The ghost of Andrew Johnson used to visit me. We drank whiskey together in the dark recesses of the night. We spoke with low voices, seditiously.

I was teaching high school English in a little town on the western edge of Kansas, under the supervision of a principal whose voice carried unspoken threats, and who seemed most dangerous when he smiled. My colleague advised me, unsolicited, to not teach a unit on the Harlem Renaissance because “This is western Kansas, and we don’t go for that kind of thing.” There was no curriculum to speak of.

I lived in a basement apartment with concrete walls covered by gypsum. The peculiar demands of teaching precipitated a change in sleep schedule: after arriving home from school, I ate dinner, slept until midnight, worked until 4 am, and then slept until 6am.

When the ghost of Andrew Johnson appeared in my living room, whiskey in hand, proclaiming “I never had much use for school. Didn’t learn how to read or write until I was 18, and that hardly held me back! I was the damned president!”  I assumed I was imagining things.

He didn’t disappear, even after I drank some cold water and slapped myself on the face a few times, I decided to quiz him, and to write down the answers so I could fact check them later:

“When were you president?”

“April 15^th, 1865, to March 4, 1869.”

“Notable accomplishments?”

“I was president when your Nebraska was inducted into our glorious Union.”

“Weren’t you impeached?”

“Twice, m’boy, and the impeachment proceedings failed both times by the grace of God.”

When I checked these notes the next day, I had no choice but to accept the truth: the ghost of Andrew Johnson was drinking whiskey in my living room.

And so a nightly ritual was established: I would grade papers while Andrew Johnson sat on the couch and drank whiskey. He would tell me stories, full of pomp and bluster. Some men are furnaces; Andrew Johnson was such a man, and he would grandstand like he was still a senator, crying out that “confederate traitors like Jefferson Davis should be hanged!” Eventually, he would fall asleep, bottle of whiskey lolling in his lap.

Those first two months, I was the golden boy of western Kansas: no lesson could fail, and even my principal, who believed that “fear is the best motivator”, told me once or twice a week “I hear you’re doing good work. Keep it up.”

When I told Andrew Johnson about this, he said “Ah, to be on the ascent. It’s a great view from the top, m’boy. Savor it. Reminds me of when I was the deputized brigadier general of Tennessee. Won me the vice-presidency, that did.”

Not everything was wonderful. The work was difficult, and I often felt lonely when I had time to myself, though never enough to accept my upstairs neighbor’s offer to go with me to bars in the surrounding towns to pick up women. He was twice my age, and stood too close when he talked to me.

My first official evaluation was positive. The principal gave me useful feedback, and I had a clear plan for my development as a teacher. That night was the first night that Andrew Johnson and I drank together. The whiskey burned as it went down, and I felt as though I had a furnace in my belly. I slept well that night.

The next week, my principal stopped me in the hallway, saying “Hey, drop by my office when you get the chance. I’d like to talk with you.”

I stopped by after school, and the first thing he said was “Andrew, I’ve decided that things in your classroom need to change. And you’re going to make these changes, or else you’ll be looking for another job over Christmas.”

The mandates were simple: formal grammar (“How can they use nouns if they can’t name and define the 8 types of nouns?”, he asked me), and questions directly from the textbook, which was so watered-down that it was completely devoid of intellectual nourishment. And every single one of my lesson plans needed to be approved by him, my aforementioned colleague (whom I’d grown to dislike), and the superintendent.

Beyond those directives, they gave me two pieces of advice: to purchase a bottle of wine and a subscription to HBO to fill up my time, and to try to find a girlfriend, if I was able.

When I asked questions, the responses were “We’re doing this to save your career” and “We’ve been teaching longer than you’ve been alive. Trust us.”

When I told Andrew Johnson about this, he was furious. “Tell them you’ll fight. Tell them to try and force you out. The bastards always try to force you out, they do. But I won, by God, I won. Tell those bastards that you’d rather die than give in.”

He poured himself another glass of whiskey. “I survived an assassination attempt and two impeachments, and never once backed down. You’ll survive this too, if you keep your wits.”

I poured a glass of whiskey for myself, and began rewriting my lesson plans.

The routine changed: my classes were observed at least once per day. Frequently, lesson plans were rewritten for me, based on whatever the mandate of the day was. After being told on Monday that my students need to write more, I would be scolded on Tuesday for having them write even a few sentences. And so on. I kept a calendar, with an X on each day where I was reprimanded. Sometimes entire weeks were filled in.

My relationship with Andrew Johnson changed, too. We drank more, and clashed. When I told him in December that I was thinking of resigning, he grew furious. “You came here believing in something, and now you want to run?” He hurled the bottle of whiskey at the wall behind me. It exploded, leaving streaks of whiskey and shards of glass in the drywall. “You’re nothing but a goddamn coward.” And with that, I resolved to finish out my contract.

When I left Kansas at the end of the school year, I did not say goodbye. My principal was surprised to see me go, but neither of us were sad about it. And I did not say goodbye to Andrew Johnson. There is no point to saying goodbye to ghosts.

In the three years since, I’ve bounced between schools and tried my damnedest to prove myself to myself. To prove my former principal wrong. They were doing the best they could. So was I.

I’ve been telling this story again and again, though the purpose remains unclear. Call it unfinished business, if you like. I no longer touch whiskey, and I know now that I am no furnace, no contraption of metal and coal. Andrew Johnson’s last act in office was to grant an unconditional pardon to all former confederate soldiers. Even though he built his career by calling for them to be hanged, he did what his predecessors were unwilling to do, political expediency be damned.

My last act as a teacher was to stack up the textbooks, turn out the lights, and turn in my keys. I’ll be back in the classroom someday. But for now, I am done telling this story, in a way Andrew Johnson never will be.

[Scene opens in a living room; ALISTAIR BARTHOLOMEW, age 12, is sitting at a table working on homework. ROBOT FREDERICK, a robot, monitors. ROBOT FREDERICK is approximately one meter tall, balances on a basketball-sized hard rubber ball, and sways slightly. He has a three articulated arms, which are slightly raised for balance.]

ROBOT FREDERICK:

Alistair, have you finished your problem set? The quiz is tomorrow, and I expect you to be ready for it.

ALISTAIR BARTHOLOMEW:

Almost. There are two exercises left, but I know how to do them.

ROBOT:

So you feel confident in the material?

ALISTAIR:

Yes. If I miss any problems, it will be because of foolish mistakes or careless errors, rather than a lack of comprehension.

ROBOT:

This is encouraging. Finish those two exercises and I will check your work for errors. It is important that you do well on the quiz tomorrow. Your future depends on it.

ALISTAIR:

I guess so.

ROBOT:

You want to become an accountant, don’t you?

ALISTAIR:

Sure. You keep telling me I’d be good at it, so sure.

