Fred: The Vampire Accountant

The following is a review of one of my classroom library books.

Seen above is an actual photograph of Abraham Lincoln preparing to go vampire hunting in 1865, just a few months before he was assassinated by one.

Drew Hayes dedicates the first book in the eight-book series to: "the uncool, uncoordinated, unexceptional, uncharming, uninteresting, and especially the unashamed. To everyone from the awkwards to the zeroes, living as the proud oddballs they are. This book is dedicated to my people." This is an exceptional introduction to the character Fred and the subject matter of the books about him. The first novel, titled The Utterly Uninteresting & Unadventurous Tales of Fred, The Vampire Accountant, caught my eye immediately on the staff-recommended shelf at The Book Loft in Columbus, Ohio's German Village. As an aside, German Villiage has the uncanny ability to put one in the mood to discover a good book, as it is anachronistic. Walking the cobblestone streets, one finds ivy clinging to ancient brick, gaslight illuminating brownstone facades, and a comforting feeling of being displaced to a simpler day when entertainment was not a prerequisite for edification. I say this with a tinge of irony because Hayes's novel about a vampire accountant is entertaining. Perhaps more than it is edifying. 

The novel is self-published by a boutique press called Reuts Publications. I look at this fact with interest. Here is a book that has found an audience simply through the sheer will of the author to make it so. I have expressed my frustrations with the publication process to family and close friends. It's no easy row to hoe, so to speak. And sometimes the stories audiences crave aren't necessarily those that the critics approve. Experiencing this book as a phenomenon of self-publishing success has caused me to rethink my stance on self-publication. Yet, the book could have used some editorial input. A lot? Not necessarily. But some. But I digress. What's the good, the bad, and the ugly? 

What I Accommodated: Trucker wereponies, among other interesting shapeshifters. Shy vampires. Mossters. LARPing. Zombies. Necromancers. Reading this book was like having a gifted (albeit mildly slap-happy) dungeon master tell you a story. It was entertaining. As a writer, the most curious aspect was the characterization. Fred often found himself running from fights and nearly wetting his pants (even though in undeath, he doesn't have the ability to do so). instead of becoming the traditional hero type, he remains an interesting anti-hero through most of it. 

What I Negotiated: I say he remained an anti-hero through most of it because he does step up in big ways (traditional hero ways, actually) throughout the book, which may or may not jive with what we have been led to believe about the timid, boring, awkward, vampire accountant who grows nauseous at the prospect of conflict. Can I talk myself into the fact that even the most cowardly among us may be moved to heroism if the circumstances are ripe? Sure. Do I still question some of the author's choices in the joust scene? Yes. 

As an aside, I recognize that I fit the target audience of this particular tale the way a severed foot is the ultimate stocking stuffer. In short, completely. I have played Dungeons and Dragons. I have LARPed a handful of times. Not everyone will dig the speculative nature of the book, which asks What if D&D fantasy were real? The monsters, the magic? Nerds salivate. Others...? Not so much. Despite this, it follows Kurt Vonnegut's 7th rule for creative writing 101: "Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia." I would only modify it to say "one group of people" in this book's case. Not necessarily a criticism, just an observation. In fact, now that I've sat with it, this is what is most admirable about the book: the author's unabashed appeal to D&D dorks.

What I Resisted: Well, nothing really seriously, because the book doesn't really demand seriousness. There's some mildly inappropriate and potentially offensive content here and there...A scene involving drugs felt a little unnecessary and overwrought, and I suppose people could accuse Hayes of being insensitive to the gay community with how he handles Bubba's sexuality, how people talk about Bubba, etc. But "offended" is a bit of a S T R E T C H. I think he was going for laughs.  

Finally, and probably barely worth mentioning is the fact that Fred is a vampire accountant, which offers an opportunity to discuss (according to lore) a vampire's obsession with counting (in some Slavic lore, it's spilled seeds or grain). Never once is this mentioned. 

I give this book 3.5💪/5💪

The Anthropocene Reviewed - Analysis with Heart & Rubric!

The following is a review of one of my classroom library books. I have also used the book for instruction.

