A Grammar of Chaos

Taking an Interest

2014-06-30T10:45:00.001-05:00

Sweet hat, Pericles.
Image from Wikimedia Commons,
uploaded by Jastrow.

My post today was inspired by an image macro my mentor posted on social media. I'm not sure of the provenance of the macro itself, and I hesitate to share it here without source citation, but the quote is attributed to Pericles (possibly erroneously), and his intellectual property happily now belongs to all of us:

Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.

I have been saying this, or something very like it, to my students for some time now. When I do, it's almost always in response to an apathetic response to an article they didn't want to read, or a discussion they don't want to have, because they "don't like politics."

Here's my confession: I don't like politics either.

I get it, politics sucks. It does. It's often confusing, it's frequently infuriating, and once you've got a handle on it, it changes. I'm not unsympathetic to a lack of interest in politics. But I'm not all that interested in math, myself, and I had to learn that too.

I came to a realization a while ago when one of my students excused not knowing who her representatives were by saying she "wasn't interested in politics," that neither am I, really. I don't enjoy reading political blogs, I'm not a fan of politicians in the way I'm a fan of footballers or rock stars. In a perfect world, I would never think about government budgets or fiscal policy or war or oppression or any of those things. None of this is a hobby for me. It's about survival.

When we don't "do politics" because it's boring, we can end up worse than bored. We can end up paying taxes for things we are fundamentally opposed to, and not paying taxes for things our communities need. We can end up giving up our rights to protect our safety, even when our safety isn't really in question. We can end up supporting the increased wealth of a very few, while the masses starve.

In short, we end up oppressed.

I'm not trying to tell anyone where their best interests lie, and I get that we might not agree on that. I understand that in asking people to get more involved with the political system, I am potentially asking people to work against my own best interests. But I feel like that's better than apathy. I feel like spirited debate between informed people of good will with differing worldviews is so much better than letting a few powerful people run roughshod over all of us.

I'm also not asking anyone to be interested in politics. I realize that we naturally take an interest in some things, and not in others. I'm just asking that we stop pretending that we have the luxury of not taking an interest in certain things even if we don't necessarily find them interesting.

In Spite of Fear

2014-05-24T09:52:00.000-05:00

"Travel far enough, you meet yourself." - David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

There was a time in my life when I was not the person I am now. A time when I stayed in my little apartment for weeks on end, afraid to go out in case of Catastrophe. Once I finally sought treatment, my therapist asked me, "what are you scared will happen?" I had no clear answer. Something terrible. Something from which there would be no recovery. The word for this behavior is agoraphobia, and I had it. It had me. All part of the joys of living on the OCD spectrum.

It didn't hit me how bad it had gotten, as is often the case, until after it was getting better. One day, after months of therapy, I woke up and decided to drive to the public library. And so I did. I checked out some books, although I don't now remember which ones, on the logic that this way, I'd have to repeat this arduous journey. When I got home, I called my mother. To brag. About going to the library.

"...and I didn't get lost, or anything!" I was so proud. Even more sobering, my mom was proud too. Hearing her voice on the phone that afternoon -- "Good for you, honey! We love you so much!" -- I wondered how I'd gotten to this point, how a strong-willed and plucky girl had so quickly become a frightened young woman for whom a ten-minute drive, there and back again, was cause for celebration.

I still wonder. And that's the hell of mental illness; I have no answer. I don't know why some brains, mine among them, seem to misfire sometimes, to take in the input from the world around us and spit out an unhelpful response. I only know that it happens, and that it happened (and sometimes still happens) to me.

A few years ago, I drove to Colorado, alone, to visit friends. When I got back, my mother said she couldn't believe I'd done it, that she remembered the young woman who was too fearful to leave her apartment, who turned in on herself and shut out the uncertainty her brain wouldn't allow her to process. "You're so much better," she said, and I could hear the pride again in her voice. I'm better, I thought, tasting the thought in my brain, letting it roll around like a good whisky. It was the first time I could concretely say I'd beaten my illness in a meaningful way.

In the last three weeks, I've done things that I could never have contemplated fifteen years ago. For many people, I'm sure this trip looks like no big deal. So you traveled, I can hear them saying, people do that. And they're right, these hypothetical people in my head. People do do that. Sane people. Healthy people. Fearless people.

Certainly I'm not always sane and healthy. And fearless? Ha! I'm demonstrably not, in point of fact, fearless. Fear is in no short supply around here, thanks to a mental illness that's deviled me for nearly half my life. And maybe "fearless" isn't the point. Maybe we're all afraid, most of the time, and maybe what's important isn't that we feel no fear, but that we acknowledge the fear and refuse to let it decide for us.

When I was asked to go on this trip, I said yes without hesitation, knowing that saying no because of fear would represent a return to that long-ago apartment that I was once too afraid to leave. When I went to the airport three weeks ago, I went knowing that I was afraid. Sitting here today, trying to put it into perspective in the scant hour before I leave for the airport, I'm afraid. My crazy OCD brain is yammering away with what if and you can't and danger danger danger.

The thing about mental illness is, you don't Get Better so much as you become more adept at managing it, more aware of the times when it seeks to sabotage your life in a million different ways. The OCD is still there, and probably it always will be. I've just gotten better at telling it to sit down and shut up. (Note: I want to make it clear that I didn't do it alone. I had and still rely on support, treatment, and love; if you have a mental illness, and you don't have those things, please reach out. To anyone. To me, if you choose.)

So sure, I'm better, but I'm not fearless. Still I have done this, and I will do this, because I am not my diagnosis, and I am never going back to that apartment. Remembering that has allowed me to have one of the best travel experience of my life, to see a place I never imagined I'd see, to meet people who have taught me, and touched me with their openness and joy in life. A life lived free of fear sounds great, but maybe a life lived in spite of it is just as good.

A Two-Side Country

2014-05-21T10:12:00.001-05:00

"Paraguay is a two-side country," my student said, to open his group's presentation on popular texts as cultural artifacts. Earlier in the week, we watched A Christmas Story, and I had lectured on the various ways that film functioned as an artifact of Midwestern US culture, the culture in which I was raised. For their group presentation, they were to discuss a popular text that illustrated their culture(s) in the same way.

My ears perked up. I wrote down "two-side country" in my notebook.

"There is a side that we want to show, and a side we do not," continued the group's spokesman, a young man who sits near the back and likes to surf on his tablet while I lecture. "Today we want to show you the both sides."

They began by showing me this:

"This is Mercado 4," said the next young man in the group, whose turn it was to speak.

"Mercado 4 here in town?" I interrupted him, even though I generally allow presentations free reign to go where students want to take them, because I knew this place, had stood there myself.

"Sí...I mean, yes."

"I've been there." My students' eyes got big, just for a second, but he recovered.

"Not alone," he said, not a question.

"No, just me," I said, and he gave me the kind of look I imagine skydivers get a lot, that look that says "you're clearly insane, but I'll give you credit for chutzpah."

"Did you get mugged?" I shook my head. "That was lucky," he said.

I nodded, chastened, and the presentation went on. The group used 7 Cajas to illustrate some pretty hard truths about this country : corruption, crime, and the crippling poverty that leads people to do terrible things. I nodded as they spoke, and thought about the woman with a hunched back bigger than her head who I bought some cough drops from for less than fifty cents American, the dirty, naked, lost-looking children who sometimes wander the Plaza where I like to read during siesta time, the man who followed my parents and I for half a block pleading incoherently for alms, the only words I understood for sure being "please," and "rich American."

Next, my students showed me this:

"We want to show you what is good here, so you will see both," said the final speaker of the group. The least fluent in English, he read from a prepared script. "We are working to be a cultural place, to improve the standing of women, and to make the poverty less for every person. We value art, and music, and beauty. The harp is our instrument, and we love to hear it because it is beautiful and it makes us proud of our home."

I thought about the openness of the people here, the beauty of the architecture, and the way even a simple meal here seems to nourish your body and soul. I thought about the harpist who played in my hotel restaurant one night at dinner, how he seemed to be performing a magic trick and making music all at once, and how pleased he was when my parents bought a CD from him. I could see why, in spite of so many terrible realities, a person could be proud to be from here.

"So you see," said the first speaker, "we are a two-side country."