ROBOT:

Alistair, your aptitude tests suggest that you have a methodical nature about you, and that you are good with numbers and with details. These qualities make you a promising candidate for becoming an accountant.

ALISTAIR:

Okay.

ROBOT:

You want to be happy, right?

ALISTAIR:

Of course. Who doesn’t want to be happy? Everyone wants to be happy.

ROBOT:

Everyone rational, at least. The best way to become happy is to use your strengths and talents to fully establish yourself in a challenging and meaningful career. Yours suggest that you would make an excellent accountant, assuming that you continue to work hard and avoid complacency

ALISTAIR:

Alright, but how do you know? How do you know that I would be a good accountant?

ROBOT:

“Know” is an imprecise word. The aptitude tests predict that you might be a good accountant, but we do not know for certain. The tests also predict, with a lesser degree of certainty, that you might be a good courtroom stenographer or kayak instructor.

ALISTAIR:

Can the tests be wrong?

ROBOT:

In short, no. They are only predictive tests. There are too many variables in play for a test to be “right” or “wrong”. There are simply better or worse predictions. Given your relatively good health, it is likely that if you do not become an accountant, it will likely be because you put forth insufficient effort. Do you doubt the tests?

ALISTAIR:

No, I don’t think so –

ROBOT:

You can always submit a request for data which went into the test and conduct your own studies. But you cannot, in good faith, cast doubt—

ALISTAIR:

–cast doubt on the test without making an empirical claim or performing my own longitudinal, normed studies. I know this, Robot Frederick. You tell me this at least three times per day.

ROBOT:

Alistair, the average this calendar year is only 2.892 times per day. When you round, you misrepresent the truth. Now what was your original point?

ALISTAIR:

My dad said that when he was little, people picked their own careers. He told me that he wanted to be an astronaut when he was my age.

ROBOT:

And look: now, he is not an astronaut, and is instead a sous-chef. Imagine how much more effective he would be if he had devoted himself fully to the culinary arts from a young age. Now he must live with the disappointment of not being an astronaut, and the disappointment of not being as effective as he otherwise could be.

ALISTAIR:

I don’t know… he seems pretty happy.

ROBOT:

Without a full psychometric evaluation, it is difficult to know, but a brief survey of the evidence suggests that you are correct and that your father could be described as “happy”. But there are many for whom the disappointment of never achieving their goals overwhelms any sort of endorphin release associated with “happiness”. Not everyone can be an astronaut, or even a sous-chef. Hence, the tests.

ALISTAIR:

Am I happy, Robot Frederick?

ROBOT:

Are you sad?

ALISTAIR:

No, not right now.

ROBOT:

Depressed? Angry? In pain? Do you want for affection or love? Do you lack adequate food or shelter? Are any of your needs unmet? Are you without purpose?

ALISTAIR:

I don’t think so.

ROBOT:

Then you are happy.

ALISTAIR:

[disappointed] That’s it?

ROBOT:

It’s that simple. In fact, I’ve noticed a slight increase in endorphin levels this week, mostly in the early afternoon.

ALISTAIR:

[bashful] I guess.

ROBOT:

Alistair, what’s been going on? Did your instructors change the curriculum?

ALISTAIR:

No, it’s still the same. We just switched desks around.

ROBOT:

And now you can better see the board and take notes?

ALISTAIR:

No, no. Now I sit next to my friend Ginger.

ROBOT:

Ginger Aaronson 7382460? You have not mentioned her before. I did not realize you two were acquainted.

ALISTAIR:

We just started hanging out last week. She’s been eating lunch with me on days when we are allowed to determine our own seating.

ROBOT:

This is not romantic in nature, is it?

ALISTAIR:

Ro-bot.

ROBOT:

Address me by my full name, please, and answer the question.

ALISTAIR:

No, Robot Frederick, we’re not dating or anything. I’m not allowed to date yet, and I don’t think she is, either.

ROBOT:

Good. Thank you for complying, Alistair.

ALISTAIR:

You’re welcome.

ROBOT:

Make sure you continue to exhibit good judgment. You are too young to be searching for a mate, especially given that you have not yet established a career.

ALISTAIR:

I’m not looking for a mate. It’s just…

ROBOT:

It’s just what?

ALISTAIR:

It’s just, she’s really pretty, and nice, and I like talking to her. We were talking before school this morning, and the sun was just coming up, and with all the oranges and reds it looked like the light was molten; and I was really happy.

ROBOT:

Alistair, light does not have mass, nor can it transition between states of matter. Therefore, it cannot be molten.

ALISTAIR:

I know that. It just looked like it was. That’s all.

ROBOT:

Alistair, you are not scheduled to begin study of simile or metaphor for another two years. In the meantime, please refrain from using them in your speech. Fanciful descriptors are hardly fitting for an accountant.

ALISTAIR:

Robot Frederick, I don’t know what those words you just said mean. How can I not use them if I don’t know what they are?

ROBOT:

Make a good faith effort. As with everything else, you will learn by systematically evaluating a series of related infractions. Can I trust you to make a good faith effort?

ALISTAIR:

I’ll try my best.

ROBOT:

That is all I ever ask of you.

ALISTAIR:

[after a pause] Do you know if I am eating with my parents tonight?

ROBOT:

You may, if you want, so long as your homework is done correctly. I’ll recalculate the family-time quota based on your decision.

ALISTAIR:

What are we having?

ROBOT:

Tonight’s scheduled dinner is eggplant lasagna. The ingredients are ready. I believe your father will prepare it.

ALISTAIR:

Great! I love lasagna!

ROBOT:

You do not love lasagna. Love implies a mutual emotional connection, as measured by shared empathetic endorphin release. This is impossible with lasagna. You love your parents, perhaps, but not lasagna.

ALISTAIR:

I’ll try to be more precise next time in my language, Robot Frederick.

ROBOT:

Thank you, Alistair. Now finish your homework. Your parents will be home soon.

The Tunguska Event: Five Vignettes

I.

It is Saturday morning. Emily and I are at the dining room table, eating a late breakfast of waffles and scrambled eggs. The radio is on, playing soft jazz. Emily is reading the newspaper while I thumb through the essays in my “to-grade” pile next to me. Her stack of papers is next to her, but they will wait until after the crossword. She announces clues, like “39 across, 9 letters: dish made from a Cambodian dictator”, to which I respond with either “Pol Pot pie” or “Shit if I know. What letters do you have?” This has been our routine since she took a job teaching composition at my school and moved in with me.

And then the music stops. “We’re… we’re getting word that the President is about to make an address. We’re switching there now.”

“Good morning. About half an hour ago, scientists at NASA’s Near Earth Object monitoring program detected an asteroid, approximately one-half mile in diameter, headed for earth. Calculations are still preliminary, but right now we can say with a high degree of certainty that the asteroid will enter Earth’s atmosphere in approximately 20 hours, around 6am tomorrow. Know that we are doing everything we can to avert full-scale catastrophe.