When it comes to AI, I happen to share the opinion of Nick Cage: "it's inhumane!" It's also inhuman. And kind of boring, really. And not always correct. I'd give it two stars out of five. That said, it poses enough of a significant threat to what I do, teaching young people how to write well, that I have been thinking about what separates us from the machines, because I maintain that while AI is intelligent, it is not smart. People are smart. I suppose I'm talking about wisdom, but it’s something else. People are universes of experience and insight capable of weaving narratives that are a mix of academic insight, conventional wisdom, and personal anecdotes. This is what I've been trying to inspire my students to do with their writing. AI can't do it, which is what brings me to John Green's book The Anthropocene Reviewed. This book does it, and by "it" I mean it creates writing about a human-centered planet by weaving academic and conventional wisdom, often even "self-knowledge" and personal insights, as well as the historical anecdotes that make his Crash Courses such a joy, into smart narratives about life on earth. 

To introduce students to his writing, I start with his essay on Diet Dr Pepper. If you like you could use the podcast readings. From there, we develop a rubric outlining what a "John Green style" review would entail. They are called "reviews" because John Green models them after his book reviews, and they ultimately end with a rating out of five starts that ostensibly makes perfect sense. I maintain that they are human analysis essays because each one is an "argument in which you study the parts of something... to understand how it works, what it means, or why it's significant." (from Beherens and Rosen's Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum, 12th ed.). 

 First we read the Diet Dr Pepper essay and discuss. Next, we brainstorm topics. From there, we write. I decided to try and write one too. I think John Green would approve of it. I will include it at the end of this post. 
What I am coming to believe, more and more, with each year of teaching experience, is that if English composition is going to remain a relevant course of study, we must evolve by teaching our students to write what only they can write. We don't need more Wikipedia pages on a topic. What we need is writing that is ostensibly human, and we need to really honor the writing process as a way by which we discover not only information about the world we live in, but also who we are as people. 

Here's my own attempt at a John Green essay.

