John Foley

“Am I not a man? And is a man not stupid? I’m a man, so I married. Wife, children, house, everything. The full catastrophe.” –Zorba The Greek

I like Jon Kabat-Zinn’s books on mindfulness, the first of which he titled, “Full Catastrophe Living.” A few key points he makes:

1)Mindfulness is not a dime-store relaxation technique; it’s a way of life that needs to be cultivated.

2)Most folks go through life like robots, automatically, responding to their conditioning, living more in the past or the future rather than the present moment.

3)The present moment is all you ever have and should not be missed.

4)Fears, desires, regrets and conditioning all dissolve in present moment awareness.

5)When the mind strays from the moment, you should not beat yourself up, or you’ll be beating yourself up quite often. As Kabat-Zinn says, mindfulness is only the hardest thing in the world.

My mind recently strayed from the present moment. I had enjoyed a kayak paddle around the east end of Hayden Island, working against the current for the first twenty minutes, looking toward the Gorge, then catching a fast ride west when I rounded the tip of the island and caught the Columbia River current. I hauled out at the marina and left my kayak outside the entrance while I went to get my car, about a half-mile west at McCuddy’s. I didn’t like leaving my kayak and was in a hurry, so I just hopped in the car and started driving back. I got about twenty feet when I heard a terrible noise, as if I’d run over a dog. There was no dog. The rope I used I tie off the front end of the kayak when it is on the roof rack had slipped under the tire and, trapped there for a moment, pulled off the front bumper of the car. All because I was thinking about the future – getting back to fetch my boat – rather than the present. Hard not to beat myself up for that one: “Is a man not stupid!” Hard for my wife not to beat me up, too, when she saw the car. Chalk it up to the full catastrophe and a mindless moment.

(The following guest column recently appeared in The Oregonian. I admire cyclists, but I worry about them. I’ve seen more than a few of the kamikaze variety around Portland. I’d ride my bike to work if I could do so safely. It’s 10 miles one way and would be a great workout, save money, help the environment and probably end badly – there are no shoulders on the roads, much less bike paths, so I’d be forcing polite drivers into the oncoming lane. And I don’t want to think about what impolite drivers might do to me.)

I was saddened to hear that Hudson’s Bay High School teacher Gordon Patterson was killed in an accident recently. Patterson was riding his bicycle, which he used to commute, when he was struck and killed by a former student in Vancouver.
 
My heart goes out to Patterson — by all accounts, a fine teacher and person — and his family. But I must admit I don’t understand how anyone would choose to ride a bike on city streets. Millions do, every day, all over the world.

I applaud cyclists and their environmental awareness. I’ve pedaled a bike to work myself in years past when I lived in a small city with bike paths. But riding alongside — or worse yet, within — auto traffic? I think that’s complete madness.

In addition to helping the environment and saving money on fuel, cyclists often cite health as a reason to pedal. Do they not see the irony here? That in trying to improve health they are endangering life?

In 1989, I planned to run with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. Friends warned me that was crazy. Yet I would’ve done it but for one small detail: I couldn’t get a ride from Barcelona to Pamplona and was too short of funds to take public transportation.

I think I would’ve enjoyed Pamplona and those bulls that Hemingway made famous. They weigh an average of 1,500 pounds and are certainly dangerous, having killed 13 runners between 1926 and the present.

Compare that to some other statistics: About 43,000 people die in auto accidents each year in the U.S., and 2.9 million are injured. The average car weighs 4,000 pounds. I’m not sure what the average bicycle weighs, but it’s a helluva lot less.

Ride your bicycle on a path or don’t ride. For your sake and the sake of your family. It’s not fair, it’s not right — but most of all, it’s not worth your life to ride with the mechanical bulls.

While pushing a cart through the grocery store yesterday, we heard a nice comment about Sean Michael. “What a great looking baby,” a man said. This is actually somewhat common, and biased or not, we can’t help but agree. We thanked the man and he asked how old Sean was. “Nearly 11 months,” Jules said. The man looked at me and said, “Isn’t it great being a grandpa?” This marked the second time I’d been mistaken for Sean Michael’s grandfather by a stranger; I’m 49, so it’s an understandable mistake that doesn’t bother me at all, but Miss Jules started to growl. She’s nearly a decade younger than me and does NOT like the grandma implication. Fortunately, the man headed off to the deli before she could take him out with a jumbo yellow onion.