We’ve already begun evacuation of cities along all coasts, and have repurposed our monitoring systems. But right now it is too early for us to know where and how the asteroid will impact. I, along with representatives from NASA, will address the nation. By that time, we will know much more about the asteroid, and the best course of action.

For now, we ask that you give aid and shelter to those in need, and that you remain calm and steadfast. If these are our last hours, they will be dignified and noble, humanity at its finest. And if they are not, then we will mark this as the moment when the country unified against a greater threat, and persevered all the same. Thank you.”

After the president finishes speaking, Emily reaches over and turns off the radio. We sit in silence, while scrambled eggs grow cold. Then she shoves her stack of papers off the table and they scatter around the dining room. “These can probably wait,” she says.

II.

There is a knock on the front door. I answer it and see Anna and Eric, eleventh graders whom Emily and I both teach. They  meet in my classroom to play Scrabble over lunch. I join in if I am not busy.

“Since we might not see you at school this week, we thought we’d come over to talk with you,” Eric said.

I invite them in, and they sit at the table while I grab the Scrabble board. “Sorry for being stalkerish,” Anna says. “We looked you up in the phone book. The phone lines are down, or we’d have called first.” I laugh.

Emily comes out of her room and sees the students. “Oh, hey!” she says. “Do you have room for one more?”

“Of course!” Anna says.

“Lemme grab my dictionary and I’ll be right out.”

When she ducks back in her room, Eric turns to me and whispers “You two live together?” I nod.

“Are you guys dating?” Anna asks.

“No. We dated back in college, but that was a few years ago.”

And then Emily is back out, and we are playing team-Scrabble, males against females (“Down with the patriarchy!” Emily says). We share stories, and I realize eight turns in that I forgot to write down the points. “Considering the circumstances, it probably doesn’t matter,” Eric says.

After the letters are gone and the words all played, the students get up to leave. “Goodbye,” they say, “We’ll see you at school if we don’t all die.”

“I hope so,” I say. “I hope so.”

They walk out, and Anna begins to pull the door shut behind her, but stops. “What happened between you two?”

I pause, and Emily answers. “I moved away,” she says. “And teaching was more important to both of us than dating was. It was too much work to handle both a relationship and teaching full-time.”

I nod. “It was a mutual decision,” I say. “There weren’t any hard feelings.”

After they are gone, Emily and I are sitting at the table. “What do you want to do?” I ask her.

She thinks for a second. “All I really want to do right now is throw open the windows and have sex.”

III.

The president is on the television again, and introduces a scientist to tell us more.

“In about an hour, “ he says, “The asteroid is going to collide with the moon, but we are unsure what will happen after that. Best case scenario, the moon absorbs most of the impact or deflects the asteroid completely. Worst case scenario, the asteroid skips off the surface and continues on its collision course with earth. Or it’s possible that the asteroid will shatter into smaller pieces, which would likely explode in the atmosphere like the object in the Tunguska event.”

He clears his throat and continues. “Frankly, there’s no way to know. We’ve repurposed a lot of equipment, but we’ve never had an asteroid so close before. While we’ll be getting data constantly, we won’t know for certain what will happen until about sunrise tomorrow. In the meantime, the only thing we can do is spend time with loved ones, prepare for the worst, and perhaps pray.”

Then he bows his head and begins reciting the Lord’s prayer. The newsroom joins in.

Before they finish, Emily turns off the TV. “They’re only praying because they’re scared and don’t know what else to do.” She sits down. “Fear is a stupid reason to do anything.”

IV.

I am making dinner when there is another knock at the door. Emily answers. It is the postman. “Package for you,” he says. It is from Emily’s grandmother, probably full of cookies, socks, and newspaper clippings.

“I’m surprised you’re still working,” Emily says. “Haven’t most people taken today off?”

“Just doing my job,” he says. “If we survive, I don’t want it to go down that I took a day off for nothing. And if we don’t survive, then what will it matter?”

Emily invites him in for dinner, but he declines. He has more mail to deliver.

V.

It is now an hour before sunrise on Sunday morning. Emily and I are lying on a blanket in a field outside of town. She rests her head on my chest, and her hand has snaked its way around my torso. She is warm.

There is no moon tonight, nor clouds. All we can see are the stars and the faint glow of distant streetlights. The field is full of dandelions.

“Y’know, there’s a chance we might spend the rest of our lives together,” I say.

She laughs. “You’re not sad about that, are you?”

“Not thrilled about the imminent death, but I can’t think of anyone I’d rather it be with.”

We lie there in silence, looking at the stars.

“There was a time, years ago, when I wanted to ask you to marry me,” I say. “I was saving up for a ring and everything.”

“Why didn’t you ask?”

“I figured you’d say no. You’d just gotten the new job and were getting ready to move, and I didn’t want to make you stay when you were so excited to leave.”

She bends up to kiss me. “I would’ve stayed. It was just a job.”

I reach over, grab a dandelion, and wrap its stem around her finger. “Maybe it’s too late now, but I hope this works.” I can’t see the flower, but I can feel its softness.

She curls up closer to me. “I think it will be alright.” I can feel her warmth and the coolness of night in springtime. Together, we wait for sunrise.

Somewhere in the vicinity of when I was 8 years old, my mother acquired a hummingbird figurine, which she attached, via suction-cup, to our kitchen window. In the hummingbird’s wings, there were a few pieces of cut glass, 14 – 18 sided polyhedral discs, which would catch light during sunset and act as prisms, scattering a few dozen thumb-sized splotches of color around the kitchen and living room. You could see Pike’s Peak out the kitchen window, and during the summer, the sun would set just to the right of the mountain. This, when combined with the hummingbird, meant that sunsets were pretty sweet. I remember frequently sitting in the kitchen and watching the light change, and the joy of cold linoleum in July.

And I remember one day, when I was perhaps 10, my father walked by and asked me what I was doing. After I explained myself (“I’m watching the light change, Dad!”), he explained to me how prisms work.

Basically, light, as we see it, stretches over a nice band of wavelengths, each roughly corresponding to a band of colour. When it passes through a transparent medium, such as glass, the light gets refracted, that is, its travel path gets deflected a bit based on the refraction index and on the speed of the given wavelength of light (each wavelength travels at a slightly different speed). The end result within the context of the hummingbird was the few dozen thumb-sized blotches of rainbow scattered about the kitchen and living room. Where I saw magic, my father saw a natural process. Or maybe it just wasn’t the same magic.

When I was growing up, most things were explained to me in terms of natural processes. My parents were both engineers by training and met by way of being debate partners in college, so there was always this sort of quiet acceptance of the facts and of well-reasoned arguments.

My mother, in particular, was really good at this. She was eminently reasonable, which made it really difficult to be angry at her. We never got the “You follow the rules because they’re rules!” speech, but instead we spent a lot of time sitting on the couch in the living room reasoning through scenarios. I generally appreciated these talks, because they made the world less frightening and senseless.