The Olympic Plate 

In his “Ode to Sport,” Pierre de Coubertin wonders, “What good are muscles, what is the point of feeling strong and agile, and why work to improve one’s agility and strength, unless it is in order to dare?” In 1889, Coubertin began the work that dared to rekindle the modern Olympic tradition from the Greeks. A Frenchman, he would have decided to base the competition upon the metric system, the accepted European system of measurement. This is why the weights in my basement, well, two plates, are considered curiosities. These plates are curiosities because they weigh 50 pounds each. The typical modern plate weighs 45 pounds. Why is this? It’s due to the metric system; 45 lbs is 20 kg. The 50-pound plates in my basement are not Olympic plates. They are old and of indeterminate origin. There is no stamping of any kind on them, and they are solid cast iron, making them difficult to handle: no grooves or holes. The only hole, the one that accommodates the barbell, is 1” in diameter; therefore, these plates would not fit an Olympic barbell. This is about as fascinating as the weights in my basement get. However, what is truly fascinating is Coubertin’s question: what is the point of developing muscles unless it is in “order to dare.” 
I may be tempted to reason, “Well, since my plates are not Olympic, this question does not apply to me.” This would be obtuse because, of course, the question applies to me. This question applies to anyone developing any skill, I dare say.What good is getting good at something if not for pushing boundaries, breaking established records, and maybe rules? Picasso inspired us to "learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist," while Frank Zappa logically concluded that progress is not possible unless we deviate from the norm. Are these the definition of daring? Before we delve deeper into this question of exercise and its implications, let’s focus on “Ode to Sport.” 
The poem won a gold medal in 1912, and its very existence gives credence to the spirit of the Olympics: the triumvirate of mind, body, and spirit. There were once Olympian categories for music, art, literature, and more from 1912 to 1948 (“What Is the History behind the Olympic Art Competition?|1st Art Gallery”). The abandonment of juried art competitions is due to many factors, the simplest being Wikipedia’s: “because artists were considered to be professionals, while Olympic athletes were required to be amateurs.” I find this a poor excuse. First, the push to involve American professional athletes in Olympic sports began way back in 1968. Secondly, I  tend to define the word amateur the way Michael Chabon defines it in “The Amateur Family” as anyone who is not afraid to disclose what holds them in a vulnerable state of wonderment. By this definition, an artist is fundamentally an amateur, but I digress. The Cultural Olympiad is said to have taken the place of juried art competition but seems to have fizzled out, while all of the modern glory (and medals!) lies with the athletes, not the artists. This separation, sequestering off endeavors of the mind, some would argue soul, from those of the body, is reflected in our greater society to a certain and, I dare say, disastrous effect. Indeed, the modern athletic mantra of “Just Do It” implies that there should be no thinking involved. 
    Why do thoughts persist when I’m pressing those 50 lb plates? Despite the loud music, the mirrors, despite the visceral pain in the muscles, the thoughts persist. And they’re going to circle, inevitably like water circles a drain, the question, “What does it mean to be daring?” Ultimately, “Am I daring?” Lifting is an exercise that we use to pump ourselves up, bodily, yes, but also mentally. The interior monologue of a weightlifter is just as vital as nutrition and routine. “Am I daring?” I rarely think of these words specifically, but most of my thoughts are born from this simple premise. “Do I look big?” or “Will my sons be proud?” Our muscular idols are daring. Whether smoking a stogie wherever he wants or killing the Predator, Arnold Schwarzenegger is an obvious icon of daring. But Arnold wasn’t my first icon of daring. It was my great-grandfather Frank. 
    As legend has it, my great-grandfather left Austria on the brink of World War I after receiving a letter from the Kaiser to fight for the motherland. And he would have been a good fighter. His biceps were so large, according to family mythology, that my great-grandmother had to sew extra fabric into his sleeves to accommodate them. When he eventually settled in Ohio, he loaded pig iron into boxcars at Ohio Brass at twice the rate of ordinary men. The facts that point to his superior strength invest his stories with “daring” the way a bright light invests the air with motes of dust. But he dared not to fight in the war. Instead, he dared to board a ship and pass the equator to work in Brazil for a period of time as a lumberjack. There is at least one story in which he and his lumberjack cohorts corner a local criminal in a cave. At this point, the notorious baddie (in my mind, a Curly Bill type) pulls his revolver. “Go ahead,” my great-grandfather supposedly said, gripping his axe. “You only have six bullets, and there are seven of us. When you’re out of ammo, the last guy among us will chop you into tiny pieces.” Is there anything more daring than staring down the barrel of a gun with the words “Do your worst”?...than bringing an axe to a gunfight… and winning?         
    I imagine my grandfather, the original John Skarl, a prize-fighter turned policeman, started lifting those 50lb plates to have biceps as large as his father's and to manicure his daring into a “prudent, well-considered audacity.” My best illustration of this phrase is my grandfather’s philosophy of nailing speeders. Rather than engage in the daring of a high-speed vehicle pursuit, my grandfather would scan the license plate, find the offender's address, and go park in their driveway. Talk about prudent, well-considered audacity! 
    I consider my own father, who aspired to be as strong as my grandfather. Who dared to become a public school teacher even though his father never graduated high school. For over thirty years he dared to prioritize the need for education in a post-industrial town that was declining fast. He exercised the prudent, well-considered audacity to adopt my sister and me.  
    Am I daring? As far as I know, there are no artists in my family, and I aspire to create 
meaningful, lasting art. I also aspire to have 18-inch biceps, which is a daring combination in a society that does not often place the artist and the athlete in the same competitive ring. Do I exercise my muscles and mind with a prudent, well-considered audacity? I think I do, but I suppose it’s not for me to judge. Like all important judgments, time and posterity will do its work. I do know one thing. When I am too old or unwell to lift those 50-pound plates, I hope to pass them on to my boys. And I hope, in their lives, they are inspired to dare. To express a prudent, well-considered audacity. To know it is not our muscles alone that matter. It’s what we do with them. To consider the stories of Austrian Oaks and Brazilian lumberjacks, but also to acknowledge the words of Eudora Welty, “A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.” To seek a life that is an expression of their entire selves.
I give weight plates, whether they be Olympic or not, three stars. 

