Literacy: Written

Writing about the purposes and standards for writing.

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Down the Spiritual Ladder

Until I was about thirty-eight I thought that faith was about ascending a spiritual ladder like going to college and graduate school. I wouldn’t have called it that, but in retrospect that is what I thought it was. My life was changed when I flunked out of a spiritual experience, a failure at a spiritual community. But that is not what this story is about.

More than a decade after my “spiritual failure” I was a leader in the Summer Institute, maybe my third or fourth such institute since I had come to Eastern Michigan University. National Writing Project Summer Invitational Institutes have been among the most rewarding experiences of my high school and college teaching careers. It had been my dream to lead such an institute, and my appointment as a professor of literacy education at EMU made it happen.

The first challenge in the Summer Institute is to establish a safe environment for the graduate students (who are also K-12 English teachers) to share their writing. One way is for the leaders, including me, to share their own writing during the Institute. Here is what I wrote about sharing in the institute:

More likely we (especially the males) are all hoping the writing does not get too personal, and the discussion stays on the cognitive level.  But writing may sweep over rational boundaries. In 1998 I felt compelled to write a poem about the troubled home run king, Roger Maris, and in the middle of reading it out loud, began inexplicably to bawl.  Beyond the humiliation of crying about a baseball player long dead, I was also a co-leader of the Institute, and had demonstrated my fragility to colleagues I had only known for perhaps two weeks.  If I learned anything from it, it was that such outbursts should not be dreaded, but in fact welcomed for their palliative effect. I came, I cried, I survived.

When teachers who had attended the Institute recalled that summer, the first thing they would remember is how I cried over Roger Maris. This is embarrassing on so many levels. First: I was in charge of the institute. Second: I was among only three males in a group of 15-20 teachers. Third I had succumbed while reading my story of Roger Maris, a boyhood hero, but one of the more hostile and ornery New York Yankees in 1961, the year he broke Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record. Fourth: From my point of view I had more inspiring teaching moments that summer.

On the other hand, what is more meaningful to a writer than to capture a vulnerable moment of his life?  I actually had a breakthrough to realize that I identified with one of the least popular Yankees.  I would have preferred to write about Mickey Mantle, a beloved  Hall-of-Fame, beloved outfielder, but instead I identified with the sullen Roger Maris. My story revealed that I identified with the outcast, the misunderstood one.  Even now I realize that I was always more like Maris than Mantle.

Spiritual growth may come from a descent down the ladder of education, social status, or professional growth.  I saw that I could expose a fragile part of myself without losing my status as an educator. Many others shared their stories of vulnerability during that summer and learned that their group status remained intact and their writing still vivid and eloquent. They learned to do that, in part, from seeing their leader crumble and survive.

The way down is the way up the spiritual ladder. Really “the way up” is a myth.  There is no spiritual ladder. That is what I learned in the summer of 1998.

 

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Writing as Blessing

Yea that form shall grow and spread in beauty:

                  The earth shall move inside what’s sweet,

                                    Shall come again to us,

                   And set us right upon our feet.

[“Early Flowers,” Edmund Clarke, A Book of Psalms, p. 95]

We all have the impulse to tell our stories or sing our songs.  What we shape with our hands has the potential to bless us and others, when it is made for God.  If the spirit of God can move inside the scriptures and inspire us, then our own words are likewise a temple God can inhabit.  It may be a simple temple, unadorned, yet sweet with understanding.

This was no doubt the purpose of the Psalms chanted every week in the synagogue. Some of them are quite homely, but all the while sincere and made for daily use. They blessed the singers. God inhabited the words and they came back to “set us right upon our feet.” [Edmund Clarke, A Book of Psalms, 95].  And by a miracle of tradition and canonization, they return to bless us today.

Our poetry reflects the same desires as the Psalms: to praise, to remember, to grieve, to beg for mercy, to cry out in anguish or anger.  In poetry we express thoughts that words can barely capture, but we resort to words as our best hope to touch God and others. When we want to reach the windows of heaven, but feel they are beyond reach, we try with poetry.

Why was it necessary to tell the same Gospel story over and over?  The story of Jesus was conveyed at least four times, to “grow and spread in beauty”[Clarke] with each version.  Each version had the touch of the author and the language that could be inhabited by the spirit to “set us right upon our feet.” We can choose our favorite Gospel, but no single one is definitive. They each have a life of their own. So do our stories, as we struggle to make us understandable to ourselves or to our expected readers.

