Category writing

Separate Has A Rat In It

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All right: so I have two classes of College Readiness, and they both had to write a UChicago essay — and they both picked a prompt for me to write. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read this. If you want to see all the prompts, go here.)

The other class chose this one:

People often think of language as a connector, something that brings people together by helping them share experiences, feelings, ideas, etc. We, however, are interested in how language sets people apart. Start with the peculiarities of your own personal language—the voice you use when speaking most intimately to yourself, the vocabulary that spills out when you’re startled, or special phrases and gestures that no one else seems to use or even understand—and tell us how your language makes you unique. You may want to think about subtle riffs or idiosyncrasies based on cadence, rhythm, rhyme, or (mis)pronunciation.

Here is my response.

Language Separator

See the rat?

I am a dull man. 

I am utterly unspecial, solidly in the mainstream: I am a white American male, cis/het, raised vaguely Christian but now a non-practicing atheist. I am married. I am 49 years old. I own a car and a house, with a mortgage on the house. I have a Bachelor’s degree, more debt than savings, and I vote Democratic. All completely “normal,” in that people who look and live like I do have made sure that our culture believes that people who look and live like I do are the norm, the standard, the expectation – and therefore everyone else is a little weird, a little off, a little less than what they are “supposed” to be. Like most people who look and live like me, I am aware of my privilege, I oppose the unfair societal structures and institutions that promote it – but I don’t really do too much to change them, because after all, I do benefit from them. I feel guilty when I think about that, so I try not to think about it.

Sorry: that went too political. (I am keenly aware that some people find it awkward and uncomfortable – challenging – when I speak of political matters. I do not want to offend them, so I usually do not speak of political matters.) My real point is that there is very little about me that is, according to our society’s generally understood and accepted standards, abnormal.

Until I open my mouth.

My mouth itself is pretty normal (Though I have WAY more fillings than is normal, I think – over 40, with 5 crowns. I have abnormally bad teeth.), it’s what comes out that is abnormal. First of all, I have a weird accent: my parents (The most important influence on a person’s accent and dialect) are from the West Coast, Washington and California, so I speak somewhat in their accents; but I was raised first on Long Island, which has a distinct accent, and then in a suburb of Boston, which has a STRONG accent. I didn’t acquire or keep either of those accents in their entireties, but I did pick up a few pronunciations; and more, Boston’s speech patterns were strongly influential: I speak too fast, as Bostonians do, and I talk faster the more excited I get; and I cuss intemperately. So I sound like a mishmash of two coasts and four states.

It’s more than my accent and my speech patterns, though: it’s what I say.

Don’t get me wrong: I am a student and an artisan — a wright. A smith. — of language. I study literature and rhetoric, and have mastered them to a degree that allows me to teach, generally successfully. I possess linguistic capacity more than sufficient to enable the utilization of language both fanciful and ornate, drawing from the recondite and recherche realm of jargon as well as splashing through the filigree fountain of poetry.

I talk good, is what I’m saying.

 And, as you can see, because I can use language well: I can also abuse it.

My favorite form is mispronunciation. I enjoy completely destroying the actual sounds of words, especially foreign ones. Especially French. Because if any language has worse pronunciation than English, it’s French. That word I used between “recondite” and “realm?” I would enjoy saying that “ruh-churchy.” So I feel that we should pronounce La petite fromage, the little cheese, the way it is spelled: lah puh-teet froh-midge. I draw from classic influences to pronounce the K and the G in “knight,” and to describe for my students when they put the emPHAsis on the wrong syLLAble.

But mispronunciation alone is too simple; a little tame, really. Much more funner is improper forms of words, particularily when the wordination is constructicated of rootages and suffixery (Holy crap, autocorrect accepted that one!  Is that really a word?! Mmmmno, it’s redlined. I think I stunned the autocorrect.) that are close, almost recognizable — but also completely wrong. That’s the besterest. Though one step higher here is when I can corrupt a common usage of a modern slang term in order to make it seem more grammatical while also being deeply annoying: when I was on Twitter, for instance, I made a point of saying I twitted a twit, not tweeted a tweet – because after all, it wasn’t called “Tweeter,” was it? (Now it should be xitted a xit on Xitter, not xeeted a xeet on Xeeter. Though either one would presumably make Elon Musk apoplectic, and that’s a good use of language.)

I admit it’s a touch upsetting that I say these kinds of things and play these kinds of games with my students, because for some reason, they trust me to steer them right with their usage of English, the poor innocent fools; I’m sure I’ve given more than one a bad idea about words from some joke or other — though I will further admit that that’s funny. I do teach them the real insane trivia hidden deep in the pockets of the English language: the word floccinaucinihilipilification (WHICH I TYPED RIGHT THE FIRST TIME) and the sentence “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.” Both of which are real. And “Y’all’d’nt’ve,” which is not real, but should be. These all show actual facets of this mad and madcap and maddening language that I love, so they are all lessons, on some level, at some point. And I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that most English teachers do not teach those lessons.

Then there are the foreign accents (Or as I am fond of saying, the furrin accents, which we don’t talk here in ‘Murrica.). A number of them show up when I read aloud, when there is some identifiable speech pattern in the dialogue, or a clear setting in an accentish area. I’ll read British stories in my best London fog, and I’ve read ev’ry danged word of Huck Finn by that Mark Twain feller in my best countrified speechery. I do sometimes use my past exposure to New York and Boston accents to play those characters when reading, especially if someone needs to be a tough guy; but I don’t put on my Pepe Le Pew when I read Guy de Maupassant’s “The Necklace.” And I never use Apu Nahasapeemapetilon’s accent, not even when I read The God of Small Things. On the other hand, I will neither confirm nor deny that Neil Gaiman’s story “Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains” retains a place in my Fantasy Literature elective specifically because I get to use my Scottish brogue.

Of course, none of these accents have the same color, force or frequency as my pirate accent. Not only because I dress up like a pirate for every Halloween, and dress up my voice like one on every September 19th (International Talk Like a Pirate Day, if ye be of the uninitiated). Also because I love doing that accent, and so it shows up whenever anyone makes a pirate reference around me, which is fairly frequent given my reputation and the assorted pirate paraphernalia which I have acquired over the years. If anyone tells me a pirate joke, I am honor-bound to respond in the appropriate manner: “AYE LAD, THAT WERE A FINE SALLY — I’LL SHARE IT WITH ME OWN CREW, THE NEXT TIME I WANT THEM ALL TO FALL ILL OF VILE PUN-ISHMENT! HAR HAAARRRRRRR!!”

Even this list, though, is not exhaustive, because it doesn’t include the character voices I use. In class there are a few definite ones; I am very fond of the voice of Gollum from The Lord of the Rings, as performed by Andy Serkis; it’s a bit rough on the throat, but so very taassssstttyy, precioussssss… And just to one side of that, almost two sides of the same coin, is the voice of Edna Mode from The Incredibles, which I also love using, as long as it is attached to the right character (NO! CAPES!). Those two are my favorites, though also I am not above talking like a Goodfella (“Do I amuse you? What am I, some kinda clown to you?”) or the Lennie of the cartoons (“And I will hug him and pet him and love him and squeeze him and call him George!”) though never when I read Of Mice and Men because that book makes me cry and I can’t make fun of it that way. 