However, these talks also took a few turns for the awkward. Like the time when my mother said to me “Andrew, given that you’re at an age where your peers are becoming sexually active, I want you to know something: both oral and anal sex are still sex, and if you choose to have sex, make sure you use at least one form of protection, preferably two. If you have any questions, you can always ask me or your father.”

Like I said, eminently reasonable, though I spent the rest of the evening doing hundreds of algebra problems in hopes of never thinking about sex again.

My mother had some health problems, especially while I was in high school. I don’t remember if there was ever a formal diagnosis, but she would have seizures every so often. I spent the summer after I got my license as her personal chauffeur while she tried to get her seizures under control. In spite of this, she stayed pretty independent: she worked with families who had deaf children, and took up martial arts (this one time, we were drilling and she kicked me on the inside of my leg, right on the femoral nerve, and I buckled… hard. Another awkward lesson in the importance of protection, it seems).

My mother died the week before I started my freshman year of college. She came home from work, asked me to scrub the floorboards in the hallway when I vacuumed later that day, went to her bedroom, and took a nap. While she was napping, she suffered a seizure and stopped breathing. My father found her when he came home from work a few hours later.

My sister and I were hanging out in the basement, oblivious. I remember going upstairs and seeing her on the floor of the living room. The paramedics were setting up the defibrillator. There were bits of plastic and paper all over the ground. And my father… he was just standing against the wall, out of the way. His eyes were like caves. This was a Tuesday.

Two days later, on Thursday, the neurologist confirmed that there was no brain activity whatsoever. My mother was on life support, a mess of tubes of skin. I remember the pastor from my mother’s church sitting with me and my sister. He didn’t have any explanations. And I remember my dad, when he told me and my sister that he made the decision to pull my mother from life support. She was a registered organ donor, and since she would never survive in any meaningful sense, he wanted to make sure that at least some good would come out of this. We quietly accepted the facts, and made the most reasonable decision from there.

At her funeral, I did not cry. I remember telling myself “This was the result of natural processes. It is foolish to cry over natural processes.” The pastor’s only consolation was that this somehow fits into the plan of God, and that maybe someday we would be lucky enough to see the reasoning. I remember telling myself “You cannot cry about the plan of God. You cannot cry over natural processes.”

With the change in context, and with our changing speeds, my father, sister and I changed trajectory significantly.

I remember my sister telling me when I was home for Christmas “The school counselor wanted me to go to some grief support group, and I told her ‘How is being around sad people supposed to make me feel anything other than more sad?’”

I became a teacher, which is what my mother was happiest doing. I figured that if we are what we repeatedly do, and then if I do the things she did I might
perhaps one day be as good a person as she was. This wasn’t empty sentimentality. My mom was pretty awesome. Over the next few years, I worked myself as hard as I could, terrified of slowing down, terrified of being a waste of carbon and oxygen. I stopped sleeping for a while.

My father made do for the next 6 months or so after my mother died. I remember getting an email from him which said “Hey. I wanted to let you know that I’m going to start dating again sometime so that it isn’t a surprise. I’m tired of being sad and lonely.” At the time, I thought of it as weakness. But now I don’t think it was.

He was looking forward to slowing down finally, to relaxing. But then he had to start all over again.

A few months later, he met the woman who is now his wife. They were engaged about a year after my mother died, and were married some 6 months later.
My grandmother on my mother’s side cried through the entire wedding. I wasn’t a big fan of my dad’s wife at the time, but it’s likely that I just didn’t see the same magic he did. I guess I still don’t, but I’m warming up to her, bit by bit.

My dad and his wife sold the house I grew up in the following summer. We gave away most of my mom’s things.

A few months after my dad sold the house, I went to see it with the woman I thought I would marry. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but when I got there, it was just a house. Whatever made it “my house” was gone. Instead, it was just a building. I’ve since never been back to that house, and never ended up asking her to marry me. That’s just how things go sometimes. Sometimes a house is just a house, and sometimes the person you love is just a person.

When I went home last Christmas, I noticed that the hummingbird wasn’t there. It’d been years since I thought of it, and I don’t remember grabbing it out of the old house so it likely got thrown away. This made me feel sad for a minute or two, but it’s not the thing that carries the memories. It’s the memories. I bet, even now, not many would see the same magic that I saw… that’s neither good nor bad… it’s just how things are.

And really, the loss of the hummingbird is small: a few dollars worth of plastic and glass, most likely. The prisms, the rainbow effect, all of that can be
replicated.

There was never any magic there. It’s just natural processes.

1)

Isaac Newton was born in 1643, and died a virgin. He was obsessed with the moon. Newton was, by most accounts, an unpleasant man; he took pleasure in petty quarrels and in discrediting his rivals. Newton was also, by most accounts, brilliant. In an age of preordained answers he dared to ask questions of the universe. So I ask you, Isaac, what were those questions?

2)

There are two relevant myths surrounding apples: the first concerns the fall of man. The second, man’s rise. But now is not the time to discuss them.

3)

Newton’s laws of motion govern particle movement on a basic level. They state:

- That a body at rest will remain at rest, and a body in motion will remain in motion, unless either are acted upon by some external force

 - That force is equal to mass times acceleration, and

- That every action produces an equal and opposite reaction

These findings were published in Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica in 1687.

While developing physics, Newton developed a series of mathematic techniques which he called calculus. The fundamental theorem of calculus is thus:

For any continuous function F(x) which is defined across a range (a,b), the rate of change of F(x) at any point x can be found by taking its derivative. Similarly, the rate of accumulation can be found by taking the antiderivative. Thus, if we can define a curve mathematically, we can know it intimately.

Newton published these methods when he was twenty-three.

4)

Imagine, for a moment, Newton as a child. Sickly, weak, and brilliant. Imagine him during the day, when his intellect so clearly outpaced his peers and teachers that he felt open contempt was the only appropriate response. Imagine a boy who, by the age of 23, had already established himself as one of the foremost minds in the world.

Now imagine Newton at night. He kept simple quarters, and never shared his bed with another. Imagine that he had a small window on his southern wall. Can you see him, staring out at the moon in the dark recesses of midnight? How pure she looked, how unspoiled, and yet she stayed.

Newton was, at the age of 17, engaged to be married. He kept a list of his sins. His engagement was broken off, and the list of his shortcomings no doubt was incomplete.

Yet the moon always came back, predictably and logically and perfectly. Can you see the attraction? Isaac, was this the attraction?

5)

Here is the first myth of the apple, which concerns the fall of mankind:

During earth’s infancy, Adam and Eve lived in harmony with the world in the Garden of Eden. They had two trees: the tree of life, whose fruit ensured immortality, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil, whose fruit would surely kill them.

