument, this is a clue about why those arguments have failed. It is not the message but the underlying view of the world that prevents us from crossing some political/ economic lines. The world does not look right from the other side. Too much is lost by accepting the opposing view.

The bridge across the predispositions consists of collaborations based on a shared need and desire for unity as well as the avoidance of harsh and polarizing rhetoric:

Shared social institutions, practices, and experiences; unifying celebrations; common rites; etc. are more what I had in mind … alongside less appearance of/public airing of political conflict and partisanship.

The theory of predispositions would explain why our political positions are so intractable, why no one wants to be convinced.  We each have a secure way to see the world and do not want anyone to mess with it. As the pendulum swings we get to enjoy a period of power and self-satisfaction. As it swings back, we are disturbed and want a change of leadership. We can not expect collaboration to be natural and comfortable as long as we expect everyone to see it through our eyes. We are not constituted to love what some people deplore.

As a student teacher I failed to grasp what my students needed. In response to their pleas I introduced them to “transformational grammar,” which completely upset the traditional grammar they had been taught. It was systematic, but less predictable.  They were not pacified, and I was still mystified.  I had a lot to learn about the predispositions of technical high school students.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

by

On Stolen Lands and Backs

O beautiful, to make amends
For our abhorrent acts
Our country built by labor forced
On stolen lands and backs
America, repent for this
Repair and say what’s true
Let equity our promise be
Declare these truths anew

(Nerissa Nields, https://www.facebook.com/TheNields/posts/america-the-beautiful-revised-lyricso-beautiful-for-spacious-skiesfor-amber-wave/10158434437015751/)

If we are to live by principles of our forefathers, then we must know the human frailty of our forefathers and mothers. The verse of America the Beautiful” that ends “God mend thy every flaw” naturally flows into the verse above of Nerissa Nields’ “America the Beautiful.”

“O Beautiful to make amends” reflects both the extraction of Native peoples’ lands and the enslavement of a race kidnapped from their homeland.  “[S]tolen lands” recalls the dominance of conquering powers from Ghengis Khan to 19th century European imperialism. Ours was a gradual displacement of the Indian tribes, almost unremarkable.  “A country built by labor forced” echoes the enslavement of subdued peoples from the time of the Exodus to the Spanish overrunning of Latin America.

How did this “extraction and exploitation” (as Walter Johnson, author of The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the violent History of the United States, calls it) escape notice in our textbooks, where we noted the brutality of the Spanish with the Aztecs and Incas, but barely flinched at the displacement of the Osage and the Sioux in the Missouri Valley?  Why do we shake our heads at the enslavement of the Hebrews under Pharaoh in 13th century BCE, but consider the enslaved African as a fixture of our nineteenth century economy?

Understanding that the birthplace of modern democracy was also the site of “Indian removal” from most of the west disrupts the narrative of “manifest destiny” we have cultivated in our textbooks. The enduring brutality of slavery both ante- and post-bellum disrupts a false narrative of increasing toleration of African-Americans from one decade to the next. As the lyrics say, “Repair and say what’s true.” We need a clear-eyed perspective on our shadowy history narrative, and a willingness to accept the original sins of our early and present history.

“Declare these truths anew,” the verse ends.  White supremacy remains obdurate in the face of history.  Consciously or unconsciously we have dismissed this sordid history, because we consider Native and African-American peoples a lower grade of humanity. Our gestures of affirmative action or reparations have been condescending, as if we had done more than they deserve. The time has come to bury this guilt, we reason. We have done more than decent people can  expect.

Only when we can see humanity in the eyes of our darker brothers and sisters can we comprehend the shame and abuse we have inflicted over the generations.  Repentance goes a little deeper than “Sorry about that.”  It requires a hunger for understanding and resolve to listen for the residual offenses.  Can there be reparations? Perhaps, if the circumstances ask for it, but not payoffs intended to settle the score. We can not buy our way out of human carnage.

That’s why I like the concluding lines of this verse:

Let equity our promise be
Declare these truths anew

The words  suggest a heightened concern in the future, not a “that settles it” attitude. I think we are too quick to claim we have put all offense behind us, not appreciating that the hearts of offender and victim are not easily changed.  Relationships heal only with persistent attention.

The power of these added verses to “America the Beautiful” is in their juxtaposition of glory and infamy.  In no sense does our recognition of racism compromise our love of all things beautiful. It is an amalgam of justice and brutality that makes our country what it is.  What we make of this checkered history is what makes us both flawed and stunning.