And it goes on from there. When I am reading test directions aloud and I get to a portion that is capitalized or in bold print, I will shout those words at the top of my lungs (“DO NOT WRITE IN THE MARGINS OF THE ANSWER SHEET”), without any warning at all; partly because I like to make my students jump (and laugh, because breaking the tension is part of my job), and partly because I want to make fun of the directions, which are universally terrible. I can actually sing reasonably well, but when I sing in class I usually make my voice sound as awful as I possibly can, intentionally breaking and scratchy and missing all of the notes. I sometimes read as fast as I can, which thanks to my Bostonian upbringing is pretty damn fast, so that all the words run together into a completely indistinguishable fog of sounds.

So the question is: why? Why do I do this? Why am I like this? Especially given my responsibility as a teacher, and my deep and abiding love for my language, and for speech both written and spoken?

Honestly? I don’t know.

It might be because I don’t want to conform. I have to follow the rules in too many ways already; even worse, I have to fight for the rules, have to make other people obey them, have to get them in trouble when they break them: and I hate that. I also can’t stand it when people turn up their noses – or even worse, break into that violent, assaultive cackle that people put on – when they catch someone saying something “wrong,” and they take advantage to say, “It’s ‘wrongly,’ you pathetic dolt!” I hate the arrogance of that, the contempt of it. I hate the hard-edged insistence on rules: when we all know that in English, the rules don’t apply. Tell me the “I before E rule.” Go on. I dare you. 

There are no rules in English, other than the only rule that matters in any language, in any form of communication: if communication was successful among all parties, then the language was effective. That’s it. That’s the whole point. We speak and we write in order to communicate something. Sometimes there is a secondary purpose (or even a primary one) such as intimidation or seduction or persuasion; but in those cases, the goal of the intimidator or seducer or persuader is still a goal that must be communicated, even if only by achieving it. But if my audience can understand what I want them to understand, then nothing else matters: that’s the truth. That’s what I want people to understand, to absorb and believe. That’s why I tell my students (sometimes to the chagrin of my fellow English teachers) that you may start a sentence with “and” or “but,” and you may use “I” in a formal writing context, and you may use contractions, as well. And you may cuss: because sometimes the only word that properly communicates one’s message is “FUCK!!”

Oops. Got too offensive there. Now this document’s going to get flagged. A much worse F-word.

I love playing with English. That’s why I love ee cummings (Even though much of his poetry is political, and even more of it is offensive: but all of it is fun.), who wrote like this:

love is more thicker than forget

more thinner than recall

more seldom than a wave is wet

more frequent than to fail

it is most mad and moonly

and less it shall unbe

than all the sea which only

is deeper than the sea

love is less always than to win

less never than alive

less bigger than the least begin

less littler than forgive

it is most sane and sunly

and more it cannot die

than all the sky which only

is higher than the sky

 and why I admire and enjoy the novel Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban (Even though it is very political, and therefore quite offensive… but it’s okay, because Russell Hoban also wrote this), which looks like this:

Looking at the moon all col and wite and oansome. Lorna said to me, ‘You know Riddley theres some thing in us it dont have no name.’ 

I said, ‘What thing is that?’ 

She said, ‘Its some kynd of thing it aint us but yet its in us. Its looking out thru our eye hoals. May be you dont take no noatis of it only some times. Say you get woak up suddn in the middl of the nite. 1 minim youre a sleap and the nex youre on your feet with a spear in your han. Wel it wernt you put that spear in your han it wer that other thing whats looking out thru your eye hoals. It aint you nor it dont even know your name. Its in us lorn and loan and sheltering how it can.’ 

 and A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (Which is both extremely political and EXTREMELY offensive, so…maybe we shouldn’t talk about it.), which looks like this:

“What’s it going to be then, eh?” 

There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim. Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry. The Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus mesto, and you may, O my brothers, have forgotten what these mestos were like, things changing so skorry these days and everybody very quick to forget, newspapers not being read much neither. Well, what they sold there was milk plus something else. They had no licence for selling liquor, but there was no law yet against prodding some of the new veshches which they used to put into the old moloko, so you could peet it with vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom or one or two other veshches which would give you a nice quiet horrorshow fifteen minutes admiring Bog And All His Holy Angels and Saints in your left shoe with lights bursting all over your mozg. Or you could peet milk with knives in it, as we used to say, and this would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of dirty twenty-to-one, and that was what we were peeting this evening I’m starting off the story with.

and all the fantasy novels and science fiction movies and so on that make up entirely new languages, and then translate them into English: because language is fun. The more fun you have, the better it works. The more fun it is, the more you want to use it: and that makes more communication, which means more connection, which means more peace, love, and understanding.

And that would be the besteresterest.

The point of this essay was meant to be what in my language use sets me apart, divides me from other people; I do think it is the degree to which I mess with language, the number of games I play with it, the variety of ways I push the bounds of what is acceptable and what is normal. I do all those things more than most people; and that’s what sets me apart. What I don’t try to do, ever, is make my language harder to understand, to make communication fail: it is maybe my worst habit as a writer that I always try, over and over, to make my communication more clear, to explain further, to give another example, another synonym. As you can see. It makes me much too wordy in my writing. But it also makes me a good (if talkative and boring) teacher. It makes me a good friend, and a good husband, because I always try to explain what I am thinking and what I am feeling; I always try to communicate (And I realize that communication also requires listening, if you were thinking that I do all the talking. I don’t. It’s just that my turn takes three or four times as long.). My wife and I rarely fight because of that, and our fights usually end in compromise and agreement: because we communicate. (I don’t deserve all the credit for that. My wife is exceptionally good at understanding me, and herself, and she listens too. She is also very patient with me, which I appreciate forever.) I think it’s good that I am able to use humor to break up those long, repetitive speeches in which I try to explain everything I am thinking, over and over again.

I just wish other people enjoyed my portmanteaus as much as I do.

Oo! That’s one I forgot to mention! Portmanteaus: when you put two words together into a single word, like breakfast+lunch=brunch, or smoke+fog=smog. I love those things. I think of them constantly, and I bring them up all the time – here, wait, I have a list of my favorite ones.

What’s that? Oh – you have to leave? No time to discuss word nerdery with me? I understand. 

Maybe next time.

And then again: maybe not. 

Just know that I’ll always be here, ready to talk about words, ready to play word games – and ready to communicate. And whether that makes me different, or makes me just like everyone else, I don’t actually care. As long as we’re having fun. And not being … too offensive.

Oh and — fun being offensive? That’s offunsive. And that is a portmanteau.

