The Most Trusted Man in America?

New York Magazine's feature story this month ("America is a Joke") is on Jon Stewart, that most excellent host of The Daily Show. The article describes a typical day as Stewart and his staff write, rewrite, and edit a 30-minute show (it looks as fun and stressful as you'd imagine!)

Those of us who watch Stewart know him as a (hilarious) voice of reason during a time when the media seem to be pushing narrative over truth. We thought that the election of Obama would dull his comic edge, but quite the opposite has happened. The show is more relevant than ever:

His comedy is counterprogramming—postmodern entertainment but with a political purpose. As truth has been overrun by truthiness and facts trampled by lies, he and The Daily Show have become an invaluable corrective—he’s Cronkite, the most trusted man in America, although in keeping with the fragmented culture, he’s trusted by many fewer people, about 1.8 million viewers each night.

In the article, Stewart talks about his encounters with people in the media after the presidential election in 2000:

The more we got to meet people [in the media], it was—‘Oh! You’re f&@ing retarded! You don’t care!’ The pettiness of it, the strange lack of passion for any kind of moral or editorial authority, always struck me as weird. We felt like, we’re serious people doing an unserious thing, and they’re unserious people doing a very serious thing.

The article is a bit long, but it's definitely worth reading.

Colliding Worlds

There's an episode of Seinfeld where George's fiancée, Susan, has a short-lived friendship with Elaine. George doesn't like this. From his view, the two women are part of two different worlds, and he relates to them in two different ways. Around Susan, he is "Relationship George"; around Elaine, he is "Independent George." But if Susan and Elaine are friends, his worlds collide ("Relationship George," he says, "will kill Independent George!")

I was thinking of this today as a couple of my worlds collide. This morning I was featured on Writing Insight, a website dedicated to supporting new and aspiring authors. With my permission, my real name was used. When I was teaching, I was uncomfortable linking my real name to my blog or twitter stream for obvious reasons. In the same breath I might complain about conservative pundits and "it's"/"its" confusion.

I like this better, though: standing behind my own words and ideas; being the same person among my friends as I am among my family as I am among my colleagues. I've been faulted (complimented?) for being too honest, and I used to laugh at that idea. Maybe I thought that because I'm quiet, I withhold more than I share, and isn't that dishonest? But as my various circles collide--through wine tastings, through library functions, through the internet--I feel this great big world, the one we all share, finally coming into view.

The End of Men?

The Atlantic recently had a fascinating article, "The End of Men." Author Hanna Rosin chronicles and analyzes the shifting workplace and education dynamics and asks, "What if modern, postindustrial society is simply better suited to women?"

The gender imbalance at colleges has been growing: women make up something like 60% of the student body in 4-year bachelor programs. One reason, of course, is that men with a high school degree still make much more money than women with that same diploma. She needs to further her education simply to compete. But also, women seem better prepared for the demands of college. Rosin spoke to some students at the University of Missouri-Kansas City:

Burress, a cute, short, African American 24-year-old grad student who is getting a doctor-of-pharmacy degree, had many of the same complaints I heard from other young women. Guys high-five each other when they get a C, while girls beat themselves up over a B-minus. Guys play video games in each other’s rooms, while girls crowd the study hall. Girls get their degrees with no drama, while guys seem always in danger of drifting away.

This seems an apt metaphor: "drifting away." The comments following the article--many of them critical--suggested that our education system the past twenty or thirty years favors girls. Stereotypical masculine traits are devalued in favor of more feminine ones. Commenter Doug111 wrote,

This now begins in kindergarden[sic], with all male roughousing [sic] of any sort suppressed and belittled. Classes in first grade and on are taught so as to favor girls. Everywhere there are cheers when girls beat out boys and all is done to see that this happens time and again. The emasculation of boys really gets going by junior high when again girls are favored. Final exams are deemphasized. Massive grade inflation encourages diligent consistent plodding performance, which obedient little girls are good at, and gets them As and A+s now with no extra grade given for the ocassionally [sic]brilliant insight, mixed with less than total diligence in mundane assignments and pop quizzes that are typical of how brilliant boys tend to operate, and what the education system used to prize most of all.