Several folks commented that while they liked the background of the previous website picture — many thought it was Alaska, but it was actually atop Mt. St. Helens in Washington — they thought the picture of me wasn’t the best. Specifically, the hat was mentioned as, well, “goofy” was one term used. In my defense I would note that the hat is waterproof and quite practical for mountain travel, much more so than, say, a ballcap. Still, it was time for a change. The new background is a shot I like from the shore of Circle Lake in Alaska’s Brooks Range, a remote and sublime place that I hope to return to someday, with my son in tow. I also added an images section to share some photos I like from my hikes.  Best wishes…

Hotchalk.com recently featured a unit I wrote linking writing and grammar — I know, bleeping grammar! I did try to make the unit interesting for both kids and teachers, and I used excerpts from writers I admire such as E.B. White, Joan Didion, Mike Royko, Pat Conroy, Anna Quindlen, Cormac McCarthy and others…I realize, of course, that by placing part of the unit on my website, students could check it out ahead of time and have an advantage on the assessments…But I think that’s unlikely. It brings to mind Larry McMurtry’s brilliant LONESOME DOVE, and the cowboy Gus who wrote a sign in Latin that he didn’t quite understand. His partner Call told him to get rid of the sign, saying something like, “For all you know, it invites folks to rob us.” To which Gus replies, “Maybe so, and I hope a thief comes along who can read Latin. I’d like a chance to shoot at an educated man for once in my life.”

Writing & Grammar Unit
This unit links writing and grammar. It includes 10 kid-tested lessons, a study guide and an assessment. The lessons here are meant to be supplemented by “mini-lessons” – I think grammar should be taught in small doses – of the teacher’s devising, based on the study guide. Many of the examples and definitions in this guide have been culled from Writers Inc. – a most useful book. The problem is that, in my opinion, Writers Inc. covers too much material, in too much detail, and does not distinguish between the important and the trivial.

Lesson 1: Writing by Ear

Grammar is a piano I play by ear, since I seem to have been out of school the year the rules were mentioned. All I know about grammar is its infinite power. To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning of the object photographed…The arranged of the words matters, and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in your mind. The picture dictates whether this will be a sentence with or without clauses, a sentence that ends hard or a dying-fall sentence, long or short, active or passive.
–Joan Didion

As Ms. Didion suggests, you do not need a comprehensive understanding of grammar to write well – but you do need to respect its power. These lessons are designed to teach you some of the basic elements and show how they relate to writing. I would also recommend reading voraciously and keeping a daily journal. These time-honored practices lead to a natural understand of grammar and usage, and will complement the lessons we review in class.
English grammar is a complex and challenging topic to master; if you are curious and want to deepen your understanding, you will have the opportunity to go beyond the basics in college classes.
In your groups, discuss what you know about grammar and give some examples; discuss how texting and the internet have affected your grammar and give some examples; and finally, discuss Ms. Didion’s opening statement. Are the rules important? Or should you just play by ear?

Lesson 2: Nouns

A noun is a word that names a parson, place, thing or idea. Read the following paragraph and underline all the nouns. Then, count all the words in the paragraph, and all the nouns. Divide the number of nouns by the total number of words. This yields a percentage. What does the percentage of nouns in this paragraph – typical in length but exquisite in form – tell you about nouns?

A solitary ant, afield, cannot be considered to have much of anything on his mind; indeed, with only a few neurons strung together by fibers, he can’t be imagined to have a mind at all, much less a thought. He is more like a ganglion on legs. Four ants together, or ten, encircling a dead moth on the path, begin to look more like an idea. They fumble and shove, gradually moving the food toward the Hill, but as though by blind chance. It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants, crowded together around the Hill, blackening the ground, that you begin to see the whole beast, and now you observe it thinking, planning, calculating. It is an intelligence, a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for its wits.
–Lewis Thomas

Total words____________
Total nouns____________
Nouns/Total=___________

Comment on the percentage – what does it mean? Also, why is this excerpt from Lives of the Cell considered excellent writing?

Lesson 3: Active & Passive Verbs
Use active verbs unless there is no reasonable way to get around using passive verbs: Examples: Joe hit him is active and strong. He was hit by Joe is passive and weak. Use creative verbs rather than settling for ones that are merely serviceable. Example: A red handkerchief was tucked in his pocket is weaker and less interesting than A red handkerchief blossomed from his pocket.
Stephen King, best-known as a horror novelist, offers some excellent advice on active and passive construction in his memoir On Writing:

The timid fellow writes The meeting will be held at seven o’clock because that somehow says to him, “Put it this way and people will believe you really know.” Purge this quisling thought! Don’t be a muggle! Throw back your shoulders, stick out your chin, and put that meeting in charge! Write The meeting’s at seven. There, by God! Don’t you feel better?