What A Piece Of Work

Dusty 1 Comment
Meeting Alien Astronaut On Mysterious Planet Stock Illustration 1796849164 | Shutterstock

So every year, I teach a class called College Readiness. It is intended, among other things, to help students apply to college and win admission; since I am an English teacher, that means helping them write application essays. I generally use the Common App prompts — which I recommend, if you’re looking for college admission essay topics — and they write several drafts over the year, with revisions and feedback about how to make their essays more interesting and more effective.

And then, for their last essay draft of the year, I have them pick one of the topics from the University of Chicago’s list of topics. They have two essay questions for their applicants: the first is a very standard, straightforward essay, about why you want to attend UChicago and what you are looking for there; and then the second — well.

They asked prior students and graduates for ideas for essay topics. And those students and alumni delivered.

You should go take a look at them — but here are some highlights.

Essay Option 1

Exponents and square roots, pencils and erasers, beta decay and electron capture. Name two things that undo each other and explain why both are necessary.
– Inspired by Emmett Cho, Class of 2027

Essay Option 2

“Where have all the flowers gone?” – Pete Seeger. Pick a question from a song title or lyric and give it your best answer.
– Inspired by Ryan Murphy, AB’21

Essay Option 3

“Vlog,” “Labradoodle,” and “Fauxmage.” Language is filled with portmanteaus. Create a new portmanteau and explain why those two things are a “patch” (perfect match).
– Inspired by Garrett Chalfin, Class of 2027

Essay Option 4

A jellyfish is not a fish. Cat burglars don’t burgle cats. Rhode Island is not an island. Write an essay about some other misnomer, and either come up with and defend a new name for it or explain why its inaccurate name should be kept.
– Inspired by Sonia Chang, Class of 2025, and Mirabella Blair, Class of 2027

Essay Option 5

Despite their origins in the Gupta Empire of India or Ancient Egypt, games like chess or bowling remain widely enjoyed today. What modern game do you believe will withstand the test of time, and why?
– Inspired by Adam Heiba, Class of 2027

Essay Option 6

There are unwritten rules that everyone follows or has heard at least once in their life. But of course, some rules should be broken or updated. What is an unwritten rule that you wish didn’t exist? (Our custom is to have five new prompts each year, but this year we decided to break with tradition. Enjoy!)
– Inspired by Maryam Abdella, Class of 2026

Essay Option 7

And, as always… the classic choose your own adventure option! In the spirit of adventurous inquiry, choose one of our past prompts (or create a question of your own). Be original, creative, thought provoking. Draw on your best qualities as a writer, thinker, visionary, social critic, sage, citizen of the world, or future citizen of the University of Chicago; take a little risk, and have fun!

So I require my students to choose one of the topics — there are over 40 others after these six — and write an essay on it. And I ask them if there is one topic they would like me to write an essay about.

This was their choice for this year:

You are on an expedition to found a colony on Mars, when from a nearby crater, a group of Martians suddenly emerges. They seem eager to communicate, but they’re the impatient kind and demand you represent the human race in one song, image, memory, proof, or other idea. What do you share with them to show that humanity is worth their time?

And here is my response.

Okay look. There are a bunch of assumptions in this question. First it assumes that I want to communicate with the Martians, when in reality I might just want to atomize them with my Blastotron 5,000,0000X Destructothunderation Disintegratorianator. And that does seem like a poor assumption since I am an American, after all. When have we ever talked first and slaughtered after? Then it assumes – even more strangely – that the Martians have the same senses we do, and would be able to appreciate something I could present to them at all, let alone having the same aesthetic senses or interest in what I would have to present. It assumes that I would have this thing on me at the moment I met them, or access to it (which probably shows an assumption based on the existence and ubiquity of smartphones, which is fine, I would no doubt have my phone with me on the Martian surface – but also, I bet the wifi signal there sucks.), and that I wouldn’t just be limited to what I would normally be able to produce on the spot – which now relies on my performance skills. (Which are, I grant, stellar. Out of this world, even. Especially my punnery.)

And worst of all: the question assumes I believe humanity is worth the Martians’ time. 

So, considering all these considerations, I have several answers, the specific choice between being reliant on the specific situation. 

First, I would not immediately blast the Martians, because of course it would be better to lull them into complacency and then carry out a sneak attack later, preferably on their home territory; that’s the proper American way.

Second, we’ll take it as a given that the Martians would have at least similar senses to mine – though I will say, if they do have a different set of senses, I would absolutely play to that, because a society focused on smell would be far more impressed by our greatest olfactory achievements than any symphony or art work or whatever I could present. (And in that case, the smell would be a Thanksgiving feast: the scents of turkey and gravy, fresh bread, and apple pie, with a delicate touch of the smell of candle wax burning, hickory wood burning in the fireplace, and a whiff of my wife’s perfume.) But for the sake of argument, we’ll accept that they would use primarily sight and sound to interact with their environment, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to communicate their intentions to me, and if they just came at me waving their tentacles or whatever, it’s Blastotron time. On sight.

So what would I show them to prove that humanity is worthwhile – or, in a more moralistic sense, that we are good? See, now we get into questions of aesthetics, for art, or into questions of values in general, and it becomes almost impossible to answer. I recognize that the goal of the prompt is to examine my aesthetics, my values, to find out what I think is the highest achievement of humanity; but since my area of interest and expertise is actually rhetoric, and that means I choose my communication with my audience in mind, I know better than to decide something like this only using my own criteria and nothing else. If you seriously just want me to pick the best thing in the world according to me with no other considerations at all, I’m going to go with the poetry of ee cummings, particularly “anyone lived in a pretty how town.” But see, much of the beauty in that poem comes from understanding both human society and the history of human poetry, and it wouldn’t translate quickly enough to the Martians; so that can’t be my answer.

If we imagine that the Martians have been watching us through Martioscopes for centuries – and why wouldn’t they? Don’t we watch fail videos constantly on YouTube? And what is human history if not one giant fail video? – then the background knowledge necessary to understand the context could actually be assumed; and in that case, I might go with something like cummings’s poetry. Or for visual art, I would probably select Michelangelo’s Pieta, or the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Or, for the sake of including multiple senses in my appeal for the value of humanity, I might go with a performance of an opera or a musical, because that can include singing, dancing, music and literature, all at once. In that case I would pick Hamilton, which I think is utterly brilliant  dramatically, musically, and poetically — though that thought process does lead me to consider movies as a way to include visual and auditory art, and to include many different kinds of aesthetic appeal: and in that case I would choose either Pleasantville, partly because it includes quite a bit of very beautiful art; or Fantasia, because it includes so much beautiful music.

But this all assumes that art is the highest achievement of humanity. I think there is an argument for that, because what is important for humanity, specifically, has to be the things that are unique to humanity; and the only things I believe are unique to humanity are the search for truth, and the creation of beauty, both for no reason apart from the intrinsic value of truth, and of beauty. Other creatures seek and discover truth – the best way to pull termites out of a mound, for instance – but they do it in pursuit of survival, not for the joy of discovery and the goal of understanding. Not that survival is less valuable than art for art’s sake and truth for understanding’s sake; but survival for survival’s sake is less human. So I do think that beauty is one of the crowning achievements of humanity: but I would have a much more difficult time arguing that it is the only, or the best, achievement of humanity, rather than truth.

