Writing Assignment

     "Choose your favorite book.  Next declare the literary reason it is your favorite book; is it the plot, or maybe the characters, is the description of the action...tell your connection to the book, how did you feel as you read it?"   These were some of the directions that H.P., the 6th grade teacher, gave her students for a writing project.  Students were to name the book and its author. After naming the literary feature that they claimed as the reason for choosing the they were told to give three examples from the book to support their claim.  Included in these examples were to be their personal reactions as they read that section.  When this assignment was complete they wrote a rough draft of a paper, book report, which they first shared with other students for critique.  After changes were made based on that critique H.P., or I, helped them proof read for spelling, clarity, punctuation and grammar.  The final step was writing the paper either longhand or on a computer.
    These students are receiving a wonderful basic education in how to write.  Some of them are gifted writers while others really struggled.  All of them were exposed to the basic elements of writing a paper..a foundation on which they can build.
    "The context you ask?"  Noble Academy, the Hmong Charter School were I volunteer.  Some charter schools get a bad rap but at Noble academics are taken very seriously.  In fact, the Noble school day is an hour longer than that of the Minneapolis Public Schools.  In addition about 75% of the students voluntarily attend summer school which concentrates on reading and math.
   

Hot vs Cool or Anxious vs Non-Anxious

      Watching the Benghazi Committee hearing yesterday when Hillary Clinton was questioned about the attack on the U.S. consulate, reminded me of the first ever televised presidential debate.  (There are some benefits to being old.) The debate was between Nixon and Kennedy.  Kennedy was widely thought to have won the debate, not so much for what he said as for his demeanor.
      Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian philosopher, is famous for having said "the medium is the message."   That rang true in the Committee hearing while Hillary remained cool, i.e., non-anxious, while much of the committee was palpably anxious.  Viewers are hypersensitive to anxiety.  Have you ever been at a public event where the presenter gets flustered and noticed your own rise in anxiety?
   In McLuhan language Nixon, and the committee, were hot while Kennedy, and Clinton, were cool. Because I like the categories from Family Systems thought I call them anxious and non-anxious respectively.  So, I agree with McLuhan, that, in many respects at least, the medium is the message.
   Leaders who are anxious always run the risk of attack.  This is because followers don't like to be anxious but become so when the leader is anxious.  If the opportunity arises they often respond by attacking the leader.

"Anything worth doing is worth doing badly" or Stories we Tell Ourselves

    During my enlistment in the United States Marine Corps I was once recruited to do some painting. Stationed at  Camp Pendleton, CA., I worked in the office of a rifle company.  The sergeant in charge of the office rented a different apartment in town and wanted it painted before he moved in.  Three or four of us were recruited to do the painting.
    Busily painting away in my corner of the room, doing the best I could, it apparently wasn't good enough. Sarge watched me paint for a few minutes and then said "Al, why don't you go buy the beer?"  Neither of us had been taught that "anything worth doing is worth badly", or, at least if Sarge knew it he didn't want the "doing badly" on his wall.
   I've parlayed that experience into a lifetime of never having to paint, by telling myself the story that I can't paint.  Had I been in the  mindset that skills come slowly, perhaps I'd have learned to paint. Of course, I do admit, it has also been convenient.
    Do you ever listen to the stories you tell yourself about yourself?   Driving near my home I recently took a wrong turn.  Several possible stories about the wrong turn presented themselves to me; how stupid, or, what's the matter with me, or, my memory is failing, or, I'm an idiot.  What do your inner voices say to you about you?   I'm guessing that for many people that voice is often an inner critic.  If that's true, perhaps we should ask "Where did we learn to be so critical?"  Why the judgment?   Missed a corner? Yup...I'm absent minded, always have been because there is always a lot going on in my mind

 What's your story?

Perhaps I was better at carrying rifle than painting.