The ultimate purposes of writing are to be blessed and even bless others. The quaint idea that writing is some kind of ornament that we put on a shelf comes from the classical tradition, which hallowed only a few writers. In that tradition, writing (other than correspondence) was considered as the work of the elite. Writers were like priests with a sacred calling. No one could aspire to the calling, they were born into it like the Levites. The Levites could bless the people, but only in a second hand way. They were the only ones to offer the sacrifices and receive the word of the Lord. Likewise writing in the eighteenth century was thought to be for the elite, the uniquely talented.

The Psalms and the Gospels transcended the idea of priesthood  and holy places and brought the blessing to every singer and  listener. We are all psalmists and narrators of the good news. We live in the tradition of democratic blessings.  We can write psalms and gospels with high expectations. It is no longer a privilege; it is a right.

We can write with expectations, not for eternal fame, but for earthly witness. Mark probably had humble expectations for his Gospel, but he became famous as  the inspiration for Matthew and Luke, and his story took off from there. Since John wrote his “good news” many have aspired to write their own versions, and write it they should.  What good news do you have to tell?

Donald Murray says, “Writing is an act of faith.” We begin by believing we will have something to say, even though some days we think we don’t.  Writing is risky and hard work, but no different than other new ventures, like walking and distance running or taking up a musical instrument.  We begin with faith that we will understand something new. Our faith is most always rewarded.

You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves in your heart–your stories, visions, memories, songs: your truth, your version of things, in your voice.      Anne Lamott

Writing is a blessing open to all.  Reading that writing is a blessing to all.  So write and be blessed.

 

 

 

 

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We Didn’t Start the Fire

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning (Billy Joel)

Politicians and journalists are fond of using hyperbolae, when they can not carry out their literal intentions. I was reminded of that when I read the Post-Dispatch editorial censuring Fox news host Jesse Watters for his metaphorical use of “ambush” and “kill shot” to describe how he would attack Anthony Fauci in an interview.  Sounds like a journalist’s whim, until he asks his viewers, “Now you get that footage to us. You get it to Fox. . .  make a name for yourselves.”   This is the language of provocation.

Fox may argue it was no more than a metaphor, a rhetorical, not a literal attack, but they know full well that there are some in their audience who just want permission or incitement to seize vigilante justice and use real bullets when words are inadequate. Fox is playing with fire, and they know it.

Do I mean they are literally taking foolish risks with inflammatory materials? No, but I see similarities between those who take risks with fire and those who egg on their audience to do things they would never do themselves–assassinate a public health official.  How much easier it would be for an unstable member of Watters’ audience to pick off a public official with an AK47, than to trap them in an interview that leads them to make foolish generalizations and then rhetorically nab them while the cameras are rolling.

President Trump was also fond of waging rhetorical war with the subconscious desire to literally take people out. He wished he could be allowed in a room alone with a whistleblower who revealed his crooked dealings with the Ukraine. Was this hyperbolae or an actual threat to a whistleblower, who is protected by law?

After the FBI uncovered a plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, she wrote that Trump’s violent rhetoric generated regular threats against her and her family.

He promised a civil war if he was impeached (a real war or literal?). He told his followers to “fight like hell” if the Electoral Collage vote went against him.  Did he mean legal protest or armed insurrection? Clearly his inaction during the insurrection suggested tacit approval of the violence.

The track record of metaphors becoming violence is alarmingly consistent during the Trump administration. The difference between the metaphor and violent action has been slim, because depth of anger against President Trump’s opponents has lingered just below the surface of legal conduct.

We know the President will hide behind the metaphor of “fight like hell,” when he is charged with inciting insurrection. Of course he never intended the violence that followed that speech. If so, why did he stand by for five hours before urging the insurrectionists to dissipate? If so, why did be promise “civil war” if he was impeached in 2021?  How many metaphors can he use without culpability? Is language free of consequences? Or are you allowed to yell “fire” in a crowded movie theater, when there is none?

A rhetorical analysis of the opinion makers on Fox news would probably yield similar hyperbolic language intended only to engage and excite their audience. That is their style of journalism, and they have a right to it. Still that style can easily rise to incitement, and journalists have to be responsible for the consequences of their rhetoric. Be careful what you wish for, Fox News.  You may find listeners eager for permission for violence.  “We didn’t start the fire   . . .”
Oh, yes you did!