Espera

2014-05-14T19:04:00.000-05:00

My students were the first ones to tell me espera, although not in so many words. The first day of class, I was ready to get started at 2 pm on the dot. If I'm honest, I was ready by 1:30, and fidgeted impatiently in the classroom for half an hour. That's how I am. It's how I'm wired. From early memory, I hear the words "If you're early, you're on time; if you're on time, you're late; if you're late, you're left." So much of the etiquette of my upbringing has been about being punctual. About how it's respectful to be on time, and disrespectful to be late. That first day in the classroom, I had to question it.

"Let's get started," I said, at 2:03, in my not-fucking-around teacher voice, the one designed to cut through whispers and giggles and make sleepy students wince. "But Miss," they replied, like people making a clear and obvious argument, "Not everyone is here."

Back home, I probably would have shot back, "Well that's unfortunate for them; we've got things to do." I didn't, though, because even on the first day, I was seeing that things work differently here. This isn't disrespect, this is Asunción telling me espera.

So I did. I do. We start class when we start class, and that's OK.

The entire cycle of life here tells me espera. The evening meal doesn't happen here until well after my stomach has begun demanding it. But Asunción says espera, and I do. At first it was about being polite; I didn't want to ask the restaurant to readjust its schedule, to ask the whole damn country to readjust its schedule for one insignificant and spoiled white lady whose stomach is on Missouri time. Instead, I sat in my room, checking the clock and struggling to ignore my rumbling belly.

Five or so days in, my stomach gave up, got with the program, and stopped whining, and I realized that the time I had between work and dinner was a blessing, a chance to unwind and watch the city do the same from my balcony.

So I wait. Yo espero. And as it turns out, I don't starve.

It's now, and I'm here.

Tonight, I strolled down the street to a restaurant that everyone I know who's been here recommends. I took my time. I looked at the lace and wood carvings being sold by the vendors in the plaza. I got to the restaurant, and a smiling woman brought me an empanada and a giant salad, and I ate it slowly, enjoying every bite, watching futbol with the old man sitting next to me. I was in no hurry. I had no place to be, no timetable to keep. It was bliss. And the empanada was delicious.

On the way back to my hotel, I stopped and looked at the Monumento a los Heroes. I'd walked past it a dozen times, but I'd never seen it after dark, all lit up. I stood on the corner and watched while the lights faded from red to purple to blue and back again.

A little old couple strolled past holding hands, and kids played on the stairs, and I felt like I was part of it. And Asunción stopped telling me espera, and instead it told me ¿Qué ves? Ahora.

Mi Mejor Amigo in Paraguay

2014-05-10T12:48:00.000-05:00

There are so many wonderful things to write about that it's hard to pick just one. But I think today I should talk about mi mejor amigo in Paraguay, Emilio the waiter. Emilio works in the restaurant in my hotel, where I have eaten the majority of my meals this week, and to me, he seems to typify the people I've met here: kind, friendly, and willing to work a little to communicate with la mujer norteamericana loca (that's me).

On my first day here, after traveling for over 24 hours, Emilio brought me the first of a series of delicious dinners. At the time, I wasn't thinking about the audacity of my request: dinnertime in Paraguay wouldn't start for another two hours, but there I was with a stomach still set on a midwestern US eating schedule. As soon as he realized I didn't speak Spanish particularly well, he changed his way of speaking from the lightning-fast, liquid sounds of a native speaker to the slower, more measured (and simple) phrasing my tired brains needed. That first night, he was willing to slow down, to have a conversation with me, not just a bare-bones communication. I walked to my room knowing how to thank someone in Guarani, and feeling confident in my decision to come here.

"My" table

Over the course of the last week, Emilio has continued to chat with me. We're not always the most adept at understanding one another, but his willingness to work with me makes all the difference. Emilio makes sure that what I ordered is what I want, and he explains the things I see during the day as clearly as he can. He reminds me to put on sunscreen, and asks about my husband, my work back home, and he listens to my fractured Spanish indulgently. We write things down, make frequent use of Google translate, and we get it done. Also he tells me I look "muy bonita" and saves the best table for me, and that's nice too.

I can't help but contrast that with what would happen back home, if the situation were reversed, and think we could take a lesson from the people of Paraguay. How many times have you seen Americans avoid talking to people who are learning English? How many times have you heard them roll their eyes, exclaim "speak English or go home," or just repeat themselves in English at increasing volumes? None of that has happened to me. Not from any single person I've interacted with: money changers at the bank, vendors on the street, the woman who cleans my room, and of course the famous Emilio, all of them trying to help me, not scold me.

I'm not saying there's been no culture shock, and I will admit that my ears perk up when I hear English being spoken, but this experience has been made so much better by the patience and kindness of the people I've met. If you'd like to do me a favor, do this: the next time you find yourself talking to someone who speaks a different language, don't get frustrated. Be patient, be kind, and really try to understand not just what they say, but who they are. They will thank you for it, I can promise you.

On an unrelated note, here are some pictures of the things I've seen this week:

Bas-relief sculpture at the Cathedral

Plaza Juan E. O'Leary

There were parades all morning for Independence Day

A shot of my walk to work

The Cathedral associated with the university where I'm teaching

A beautiful tree-lined street

Pediment of the Monumento a los Heroes

Woman making lace

Who says punk is dead? Not Paraguayans, apparently.

Protesters at the Monumento.

Settling In and Setting Out

2014-05-05T09:29:00.000-05:00

Today is my first official day in Paraguay. Yesterday, I decided, really doesn't count, because I was too exhausted to communicate in anything longer than a facebook post (so apologies if you also are my facebook friend, because some of this is gonna be review). It's early days yet, but so far I'm feeling pretty good about the whole thing.

The trip was long. By "long," I don't mean "I have to go all the way across town?!" I mean long. I left my house in SW Missouri at around 11:30 on Saturday morning (and all the thanks in the world to the dear friend who made it her business to get me to the airport), left Tulsa, Oklahoma around 4:30, stopped in Atlanta, Georgia, which I left around 10:30, and landed in São Paulo...sometime the next morning. From there, it was a short flight (relatively) to Asunción, and an even shorter drive to my hotel. I got to my room around 3:00 on Sunday afternoon.

The view from my balcony is beautiful.

My hotel is lovely. Asunción is lovely. And most of all, the people are lovely. So far, everyone has been more than willing to work with my sad lack of Spanish (resolved: I am going to learn Spanish at least to the level at which I speak French), and I've even shared a few jokes and smiles with the hotel staff. They are good people, and I feel comfortable and safe here. Carlos, my driver from the airport, pointed out several cool places, most notably a 40-block park (Paraguayans seem to love parks; I've seen several already, all beautiful and full of people.) and the President's mansion (which looks almost exactly like you'd think the President of Paraguay's mansion would look).

Aguyjé, Emilio!

Emilio, the waiter at dinner last night, joked kindly with me about my attempts at Spanish and taught me to say "thank you" in Guarani after I told him "muchas gracias" when he placed a beautiful cold plate of ham and hearts of palm in front of me (it's "aguyjé," if you're interested).

This afternoon, I will be driven to the Universidad Católica to meet my colleagues and my students. After today, I plan to walk (both Google Maps and Carlos assure me that it's about a five to ten minute walk), but for the moment I'm content to be a passenger, at least until I figure out what's where. My class meets today for the first time, and I'm the usual mix of excited and nervous.

Anyway, that's what's happening around here. If the whole trip is as happy-making as the last 24 hours have been, I may never leave!

For Mom

2014-05-03T14:53:00.004-05:00

I'm in the Tulsa airport, waiting (im)patiently to begin the part of my trip that involves flying metal boxes, and I'm thinking about my mother.

I love it when people say we look alike. Go on, say it.

When I was little, somewhere in the vicinity of nine, my parents decided that it was time I visited my French family. At least, I assume that's what they decided. I was nine, as stated, so I wasn't privy to all of the discussions that led to things happening in my life. In any event, it was decided that I would be taken to Chateau-Thierry, where my grandmother's people live, and, happily, that is what happened.

Unfortunately, my dad wasn't able to come for reasons that I assume were related to his job, so my mother and I packed our bags and headed to the Kansas City airport, flew to New York, then to Paris, then boarded a train and rode to my Tante Alice's house, where we were greeted with what is still the most delicious soup I've ever tasted. It was the best trip I had ever had, and to this day is top 5.

I tell you that to tell you this: My mother is one hell of a woman.