Rewrite the following passage using strong, active verbs. And don’t be a muggle!

Randy was the subject of discipline by his science teacher. It wasn’t the first time he had faced corrective action. In middle school the record for detentions was held by him. This time, the options for Randy may be worse – he could even be expelled. Ten days at home were required for students who were expelled. Fun after-school activities like baseball wouldn’t be allowed, either.

Lesson 4: Modify in Moderation

The respected author of On Writing Well urges writers to be “intensely selective” with adjectives and adverbs. “If you a describing a beach,” says William Zinsser, “don’t write that the shore was scattered with rocks or that occasionally a seagull flew over. Shores have a tendency to be scattered with rocks and to be flown over by seagulls.”
Read the following insightful passage, which is from an autobiographical novel by a popular American writer.

I began my paper but began it badly. I never began things well. The first sentence had too many adjectives. So did the second. Remembering that my professor in the modern novel, Colonel Masters, a shy and excellent teacher, had chided me gently about my irrepressible love of adjectives, I started again with clear simple sentences. Nouns and verbs, nouns and verbs, and occasionally, to satisfy my own simple lust, I would throw in a delicious, overwrought adjective or two.
–Pat Conroy

Many young writers develop a hard-to-kick adjective habit, particularly after realizing they have some descriptive talent. Adjectives, however, are more powerful when used sparingly. Cross out the modifiers in the following sentences and note how the flow improves.

It was very clearly apparent that the troublesome students would not stay serenely in the boring class.

I was on slippery ice and slowly and dangerously drifting toward a big truck at the busy and cluttered intersection.

A rampaging grizzly could use the hiker’s huge walking stick as a handy toothpick after he’d quickly dispatched with his meager and frightened human meal.

Lesson 5: Coordinating Conjunctions
Coordinating conjunctions connect individual words or groups of words. And and but are the most common coordinating conjunctions; the others are or, nor, for, yet and so. While most often used within sentences, coordinating conjunctions can also provide fluid transitions at the outset. Consider the following excerpt from a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer:

And there I sat, in my big, black, fat-cat car, with air-conditioning blasting, stereo playing and enough electronic doodads to do everything but blow my nose.
I had enough money in my picket to buy that skinny kid a suit, pay his family’s rent for a month and maybe fill up their refrigerator and pantry.
But I hadn’t had the decency to let him squeegee the windshield, then touch the button that lowers a window and give him a buck and a smile. I had given him a scowl and a wave-off, gestures that said he was nothing.
And all the while, do you know what was playing on my stereo cassette? Peter, Paul and Mary singing that if they had a hammer, they’d hammer out love between their bothers and their sisters, all over the world – that’s what was playing.
–Mike Royko

Some English teachers have preached against using coordinating conjunctions as openers. I would challenge you to find a novel in the library or bookstore that does NOT have dozens of sentences beginning with these words. And if our novelists – our finest writers – use coordinating conjunctions to begin sentences, why can’t students? Still, be aware that some teachers will mark you down for opening with coordinating conjunctions, particularly in formal research papers.
Reflect on this controversy. Have you been taught to avoid and, but, etc. at the beginning of sentences? Why? Do you feel comfortable using these words as openers?

Lesson 6: Simple Sentences
A simple sentence can have a single or compound subjects and predicates. It has only one independent clause, and no dependent clauses. And a simple sentence can contain one or more phrases.
Usually, simple sentences are short. For this reason they are generally preferred for young writers, because short sentences are easier to control and easier to read. Perhaps the most famous writer of short sentences was Ernest Hemingway. He also wrote many sentences that were moderately long, but his short, staccato sentences are part of his legacy. Consider the following passage from The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, about a man finding his courage on a safari after an embarrassing display of cowardice:

Beggar had probably been afraid all his life. Don’t know what started it. But over now. Hadn’t had time to be afraid with the buff. That and being angry too. Motor car too. Motor car made it familiar. Be a damn fire eater now. He’d seen it in the war work the same way. More of a change than any loss of virginity. Fear gone like an operation. Something else grew in its place. Main thing a man had. Made him into a man. Women knew it too. No bloody fear.