He goes on to describe this trend as "positive discrimination." I think he raises interesting points. But I think this is part of a larger paradigm shift, one in which women--more than men--are adapting and taking the initiative. I see young women in school--they have one or two children and, sometimes, an unemployed husband. They are getting this degree to support their family, to gain stability, and more often than not they are working another job at the same time. I see young men--unattached, unburdened by children--drifting, unmotivated.

Toward the end of "The Poisonwood Bible," Orleanna Price, the mother, reflects on men, women, and history. Men, she says, are around for the beginning and the end; the birth and the death. They fire the shot that launches wars, they plant the flags. But women are there, too, between the lines. They're doing the laundry, teaching the kids, and comforting the ill. I think about those articles on marriage from a few months ago that I read and posted about. One of the writers suggested that, usurped of their traditional roles as providers and breadwinners, instead of adapting, many men will turn to hypermasculine behaviors. Violent, misogynistic. Orleanna described the danger of standing still, refusing to change--she was condemning the United States and men in general, and her husband in particular.

I do recommend reading "The End of Men" article in whole - it's long, but worth it.

Telling the Truth, Slant

This is new for me - I've finished a goal I set for myself with time to spare. Instead of procrastinating, instead of calling up my mom or a friend to meet for lunch, instead of catching up on the finale of "Grey's Anatomy," I chose to finish the task I'd assigned for myself. Now, this should be impressive to no one except myself; grownups do this every day, right? They don't need a supervisor breathing down their backs or some instantaneous positive feedback.

Practice and repetition makes habit, and I'd like to develop good habits. Clearly, all this talk of multitasking has me hyper-focused on how I conduct myself. Ultimately, of course, I want to apply these good habits--discipline--toward writing. Can I move forward with my plans given my current schedule? Is there room if I just become more disciplined? Or do I have to cut something out?

Tomorrow I'm leading a library book club discussion of one of my absolute favorites, The Poisonwood Bible (read about George Rede's experience with the book here). Kingsolver is the kind of writer I'd like to emulate - a distinct and informed voice, an engaging story that is at once personal and universal. The story follows a baptist minister, his wife, and their four daughters as they travel to the Belgian Congo to spread Christianity. The first time I read it, I had just completed a course called "Africa on Film." We watched Raoul Peck's "Lumumba" about that nation's first democratically elected leader; Patrice Lumumba was imprisoned and murdered, and evidence suggests the complicity of the United States. His election, capture, and death--and the politics behind these events--provided the backdrop of the Prices' stories. Having learned about it made Kingsolver's story all the more interesting to me. (Click here to watch a short "preview" for it; the embed feature doesn't seem to be working).

Rereading the book, almost ten years later, I'm able to make a different sort of connection. The female Prices learn (some more quickly than others) that their knowledge and experiences in Georgia don't mean a thing in the Congo. The seeds they planted, the food they cooked, and the way they treated one another do not easily translate. The girls and mother are able to adapt, whereas the father remains steadfast in his belief in a certain kind of God and in his ideas of what is right and wrong. I compare his unwillingness to change and his inability to learn about and love the community in which he finds himself to my dad's journey in Kenya. Instead of imposing change on a group of people, my dad became friends with them, immersed himself in the customs, the values, and the needs, which are as varied there as they are here. They work together to meet those needs. After almost three years of living there more than here, Africa is a part of him.

Why We Need Reform

With all the back and forth and frustration over feckless Democrats and obstructionist Republicans, it's easy to forget the ultimate goals of health care reform. One of my favorite political sites, Talking Points Memo, posted a reader's email that serves as a reminder. Here is the key portion, though the whole thing is worth reading.

My story: My father is dying of Huntington's disease. Before he dies in 8 to 10 years, he will need anti-depressants, anti-psychotics and drugs that fight dementia and his tremors and convulsions. He'll need multiple brain scans and physical therapy sessions.