I am nervous about this trip, as I am nervous about all trips. I'm worried my bags will get lost. I'm worried I'll miss a connection and have to live in the Rio de Janeiro airport like Tom Hanks in that movie, living on ketchup-and-cracker sandwiches and cups of water cadged from kind-hearted airport employees, fending off scurvy with lemon juice in little packets. I'm worried there will be A Problem (I am aware that my brain has manufactured this Problem, as it is prone to do; I've made so many lists I've got lists of my lists, and I'm sure all my proverbial ducks are in their proverbial row.). But I worry. Like Yeats (or Chinua Achebe, if you're more of a novels person) says, things fall apart. And I never feel so vulnerable to that idea as when I'm leaving my comfort zone. I'm worried about all this stuff, and here's the thing:

I don't have an inquisitive nine-year-old to corral. I'm just responsible for myself, no one else, and certainly not someone who is almost completely dependent on me for their every need.

Dang, mama. My hat is off to you. All the hats I've ever owned. Hell, all the hats I've ever seen. All off, to you. Because of you, I can do this.

Where I've Been, but Mostly Where I'm Going

2014-04-22T15:32:00.003-05:00

So yeah. I've been remiss. One post in one year? Ridiculous. That's my bad. There are lots of excuses I could make, but they all come down to the fact that I have a hard time prioritizing myself and my writing and I need to work on that.

Oh...THAT'S where that is...

Which is why it's lucky that I have a new adventure to go on, and I feel inspired to write about it. And I'd really like it if you came with, at least in the metaphorical sense of, you know, reading what I write.

See, in just under two weeks, I'm going to Asunción, Paraguay, where I will spend the better part of a month teaching a course on Literature & Film.

There's a lot here for me to worry about, and brothers and sisters, I am a world-class worrier. For starters, I don't speak Spanish, and I sure don't speak Guarani, the indigenous language of Paraguay that, I am told, peppers the speech of the people I will soon be meeting. For another, I've never taught a course on film, or literature, for that matter. And let's not lose sight of the fact that I'm going all alone, to another hemisphere, farther away from home than I've ever been.

But what the hell. I'm a big girl. And I have decided to focus on what's awesome: I am going, all alone, to another hemisphere, farther away from home than I've ever been, to do my favorite thing in all the world: teach. How cool is that? Pretty damn cool, that's how.

My goals for this journey are, as is the case with so many things, best expressed in the form of a bulleted list (sue me, I'm a tech writer by training):

Learn more about the world, and my place in it
Eat a LOT of empanadas
Gain some experience working with English-language learners
Write about the things, people, and places I see

That last one is where my long-neglected blog comes in. It's all well and good to write for yourself, but like I tell my students, the fun don't stop there. If you're interested in my experiences, follow along. If you have any advice, share it. And if you'd like to look at about a thousand pictures of empanadas, I think you'll be very happy here. Seriously, I love those things.

Get in my belly.

Burke, Breadwinners, and the "Rock of Certainty"

2013-06-05T13:13:00.000-05:00

We've all heard this narrative on the "news" channel of our choice: "America is too polarized, they refuse to work with us, we are going to Hell in a handbasket, and it's all their fault." Depending on which flavor of media you prefer, you'll have inserted different values for "they" and "us," but the story is in general the same. And you know what? It's kinda true. Depending on where you're standing, either they are standing in the way of progress, or we are standing up for tradition. Or both, all at once. Or...something. It's disorienting to the point of becoming nonsensical, and maybe that's the part that really makes sense. As with nearly everything else humans do and say, this one can be explained using rhetorical theory (you knew I was gonna go there, right?).

He also looked like my grandpa.

Enter Kenneth Burke. Burke was a rhetorician who was interested in...well...pretty much everything. The ways people use symbolic language to communicate and persuade, the ways dramatic and narrative conventions can be mapped onto persuasive speech, the ways things change, and the ways things stay the same. Of interest to me, today, is a wee little section in his book Permanence and Change, in which he discusses a phenomenon he describes as "The Rock of Certainty."

According to Burke, "[w]hen a superstructure of certainties begins to topple," in other words when things we always took for granted start becoming a bit...ambiguous, people start getting similarly disordered. This makes sense, from a Burkean perspective, because for humans, "language is an implement of action." What we say, we do, and more than that, we are. And in times when everything is going pear-shaped, many of us will start saying (and therefore being) the most stable things we can think of.

Burke says that "our very concepts of character depend on the verbalizations of our group," and with that mindset, things start to make a lot more sense: The more polarizing our rhetoric, the more we distance ourselves from that which we are not. The more we seek a common enemy, the more we reinforce the bonds that make us, us. And meanwhile, Eris (the Greek goddess of chaos, not the baby planet) laughs, because the more we seek the margins, or more accurately the more we marginalize anyone who doesn't agree with us, the less possible consensus becomes.

Why on earth would we do such a ridiculous thing, at a time like this? Things, empirically, are bad, and seem to be getting worse. Poverty, unemployment, war, bloody revolution, rape culture, homelessness, famine, food contamination, we're adding new horsemen to our common mythology every day. Surely now, more than ever, we need to pull together. Right?

Wait. What now?

Yeah, wouldn't that be a world? But here's what actually happens. When the proverbial fan starts getting all splattery, people "naturally begin to look for some immovable 'rock' upon which a new structure of certainties can be erected." This how you get from statements like "I just read that 40% of American households with children have a female breadwinner. Things sure are different than they used to be; I wonder how that affects family structure," to "[L]iberals who defend this and say it is not a bad thing are very anti-science. When you look at biology, when you look at the natural world, the roles of a male and a female in society and in other animals, the male typically is the dominant role."

Erick Erickson, in addition to having one heck of a catchy name, is giving us an excellent example of what Burke was talking about. He's watching a paradigm he's accepted likely all of his life get turned on its head, and it's scary. It is. Change is scary, y'all, especially when it leads us into unknown directions. And most especially when those unknown directions might challenge our primacy as the dominant group. So Mr. Erickson does just what Burke describes: he tries "to salvage whatever values, still intact, maybe serve as the basis of new exhortations and judgments," in this case a somewhat specious understanding of science, underpinned with a healthy dose of misogyny.

Fox News, the network on which this statement was made, serves as an excellent example of how these paradigm shifts lead to polarization. See, Burke describes a situation where, "[s]ince extreme statements were more likely to attract an audience than better balanced ones," anyone who wanted to reach an audience had to hang out on the fringes. Modern media is competing for the attention of folks who have lots to do, lots to worry about, and lots of options where media consumption is concerned, so they have to be as noticeable as possible. They do that by putting forth their version of the facts in the most stark, black-and-white, and above all radically inflammatory terms possible, finding what Burke describes as "mental colored-spectacles" so that a viewer could see, everywhere he looked, "evidence of this one color."

And here's where we come full circle, back to the concept of language as "implementation of action" and a way to define and create our concepts of self. As a liberal feminist myself, I define myself every day by what I am and am not, and I am emphatically not a consumer of Fox News because that's not me. On the other side of the spectrum from me, there are people who can't even stand the idea of sitting down and watching Rachel Maddow because she is not a representative of who they are. I want to make clear that we are all guilty of this to some extent, at all positions on the political spectrum. It's a tendency of humanity to become entrenched in ever-more-polarized ideologies when things get wacky, and things, empirically, are wacky.

I am in general a fan of radicalism. Maybe at some point I'll write about why, about Socrates and the "gadfly" effect and the general nature of humanity to stagnate somewhere in the middle. But today, my message is, if not centrist (that not being who I am), at least consensus-focused. If we can't start agreeing on some terms and figuring some things out, we'll be riding our ideologies into the abyss.

Crime Scenes and Carl's Junior

2011-07-05T17:03:00.000-05:00

Next time, on Hoarders...

I hate moving. I'm a nester by nature, and the whole process of boxing things up and carrying them away to be unboxed elsewhere gives me the icks. This little whinge-fest is by way of excuse: it's not that I didn't want to blog, it's that my computer was in seven pieces in four different boxes. But I'm getting settled, and it's time to get back to our buddy Aristotle.

To recap: you've got ethos, where an argument (buy a Buick) succeeds or fails based on the character of the speaker (Tiger Woods), and you've got pathos, where emotion is used to persuade the audience to do such varied things as adopt puppies and commit genocide. Now let's meet the new kid, logos.