 

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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.

 

 

 

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St. Louis: Can this heart be saved?

“In St. Louis the history of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare upon the living.” (436)

Perhaps this is Walter Johnson’s conclusion from his two hundred-year survey of racial history of St. Louis: The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States.

He says in the first chapter it is a history of “extraction and eviction,” and he draws parallels to the methods applied to Native peoples and Black peoples.  Wherever the peoples resided, if they stood in the way of imperial development, they were removed.  Whatever the peoples had to offer, from beaver trading to land ripe for development, it was seized as a matter of privilege.  The assault of Black homes in East St. Louis in 1917 was comparable to the assault of Native peoples prior to the Civil War:

Consciously or not, the murderous white men of East St. Louis employed the tactics of their military forebears in the West– of Nathaniel Lyon on Bloody Island and, even more pointedly, William Harney at Ash Hollow in the Nebraska Territory. They burned their victims out and shot them as they ran. They drove them out of their houses and off their land (241).

What was accepted by powerful white people in the nineteenth century about Native peoples, was practiced with impunity with Black people in the twentieth century: “extraction and eviction.”

The question implicit in the entire history recounted by Johnson is “How are the White elite of today scripted by the actions of their forebears?” What suppositions and impulses are guided by the imperial assumptions of the past? How do the citizens of St. Louis break the pattern of exploitation and turn to regeneration of the neighborhoods and the victimized residents who live in them?

As the title suggests, the patterns of violence in this one city were duplicated in cities across the country.  St. Louis might have initiated the patterns of dispossession of the nonwhite races, but they were replicated in Chicago, in Atlanta, in New Orleans, and across the land.

The latter chapters of Broken Heart reveal the failure of federal programs of redevelopment, of block grants,  of fair housing, of low-income housing, all targeting disadvantaged people, but benefiting only the advantaged wealthy.  The efforts of the Great Society and Nixon’s “Black Capitalism” were for naught.  The nightmare of the past seems to preside over the failure of reform.

In his Epilogue Johnson turns to the Black-initiated projects of rehabilitation of housing, of art and culture, and occupational education.  He lists dozens of small projects with promise and possibility, such as:

  • Art House Collective – North St. Louis (mental health support and meals for residents)
  • Perennial – repurposing discarded objects and community education
  • Solidarity Economy St. Louis and Citizen Carpentry – networks of cooperation and mutual support- used bricks for a spiral pathway on “Tillie’s Corner,” site of a beloved neighborhood grocery
  • Granite City Arts and Design Collective  – east of the river – urban gardening and sustainable agriculture

Whether symbolic or substantial, Johnson applauds the spirit of hope and wisdom to find the real needs of people.  Many of these visionaries have become close friends of the author, because he spent time in the neighborhoods he wrote about and brought his students to contribute to their rehabilitation.

Recently Johnson was interviewed by Tef Poe about his book on Facebook. Poe is the creator of Hands-Up United, a “books and breakfast” program which meets biweekly around the city, bringing together kids and adults for food, fellowship and free books.”  He also sponsors an annual art show for local artists.

They bantered like old friends, occasionally forgetting their audience, but displaying hope for North St. Louis, often absent in Johnson’s history. He revealed that his aspiration for this neighborhood was an arts and culture center that would attract local talent along with an appreciative following.

The Epilogue includes the failure of St. Louis to break the pattern of police brutality, but it ends with a survey of local restoration, of small, dedicated efforts to change history in North St. Louis.  We get the feeling that we are not imprisoned by history as long as there are sensitive reformers to write a counter-narrative. It is an astonishing conclusion after a review of centuries of extraction and eviction.  We discover that Walter Johnson uncovered the dregs of racial capitalism to recover the spirit of some who are rewriting it.   There is hope in self-regeneration.

Whether the white power structure can be re-invented to reverse years of white supremacy remains in question. The disturbing  echo of the Walter Brown saga, the exoneration of officer Jason Stockley accused of murdering Anthony Lamarr Smith (2011), suggests that the momentum of history is inescapable. Johnson chooses to chronicle this event at the beginning of the Epilogue, preventing our leap into optimism.