The sentences in this passage average fewer than six words. Hemingway also used sentences fragments, and while students should generally avoid these, they can be effective in experienced hands. This short style looks easier than it is. Give it a try yourself. Assemble the following items into a paragraph in which you write sentences no more than 8 words in length. You can use all or some of the items listed.

An island…a family…a storm…treasure…rescue…sharks.

Lesson 7: Compound & Complex Sentences

A compound sentence consists of two independent clauses. A complex sentence contains one independent clause and one or more dependent clauses. And a compound-complex sentence carries two or more independent clauses and one or more dependent clauses. Whew! That’s more clauses than in a mall on Christmas Eve.
Bad jokes aside, compound and complex sentences are moderately to very long. While long sentences can be elegant and a pleasure to read, they are more difficult for young writers to control. Read the following long sentence (52 words), which is always under control.

I spent several days and nights in mid-September with an ailing pig and I feel driven to account for this stretch of time, more particularly since the pig died at last, and I lived, and things might easily have gone the other way round and none left to do the accounting.
–E.B. White

E.B. White is perhaps the only writer who can make me care about pigs. This seemingly effortless sentence is a model of elegance. Try to write three elegant compound/complex sentences of your own about school.

Lesson 8: Periods and Commas

Punctuation plays an important role in a writer’s style. Writers are concerned with sound and flow, and punctuation affects both of these key elements. Let’s look at two popular writers, Cormac McCarthy and Garrison Keillor. McCarthy rarely uses commas in his writing. Consider the following passage from his novel (which later became an Oscar-winning film) No Country for Old Men:

They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. I don’t know what them eyes was the windows to and I guess I’d as soon not know. But there is another view of the world out there and other eyes to see it and that’s where this is going. It has done brought me to a place in my life I would not have thought I’d of come to. Somewhere out there is a true and living prophet of destruction and I don’t want to confront him.

Next, read the following passage from Keillor’s Lake Wobegon Days, about a fictional town in Minnesota that features women who are smart, men who are good-looking, and children who are all above average:

The first white folk known to have spent time in the Wobegon area were Unitarian missionaries from Boston, led by Prudence Alcott, a distant and wealthy relative of the famous Alcotts of Concord, a woman who sent a stereopticon and a crate of boysenberry jam to Henry Thoreau at his cabin by the pond, although he never mentioned her in his book.

Compare and contrast the two passages. What difference does the punctuation make in the sound and flow?

Lesson 9: Logic & Questions
While most students understand that writing can be creative, the logical aspect of the craft is often overlooked. A logical thread connects sentence to sentence and paragraph to paragraph. And one of the best ways to check both your content and grammar is to read over a paragraph and ask, “Does this make sense?”
Which brings us to questions. Questions that arise during the writing process often work effectively on the page; they add variety and can help the reader understand the point you are making. Consider the following humorous passage, which contains nine questions.

But the Easter Bunny is so unsatisfactory a holiday icon that no one even knows what he does. Does he color the eggs? Lay the eggs? Hide the eggs? What is his visual image? Is he a human-sized rabbit (terrifying) or an average-size rabbit (well, then, how does he carry baskets)? Some people imagine him wearing a pale blue velvet jacket. This is in fact Peter Rabbit, not the Easter Bunny; the confusion is a function of the fact that people think all rabbits look alike. A few people imagine the Easter Bunny wearing a top hat; these are the readers of men’s magazines…What about transportation? Santa has a sleigh, the Tooth Fairy has wings. How does the Easter Bunny get from house to house? I have a child here who thinks the Easter Bunny drives a pickup truck. What kind of holiday symbol could conceivably drive a pickup truck? The Easter Bubba?
–Anna Quindlen

Write a paragraph about an animal in which you pose several questions.

Lesson 10: Interjections and Exclamation Points

The interjection is the Pluto of parts, out on the perimeter and seldom cause for concern. An interjection communicates strong emotion or surprise. Punctuation – sometimes a common, more often an exclamation point – is used to set off an interjection from the rest of the sentence. Examples: Oh, no! The cat puked.
Nuts, I thought I was going to win that hand.
Wow! What a shot!