Some of you may have heard the 101 definition of logos, argument based on logic, and dismissed it as boring and ineffectual. Hang onto your hats. Aristotle defines logos as "persuasion achieved through proof or apparent proof." The italics are mine, because wow. That's important.

YEEEAAAAAAAAH!!!

Proof is one thing. We've all seen CSI. We know from proof. Proof is the stuff that, well, proves things. This guy has no pulse, he must be dead. That guy's DNA is under his nails, there must have been a struggle. Blacklights are used, we all giggle. David Caruso takes off his glasses and says something witty, The Who plays, rinse, repeat. Proof. Easy-peasy.

The meeting place of 1/2 of my DNA

This whole idea of "apparent proof," though, this is where logos stops looking like your grandma darning socks in a rocking chair circa 1995, and starts looking like your grandma hanging out in Paris dance halls circa 1945. Yowza. Well, my grandma anyway. Your grandma is no doubt more respectable than mine.

Aristotle described two ways of deploying logos: the example and the enthymeme. The example is relatively straightforward: ever win an argument by pointing out that some undesirable event happens "every single time?" And then going on to outline every instance you can remember of said event? Yeah, me too. It sometimes ain't pretty, either. Anyway, that's examples in a nutshell. It may or may not be worth knowing that this is a form of inductive reasoning, in which a list of specific instances are used to draw a general conclusion.

On to the enthymeme. Aristotle says:

When it is shown that, certain propositions being true, a further and quite distinct proposition must also be true in consequence, whether invariable or usually, this is called syllogism in dialectic, enthymeme in rhetoric.

This bar doesn't suck.

Geez, Aristotle. Settle down. OK, here's what he means. You know how you sometimes say stuff like, "I don't want to go to that bar. All the bars in this town suck," and the other person says, "yeah, that bar probably sucks. We should go somewhere else." Well, you won that argument using an enthymeme.

Because we're talking about Aristotelian rhetoric here, everything breaks neatly down into component parts (I do love a man with an orderly mind). Here's how they work:

Major Premise: All the bars in this town suck.
Case (Also called Minor Premise): That bar is in this town.
Conclusion: That bar sucks.

Done and done. Except that in the real world, enthymemes often congregate together and gang up on their audience. Because there's an unstated major premise at work here: We should not go to a bar that sucks. And adding that major premise to the mix creates a new conclusion: We should not go to that bar. See how that works? Pretty simple, yeah?

Except when it's not.

Once you start looking at the world in terms of enthymemes, all kinds of interesting stuff shakes out. Think about commercials. I think about them a lot, looking for enthymemes, because I'm a geek like that. Here's just one example of what I have found:

OK. There is a whole towering series of enthymemes at work here, but most of the premises are unstated. I promise they're there, though. Let's start with the obvious parts and work our way backwards.

Clearly, the conclusion of any commercial is "buy our crap." Carl's Jr. is not breaking new ground there by any means. We can safely assume the conclusion of this commercial is "buy a gigantihuge breakfast burrito." Conclusion...check.

I'll crack your damn eggs.

The major and minor premises get trickier. Major premises tend to be statements about the world that are generally accepted by the audience. Sometimes, they are left unstated purposefully because, well, let's face it, a lot of the things we generally accept as truth are not very pleasant. Things like, "Men are incapable of feeding themselves," or "Women can cook but they sure are annoying to have around." Major premises...check.

The minor premise, often called the case, typically refers to a specific instance. In this case, this poor egg-challenged gentleman's inability to cope with the complexities of breakfast preparation, coupled with his fear of "furry covers" on his toilet seat. Minor premises are more commonly stated because they are specific.

That guy, with his implied fear of commitment, and his unseen girlfriend, with her alleged desire to control her man's bathroom decor and by extension his life in exchange for assuming the egg-cracking duties in the household, are specific people. No one, the ad agency could argue, is saying that all male/female relationships are like that. Except that by making a commercial designed for a general audience and using those themes...they kinda maybe are.

I could get into the details here, look at the color scheme, the tiny visual cues that further illustrate the point, but I think I'll save visual rhetoric for another post. Aristotle wasn't looking at rhetoric as a visual thing, anyway, and there's a limit to even my attention span. Also these boxes aren't gonna unpack themselves.

Suffice it to say that I don't like this commercial. I don't like the fact that it uses negative stereotypes about both genders to frame its argument, and I don't like that it does this sneakily using an unstated major premise. Unfortunately, the hard truth of the matter seems to be that if you shake a commercial hard enough, all kinds of unlovely truths about how we're socialized to view the world come tumbling out.

Pathos, Puppies, Panzer Tanks

2011-06-13T12:57:00.005-05:00

Here's the scene: It's late at night, and you can't sleep. You sit on the couch all bleary-eyed and cranky, pick up the remote, and start channel surfing. You settle on something light, something that doesn't tax your intellectual or emotional capabilities too much (after all, you are tired), maybe an old John Hughes movie or a little Adult Swim. Suddenly, right when you are at your least able to deal with it, it happens.

An argument based on brutal-ness?

Oh mercy. At this point in my battle with insomnia, I am typically fighting back tears, half ashamed and half angry at the unwanted emotional response that is now distracting me from Metalocalypse. I am also framing my own rhetorical debate, because I know I must convince husband that a third dog is just what we need around the house. I am completely caught up in my emotional need to save all teh aminals, and logic has taken the backseat. And that's how I know this commercial works. This is not a commercial designed to teach; it's a commercial designed to tug at your heart strings. And oh mama does it succeed.

First off, we've got the song. Oh man. That song has been pulling my heartstrings since I was a disaffected and angst-ridden teenager. I can still remember the terrible tragedies of teenagerdom, against the background of Sara McLachlan's crazy pretty voice. The moment I hear that song, I am immediately transported to every bad breakup I experienced from 1994 to the day I met my husband roughly 10 years later. Suffice it to say that I'm now receptive to the content of the ad.

My heart hurts.

And then there's the visuals. I really, honestly believe that if you can watch this commercial and not once feel a feeling, you don't have any. That shepherd mix struggling to walk gets me every. Damn. Time. The words on the screen are almost incidental; they basically serve as punctuation. By the time you get a load of those sad eyed doggies in cages and that poor little one-eyed kitty cat, you've pretty much gotten the message.

This is pathos being used to its most perfect extension. Aristotle wasn't a huge fan of the technique, saying that, "The arousing of prejudice, pity, anger, and similar emotions has nothing to do with the essential facts," but he nonetheless devoted a large part of Book II of his Rhetoric to a detailed analysis of the different types of emotion - a kind of color wheel of human feelings.

Why did he bother? Aristotle is endearing to me for a number of reasons, one of which being that he was eminently logical, so why would a guy whose entire life's work was approaching the world with a rational curiosity spend all this time figuring out how people feel and why?

Because it works.

As an experiment, think about what a completely logical ad for animal shelters would look like. Then think about how you'd respond to it. Not so much, right? If you did respond at all, it would be with emotions - we're just too emotionally connected to animals in Western culture to be completely rational about the idea of animal abuse.

This hen does not need a flag.

Aristotle believed that people should naturally make decisions in their own best interests when presented with all the data, and he may have been giving us too much credit. Logically, I need a third dog like a hen needs a flag. But in the process of writing this blog, I have watched that video maybe three times, and I am convinced that what Ming and Alfie need is a little brother or sister.

Dang. Think about that for a second. Here I sit, writing a blog about rhetoric, and the pathos in this commercial is so powerful that it's working on me in spite of what I laughingly call my "academic detachment."

These bad dogs do not need a sibling.

I chose the McLachlan ad for a couple reasons. One, it's as good an example of an argument based on pathos as I've ever seen. Two, it's an example of pathos being used for good. Aristotle was nervous about the idea of rhetors using emotion at the expense of facts, and with good reason. Sad doggies to one side, the world of advertising (be it political, industrial, or anything else) runs rampant with arguments designed to play on our emotions. And often not to the betterment of society.

Hello there, German guy.

Check out this handsome young man. See how bravely he gazes off into the distance? My German is a little rusty, but just looking at this young man makes you stop and say, "goodness, but Germans are attractive folk. They must have a great deal of national pride." And my non-existent skills where sprechen Sie-ing Deutsch really don't matter. If I didn't know about the horrors of World War II (meaning if I were this poster's target audience), how could I possibly find something to object to? The words, like with the RSPCA, don't matter nearly as much as the emotional freight of the image. Hitler's Germany has cast itself as a nation of strong, proud, young, healthy and attractive people.