Since the writing of The Broken Heart we have the story of George Floyd to add to the narrative of Blue on Black.  Diverse protesting groups are seizing the moment to strive for change, but there is yet the “law and order” theme of the Presidential campaign to serve as a counter-point.  We are still writing the Epilogue of The Broken Heart of America in our narrative of the Fall, 2020.

 

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The Politics of Capitalization

What gets capitalized in the English language may be both quibbling and consequential.  Whether we call ourselves “Democrats” or “democrats” certainly matters, since one is a political party and the other is a political philosophy. The distinction between black people and Black people is now under consideration.

When we consider color of skin, we know there are many light-skinned people who identify as “Black,” so skin color is not a defining factor of race.  We need to make a distinction between the color “black” and the race “Black.”

The Associated Press has turned the rules of capitalization into a political nightmare by deciding to capitalize “Black,” but not “white,”  when referring to race. Not to mention it will confuse millions of students of the English language, who will assume capitalization now refers to race.  The AP style gods reason that “black” is a pigment whereas “Black” is a race.  “White” is not so much a race as a pigment, a diverse group of people with similar skin color.

Capitalization of certain nouns is supposed to indicate whether they are “proper,” meaning a specific person, place or idea, or “common,” meaning the name is assigned to a larger class of person, place or idea. For example, we refer to “Doctor Fauci,” but we would say “Fauci is also a doctor.”  It is not so much an elitist distinction, as a contrast between specific and general.

The AP has made an elitist distinction between “Black” and “White” by saying Black is more like a race, whereas white is more like a skin color.  This sets up a hierarchy between names that we may not intend when we refer to “black” or “white.”  No one intends to comment merely on the color of skin when they recognize someone as “White.” We mean “White” person as opposed to “Black” person. Neither term actually defines a race, because we know that a black-pigmented person can have many shades of skin and varieties of bone structures. “White” people can be European, Latin American, or South African with varieties of skin shades and bone structures.  The names are not really racial distinctions, but we use them like racial distinctions in our everyday language. We capitalize them because they refer to specific groups of people, at least in our minds.

When we use the adjectives “black” and “white” loosely we describe  people according to race, even though we can not be sure of their racial backgrounds. Yet if we say “There were a lot of white bodies on the beach at the beginning of the summer,” we know we are referring to pigment. If we say “There were more Blacks than Whites at the protest demonstration” then we know we are referring to race. In neither case have we academically classified people according to race.

If we just let “Black people” and “White people” refer to the same kind of thing, we will avert three problems.

  1. We will not make “Black people” appear to be more important or distinguished than “white people.” This keeps the “proud to be white” community from taking offense.
  2. We will acknowledge that skin pigment is not the only defining characteristic of both the Black and the White races. The names are merely a shorthand for identifying race. This will make the anthropologists happy.
  3. We will make it easier for writers to remember when to capitalize. This will make every student learning to capitalize remain calm from our consistency.

In the interests of  racial equity, anthropological accuracy, and stylistic simplicity, let us capitalize both “Black” and “White” when we refer to informal race groupings.

 

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Open Schools, Contributing Communities

Does the “re-opening” means school  mean “school as usual,” while “not opening” means parents are locked down in their homes? 

We have been trapped into thinking how much risk is acceptable for getting children out of the house all day.  We assume we can’t have student health and economic health, because the present hours of schooling make it impossible.  Parents want to be done with the responsibility of education, and teachers want their schedules to be as predictable are they were a year ago.

Nobody gets to avoid inconvenience, if we are to maximize both education and health for the coming school year. A good plan would inconvenience everyone, and make education a community responsibility, as ideally it would be.  It would ask for contributions of time, energy and money that would make everyone feel a little compromised, because they couldn’t live in a manner to which they have been accustomed. Yet, just as we have learned to appreciate the value of seclusion, along with its annoyances, we could find value in education being shared across the community. 

Here is a proposal for schooling for 2020-21, not an irrevocable plan for school reform.  Yet we could learn something about education in the coming school year, whether the plan is successful or not. For example:

Learning is more of a present-and-practice process, than a present-and-memorize process. This would not be startling to most educators, but to the general population learning has always seemed like an assimilation of facts to be regurgitated later. It makes standardized testing more significant than it really is. This proposal is based on an orientation-and-formative practice model of learning.