Eve, tempted by Lucifer, ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and subsequently fed the same fruit to Adam. They were forcibly expelled from the garden, and thus mankind was condemned to mortality.

I cannot speak to this story’s veracity, but I can say this: If the tree of knowledge existed, Newton tasted its fruit early and often. He was ravenous. Each bite, each sumptuous, juicy bite, served as testament only to the wonders of the world and to his own inadequacy when facing its splendor. How can people, fallible, and foolish, measure up to the mathematical perfection of the universe? They simply cannot.

Adam and Eve were made of dust, of earth. How cruel, then, their expulsion must have been.

6)

Newton’s usage of inertial frames makes it possible for us to think in four-dimensional terms. The first dimension, a line, is one axis of motion for a body. The second dimension gives us a plane, and two directions of motion. The third, a solid, gives us three. The fourth dimension is time, which, while a vacuum, lets us know everywhere that body has been and everywhere it will ever be. If only people were so predictable and orderly, Isaac, perhaps you would have loved us more. But how can we know?

7)

Newton’s law of universal gravitation states that the elliptical form of planetary orbits could result from centripetal force inversely proportional to the square of the radius vector. More precisely, gravitational force varies such that if two objects were moved to being twice as far apart, their gravitational attraction would be one-fourth as strong, and so on.

Newton’s proof took only nine pages, and explained the motions of heavenly bodies. His explanation is the only one that makes sense to me when I wonder why we orbit as we do.

The fundamental difference between scientists and philosophers is that philosophers ask why, whereas scientists only ask how.

8)

Here is the second myth of the apple:

In the late 1660’s, while grappling with the notion of gravitas, Isaac Newton sat near an apple tree. When an apple fell from the tree, he thought “Why would it fall straight down, perpendicular to the earth’s surface? Why not sideways, or upward? There must be a force! And if there is a force, surely it is the same force which keeps us rooted, and perhaps the same force which keeps the moon in place.”

If one were to visit the Cambridge campus, one could see the alleged tree, and perhaps sit beneath it.

Whether the apple actually existed is irrelevant. Newton spent over 20 years developing and articulating this theory, and then bestowed upon it the name gravity. He single-handedly smashed the last vestiges of geocentricism and ushered in heliocentric theory. To pretend otherwise does him a fundamental injustice.  It took him two decades to learn why the moon stays as she does.

9)

For the past six months, I’ve spent my spare time re-teaching myself calculus. It’s been seven years since I last spent any real time on the maths or sciences and I could no longer stand the stench of my own ignorance. I write out the proofs again and again, but I am ankle deep in an ocean of beauty, waiting for the tide to come in. Every so often, a wave of clarity will wash over me and for an instant I can see the perfection, the mathematical harmony that Newton saw.

For an instant I can see it, and then there is just driftwood. I am a child who cannot swim, standing on a beach, turning over pebbles. Only my ankles are wet, yet there is sand between my toes.

In the last six months, I’ve gone on exactly one date. I know that there is a pull to bodies in motion, to friction and to sweat, but that is a messy business, full of imprecision. I’ve not yet learned to see in the dark. I’ve not yet learned where my orbits will take me. It’s been so long since I last reckoned with anyone’s weight but my own, since I last reckoned with equal and opposite forces. It hasn’t been long enough.

Isaac, my work will not change the world as yours did. My work will not outlive me. I am, at best, a derivative. I am, at best, an insect hoping to stand on the shoulders of a giant.

These days, I am late nights and early mornings. I am running up a sleep debt I have no intention of repaying soon. All time is borrowed, and will eventually be paid back many times over. My debtors will forgive the temporary excesses.

Newton’s work in calculus was largely supplanted by Leibnitz, and very little of his original notation remains. Newton’s laws of motions were improved upon by Euler, and are now considered incomplete. He never identified the precise numerical value of the acceleration due to gravity. His work in alchemy produced no significant results. At the time of his death, he had alienated most of his peers and rivals. He refused to take communion while on his deathbed.

In spite of these flaws, in spite of his meticulously kept list of sins, Newton’s work lives on, a singular testament to sheer force of the mind when presented with questions so intrinsic, so fundamental, that they are indistinguishable from the questioner.

Isaac, they sent men to the moon and she was silent. Isaac, men went to the moon and touched her just to prove that they could. They used you, Isaac, they used you. Sound does not travel in the vacuums of space or time, but if the moon screamed, if she screamed you heard her.

You are not responsible, Isaac. You are not responsible.

We should have sent you. It should have been you, Isaac. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

It’s been thirty-nine years, Isaac, since we last set foot on the moon. Thirty-nine.  Current theory states that the moon was once a part of earth before it was ripped away. The moon came from the same place we did; the moon is made of dust, and we are made of dust, and so we are the same. Isaac, the last moon mission brought a geologist. Is that any way to greet our sister? Is that any way to show her we love her? Isaac, how did we forget her gravity? How did we forget her bloodlines?

Everything you did, you did for the Moon. Sound does not travel across the vacuum of space and so you asked the maths to ask the universe. You measured her curves, her motions, her path across your south-facing window. In doing so, you knew her intimately. And you loved her. The questions you asked traveled across the vacuum of space and so were silent. But the moon heard, and she answered.

Newton got his answers. I believe this. And the moon… the moon spins on, silent as she ever was. Sometimes, though, she smiles. I only hope that one day we learn to smile back.

How would you respond to the following?   A teacher tells you “I hate to leave teaching because I’ve always loved my subject matter, but I can’t make enough money to raise my family.”

While this seems a prime opportunity for a grandiose soliloquy, my actual response would be much closer to “I’m sorry to hear that. What are you thinking of doing instead?”

If the reasons are purely financial, then it would be tough to fault my colleague; a teacher’s salary is very comfortable for someone who is single and debt-free, but a bit tight beyond that. More to the point, I cannot fault my colleague for making what she feels is the best decision for her and her family if that decision does not harm others. I have no right to make such a moral judgment.

Speaking more personally, I can empathize. I left my first teaching position (albeit for different reasons), with no intent at the time to return to being a teacher. In my case it is the students and my relationships with them which bring me back, rather than the subject. But I can say with full honesty that I have been planning for the upcoming year under the assumption that I will not be a teacher and will instead be a writer and an engineer-in-training. This may prove a mistake, but I am perhaps much better at teaching than I am at being a teacher. I don’t know yet if I am better at being a teacher than I am at being other things, but sometimes it is time to stop waiting and to start figuring things out.

Everyone must decide what they are willing to sacrifice and for what. I can’t, in good conscience, fault people for making such decisions.

How would you have responded to this?

This is a story about my grandmother.

My grandmother is a librarian at her church. She used to be a florist, but now she is a librarian.  Tuesdays and Thursdays, she takes care of my little cousin Harley Jane after school. After Harley is done with her homework, she and my grandmother read together.