Then we come to this.

Whoa, wait, not cool.

Um...well then. I'm not nearly so comfortable with this. Like, at all. Wow. Easy there, Germany. Let's ignore for a second that I've never seen a Jewish guy that looks anything like that. Let's also ignore the fact that, as mentioned, my German is slim to absent (although I'm pretty sure that the caption says something to the effect of the war going on longer and the cause for war being strengthened). If you're this ad's target demographic, you already know that the handsome German guy up above is wearing the white hat. So by extension...well...eek.

And make no mistake. The power of the Third Reich was due in large part to the effectiveness of rhetorical arguments based in pathos just like these. Having cast themselves rhetorically as the "heroes," the only thing they needed to do was find a "villain." And when they did, they murdered millions of innocent people.

Let me be clear. Sara McLachlan is not a Nazi. Like, not even a little bit. And there are really good reasons to use arguments based in pathos. If it gets abandoned, neglected, and abused dogs into safe, loving homes, I'm all for it. Easily 95% of the pathos-based arguments out there fall somewhere between the two extremes of animal lover and Hitler, more if you're not particularly political.

But all of them have one thing in common: they want you to feel and not think. As an advocate of thinking myself, I have to be a little wary of that.

Aristotle, Ethos, and Tiger Woods

2011-06-07T14:48:00.002-05:00

Ethos in Action

Here's the thing. If you're still here after reading my last blog post on Aristotle, there has to be a reason for that. Maybe (I hope) you found value in what I had to say. Maybe you felt an emotional attachment to the material (even if it was just giggling at pictures of Doctor Who). Or maybe you felt like you got a sense of me as a person, and you decided you wanted to hear more. From that person. The "me" of the blogosphere.

Ta-da! You've just defined ethos.

Ethos is one of Aristotle's basic rhetorical categories, and any argument that hinges on the character of the speaker is using it. Aristotle puts it like this: "We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is true generally whatever the question is..." In other words, we believe good men because they are good, not because they are experts. And this gets really interesting in modern culture. Consider, for example, the curious case of Tiger Woods.

At a certain point, Tiger Woods could pretty much sell anything. To anyone. He was an endorsement powerhouse, associated with an increasingly diverse series of products, from Buicks to watches to razor blades. Some of these endorsements made logical sense. Woods is, after all an professional golfer, so he is likely to be qualified to sell golf clubs for Titleist or golf apparel for Nike.

This is not an Escalade.

We're not concerned with those ads right at the moment, though. We're interested in the phenomenon of celebrities selling things they have no special knowledge of. Things like Buicks. Tiger himself is neither a mechanic nor a car designer. In any event, he (in)famously drives an Escalade, on which more later. He has, in short, no special knowledge of automobiles that would qualify him to tell Americans what kind of car to drive. But there he is over there, looking sharp in his suit, with a big grin on his handsome face, telling us to buy a Buick. And a lot of folks did.

Think about that for a second. I'm married to a mechanic. We have mechanic friends. If one of those guys tells me to buy a specific car, I consider it. But Tiger, cute though he was, just didn't logically have the knowledge a mechanic has. Weird, right?

Here's why it works. When Tiger Woods' face was on all these random products, he was basically the golden boy of the PGA, and the world in general. He was attractive, but in a clean cut, nice-guy, take-him-home-to-meet-the-family way. He was multi-ethnic and clearly non-white, but in such a friendly and relatable way that even the most conservative of households had trouble feeling threatened. He was talented, and charming, and he had such a lovely family. Remember that? We loved that guy!

This is an Escalade.

That brings us neatly to the turn. Having taken our little trip down memory lane, to a time when Tiger Woods was the emblem of all that was right and wonderful with the family-centric melting pot we all like to think America is, we must return to reality. Remember this picture? Me too.

This was the moment when we collectively decided that maybe Tiger Woods shouldn't be making our purchasing decisions. Because this was the moment when he lost his ethos. Instead of coming off as America's "good man," a man we could trust to make the right choice for us, he became persona non grata. In a way, the absolute excellence of Tiger's ethos pre-Escalade was what led to his downfall. Because we believed him.

It is important to point out that Aristotle saw ethos as something confined to a specific speech at a specific time, with the speaker's previous performances of character as irrelevant. He also lived in a time before YouTube. These days, to Tiger Woods' chagrin, your ethos is a 24/7 proposition.

We're not internationally acclaimed pro golfers (one can only assume), but that doesn't mean ethos doesn't matter to us. We are personalities in our own way. Our ethos may not be responsible for multi-million dollar deals (yet), but it is responsible for a lot of the decisions others make about us. The ethos of others, conversely, is a big part of why we make some of the decisions we do.

Bush takes his ethos for a ride.

Like all things rhetorical, arguments based on ethos are all around us. Every time you see an Ivy League-educated candidate wearing cowboy boots and a chambray shirt, you're seeing a candidate who is aware of his ethos. If you've ever seen an actor using an award ceremony as a political platform, you've seen an astute use of ethos. In order to argue effectively (even if our argument is just "take me seriously"), we have to be equally aware.

It has been said that arguments based on ethos are artificial in nature. And there is a certain degree of truth to that assessment. I'll get into that at a later date. The point today is that it works, and that we really ought to be aware of it. I would never advise anyone to manufacture a completely false ethos (just look at what happened to poor Tiger), but if you've ever answered the question "what's your greatest weakness," in a job interview with, "I'm kind of a perfectionist," you realize there's a fine line here.

If you're interested in Aristotle and his means of persuasion, Massachusetts Institute of Technology has an excellent online version of his Rhetoric. If you want to chat about any of this stuff, hit me in the comments or send me an email.

Back and Badder than Ever - Now with More Aristotle!

2011-06-06T16:39:00.001-05:00

My Boy Aristotle

It's been a crazy few weeks. I'm apparently now a Master of Art, which is nice. I haven't found a job, which is less nice. I have gotten plenty of sleep, spent time with some truly awesome people I hadn't seen a lot of lately, and gotten all caught up on Doctor Who. I may have mentioned, though, still no job. It's scary. No, scratch that. It's terrifying. In the meantime, I am falling back on something that never (well almost never) makes me feel incompetent and useless, the thing I have studied for most of the last two years, and the thing I will study some more should I get up the guts to go for a PhD at some point: rhetoric. So today I think I'll talk about my buddy Aristotle.

No, wait, where are you going? Come back here and sit down.

"I wear a fez now. Fezzes are cool."

Here's my personal theory on rhetoric: it's important. That's it - that's the theory. And the corollary to that theory is, you should know about it. We all should. It's a shame that people hear the word rhetoric and either tune out or immediately think of Nazis, Fox News, or other forces for evil. Because rhetoric is cool. Like fezzes.

Unlike fezzes, though (because every tenuous metaphor has to break down eventually), rhetoric isn't just something you see on adorable Gallifreyans with alarmingly good hair and dreamy dimples. It's all over the place. People are selling things to you all the time, from cheap plastic crap to political ideologies to cultural assumptions to cheap plastic crap designed to celebrate political ideologies and cultural assumptions. If they could pitch you in their sleep, they would. One day, they probably will. In other words, unless you're a big fan of cheap plastic crap, this is useful stuff.

Rhetoric informs the way we write...basically anything. After all, understanding rhetoric is a great tool in understanding human motivations, which they tell me are neat things for our characters to have (even if they themselves are not human). Rhetoric is also a great way to figure out what the latest and greatest novelist, screenwriter, or video game designer is really saying, so you can make an informed decision regarding your media consumption. And believe you me, once you start thinking about this stuff, you realize there's a lot more going on than meets the eye.

Fezzes, future me? Really?

In service of that, I bring you Aristotle. Relax, he's a big sweetie once you get to know him. A real barrel of laughs. Well, OK, that's kind of a lie. But he's not that bad. In fact, in his own dry and analtyical way, he's almost as awesome as Doctor Who. Awesomer, even, unless we're talking Chris Eccleston Doctor Who, in which case all bets are pretty much off.

Aristotle was a part of the whole Athenian intellectual movement, and like intellectuals everywhere, he taught for his supper. He taught lots of people, among them Alexander the Great, and he taught lots of things: science, music, linguistics, metaphysics, and zoology, just to name a few. And, most importantly from where I'm standing, rhetoric.