The logistical problem is social distancing and the need for supervised space for students when they are not in school. This proposal advocates split sessions with students in school everyday for half a day.  It takes advantage of likely vacant space and employable personnel during the gradual recovery of the economy for the next twelve months. According to the CDC guidelines, it is an educational environment with “more risk” than virtual classes and less risk than classes with no social distancing or limitation on numbers of students in the classroom. (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/schools-childcare/schools.html?deliveryName=USCDC_2067-DM28938)

It seems safe to assume that there will be available space and employees for the next year, as the economy recovers.  The space is an urgent need, since the entire student body can not occupy their school at once. If we operate on split session, we need a place for kids to learn for the other half of the day, other than the home.

This proposal would establish “integral learning centers” outside of the schools for the 2-3 hours/ day students are not in school, because of split sessions. The split sessions would run roughly from 9-12 p.m. and 1-4 p.m. Two hours plus a lunch hour would be spent in independent learning centers around the community. For students in the morning classes at school, lunch would be served at school after classes.

An integral learning center would meet the following requirements:

  • at least 1,500 square feet of space that can be divided into two rooms  of 750 sq feet, with tables and chairs age appropriate for 30 students to use for independent learning (or whatever space is required for six-foot social distancing)
  • available restrooms for students only
  • bookshelves to contain 100 paperback age-appropriate books, both fiction and non-fiction
  • a part-time site supervisor, who will ensure the hygiene and order of these classrooms

The host for the integral learning center is responsible for the maintenance, not the learning in these spaces. The feeder schools will be responsible for the hiring of tutors, attendance/ lunch coordinators and the supply of wireless devices adequate for online learning.

Both the integral learning centers and the schools associated with them should follow the CDC guidelines for a safe learning environment: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/schools-childcare/schools.html?deliveryName=USCDC_2067-DM28938

Schools will have to decide how to best use the critical three hours students are in their buildings.  Some obvious adaptations would be the integration of Math and Science along with integration of English and Social Studies, forming two 75-minute blocks of learning. Some common readings can make the disciplines connect.  Teachers will rely on work done at the Independent Learning Centers to move their curriculum at a reasonable pace. Project-based learning and e-classroom platforms can connect the school classroom with the Independent Learning site.

Not addressed here is the arts curriculum: music, visual arts and drama. These are essential to all levels (K-12) and should not be neglected. Arts can be integrated with core subjects, but individual instruction would have to be addressed at the proposed Integral learning centers. Could they include studios or practice rooms?  The logistics are daunting, but every effort should be made to support the arts, even in a skeletal curriculum. Some studio work could be done at the school from 4:30- 6:30 p.m., the same slot as inter-scholastic athletics.

Some contributions of federal and state government

  • funding for businesses/ public institutions making space and a site supervisor available for learning centers
  • funding for age-appropriate circulating libraries at each learning center
  • funding for extra bus drivers for transportation between schools and learning centers
  • joint funding with school districts for staffing of learning centers

Some contributions of local education:

  • students are taught in 3-hour shifts: 9-12 and 1-4
  • for teachers of grades 4-12, project based learning with daily targets, will be required
  • some method of communication with students’ off-campus tutors
  • each school would hire 2-3 tutors for each of 10-20 learning centers, and an attendance/lunch monitor to supervise students from 9 a.m – 12:00 p.m and  1- 4:00 p.m. They would receive competitive wages of $15-$20 hour. No tutor would carry a student load of more than 15. Tutors would receive mandatory training of at least five hours before taking full responsibilities. High school students could receive appropriate credit for tutoring younger students or those struggling academically.
  • provide Chromebooks or wireless learning devices for students without computer access at the learning center or at home.
  • hire more drivers and set up bus schedules for getting students to learning centers and back to school or home again.
  • many special education students may have to remain in resource rooms for much of the school day; integration with mainstream population would be a school-based decision; community visitors could enhance learning and experience.
  • physical education would be a school-based decision, possibly incorporated with lunch hour.
  • inter-scholastic athletics (assuming they exist) practice would run from 4:30 – 6:30 p.m 

Some contributions for parents

  • students will only be in school or learning centers from 9-4
  • students may still need help at home with assignments
  • students will have to keep strict bus schedules

Some contributions from the community

  • businesses and public institutions (e.g. libraries, senior education centers, recreation centers) would allocate about 1,500 sq feet for two learning centers each with 15 students/ center. Some compensation for the space and an onsite supervisor would be funded externally, along with an onsite library of 100 age-appropriate books, which could be integrated or supplemental to student learning. The amount of space would have to be consistent with social distancing.
  • tutors/ monitors could be hired from the semi-employed population of high school, college students, retired seniors and other part-time workers.

