Below are seven or eight writing prompts. Do keep your responses coming to keithhoward@gmail.com
K-SOFA Means “Dreamless Sleep” in Kampuchean
Fact: If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the
air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air,
the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all
four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.
Using your prior knowledge, and this fact, please make a statue of a horse and rider.
K-SOFA Means Jeff Raymond
Studies show that if a cat falls off the seventh floor of a building it has
about thirty percent less chance of surviving than a cat that falls off the
twentieth floor. It supposedly takes about eight floors for the cat to realize
what is occurring, relax and correct itself.
Please write a story, from the point of view of a cat, about a cat falling from the twentieth floor of a building. Use foreshadowing to build suspense.
K-SOFA Means One Math Problem with a Strange Answer
111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = ???????????????????
Please show your work below. Thank you in advance for following directions.
K-SOFA Means Washing the Fruit Before Letting It Rot
Please write an essay, story or datribe about at least one of the following facts.
* 21% of us don't make our bed daily. 5% of us never do.
* Men do 29% of laundry each week. Only 7% of women trust their
husbands to do it correctly.
* 40% of women have hurled footwear at a man.
* 85% of men don't use the slit in their underwear.
* 67.5% of men were tightie whities (briefs).
* The average bra size today is 36C whereas 10 years ago it was a 34B.
* 85% of women wear the wrong bra size. (Is there a correlation????)
K-SOFA Means “Gentle Lamb” in Swedish
Please tell how YOU would respond to the following survey.
* 58.4% have called into work sick when we weren't.
YOU:
* 3 out of 4 of us store our dollar bills in rigid order
with singles leading up to higher denominations.
YOU:
* 50% admit they regularly sneak food into movie theaters to
avoid the high prices of snack foods.
YOU:
* 39% of us peek in our host's bathroom cabinet.
YOU:
* 81.3% would tell an acquaintance to zip his pants.
YOU:
* 35% give to charity at least once a month.
YOU:
* 71.6% of us eavesdrop.
YOU:
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
After a Variety of Strange (If Not Wrong) Turns, Novelistador Returns to Giving Away Writing Prompts
Below are seven or eight writing prompts. Do keep your responses coming to keithhoward@gmail.com
K-SOFA Means “Dreamless Sleep” in Kampuchean
Fact: If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the
air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air,
the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all
four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.
Using your prior knowledge, and this fact, please make a statue of a horse and rider.
K-SOFA Means Jeff Raymond
Studies show that if a cat falls off the seventh floor of a building it has
about thirty percent less chance of surviving than a cat that falls off the
twentieth floor. It supposedly takes about eight floors for the cat to realize
what is occurring, relax and correct itself.
Please write a story, from the point of view of a cat, about a cat falling from the twentieth floor of a building. Use foreshadowing to build suspense.
K-SOFA Means One Math Problem with a Strange Answer
111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = ???????????????????
Please show your work below. Thank you in advance for following directions.
K-SOFA Means Washing the Fruit Before Letting It Rot
Please write an essay, story or datribe about at least one of the following facts.
* 21% of us don't make our bed daily. 5% of us never do.
* Men do 29% of laundry each week. Only 7% of women trust their
husbands to do it correctly.
* 40% of women have hurled footwear at a man.
* 85% of men don't use the slit in their underwear.
* 67.5% of men were tightie whities (briefs).
* The average bra size today is 36C whereas 10 years ago it was a 34B.
* 85% of women wear the wrong bra size. (Is there a correlation????)
K-SOFA Means “Gentle Lamb” in Swedish
Please tell how YOU would respond to the following survey.
* 58.4% have called into work sick when we weren't.
YOU:
* 3 out of 4 of us store our dollar bills in rigid order
with singles leading up to higher denominations.
YOU:
* 50% admit they regularly sneak food into movie theaters to
avoid the high prices of snack foods.
YOU:
* 39% of us peek in our host's bathroom cabinet.
YOU:
* 81.3% would tell an acquaintance to zip his pants.
YOU:
* 35% give to charity at least once a month.
YOU:
* 71.6% of us eavesdrop.
YOU:
K-SOFA Means “Dreamless Sleep” in Kampuchean
Fact: If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the
air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air,
the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all
four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.
Using your prior knowledge, and this fact, please make a statue of a horse and rider.
K-SOFA Means Jeff Raymond
Studies show that if a cat falls off the seventh floor of a building it has
about thirty percent less chance of surviving than a cat that falls off the
twentieth floor. It supposedly takes about eight floors for the cat to realize
what is occurring, relax and correct itself.
Please write a story, from the point of view of a cat, about a cat falling from the twentieth floor of a building. Use foreshadowing to build suspense.
K-SOFA Means One Math Problem with a Strange Answer
111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = ???????????????????
Please show your work below. Thank you in advance for following directions.
K-SOFA Means Washing the Fruit Before Letting It Rot
Please write an essay, story or datribe about at least one of the following facts.
* 21% of us don't make our bed daily. 5% of us never do.
* Men do 29% of laundry each week. Only 7% of women trust their
husbands to do it correctly.
* 40% of women have hurled footwear at a man.
* 85% of men don't use the slit in their underwear.
* 67.5% of men were tightie whities (briefs).
* The average bra size today is 36C whereas 10 years ago it was a 34B.
* 85% of women wear the wrong bra size. (Is there a correlation????)
K-SOFA Means “Gentle Lamb” in Swedish
Please tell how YOU would respond to the following survey.
* 58.4% have called into work sick when we weren't.
YOU:
* 3 out of 4 of us store our dollar bills in rigid order
with singles leading up to higher denominations.
YOU:
* 50% admit they regularly sneak food into movie theaters to
avoid the high prices of snack foods.
YOU:
* 39% of us peek in our host's bathroom cabinet.
YOU:
* 81.3% would tell an acquaintance to zip his pants.
YOU:
* 35% give to charity at least once a month.
YOU:
* 71.6% of us eavesdrop.
YOU:
Monday, March 12, 2007
Profiles in Oddity
My friend Mark Roth is one of the wisest men I know. He is, to use a little Yankee slang, a mensch, one of those people who know exactly what to do when and where to go to get what needs to be gotten. A mensch is the son of whom a mother can be proud. Mark Roth is a mensch. I, whose mother hesitates to recognize him too quickly in public, am not a mensch. I bear Mark no ill will for his good fate; at least I am not what we New Englanders call a schlemiel. But I digress.
In addition to his mensch-hood, Mark is a strikingly attractive man in a toadlike sort of way. Standing somewhere between five-three and six feet tall, Mark looks much like the action-adventure movie actor, Wallace Shawn, star of My Dinner with Andre. Mark’s muscles are much tauter, though, due to his practice of tai chi, an oriental martial art which draws upon the traditions of both karate and karaoke, although its primary spiritual goal is the proper arrangement of dried flowers. Steeped in Eastern thought and mysticism, Mark is capable of maintaining a straight face while tossing off such gnomic utterances as “The foot of the chicken supports the soul of the future.” As a Zen Baptist myself, I have found Mark’s insights into the universe enlightening, if unintelligible.
Twelve years ago, Mark was chosen as the first principal of a brand, spanking new high school in the town of Weare, New Hampshire. John Stark Regional High School, named after a long-dead patriot who is most famous for having given New Hampshire its state motto, “No new taxes,” serves students from Weare and Henniker, a town for which the claim to fame is that it is “the only Henniker on Earth.” One wonders why Intercourse, PA and Truth or Consequences, NM, don’t use the same tagline. For that matter, exactly how many Kissimees, Tallahassee’s and Ybor City’s exist outside of Florida? But, again, being no mensch, I digress.