Let's be real here for a second. Aristotle, no matter what you may have been told in your undergrad Western Civ course, did not in fact invent rhetoric. That's silly, and it's insulting to every single person who ever convinced anyone of anything before the 4th century B.C.E. But what he did do was figure it out, write it down, and tell other people.

Holy crap, I hope not.

Why is that awesome? Well, think about it for a second. We're talking about a guy who lived thousands of years ago, writing down a bunch of stuff that we're still talking about today. I mean come on, two-thirds of this guy's stuff has been lost to antiquity, and what's left is still enough to keep us talking. If that's not worth at least a "damn, that's kinda cool," then I don't know what is. Think about the stuff you read, and ask yourself. Will people still be studying it in a few thousand years?

And even more, will they still be using it as a starting point for teaching an entire discipline? Yeah, probably not. Cheap shots at Twilight aside, Aristotle is kind of a big deal. We might not listen to the kind of music he wrote about, and we sure don't speak the same language he studied, but he's the guy who gave us the foundation for the rhetorical principles we use today.

Aristotle was into precision. He put things into categories, made lists, and then thought about how those lists connected to make larger lists. A man, in other words, after my own heart. Over the course of the next few days, I'm going to talk about some of those categories, and try to explain a little bit more about why I love Aristotle, and why he is still, after literally millennia, basically a rock star when it comes to figuring out how we convince people to do things, and maybe more importantly, how other people convince us.

Six Sentence Sunday 5-15-11

2011-05-15T10:21:00.000-05:00

Here's my six:

They came at night, without warning, professionally silent, disabling our security system, overriding our door locks, and moving around in the living room unnoticed. I would never have awakened if one of them hadn’t bumped into something – probably the antique Chinese vase on a stand by the sofa – and muffled a curse.

“David?” I groped for my husband, looking at him wide eyed. “Did you hear that,” I hissed. “I think there’s someone in the living room.”

“Stay here. I’ll take care of it.”

If you're keeping score, this comes from the same WiP as the last six I posted, although from another section, and is narrated by the woman narrating last week's six sentences, although in a different time. Enjoy! :D

My First Six Sentence Sunday!

2011-05-08T14:59:00.000-05:00

The twitter-folk inform me that today is Six Sentence Sunday. Seems like as good a time as any to post some actual fiction. What follows is the first six sentences of my as yet untitled work-in-progress:

I was asleep, to begin with. My bed was soft and warm, the room was dark and soothing – as soothing as an improvised bedroom that had once been a high school history classroom could be, anyway. Posters that I’d never bothered to remove peeled slowly off of the walls, leaving greasy spots behind where adhesive gum had been. Some long-gone teacher’s desk still sat by the whiteboard, presumably stuffed full of worksheets, grade books, and uninspired term papers; I’d never bothered to look. Taped to the desk’s surface, a picture of a smiling woman and a man I presumed was her smiling husband. I didn’t look at that picture often, not at all on a good day.

That's my six! Feel free to comment, suggest, encourage, discourage, speculate, like, or dislike. Yes, you. :)

Let's Do This

2011-05-04T12:20:00.000-05:00

So I've been tweeting. It's...weird. I made fun of Twitter when it came out. I still make fun of it a little. I've got a snarky streak (well, ok, I've got a non-snarky streak, running through a personality made up mainly of snark), so making fun of things comes naturally to me.

Anyway, tweeting. I was wrong, Internet. And you were right. Twitter is actually pretty cool. I have had conversations with people who are writing cool stuff. People who have done what I thus far have only rarely had the chutzpah to do: put their writing somewhere where people can read it.

I hate being scared. I hate admitting I'm scared even more. But I am. I'm scared to tell you about my book. I'm scared to offer it up to you and say "I wrote this." I am so tempted to throw it out there under a pen name and then tweet/blog/facebook about how "my friend wrote this and you should check it out."

But I won't. If someone else has the guts to do this, so do I, dammit.

So what's my book about? Well, it's your classic girl meets boy, boy takes over the world using telecommunication technology, and chaos ensues kind of thing. And it's coming this summer.

There. I said it. Oh crap, what have I done.

Writer's Block...Sort Of

2011-05-03T20:45:00.000-05:00

Avoidance FTL

I have writer's block. Sort of. I know for an absolute fact that if I were to give in to temptation and open up any one of the fiction pieces I'm working on, I would be kicking ass and chewing bubblegum in no time. It would feel great. I know this, just like I know that if I were to open up a blank Word doc and try to write an academic paper on, for instance, emotional rhetoric in political campaigns, I would sit staring blankly at the screen, wander off and have a smoke, call my friend and chat about random crap, pour myself a drink, drink it, consider making bread, and finally sit down and bang out a whiny, self-absorbed blog about how hard grad school is that I would then realize is crap and subsequently delete.

Three guesses why I know this.

I want to be writing something fun. I need school to be over, so I can devote myself to writing for the fun of it. I want to be revising that novel thing. I want to be putting the finishing touches on my newest short story and shopping it around. I want to be starting to pin down the new thing that's floating around my consciousness, the thing that I lie in bed and plan out when I can't sleep, because it's fun. And academic writing, at some point, has become un-fun for me.

I need to be writing my Research Problem, a final paper which functions like a thesis in any normal master's program. I need to be writing my final paper for History of Rhetoric, in which I intend to analyze As Seen on TV commercials and prove that they prey on our fear of being alone and helpless. I need to be writing my stylistic and rhetorical analysis of The Communist Manifesto for my British Essay class. These are all things that I love thinking, talking, and reading about. It's time to start writing.

Slap your troubles away...

Because the key word here is "writing." Not "thinking about writing," or "talking about writing," or even, heaven help us, "planning to start writing." I am a master of avoidance. I have made exhaustive outlines, taped them to my office wall, and then gone on to make neat and tidy tables that convey key pieces of information. I have wandered into fellow GA's offices, and the offices of "real" faculty, and had fascinating conversations about my research. I have watched the damn Slap Chop commercial roughly 42 times.

I decided the problem was location; my office, I reasoned, a place designed to be worked in, was too full of distractions. There are simply too many interesting people hanging around there. So I relocated to my house, on the logic that at least my dogs aren't likely to be doing interesting research on the rhetorical practices of Victorian women or Alexander Pope. I may have mentioned how well that's working out for me.

But May is here, and it's time to put my money where my mouth is.

What are your avoidance strategies? And how do you overcome them?

An Infinite Loop of Revision...

2011-05-02T19:58:00.000-05:00

I have three major academic projects to write and untold stacks of papers to grade, and instead of doing any of that I'm stuck on this infinite loop of revision ideas on this book-length fiction thing I'm working on. I think the internet acronym I want is FML. I have got to get focused, so I'm calling on you for help. Do me a solid and click through?

I originally started writing this thing in third person and decided to switch it over to first. My reasoning at the time was that I wanted more access to the heroine's internal monologue than I felt comfortable with trying in third person.

Since then, I feel like I've gotten a really good read on my characters' voices. So good, in fact, that I've found myself wanting to get into other folks' internal monologues. Which is obviously problematic in first person.

What's the answer? Or at least, what's your answer? It seems like I have at least five options here:

Resign myself to having access to only one character's thoughts and feelings and directing my revision of other characters toward showing their likely thoughts and feelings with descriptions, actions, and dialogue.
Do a massive revision switching the whole piece to third person.
Try to manage a shifting first person, where various sections are told from various points of view.
Throw the whole thing away and start over from scratch.
Discover some other option that has yet to occur to me.

I'm asking for two reasons. One, I really want to know what you think. And two, I need to get this out of my head so I can focus on the forty-two bajillion other things I need to be focusing on. Help me out, wouldja?

Refusing to Choose

2011-04-28T17:14:00.000-05:00

Beware! I bring you terrifying news! Are you ready? Are you? OK. Here goes. When teachers aren't being teachers, they do other things.

I know. I'm sorry. Shocking.

It's easy to be sarcastic on this subject. At least, it is for me. For Judy Buranich, though, this is not funny at all. Because Judy Buranich is, like me, a teacher and a writer. She's a significantly more successful writer than I am, at that. And that might have been the problem. Because Ms Buranich is a writer of romance novels. And that apparently makes her fair game for the morality police.