Works Cited

View. “Ode to Sport by Pierre de Coubertin.” Poetry in Surrey Libraries, Poetry in Surrey Libraries, 19     Sept. 2020, npdsurrey.wordpress.com/2020/09/19/ode-to-sport-by-pierre-de-            

    coubertin/#:~:text=O%20Sport%2C%20you%20are%20Progress,without%20compromising%20his        %20good%20health. Accessed 11 Oct. 2023.‌

“What Is the History behind the Olympic Art Competition?|1st Art Gallery.” 1st-Art-Gallery.com, 2023,     www.1st-art-gallery.com/article/the-Introduction-of-olympic-art-competition/. Accessed 10 Oct.         

    2023.

Postscript: I was inspired to first read and then use John Green's book by a student. Thank you for inspiring me!

The Loser's (Book) Club

What Does it Mean to be a Loser?

What if you were to glance into a shadowy bathroom on a dull, overcast day and see a skeleton standing there in the shower 💀💀💀? As adults, we dismiss these fantasies as childish or, worse, cuckoo. Ultimately, not worth our time. But as a pre-internet, pre-cell phone, video game deprived, really, really, really, bored kid, this kind of fantasy could invest a dull day with some much-needed zing. I still remember during my time in The Loser's Club, the day the water in the neighborhood lake turned red. Scout's honor. As adults, we rationalize. It must be the silt. Maybe it was an algae bloom? As a child, it could mean so much more. A bad portent? Ghosts? Devils? Something worse? Something from beyond the rim of the universe?

My Loser's Club was a neighborhood group of kids and then a group of young adults from different places/interests. I refer to us as The Losers because we were not popular, not particularly or overly involved in extra-curricular activities, and, well... we were kind of losers. By this, I don't mean Burnouts. This is an important distinction. Henry Bowers is a Burnout. Ben Hanscom is a Loser. I identify with him: a hopeless romantic, his arms full of library books. As Losers, we would not be so bold as to imagine a large place for ourselves in this world. We would not be so bold as to try and become large to fill that large, imagined space by becoming captain of a team or by dating the prom queen. We were more likely to thrive in imaginative endeavors, such as reading, drawing, or role-playing. Our epic quests were in our minds. We spun our own yarns with golden threads of imagination. I might not have been the captain of the football team, but I was a level twelve gray elf mage covered in mystical, runic tattoos. 

Like the kids in It, the friend group I became a part of was a hodgepodge of other Losers. Richie reminds me of my friend Jack- always a wisecrack behind his lips, the kid that began wearing a beret as a social experiment, the kid that slyly flipped the bird while blowing his trombone for the yearbook band photo (yes, the bird picture made it into the yearbook). Eddie, the sickly one was a bit like my friend Paul who also happened to be valedictorian of the school and was fluent in Elvish: our first Dungeon Master. Like Eddie, Paul suffered from bouts of illness, allergies, and temper. Ben, the analytical, poetic one was much like all of us, but perhaps particularly, like Robert, a quiet, artistic type who would become a gifted designer. We all see ourselves as the protagonist, so I guess that makes me Stuttering Bill. Rather than being afflicted with a stutter, I was quiet. I missed my eighth-grade DC Trip because I never uttered a word about it to my parents. I was too busy trying to disappear into thin air. This would have been preferable to facing that relentless bully, puberty, and his cruel stage: middle school. The truth is there's a little bit of all of these characters in each Loser, which makes them timeless. If I had to name a Beverly, I suppose it is my high school girlfriend and now wife, who often preferred the company of boys. She was beautiful but a bit too body atypical to be in with the cheerleaders. She was more at home on the softball field and the band. The stand-in for the murdered children in the book would be my close childhood friend Ryan, Robert's younger brother, who tragically took his own life back at the turn of the century. He is the Georgie of this story, I suppose. I imagine there are odd. almost supernatural events that invest every childhood with a kind of magic, and there were plenty in my own childhood spent playing out at the ponds and the woods (our barrens) and navigating the Henry Bowers of our lives. Mine was named Scott Brocus. It is provocative to think that there is a bad guy I could blame for my friend Ryan's death. A bully. An evil clown. A cosmic spider. A werewolf. It is a more provocative notion than the reality of mental illness and parental negligence that actually led to his death. Bill's guilt in the novel is relatable. To this day, I feel guilt for Ryan's death. I did not send him out in the rain with a boat to be eaten by the monster in the sewer grate, but I often think about how I was not able to be enough of a friend to prevent his death, and I have fought long and hard to defeat that guilt. Also, I think the evil, if there is a tangible evil, delights in guilt, so I try not to think those thoughts. But they linger... along with the memories of childhood. Perhaps Ryan is like Stan? Stan, who could not face the fears of his childhood? Stan, who remembered too much too quickly? My friend was suffering from schizophrenia. Stan and the rest of the Loser's Club were also seeing and hearing things the adults could not see while they were tormented by Pennywise. I mentioned earlier that there are odd. almost supernatural events that invest every childhood with a kind of magic, and perhaps this is because our imaginations fill the gap between perception and scientific reality. But there are some mysteries that even science stutters to explain. 