So I have to also consider: what is our greatest truth?

Is it science? Perhaps; but the creation of the scientific method as a formula is pretty well associated with only one man – and I have a hard time accepting that a dude who died trying to freeze chicken is literally the one best person in the history of humanity. Especially when his name was Francis Bacon. But then, if it’s not science, what is it? What is the one greatest truth that humanity has ever known, which I could then speak to an alien race and show them what we have accomplished?

I can’t think of one. (Take it as a given that it is not math.) Mainly because so much of our truth-seeking has to do with ourselves: and we still don’t know jack about ourselves, not really. I could go with “The only thing that I know is that I know nothing,” from Socrates, or “Existence is suffering, and suffering is caused by desire” from the Buddha; but honestly, I think “All you need is love” by Sir Paul McCartney is just about as profound and valuable as either of those. 

That’s why I turn to art. But that’s not fair: because I’m biased. So my biased answer suits the intent of the essay prompt, as my choice says something about me; but it wouldn’t actually present the pinnacle of human achievement unless I assume that I am qualified to judge that – which implies that I am the pinnacle of human judgment. And I’m not: I ate Peeps dipped in salsa. That was not sound judgment on my part. This, of course, also implies that I should not be choosing the pinnacle of human artistic achievement (though I sure did that without hesitation, didn’t I?), as that too requires judgment.

So I think the best answer is this: I would not choose.

Because I know nothing, because I have great respect for humanity (And much respect for myself, don’t get me wrong; but more for humanity), and because I don’t actually accept the premise of this question, I think that what I would choose to present to show the worth of humanity is – humanity. 

All of it. All of us. Because part of the glory of humanity is how incredibly different we all are, how various, how multifarious; and yet at the same time, how similar: because my mom is nothing like your mom, and yet somehow, the way my mother used to kiss my head when she tucked me in is exactly how your mother kissed you when she tucked you in. Or maybe how your father did, or your grandparent. The way I look up into warm raindrops and smile is exactly the same way you do it, when we are dancing in the rain. The incredible pride I feel when I finish the project I’ve been working on – whether it’s a novel about vampires or pirates, or a bookshelf I built, or the successful sale of my mother-in-law’s house after her husband died – is the same as the incredible pride you feel when you finish what you’ve been working on, whether that is a sales presentation, a complete re-watch of every episode of Supernatural, or helping your child master their dance for the Christmas recital. And yet how much does your child’s dance recital routine resemble my pirate novel?

It depends: does your kid dance the hornpipe?

If I want to show humanity’s greatest achievement, I think I have to show humanity’s greatest strength: our diversity, our individuality, and our unique and personal ability to take almost anything and turn it into a work of art, a magnificent accomplishment, just because one human being – and often, no one else on the whole damn planet – saw that activity, that pursuit, that project, that idea, as worth all of one human being’s time and energy and focus: and thus that one human being accomplished something incredible.

Now, this would likely encounter some resistance from the Martians. Because, as the prompt says, these beings are impatient: they are the ones who asked me for one single piece of work to present to them to represent all of humanity.

But really? That’s just a request for a sales pitch. They’re asking me to convince them that one thing is the best thing in all of human history. (I would prove this by asking them to show me, first, the one thing that represents all of Martian culture. And by the way, if they could do so, then I would have an excellent idea of what their aesthetics or values are, and I could think of one wonderful example to show them in return. But I bet I’m right: because this seems like an absurd request with any race. I mean, show me the best cat of all time. The best horse. The greatest star. You see? There are too many criteria, too many options, in almost any collection of items as large as everything accomplished in an entire race’s history.) So I would first show them this:

And then express that here we have an example of nearly perfect writing, combined with – I wouldn’t necessarily call it nearly perfect acting, because I don’t want to judge; but it’s not only one artist, you see? The words have to be brought to life by the actor, and the end result – is that the accomplishment of one human? Or two? Or many, since directors and acting coaches and everyone else who contributed to these performances also participated in the creation of this moment. And since there are so many interpretations and versions of this particular speech written by William Shakespeare, it’s hard to say if this one is the best version of it – or maybe this one.

Or this one.

Or no. It’s this one.

(Actually, I can’t find a clip of my favorite version of this speech, which was my first encounter with it: when Nick Nolte gives the monologue in the movie Down and Out in Beverly Hills. Other than that one, I think I actually like Cumberbatch the best out of these.)

But the point is, I would argue, that because of the individual ability of humans to interpret reality, and to translate it, inculcating our own ideas and feelings into what we take in, blending what we learn with what we are – to understand one great accomplishment of one human, one also has to appreciate the other versions of the same idea, the same art, the same achievement. When I was young, I was deeply impressed by Thomas Edison – and then when I learned about Nikola Tesla, I was even more impressed by him, because of what I had felt about Edison; and then, honestly, I was once again impressed by Edison (Though I know that isn’t the popular interpretation, as the memes nowadays would have us believe that Tesla was all of the genius and Edison only stole it: but no, Edison was more than that. But this isn’t the argument I want to have with these Martians.).

If I got them listening with my versions of this speech as presented by different actors, I would then point out that every one of Shakespeare’s plays was based on a story written by someone else. That the Bard himself, whom I still consider the greatest wordsmith in the history of the English language, wrote adapted rather than original screenplays – and who knows, maybe the Boccaccio version was better. 

(Okay, that pun might be the greatest accomplishment of humanity. But probably not.)

So then, once I had them on the hook with this idea that different humans can create different versions of the same masterpiece and make it into entirely new and different masterpieces – then I would show them all of humanity that they could ever want to see.

I would show them the internet.

I would hand over my phone, and starting with the items that I have mentioned here – the poetry of ee cummings, and the art of Michelangelo, and the work of Shakespeare and of Lin-Manuel Miranda, and of Pleasantville and Fantasia, and also Mozart’s Requiem and the album In the Court of the Crimson King and Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and everything else that is perfect – I would show them everything that can be found on the internet that shows what humanity is and what humanity can do.

Including the wars. And the genocides. The atrocities and the errors and the destructions. The atomic bombs. The Holocaust. The history of holy wars around the world. Because those, the perfect masterpieces of evil that we have created: those are humanity too.

And the Martians should have some warning, at least.

And then, once they were all completely riveted by what they saw on the screen?

Blastotron.

What a Weekend!

Dusty 1 Comment

WOW! That was… amazing.

This last weekend was the Tucson Festival of Books. And for the fourth year, I had a booth, and I offered my pirate books, the three volumes of The Adventures of Damnation Kane, for sale to anyone who: 1) Saw my tri-corner hat and pirate-themed shirt; 2) Noticed the name of the booth, or 3) Paused to look at the INCREDIBLE art that my wife Toni DeBiasi created for all three Volumes of the series.