Current medical treatments can't save him, but they will give him a few more years before the slow death strips him of his memories, personality and control of his body.

There's a 50 percent chance the same slow motion death awaits me and each of my three siblings. If I ever lose my job I'll become uninsurable, permanently. My sister already lost her insurance.

That means whatever treatment is developed for Huntington's will be unavailable to us. There's simply no way we could afford it. Not only high tech gene therapies or other interventions, but the medications and treatments that exist now that would buy us enough time to see our kids' graduations or weddings, and would give them hope of not suffering their grandfather's fate.

There's a bill that would mean we'd never be rejected for health insurance or have it canceled. Health insurance that could ease our final years, or maybe even save us.

But liberals are refusing to support it. I know there are principles and politics at stake. I know people are tired of being told to shut up and take what's given to them. But in the end, there a thousands of people with Huntington's and millions of people with other serious or terminal illnesses who will never benefit from treatment because they are uninsured. Millions more who are otherwise healthy will die premature or unnecessary deaths because basic health care isn't affordable.

I'm off to Nana's - it's been a couple weeks, and my laundry is piled up a bit. We'll cheer on the Colts and Saints today, though I suspect the NFL is hoping for a Jets/Vikings Superbowl.

Communities

Sometimes life throws us things that make us question the justice of the world.

I'm not religious; I'm not even spiritual. But I tend to believe that there's an order to the universe, that things even out. Despite so much evidence to the contrary, I tend to think good things ultimately happen to good people.

When a lovely, positive, vibrant 27-year old is losing her battle with cancer, I'm reminded that this world can be cruel and random. That horrible things can happen to the best people and the best families.

We were part of a rather counter-cultural Catholic church in the 80s and 90s. I knew nothing of the orthodoxy and intolerance that continue to plague more traditional Catholic churches, because ours was accepting of differences, more concerned with issues of peace and justice than what people did behind closed doors. The church's first members were young, in their late teens and early twenties. They got married, had kids (I was one of those kids), and thus a generation was born into this caring and intimate environment. We all lived in the same neighborhood as the church. We walked there and to each other's houses for sleepovers and pool parties. Many of us went to the same schools and rode the same buses.

By the early-to-mid-90s, many of the members who'd married had divorced (my parents included), and many had moved away from the neighborhood. Many of us stopped going to the church (the priest who'd helped to start it had long since moved out West) and found somewhere (or nowhere) else to go. Now, members of that first generation of kids are in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties. Many of the parents are remarried, graying. And we're all tolerant, open, and concerned with peace. Justice.

We met today at Spring Grove Cemetery - that large and lovely place I grew up across the street from, celebrated my First Communion in, and learned how to drive a stick in - to honor Jenna. About one hundred of us gathered near the entrance, slowly recognizing each other and sharing hugs and tears. For the next hour and a half, we walked quietly through the cemetery, umbrellas open, thinking, reflecting, crying, and praying. Spring Grove has always represented peace, beauty, and community much more than death. It was a gray, rainy day that seemed appropriate for the circumstances.

I have trouble holding grudges nowadays. I reserve my anger for deceit, injustice, and intolerance, and only towards those I don't know personally. For everyone else, especially, today, Jenna and her family, I have only love and hope that somehow, somewhere, the world restores order.

Anything other than what I've been trying to be lately...

I had gotten into one of my little reflection ruts. I started thinking about myself--life, the big picture, identity, gender roles, blah blah blah--to the point where I had to find a youtube video with the "I Don't Wanna Be" theme. Haha! This task, this task! How do we know what we want to be? I feel privileged to be part of a family and community that allows me to explore (to succeed and to fail), and I wonder if some of the craziness that's going on in our society recently (birthers, 9/12ers, tea partiers) is the result of people buckling down, their own identities and roles being challenged by this Other.

Here's what's awesome: Instead of a straightforward production of the theme song, I could only find fan videos. And one baby. This knocked me right out of my momentary rut. Simplify, Rachel. Simplify and enjoy.