Another theme from this book that encourages me is that there is hope, even in the face of unspeakable evil. Based on events from the novel, it seems that love and friendship are the best weapons we have. It also seems we are at our strongest in childhood, which is illogical. However, similar themes exist in the Bible and the work of the New England Transcendentalists. The Bible reminds us we must become like little children to be pleasing to God, and Emerson said, "the sun illuminates only the eye of man, but shines into the eye and heart of the child." Perhaps it is because when we are children, we still walk hand in hand with Mother Nature? A similar theme exists in Thomas Cole's The Voyage of Life paintings. As the main protagonist grows from Infancy to Youth to Manhood, they trade their relationship with nature for materialistic items and symbolically lose the rudder of their ship, and are faced with a torrent, as well as the three demons of Incontinence, Murder, and Suicide. People always ask, "How can you stand teaching adolescents all day long?" Usually, I ask, "How can you stand being around adults all day?" As King tells us in the preface, "the magic exists." We seem to agree that it is most potent in youth and that it fades until, in adulthood, we forget what it was like. So, whether it's Stuttering Bill on his bike, "Hi-yo Silver, AWWAYYYYY!" or the young person in Thomas Cole's Youth questing for that castle in the sky (either on the football field or in an imaginary dungeon), we would do well to remember the magic of those hours. So many of the adults in Derry are out of touch with what's happening because they have become like the man in Cole's painting, or drone-like, as in Collins Street at 5 p.m. A theme of the book is that adults are out of touch - they often cannot see Pennywise or the horrors he calls tricks. We must do better, King seems to urge. 

If you liked the connections I share to IT, you may like Kayla Rae Whitaker's personal essay "Hanging Out with Pennywise and My Grandmother's Ghost"

Book Club Q&A

What themes/tropes inspired IT, and how do these themes and tropes endure? I believe IT is a masterwork (despite its warts), so it is worth the time to pursue this question. 

Stephen King owes Ray Bradbury a ton of gratitude for having written Something Wicked This Way Comes. Without it, I don't believe King would have written books like Fairy Tale, It, Doctor Sleep, and numerous others. Something Wicked This Way Comes is about a Cougar and Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show - essentially a dark carnival - that blows into town in late October, interrupting, or more accurately, facilitating, Will and Jim 's- the two young protagonists of the novel- coming of age. The novel is strong in "literary elements" such as poetic prose and wonderful in its pursuit of establishing/reinforcing universal truths about happiness, death, and fear. 

What King "borrows" from SWTWC is, obviously, the dark carnival trope, clearly used in It and adaptively in Needful Things. In fact, the world over associates King with Pennywise, the killer clown from outer space, because clowns have always made shockingly provocative villains. The Joker is the world's first supervillain, representing everything Batman is not. Batman is dark and serious and committed to justice, while Joker is bright and wild and committed to chaos. So Pennywise sticks in our collective consciousness like the brightly colored psychopath that he is. But he's more. He's a killer clown from outer space- from somewhere beyond the outer darkness where the, and nothingness, and the deadlights. He (or she as the book reveals) is an entity that is so horrible to gaze upon it instantly breaks the sanity of those who do (a theme of the Eldrich Gods that King owes to Lovecraft). The theme of the deranged clown will endure, either in Juggalo culture, and probably in B movies (Captain Spaulding, anyone?), and always in fighting Batman. Pennywise is arguably the most sophisticated incarnation of a beloved horror/pulp trope.   