There are  dozens of ways a program like this could fail. It depends heavily on seamless collaboration between schools, transportation systems, integral learning centers, and the community at large to keep students safe within a dynamic system. Of course, schools and communities could make less risky adaptations, but these are proposed for maximum coverage of time spent out of school. 

If parents have learned anything in the past three months, it is that education can be a lonely, exhausting job. There is no safe way to re-open schools in the fall without full collaboration of community members: parents, site supervisors, teachers, tutors, bus drivers, etc. Nothing proposed here is for free, but the attention to,  and support for, student learning goes beyond hourly wage. It involves noticing and a willingness to help a child adjust to a new learning environment. Intangibles such as caring can not be built into any proposal, but they are indispensable to its success.

We can have re-opening of both schools and economy, if we can all  assume our share of responsibility for education. This proposal calls on the willingness  of citizens to step up to the challenge.

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Mother’s Day

Flutter, feed, repeat

A brownish-black-ear-muffed mother

Eurasian sparrow fluttered

In front of the round opening,

Of our blue-roofed birdhouse

 With singular snatch, gulp, re-opening,

The beak poked through.

 

Flutter, feed, repeat

Another beak appeared behind the first

The seed offering consumed so abruptly

Lunch merged into dinner into breakfast

Mom fluttering, feeding, coaxing

The fledglings into the light.

Suspending, lingering, depleting

Calories of flutter-energy

 

Mother’s Day: it passed the same as Saturday

Flutter, feed, repeat, without relief

Inconsiderate fledglings

To ignore the occasion

Without so much as a card!

The flight-feed pattern persisted

The heads poked out further,

Lunching, not launching.

 

Anti-climactically, we found the thankless chicks

Grazing our back lawn on Monday

The extraordinary moment had passed

Without fanfare

Occasionally they taxied across the yard

Briefly sporting wingmanship

Under supervision of the exhausted  flight instructor

Glad to be done with flutter, feed, repeat.

 

Prose Rendition (prior to poetry)

On an ordinary Saturday afternoon, we sat on our patio staring at the blue-roofed birdhouse in the middle of our backyard. Something extraordinary was happening. A grayish brown Eurasian sparrow was fluttering at the entrance to the house where something had poked its beak, something that had yet to experience the world beyond the birdhouse.

Every thirty seconds the mother rose up from the squirrel baffle under the birdhouse and fluttered in front of the round opening, apparently offering food to the junior sparrow. Junior was poking his head a little more into the sun, each time mom fluttered in front of the opening.  And right behind him was another beak that occasionally grabbed a morsel from mom. In spite of this neither of the fledglings offered more than the open beak to the fresh air, no matter how many times mom returned to the birdhouse with another course of seeds.

As the ritual wore on through the afternoon, we wondered how long before the mother was exhausted or the youngsters took flight. It seemed clear that the feeding at the front entrance was calculated to coax them out to where they would have to spread their wings or hit the ground. Except for the timeless virtue of retirement and the confinement of  the CoVid-19 pandemic, we probably would have lost interest in the outcome, so monotonous was the ritual of flutter, feed, repeat. We even shared vicariously the exhaustion of the fluttering mother, lingering, suspending in a flight pattern, depleting every calorie of energy she had.

The following day was Mother’s Day, and I thought how satisfactory it would be for the young to relieve their Mom, as our young attempt to do once a year. Flutter, feed, repeat went on for the entire day. We noted a couple of breaks, when mom simply disappeared, and the head appeared in the opening without the expected reward. We walked past our sliding glass door all day hoping to witness the liberation of the mother and the youngsters in the headlong act of desperation. Nothing.

It was Monday morning we discovered the chick sparrows grazing the grass and occasionally taxiing across the yard. The miracle had unfolded beyond our notice. We were disappointed that the extraordinary even had passed without fanfare. The mother had taken to the ground for the next stage of flight training. We felt a physical release of expectation and a sympathetic sigh of relief that the ritual of flutter, feed, repeat had ended.

 

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Disarm Your Language!

Whereas slurs and insults have already been declared offensive language,

While rhetorical war continues to rage in the halls of Congress, on the platforms of social media, in religious denominations and institutions of higher education, and across our dinner tables.

