The Writer's Poke

A little girl escaped the watchful eyes of her mother, and ended up on the narrow streets of a big city. In the distance, a white van approached. The driver wasn’t going very fast – maybe just 20 miles an hour, but he apparently didn’t see the toddler, and the toddler definitely never noticed the van. And then in a moment, it happened. The van ran over the little girl. The driver knew that something was wrong. Maybe he noticed at the moment of impact that he was running over a small child. But after pausing for two seconds, he decided to drive on. This decision required that the back tires of the van would run over the girl, and as the van drove off, a smear of blood trailed off into the distance. Although no one saw this event happen, a security camera captured it on video for the world to see. And, it captured the aftermath. Within seconds a man walked down the street. When he came across the girl, he didn’t even bother to look down. He simply altered his path, walked aroun...

A friend of mine does this "Devil You Know" webshow. He's easily the second most funny guy in the Mattoon, Illinois, class of 1991. This is Episode 9, but you might want to start at the beginning. Otherwise, you'll be lost

(Marilyn Monroe reading James Joyce's Ulysses ) Students of Marilyn Monroe recognize that she was much more than a pretty face. Monroe created herself. She started from nothing, and she used her natural beauty and charisma to transform her image into one of the world’s most recognized. Even though she played the “dumb blonde,” it was all an act. She was constantly reading, and always learning. She wanted to be a respected actress, and instead of getting by on her looks, she cared about landing meaningful roles worthy of her profession. Her tragedy, perhaps, is that she became trapped in her own manufactured image. But in this she wasn’t unique, as it is the trap in which most famous people find themselves. What was truly tragic about her life was her inability to find lasting love, although she did experience it, to a degree, with her second husband, Joe DiMaggio. What she was never able to experience was motherhood, and this is what may have caused her to end her own lif...

I have been the victim of racism. Sort of. When my wife and I were in Washington D.C., we stopped for lunch at a Subway. As we ate our meal, I watched a young African-American male hitting up passers’ by for money. God, I thought, I hope he moves on by the time we’re done with our meal. He hadn’t, and as soon as we left the safety of the restaurant, he approached us. “Excuse me, sir,” he politely began, “but I’m a student on a field trip with my college.” Sure you are, I thought. “I’ve been separated from my group, and I need $20 so that I can get back with them.” I declined to give him any money, and his attitude and demeanor immediately changed. “It’s because I’m black, isn’t it!” he shouted. I just kept walking, but his volcanic reaction scared me. What would I do if he attacked me? I thought. I didn’t think this because he was black, either. I have been approached by panhandlers all over the nation – some white, and some black – but I had never experienced anyone reacti...

According to a Forbes.com article, by the year 2030, 5 billion of the world’s 8 billion people will live in cities, but it isn’t the urban lifestyle that most of us might imagine in the United States. Rather, 2 billion people will be living in slums. I don’t think any of us can really imagine what it is like to live in a slum. Can you imagine, for example, what it is like for 600,000 slum dwellers in Mumbai, India, to live in one square mile? For sake of comparison, consider the geographic size of Rochester, Minnesota. Rochester has just over 100,000 people in its geographic boundaries, but how big is Rochester from north to south and east to west. From Target South to 55th Street is at least five miles, and from U.S. 52 on the west side to RCTC on the east side is at least 5 miles. So, the greater Rochester area is at least 25 square miles. For Rochester to have the same population density as the Mumbai slum, it would need to have a population of 15 million! Imagine what Rochest...

According to popular legend, if you try to place a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will immediately leap out. If, on the other hand, you place that same frog in a pot of lukewarm water and increase the temperature to the boiling point ever-so-slowly, it will remain in its bath until cooked. For some reason, the lesson of the frog came into my mind when I was thinking about the American melting pot metaphor. Traditionally, the melting pot has been seen as a positive image, but over the past 30 years or so, more and more people have pondered just how positive having previous cultural identities melted down into one truly is. Do we really want the same strip-mall culture from sea to shining sea? When I was in Denver over the weekend, I was able to make a Target run, and the Target was set-up exactly like my local Target. When we ate at Cracker Barrel, it had the same “local store” and the same menu as any Cracker Barrel anywhere. Granted, strip-malls and branding isn’t what pe...

Being pretty matters. How much? About $230,000 over the average lifetime. Yep. Pretty people have it made, economically speaking. Not only do they make more money than those with average looks, but they are able to secure loans easier – looks are more valuable than credit scores. And, for that matter, good looking folks are able to secure richer spouses. Any way you look at it, it pays to be a pretty face. Researchers indicate that even good-looking NFL quarterbacks make more money than the more homely ones. I’m not sure where Peyton Manning falls in this analysis... Should it matter? Are we upset with the human bias for good looks?  Think about your own preferences. Would you rather look at someone pretty, pretty average, or pretty awful? Do you feel better when you are having a conversation with a looker? Have you ever been friends, or not, simply because of the way someone looked? And what is the connection between looks and intelligence? Is it true...