My sister and I were voracious readers when we were growing up. So was my mother, from what I’ve heard and what I remember. My sister and I were not allowed to watch more than 30 minutes of television per week, so instead we read. It was a family activity, so it never occurred to me to do anything other than relish the opportunity. I would pick a book of my own to read, and one of my parents would read to my sister while the other cleaned up the kitchen after dinner.

I had my own bookshelf in my room in lieu of a toy shelf. And when I was 6 years old, you would’ve noticed a few predominant themes across the selection of titles: dinosaurs, rockets, Hardy Boys mysteries, and bears. One of my mother’s coworkers gave me a box full of bear books her children had outgrown: Paddington, Corduroy, The Berenstains, and Winnie the Pooh.  My sister had not yet started reading, so the books stayed in my room, though she would occasionally pull one off the shelf for me to read to her.

It was about this time that my mother, sister and I flew out to Memphis, Tennessee to visit my grandparents. My memory of the trip is fuzzy, but one aspect of it is perfectly clear even now. My grandmother had this old green chair, one of the first pieces of furniture she and my grandfather bought after they got married. After dinner, she would sit on the chair and I would sit on her lap and we would take turns reading to each other. We even took a stab at the dinosaur textbook my mother picked up at the college bookstore, though eventually the Latin names and technical terminology got to be too much for either of us

The other thing I remember about this chair was behind it, she had a small shelf full of old maps and issues of National Geographic from the 50’s  on. Anytime my sister or I were bored (which was not often), we’d go to that shelf.

The following summer, my grandmother flew out to Colorado Springs to visit us. While my father drove to the airport to pick her up, my mother took all of my bear books off the shelf, boxed them up, and put them on the top shelf in my closet. When I asked her why, she said simply “Grandma’s afraid of bears. So we’ll put the books away until she goes back home.”

The visit passed without incident. As I grew older, I boxed up the books I’d outgrown and donated them to the library (though I kept the dinosaur books; it’s impossible to outgrow dinosaurs). By the time my grandparents moved to Colorado Springs, I was in middle school and far more interested in Tom Clancy and Lois Lowry than I was in AA Milne or Stan and Jan. With that, I slowly forgot about my grandmother’s fear of bears, as it was no longer relevant to maintaining normalcy.

Flash forward to the summer after my sophomore year of high school. My grandparents, mother, sister and I all piled into my mother’s ’96 Plymouth Voyager and drove through Colorado, Nebraska, and South Dakota to Huron for my grandmother’s family reunion. She and most of her 12 siblings were born there, and gathered every other summer. I looked forward to this for two reasons: I could work on my summer 1984 reading project, and I was in a gathering where not only was there no expectation that I hit on people, everyone there was somehow related to me and so I couldn’t hit on them. As a teenager terrified of poor grades and of dating, the family reunion was exactly where I wanted to be.

The night before the reunion started, we went with two of my aunts to dinner at a steakhouse which my uncle assured us was “pretty good once you get over how gross everything is”. My sister, by then a fierce vegetarian, claimed that the place reeked of murder, but agreed to go with under the condition that no animals could die for her salad.

My grandmother, however, flatly refused to even get out of the car. My aunts kept saying “Bernice, it’s probably not even there anymore,” until she finally relented.

We knew this was a mistake when I opened up the front door and my grandmother let out an unearthly howl, as if some old torment were being reinflicted on her. She walked right past the host’s table, through the restaurant, and toward this seven foot tall stuffed grizzly bear. She sobbed and ran her fingers through the fur on its belly. Even now, almost 10 years later, I can see it clearly.

It took nearly half and hour to get her back to the hotel. When we arrived, she shut herself in her room and did not come out for two days. She was inconsolable. On the third day, she joined us for lunch as though nothing had happened.

It took me nearly two years, but I’ve finally pieced together the story:

My great-grandparents were Germans from Russia. They were kicked out of Germany by the Kaiser, then out of Russia by the Bolsheviks, then came to the United States in the early 20’s where they finally settled in South Dakota.

Because they did not speak English and because they were poor, my great-grandparents were largely ignored, and their children were ostracized. My grandmother told me once about how a teacher punched her and called her a stupid, no-account kraut when she missed a math problem. She was 7.

My great-grandparents grew potatoes and cabbage. They slipped into Russian when they were angry. At night, after the chores were done, my grandmother and her 12 siblings gathered around my great-grandparents, who would tell them stories of Europe, of Tzars and the war and of the great siberian bears. My grandmother loved these stories.

It was no surprise to those in the know when my grandmother, at the age of 18, announced at dinner that she had fallen in love with a grizzly bear from Winnipeg and was leaving home to elope. My great-grandmother chased her out of the kitchen with a rolling pin, but my great-grandfather said, in German, “If this is love, who are we to stand in the way? She cannot stay at home forever.”

This was the spring of 1957, and in spite of the burgeoning civil rights movement in the South, my grandmother’s rapid elopement was something of a scandal within Huron. However, her family’s relatively low social standing prevented most of the fallout.

My great-grandfather spent that summer building a log cabin. “No daughter of mine will live in a cave,” he said. He felled the trees, shaped them into logs, and built the cabin by himself. He refused help. As perhaps an ultimate act of kindness, he made the doors wide enough that my grandmother’s grizzly husband could fit through.

My grandmother lived in that cabin for the next 8 months. When winter came, her sisters walked out to the cabin to beg her to come home. But my grandmother said simply “I have made my den. Now I will sleep in it.” While her lover hibernated, my grandmother drew and painted until the shivering became too much.

When spring came and the snow melted, the bear woke up. But instead of renewing his relationship with my grandmother, he was aloof and distant, more interested in foraging for berries and rabbits than he was in her. One day, he simply did not come back.

My grandmother was distraught. She told her parents, who urged her to come back home. “I can change him; I really can,” she said.  But even then, she knew the impossibility of domesticating a wild creature.

While my grandmother slept, my great-grandfather borrowed a rifle from the German family next door and walked until he found the bear. He gave him two options: leave town, or honor his commitment to my grandmother. When the bear refused to do either, my great-grandfather shot him three times. The wounds were fatal. Then he burned down the log cabin, along with all my grandmother’s paintings.

Let me be clear that this was not an act of vengeance. My great-grandfather was a harsh man, but he believed steadfastly in the powers of redemption, and more than anything, he wanted to make sure his daughter had a future. Sometimes we find ourselves in extraordinary circumstances; in these cases, the cost of returning to normalcy is always high, and always terrible. But normalcy is sometimes worth it.

Life returned to normal. A local restauranteur bought the bear and had it stuffed. This too was a minor scandal, but as time passed all that was left was the faint odor of scandal, and after a while even that was gone. My grandmother’s ill-fated marriage was never discussed again, and the following year she met my grandfather. They fell madly in love, and are still married.