And labeling language remains accessible to all and avoided by few and

Whereas a high season of labeling looms (an impeachment trial, a Presidential campaign) ,

Therefore we propose to curtail labeling as a weapon against partisans.

We challenge partisans to lay down weapons of language such as, but not limited to, the following:

words containing “ism” and “ist” for example: racist   sexist  globalist  classist  elitist socialist  fascist  communist  

words beginning with “anti” and “pro” alleging bias, for example:  anti-police  anti-intellectual

anti-military  anti-God  anti-gay  anti-immigrant  anti-American  anti-science  pro-death   

words containing “phobia,” for example: homophobia  xenophobia  technophobia

words alleging polar positions, for example: race war/ race card   class war   politically correct unpatriotic  radical  totalitarian  

[Feel free to add your own labels]

And finally, we declare zero tolerance for those that disregard this standard of decent language.

Speakers and writers armed with labeling language are a threat to civil life.  “That comment was racist!”  “His court decisions are anti-God.”  “Your opinions instigate race war.” “That proposal is anti-immigrant!” Such comments incense our feelings more than our minds.

Labeling is a word bomb. It plants a name on an individual and sets off all the negative associations we link to that name. Instead of understanding the individual, we are distracted by the shrapnel from the bomb, the connotations of a word like “unpatriotic.”

Let’s stop the nonsense. Take a lesson from the infamous labeler Senator Joe McCarthy, who aroused terror in a free society in the 1950’s with the incendiary label “communist.”  Today we regularly ignite our discourse communities with inflammatory labels.  It has become more convenient to declare  “–ism” or “–ist” or “–phobia” than to describe the behavior we object to.  Trivializing and efficiency override reflection and explanation.

We know when a civil argument is about to leave the rails; the discharge of labels is one such occasion–a reckless acceleration that antagonists take personally. It is shorthand for claims without evidence, for headlines without the backstory, for tweet without elaboration.  It is ideal for the sound bites, not civil discourse. Disarming our rhetoric can moderate brusqueness in order to pay attention and  be attended to.

Every “ism” and “anti” has a story behind it, which we often dismiss with a single word.  Was it “racism” that caused a police officer to shoot a woman in her home in Fort Worth last week or was that the “anti-police” bias in the reporting of the press? When a university bans a speaker because of his or her message is it “anti-intellectual,” violating free speech, or “No-platforming” excluding noxious discourse on campus (https://aeon.co/ideas/is-it-legitimate-to-ban-speakers-from-college-campuses)? The clues are in the backstory.

Most prefixed and suffixed labels are weaponized, designed to put targets on people.  It defames character, only to be answered by counter-defamation or defensiveness. In neither case can meaningful dialogue ensue, only punches and counter-punches.

At the very least, we should describe behavior instead of labeling.  Instead of calling a politician “anti-gay” refer to him as the opponent of civil rights legislation to protect LGTB individuals from housing discrimination.  That is the kind of evidence that holds up under scrutiny.  Yes, it takes more words, and the words lack punch, but that is the point. Words should be used to describe rather than punch.

And what if we own our labels? A certain majority of women want to be known as “feminists,” and yet the label can be used to construe all kinds of behavior demeaning to men, for example claiming men can not be victims of sexual harassment.  Then it becomes a weapon. It is safe to own your labels, but unsafe to be labelled. Likewise many of us are happy to be politically correct, but an increasing number may consider it a kind of shaming that traps us in our casual use of language.  We may be politically correct, but we don’t want that label to be used against us.  Therefore, labeling could be permitted if it is self-labeling.

“To understand everything is to forgive everything” (Madame de Stael, 1766-1817), often paraphrased as “To know all is to forgive all.” Understanding nurtures patience and patience, understanding.  If we take the time to tell the story or explain the behavior, and our opposition summons the patience to listen, we have the makings of dialogue.  Forgiveness is found in the details.   Forgiveness does not guarantee we will agree, but we might accept the good will of the other. We  make a treaty, we go on.

Citizens, lay down your labels!  It is a little less satisfying to reply “Can you give an example?” than to shout “elitist,” but it may open possibilities that would otherwise be closed. It takes more patience to listen to the back story than to brand a writer as “politically correct.” We appeal for zero-tolerance on name-callers. And we appeal for patience, not accusations.  Accept no labels! Throw down your weaponized language!  Listen to your opponents!