"The years teach much which the days never knew."

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The New York Times had an opinion piece the other day entitled, "Teenage Fads, Forever Young." Four adult women, each some kind of specialist in teenage behavior speculated about today's adolescents. Each woman wrote about her own experience as a teenager, the fads that were followed and spread. Each seemed bemused by high schoolers today, with their texting and frequent hugging. 

One concluded, 

Just as many parents in the past never really knew what teenagers talked about holed up in their rooms or in the food courts or parking lots, the conversations and content shared among teens and tweens online remain a mystery to many of today’s parents — with the exception of that rare teen who has no secrets from mom or dad and is happy to friend them on Facebook.

This amused me. I know teenagers keep secrets from their parents, and they talk to their friends differently than they talk to their parents, but none of the women touched on this trend: millenials, gen-yers, and people like me, at the tale end of gen x, are friends with our parents. We're not just friends in the Facebook sense of the word; rather, we genuinely enjoy each other's company. 

But what struck me most about this piece (or, I should say, what bothered me most) is that four adult women were writing about the teenage experience. They were generalizing. They were treating teenagers like specimens. I guess in some ways I do the same thing, write about something to understand it better, but the fact that they had four separate adult voices and not one teenage voice speaking for himself or herself, is troublesome. And judging by the comments that followed the article, it wasn't just troublesome for me. 

It's so easy to tear things apart. Find the flaws. Criticize. 

Maybe tomorrow I'll put things together and compliment. Tomorrow is Friday, after all.

"This Is My Now,” “The Time of My Life,” “Do I Make You Proud” , “A Moment Like This.”

The "American Idol" winning song is a horrific, treacly number called, "No Boundaries" (not to be confused with prior winning titles such as "This Is My Now"). Lucky for me, I'm partial to horrific, treacly numbers, especially when sung by American Idol contestants.  

It's easy to make fun of American Idol. In fact, it's the kind of thing that I typically would make fun of. But I love it, and I love being part of this national conversation, however superficial. 

Knowing a bit about sports, politics, and pop culture - I have a ready reference for any awkward situation; some kind of common ground. 

Dishonour descended

Language has the power to connect, to reveal truths, but it also can disguise or obfuscate (I love that word) the truth. That is, those who have power can control language and thus create their own reality. I wrote a little about it last month. This entry at Daily Kos, The Joke's on Us, explains how "waterboarding" entered into our vernacular just five years ago and why it should be called its more appropriate name, "water torture." 

The writer begins by describing how certain professions, "so challenging, so emotionally stressful," require "a culture of biting black humor" to get through each day

Fire fighters who talk about "crispy critters" don't do it because they fail to understand that the remains found in a smoldering house are someone's friends, someone's family. They do it exactly because they know these pitiful remains are all that's left of living, breathing people, and if they don't distance themselves emotionally from what they're seeing, they won't be able to do their jobs. If they don't place a box around what they're experiencing today, they won't be able to work tomorrow -- and tomorrow they just might save someone who can still be saved. Part of that box is language that seems cruel or dismissive to a casual observer.

The writer explains that "waterboarding" was a term created by torturers who needed to create a new name for an old technique. "Waterboarding" was darkly humorous because it likened the activity to surf boarding. It was an inside joke to people who knew and witnessed the horrible reality of torture.  But now, the media have adopted this term and its entered popular culture:

Rather than using the term "water torture," they're indulging in the dark humor of the people who watched men's eyes go wide before the sopping towel was pressed against the face. For that there's no reason, no reason at all. Because when it comes to matters like torture, the last thing the public needs is a media that's trying to insert itself between Americans and the ugliness of our government's actions. Giving us that kind of emotional out isn't going to protect us, it just makes it easier for us to repeat this horrible era.

Saying "waterboarding" trivializes what we've done. It's not a neutral term, it s dismissive term, created with the purpose of snickering at pain.

The term is "water torture."