Under Mark’s leadership, John Stark went on to become the New Hampshire School of Excellence for 1997, which some may see as evidence that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Still, Mark did an excellent job at Stark, and has progressed from opening a new high school to creating a school district from scratch and not just any school district but a first-in-the-nation project, which crosses state boundaries between Vermont and New Hampshire. These two states, of course, share the same kind of love as Arabs and Jews, Hatfields and McCoys or Red Sox and Yankee fans, with New Hampshirites believing that the population of Vermont is borderline socialist, clad in rope shoes and practicing free love. Vermonters, on the other hand, think the typical New Hampshire resident is a loudmouthed wrestling fan who should shut up and go brush his tooth. In other words, Mark is presiding over a marriage made in Hell, with the towns of Orford, New Hampshire, and Fairlee, Vermont, engaged to be joined in schools by September of 2000.
The bastard offspring of this union takes its name from a novel with a huge cult following in the 1960’s. No, lacking poetic justice, it is not to be named Slaughterhouse Five, with its slogan “Corpse-carriers to the slaughterhouse.” Instead, the literary work in question is Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, with the district to be called Rivendell. Its motto? “Rivendell is a haven for all that is kind and just, no evil will pass its borders.” Of course, Tolkien’s book was written in Middle-Earthian, so a more accurate quote might be Dante’s, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
Mark, a visionary of the first rank, hopes to create a new kind of school, one which is central to the communities it educates and one which is able to serve as a model for future bizarre pairings, say the marriage of Patrick Buchanan and Woody Allen. The glue to hold this community together is technology, specifically expensive, high-powered computers purchased by the gross lot. Mark’s vision includes laptops for every teacher and 11th and 12th grader, Internet connectivity for all citizens in the district and the creation of a network of creative, intelligent people sharing their lives in cyberspace. Mark’s vision does not include 5,000 people linked electronically to compete in the world’s largest solitaire tournament, although that’s where the smart money would be bet. Mark’s vision does not include these laptops, routers, hubs and other high-tech gizmos being marshaled simply to allow people on the Vermont side of the Connecticut River to peek into the lives and homes of those on the other side and remarking, “New Hampshire women really are as fat as we always feared and I think the schnauzer is cheating in that painting of poker-playing dogs on the trailer wall.”
Mark, being a mensch, believes that the people in his fiefdom will progress past this point and will create a true “virtual community,” where people will be unified rather than divided, supported rather than criticized, warmed by the promise of e-mail rather than burned by flame wars. Mark, being a mensch, knows that his vision will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, in order to equip every student with enough computing power to predict accurately the motion of a ping-pong ball in a tornado. Mark, being a mensch, is sometimes too smart by half and occasionally does crazy things. For example, Mark has asked me to help him find ways to fund this vision of a brave, new, wired world. My Internet experience has been that I can never find what I want, unless what I want is to waste time in new and creative ways; my experience with fund-raising has been that it is considerably easier to spend other people’s money than my own; envisioning the synthesis of these two qualities is the sort of thing at which Mark excels.
Mark already has a head of technology, Barrie North, a computer whiz who can tell the difference between Windows 98 and Windex with ammonia and who can use the word Linux without wondering whatever happened to Schroeder, Lucy and the other second-tier Peanuts characters. Barrie has clearly thought about the challenges the district faces in trying to secure and maintain world-class technology. In short, Barrie is a realistic, levelheaded man with his feet planted firmly on the ground. He makes me very nervous.
Mark recently arranged for Barrie to meet me and discuss possible strategies, walking us to the New Hampshire banks of the Connecticut River, seating us at a picnic table facing beautiful cliffs. As soon as we sat, Barrie opened a calfskin briefcase that cost more than my car, and produced sheaths of paper with charts, tables, graphs and other creations of which my word processor is still ignorant. Not to be completely upstaged, I reached into my pocket for my pocket-knife and carved my initials into the top of the picnic table. Barrie is an Englishman, I believe, from the funny way he talks and he is clearly much brighter than I, having had the advantage of growing up in a nation that has been declining steadily for the past 90 years, although he can be a bit of a stick in the mud. He sat through our meeting chuckling quietly, if unappreciatively, at my fund-raising ideas, which would have been fine except that I was serious. Regardless of their legality or morality, each of the following ideas is possible and should be treated respectfully.
Riverboat gambling on the Connecticut. New Hampshire is, of course, the state which decided that the best way to fund education was by selling cut-rate liquor on its highways and lottery tickets to its stupidest citizens. Give even the smartest person enough Wild Turkey and he will believe that seven-million-to-one odds are not really that bad. After all, somebody’s got to win. From drunken scratching of tickets to drunken vomiting off the side of a riverboat is one small stagger for man, one giant payday for the Rivendell School District. Fill the decks with roulette wheels and the Rivendell School District has the educational equivalent of a currency printing press. When I finished explaining this idea to Barrie North, he looked at me and said, “I don’t believe the school board would wish to make alcohol abuse and wagering on the river the foundation of its fiscal future.” Perhaps not, but they might wish to have enough money pouring into the district that they could afford to buy disposable Pentium-III computers and still give every man, woman, child and dog enough cash to buy satellite dishes and snowmobiles.
Native American Casinos on the Shore. Although I may not be the smartest guy around, having received my education in New Hampshire, I have studied a little logic and philosophy and can quod erat demonstatum with the best of them. Ethics tells us that we should honor that which is good, eschewing the evil. History tells us that Indians once lived in the Rivendell School District area, but that these Indians are now dead. Folk wisdom tells us that the only good Indian is a dead Indian. Using inductive reasoning, we can see that by running a drunk-infested, mob-influenced casino with a name like Mohican Mama’s Bingo and Slots Emporium, the Rivendell school district would be honoring good Indians while pulling in mad cash hand over fist. When I put forward this eminently logical argument, Barrie looked at me quizzically and said, “I don’t quite follow your reasoning about dead Native Americans and somebody’s mother.” I’d like to know what exactly is the advantage of having a fruity, refined accent that calls out for an honorific title and a monocle in one eye if you can’t even see the color of money when it’s right in front of you.
Using the District Web Site, Rivendellschool.org, as a Portal for Internet Pornography. Although I have no personal, first-hand knowledge of how pornography on the Internet works, I understand from acquaintances that people are regularly asked to give out their credit card numbers in order to view pictures of women engaged in unseemly behavior with sports equipment or barnyard animals. I have small children; had I any desire to view some other woman locked in carnal embrace with a llama, I would not like an item on my Visa card reading “$49.99 to Madame Suki’s House of Nookie” lying on the coffee table. On the other hand, a charitable donation to a school district would slip right by any curious nine-year-old. In fact, if we could change the Web address to amnestyinternationalsavethechildren&greenpeacepresenttherivendellschool.org, even the local Unitarian minister could view candid locker-room pictures of cheerleaders without raising his congregation’s suspicions. When I asked Barrie North how easy it would be to assess a surcharge of five dollars per transaction, he coughed nervously and said, “I, ahem, assume, ahem, that is a joke?” No, ahem, it, ahem, wasn’t.
Auctioning Off Virtual Items from a Virtual Marketplace in the Virtual Rivendell Community while Collecting the Bills in Cold Hard Cash. As long as the site is clear about the virtual nature of its merchandise, how can any state attorney general complain that a customer’s virtual refrigerator or garden hose never arrived? One doubts that any court has jurisdiction over virtual transactions; if possession is nine-tenths of the law, how define possession of that which has no objective existence.. Even if charges are brought, imagine the fun of watching a state prosecutor trying to prove the absence of a non-existent object in a customer’s home. In fact, ancillary money could be made by selling the rights to a movie of the trial, either as an existential experiment in the meaning of nothing or as a boffo laugh riot. When I suggested to Barrie that Robin Williams would be perfect for Mark Roth’s part, he replied, “While I don’t know Mr. Williams, I doubt his advisors would allow him to become part of a felonious conspiracy to defraud the Internet public.” I bit my tongue rather than ask him what an Englishman knows about entertainment, now that Bill Shakespeare has shuffled off to mortal Buffalo
Solving Social Problems in the Real World with the Resources of the Virtual Community. Rural New Hampshire and Vermont have long, cold winters, with not a lot of recreational opportunities that don’t involve expensive clothes and frostbitten extremities. Teenagers, especially, lack much to do but begin an evening drinking beer on back roads, ending it by mating, then vomiting or vice-versa. Regardless, these couples’ coupling leads to the social problem of teenage pregnancy. Enter the Internet, with its easy access to millions of childless couples the world over, many of them with Platinum Cards and a willingness to pay any price necessary for a little baby. In one fell swoop, what was previously a problem, drunken teenagers rutting in the woods, now produces a cash crop which the district can sell, passing on to the teenage girls enough seed money to buy makeup and beer for the next crop. When I completed the idea, Barrie North looked at me and said, “I believe, sir, you are suggesting that the school district should promote promiscuity and make a profit off what is, in effect, a slave factory.” Well, duh.