Overusing interjections will annoy the reader. Some students are overly fond of the accompanying exclamation point as well, which they use in clusters of two or three to convey excitement. Make your writing exciting with nouns and verbs and you won’t have to overcompensate by using excessive interjections and multiple exclamation points.
Naturally, there are exceptions to this and every generalization about writing. The author Tom Wolfe, for example, has made interjections and exclamation points essential elements of his style. Read the following excerpt about a man sweating profusely during a bankruptcy proceeding from his bestseller A Man in Full:

Croker stared at the upright middle finger and squinted and stared some more, and his face grew red. And then Peepgass saw them…the saddlebags! The saddlebags! The saddlebags had formed! They were complete! The great stains of sweat on the tycoon’s shirt had now spread from both sides, from under the arms and across the rib cage and beneath the curves of his mighty chest until they had met, come together, hooked up – two dark expanses joined at the sternum. They looked just like a pair of saddlebags on a horse…Oh, Peepgass loved it! Harry had done it again! – gotten his saddlebags – even with a tough old bird like Charlie Croker!

How many exclamation points are in this paragraph? How many interjections? Are they effective? Would the paragraph be as strong without them? Reflect.

(My friend Fern Chandonnet, a former Alaskan, decided to have a little literary fun at Sarah Palin’s expense. Hard to blame him. Her fall from grace began with that Katie Couric interview when Couric asked her what newspapers and magazines she read to inform her about world events, and the governor couldn’t name one. I was surprised she didn’t at least mention Field & Stream.)

Dearest Gang,
As you know, life in the Greatest Democracy the World Has Ever Known is beset today with improvised explosive fictions, launched anonymously from who-knows-where and calculated to bring down the most well-meaning expositions and their sponsors.
I suppose it’s a bit hubristic to think that this short note can dissipate the ever-expanding war fog, but I was inspired recently by a national liberal icon whose message, essentially, was: “Never give up!” (Unless of course you are dead, in which case the advisability of further struggle should be reviewed.)
At moments like these I like to turn to a selection from Scripture for guidance. Of particular relevance now, if I may presume to recommend it, is Paul’s Epistle to the Oklahomans.
And so to work. I am concerned as you are about the scurrility that pervades public discourse in general but today will limit myself to the persistent questions that surround ex-vice-presidential candidate (and now ex-governor of Alaska) Sarah Palin.
One of the most-often heard allegations is that Ms. Palin is not actually an American citizen – by virtue of her foreign birth and of her never having made public the relevant immigration or naturalization paperwork. Reports have the dark beauty arriving in 1983 at the port of Brooklyn, N.Y., aboard a Moldovan container ship. She is said then to have been employed among the dockworkers (in a service capacity not further specified) for two years, during which time she saved enough of her wages to buy a train ticket to Idaho, and thence to Alaska.
What stands immediately in boldface of course is that Moldova is landlocked and therefore is an unlikely point of departure for a container ship or, indeed, for any vessel larger than a canal barge. And though members of The Friends of the Enlightenment – a Mensa splinter group in Peoria, Illinois – claim the former Wasilla mayor did in fact arrive in Idaho aboard a canal barge (thus “proving” [?] that she was born in Moldova), it will be remembered that the municipality of Tiraspol, Moldova, on the River Dniester, is a well-known port of convenience (read: haven from regulators) for European-owned container ships and, correspondingly, is a notoriously fictional point of embarkation for that traffic. And though Tiraspol is considered a veritable Mecca for canal barges, and a canal barge from Tiraspol might conceivably find its way through the snarl of Moldovan, Romanian, and Ukrainian canals to the Black Sea and thence to Istanbul, no canal barge is thought ever to have crossed the Mediterranean, let alone the Atlantic Ocean (as of this writing).
You may draw your own conclusions.
The possibility arises that Ms. Palin embarked on her fateful voyage to Brooklyn from one of Romania’s Black Sea ports, likely as not Constanţa. Still, given her interest in oil industry development, it may be that she worked the oil fields of Baku and emigrated from that Caspian port – again, via canal barge or, perhaps, overland cart – and west to the Black Sea. The position has been lent some support by linguist Arthur Zwerdling, author of the controversial “Back to Baku.” He has written that Palin’s much-ballyhooed accent suggests a strong Azerbaijani influence.
Of interest: a Friends of the Enlightenment spokesman allows that the Baku scenario is not without merit. He avers that a check of public records there reveals that a certain “S. Palin” or “S. Palinka” was arrested in 1982 on suspicion of smuggling Russian pantyhose into the port. The resolution of the case is not part of the record, but it will be noted that the items were identified as “irregulars” – a not unusual designation for goods of Soviet provenance – and were thus tagged because the crotch areas of the hose, usually woven of light material for reasons of aeration, were in this case (through the usual Russian misfeasance) made of canvas. Baku housewives, known throughout the Caucasus for their wry humor, referred to the contraband as “the pantyhose with the death panels.”
Coincidence? I wonder.
Of secondary importance but nonetheless requiring, I think, a journalist’s eye, is Ms. Palin’s erratic CV, which lays claim to a “degree” in public relations from an Idaho university. Our friends in Peoria are quick to point out the results of a 1984 records check at the Sorbonne in Paris. To wit: one “S. Baleine” was granted a certificate of competence – with a concentration on “Post-Jansenist cretinism in the Dordogne” – after having passed several oral exams.
Two problems immediately present themselves: “Baleine” is the French word for “whale,” whereas “Palin” derives from the Russo-Caspian linguistic strain meaning “spelunker,” originally signifying “cave dweller.” (See the Greek “spelaion,” with its sense of “cave.”) Further there has been no corroborative evidence showing that the Sorbonne has ever granted a degree to an Azer Turk that involved anything to do with the Dordogne.
Second, Idaho University records indicate that an “S. Palin” was indeed granted a degree, though not in “poetry” as the ex-governor originally had claimed. (Her CV entry for the period cites a degree in “public relations,” though this is thought to have appeared only after she was embarrassed by an Idaho poetry-slam activist at a public gathering.) In fact, she had majored not in “poetry” but in “poultry,” thereby revealing the influence devolving from the plethora of poultry farms that line the shores of the Caspian Sea (not to mention the frequent Azer Turk confusion of “poetry” and “poultry.” [See J. Dagnabian’s “Efficaciousness of ESL among Azer Turks”, PMLA Journal, 1956]).
Finally, it is being bruited about that the Azer connection is patently false by reason of la Palin’s very name: that “Palin” is her married name and not her own. This is a cavil. The alert reader will remember that the “Palins” inhabit various and separate branches: Ms. Palin’s being the Caspian spelunker’s, and her husband’s that of the whale line [see Todd Palin’s “I Fry and Pray: My Life with a Salmon Addict”, National Republican Clearing House, 2008].
So long for now, Gang-sters. And remember: there is no such thing as a stupid answer.
Fern Chandonnet