The classic question for ANY book is, what are people's favorite and least favorite parts? It's even better if they can defend their choice with good reasoning. 

My first question is, why doesn't Pennywise simply show his true form to the Losers and consume them with his deadlights? If this is his most potent weapon why does he spend so much energy (and glamor) to terrify the Losers? 

RANT: I think I have a way to answer this, but King never directly states my theory. My theory brings me back to the story "To Build a Fire" by Jack London. We are told that the nameless protagonist's main weakness is his lack of imagination. It is ultimately what kills him. Is the same true for Pennywise's most hapless victims? Those that are taken into the deadlights? Is the greatest strength of The Loser's Club their ability to imagine something terrifying? Is this ultimately what saves them? 

How does Eddie's injury at the hands of Henry Bowers help to set Eddie free? Relatable? On theme? How does facing our biggest fears liberate us? Does it matter if it's an intentional facing of fear or not?

Another theme I'd like to focus on is the idea that evil feeds on fear. It's a theme outlined in Bradbury and King, but it is older than this. Where does it come from? Next, King mentions that fear seasons the meat like salt, which we see in the death of several of the characters in the book. But is it the villain's greed for this seasoning that ultimately leads to her downfall?  

How would Bachman have ended this book differently than how King chose to end it? Explain.

Conclusion

In closing, I am fortunate as a teacher of adolescents to be close to that time of life in which magic is real and the future sparkles like a promise, much like the transcendental castle in the sky in Thomas Cole's painting. This keeps me young. It reminds me that the magic is real, as King guarantees in his epigraph. This is why I fight the notion of going on "auto-pilot" like the adults in the Collins Street painting, where the gold has jaundiced to a sickly beige the color of a hospital waiting room from the 1970s. Every year it gets harder to tear away from the seduction of routine. To me, an aging English teacher, routine is scarier than Pennywise. It has the power to make us complacent and dull our minds and hearts. I think of the mournful refrain of Wallace Steven's poem "Gubbinal," "The world is ugly / and the people are sad" or Lindsay's line "It is the world's one crime its babes grow dull," but every time I meet a kid with a dream all of that fades, fades, and though Frost claimed "nothing gold can stay," we must strive to hold onto that gold, that "strange flower, the sun." It is possible that we will fight demons in adulthood: but rarely do they take the shape of a killer clown. They are more likely to take the shape Thomas Cole suggests in Manhood as Intemperance (our inability to restrain our lusts), Suicide (literal, or, as Emerson said, "Envy is Ignorance, Imitation Suicide"), and Murder (does it count if we slowly suffocate our dreams in exchange for comfort?). These things can be scary, but I believe we have the greatest defense against them living inside of us: our childhood selves and the people we choose to be, day after day. 

RIP The Dad Sneeze: A Favored Classroom Management Tool

One of the most effective child management tools in a dad's repertoire is the Dad Sneeze. No other instrument allows dads to, in a socially sanctioned manner, momentarily peel back the veneer of their genial affability and allow a glimpse into the dark and savage recesses of their repressed and domesticated psyche. They perhaps believe society has bullied that wolf-killing spear from their hands and substituted a voting pad. Or a scratch-off lotto ticket. Diesel smoke. Some truck nuts. The Dad Sneeze is a harkening of hankies back to that heyday of the unabashed male presence.  

Deep down men know they were once hunters out to prove their alpha by bringing home fresh meat to the family. Nowadays at least we can run the grill, correct? But the kids just want "Whopper, whopper, whopper, whopper, junior, double triple, whopper...". This is the true dumbing down of America. Our only recourse is to unleash 135 decibels of pent-up rage into a sneeze to warn younglings of our potential for brutality. Now, they have even taken this from us.

