The Writer's Poke

Once a month, the LDS do something called a Fast and Testimony meeting. For one hour, members of the church have the opportunity to share their testimonies, either at the podium up front, or with a portable microphone at their seats in the audience. Sometimes these meetings start out quite slowly, but go on they do. Even if no one volunteers to speak, everyone will remain seated for the entire period. If the silence goes on for too long, people tend to look around, wondering who will break the tension by sharing their testimony. So what is an LDS testimony? Basically, it is a statement of belief. Everyone that gives a testimony shares their individual stories, but all assert the following: 1) I know the church is true, 2) I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet, and 3) I know that Book of Mormon is the word of God. Some people give their testimonies every month, while others rarely speak, but when they do, they sometimes get pretty emotional about it. Why the emotion? Perhaps they...

Life is ruled by chance, but that's no reason not to make careful choices along the way. One of the popular cliches people buy into is the idea that "Everything happens for a reason." There's no way to prove or disprove this statement, of course, but it smacks of fatalism to me. If we truly believed this, then why bother? It's almost as if everything that will happen is predesitined. On the other hand, living by the philosophy that we can live the life we chose is equally inaccurate. What we can do, however, is live a purposeful life. We can think about the kind of life we'd like to have, and spend each day living accordingly. Chance will still help and hinder us along the way, but it's not an either/or scenario. Chance and choice can work together. For example, when I started my college teaching career, I specifically sought out administrative responsibilities with each job I held. I didn't know when a full-time administrative opportunity might presen...

Does wisdom come with age? Not necessarily, but perhaps that takes years to discover. Young people can have confidence, but that doesn't necessarily mean they have wisdom. In fact, confidence and wisdom might be opposites, for if you think you know everything, as young people sometimes do, then you don't have wisdom. Wisdom and humility, on the other hand, seem to go together. Wise people call on their experiences, and they call on their knowledge, but they also recognize when knowledge and experience aren't enough. Knowledge and experience, then, are not synonyms for wisdom. What is wisdom, and how do you know if someone is wise? "I do not think I know what I do not know." -- Socrates

For about ten bucks, you can buy Dr. Verna Price's "The Power of People: Four Kinds of People That Can Change Your Life." In this book, released in 2002, Price says that people either add or multiple value to your life, or they subtract or divide value from your life. The end. Now, this book is 130 pages long, so Price obviously includes examples to prove her thesis, but do we really need examples to understand that her point, such as it is, has merit? Perhaps the real question is, what do you do with the subtractors and dividers in your life? Do you flee from them, and solely associate with the adders and multipliers? That makes a lot of selfish sense, but if you consider yourself to be an adder or a multiplier in their lives, don't you have a moral obligation to stay, even if they are toxic individuals? When I was in junior high, I wrote a talk for church, based on the idea that there are four kinds of potato people: Spec-tators, participa-tators, anticipa-tators, a...

Iowa State University's slogan is "Choose Your Adventure." That's how they market themselves to today's potential college students. It makes me wonder if their Director of Marketing read the same books that I did growing up. During the 1980s, Choose Your Own Adventure novels were pretty popular in my grade school. The gimmick behind the concept was, you'd read a few pages and then be given a choice. You could either "jump off the cliff" and turn to page 69, or you could "stay and wait for help" and turn to page 142, and so on. So they weren't really "novels" at all, but a series of possible stories that lasted a few pages at most. Jump off the cliff, and you could probably expect the story to end with a splat on the next page. So I usually ended up cheating. Yes, I would like to jump off the cliff, but not if that meant the story would come to an abrupt ending. Sneaking a look at page 69, if I saw that the story was going to ...

When you read a page of text, what do you focus on? You focus on the text, the words, of course. But what about the space between the text, and the space in the margins? Why so much space? The easy answer is: you need the white space to be able to read the text. If a publisher tried to cram too much text onto a page, thereby devaluing the importance of white space, the text would be a pain to read, if not totally unreadable. There's an undeniable elegance, a balance, in the appropriate use of white space. So too in life. Do you have days when you're busy from the moment you wake up until the very moment your head hits the pillow? Such days are obviously exhausting. You might feel the rush that comes from ceaseless productivity, but productivity has a price, and its cost is paid in stress. Reflection and meditation are to life what white space is to the text. Without time for reflection, life loses its balance. Without time for simply being, we become little more than hamsters r...

A few years ago, Megadeth was playing at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, and I asked Patrick if he wanted to go. Somewhat to my surprise, he eagerly agreed. Truth be told, though, he probably would have gone anywhere or done anything that I might have suggested. At the time, he was living three hours away from anyone he knew outside of work, and so going to listen to Megadeth probably never sounded so sweet. The night of the concert I drove up to his apartment, which was maybe 100 miles from the venue. Forgetting that inbound Chicago traffic might be rough on a Friday night, we found ourselves caught in bumper-to-bumper traffic. At one point, I resigned myself to the fact that we might miss the entire concert. But we finally arrived, only seventy-five minutes late. The Misfits were the opening act, and we had missed their entire set. Handing our tickets to the checker at the door, all we saw were goths dressed in black from head to toe everywhere we looked. They were in the lobby, t...