If you knew before you began that your statistical chance of failure was 40%, would you still dive in? Considering the fact that the divorce rate in the United States has been around 40% for years now, isn’t it surprising that the institution of marriage hasn’t gone extinct? And at least in the United States, couples continue to subscribe to the fantasy that marriage is about commitment and love. Ideally, maybe, but when the going gets tough, the weak get divorces. Maybe it would be more appropriate for commitment and love to come with expiration dates, because quite frankly, who can say with any sense of certainty that the person you commit to loving this week is the same person you can remain committed to and love for the next 65 years? Marriage is the ultimate leap of faith in a society than no longer believes. So why do the majority of couples continue to tie the knot? Simple: knots can always be cut later. Well, except in Vatican City and the Philippines, two places in the w...

In 1973, Bobby Riggs challenged the top-rated women’s tennis player to a match, and he easily defeated her: 6-2, 6-1. To add insult to injury, the match occurred on Mother’s Day. Today, who remembers that match or Riggs’ opponent, Margaret Court? But people still remember the match Riggs had the following September. If Riggs could so handily defeat the #1 female player in the world, surely he could defeat Billie Jean King. Riggs was 55, and King was 29, but his defeat of Court, 30, proved that age was no obstacle to “male superiority.” King had won back-to-back Wimbledon titles, and while Riggs had won Wimbledon himself, his victory occurred in 1939. Unlike Riggs’ match with Court, the Riggs-King match would follow standard tennis rules – three sets to win. And King was understandably worried. If she lost the match, she felt like “it would set us back 50 years.” In other words, King wasn’t just playing an exhibition match; she was playing as a representative of the entire fem...

So women don’t actually talk more than men. Chew on that idea for a minute. According to a generally-accepted stereotype, women do talk more than men, but according to Deborah Tannen, women actually engage more in “rapport talk,” whereas men prefer “report talk.” And in the end, women do not talk more than men. Tannen observes that men are more apt to talk in public. I find this to be an intriguing notion, and it makes me wonder if that is why female public speakers appear more “masculine.” I always assumed, for example, that Hillary Rodham Clinton gets the “masculine” label because she is a strong woman, but perhaps she is a strong woman because she speaks in the public (e.g. male) sphere. Note, too, that a woman like Clinton is not engaging in the “rapport” style of communication, either, which may explain why critics view her as “cold” or “frigid,” terms not as often used to describe men, to be sure. What are words for? Seems like such an easy question, but “to communicate” i...

If gender is socially constructed, then our definition of what it means to be “all boy” is obviously made up. You and I and everyone in society have developed an unspoken definition, and every boy learns what it means to be a boy. Or at least boys do their best to pretend that they know. Why can’t a boy have a purse? I remember asking my mom for a purse when I was in grade school, and I was old enough to “know better.” My mom told me as much, but then she took me purse shopping. I certainly didn’t want a feminine purse. What I was looking for was something “masculine” in appearance. I figured carrying a purse was little different than lugging around a backpack, and I found a small all-black purse that had a number of compartments – useful for carrying around pens and candy and gum and army men and so on. As soon as mom bought it, however, I knew that I could never use it, and it ended up being forgotten in the back of mom’s closet. Why can’t a boy’s bicycle have a basket? My c...

Sometimes I want to publicly apologize to my students. Forcing them to read essays and novels will never cause them to develop a true love for the written word. I wish that it would, but I have the sense that it has the same effect as demanding my daughter eat her broccoli. I want her to be happy, and so I usually cave in and offer her a piece of candy for eating a few bites of broccoli. In truth, I know how horrible this approach is, as it never instills within her the knowledge of broccoli’s intrinsic value.   She needs to eat her broccoli to be healthy, not just because I want her to be “well rounded,” and yet, she can live for years on candy, at least in theory, before she may even recognize that a little broccoli is good for the body. Hey, some people even admit that broccoli tastes good, but it’s difficult to make that argument to a three year old when she has cinnamon rolls on the brain, let alone sticking out of her mouth. Having spent the better part of the last ...

   The lucky ones feel a deep sense of belonging. They know why they’re here, and that sense of belonging and purpose informs how they live their lives. This doesn’t always happen all at once, this feeling of belonging, but it can develop over time. It can take root, and it can blossom. Do you know why you’re here, or are you simply going through the motions for the time being? Perhaps “for the time being” has been going on for quite a while? Even going through the motions can be a positive kinetic experience. Every day at the gym, I see dozens of people working hard, going nowhere. These are the treadmill enthusiasts. Me, I prefer doing my walking on a real track, but whether or not walking around in a big circle is superior to walking in place is debatable. The point is to keep moving. Don’t stagnate. Don’t allow yourself to die a little bit more inside each day. We all have the power within us to achieve greatness. This isn’t a cliché. Reaching one’s potential is ...