I could sense from Barrie’s tone that he was tiring of these ideas, so I quickly outlined a few more— having declared the Connecticut River international waters, as it connects to the Atlantic and is more than 250 miles from the ocean shore, hosting mano a mano fights to the death between world leaders; selling the Rivendell School District’s combined computing power to the highest-bidding third-world dictator; mud-wrestling PTO moms on live Internet feeds, etc.
As I enumerated these ideas, a certain vein in Barrie’s forehead started throbbing. I know that vein well, having seen it in a lot of these reality-laden people, from third-grade teachers to traffic cops to employers. Just as migraine sufferers speak of an aura appearing before a headache’s onset, I know that I am on a roll and thinking clearly when that particular vein starts pumping away. At the very moment my riff is just starting to achieve transcendence, my audience’s forehead seems unable to contain its pressure any longer. To stave off an embolism, Barrie held up a hand to stop me and spoke, very slowly, through those clenched teeth that seem to follow throbbing veins as autumn follows summer.
“When Mr. Roth suggested that we meet to discuss the district’s technology funding needs, I assumed you would have some familiarity with the subject. I assumed you would present a series of practical proposals from which we could create an action plan. I assumed, at the very least, that you were prepared to write a grant proposal or something.”
Or something. Here in New England we have a word for a person who appears foolish in order to further a cause for which he is hopelessly unsuited. We have a word for a clown who recognizes that meeting the technology needs of a new school district is a task far beyond his capabilities, but that there is a chance that his folly will lead one person who reads his work to pick up the telephone and call 603-353-2170 or e-mail markroth@rivendellschool.org with ideas for how to make this vision a reality. We have a word for that sort of person. Not being a mensch, though, I can’t remember the word.
In addition to his mensch-hood, Mark is a strikingly attractive man in a toadlike sort of way. Standing somewhere between five-three and six feet tall, Mark looks much like the action-adventure movie actor, Wallace Shawn, star of My Dinner with Andre. Mark’s muscles are much tauter, though, due to his practice of tai chi, an oriental martial art which draws upon the traditions of both karate and karaoke, although its primary spiritual goal is the proper arrangement of dried flowers. Steeped in Eastern thought and mysticism, Mark is capable of maintaining a straight face while tossing off such gnomic utterances as “The foot of the chicken supports the soul of the future.” As a Zen Baptist myself, I have found Mark’s insights into the universe enlightening, if unintelligible.
Twelve years ago, Mark was chosen as the first principal of a brand, spanking new high school in the town of Weare, New Hampshire. John Stark Regional High School, named after a long-dead patriot who is most famous for having given New Hampshire its state motto, “No new taxes,” serves students from Weare and Henniker, a town for which the claim to fame is that it is “the only Henniker on Earth.” One wonders why Intercourse, PA and Truth or Consequences, NM, don’t use the same tagline. For that matter, exactly how many Kissimees, Tallahassee’s and Ybor City’s exist outside of Florida? But, again, being no mensch, I digress.
Under Mark’s leadership, John Stark went on to become the New Hampshire School of Excellence for 1997, which some may see as evidence that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Still, Mark did an excellent job at Stark, and has progressed from opening a new high school to creating a school district from scratch and not just any school district but a first-in-the-nation project, which crosses state boundaries between Vermont and New Hampshire. These two states, of course, share the same kind of love as Arabs and Jews, Hatfields and McCoys or Red Sox and Yankee fans, with New Hampshirites believing that the population of Vermont is borderline socialist, clad in rope shoes and practicing free love. Vermonters, on the other hand, think the typical New Hampshire resident is a loudmouthed wrestling fan who should shut up and go brush his tooth. In other words, Mark is presiding over a marriage made in Hell, with the towns of Orford, New Hampshire, and Fairlee, Vermont, engaged to be joined in schools by September of 2000.
The bastard offspring of this union takes its name from a novel with a huge cult following in the 1960’s. No, lacking poetic justice, it is not to be named Slaughterhouse Five, with its slogan “Corpse-carriers to the slaughterhouse.” Instead, the literary work in question is Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, with the district to be called Rivendell. Its motto? “Rivendell is a haven for all that is kind and just, no evil will pass its borders.” Of course, Tolkien’s book was written in Middle-Earthian, so a more accurate quote might be Dante’s, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
Mark, a visionary of the first rank, hopes to create a new kind of school, one which is central to the communities it educates and one which is able to serve as a model for future bizarre pairings, say the marriage of Patrick Buchanan and Woody Allen. The glue to hold this community together is technology, specifically expensive, high-powered computers purchased by the gross lot. Mark’s vision includes laptops for every teacher and 11th and 12th grader, Internet connectivity for all citizens in the district and the creation of a network of creative, intelligent people sharing their lives in cyberspace. Mark’s vision does not include 5,000 people linked electronically to compete in the world’s largest solitaire tournament, although that’s where the smart money would be bet. Mark’s vision does not include these laptops, routers, hubs and other high-tech gizmos being marshaled simply to allow people on the Vermont side of the Connecticut River to peek into the lives and homes of those on the other side and remarking, “New Hampshire women really are as fat as we always feared and I think the schnauzer is cheating in that painting of poker-playing dogs on the trailer wall.”
Mark, being a mensch, believes that the people in his fiefdom will progress past this point and will create a true “virtual community,” where people will be unified rather than divided, supported rather than criticized, warmed by the promise of e-mail rather than burned by flame wars. Mark, being a mensch, knows that his vision will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, in order to equip every student with enough computing power to predict accurately the motion of a ping-pong ball in a tornado. Mark, being a mensch, is sometimes too smart by half and occasionally does crazy things. For example, Mark has asked me to help him find ways to fund this vision of a brave, new, wired world. My Internet experience has been that I can never find what I want, unless what I want is to waste time in new and creative ways; my experience with fund-raising has been that it is considerably easier to spend other people’s money than my own; envisioning the synthesis of these two qualities is the sort of thing at which Mark excels.
Mark already has a head of technology, Barrie North, a computer whiz who can tell the difference between Windows 98 and Windex with ammonia and who can use the word Linux without wondering whatever happened to Schroeder, Lucy and the other second-tier Peanuts characters. Barrie has clearly thought about the challenges the district faces in trying to secure and maintain world-class technology. In short, Barrie is a realistic, levelheaded man with his feet planted firmly on the ground. He makes me very nervous.
Mark recently arranged for Barrie to meet me and discuss possible strategies, walking us to the New Hampshire banks of the Connecticut River, seating us at a picnic table facing beautiful cliffs. As soon as we sat, Barrie opened a calfskin briefcase that cost more than my car, and produced sheaths of paper with charts, tables, graphs and other creations of which my word processor is still ignorant. Not to be completely upstaged, I reached into my pocket for my pocket-knife and carved my initials into the top of the picnic table. Barrie is an Englishman, I believe, from the funny way he talks and he is clearly much brighter than I, having had the advantage of growing up in a nation that has been declining steadily for the past 90 years, although he can be a bit of a stick in the mud. He sat through our meeting chuckling quietly, if unappreciatively, at my fund-raising ideas, which would have been fine except that I was serious. Regardless of their legality or morality, each of the following ideas is possible and should be treated respectfully.