It’s difficult to go through the day without some idea, memory, or song sneaking its way into your mind. Don’t you just love it, for example, when you get a song stuck in your head? It might not be a song that you like, but it’s hard to avoid hearing some songs to the point that they are indelibly recorded into what has become, over time, your skull full of mush. So the other day I was at the local grocery store shopping for donuts and Wheaties, and basically minding my own business, when what started playing on store’s music station? Hall and Oates’s “Kiss on My List.” In this song the chorus repeats at least three times, and it’s the same one line over and over and over again: “(Because your kiss) is on my list.” In the course of listening to the song one time, then, you hear this mantra at least 20 times. Listen to the song once, and just try to forget the chorus the rest of the afternoon. You cannot do it. But what is this list that Daryl Hall sings so passionately about? You don’t...

Larry was in the hospital, and so it was not a surprise when the College President called me. "I've asked Roger to fill in," she said. And just like that, I had a new boss. Roger was a great guy, and he and I had a fine relationship when we were both Department Chairs. Now that he was Interim Vice President, however, many of us felt that he had let the role go to his head. It even got to the point where he was sending out memos about how dirty the coffeespoon was in the breakroom . And that's something as Interim Vice President that he could not just stand by and let happen. The coffeespoon must be clean at all times, or else there would be no more coffee. After all, he was a former military man, and what we needed was a little military discipline. He saw the coffeespoon as symptomatic of bigger problems. Then one morning Roger called a meeting. It was just me, him, and Richard, who was the other Department Chair. Richard was the nicest Southern gentleman you...

Everyone on my mom's side is Mormon, and most summers we would travel out to Idaho for a two or three week visit. One summer, we brought our Apple II computer, and my cousins and I would play a game called "Olympic Decathlon." Since it was my game, I was pretty good at it, but after a few days, most of my cousins had developed some skills, too. Eventually, everyone was over at the Grandparents' house at the same time, and everyone packed into the living room to see me take on the top challengers. When we were through about half of the events, I realized that there was a real chance that I might actually lose. And then it happened: on the high jump event, my thumb hit the joystick button a split second too late, and I knocked over the bar. Thinking I was with a regular group of kids, I said, "Shit!" And the entire room immediately got quiet. My parents weren't in the room, but one of my uncles had apparently stuck his head in at that exact moment, long en...

My mother keeps a scrapbook for Octavia, her first and only grandchild. Actually, as my mom admits, it's more a scrapbook for herself, but it contains a lot of Octavia pictures. It also contains a lot of Mormon quotes and things that she's snipped out of magazines -- things that may or may not be Tavi -related. And it's kind of scrapbooking on the cheap. Mom simply uses regular notebooks for scrapbooks, because after all, why go to all the expense of buying the appropriate materials when notebooks work just as well. More or less. What really bothers me about her scrapbooks, besides all the Mormon quotes, is the censorship of one particular photograph. Linda took a picture of Tavi enjoying a bath, and in this picture, she's laying on her stomach with her bare butt exposed. My mom apparently thought the picture was too racy, and she placed a sticker over Tavi's crack. Funny thing is, my mom must really like this picture. She has the same shot hanging up on the wall...

We were at a sandwich shop in downtown Washington D.C. Outside we could see a young black man politely walking up to people. He was clearly asking for money, and I could only hope that he would have moved on down the street by the time we were ready to leave. Unfortunately, this must have been his corner, because he was still right outside the door when we left. And instead of walking right by him, I acknowledged his presence. You see, I have this terrible problem of looking people in the eyes, whereas when you're in the big city, you must develop the ability to look through people, if you look in their direction at all. "Excuse me, sir," he said. He wanted to give me his rehearsed speech. Apparently he was a student that had somehow gotten separated from his tour group. And could I spare some money so that he could purchase a subway ticket? I acted sympathetically, but I declined to give him any money. Immediately, his body language changed, and so did his tone. "It...