I go hunting in the fall. The hunt begins when I spot the inattentive prey. Nearly always the young beast has his head down and therefore does not spot me as I slyly move toward the lair. I keep the other beasts distracted with rhythmic patter, and when I’m close enough, I pounce.
“Give me that cellphone!”
At this point, the beast, caught with phone in lap, looks up with a startled and guilty expression – clueless in the classroom. He quickly conveys via text message that he’s been nailed and reluctantly hands over the offending instrument.
Of course, a few die-hard cellphone addicts – I call them cellphonics – refuse to relinquish their toys.
“No way I’m giving you my phone, Dude,” the cellphonic says.
“It’s Mr. Dude. And you know texting in class is against school rules, right?”
“So?”
“So if you don’t give me the phone, I’m going to send you to the office.” I emphasize the last two words in a manner that suggests he will be beaten with flashlights at this locale.
A few hopelessly addicted cellphonics keep their phones and take their punishment. Either way, I chalk up another kill. I’ve taken down 441 cellphonics in the last eight years, which I believe is a state record.
Cellphones are the bane of the teaching profession. Not to mention an insult. The implication is that students would rather communicate with a friend than listen to what I, Mr. Teacher Man, have to say. What gall!
Am I taking this too personally? Perhaps. I’ve even resorted to deception and fright tactics. For example, I recently opened an issue of Scientific American – the actual article I flipped to was on robots – and looked troubled. “It says here,” I intoned gravely, “that cellphones cause inner-ear damage, speech impediments and shrink your brain!”
My freshmen students bought it and exchanged worried glances; my junior students were skeptical and demanded to see the article themselves. I was at once pleased by their critical thinking and dismayed because they uncovered my ruse.
Cellphone use is spreading through schools like a virus. Walking around our campus, it’s not uncommon to see a group of cellphonics in a circle, the very symbol of familial kinship. What are they discussing? World peace? The opposite sex? No, the best cellphone plans. Or worse yet, each has a phone pressed to her ear and is not communicating within the circle – just with some cellphonic somewhere else.
While I understand the urgent need for teens to communicate, I would prefer they do it in person, face to face. A face in a phone doesn’t count. To really communicate, you need to be physically present.
Cellphones also contribute to cheating and tardiness in school, to name just two ills. And teachers tire of the excuses. A typical one I hear is, “My mom is calling.” What cold-hearted teacher wants to keep a young person from communicating with his mother?
A couple of years ago, a student who had been guilty of numerous cellphoic violations – the sly peek, the ringing backpack – used that very excuse. I picked up his phone and recognized the name on the caller I.D. His “mom” was one of my fourth-period students.
Sometimes I fantasize about the last day of my teaching career. In that final class on a fair June day, I spot a student with a cellphone hidden behind the barrier backpack on his desk. I confiscate the phone and, instead of tucking it into a desk drawer for safekeeping, I proceed to smash the offending instrument with a hardbound Norton Anthology until the electronic innards are spread hither and yon across the room.
Hey, one can dream.