COVID has ruined it, of course. This Dad-Sneeze management tool has been removed from the toolboxes of dads and teacher dads alike across the country thanks to a global pandemic. It is no longer socially acceptable to sneeze one's lungs out in a public place. Or even a private place. It just isn't. Stifling a sneeze in the crook of an elbow, or pulling one's shirt up to cover nose and mouth, running sanitizer over hands like a church lady, doesn't stack up to the male power tool known as The Dad Sneeze. 

To dads everywhere, especially those who also happen to be teachers: God bless you. 

A New Development...

 Apparently, a senior at Princeton created a web tool to determine if a piece of writing was composed by a bot. This is an interesting development in the ChatGPT discussion for teachers of English. The Buzzfeed article is here. Here's another from The Daily Beast. And here's a link to his web service called GPTZero. 

The End of High School English...

With the prediction that ChatGPT is going to be the "end of high school English" I can only say I'm glad I decided to specialize in creative writing. There are still "things and stuff" that the human brain can do better than a computer, and write is one of them. It's clear to me that technology is diminishing our regard for human life, but it shouldn't be, really. For instance the human eye is still better than any camera out there. And just suppose for a moment that someone invented a camera that WAS better than the human eye... how could we appreciate the pictures with our inferior human eyes? Maybe I'm being dumb, but maybe I'm not. What gives writing life is the authentic human touch, whether it be humor, poetics, or the dazzling personal connections that create authenticity... and computers won't be able to write "better than humans" until they become fully human, because it's how the human responds and reacts to the world in a sensory and emotional way that informs good writing, and computers will only ever be able to offer us an approximation that is once removed from true human experience. If anything, AI is going to make me a tad more leery about writing, whether it be student writing or the new novel or book of poetry I'm cracking open in 2023, but shouldn't this be the case anyway? Shouldn't human authenticity be at the heart of great writing?  

I asked ChatGPT to write a poem about dreary weather. Here's what I got: 

The sky is gray and dreary The rain falls in a steady stream The wind howls through the trees It's the kind of weather that makes you want to curl up and dream

The world outside is bleak and bare No birds singing in the air The streets are empty, no one out It's the kind of weather that makes you want to hide and pout

But even on a day like this There's still beauty to be found A warm cup of tea and a good book Can make the dreary weather feel like solid ground

So don't let the weather get you down Embrace the chance to stay inside Find the joy in a quiet moment And let the dreary weather glide

I'm sorry, but this is generic garbage. Had I shared something like this in a poetry workshop I would have been offered some suggestions (not all poems have to rhyme... even though the rhyme schemes is sporadic... and choose some less basic focal points and some more unique verbs... and give it some goddamned SOUL for crying out loud!), and quite likely laughed at behind my back. Sure this would probably get an A or a B in an elementary or even middle school classroom, but when it comes to serious writing, this ain't it. 

I can't help but think of videos of those robotic dogs that skitter around and fall over. No one in their right mind would compare those monstrosities with the nuzzle of a German Shepherd's muzzle, or the adorable head tilt of same, so why are we decrying the doom of writing instruction? We simply have to do better and expect better. At all levels.    

The End.

Novella Award

 I am very happy to be named a semi-finalist in the 2021 Sandy Run Novella Award by Hidden River Arts.  

A Baseball Poem

I am very happy to be a contributor to the newest issue of Twin Bill. I really love how the publication pairs artwork and writing. Check out the poem here. 

Thomas Cole: Youth

I was lucky enough to see Thomas Cole's The Voyage of Life series in person this summer. It is displayed at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. There are four great paintings in the series. Admission is free. 

As school starts again, I like to turn my thoughts to the painting titled "Youth" because I find it to be an excellent reminder of why I teach the age I choose to, and my favorite of the series. First, note the youth has his hand on the boat's rudder. Take note, teachers. Teenagers value autonomy. We all do, really. Secondly, you'll notice the ethereal palace in the sky. Every kid has a dream. Your job is not to judge that dream but to help them navigate the voyage to the best of your ability. Third, notice the youth has long hair. This is obviously a period piece, but I want to point out that adolescence is usually when people experiment with identity. Don't be overly judgmental. Fourth, notice the journey becomes difficult. Assume everyone is voyaging a difficult path. Act accordingly.      