You might actually learn something.

Unofficial Committee for Language Disarmament

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Apostro-plectic

Punctuation has limited material or spiritual benefits, except perhaps for editors, lawyers and some mechanically-inclined English teachers. Yet it seems to rise to cosmic importance occasionally in my Facebook community and even in the world news. I draw the line at apostrophes, however.

A grammar-obsessed vigilante — dubbed the “Banksy of punctuation” — is on a mission to put a full stop on rogue apostrophes in the UK, according to a report. The anonymous crusader risks doing jail time to roam the street at night, scrubbing grammatical miscues from businesses around Bristol, he told the BBC. “It’s more of a crime to have the apostrophes wrong in the first place,” he said.

What can you say about a crusader who defends the honor of apostrophes?  So gallant to protect the small and vulnerable? So selfless to edit without reward? So civil-minded to remove offense from the view of editors and proofreaders?  Do we all sleep better, knowing that apostrophes have found their place before or after the “s” or have been dislodged from their obscene pluralization’s [sic]?  Does this crusade touch our deep anguish for distasteful signage? Or is this obsessive-compulsive disorder under the veneer of cultivation?

This is a mark of punctuation that can be mistaken for a fleck on the page. A mark that hangs in space, swaying between letters that seem to disown it. An ambiguous mark that could mean a contraction, a plural, a possession, a plural possession, or, in its absence, a case of pronoun possession:

“It’s hard to know when ‘it’s’ loses its apostrophe.”

(In this example of a contraction (it is) and a pronoun possessive (its), the single quotation marks around “it’s” look suspiciously like apostrophes, adding to our despair.)

Some people find this exercise entertaining. They are variously called grammarians, linguists, grammar- Nazis, lawyers or obsessive proofreaders. They should be allowed their harmless recreations unless they inflict them on the casual and the carefree, the contented abusers of hanging commas. Then their obsession becomes our neurosis. We find apostrophes flitting through our prose with alarming inconsistency. We are haunted by the plural possessives and the plurals disguised as contractions. We pause, we parse, we puzzle, we perspire with perplexity.

And when these apostro-plectic crusaders afflict us with their preoccupation, I am driven to my own crusade: the banishment of apostrophes from English. After decades of circling “its” and “it’s” on student writing at every level of secondary and tertiary education, I am convinced the world would be a better place without apostrophes.

There are many languages which seem well-off without apostrophes. There are many devoted students of the English language who are still befuddled by them. There are many pluralized nouns that have been contaminated by them. There are many more cases of overuse than underuse of the annoying specks. There are many flecks on white paper that have been mistaken for them.

I cannot imagine how the absence of an apostrophe would confound my interpretation of a writer’s message. If I wrote “writers message,” I would have no trouble recognizing that phrase as a possessive, rather than a plural.  It only looks wrong, because we are conditioned to expect apostrophes. If I wanted multiple writers to have a message, I would say “writers messages” or the “message of many writers.” Without the apostrophe, plurals and possessives are identified by their context, the same way a programmed spell-checker recognizes and corrects them. The presence or absence of an apostrophe will never change how we pronounce words or interpret their intended use. How do we know that a word pronounced as “writers” in conversation is a plural or possessive? By its context in the sentence, not its spelling.

As for contractions, we know that “didnt” means “did not”, whether we acknowledge the absent “o” or not. If we abbreviate a word, for example as “Mr,” we don’t have to place an apostrophe to note the absence of four letters. We accept that the word can be abbreviated and pronounce it as if the letters were present. Contractions are nothing more than a special case of abbreviation.  The apostrophe is symbolic, but unnecessary.

The abolition of the apostrophe would save numerous characters in a manuscript, would acknowledge in written language what is already true in spoken language, would end the confusion of millions of writers of English, would relieve the wearisome labor of English teachers and editors, would save a week of language instruction in every academic year, and eliminate three pages of every stylebook for the end-users of English. The efficiency of the move is so mind-boggling, it is unfathomable what would prevent it.

Oh, yes, I forgot about the “Banksy of punctuation,” the ranters bereft of a reliable rant, the editors and lawyers whose work might be de-mystified, and the purists who declare wholesale change in English as moral depravity or, at best, sheer laziness. If this is the full catalogue of victims of the apostrophic rebellion, then I consider them collateral damage.

Its a pleasure to lay their troubled spirits to rest.