Riverboat gambling on the Connecticut. New Hampshire is, of course, the state which decided that the best way to fund education was by selling cut-rate liquor on its highways and lottery tickets to its stupidest citizens. Give even the smartest person enough Wild Turkey and he will believe that seven-million-to-one odds are not really that bad. After all, somebody’s got to win. From drunken scratching of tickets to drunken vomiting off the side of a riverboat is one small stagger for man, one giant payday for the Rivendell School District. Fill the decks with roulette wheels and the Rivendell School District has the educational equivalent of a currency printing press. When I finished explaining this idea to Barrie North, he looked at me and said, “I don’t believe the school board would wish to make alcohol abuse and wagering on the river the foundation of its fiscal future.” Perhaps not, but they might wish to have enough money pouring into the district that they could afford to buy disposable Pentium-III computers and still give every man, woman, child and dog enough cash to buy satellite dishes and snowmobiles.
Native American Casinos on the Shore. Although I may not be the smartest guy around, having received my education in New Hampshire, I have studied a little logic and philosophy and can quod erat demonstatum with the best of them. Ethics tells us that we should honor that which is good, eschewing the evil. History tells us that Indians once lived in the Rivendell School District area, but that these Indians are now dead. Folk wisdom tells us that the only good Indian is a dead Indian. Using inductive reasoning, we can see that by running a drunk-infested, mob-influenced casino with a name like Mohican Mama’s Bingo and Slots Emporium, the Rivendell school district would be honoring good Indians while pulling in mad cash hand over fist. When I put forward this eminently logical argument, Barrie looked at me quizzically and said, “I don’t quite follow your reasoning about dead Native Americans and somebody’s mother.” I’d like to know what exactly is the advantage of having a fruity, refined accent that calls out for an honorific title and a monocle in one eye if you can’t even see the color of money when it’s right in front of you.
Using the District Web Site, Rivendellschool.org, as a Portal for Internet Pornography. Although I have no personal, first-hand knowledge of how pornography on the Internet works, I understand from acquaintances that people are regularly asked to give out their credit card numbers in order to view pictures of women engaged in unseemly behavior with sports equipment or barnyard animals. I have small children; had I any desire to view some other woman locked in carnal embrace with a llama, I would not like an item on my Visa card reading “$49.99 to Madame Suki’s House of Nookie” lying on the coffee table. On the other hand, a charitable donation to a school district would slip right by any curious nine-year-old. In fact, if we could change the Web address to amnestyinternationalsavethechildren&greenpeacepresenttherivendellschool.org, even the local Unitarian minister could view candid locker-room pictures of cheerleaders without raising his congregation’s suspicions. When I asked Barrie North how easy it would be to assess a surcharge of five dollars per transaction, he coughed nervously and said, “I, ahem, assume, ahem, that is a joke?” No, ahem, it, ahem, wasn’t.
Auctioning Off Virtual Items from a Virtual Marketplace in the Virtual Rivendell Community while Collecting the Bills in Cold Hard Cash. As long as the site is clear about the virtual nature of its merchandise, how can any state attorney general complain that a customer’s virtual refrigerator or garden hose never arrived? One doubts that any court has jurisdiction over virtual transactions; if possession is nine-tenths of the law, how define possession of that which has no objective existence.. Even if charges are brought, imagine the fun of watching a state prosecutor trying to prove the absence of a non-existent object in a customer’s home. In fact, ancillary money could be made by selling the rights to a movie of the trial, either as an existential experiment in the meaning of nothing or as a boffo laugh riot. When I suggested to Barrie that Robin Williams would be perfect for Mark Roth’s part, he replied, “While I don’t know Mr. Williams, I doubt his advisors would allow him to become part of a felonious conspiracy to defraud the Internet public.” I bit my tongue rather than ask him what an Englishman knows about entertainment, now that Bill Shakespeare has shuffled off to mortal Buffalo
Solving Social Problems in the Real World with the Resources of the Virtual Community. Rural New Hampshire and Vermont have long, cold winters, with not a lot of recreational opportunities that don’t involve expensive clothes and frostbitten extremities. Teenagers, especially, lack much to do but begin an evening drinking beer on back roads, ending it by mating, then vomiting or vice-versa. Regardless, these couples’ coupling leads to the social problem of teenage pregnancy. Enter the Internet, with its easy access to millions of childless couples the world over, many of them with Platinum Cards and a willingness to pay any price necessary for a little baby. In one fell swoop, what was previously a problem, drunken teenagers rutting in the woods, now produces a cash crop which the district can sell, passing on to the teenage girls enough seed money to buy makeup and beer for the next crop. When I completed the idea, Barrie North looked at me and said, “I believe, sir, you are suggesting that the school district should promote promiscuity and make a profit off what is, in effect, a slave factory.” Well, duh.
I could sense from Barrie’s tone that he was tiring of these ideas, so I quickly outlined a few more— having declared the Connecticut River international waters, as it connects to the Atlantic and is more than 250 miles from the ocean shore, hosting mano a mano fights to the death between world leaders; selling the Rivendell School District’s combined computing power to the highest-bidding third-world dictator; mud-wrestling PTO moms on live Internet feeds, etc.
As I enumerated these ideas, a certain vein in Barrie’s forehead started throbbing. I know that vein well, having seen it in a lot of these reality-laden people, from third-grade teachers to traffic cops to employers. Just as migraine sufferers speak of an aura appearing before a headache’s onset, I know that I am on a roll and thinking clearly when that particular vein starts pumping away. At the very moment my riff is just starting to achieve transcendence, my audience’s forehead seems unable to contain its pressure any longer. To stave off an embolism, Barrie held up a hand to stop me and spoke, very slowly, through those clenched teeth that seem to follow throbbing veins as autumn follows summer.
“When Mr. Roth suggested that we meet to discuss the district’s technology funding needs, I assumed you would have some familiarity with the subject. I assumed you would present a series of practical proposals from which we could create an action plan. I assumed, at the very least, that you were prepared to write a grant proposal or something.”
Or something. Here in New England we have a word for a person who appears foolish in order to further a cause for which he is hopelessly unsuited. We have a word for a clown who recognizes that meeting the technology needs of a new school district is a task far beyond his capabilities, but that there is a chance that his folly will lead one person who reads his work to pick up the telephone and call 603-353-2170 or e-mail markroth@rivendellschool.org with ideas for how to make this vision a reality. We have a word for that sort of person. Not being a mensch, though, I can’t remember the word.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Two Miles of Chicken Wire and a Four-mile Cow Pasture:
Two Miles of Chicken Wire and a Four-mile Cow Pasture:
Definitional Issues Related to Students with EBD
Most current educators, in arguing for the importance of definition in working with students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD), demonstrate the rhetorical error of false analogy in suggesting that because diagnosis generally precedes and determines treatment in a medical model, the same should be true for education. This error is understandable and, most likely, derived from the fact that psychiatry, that shibboleth of the field, has managed to exist for the past hundred years with two entirely different and antagonistic views of humans and the human condition. When the psychiatrist is acting as a physician, that is to say, a scientist, he or she treats the patient as an organism, which will respond consistently to a prescribed treatment. If, for example, a particular psychiatrist's child has a staphylococcus infection, she is not concerned with the child's feelings about the infection, the family dynamics which may have led to exposure to the infection or any other factor. The medical doctor in the psychiatrist prescribes sulfathiazole for a period of one week, knowing that no peer can possibly question her judgment. Sulfathiazole cures staph infections. If the psychiatrist's first patient the next morning complains of anhedonia, an ever-present taste of aspirin in his mouth and a feeling of pointlessness in his life, the humanist in the psychiatrist, or "soul doctor" in German, has no equivalent to sulfathiazole. Depending upon her background, orientation and underlying assumptions, the psychiatrist may recommend years of traditional analysis, group therapy, a series of exercises done with the psychiatrist, 100 milligrams of Prozac daily or any combination of the above or other treatments, knowing that whatever she suggests is open to violent criticism by any of her peers.