I hope you all have a great start to a new school year. 

An Enemy of the People

 As many of you are all too keenly aware, this school year was like no other. It also provided some very rich educational opportunities. No, I don't just mean shooting our paper towels into the trash, although that was a lot of fun. A CCP class with juniors and seniors voted to read Arthur Miller's adaption of Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People. Now, it bears to mention that these kids are SMART. Forget what you think you know about academics in a vocational school. The connections they made between the play and COVID-19 were inspiring to watch. Dr. Thomas Stockmann's discovery of harmful bacteria in the town's bathhouses prompts a political battle fueled by the mayor's (his brother, Peter) desire to keep the baths open to a) not ruin the town's reputation and b) continue to make money, in which science offers an inconvenient truth, and unfortunately, people's baser nature wins the day. Not only did students connect the dots on the political and economic connections to national, state, and local government's handling of the virus (to shut down, or not to shut down, etc), but they appreciated other connections as well, such as parallels between Dr. Stockmann and Li Wenliang. 

From a teacher's perspective, teaching this play could have been problematic. My approach was to read the play together and have students blog their thoughts. In retrospect, a podcast was an ideal way to encourage discussion during a year in which classroom discussion proved challenging. Either way, I kept my opinion out of it and let them make up their own minds. 

And they did.

Having Fun and Stimulating Discussion in English Class During a Global Pandemic

I've been teaching in-person since August 19, 2020. My students are masked, and there are plexiglass dividers on each desk. The desks are not arranged in my customary U-shaped arrangement. They are in rows to maximize social distancing. Every period of every day, I spray every occupied desk with sanitizer and students wipe their desks with a paper towel. 

I've decided to put those towels to use. 

At first, we read a novel: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Or rather, I read the narrative and they filled in as voices for the various characters. In case you didn't know it's partly a basketball story. That got us talking about basketball. Pretty soon, I noticed the students (predominately male) started good-naturedly shooting their paper towels into the trash like little sopping basketballs. 

So, around the first of March, I brought in a hoop to make it more fun. We decided to break the class into teams and start keeping score. This lightened the classroom atmosphere considerably. 

Let me digress for a moment. Since school resumed in August I've been struggling to bring the discussion into the classroom. There are several factors working against discussion. 1) students literally have their mouths covered. This is not my anti-mask rant. I understand why they are required. It makes fostering organic discussion difficult. I might also add, it tends to cut down on chatter too, which is kind of an unintended benefit. 2) Each student is literally in a plexiglass bubble. Again, this is not me being anti-PPE. I understand why these barriers are in place, I just want you to understand the challenge it poses to the discussion. 

So, in order to motivate discussion, I modified a classroom discussion "game" I discovered at a CCP teacher's conference at the local community college. I owe a debt of gratitude to a fellow CCP teacher, Elliot Zetzer, who originally designed this game to foster discussion during his Socratic seminar course. I modified it for my purposes. Feel free to steal it or modify it yourself. It works. And it's fun. 

This version is modeled after the NBA. I'm sure you could adapt it to any sport. When I first discovered it, it was modified toward the MLB.

It seems to work best when you split the class into teams and keep score. And it works in classes that have not read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian to be clear.

Each team needs a "team captain" and they start with the "ball. " They have the choice to either pass the ball to another teammate or shoot the shot themselves. By shoot, of course, I mean start the discussion. The rule I developed to discourage "ball hogs" is that everyone on your team must speak at least once until anyone is allowed to speak twice. 

Depending on what they say, students can score a certain amount of points for their team. We have been using this format to discuss classic American short fiction. Some of the stories in our textbook that I have used are Flannery O Connor's "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" and Eudora Welty's "A Worn Path." The questions range through recall to interpret style questions. It helps to have a lot of questions ready to help stimulate the discussion. It obviously helps if the students have already read the piece, but have it open during the discussion. I intend to use several more stories with the game, and it could be adapted for poetry discussions, non-fiction, or just about any kind of reading.