Ms Buranich

This pleasant-looking woman has become something of a scandal lately, and I just can't figure out why. Or rather, I can. And I hate it. One of Ms Buranich's most vocal critics describes Buranich as "a top-of-the-line teacher." So clearly Buranich is not failing at her job in any way. Apparently, however, Buranich's books (which some have described as erotica) are "unethical, [and] totally unacceptable," This critic goes on to express her horror that "everybody’s sort of looking at this like, hey, this is OK."

Well guess what, Buranich haters. Hey, this is OK.

People have sex. It happens. And like everything else that happens to human beings, it's OK to write about it. It's OK to read about it. It's even OK to enjoy reading or writing about it. I was not under the impression that a healthy interest in sex was forbidden for those of us who teach. No one tell my husband.

Not only is erotica OK (and easily avoidable if it's not your cup of tea), it has nothing to do with Ms Buranich as a teacher. In fact, it may not have all that much to do with Ms. Buranich as a writer; her books are sold in Waldenbooks, filed under Romance, after all. To suggest, as many critics have, that she should choose between teaching and writing is flatly ridiculous and insulting to both teachers and writers.

I'm a teacher. I love teaching. I love working with my students to improve their writing and their understanding of the things they read. Even when my MA is finished this May, I hope to continue teaching in some capacity for the rest of my life. It is very possible and even likely that I will get a PhD in my field and become a professor. I think I could happily teach rhetoric and composition forever.

I'm also a writer. I love writing. I love taking my odd little theories and flights of fancy from my brain to the page. I am learning to love sharing what I write. I think I could happily write forever.

I teach composition. I write extreme horror, science fiction, and fantasy, all with the occasional sex scene here and there. The reason I teach is to help other people become better writers and citizens of the world. The reason I write is to examine how ordinary people act in extraordinary situations - and sometimes people get it on.

Happily, there are people who get that. If you're interested in showing your support for Judy Buranich, check out this facebook page started in her defense.

I'm not choosing. Neither should Judy Buranich.

This is Book Country

2011-04-27T17:14:00.000-05:00

OK, I will try really hard to not make unnecessary Hunter S. Thompson references, and will instead focus on the really cool thing that just happened in my world: ~~Bat~~ Book Country. Sorry. It got away from me there. I'll be better.

Anyway, if you a) read or b) write, you have reason to be as excited as I am. Because Book Country is super sweet. Go ahead, check it out. I'll wait here.

So? Pretty sweet, huh? How cool is this idea? I kinda wish I'd thought of it first, and I'm very excited about getting involved. It's basically a win-win: read other people's books, get them to read yours, get industry information that can help you find an agent (edited for clarity from original post). When worst case scenario is reading more, you can't really go wrong.

I joined yesterday, and I'm working up the nerve to submit my own book. And by "working up the nerve" I mean "glaring dourly at whole chapters that I thought were pretty OK, actually, until I considered someone who hadn't taken vows to love and support me reading them." But I'm getting there. You should too. When and if I finally get the chutzpah to put chapter one up, I'll let you all know. But even if I don't, go take a look at all the great work the good people at ~~Bat~~ Book Country are doing. I'm so sorry. I can't help myself.

Revising = Winning

2011-04-26T16:02:00.000-05:00

I've begun some substantial revisions on my largest writing project to date, something that I suppose I have to call a novel. ~~I think it's pretty good.~~ I think that it might become something that is pretty good. In any event, I'm loving the process of revising it. In a bit of odd synchronicity, I am also teaching revision to my Research Writing students. They do not share my love.

The Illustrious Mr. Sheen

For many of my students, revising is something they do under duress, complete with the obligatory under-the-breath "it was fine how it was" and the dreaded "this is stupid." But revise they shall. And I found a truly nifty way to show them how. I'm of the opinion that in order to revise for conciseness (my students' current writing task is revising a 4-page research paper into a 500 word essay), you have to really know what you were saying in the first place. So today, I unveiled my master plan. OK, well, that's a lie. There was no plan. My students were bored, I was desperate, and I went with it. It worked, so I'll call it a "master plan" instead of a "foolish catastrophe." Anyway, I chose a famous piece of American oratory, presented in text form. That's right, a transcription of the Charlie Sheen interview (from the Huffington Post).

It turns out that the mere mention of this foolishness is just the thing to get late-in-the-semester undergrads to rise above the lack of A/C and motivation that has permeated our classroom all month. It also turns out that Charlie Sheen's (in)famous interview in which he proclaims himself, among other things, to be winning, a bayonet, a Vatican warlock assassin, and winning, lends itself very well to rhetorical analysis and subsequent revision for conciseness.

Here's what we found. The entire text follows a very specific structure. In a section that we identified as the introduction, Sheen states his basic thesis: I'm winning, and you are losing. He elaborates on this thesis in subsequent sections, always staying true to the basic structure. In a section on his 3 failed marriages, Sheen's premise can be restated as "I'm winning at marriage, but marriage as an institution is losing." A section discussing his ex-wife Brooke can be boiled down to "I'm winning, and Brooke is losing." Later, when Sheen claims to have "cleansed" himself of addiction, the dichotomy holds up. Charlie Sheen is winning, Alcoholics Anonymous is losing. Then he restates his original thesis, sums up his points, and gets out of there. It's neat, it's tidy, and it almost makes me think that this guy isn't quite as crazy as I thought. I mean, maybe he is winning, and by winning I mean laughing all the way to the bank.

Charlie Sheen may or may not be a warlock assassin for the Pope, but he did give us a well-structured argument that supports its thesis; what else can a comp teacher ask for?

My Work-in-Progress Blog

2011-04-25T17:16:00.000-05:00

I'm trying an experiment. And I need your help. See, from the time I learned how to read, I wanted to be a writer. I've loved playing around with the English language my whole life, so much so that I decided (after a few missteps) to study it. When I was five, I wrote a short story. Not a great short story, but Mom sure liked it. I think she still has it, in fact. I know I still have the compulsive habit of converting my every thought, fear, and fantasy into prose of varying quality. Finally, after 25 years of this, it has occurred to me: why do I have a laptop full of short stories, novels, and outlines that no one has ever read?

Am I a great novelist? Probably not. But the more I write, and the more I read what I write, the more I think that there might be other people who might want to read this stuff. Just typing that makes me feel weird. It's been my long-standing habit to think of writing fiction as something I do privately, for and with myself. At the risk of being crass, think about the things you do that fall into that category, and ask yourself if you've ever considered the idea that others might want in on that action. If the answer is yes, do let me know; I'll be blocking you from picture messaging me directly.

The point is, if I want anyone other than Mom to read what I write, I have a few options. I can pester my friends to read it, I can pester my husband to read it, or I can try to get it (gasp) published. So far, I've had a teensy bit of success with that, which is amazing. But I'd like to try to take it further. I'm working from the advice of a professor of mine: to get published, you have to either write the Great American Novel or have a built-in following. Let's be real here. The Great American Novel is not likely to be within my reach. I'm going to shoot for option B.

I want to use this blog to talk about what I'm writing, what I'm reading, and what in general is going on in my world. I'd love feedback on any and all of that. That's where you come in. If you like what I write, tell someone. If you don't, tell someone. Follow me, comment on me, share me on your social network of choice (whether online or not) and tell your friends to do the same. I feel like such a shill even asking, but the truth is, no one ever got published by trying to hide the fact that they were writing. I'm writing. You tell your friends, and I'll tell every publishing company and lit agency I can find contact info for, and maybe one day there'll be a book at the bookstore by "that girl whose blog you read."

Repelled by Man

2011-04-23T11:32:00.000-05:00

Many people believe that they are attracted by God, or by Nature, when they are only repelled by man. ~William Ralph Inge

Today I saw something so horrible that I almost don't want to talk about it. But I think I need to. I think everyone needs to. As much as I hate the religious overtones of the word, today I saw something evil. I saw members of my species viciously attacking another member of my species, and for what? Was there a cause being advanced? Were the attackers taking justified revenge or moving to protect themselves? Was the victim threatening anyone? No. The only cause here was stupid, festering, ignorant hate. And that's as close to a working definition of evil as someone with my upbringing and religious background can find.

I'm going to give you a minute to watch the video. And then as long as you need to process it. I am still processing it. If you feel so moved, please sign the petition. When you're ready, read on after the jump.