I've written this quote before, from J.M. Coetzee's "Diary of a Bad Year": "Dishonour descends upon one's shoulders, and once it has descended, no amount of clever pleading will dispel it." President Obama may wish to sweep the Bush administration's torture program under the rug (this shameful, dishonorable age), and focus on the many daunting tasks at hand, but I don't know that it's possible. Everyone's complicit - democrats, republicans alike. They let it happen. We elected them (and re-elected them), and they represent us: so we're complicit too. 

Is that why we say "waterboarding"? Not that we're being dismissive of the reality, "snickering at the pain," but that we too tortured?

It's Sunday, so I'm headed to my grandmothers, laundry and vanilla bean in tow. We'll wait for a call from my dad, who's just returned from war-torn Uganda to corrupt Nairobi. My brothers and I joked about being able to insert "war-torn" in front of anywhere he goes. We're allowed to joke that way because we're on the inside: the fear is ours.

Those quirky cues

I've been thinking about cues.

I first read Ruby Payne's "Framework for Understanding Poverty" years ago for an education class. The slim book argues that each economic station -- poverty, middle class, and upper class -- has its own set of rules and hidden social cues. Children born into poverty, the middle class, and into affluence, grow up knowing the particular rules of that station, and in order to move from one station to the next (e.g. poverty to middle class) children must be taught, explicitly, the rules of the "next" station: how to behave in certain situations, how to get certain resources, etc. 

I think of "Gilmore Girls," with Lorelei breaking all the rules, separating herself from her affluent parents and upbringing and deciding, instead, to raise her daughter according to middle-class values. According to Payne, while the affluent (read, more, "old money") value the past and the middle class focus on the future (planning for, saving for), those in generational poverty value the present: the present is the only thing they can count on because the future is uncertain.

The book is fascinating. It's just a framework, and so while I might not agree with everything she says, it's meant only to be a way of looking at things. Any teacher who works in a poor district should read it: he or she must teach certain social cues -- standing in line, being quiet, how to handle books -- instead of berating children for lacking the "knowledge" that middle-class children have been taught since birth. (I put "knowledge" in quotes, there, because I don't like what I connote there; I hate not finding the appropriate words!)

It's Payne's argument that the toughest part about moving out of poverty and decidedly into "middle class" is not the accumulation of wealth. It's not about earning $50,000/yr instead of $10,000/yr; rather it's obtaining the knowledge of those social cues. I think of my own upbringing. We didn't have a lot of money: my mom stayed home with me and my brothers, while my dad worked in education. Our house was small, on a super-busy street, and waterbugs were frequently seen. My clothes were hand-me-downs. But both my parents were college-educated. We went to the library and were read to every night. We watched television, but only PBS shows, on occasion. It was only later, when my parents split and each worked fulltime, that we started getting more "stuff" and, financially, entered the middle class. But my brothers and I were taught those social cues from day one, independent of our financial situation.

Actually, what got me thinking about Payne's book was an old post by Judith Warner on the New York Times website, "My Kind of Normal." She writes about her own "weirdness" -- demonstrated most recently by her failure to call a plummer about a dripping faucet (despite months of dripping and water waste) -- and how she's passing that weirdness onto her daughter. Her eleven-year-old daughter won't wear Uggs and doesn't like Zac Ephron: how weird and abnormal, Warner writes. 

Warner discusses -- in this post and others -- her own tendency to overanalyze and overthink, and her own hypersensitivity. The comment section is full of people identifying with (and criticizing) her. I identify with her too, to an extent, and now that I've learned more of the social cues (due in no small part to my schooling, post high school, and the internet, that great equalizer), I can better appreciate my (or so I perceived at the time) outsider status during junior and senior high.

Is it wrong to hope that this economic downturn results in a shift in fortunes?  On the local news, which has a decidedly middle-class point of view, I saw a story the other day about families who, for the first time in their lives, have had to seek assistance, going to food banks, thrift stores, etc. They've had to access those same resources with which those in poverty are already familiar.  More are famliar, now, with what it's like to be underwater, unable to save, plan for the future.  Maybe this will bring about greater understanding among more people.