And that was a LOT of people.

I went there with, I think, about 65 books.

The first day, Saturday, I sold 42 of them. (The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything!) I sold every copy of Volume I I had with me. I went home, got the four other copies of Volume I at my house, also grabbed my VERY FIRST copy, the first printed copy of any book I have ever written, and brought that on Sunday. I used the very first copy (which was NOT for sale) as a display copy.

I sold the other four. And six more copies of Volume II and Volume III. And I unfortunately had to turn away a few other people because I didn’t have a copy of Volume I to sell them, at the end of the day, or else I would have had at least two or three more sales.

I now have 13 copies left of the 69 copies I brought with me to the Festival.

I have never done that well. The Festival has always been pretty good to me: I have a good book (Three of them, I think), I have a good hook — “Can I tell you about my time-traveling Irish pirate?” — and the aforementioned three attention-grabbers (sign, cover art, and stylish chapeau) brings people close enough to get drawn in by my elevator pitch. But my previous record was, if I remember right, 29 books sold. So I almost doubled that.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, to everyone who came and bought my books. I am honored beyond belief. And now I am anxious as hell that you all won’t like the books, or that you won’t like the third book, or — I dunno, something. So if you could see your way clear to tell me if you do like the books: go to the Contact link at the top of the page (Under the three lines, on mobile), or click on the Feedback link that should be floating in the bottom left corner of the page, and send me a message. Send me a Facebook message or Instagram message — @TheodenHumphrey, in both cases. (Also the same handle on X, if you are a glutton for punishment — or Threads, if you’re a glutton for social media.) Or if you’re really feeling good about my work, post a review somewhere — Amazon, or Goodreads, or Lulu.com where the books are produced — and then let me know that you did so. Thank you.

Thank you, as well, to my fantastic booth partner Amanda Cetas, who stood with me on a patch of sole-stabbing gravel for eighteen hours over two days, who covered me when I wanted to take a break (And made sales for me, too), who directed people to my side of the booth when they seemed more interested in fantasy than in historical fiction, and who stayed positive and energetic all the way through. Thank you, also, to all the people who bought Amanda’s books — she said she did better this year than she has before, too, so it wasn’t just the Pirate who made out like a bandit.

Amanda also shared my confusion over our nearest neighbors, who were… intactivists. Anti-circumcision activists. With whole books. About… circumcision. Now, I actually know the arguments against circumcision, and — how do you fill an entire book with them? Let alone TWO?!?

Needless to say, they did not send many customers over our way, and we didn’t send any their way, either. I didn’t have any people come to my booth and say, “Pirates, huh? You wouldn’t have anything about foreskins, by any chance?”

(I would have sent them over if they did. But they didn’t. The people over there still had people at their booth all weekend, so I think they did fine, too.)

If you didn’t get the book or books you wanted, or you now want more books, then please use the links on this page to Contact me or to order yourself a copy from Lulu.com. (If you Contact me, I will sign the book for you before I ship it.) If you didn’t make it to the Festival this year, then come to next year’s — Amanda and I will be there (Hopefully with our partner, the Poet, Lisa Watson, who wasn’t well enough to attend this year), and I will have all of the Adventures and at least one new book, as well. Amanda will probably have nine new projects, all of them as wonderful as the ones she has right now.

And if you bought books, two things: thank you for reading. You, along with the rest of the literate people, are the bulwark holding back the tide of Fahrenheit 451. You are giving my world meaning. You are joining me in this weird sort of slow-motion conversation that is a novel.

And also: get off the internet and go read. Like I’m about to do.

(If you’re wondering, I only bought two books this year. But that’s because this is my TBR pile.

No, I’m not kidding.)

Here are the two books, anyway.

Happy Reading, all.

#500 is #3

Dusty 2 Comments

So I noticed, not too long ago, that I was getting pretty close to 500 posts on this blog. That’s a lot of writing, over the last nine years I have had this blog, especially since there have been a couple of fairly lengthy hiatuses — hiati? — lacunae in those years. The majority of those posts are pretty substantial, some running to several thousand words and hours and hours of effort; though some are just short comments or jokes or links. But still, 500 posts seemed like a lot, and also a number worth celebrating.

And then I hit a wall, when my family crisis happened in October. That last post before the crisis was #497. And a month or so ago, I posted an explanation as to what was going on and why I hadn’t been following the carefully established once-a-week-new-post pace that I had maintained fairly well for about 16 months at that point; that explanation was #498.

Last week I posted about politics, and my desire to take up the fight. I will have more to say about that — but also, I couldn’t help but notice (though of course I already knew) that that was post #499. Which meant this one was the big one.

So what to post about? More politics? Teaching, which has been the bulk of the last 499 blog posts? I thought about a book review, because I have a good one to write.

But then this happened. I did it. It came in the mail.

Volume III of The Adventures of Damnation Kane.

It’s bizarre to me that this is such a clear mirror: but I had to take advantage.

This is not, of course, the finished book, because that will not be the cover image; my wife had a great idea for it, and she is prepping the board for the painting. (**Please note: if for any reason she is not satisfied with her image, then I will use something else for the cover; probably some old painting of pirates which is in the public domain. I’m just trying to say that the plan is for all three books to have original Toni DeBiasi covers, but if they don’t then they don’t, and so be it.) I printed one copy with a nothing cover as a galley proof so I could do one last edit of the text, which I find easier when it is printed on actual paper.

But the book is written. The story is done. This is the end of the Adventures of Damnation Kane.

Here they all are.

So this is my 500th post: it is announcing to all of you that the book is done, and it will be published and available within the next two months. And I am very, very proud of me.

Thank you for reading, to all of you who read, for whatever you read. If you are reading my pirate books, you’ll have one more to buy pretty soon.

I Am Persuaded

Dusty 1 Comment

Sorry this is coming in late (But also, my WordPress stats counter tells me that people are looking at my archive of old posts, and I have to say, there’s a lot there. So please feel free to look back through what I’ve written in the last 8 years on this blog) and it is only a link, not my words.


But. I have made a decision.

I am going to stop arguing. Online, at least.

In all the years that I have been arguing online, and arguing in person, and also hating myself for doing it, I have never been able to come to this decision, because I have always felt there is value in arguing the point, in standing up for my side. I don’t always see that value, because the internet is a terrible place for argument on the topics I generally argue, which are almost all political; but I have constantly told myself that there is value, and thus I need to keep doing it, even to my detriment.

Until I read this.

This is the culmination of a series of essays, which the author lists and links in this one; I recommend reading all of them — but also, he, like me, is wordy, so that’s a lot of sauce to drink down at once. Maybe just start with the one I’m linking. It’s on Substack, but it’s free to read. I will have more to say on this, which I’ll try to post next week on the usual day. For now, read this.

https://armoxon.substack.com/p/preaching-to-the-choir

The Essay Of Hate

Dusty Leave a comment

So! Just as with last week, when I presented the essay I wrote during my AP Literature class, followed by the essay I wish I had written instead; here is the essay I wrote during my AP Language class; and tomorrow I hope to post the essay I should have written instead of this one. (I may need a little extra time to finish the rewrite on this one, because it requires some research, and this has been a busy weekend.)