Petitions by Change.org|Start a Petition »

Are you back? Did you see that poor woman slump to the floor in utter defeat? Did you see her clutch at the leg of the one person brave enough to defend her, desperate for comfort on what may well have been the worst day of her life? I did. Did you make it long enough to see her on the floor seizing beside a trash can, while people stepped over her? While NO ONE knelt down and took her hand? While NO ONE said all the things I wish I'd been there to say to her? Things like, "Honey, just relax, I'm here for you." Things like, "We're going to get through this." Things that, loosely translated, mean, "I'm a human being and so are you. Your suffering moves me to action, because that's what humanity is supposed to be about."

I realize that there are people who will never understand transgendered people, people who are made uncomfortable by things, ideas, and people that fall outside the neat little boxes we try so hard to put ourselves in. I don't think being made uncomfortable is anywhere near a good excuse for hatred on this scale. People don't have to live by your rules to be worthy of your compassion. If you believe otherwise, I invite you to take a good long look at yourself and figure out just what it is that scares you so badly that you need to put so much hate into the universe.

I was lucky enough to be born the gender I was supposed to be, complete with all the socially acceptable bits and bobs, so I can't in all honesty say I understand what it's like to be a transgendered person. But dammit, I understand what it's like to be a human being who is scared and in pain and all alone. Surely we can all understand that. And if we can't, how can we call ourselves human?

The Joy of Vegetables(?), or Why the Bookstore Disappointed Me

2011-02-16T11:39:00.000-06:00

The kind of thing I had in mind,
but with veggies.

The lust for veggies continues. I'm embracing it. I mean, as a coworker pointed out yesterday, there are worse things I could crave. At least it's not bacon. Or crack-cocaine. In service of that, I decided the other day to look around for some cookbooks featuring vegetables, and I had an epiphany of sorts concerning the way we eat in this country. Those of you who already eat decently, bear with me. I'm in new territory here.

I knew what I wanted, almost precisely. I could picture it. It would be just like certain cookbooks I already own, the ones with a big, colorful, glossy close-up shot of a bowl of pasta or a Frenched rib roast. The ones with titles like "The Beef Cookbook," or "365 Days of Pasta," except this one would be "The Joy of Vegetables." I was excited about the idea of looking through a big shiny book of veggie dishes, getting ideas for new and exciting dinners.

So I took myself off to the bookstore with high hopes. I knew that the cookbook I sought not only existed, but was likely to be sitting on a shelf in pride of place, being gorgeous and glossy and tempting next to its meaty and starchy compatriots. Yeah, not so much.

What I was looking for was a book of recipes and ideas that would celebrate the vegetable as a darned tasty thing to eat. What I was not looking for was a book about becoming a vegan, or even a vegetarian. I have nothing but respect for people who choose a meat-free diet, but that's just not me. I also was not looking for books about curing diabetes, fibromyalgia, morbid obesity, high blood pressure, or chronic fatigue disorder (none of which I have). Sadly, the overwhelming majority of what I found was just that. Apparently, there are only two reasons to eat a remotely healthy diet in the United States:

You have moral or political objections to eating meat, and are eating healthy sort of by default.
You have a chronic or terminal illness, and are eating healthy in a last ditch effort to be cured.

The kind of thing I found.

It really made me think. Why don't we just eat vegetables because it feels good? Or just because it's tasty? Like, before we end up in a doctor's office? We spend so much time in this country (and, to be fair, in most Western countries) perpetuating the idea that children who eat their vegetables are "good" children, and must be rewarded for performing this onerous task. Then we grow up and hey! We don't have to eat those nasty sprouts anymore! So we don't. But I wanna. Is that weird? Apparently so.

More of the kind of thing I found

I just reread that last paragraph, and it sounds preachy as hell. I'm sorry. But the point still stands. I'm not saying there aren't excellent cookbooks of just the sort I was looking for; there absolutely are, and I've ordered one (Vegetable Love, by Barbara Kafka) from Amazon already. The point isn't that they don't exist, it's that they apparently aren't sought after enough to show up in a bookstore. Instead, we get food as a prescription, the inference seeming to be that of course you'd rather eat a pizza, because who wouldn't?

I'm not saying for a second that it's not important for there to be cookbooks designed to help people with serious health problems. I just think it's telling how many of them there are, as compared to books that offer food as not a joyful and fun pursuit but as a teaspoon of cod liver oil to cure what ails you.

Attack of the Sexy Veggies

2011-02-13T13:40:00.000-06:00

Something has happened to me. I'm not sure how to describe it. I'm not sure where it came from, and I'm not sure what it means. But it's happened. It's early afternoon on a Sunday, and I'm eating an apple.

That's not too weird, on the face of it. I like apples, always have. They're sweet and juicy and crispy. Yum, apples. What is weird is that I didn't get up this morning, putter around making small talk with Husband, and then make a massive plate of bacon-basted eggs with a side of bacon. Or pancakes (with bacon). Or beans on toast (with bacon and eggs and the occasional grilled mushroom). Or eggs benedict (with ham because sometimes you gotta get some variety with your preserved pork choices). I didn't even go all Froggy and make crepes with butter and sugar, topped with more butter and sugar.

Instead, I'm eating an apple. Not an apple fried soft in butter and then swathed in brown sugar and cinnamon, cuddled up inside the aforementioned crepes. Just...an apple. And it's ungodly good. I'm almost ashamed to admit how much I'm loving this apple. In between typing sentences, I'm reaching out, snagging a chunk of raw apple, and chowing it down like it's chicken-fried bacon with maple syrup on a wobbly poached egg, balanced atop homemade brioche.

I want to be clear: I'm not on a diet. I'm not counting calories, or fat grams, or carbs, or whatever the hell we're supposed to be counting this week. It's true that I periodically look in the mirror, compare my mental image of me with the one I'm presented with, and decide to eat nothing but tofu and brown rice until I can fit in my high school jeans. But that's not what this is about. I threw those jeans away ages ago, and I fit into the ones I have just fine. This is not about me wanting to be healthy, or skinny, or even not faintly bacon-scented (although that last one's not a bad goal, in all honesty). It's about the simple fact that for the last week or so, the very idea of heavy, starchy food has made me feel...ill.

For the first time in basically ever, I don't really want the warm soothing comfort of mashed potatoes and gravy. I want tomatoes, and carrots, and sexy, sexy broccoli. I want to feel them crunch between my teeth and spread their juices across my tongue. I want to revel in the idea of them inside my stomach. It's a lust for veggies I've developed, and I just don't know where to put that in my brain.

It's like my gut is having an identity crisis. I love me some comfort food. It's not just social conditioning; it's genetic. I'm half Scottish and a quarter French, for fuck's sake. Put those together, and you get potatoes, bread, and heavy buttery sauces washed down with something alcoholic, and that's been my culinary comfort zone for as long as I can remember. I venture out, sure. I am the chick who eats anything. But I typically prefer my "anything" to come with a side of starch and maybe some kind of roux-based goo on top.

But suddenly, this week, the very idea is cringe-worthy. I think it might have something to do with late winter. I'm tired of pots of stew and chicken & dumplings, tired of food that sticks to my ribs. It might also have to do with my thyroid medication, which is the highest level I've ever been prescribed. Maybe I'll adjust and things will go back to normal. Maybe by the end of summer I'll be wishing it weren't so hot so I can justify making a big old pot of beef bourguignon.. Maybe.

I know Husband hopes so. The other day, I made a Margherita pizza for supper and he looked in vain for the meat. Last night, we went to Joplin to have supper, and my sudden pickiness resulted in our driving aimlessly around the city looking for something that didn't give me a knee-jerk "eeeeeew" reaction. We ended up at Panera Bread, where I had a veggie sandwich and a Greek salad. Me, the girl who once lived on their broccoli-cheese soup, eating a veggie sandwich and a salad. And it. Was. Stellar.

I've always said I'd rather be a bit on the plump side if it meant I could eat good food made with love, always privately rolled my eyes at people who set themselves unrealistic dietary restrictions and torment themselves with food they hate in obeisance to the almighty American ideal of beauty. I still feel that way. Screw the American ideal of beauty, and screw people that judge me for not playing that game, for having the audacity to feel hot (at least sometimes) in my size 14 jeans. I will be busty and curvaceous, and you will respect the junk in my trunk. It's just that suddenly, veggies sound sexy as hell.

Dear gods, who have I become?!