The psychiatrist wears two hats, scientist and humanist, a schizophrenic wardrobe indeed; educators have only one hat, that of the humanist. We have no sulfathiazole, no readily accepted treatment for emotional and behavioral disorders. While research may suggest, for example, that adolescent sexual perpetrators respond better to group than to individual therapy, the success rate is low in either instance. Likewise, there is no empirically-proven educational intervention to prescribe for a student who, for example, can't read, throws chairs and regularly tells people he wishes he were dead. One shudders to think of going to a physician for a diagnosed infection and being told to take a medicine that might make some difference eventually. Or not. Or make the condition worse. Compared to medicine, our understanding and treatment of inappropriate human behavior has not advanced significantly since Aristotle. In the grip of the Cartesian dichotomy, our knowledge of our bodies so far surpasses our understanding of our minds that little meaningful communication can take place between C.P. Snow's "two cultures."
Philosophically, then, educators, lacking a universally accepted and prescribed course of treatment for even the simplest behavioral issue, have necessarily less concern with definition or diagnosis than do physicians using the scientific model. The background, experience and personal style of the educator and his or her institution have much more to do with the proposed educational plan than does objective evidence of the plan's efficacy. The proverb that "Everything looks like a nail if all you've got is a hammer" might be translated in EBD terms into "Everyone needs tokens if all you've got is a classroom economy" or "Everyone craves hugs if all you've got is the 1970s." While it is difficult to accept the notion that education for students with EBD is teacher- or institution-driven rather than student-driven, a brief glimpse at the population suggests its truth. Examination of the group of students identified as having EBD suggests that there is much more variability within this group than there is between individual students so identified and students carrying other disability labels or no labels at all. That is, were one to randomly identify 100 students with EBD and choose, say, 10 reasonable educational or behavioral variables, one suspects that a comparison of the EBD group and the other groups would show that, in terms of similarity, most students with EBD would "migrate" to other group's profiles and that there would be little evidence of commonality within the EBD group. Like the Unitarian Church, the EBD label embraces those who are in very few ways alike and in many ways different; neither the Unitarians nor the field of EBD has a single doctrine or belief which is necessary and sufficient for membership.
Regardless of philosophy, however, definition and labeling do matter politically and practically. It is difficult, if not well nigh impossible, to define accurately emotional and behavioral disturbances because their identification is extraordinarily subjective and based on cultural rather than statistical norms. As yet, we have no "weirdometer," so it is impossible to say that a student is two standard deviations above the mean in terms of weirdness. Likewise, a student's behavior may be borderline acceptable in some schools, while offering evidence of emotional disturbance in another. A girl with green hair and signs of self-mutilation with a razor might be immediately identified as emotionally disturbed in small-town Colebrook, New Hampshire; the same student would find a small, but not minuscule, peer group if she were to transfer to Nashua High School, and her appearance would not likely raise comment. The federal definition of "serious emotional disturbance" is filled with unclear terminology and logical inconsistency; like using two-miles of chicken wire to fence in a four-mile cattle pasture, the definition has little of the form and none of the function intended by its writers.
Anathema though it may be to those who wish to clarify the definition of EBD, the ambiguity present in the current definition of EBD may actually be in the best interests of both practicioners and, more important, students. Any definition of EBD is, no matter how elegantly stated, dependent upon subjective judgment rather than quantifiable data. To identify a student as having mental retardation, one must show that the student scores two or more standard deviations below the mean on a valid and reliable intelligence test and that the student demonstrates socially adaptive behavior (as measured on psychometrically acceptable instruments) which is significantly below that of his or her age peers. No such objectivity exists in the case of EBD. Nor can it. Nor should it. Ultimately, like the Supreme Court justice asked for his definition of pornography, the special educator is forced to say about EBD, "I can't tell you what it is, but I know it when I see it."
Definitional Issues Related to Students with EBD
Most current educators, in arguing for the importance of definition in working with students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD), demonstrate the rhetorical error of false analogy in suggesting that because diagnosis generally precedes and determines treatment in a medical model, the same should be true for education. This error is understandable and, most likely, derived from the fact that psychiatry, that shibboleth of the field, has managed to exist for the past hundred years with two entirely different and antagonistic views of humans and the human condition. When the psychiatrist is acting as a physician, that is to say, a scientist, he or she treats the patient as an organism, which will respond consistently to a prescribed treatment. If, for example, a particular psychiatrist's child has a staphylococcus infection, she is not concerned with the child's feelings about the infection, the family dynamics which may have led to exposure to the infection or any other factor. The medical doctor in the psychiatrist prescribes sulfathiazole for a period of one week, knowing that no peer can possibly question her judgment. Sulfathiazole cures staph infections. If the psychiatrist's first patient the next morning complains of anhedonia, an ever-present taste of aspirin in his mouth and a feeling of pointlessness in his life, the humanist in the psychiatrist, or "soul doctor" in German, has no equivalent to sulfathiazole. Depending upon her background, orientation and underlying assumptions, the psychiatrist may recommend years of traditional analysis, group therapy, a series of exercises done with the psychiatrist, 100 milligrams of Prozac daily or any combination of the above or other treatments, knowing that whatever she suggests is open to violent criticism by any of her peers.
The psychiatrist wears two hats, scientist and humanist, a schizophrenic wardrobe indeed; educators have only one hat, that of the humanist. We have no sulfathiazole, no readily accepted treatment for emotional and behavioral disorders. While research may suggest, for example, that adolescent sexual perpetrators respond better to group than to individual therapy, the success rate is low in either instance. Likewise, there is no empirically-proven educational intervention to prescribe for a student who, for example, can't read, throws chairs and regularly tells people he wishes he were dead. One shudders to think of going to a physician for a diagnosed infection and being told to take a medicine that might make some difference eventually. Or not. Or make the condition worse. Compared to medicine, our understanding and treatment of inappropriate human behavior has not advanced significantly since Aristotle. In the grip of the Cartesian dichotomy, our knowledge of our bodies so far surpasses our understanding of our minds that little meaningful communication can take place between C.P. Snow's "two cultures."
Philosophically, then, educators, lacking a universally accepted and prescribed course of treatment for even the simplest behavioral issue, have necessarily less concern with definition or diagnosis than do physicians using the scientific model. The background, experience and personal style of the educator and his or her institution have much more to do with the proposed educational plan than does objective evidence of the plan's efficacy. The proverb that "Everything looks like a nail if all you've got is a hammer" might be translated in EBD terms into "Everyone needs tokens if all you've got is a classroom economy" or "Everyone craves hugs if all you've got is the 1970s." While it is difficult to accept the notion that education for students with EBD is teacher- or institution-driven rather than student-driven, a brief glimpse at the population suggests its truth. Examination of the group of students identified as having EBD suggests that there is much more variability within this group than there is between individual students so identified and students carrying other disability labels or no labels at all. That is, were one to randomly identify 100 students with EBD and choose, say, 10 reasonable educational or behavioral variables, one suspects that a comparison of the EBD group and the other groups would show that, in terms of similarity, most students with EBD would "migrate" to other group's profiles and that there would be little evidence of commonality within the EBD group. Like the Unitarian Church, the EBD label embraces those who are in very few ways alike and in many ways different; neither the Unitarians nor the field of EBD has a single doctrine or belief which is necessary and sufficient for membership.
Regardless of philosophy, however, definition and labeling do matter politically and practically. It is difficult, if not well nigh impossible, to define accurately emotional and behavioral disturbances because their identification is extraordinarily subjective and based on cultural rather than statistical norms. As yet, we have no "weirdometer," so it is impossible to say that a student is two standard deviations above the mean in terms of weirdness. Likewise, a student's behavior may be borderline acceptable in some schools, while offering evidence of emotional disturbance in another. A girl with green hair and signs of self-mutilation with a razor might be immediately identified as emotionally disturbed in small-town Colebrook, New Hampshire; the same student would find a small, but not minuscule, peer group if she were to transfer to Nashua High School, and her appearance would not likely raise comment. The federal definition of "serious emotional disturbance" is filled with unclear terminology and logical inconsistency; like using two-miles of chicken wire to fence in a four-mile cattle pasture, the definition has little of the form and none of the function intended by its writers.