This essay is the Synthesis Prompt. The concept here is entering into a debate: the students are given six sources of information, which divide mostly evenly into two groups, one on either side of a controversial issue of some kind. The students are to synthesize information from these sources and present the two sides of the debate, and their own opinion on the topic — which can be on both sides, either side, or neither side.

The topic this year was urban rewilding, which is the practice of taking back some developed areas in a city and turning them into natural ecosystems, planting native plants and trying to encourage wildlife to live in the area, as well. This can take the form of anything from a rooftop or a vertical garden, to reclaiming vacant lots or empty buildings and turning them into natural green spaces. And while in most years, the topics don’t have a definitely “correct” or “incorrect” side — two years ago the question was about whether schools should teach cursive, which, good grief, who cares — this topic had such a clearly correct side that even the sources weren’t really on both sides: four of them were correct, and two of them were, well, sort of weaseling.

To be clear: the correct side is in favor of urban rewilding. The concrete tombs that we call cities are in desperate need of greenery, and our world is in desperate need of plants that can capture and sequester and convert more carbon dioxide, and the natural world needs not to be driven into extinction by our destruction of habitat.

And that was my problem: as I was reading the sources, I was looking for the two sides, and I just couldn’t find one of them. Not that I would argue against urban rewilding no matter what, but I couldn’t even take that side seriously. So by the end of reading the sources, I came to a decision: I was going to argue for neither side, with the appearance of arguing for the wrong one.

I don’t know that this is a bad argument, but it is not the argument I would like to make. It was fun to write, though, so here it is. Enjoy. If I can get my research done, I will write an argument stating why we should clearly, obviously, promote urban rewilding everywhere we can.

Urban rewilding is an effort to restore natural ecological processes and habitats in city environments. Many cities around the world have embraced rewilding as part of larger movements to promote ecological conservation and environmentally friendly design. Now, a movement to promote urban rewilding is beginning to take shape in the United States as well.

Carefully read the six sources, including the introductory information for each source. Write an essay that synthesizes materials from at least three of the sources and develops your position on the extent to which rewilding initiatives are worthwhile for urban communities to pursue.

Urban rewilding is an effort to restore natural ecological processes and habitats in city environments. It’s becoming more popular, and so the debate is heating up: is it worth putting effort into this? It seems like a positive concept, a valuable endeavor — but is it worth the effort? Would it be prohibitively expensive? Worse: could it be that this is only window dressing?

The answer is something else entirely. Urban rewilding is evil. It promotes precisely the wrong goal, by trying to bypass the actual issue. The actual issue is humanity. We are a blight upon the Earth, and we should be destroyed. Then and only then — when the last living human has returned to earth and dust — should our cancerous pustules, the monstrous toxic boils we call cities, be “rewilded” by the natural processes that will devour our waste as they devour our worthless corpses. [I am terribly disappointed in myself that I didn’t finish the “boils” metaphor by talking about lancing and draining the pus. Ah, well. Next time!] 

“More than 70% [of] projected extinctions of plants and animals would be counteracted by restoring only 30% of priority areas,” the infographic in Source A tells us. Sure, that seems like a wonderful trade-off — but it still includes the extinction of 30% of the species projected to die by our actions. You know what would preserve 100% of species that would otherwise go extinct thanks to human action? The extinction of the human race. Come on now: if 70% of species are worth saving by limiting humans, aren’t 100% of species worth saving by eliminating humans? Wouldn’t we trade 100% of species for the loss of only one? Of the worst one? This trolley problem isn’t even a problem.

Source B, I think, shows the heart of the issue: we are the most short-sighted, selfish, superficial beings imaginable. The idea here is to grow more life, more nature, inside our dark, dingy, dangerous, disgusting urban sprawls — and yet this policy brief feels it must sell this concept to the public. “Rewilding is a powerful new term in conservation,” it says. “This may be because it combines a sense of passion and feeling for nature with advances in ecological science. The term resonates. Rewilding is exciting, engaging, and challenging.” Look at that: saving the planet, living in a natural setting, respecting our fellow beings by not slaughtering them wholesale so we can build another goddamn Walmart: those appeals are not enough! Noooo, we need to market the brand, we need to sell it, we need to convince people. How disgusting is that? How disgusting are we?

Source C continues this. It presents a delightful scene of a friendly scientist helping the audience think back to their childhood: before they became polluters and exploiters of the natural world, when they were innocent (if we ever truly have been) and actually loved nature. Because, the TV host says, “if [we] don’t spend any time outside, why are [we] going to care about [our] local places let alone the national parks in the distance?”

WHY ARE WE GOING TO CARE?! Because this is not our world! Nature does not belong to us, we belong to nature! We need nature, it doesn’t need us! The graph in Source E shows it: more nature means less depression, less stress. Even we are happier when we don’t live in the world we are building. We destroy everything in order to benefit ourselves, and in so doing? We destroy ourselves. Even our attempts to remedy this, like Dr. Scott’s presentation in Source C, are performances given on television: they are artificial. Attempts to trick people into associating SAVING THE PLANET with some happy childhood memory of climbing a damn tree. Because without that emotional manipulation, without that chicanery, we would be far more likely to simply wipe out all life: including ourselves. 

Well. We should skip the middle step, and jump straight to the end game. If all humanity were reduced to windblown ash, then the rest of the natural world — the healthy part, the good part — could flourish, once more. Urban rewinding is clearly not the answer: even at its best, as presented in Source F, it can only create 600 hectares of parkland in Madrid, one of the biggest cities in Europe; or 300 km of park connectors in Singapore, one of the greatest sprawls in the world of human filth. Is it worth pointing out that even those attempts at rehabilitating the human virus focus primarily on the wealthy? That Toronto’s Beltway features “farmers’ markets, performance spaces, and a children’s garden,” but not a single breath of fresh air and a flash of green life for the poorest slums in the city?

No. It doesn’t matter. We are not worth saving, if we have to think this hard about saving our planet. I just hope that we are the first to go, so everything else can go on without us. To that end, let’s forget about urban rewilding: let’s just build ourselves to death. 

The Essay That Should Have Been

Dusty Leave a comment

Every year I make my AP students write an essay in the first week.