This time of year I think of my father and brother, and an epic — well, epic for us — voyage we took four years ago in August.

I’ve always been close to my brother Mike, who is also a bit restless. After years in large corporations, he bagged the American dream to chase his own, and persisted despite some very lean years. He eventually started his own business (Claritycentral.net), and has found a way to tie business principles with his spiritual view of the world. He is much in demand as a speaker and seminar teacher.

I once invited Mike into my classroom at Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis. He had an exercise that was effective with professional business people, and he tried it with my class. It involved completing the statement, “If I didn’t listen to my fear, I would…”

Well, Roosevelt was in a rough neighborhood, and some of my students were hardcore gang members with violent tendencies. The first boy Mike asked to share said, “If I didn’t listen to my fear, I’d pop a cap in my old man’s ass!”

“Okay,” I said above the ensuing din, “I think we’ll move on to some vocabulary work.” And I got my brother out of there before he started a riot.

Mike visited me a couple of times when I moved to Everett, Washington, and he enjoyed getting to know the Seattle area. I’d casually mentioned how much I enjoyed living aboard a sailboat in Everett, and following a divorce, Mike moved to Seattle and brought along his recently purchased 41-foot Beneteau called Shannon. She was a beautiful sloop, and we enjoyed many cruises around Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands.

We tried to persuade our old man to come out for a cruise. He’d mustered out of the Navy on Whidbey Island in the early ‘50s, had fond memories of the area, and often spoke about coming out to visit sometime. Yet whenever Mike and I would invite him, he’d turn us down, citing the long flight from New York and this and that.

During the summer of 2005, after dozens of excuses, he finally caught a plane to Seattle. We had a week, and our plan was vaguely circular: set out from Everett aboard Shannon, cruise north through the islands, then back south to Seattle. We planned short legs. A day on the water can be tiring, and our sisters back east had warned us that the old man’s energy level was pretty low; he’d had to quit his retiree job as a school bus driver because he simply didn’t have enough spunk to deal with the kids.

While getting older did not make my father a happy man, he was far more peaceful. Alluding to the abusive way he treated me during home repair sessions when I was a kid — to this day, I avoid anything remotely mechanical because of the anger that arises — he told me once, “You know I’m just so sorry about that, John. I remember the hurt look on your face when I yelled at you, and boy, I just feel terrible. I’ll start thinking about that, feeling bad, and then I’ll just say to myself, ‘It’s the past, you can’t change it.’ And I try to let it go.”

We’d put the bad blood in our wake years earlier, and had become genuine friends.

The first day we motored from Everett to La Conner, a charming village surrounded by tulip fields. The second day we took another small trip to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island. We stopped for lunch at Roche Harbor, on the west side of the island, on the third day, and that was when I really noticed how frail my father was. He had to stop three times along the dock to rest, and I had to help him up the last ramp near the restaurant. Despite smoking and drinking heavily all his adult life, he’d also been vigorous and athletic; the last time I’d seen him, a few years earlier, he’d still been swimming, walking and playing a little tennis. Clearly, I was in denial about his decline.

From Roche we cruised west to Sidney Island, where we anchored for the evening. We were blessed with wonderful weather most of the week, but that night in particular stands out. Surrounded by islands, we sat in Shannon’s cockpit, sipping beers and watching the tide flow in, the sun head toward the horizon and the play of alpenglow on Mt. Baker. We told old stories and new lies and generally renewed our kinship.

The only really challenging weather we hit was on the leg from Sidney Island to Victoria, when the wind kicked up to 25 knots and waves sprayed across the deck. Mike and I enjoy sailing in that kind of weather, but the constant pitch and roll of the boat means you are always shifting your balance and adjusting your center of gravity, not to mention trimming the sails. A couple of hours of this can be tiring, and we were both concerned.