Anathema though it may be to those who wish to clarify the definition of EBD, the ambiguity present in the current definition of EBD may actually be in the best interests of both practicioners and, more important, students. Any definition of EBD is, no matter how elegantly stated, dependent upon subjective judgment rather than quantifiable data. To identify a student as having mental retardation, one must show that the student scores two or more standard deviations below the mean on a valid and reliable intelligence test and that the student demonstrates socially adaptive behavior (as measured on psychometrically acceptable instruments) which is significantly below that of his or her age peers. No such objectivity exists in the case of EBD. Nor can it. Nor should it. Ultimately, like the Supreme Court justice asked for his definition of pornography, the special educator is forced to say about EBD, "I can't tell you what it is, but I know it when I see it."
The Final Word on Adoption (unless I change my mind)
It’s not often that the mail changes my life. I mean, phone bills, supermarket flyers and invitations to further extend my already fragile credit are fine in their way, but they don’t serve as catalysts for introspection and meditation. A while ago, though, I received a letter that did just that, hitting me like a meatball between the eyes.
Oddly, the envelope itself inspired dread, bearing the return address of the probate court in my hometown. Given that my life to this point has been criminally unremarkable, I assumed the envelope contained either a reminder of a long-forgotten debt or the news that my high school had reviewed its records and that my diploma had been revoked.
Instead, I found a pleasant letter from the probate judge telling me that a stranger, or more accurately, the stranger’s social worker, had found that she and I had the same biological father, that she too had been placed for adoption at birth and that she wanted to make contact with me. It struck me as very odd.
As an adopted person, I’ve never used a phrase like “as an adopted person,” so the whole premise struck me as surreal. I mean, I’ve never really cared who my biological father was; instead, I’ve been focused on what kind of father my children will have. Still, strange or not, I did have to respond to the request, so I wrote the following letter:
Dear Judge X:
For the past 15 years I have spent my days helping adolescents with emotional difficulties recognize that their existence can offer meaning and purpose. I spend the rest of my life in nurturing and encouraging the search for meaning with my children. Life, for me, is filled with significance and purpose, with meaning pooling up like sunlight on a sheet of foil. Although I am a terrible poet, I do have poetic vision, with an ability to find connections between seemingly isolated objects and events. It is therefore very difficult for me to admit that I find meaningless the existence of a woman fathered by the man who was intimate with a woman 39 years ago, the fruit of which union became the baby who was adopted by my parents. (Henceforth, rather than use such circumlocutory language, I will refer to this person as my “biological father,” although I am loath to use the second word even with modification.) I find that I have no particular emotional response to this fact, nor any curiosity about this woman or her father.
I am not a very philosophical man, at least in the sense of having a systematic belief system. In the choice between immanence and transcendence, I always choose the present and concrete over the ethereal and otherworldly. As H.L. Mencken remarked about philosophy in general, “We are here. It is now. The rest is all moonshine.” Because of the unusual situation presented by your letter, though, I have been led to ponder and outline a rough draft of a philosophy of life; this process has crystallized a number of previously unexpressed first principles by which I lead my life. Please excuse the length of this letter, but I hope to make my intentions explicitly clear to you, the involved party from the State of New Hampshire and, most important, the woman who initiated this series of circumstances.
If I were asked to define myself by coming up with a list of 100 descriptive attributes, the list might begin with:
1. I am a father.
2. I am a teacher.
3. I am an artist.
and so on, moving down toward the following:
37. I am a Red Sox fan.
38. I am a chess player who enjoys playing against superior competition, of which there is no shortage.
39. I am an Army veteran.
and conclude with:
98. I am a coffee drinker.
99. I worked my way through college and graduate school.
100. I am a good cook.
This hypothetical list, though, would probably not include the item “I am adopted,” for this fact forms almost none of my core identity. When I do meet people who view their adoption as central to their humanity, I am vaguely amused, for adoption has had little significance in my life. Since our conversation, I have done a little Internet research into the world of adoption, primarily through reading postings at newsgroups devoted to the subject. I was shocked to find that thousands of people appear to devote considerable energy to tracking down biological parents, children and siblings. Most of the postings have a desperate, Holy Grail tone to them, as if successful detective work would somehow make the searcher whole. Perhaps I have chosen massive denial as a strategy of coping with adoption, but the notion that one’s life is given purpose by the pursuit of another strikes me as pathetic and absurd. Pathetic because this is a sucker’s game: the elusive quarry is almost certainly not going to grant peace and serenity. Absurd because the random occurrence of a blood relationship guarantees no connection more profound than perhaps a certain physical similarity or, perhaps, a taste for salty foods. Many of us have had the experience of traveling overseas and meeting someone who comes from the same state or region; this coincidence forms a short-lived bond that melts fairly quickly if there is no other connection to be made. Thus it is with adoption and me; meeting someone who is adopted or interested in adoption is roughly akin to meeting a fellow New Englander in Vienna; I am interested enough to talk a bit, but the topic wears itself out fairly quickly. I would shy away from someone calling out in Heathrow Airport, “Hey, I’m from New Hampshire. Any other New Englanders here?”; similarly, I am put on guard by people who were adopted using that fact as a calling card.
Although I don’t much like labels, I find I hold some beliefs which might be labeled “existentialist,” although they might just as easily be called common-sense conservatism. First and foremost, I believe that what we do defines who we are; the “I” in each of us is the product of our experiences, those events which life has thrown at us, and, more important, our response to those events. Each situation in our lives offers the opportunity for choice and it is the patterns of those choices which create our identity. Without in any way wanting to sound mechanistic, a human life is that set of patterns and rhythms created by the choices we make; identity is the product of our responses to the chaotic events which life churns up over time.
This identity is being continually created, of course, so it also affects the choices we confront in our lives. As a perhaps too-facile example, a young person who is offered the opportunity to cheat on a test has at least two choices: politely refuse the offer or cheat. If the young person takes the first choice, he discovers that he is becoming the sort of person who doesn’t cheat; likewise, the people around him are discovering this, so they are less likely to offer him the chance to cheat. This self-stoking cycle applies just as strongly in regard to positive options; we are always in a state of becoming who we are. There is no static “I,” there is a dynamic, ever-changing, and, one hopes, ever-improving “I.”
This philosophy leads directly to my feelings about my biological father. My view of life is that each of us is born with certain biological strengths and limitations; the vast majority of us have “enough” of everything we need to be successful. The secret to that success, though, comes not, except in the case of professional basketball players and midget wrestlers, from the biology with which we are born, but from the psychology and sociology of our parents, which enables us to make good choices later in our lives. In the battle between nature and nurture, my money is on the importance of nurture. For example, I was born with a brain capable of learning a lot of different information. My mother is a voracious reader who encouraged me to read broadly, deeply and until my eyes dried out. Whether I was reading comic books or Kafka, she urged me to read and think about what I was reading. Likewise, I was born with potentially adequate hand-eye coordination and a body that would be capable of running fast. My father, who was a high-school phenom, drove me to baseball soccer and track practice and attended every single one of my childhood and high school games, meets and tournaments, whether I was starting or riding the bench. In each of these examples, and in countless more, I was born with certain potential gifts and abilities but it was the nurturance of my parents and others who breathed reality into that potential.
If we can use the analogy of cards, my biological father dealt half of my hand and left the table; it was my parents who taught me to play. In terms of influence on my life, my biological father’s role is considerably less than that of my second-grade teacher, my old soccer coach, or even the friendly cashier at the local supermarket. In fact, if you had contacted me with information about Ben Roe, my elementary-school best friend, with whom I have not spoken since he moved away 30 years ago, my emotional response would have been immeasurably greater than it is under the present circumstances. The difference between my relationship with the people mentioned above and my relationship with my biological father is that I interacted with them, while I merely resulted from an action of my biological father, a result which was almost certainly unintended.
I have three young daughters, each of whom is wonderful in her own unique way. In a sense, I had nothing to do with which girl would have blue eyes, which would be left-handed and which would have dimples. I could not have chosen different attributes, for I had no choice. In fact, during the act that led to conception, babies were certainly far from my mind. I became my daughters’ father when I started to father them at birth, a dynamic and ongoing process; up until that point, I was merely a sperm supplier. By this light, my biological father has had zero influence on who I am, for he had no control or influence over which genes he was passing on to me.