Outside, my grass is about 10 inches tall. I have the option of mowing, taking care of some things around the yard, for a $25 reduction in my monthly rent. But I rent because the last thing I want to do is worry about things like mowing the lawn. I have enough trouble putting my clothes away each Sunday after doing the laundry. The yard looks extremely unkempt, and I wonder what the neighbors think; I should contact my landlord, but... I don't. 

Just like my bathrooom light that's been out for about a month (my little step stool isn't tall enough for me to safely change the lightbulb), I don't care enough about it to do anything.  Is that weird?

"The important thing is never to stop questioning."

- Albert Einstein

Today was the first class of a new quarter at the school where I teach. I love starting over every three months. I know a little more and can respond to questions more quickly and with greater authority. I anticipate problems and address them before they come up. But even though this is my seventh or eighth time teaching the same class (I've changed books and assignments as necessary), I still find myself impressed and surprised by each group of students.

It's easy to stereotype. In fact, according to the New York Times, it's evolutionary:

Eons ago, this capability [to stereotype based on appearance] was of life-and-death importance, and humans developed the ability to gauge other people within seconds.

Susan Fiske, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Princeton, said that traditionally, most stereotypes break down into two broad dimensions: whether a person appears to have malignant or benign intent and whether a person appears dangerous. “In ancestral times, it was important to stay away from people who looked angry and dominant,” she said.

But I can't tell anything about my students by looking at them. Each new group of students is full of quirky individuals with 18 - 30 years of experience informing their attitudes, and those attitudes only begin to reveal themselves on the first day. I ask them about previous writing experiences, I ask them to respond to an essay we read in class, and I even ask them about the last book they read. 

Granted: I'm a bit of a softie. I just love playing a part in their education. (One student graduated from my high school four years before I did!)  I'm much harder on myself than I am on others, and sometimes I think that I and my students alike would benefit from a shift in that regard (be less of a softie, more of a hard ass); regardless, as my friend told me back when I was teaching a summer school class to 3rd graders and questioning my skills, "Everyone can use some positive encouragement."

People do have the capacity to change. I go back and forth on this, at least in regard to my own capacity, but it has to be true. I think back to all those "first days" in grade school and even junior and senior high, where I would throw up out of nervousness. Or those second, third, and fiftieth days, curling up in the corner of the playground because I was too shy to find someone to play with or talk to. So when I wasn't sitting there, obsessing over my inability to MOVE, I was watching people - their behavior, their interactions, how they spoke to one another. I still dream of being invisible, moving ghost-like among people and seeing how they really  are, returning to my observant past; but it's much better now. Being among the living. Still slightly neurotic, but physically present.

Tortured Logic

Some time in the middle of the quarter, we talk about identifying bias, logical fallacies, and the use of language to obfuscate and manipulate truth. There isn't a better example than torture, and the "tortured logic" used to justify its use.

• "Mistakes were made." Using the passive voice disguises the main actor; mistakes were made by whom?  We don't know, but they were made, it's time to move on!
• "We don't torture." President Bush said this in 2003, and President Obama said this in 2009. When Bush said it, we believed him. That lie, then, puts a cloud over everything that follows. Regardless of whether you think President Obama should prosecute torturers and the justifiers of torture from the previous administration, he is definitely doing the right thing by bringing this to light; transparency is the only act that will remove the cloud.
• "Enhanced interrogation methods." That's so less ugly than torture, right? 

Andrew Sullivan wrote a brilliant post about power, conservatism, torture, and Western civilization. The whole piece is worth reading--it's only four paragraphs--but here is its first one:

The assertion of total power through unchecked violence - outside the Constitution, beyond the reach of the law (apart from legal memos from hired hacks instructed to retroactively redefine torture into 'legality') - will be seen in retrospect as the key defining theory of Bush conservatism. It ended with torture. Why? Because reality may differ from ideology; and when it does, it is vital to create reality to support ideology. And so torture creates reality by coercing "facts" from broken bodies and minds.