After my mother died, and after my sister graduated from high school, my grandparents moved back to Huron. I visited them last November for Thanksgiving. After the meal was finished, while playing board games with my cousins, I saw my grandmother sitting in her green chair, reading Paddington Goes to the Museum to Harley Jane.

I woke up in the very early hours of the next morning, and came upstairs to the kitchen for a glass of water. The living room light was on, and I saw my grandmother again sitting in her chair, holding an issue of National Geographic. She motioned for me to sit down on the chair next to her, and I saw that the magazine was dated September, 1956. It had a grizzly bear on the cover, standing tall and proud.

“His name was Luther. He was named after Martin Luther,” my grandmother said. “Your great-grandfather always said ‘marry a good Christian’, and I did. No priest in town would make it an official wedding, but it was as real to me as my marriage with your grandfather is.”

“Do you know what it was?” she asked. “He used to sing me to sleep. He’d hold me, and I could feel the weight of those great paws and feel safe. Then he would sing, low and deep, more like a rumble than a tune. I could feel the vibrations in my chest, and I would feel completely and totally safe.” She turned around in her chair and put the magazine back on the shelf next to the others. We sat there for a time.

“Andrew,” she said, “you know I don’t care who you love so long as you’re happy,” she told me. “But when you have someone you call your darling, someone you love, hold her and sing her to sleep. Let her feel the vibrations, low and deep. You’ll never be perfect, and you’ll both hurt each other more than either of you deserve. But so long as you hold her, so long as you sing her to sleep, everything will be fine. Sing her to sleep, and everything will be fine.

In fact, by all reasonable metrics, I really enjoy Starcraft. It gives me something to do with friends, something to do when I have pockets of free time, and a relatively vibrant professional scene to follow via GOMtv. I enjoy the strategy, the mechanical challenge of commanding an army, and the thrill of watching zerglings swarm right into the mineral lines of my opponents (this never got old). And given how I don’t watch television, have a Netflix subscription, or play any other computer games, it’s nice to have a hobby.

So what’s the problem?

Put simply, Starcraft became a surrogate for things like the thrill of getting things done, for real-world social interactions, and for actively seeking out new problems to solve. Instead of teaching myself Ruby or re-teaching myself calculus, I was teaching myself the 10-pool expand. Instead of gathering for a board game night, my friends and I would set up a Skype conference call and log in to battle.net. Instead of reading the 20 books on my reading list, working on either of my writing projects, or working to make the Encyclopedia Show even more awesome than it is now, I played Starcraft. Instead of going out and meeting people, I played ladder matches. Instead of getting back in shape (I went from a 4:40 mile to an 8:40 mile… pathetic!), I worked on improving my APM.

Let me be clear here that Starcraft was not the problem. Let me also be clear that my favourite leisure times are those spent in play (my excitement level about the coming of tennis weather, on a scale of 1-10, is “really friggin’ excited”).

The problem, instead, was me, is me, my habits, and my patterns. If I had to estimate, I’d say 300 hours were spent over the last 6 or 7 months on Starcraft, hours I could’ve spent elsewhere. Reading, writing, learning, and building real human relationships in real life. In the broad scope of my life, those 300 hours amount to very little In the broad scope of humanity, they’re an imperceptible instant, not even a blip (and so am I).

But it seems a shame to let myself stagnate now, especially when there are so many things left to write, left to build, and left to learn, and so many people left to meet.

In my evening job, I work quite a bit with students who struggle with study skills. They’ll tell me things “I get home, and then I turn on the TV instead of doing my homework, and no matter how I try, I can’t make myself turn the TV off to get stuff done.”

I respond by telling them to take willpower out of the equation, as most systems that rely on people being perfect/making perfect decisions will fail… perhaps all such systems, particularly those which are self-imposed. Instead, we brainstorm ways to control their environments such that they do not have the opportunity to fail in this way (and can instead fail in far more interesting ways).

By removing Starcraft from my computer, and replacing it with a good word processor, I am doing just that: setting myself up to fail in far more interesting ways than “Oh shit, I just spent the afternoon playing Starcraft instead of writing.” Willpower is no longer a factor.

We are only 24 hours in to a 720 hour experiment, but last night, instead of perfecting my 5-minute speedling push, I helped 3 people edit their resumes and cover letters, finished reading a book I’ve been meaning to read for a month, talked strategy with the captain of my high school’s academic bowl team (they just placed 7th in the nation, no thanks to me) and worked just a bit more out of my calculus book. Today, I gave editorial feedback on a book a friend of mine’s husband is writing, planned for an upcoming board meeting of my non-profit, and will spend the rest of night revising a poem I’ve been working on for a few months.  Tomorrow, if I do not sub,  I will spend part of the day reading, part of the day writing, and part of the day working on math before heading to work.

But I will not play Starcraft. Willpower has been taken out of the equation. Now it is up to me to do something useful.

It is now up to me to find more interesting ways to fail.

It also is not a surprise, as more and more schools fail to meet AYP targets (particularly poor urban schools, though there are plenty of suburban and rural schools also in this pile), that the cry is raised for more privatization and more charter schools. Meanwhile, several critics (notably Alfie Kohn, who said many of the things I’m about to say first, and much better), including Diane Ravitch, suggest that we should move away from holding charter schools in particular esteeem, as they often shortchange students who do not have access to them (this is done under the (typically) liberal value of “equal access for all to needed resources”, one of the catalyzing ideas in the health-care debate).

My thoughts are thus: charter schools are neither intrinsically good nor bad (neither, for that matter, are public or private schools). Rather, it is what goes on inside these schools that gives them their moral weight and efficacy (or that precipitates the lack thereof).

It comes down, I think, to the tension between present and future (John Dewey, Shirley & Hargreaves, and Latimer have all written about this at much more depth than I’m about to; much of my understanding about this issue comes from a (not-yet-published) article I’ve been working on with a mentor who is a professor and researcher here in Nebraska). More to the point, it comes down to the tension between which one we give significance to (as that one builds the other).

NCLB is largely a future-oriented program; at the beginning of each school year, there is a known set of standards, and more specifically, a known set of district/state-wide assessments which will be given to the students. With such an end in sight, instruction switches to making sure that students are prepared for that known future, with the amount of instructional time devoted to test preparation almost assuredly proportional to how important that test is to a given school.

The expense to the present: test preparation is neither enjoyable nor particularly rewarding, even on the best of days, and students (and teachers) are often subjected to a fairly regimented and scripted series of lessons (I’ve heard of lesson-plans that were scripted down to the 30-second interval) all designed to produce a pre-determined outcome.

The goal here is not learning, so much as it is compliance (even in the maths, there’s a difference between a teacher who teaches math as a descriptive language, and one who teaches it as a rote algorithm for solving problems).  In such regimented environments (and really any environment where the goal is to produce a pre-determined outcome, at the expense of all other outcomes), there is no room for students to take ownership of their work, nor is there any room for students to be particularly active participants in constructing meaning.