As a father, I know that the look I give when smiling into my five-year-old’s face is the same look of love which my father gave me when I was adopted. I love my children because of the time I spend with them and the dreams I have for them and because of the great people they are becoming, not because they are flesh of my flesh or bone of my bone.
In short, my need to find out more about the man who sired and the woman who bore me is nil. Nada. Zilch. With no bitterness or animosity toward either of them, and with thankfulness that neither of them appears to have passed on genes for madness or early-onset Alzheimer’s, I would say that I have no desire or need to discover these people. You have informed me that both my biological mother and father are dead. May they rest in peace.
Given that my need to establish any kind of contact is non-existent, I must consider those of my biological father’s daughter, or my biological half-sister. While it is difficult for me to conceive of any questions that my identity could answer for this woman, the fact that she has initiated this process clearly indicates that she believes that finding me will be helpful to her. My first response is that if she wishes to discover more about herself, she should start with a mirror. Likewise, if she wishes to discover more about her father, that same mirror could be used to search for her father’s effects on her. Still, as long as no harm is likely to accrue to me, I have no objection to some minimal amount of contact, as long as the following requests are accepted. I request that my biological half-sister
1. Understand that I am not her “long-lost brother”; I am merely a person who shares some genes with her,
2. Understand that I have no desire to enter a long-term relationship with her or any of her relatives,
3. Understand and respect my desire for privacy, and
4. Understand that I am a writer and that I may choose to write about this experience and publish these writings, promising to protect the anonymity of her and her father.
Each of these conditions uses the verb “understand”; it has crossed my mind that my biological half-sister may have been judged incompetent and that the request you received may have been initiated by a case worker or guardian. If this is the case, I am still willing to meet her, with the understanding that her legal guardian accepts these conditions.
As a practical matter, I would prefer that you forward me this woman’s name, telephone number and a convenient time to call. I will make every effort to place a phone call and to try to arrange for at least one face-to-face meeting.
Thank you, Your Honor, for your interest in this case. Until I hear from you, I remain
Sincerely yours,
Did I contact this woman? Yes. Did we have a pleasant conversation? Yes. Did I rethink my position as stated above, and become friends with this woman? No, not at all. In fact, that is how the letter changed my life: it showed that I didn’t need to change my life all that much.
Oddly, the envelope itself inspired dread, bearing the return address of the probate court in my hometown. Given that my life to this point has been criminally unremarkable, I assumed the envelope contained either a reminder of a long-forgotten debt or the news that my high school had reviewed its records and that my diploma had been revoked.
Instead, I found a pleasant letter from the probate judge telling me that a stranger, or more accurately, the stranger’s social worker, had found that she and I had the same biological father, that she too had been placed for adoption at birth and that she wanted to make contact with me. It struck me as very odd.
As an adopted person, I’ve never used a phrase like “as an adopted person,” so the whole premise struck me as surreal. I mean, I’ve never really cared who my biological father was; instead, I’ve been focused on what kind of father my children will have. Still, strange or not, I did have to respond to the request, so I wrote the following letter:
Dear Judge X:
For the past 15 years I have spent my days helping adolescents with emotional difficulties recognize that their existence can offer meaning and purpose. I spend the rest of my life in nurturing and encouraging the search for meaning with my children. Life, for me, is filled with significance and purpose, with meaning pooling up like sunlight on a sheet of foil. Although I am a terrible poet, I do have poetic vision, with an ability to find connections between seemingly isolated objects and events. It is therefore very difficult for me to admit that I find meaningless the existence of a woman fathered by the man who was intimate with a woman 39 years ago, the fruit of which union became the baby who was adopted by my parents. (Henceforth, rather than use such circumlocutory language, I will refer to this person as my “biological father,” although I am loath to use the second word even with modification.) I find that I have no particular emotional response to this fact, nor any curiosity about this woman or her father.
I am not a very philosophical man, at least in the sense of having a systematic belief system. In the choice between immanence and transcendence, I always choose the present and concrete over the ethereal and otherworldly. As H.L. Mencken remarked about philosophy in general, “We are here. It is now. The rest is all moonshine.” Because of the unusual situation presented by your letter, though, I have been led to ponder and outline a rough draft of a philosophy of life; this process has crystallized a number of previously unexpressed first principles by which I lead my life. Please excuse the length of this letter, but I hope to make my intentions explicitly clear to you, the involved party from the State of New Hampshire and, most important, the woman who initiated this series of circumstances.
If I were asked to define myself by coming up with a list of 100 descriptive attributes, the list might begin with:
1. I am a father.
2. I am a teacher.
3. I am an artist.
and so on, moving down toward the following:
37. I am a Red Sox fan.
38. I am a chess player who enjoys playing against superior competition, of which there is no shortage.
39. I am an Army veteran.
and conclude with:
98. I am a coffee drinker.
99. I worked my way through college and graduate school.
100. I am a good cook.
This hypothetical list, though, would probably not include the item “I am adopted,” for this fact forms almost none of my core identity. When I do meet people who view their adoption as central to their humanity, I am vaguely amused, for adoption has had little significance in my life. Since our conversation, I have done a little Internet research into the world of adoption, primarily through reading postings at newsgroups devoted to the subject. I was shocked to find that thousands of people appear to devote considerable energy to tracking down biological parents, children and siblings. Most of the postings have a desperate, Holy Grail tone to them, as if successful detective work would somehow make the searcher whole. Perhaps I have chosen massive denial as a strategy of coping with adoption, but the notion that one’s life is given purpose by the pursuit of another strikes me as pathetic and absurd. Pathetic because this is a sucker’s game: the elusive quarry is almost certainly not going to grant peace and serenity. Absurd because the random occurrence of a blood relationship guarantees no connection more profound than perhaps a certain physical similarity or, perhaps, a taste for salty foods. Many of us have had the experience of traveling overseas and meeting someone who comes from the same state or region; this coincidence forms a short-lived bond that melts fairly quickly if there is no other connection to be made. Thus it is with adoption and me; meeting someone who is adopted or interested in adoption is roughly akin to meeting a fellow New Englander in Vienna; I am interested enough to talk a bit, but the topic wears itself out fairly quickly. I would shy away from someone calling out in Heathrow Airport, “Hey, I’m from New Hampshire. Any other New Englanders here?”; similarly, I am put on guard by people who were adopted using that fact as a calling card.
Although I don’t much like labels, I find I hold some beliefs which might be labeled “existentialist,” although they might just as easily be called common-sense conservatism. First and foremost, I believe that what we do defines who we are; the “I” in each of us is the product of our experiences, those events which life has thrown at us, and, more important, our response to those events. Each situation in our lives offers the opportunity for choice and it is the patterns of those choices which create our identity. Without in any way wanting to sound mechanistic, a human life is that set of patterns and rhythms created by the choices we make; identity is the product of our responses to the chaotic events which life churns up over time.
This identity is being continually created, of course, so it also affects the choices we confront in our lives. As a perhaps too-facile example, a young person who is offered the opportunity to cheat on a test has at least two choices: politely refuse the offer or cheat. If the young person takes the first choice, he discovers that he is becoming the sort of person who doesn’t cheat; likewise, the people around him are discovering this, so they are less likely to offer him the chance to cheat. This self-stoking cycle applies just as strongly in regard to positive options; we are always in a state of becoming who we are. There is no static “I,” there is a dynamic, ever-changing, and, one hopes, ever-improving “I.”