I started doing this because when I moved to Arizona and started teaching AP, I went to a summer seminar in how to teach AP, and the instructor — a very smart man who had been teaching AP for 30 years, and whom I respected quite a lot — told us that we should start hard, in a way: give them a practice test, one of the essay questions from an actual past AP exam, right at the beginning and grade it as you would an AP test — no mercy. It shows the students what the test is like, both through the use of an old question and the AP’s generally high standards, and through the use of fairly intense pressure on them to perform; this will motivate them, he said, to work hard in order to be more prepared for the actual test. So I do that: and it works quite well, most of the time. A number of my AP students are the most successful, and the most lauded, students at the school, and I like giving them a test that they don’t automatically ace, as they usually do in their other classes; it puts them off balance, which is usually where they need to be to learn and grow. Also, while I have a well-earned reputation as a generally easy-going sort of cat, I want them to know that the AP is not easy, and so in academic terms, I am not an “easy” teacher.

So, an AP essay, in the first week.

One of the things I do to try to mitigate that difficult assignment is to take the test with them. I know it doesn’t make it any easier if I’m writing an essay while they are writing an essay, but I think it does two things: one, it shows that I am teaching something that I really know how to do, in a practical, everyday sense, and maybe even something I like doing (It is. I like writing essays. I think they just generally don’t believe that I do.); and two, it shows them that I’m not giving them assignments just to torture them, I think they are valuable — valuable enough to do them myself.

Now, most years, this is not very hard for me: I’ve written a lot of essays, I’ve read a lot of literature, I analyze everything all the time. But this year, man. I don’t quite know what it was, but I struggled with both essays, the synthesis essay I gave my AP Lang students, and the open response question I gave my AP Lit class. Okay, I know some of what it was: in the case of the Lang essay, I had trouble with the topic as it was presented in the packet of information (The synthesis prompt asks the students to read six sources which represent two sides of a debate, and then to “join the conversation.” They need to present their own opinion on the issue, using at least three of the sources as references to place their opinion in relation to the rest of the debate.), because one side was clearly right, but also really badly argued, which left me the unfortunate options of choosing the wrong side, or using bad arguments to support the right side; and then in the case of the Lit essay, I asked my students to use the book they chose to read over the summer to answer the question if they could, and so I used the book I read as potential new material for the class — and I didn’t (and don’t) have a good enough grasp of that work to use it well for the essay. Basically I picked a bad topic for Lang, and a bad answer for Lit.

So here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to use this blog to write the essays I should have written for these two prompts. Partly as a way to vindicate myself as an essayist (Though to be clear, I showed my Lit class today the essay I struggled with, so they could see that I struggle too; and I’ll do the same with my Lang class tomorrow, because I don’t think everything I write has to be perfect), because I should have written better essays; but mainly just because I think these are two genuinely good topics for essays, and I want to do the subject matter justice.

This week I’m going to do the Lit essay. I will also be including the bad one I wrote, which isn’t terrible; but there’s a better answer I could have given, which I’m going to write now.

(Also I don’t think I’ll get this done tonight, Monday, so this week’s will almost certainly be posted tomorrow and maybe even Wednesday. Sorry. School, man. It takes up your time.)

You know what? I’m going to make it a thing. I’m going to type (because my handwriting is atrocious, especially when I’m trying to stick to a time limit with my students) the bad essay I wrote in class and post it tonight, and tomorrow I will come back and finish the good essay. And do the same thing next week, with the other one.

So here we go: the response I wrote in class to the AP Literature Free Response prompt. (As you’ll see, this essay gives a thematic statement, and asks the students to apply it to any full-length work they have read, using the theme given to analyze the work. The perfect work to answer this question with happens to be the book I have read more than any other, and know better than any other; but that’s not the one I wrote about.)

Also, here is the test in my handwriting, so you will understand why I am typing this.

Okay? So here we go.

First, the question:

AP English Literature and Composition 2023 Free Response Question #3:

Many works of literature feature a rebel character who changes or disrupts the existing state of societal, familial, or political affairs in the text. They may break social norms, challenge long-held values, subvert expectations, or participate in other forms of resistance. The character’s motivation for this rebellious behavior is often complex.

Either from your reading or from the list below [Side note: Ummmm, if you haven’t read the book you select to write about, you’re pretty well boned on this essay. So it really should just be the rest of this direction:], choose a work of fiction in which a character changes or disrupts the existing state of societal, familial, or political affairs. Then, in a well-written essay, analyze how the complex motivation of the rebel contributes to an interpretation of the work as a whole.

So the best work I know (though there are several good ones on the provided list of suggestions, including Antigone, Invisible Man, Kindred, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Paradise Lost) to answer this question is Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury. The work I used to answer it was Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw, which musical film buffs will know as the original version of My Fair Lady.

Here is the essay, complete with the part where I just started cursing because I wasn’t sure exactly how to write this, and then the title I came up with (because of the cursing, so let me tell you, that’s some effective brainstorming) and the rest of the essay.

You know what? Fuck this. Fuck this prompt, fuck this test — and fuck you.

“FUCK YOU, I WON’T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME.”

— Zack de la Rocha

Language is one of the primary determining factors for a number of society’s categories. How we talk shows, or even determines, who we are and how we get treated. I talk about this every year, when I teach diction: how formal language and the use of specialized jargon helps to present me as a teacher, as a person worthy of (but frequently denied) respect. Casual diction, featuring the use of contractions, and slang, and even profanity or “inappropriate” language shows me as — something else.

But does it make me a rebel?

Zack de la Rocha, lead singer and lyricist of the band Rage Against the Machine, is in many ways a rebel. When the band performed their timeless classic “Killing in the Name Of” on the BBC, de la Rocha was asked to leave out a key word in the final refrain, which I used to title this piece. Clearly, asking him to change that particular statement was rather foolish: de la Rocha not only clearly enunciated the entire refrain, he flipped off the camera while he responded to the BBC’s attempted censorship. Violating rules by itself is not rebellious: but when you violate rules as a means of resisting the oppressive power structures that dominate our society, it is certainly rebellious.

Zack de la Rocha’s motivations for this rebellious act are really quite simple (though his motivations in forming the band, writing and singing the songs he does, are not), but more often, rebellious motives are complex. In the play “Pygmalion” by George Bernard Shaw, all of the main characters (Except for poor, pitiful Freddy) are rebellious in one way or another. Professor Higgins and the Colonel [Note: I could not remember the Colonel’s name, so I just used his title throughout. It’s Pickering. Colonel Pickering.] both defy the social order of Great Britain, as does Eliza Doolittle; Eliza also defies the misogyny and elitism which her two “benefactors” partake in unthinkingly, especially Higgins. Mrs. Higgins defies expectation in taking Eliza’s side over her son’s — thus also defying her class role in becoming a partisan for the flower girl — and Mr. Doolittle breaks stereotypes, social order, and all expectations by becoming an accepted member of the upper class, and by not being a dick despite the twin facts of his alcoholism and his neglect of his daughter. However, while they are all rebellious, not all of their motivations are complex, though some are.

Higgins’s motivations may be the simplest among the upper class characters: he wants to prove that he is smarter and better than everyone else. We can see this in his every scene, from his initial appearance when he shows off, and insults everyone at the market, to his final argument with Eliza when he is somehow simultaneously offended and offensive in telling Eliza he loves her but will never love her and love is stupid anyway. All he wants is to be the best, to be the possessor of the most respected and respectable opinion. Fuck him.