But Dad seemed invigorated by the weather. He caught a second wind, as it were, and even took the helm for a while. I have a picture of him at the wheel, smiling though the rollers and spray – suddenly, miraculously, a young man again.

Our final stop was Victoria, where we visited my aunt M’ada, my father’s sister, and her husband, Jack. We stayed a couple of days, enjoying their Canadian hospitality. Then we set out across the Strait of Juan de Fuca on a foggy morning that seemed surreal and foreboding. It was our longest leg, all the way down to Seattle, and our father flew home the next morning.

He was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer about six months later. I talked to him regularly, the last time following a dispute about where and how his funeral arrangements would be carried out. He was gracefully accepting his death and didn’t care much, which led to various family members interpreting his wishes.

Finally I’d had enough. “Dad,” I said over the phone, “we’ve decided to fly you back out here. Then we’re going to wheel you aboard Shannon, cruise out into the sound, and bury your ass at sea.”
That was the last time I heard him laugh. A couple of weeks later I flew east for his memorial service. On the long flight I thought over our sailing trip, and I felt very grateful for those fine days we spent on the water, sailing the old man home.

A few days ago my 9-month-old son looked at me and said, “Da-da.” Naturally I was thrilled, humbled and nearly moved to tears.

Then he looked at the cat and said, “Da-da.”

So okay, comprehension is an ongoing process. We’re trying not to get ahead of ourselves. After Sean Michael said, “Oye” repeatedly, Jules got so excited she went out and purchased a Star of David and a yarmulke.

I jest.

A few of Sean’s favorite activities are bouncing in his activity jumper, taking shoulder and backpack rides (my little hitchhiker and I walk a trail on Sunday mornings), watching Baby Einstein videos, strolling around the park in his custom chariot and diving from the couch onto soft pillows. That last one scares Miss Jules, but he always comes up smiling.

My least favorite activity with Sean remains diaper changing. As a classic movie fan, I’ve labeled various aspects accordingly: Rear Window, Midnight Run, The Sweet Smell of Success, Groundhog Day, Duck Soup, Water World, Five Easy Pieces, The Dirty Dozen and, occasionally, Apocalypse Now. Just when I mastered the process, Sean Michael added some challenges. Now he rolls, kicks and arches while I’m working, and it’s like trying to strap a diaper on a bucking bronco.

The diaper change is about the ONLY image his Paparazzi Grandparents haven’t captured digitally – and I’m sure they will eventually. I half-expect them to jump from behind a tree and snap his picture when we’re strolling around the park. Grandma Mary claims she is entering his pictures in some cute baby contest, but I suspect she’s actually selling them to tabloids.

As Sean Michael gets older, his toys are starting to accumulate. The latest was a version of Jack in the Box called Peter the Pirate. Unfortunately, Peter refused to leave his box. Rather than suggest therapy, we exchanged Peter the Pirate for Jester the Clown, who dutifully pops at the appropriate time.
Most of Sean’s toys end up in the play pen. I call it the bullpen, but it actually reminds me more of a little prison – solitary confinement, unless you count a couple of stuffed animals. Every time I put Sean in there, I feel like that mean warden from The Shawshank Redemption, and I can imagine the conversation he might have with another inmate:

“What ya in for, bub?”
“Disturbing the peace.”
“How short are you?”
“About 30 inches.”

“Sheesh, new fish! I meant how long are you in for?”
“Ten to twenty.”
“Years?”
“Minutes. But it could be five to ten with good behavior.”

Well, it’s time to spring the kid for a shoulder ride. I’m guessing his ever-increasing weight and my ever-waning strength give us about a five-year window for this activity. Best Wishes from Baby Land, John & Jules.

Mark Fink, a successful TV writer and producer (FULL HOUSE, among many others), asked me to provide a blurb for his second young adult novel. I was flattered he asked and happy to oblige, since I thought his book was excellent. Here’s the blurb: “Andy Crenshaw has reason to sulk when his big summer trip is hijacked from Hawaii to Wisconsin. Instead, this kid rolls with the punches, embraces his funky relatives, avoids the cows in the road and sees beauty beyond surface appearances. Andy is a hoot and THE SUMMER I GOT A LIFE is hilarious — as well as sensitive and insightful. I loved the characters, who are perfectly drawn in all their imperfections.” I should add that a scene set at the Oshkosh Mall, in which a pig invades Victoria’s Secret, is worth the price of the book.