In The Tao of Inner Peace , Diane Dreher describes the difference between the philosophies of Confucius and Lao Tzu. Confucius, she notes, "upheld elaborate rituals of etiquette and social duty." In other words, he promoted a conservatism that placed the good of the society over the creative freedom of the individual. Lao Tzu, on the other hand, put the individual first. The basic idea of Tao is that the individual can control any situation through the way that situation is perceived. And Te, according to Dreher, refers to living a purposeful life. Putting Tao and Te together is what is meant by living the way of the dragon. Confucius apparently admitted that he had no idea how a dragon could fly, but he recognized that dragons did in fact have that ability, and that Lao Tzu was himself a dragon. Are you a follower or a dragon? "Challenge is a dragon with a with a gift in its mouth. Tame the dragon and the gift is yours." -- Noela Evans

In high school I thought I might want to become a veterinarian some day. That all ended when I took Zoology. Actually, I liked Zoology, and even in college I toyed with the idea of double-majoring in Zoology and English. But Zoology taught me that I liked live animals a lot more than I liked dead animals marinating in formaldehyde. It also taught be that I had better leave the brain surgery to others. As an extra credit assignment, Mr. Samson asked those interested to remove the frog’s brain intact. My lab partner was happy to hand me the scalpel, and I worked carefully to cut through the French delicacy’s skull. About 90% of the operation was a success, but then my scalpel got stuck on a tricky bit around Kermit’s right eye. Without much thought, I tried to secure a better grip on the back of its head, and the next thing I knew, I had poked the brain with my left thumb. And let me tell you something: poking a frog’s brain with your thumb is not something that you soon forget. What did...

Panera Bread likes to know its customer. So when you place an order, they ask for your name. The local Panera still asks for your name even though they now hand out those coaster-size buzzers that let you know when your order is ready for pick up. And they still ask you for your name even if you hand them a credit card that has your name clearly imprinted on the front of it. When I go there, I always give my name, and then I spell it out for them, just in case my tongue is overly lazy that day, or just in case the ever-attentive employee taking my order has pieces of cheese stuck in her ears. My name is a one-syllable, four letter word. And this is what I say when they ask me my name: “Bret: B-R-E-T.” When I pick up my order, I like to look at the receipt to see what they’ve heard me say. If they happen to spell Brett or Brent or even Brad, that’s no big deal. People often mistake a Bret for any one of those. But here’s the kicker: on multiple occasions, the name written on my receipt ...

Human beings are a funny lot. For most of our history, we believed that we were the center of the universe, and that everything revolved around us. Guess what? Even though now we seemingly know better -- that the Earth revolves around the sun, that our sun is just one of billions of suns in billions of galaxies -- we don't. Most people simply don't sit around and contemplate how small and insignificant we -- and our planet, and our place in the universe -- really are. What we lack, in other words, is perspective. And maybe that's a built-in defense mechanism. In fact, I'm sure it is. Growing up, we all experience the same thing on an individual level, right? We all start out in life believing that we are the center of the universe. We are the protagonist in our own play, and everyone around us simply shares our stage. It's hard to think that with a planet of 7 billion people, even if we were "one in a million," that still means that there are thousands of...

I haven't always been conformable in this skin. Back in junior high and high school, specifically, I would leaf through pictures in the yearbook and compare myself to the other guys. What does this guy have that I don't have, I'd ask? One guy in particular was everyone's darling. But why the girls were ga-ga over him and not me, I never understood. I'm sure that there were times when I would have been glad to trade lives with him. But during our senior year, the girl he was dating -- the girl that I, of course, wanted to be dating -- ended up pregnant. And when that happened, that pretty quickly put an end to me wishing to be him. Then, I was very thankful that I was me. Virgin, yes. But father, no. Have you ever wanted to trade lives with someone? Why do you imagine that their life is so much better than your own? "Enjoy your own life without comparing it with that of another." -- Marquis Condorcet

One lucky African child gets to drink Salma's milk. Yummy.

so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed in rain water beside the white chickens. -- "The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams You know, I've taught "The Red Wheelbarrow" as a serious poem to my writing students for years and years. And I've told them that they could analyze it for a full 3-to-5 page essay. So, yes, I appreciate that poem. But as I was brushing my hair this morning, I looked into the bathtub, saw some of Octavia's toys, and this "parody" just came to me. Then I wiped away a tear, knowing that I'll never be as widely anthologized for my stunning, impressionistic brilliance as W.C. Williams is. Truth be told, I spent less than five minutes "composing" my poem, which is just about as long as it took Williams to write his. So why is Williams' poem famous and mine never will be? Is it just because he wrote his first? Is it because his objects are better than mine, somehow more essential to a symbolic u...

"Sometimes you tell the truth Like you're pulling taffy." -- from "Taffy" by Lisa Loeb How in the world is pulling taffy related to telling the truth? According to http://www.exploratorium.edu/ , pulling taffy " aerates it, or incorporates many tiny air bubbles throughout the candy. This makes it lighter and chewier." The process itself can be quite strenuous to the one doing the pulling, because it requires "stretching it out and folding it in half, then stretching and folding again, over and over, until you may reach the point of exhaustion." Now imagine telling the truth like this. But then remember the pay off -- a "lighter and chewier" truth. Develop another metaphor for telling the truth that is as innovative and as descriptive as Lisa Loeb's "Taffy." "If you're going to tell the truth, be funny of they'll kill you." -- Billy Wilder