God, it's ironic that Bush -- the cowboy, the "you're with me or against me" president -- became the postmodern president, using power to shape and define "truth." And President Obama, with his ability to look at people, countries, policies, etc, from different points of view, seeing the gray between "us" and "them" and the compromise between "with me" and "against me," appears to be the modern president - searching for truth, using methodology and science and dialogue to find the best solutions and policies. 

Waiting at the airport Sunday and Monday night, I watched more cable television news than I'd seen in the previous two months. A panel of talking heads were discussing "enhanced interrogation methods." What disgusted me was the fact that these "news analysts" were treating it as a partisan issue, with republicans excusing it. This is a clip from yesterday, but it reflects the tenor of these ongoing conversations:

Correlation does not imply causation

In today's New York Times, Tara Parker-Pope writes about the benefits of friendships when it comes to an individual's long-term health. She says, 

In 2006, a study of nearly 3,000 nurses with breast cancer found that women without close friends were four times as likely to die from the disease as women with 10 or more friends. And notably, proximity and the amount of contact with a friend wasn’t associated with survival. Just having friends was protective.

There are a number of statistical relationships that she cites between friendships and survival. In fact, a stronger relationship exists between health and having a support system of friends than health and family. I don't doubt that there's some truth. But I also think back to my Research and Statistics course where it was drummed into us: Correlation does not equal causation. 

As soon as a statistical link is demonstrated, we have to look at the confounds, the alternative explanations. If someone has a strong network of friends, non-related support, then that tells us about that person. The same things that cause an individual to have many friends may be the same things that cause that person to fight cancer.

Dilettantes and dabblers

Pamela Sims wonders in today's New York Times, "Is this the Time to Chase a Career Dream?" She describes a little of her own career as a business coach, helping clients discover and realize their dreams: Surgeons who want to be musicians, program managers who want to build churches. Sims suggests that the chaos and instability of today's job market may lead to more people following their dreams, indulging their creative passions.

She writes that "if [people] are going to live with uncertainty, and work like crazy to secure their livelihood, ... they might as well pursue something they care about deeply."  Last month I wrote about another New York Times article, Generation OMG. The article described a business major going into teaching because "the economic contraction... can give people more room to be creative." 

I don't know that I'd say going into teaching is "being creative" (not that it doesn't require oodles of creativity!)  I'd more likely say that teaching--like nursing--is a recession-proof career. There may be reductions in benefits and even positions, but on the whole, there will always be a need for education and health care. 

Will there be a need for dilettantes and dabblers?  I can do both of those jobs quite well. 

Logical Fallacies

Edited, 1/20/10 - for those of you googling "sequitarian" and getting this post, I apologize. It really had nothing to do with sequitarianism... "Sequitur" is a logical consequence. "Sequitarian" is a made-up word, but we could define it as someone who follows logic, or who always does what logic dictates. A "non sequitur" is something that doesn't follow (e.g. "I love cheese; let's go get ice cream"). Perhaps a "non sequitarian" (again, a made-up word) would be someone who doesn't do what logic dictates. I'd say a non-sequitarian is rather random.

I think most people think of themselves as slightly abnormal. Everyone else, they think, has things figured out, or easier, or simpler. Everyone else knows what to do. At least, that's what I choose to believe - we all think that we're weird, we all feel awkward and lost and are just faking it.

The action of Othello starts in the hustling, bustling city of Venice. The major characters then go to the island of Cyprus to fight the Turks. Once the Turks are defeated, they're all just kind of there, on this island, with nothing to do but get into each other's business. Idle hands and all.

Speaking of non sequiturs, I googled to see if "non sequitarian" was a real word, and I found this quote in an article, "How to Find the Right School for Your Child":

"There are of course plenty of religious based schools but there are also non-sequitarian private schools to choose from."

Edited to add: this is funny because the writer meant "non-sectarian" private schools.