Stories

    While I'm in Thailand early next year, the Curmudgeonette has plans to spend some time in Arizona.  She's recruited her college roommate, J.J., as a traveling companion.  As plans for this trip were being developed discussion turned to possible contingencies.  J.J, said "Well if it doesn't go according to plan it will be an adventure.  Adventures will give us stories to tell."   I thought, 'now there's a wise woman with a great attitude.'   Of course I knew that before, but it reinforced my opinion of her.
    Yes, stories!  Recently I heard a discussion of traveling on National Public Radio.  One of the speakers spoke of car trips he takes with his wife and children.  He said that when they begin the day he reminds his family it's about creating stories.  This turns the unexpected into fodder for story telling.  It would set the expectation that the surprises are to be eagerly anticipated and not seen as frustrating interruptions of the day's planned activities.
    In one of my travel books the author makes the point that there is a significant difference between a traveler and tourist.  Much of the difference is in the reaction to the unexpected.  The tourist heads for the safe, known, popular places where he/she is likely to be surrounded by other persons much like him/her.  The traveler, on the other hand, is interested in experiencing the culture and life in a new place and the unexpected, the different, the unfamiliarity is the point to travel.
    Thailand, and especially Bangkok and Ayutthaya, are now very familiar to me...my home away from home.  Therefore, it is more difficult for me to be surprised and have the data for stories. Seeing pigs on motorcycles, goats on the street, elephants walking home after work (when the Curmudgeonette read this she thought I meant "when I was walking home" but it's the elephants that are walking home), children on water buffalo, tuk-tuks, long tail boats, rice paddies, 4 passengers on a motorbike, a wheelchair pulled by a motorbike, beggars on their bellies, royal photos everywhere, pick-up trucks with loads ten feet high, everyone standing at attention at 6pm as the national anthem plays, drivers sleeping in hammocks under their parked buses...and much more, I now take for granted. 
      The last few years students at Noble Academy, the Hmong charter school where I volunteer, have done "I spy" with me.  That is, they brainstorm photo opportunities for which they want me to search while I'm in Thailand.  This has been very helpful as I look at, what is now familiar to me, through their eyes and recapture some of sense of how exotic it all is compared to home.
    There there are the stories we tell ourselves...but I think I'll save that for a subsequent post.

I drive by this temple every day on my way to school in Ayutthaya.

End Of Revolutionary War

From the Writer's Almanac

Today is the anniversary of the surrender that ended the American Revolutionary War, in Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781. George Washington had had a difficult spring. His troops were low on supplies and food, their clothing was in shreds, and there had been a steady stream of desertions from his ranks. By summer, Washington had only a few thousand troops camped at West Point, New York. The British expected Washington to attack New York City, which he had been planning to do for most of the spring. But when he learned that the British forces under the control of Lord Cornwallis were building a naval base on the Yorktown Peninsula in Virginia, he decided impulsively to march his army from New York to Virginia, in the hopes of trapping Cornwallis and capturing his army. Washington's plan to move his army 400 miles in order to catch his enemy by surprise was a bold move. He had to march his troops toward New York City first, to scare the British into hunkering down for an attack. Then he quickly moved south. Washington's men and their French allies marched every day from 2:00 a.m. until it grew too hot to continue. It was a hot summer, and on one day, more than 400 men passed out from the heat. Few armies in history had ever moved so far so fast. Lord Cornwallis learned of Washington's approach before he arrived, but Cornwallis chose not to flee, because he thought his troops would be evacuated by the British navy. He didn't realize that the British ships had already been routed by a French fleet from the south. So in the early weeks of October, he watched as Washington's troops surrounded the city and began a siege. After several days of bombarding the city with gun and cannon fire, Washington received word that Cornwallis would surrender. Washington requested that the British march out of the city to give up their arms, and the surrender began at 2:00 a.m. on this day in 1781. The one soldier who didn't surrender was Cornwallis himself. Instead, he sent his sword with his second in command to be offered to the French general, signifying that the British had been defeated by the French, not the Americans. In didn't matter though. England didn't have enough money to raise another army, and they appealed to America for peace. Two years later, the Treaty of Paris was signed, and the war was officially over.

Eleanor Roosevelt from today's Writer's Almanac

It's the birthday of the longest-serving First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, born in New York City (1884) who said, "A woman is like a tea bag. You never know how strong she is until she gets into hot water." She began a secret courtship with her cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt. During World War I, she went off to Europe and visited wounded and shell-shocked soldiers in hospitals there. Later, during her husband's presidency, she campaigned hard on civil rights issues - not a universally popular thing in the 1930s and 1940s. After FDR died in 1945, she moved from the White House to Hyde Park, New York, and taught International Relations at Brandeis University. As anti-communist witch-hunting began to sweep the U.S., she stuck up for freedom of association in a way that few Americans were brave or bold enough to do. She chided Hollywood producers for being so "chicken-hearted about speaking up for the freedom of their industry." She said that the "American public is capable of doing its own censoring" and that "the judge who decides whether what [the film industry] does is good or bad is the man or woman who attends the movies." She said that the Un-American Activities Committee was creating the atmosphere of a police state in America, "where people close doors before they state what they think or look over their shoulders apprehensively before they express an opinion." In 1947, a couple years before the McCarthy Era had reached full swing, she announced, "The Un-American Activities Committee seems to me to be better for a police state than for the USA." She once said, "We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together and if we are to live together we have to talk." And, "You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do."