The 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress indicated that only 13% of American high school seniors achieved “solid academic progress in American history.” I would assume that there is a simple explanation for this. Students don’t read history books, they don’t take history classes, and the culture doesn’t reinforce the value of knowing historical information. Did you take history classes in high school? I took two full years of history classes, but I was the exception. Some of us took history during the summer, but a lot of the people in that class simply wanted to complete in six weeks what would normally take a full academic year to sleep through otherwise. In other words, some just wanted to “get it over with.” When I took Modern and Medieval History during the regular year, almost everyone in there was simply looking for a place to hide. All of my friends were in Honors and Advanced Placement classes, and these History classes were filler classes, at best – a wa...

Joseph Campbell is one of my personal heroes. This week, I stole some time to re-watch his amazing interview series with Bill Moyers, and I was reminded that many people live a life of excuses. Campbell mentioned the ending to Babbitt , the classic novel by Minnesota author Sinclair Lewis. Babbitt's son tells him that he doesn't want to continue college; instead, he wants to drop out and work in a factory. To this, Babbitt responds: "I've never done a single thing I've wanted to in my whole life! .... But I do get a kind of sneaking pleasure out of the fact that you knew what you wanted to do and did it.... I'll back you. Take your factory job, if you want to. Don't be scared of the family.... Nor of yourself, the way I've been. Go ahead, old man! The world is yours!" Babbitt supports his son's decision, even if it's one that society might not understand. In terms of Campbell, his son is "following his bliss." It might se...

Prior to 9/11, water-boarding had long been described as “torture” in The New York Times . After 9/11, however, when the U.S. started using this “intensive interrogation technique” against “persons of interest,” the paper dropped the word “torture” from its description. For some reason, The New York Times determined that it was appropriate to describe how suspects were being interrogated by CIA agents, but that it was not appropriate to call such methods “torture.” Why? This might seem like a small example, but what’s really at issue here is a form of censorship. Whether or not the paper still accurately describes the process of water-boarding, the fact remains that its decision to no longer label it as “torture” is significant. It’s not unusual for The New York Times to be attacked as part of the “liberal media,” so why wouldn’t an organ of the liberal media want to continue using the word “torture” if doing so would make the Bush administration, the administration that ha...

Part of me just wants to say “Girl Power!” but another part of me wants to say, “Why are we being asked to condone the promotion of junk food for the brain?” In Sady Doyle’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fangs: The Unwarranted Backlash Against Fans of the World’s Most Popular Vampire-Romance,” focus for one moment on the key word in the subtitle: “unwarranted.” For something that is “unwarranted,” Doyle certainly does spend quite a bit of time showing why the backlash may be warranted. In truth, she cannot defend the Twilight series. All she can do is defend the girls that like the series. She is probably right that it’s not fair to attack the fans themselves, but defenders of culture shouldn’t have to do that. Tearing down the books is easy enough to do, and the books are poorly written. Simple. And Doyle admits as much. At the same time, she claims “they speak to a legitimate need.” That may be true, but what exactly is this “legitimate need,” and should we simply accept Twilig...

I had a chance to watch Sylvester Stallone’s The Expendables this weekend, and it may be one of the best movies ever made. Think that’s a bit of an exaggeration? I thought so too, until I started thinking about how much it reminded me of a true American film classic, 12 Angry Men . Doing a quick Internet search, I find that I’m not the first reviewer to draw this connection, either. So, other than the fact that both movies feature strong ensemble casts, what is it that makes them so much a like? Both ultimately reject the idea that people are expendable. In 12 Angry Men , Henry Fonda’s character is the only one of twelve jurors who wants to give a young man accused of murdering his father a fair hearing. Over the course of the movie, Fonda is able to show the other eleven jurors that no one is disposable. Life has a value that must be respected. In The Expendables , Stallone’s character is a mercenary. He seems like a nice guy on the outside, but he views himself...

Jones Soda has a gimmick. Customers can submit pictures, and if Jones likes them, the company will use them on its bottles. On facebook this summer, Jones has also been posting pictures from its “road trip” across the country. One picture that stood out to me is what I refer to as “The Jones Girls.” These five young girls are situated in, on, and next to a British-style Royal phone booth. The girl inside the phone booth looks as if she ended up with the short end of the straw on this assignment. The two girls in front seem innocent enough. But it’s the two girls on top of the phone booth that make the picture feel slightly provocative. At least that was my initial impression. So since my English students are working with visual responses this semester, I decided to show it to them for their reactions to see if they jived with my own. Most didn’t venture to offer a verbal response in front of their classmates, but it seemed clear that the picture did make a few of them feel uncom...

People like to compare themselves to others. That’s no big surprise, but are we more likely to make “upward” or “downward” comparisons? That is, are we more likely to compare ourselves to people that are more successful or less successful than ourselves, that are happier or sadder than ourselves, better or worse off than ourselves? Perhaps it is not an “either/or” question at all, but if not, then it is worth pondering why we use “upward” comparisons in some cases and “downward” comparisons in others. What, in other words, are the functions for each sort of comparison? After all these years, I still enjoy watching the first few audition shows of American Idol. I’m not so much interested in who will receive golden tickets as I am in who is willing to humiliate themselves in front of millions of viewers. Even more impressive, for some reason, are the auditioners who don’t recognize just how bad they actually are. They genuinely believe they have talent, and nothing the judges sa...