Under this model, the only noticeable consideration between a small class and a large class, or a charter school or public school, is the school’s ability to make students comply (one could conceivably have a lecture hall of 4th-graders all watching one presenter, with teacher-aides taking care of the messy business of dealing with behavior and grades) as they all reach pre-determined outcomes.

I would argue that such an environment is violent, to both its students and its teachers: the students, because they get very little say in determining their own actions (beyond the choice between obedience and disobedience), and the teachers because with such a singular goal in front of them, the implication is that no excuses are allowable (see Rhode Island). In either case, there is a notion of “succeed or be punished” that does not exist in very many places outside of school.

On the other hand, schools and classrooms can organize themselves in student-friendly fashions (this is where Alfie Kohn does his best writing, I believe) by way of focusing on the present (and letting the future determine itself). Such schools are more interested in process than in product (not to say that product is unimportant, but they recognize that sometimes things don’t work, and that the rational choice is to try again, and to create a safe space for students to try again).

More to the point: a school organized around process, rather than product, is a school that allows students to determine the directions of those processes (if the only reason to engage in a process is to produce a discrete and pre-defined product, the process is irrelevant in the larger scheme of things). When both students and teachers have the freedom to determine their own learning (guided, of course, by the teacher’s strong knowledge of the discipline at hand), the end result is a school that meets the needs of its students.

(Contrast this with a school hell-bent on test preparation, for whom students are only as important as their test scores, in which case the needs of the students are only considered if and when they impact school achievement. I’m oversimplifying here, but not by much).

I should note here that I am not against teacher accountability. Poor and/or damaging teachers should be given opportunities to improve (as should good teachers!) and directed qualitative feedback, but should eventually be fired if no progress is made (that said: research generally shows that one of the best ways to improve teaching is to bring in one or two excellent teachers and leaders who are put in leadership positions; something about a rising tide lifting all boats, perhaps?). And while I find the notion of merit pay to be personally insulting (I do not need incentives to do my job well; teaching demands excellence, which is its own reward, and my standards for myself are high enough that it would take a herculean effort to achieve them), I know enough to avoid making people choose between doing good, important work, and finding a paycheck that meets the needs of themselves or their family.

Again, though, the difference is not between charter and public schools; either can provide a robust learning environment (one focused on the processes of learning, rather than the “outcomes”) for students. And so long as there are multiple types of environments (I worked with a student in the past who went to an all-boys catholic school; he found it was the best place for him to learn, and that he felt much less dehumanized than he did at the public school he’d have otherwise attended) which meet the varying needs of students in different ways, buttressed by good teachers who are able to construct classrooms in which students learn to meet their own needs, good things will happen.

What it comes down to, though, is really whether we make our schools fit our students, or if we make our students fit our schools. And to determine this one, we look to the dichotomy between Present and Future. It is my hope that our schools build themselves around meeting the needs of the students they serve (and that they allow students the freedom to meet their own needs), and that we never sacrifice the present on the altar of the future.

While I won’t spend any time discussing the classes I observed (though one highlight is definitely a student asking me to give her feedback on some poetry she’d written; I was flattered by this and honored to do so, particularly given my status as a stranger), Deron also asked me to lead a short writing workshop for the Fine Lines creative writing club, which is the real topic of this blog post (now that the preamble is done).

The workshop I gave focused specifically on techniques for giving feedback on a piece of writing (which I believe is crucial to the revision process).  When I was in high school (and even in college), I struggled quite a bit with finding ways to give good, useful feedback to people, and with getting good feedback from writing-group members (and teachers, frankly).  The following is a brief explanation of how I’ve systematized the best (read: most useful and effective) practices I’ve come across.

First, though, some theory:

Despite writing being a very personal act (it is, as far as I can tell, best described as the organization and concretion of thoughts on paper (or magnetic media, as the case may be)), once writing has been written, it does not remain personal except if it is never shown to anyone.  Once I’ve shown a piece of writing to someone else, that piece of writing at least partially belongs to them, too, as does the meaning they make from it (when I say “belongs to”, I mean personal ownership rather than legal ownership).

To draw an analogy: I form an idea, then turn it into an utterance, and then speak (which produces sound waves). Those sound waves hit your ear, are decoded, and are then turned into an idea. You are just as active a participant in my communique as I am. My friend Joel says that art consists primarily of a performer and a witness, and that it is the presence of those two that make it art. I tend to agree with him.

When we think about writing this way, it becomes imperative that we consider the reader, as that reader is what helps our writing transcend its status as squiggles of ink on a pile o’ dead trees.

With this in mind, we can turn to the more pragmatic question of how.

My way of approaching it is thus:

When giving critique, the best critique that we can give is to communicate the experience of reading, as clearly and as specifically as possible (which means that it has to be tied to specific moments in the text). Moreover, in a vein similar to how Cris Tovani teaches reading, we should equip our critiquers with a means of responding to the text.

I usually ask for record of the following things:

• Emotional response (It’s nice to know when this is going well, and if it isn’t going well, it’s nice to know that, too)
• Questions (implicitly, this also deals with believability, but at the very least it helps make sure that the things I want the reader to notice are being noticed, and also helps to see if there are possibilities that I’ve not yet explored)
• Attractors/Distractors

The first two are fairly self-explanatory (I don’t mean to imply simplicity, but they’re clear in what they expect).

The latter one, Attractors and Distractors, is also pretty simple, though not in the same way. Simply put, an Attractor is anything (be it tension, characters, detail-usage, plot, craft… any feature) that keeps the reader reading. A Distractor is any feature of the text that gets in the way of reading (mechanics, confusion, boredom, and so on).

While keeping in mind that different readers read for different reasons, there’s usually enough of an overlap here to draw some meaningful conclusions about the strengths of a given text, and what we can do to maximize them.

Given that the strengths of a text are directly dependent on the readers (no matter how revolutionary Feynman’s Quantum Electrodynamics might have been, a room of 3rd graders probably will not feel particularly compelled by it), or more specifically, on the reader’s notions of salience and scale, this also means that we have to select our readers, at least somewhat.

I’m all for very approachable texts (in fact, my love of slam poetry stems largely from approachable it is), but it’s fallacious to assume that some piece of art will appeal to everyone, or that it should appeal to everyone.  It should appeal to the people it appeals to (tautology!), and it’s precisely those people that we, as writers, should keep in mind as we write, as our work must navigate their expectations (confronting them as appropriate, though the expectations belong to the reader, not to the writer).

Ultimately, this type of feedback should provide a different perspective by which the writer can revise her writing. These perspectives might not be useful (“Needs more pictures!”), but it might also shed light on some fertile areas for expansion, without the rationale-less “Fix this. Strike that. Amend this. Now rewrite the whole thing from the point of view of the table-lamp” critique that seems more common than not.

What are your favorite strategies for getting feedback? For revision?