This philosophy leads directly to my feelings about my biological father. My view of life is that each of us is born with certain biological strengths and limitations; the vast majority of us have “enough” of everything we need to be successful. The secret to that success, though, comes not, except in the case of professional basketball players and midget wrestlers, from the biology with which we are born, but from the psychology and sociology of our parents, which enables us to make good choices later in our lives. In the battle between nature and nurture, my money is on the importance of nurture. For example, I was born with a brain capable of learning a lot of different information. My mother is a voracious reader who encouraged me to read broadly, deeply and until my eyes dried out. Whether I was reading comic books or Kafka, she urged me to read and think about what I was reading. Likewise, I was born with potentially adequate hand-eye coordination and a body that would be capable of running fast. My father, who was a high-school phenom, drove me to baseball soccer and track practice and attended every single one of my childhood and high school games, meets and tournaments, whether I was starting or riding the bench. In each of these examples, and in countless more, I was born with certain potential gifts and abilities but it was the nurturance of my parents and others who breathed reality into that potential.
If we can use the analogy of cards, my biological father dealt half of my hand and left the table; it was my parents who taught me to play. In terms of influence on my life, my biological father’s role is considerably less than that of my second-grade teacher, my old soccer coach, or even the friendly cashier at the local supermarket. In fact, if you had contacted me with information about Ben Roe, my elementary-school best friend, with whom I have not spoken since he moved away 30 years ago, my emotional response would have been immeasurably greater than it is under the present circumstances. The difference between my relationship with the people mentioned above and my relationship with my biological father is that I interacted with them, while I merely resulted from an action of my biological father, a result which was almost certainly unintended.
I have three young daughters, each of whom is wonderful in her own unique way. In a sense, I had nothing to do with which girl would have blue eyes, which would be left-handed and which would have dimples. I could not have chosen different attributes, for I had no choice. In fact, during the act that led to conception, babies were certainly far from my mind. I became my daughters’ father when I started to father them at birth, a dynamic and ongoing process; up until that point, I was merely a sperm supplier. By this light, my biological father has had zero influence on who I am, for he had no control or influence over which genes he was passing on to me.
As a father, I know that the look I give when smiling into my five-year-old’s face is the same look of love which my father gave me when I was adopted. I love my children because of the time I spend with them and the dreams I have for them and because of the great people they are becoming, not because they are flesh of my flesh or bone of my bone.
In short, my need to find out more about the man who sired and the woman who bore me is nil. Nada. Zilch. With no bitterness or animosity toward either of them, and with thankfulness that neither of them appears to have passed on genes for madness or early-onset Alzheimer’s, I would say that I have no desire or need to discover these people. You have informed me that both my biological mother and father are dead. May they rest in peace.
Given that my need to establish any kind of contact is non-existent, I must consider those of my biological father’s daughter, or my biological half-sister. While it is difficult for me to conceive of any questions that my identity could answer for this woman, the fact that she has initiated this process clearly indicates that she believes that finding me will be helpful to her. My first response is that if she wishes to discover more about herself, she should start with a mirror. Likewise, if she wishes to discover more about her father, that same mirror could be used to search for her father’s effects on her. Still, as long as no harm is likely to accrue to me, I have no objection to some minimal amount of contact, as long as the following requests are accepted. I request that my biological half-sister
1. Understand that I am not her “long-lost brother”; I am merely a person who shares some genes with her,
2. Understand that I have no desire to enter a long-term relationship with her or any of her relatives,
3. Understand and respect my desire for privacy, and
4. Understand that I am a writer and that I may choose to write about this experience and publish these writings, promising to protect the anonymity of her and her father.
Each of these conditions uses the verb “understand”; it has crossed my mind that my biological half-sister may have been judged incompetent and that the request you received may have been initiated by a case worker or guardian. If this is the case, I am still willing to meet her, with the understanding that her legal guardian accepts these conditions.
As a practical matter, I would prefer that you forward me this woman’s name, telephone number and a convenient time to call. I will make every effort to place a phone call and to try to arrange for at least one face-to-face meeting.
Thank you, Your Honor, for your interest in this case. Until I hear from you, I remain
Sincerely yours,
Did I contact this woman? Yes. Did we have a pleasant conversation? Yes. Did I rethink my position as stated above, and become friends with this woman? No, not at all. In fact, that is how the letter changed my life: it showed that I didn’t need to change my life all that much.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
The Real Seven Things Men Think about Other than Sex
None of these are stolen from Dane Cook or anybody else.
1) If I were to die today, who would deliver my eulogy (or my malogy, for those of you with a Classical background)? I mean, I've written and delivered quite a few of these suckers, and I know how to get 'em crying, yet leave 'em laughing. Who can I trust to deliver mine? Would a videotape of me talking about the me who used to be vertical be tasteless?
2) Does good pitching always beat good hitting? Always? How about the Big Red Machine of the 70s? How good were Don Gullett, Fred Norman, Gary Nolan, Jack Billingham, Pat Darcy, and Clay Kirby, really?
3) I'd really like to figure out a way to disappear completely, leaving no trace of my former self. I don't actually want to do so, but I'd like an outline.
4) What is the greatest novel ever? Gatsby? Middlemarch? It Can't Happen Here? On Account of Because? What Trouble Looks Like?
5) If I join a CD club, is it really a good deal? Can I even think of 12 CDs I'd like to own? Tonio K? Daniel Amos? Swirling Eddies? Lost Dogs? Peter Case? Any other candidates, folks?
6) For whom I should I vote in the 2008 New Hampshire Primary, given that my votes have gone, in order from 1980 on, to Ted Kennedy, Gary Hart, Bruce Babbitt, Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton, John McCain (write-in) and Joe Liebermann? Any readers who can spot a pattern here and offer advice are begged to do so.
7) Why is Waking Life one of my favorite movies?
1) If I were to die today, who would deliver my eulogy (or my malogy, for those of you with a Classical background)? I mean, I've written and delivered quite a few of these suckers, and I know how to get 'em crying, yet leave 'em laughing. Who can I trust to deliver mine? Would a videotape of me talking about the me who used to be vertical be tasteless?
2) Does good pitching always beat good hitting? Always? How about the Big Red Machine of the 70s? How good were Don Gullett, Fred Norman, Gary Nolan, Jack Billingham, Pat Darcy, and Clay Kirby, really?
3) I'd really like to figure out a way to disappear completely, leaving no trace of my former self. I don't actually want to do so, but I'd like an outline.
4) What is the greatest novel ever? Gatsby? Middlemarch? It Can't Happen Here? On Account of Because? What Trouble Looks Like?
5) If I join a CD club, is it really a good deal? Can I even think of 12 CDs I'd like to own? Tonio K? Daniel Amos? Swirling Eddies? Lost Dogs? Peter Case? Any other candidates, folks?
6) For whom I should I vote in the 2008 New Hampshire Primary, given that my votes have gone, in order from 1980 on, to Ted Kennedy, Gary Hart, Bruce Babbitt, Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton, John McCain (write-in) and Joe Liebermann? Any readers who can spot a pattern here and offer advice are begged to do so.
7) Why is Waking Life one of my favorite movies?
Thoughts on Redemption
Somehow, today I clicked onto a blog by a born-again minister who wrote about the seven, I think, things men think about other than sex. He mentioned owning a wild animal as a pet. Apparently, Dane Cook, the unfunniest comedian ever, had mused about the same thing. A reader called the born-again to task, and he replied that, although he loved the baby Jesus, he and Dane Cook are both men, so their thoughts are similar.
Diligent readers may have picked up that, a few lifetimes ago, I was a Baptist minister, educated at a conservative seminary (Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, for those who are stalking me). The thought that men are men, no matter whether redeemed or unredeemed, are identical, struck me as an odd theological position, much like the bumper sticker "Christians aren't Perfect, Just Forgiven." Heinrich Heine remarked, "God will forgive me; that's his job," which seems to sum the whole thing up fairly well.
Incidentally, when I hear the word redemption, I think of bottles that can be turned into cash.
Diligent readers may have picked up that, a few lifetimes ago, I was a Baptist minister, educated at a conservative seminary (Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, for those who are stalking me). The thought that men are men, no matter whether redeemed or unredeemed, are identical, struck me as an odd theological position, much like the bumper sticker "Christians aren't Perfect, Just Forgiven." Heinrich Heine remarked, "God will forgive me; that's his job," which seems to sum the whole thing up fairly well.
Incidentally, when I hear the word redemption, I think of bottles that can be turned into cash.
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