"So there's this old lady..."

This phrase used to signal a brainstorming session. Throw out character ideas, plots, crazy scenarios. The old lady turned into Theresa Merchant - she was widowed and lived in Cincinnati and played bridge. She was tricked into letting her pal "Henry" stay with her. He reminded her of her late husband and, supposedly, shared the same name. Eventually Theresa figured out the truth but instead of kicking him out or calling him on it, she just took the upper hand.

Today I discussed Ibsen's "A Doll House"; last week was "The Glass Menagerie." Just when I'm thinking that women have come a long way since 1879 and 1946, I come across something like this report in the NYtimes about an NGO in South Africa's reports on the rise of "corrective rape" to "cure" lesbians. I'm midway through Coetzee's "Disgrace," and I think something like this has happened in the plot.

Stumbling, bumbling, fumbling...

During one of my many detours, I learned about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Before one can worry about "self-actualization" - morality, creativity, spontaneity, etc. - one must have physiological needs met: food, breathing, water, sex, and air. And once those needs are met, then one can worry about safety, belonging, etc. And then belonging. And then self-esteem. And finally self-actualization. 

There are a lot of good and important things to take out of Maslow's hierarchy, especially when it comes to school - how can children who aren't having their physiological needs met, who don't feel safe, be motivated in the classroom?  It's just a little more challenging.  

This New York Time piece, "Generation OMG", the effects of this recession are considered. According to the article, the children born in the 30s and just before turned into the silent generation, sober, practical, eager for a safe, secure job.  Their children, the boomers, were protected, indulged, and able to explore. The article draws some parallels between the excesses of the twenties and the bubbles of the nineties (artificially inflated, also, during the last administration), and it suggests that children today will grow up to be silent - sober, practical, less likely to indulge in excess.  

The article is more nuanced than my little description, acknowledging other similarities as well as diffences. But it made me think of how lucky I am to have the luxury of worrying about creativity, problems of morality, expression. These are good problems to have. 

Truth in writing

There are some things I read that just ooze with humanity. Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri, had believable characters in situations that didn't seem contrived and yet were still interesting.  Different. The Art of Racing in the Rain was narrated by a dog; yet this dog seemed more real, more authentic, than most characters I see on tv or in movies.

A number of things stood out to me in the President's inaugural address, but I especially appreciated this passage (emphasis mine):

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends — hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism — these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths.

Fiction allows us to explore a truth in so many different ways.  Grief, joy, passion, anxiety, courage, and loyalty can be treated with the subtlety and complexity these truths deserve.  

I'm just dancing around my own explorations.  

The Full Spectrum

I read a fascinating article in the New York Times last week: In a Novel Theory of Mental Disorders, Parents' Genes Are in Competition. The theory describes an "evolutionary tug of war" between maternal and paternal genes that determines, basically, where a child falls on a  spectrum, with autism and schizophrenia being at opposite ends.  

According to the article, while many of the researchers' details are likely to be wrong, the broad idea provides a new framework for thinking about mental illness:

Emotional problems like depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder, seen through this lens, appear on Mom's side of the teeter-totter, with schizophrenia, while Asperger's syndrome and other social deficits are on Dad's.

It was Dr. Badcock who noticed that some problems associated with autism, like a failure to meet another's gaze, are direct contrasts to those found in people with schizophrenia, who often believe they are being watched. Where children with autism appear blind to others' thinking and intentions, people with schizophrenia see intention and meaning everywhere, in their delusions. The idea expands on the ''extreme male brain'' theory of autism proposed by Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen of Cambridge.

I think we all fall on this spectrum. If we're lucky, we fall somewhere in the middle: stable, adaptable, and emotionally competent. But I love the idea that sane/insane, balanced/imbalanced, etc. are false binaries (flashback to freshman english class, deconstructing the three sisters from King Lear!) Just like my politics, I'm slightly left-of-center: Socially awkward, better at analyzing than reacting emotionally in the present.