The Colonel’s motives are more confusing. He doesn’t want to be the best, nor does he want to prove that Henry is the best; he doesn’t really want to win his bet, he seemed genuinely curious as to whether or not it could be accomplished. Then as time goes on, and he fosters a paternal love for Eliza, his goal seems to be helping her — though in the third act he, like Higgins completely disregards Eliza and her accomplishments by focusing exclusively on the result of the bet with Higgins. Is that because he is comfortable with the elitism that motivates the bet? Is it because he is a kind man who wants to meet Higgins on his own ground? If we are seeing this play as a feminist or Marxist critique of the patriarchy or the class structure, then clearly the Colonel, for all his attempts at being genuine and kind, is simple one of those who work forces.

The same who burn crosses.

[Note: These last two sentences are lines from the Rage Against the Machine song, which is about how police and other soldiers of the power structure are racist and bigoted and attack marginalized people under the guise of enforcing state power. I’m just saying that the Colonel is part of the problem, in ignoring Eliza as her own person with abilities and accomplishments, treating her only as the product of Higgins’s abilities and accomplishments. And if you got that, I apologize for teachersplaining — but it occurs to me as I type this that the audience who would be that familiar with both Rage Against the Machine and Pygmalion is vanishingly small. It didn’t even include me until a week ago.]

Mrs. Higgins seems to be in the same category as the Colonel: generally a solid pillar of the oppressive social order, encouraging her son to act properly and to marry, frowning on but never actually opposing the exploitation of Eliza; but then towards the end, when the Colonel slips, it is Mrs. Higgins who steps up to help Eliza. But while this makes her, like the Colonel, likable and sympathetic, it’s clear that the underlying allegiance to the power structure remains as Mrs. Higgins wants to protect Eliza: rather than empowering her to take control of her own life. This makes both Mrs. Higgins and the Colonel complicit, rather than rebellious, because they see Eliza as an especial exception, rather than just one instance of a whole oppressed class, and by making an exception of her, they prove the rule.

Eliza’s case is more interesting. She participates in the experiment as part of a rebellion against the social order, not merely to prove her superiority, but because she finds fault in the order — why should she be any less than the toffs? She also breaks the misogynistic stereotypes by going to Higgins’s house, intending to hire him, and then continuing to live there in violation of the sexually oppressive morals of Edwardian society, again as an act of rebellion. But it’s no surprise that her acts are more clearly — and cleanly — rebellious, as she is the victim of the power structures she pushes back against. Her motivation is, naturally, selfish, therefore not rebellious — but she also displays a strong sense of justice, all the way from the beginning when she bewails her treatment at the market by all the wealthy people who treat her as an object. She does at that time use the oppressive patriarchal norms as a shield — you can’t treat me this way, I’m just a poor girl (Nobody loves me); but by the end, she objects to her exploitation by Higgins and the Colonel, as well.

And this idea leads to the most rebellious figure within the play, with the most complex motivations: Shaw himself. The playwright, in adapting the Greek myth to an Edwardian England setting, is attacking the mythology of the society he is depicting: because the man who crafts the perfect woman is not only the villain — he is indifferent to his creation, where Pygmalion fell in love with his Galatea. Shaw may be saying there is no love in England that the patriarchal egotism and contempt for the other leaves no room for love of any but the self. He also breaks down the norms of the theater for which he is writing, because where a comedy is traditionally to end in a marriage, and a tragedy in the hero’s fall, this play ends in the heroine’s rise — but without a marriage. What’s more, we are treated to a discussion of why the tale should not end in a marriage, why it is better without a marriage (because Higgins insists he is more honest and honorable for treating everyone badly) — and that’s how it ends, so either Higgins is right, or he has imposed his views on the audience as he imposed them on Eliza.

But then in the additional narration added to the play, Shaw does give us a marriage, though seemingly one that is only economic in character and theme. Thus breaking his own thematic conclusion, as well as his society’s.

Perhaps the most critical rebellion here is Shaw fighting against himself. In using language to criticize language by breaking it down to meaningless idiosyncrasies and stereotypes even as he breaks Eliza’s speech into meaningless phonetics; in using drama to criticize drama, by creating a comedy that rebels against comedy and a myth that rebels against mythology, Shaw undercuts his own authority, even his own argument. He rebels against himself, and like Higgins, rejects any connection to his own creation — and thus, perhaps, personifies God, the Devil, and Cain, who is not his brother’s keeper. nWhen Shaw looks up, flips the middle finger, and says “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me,” he is not speaking to the BBC, he is speaking to himself. And the only result is paradox.

Good stuff, right?

Well no.

Though actually, as I read through all of this, I realize that there are some genuinely interesting ideas here: I was just limited by, first, the time frame, and secondly, by the fact I couldn’t use the text to look up specific details, or the internet to look up general concepts and ideas. Give me a couple more hours and my usual resources, and I could have made this into something actually interesting. 

I would want to change the thesis, first of all because the one I have here is terribly awkward. “In the play “Pygmalion” by George Bernard Shaw, all of the main characters (Except for poor, pitiful Freddy) are rebellious in one way or another. Professor Higgins and the Colonel both defy the social order of Great Britain, as does Eliza Doolittle; Eliza also defies the misogyny and elitism which her two “benefactors” partake in unthinkingly, especially Higgins. Mrs. Higgins defies expectation in taking Eliza’s side over her son’s — thus also defying her class role in becoming a partisan for the flower girl — and Mr. Doolittle breaks stereotypes, social order, and all expectations by becoming an accepted member of the upper class, and by not being a dick despite the twin facts of his alcoholism and his neglect of his daughter. However, while they are all rebellious, not all of their motivations are complex, though some are.” I hate that last sentence, which was the result of me trying to include the prompt’s demand for complex motivations, clashing with the fact that not all of the characters have complex motivations: Higgins, the phonetics professor who helps Eliza Doolittle learn to speak like an upper class Englishwoman, really is just an arrogant twerp who wants to be right all the time; and I never should have brought up Eliza’s father, who is not a useful character, just a moment of comic relief. And if I was going to bring him up, I shouldn’t have called him a dick (or “not a dick.” Not better.) 

But also, this thesis says that all of the characters are rebellious: and that’s not true. Higgins does try to break the social order of England by helping Eliza, from the lower class, to become superficially part of the upper class; but he’s bending the rules of that social class, not trying to break them, not least because he doesn’t actually want Eliza to join the upper class: he just wants to trick everyone into thinking she is part of the upper class once he teaches her to speak in a certain way. That’s not rebelling against the social class, that is using the exception to prove the rule, showing that without Higgins’s own genius, the social classes would continue to correctly segregate the lower from the upper classes based on their patterns of speech. Colonel Pickering is the same, and Mrs Higgins does sort of defy family by protecting Eliza — which I would keep, because it is interesting — but again, it’s not like she changes the situation in the long run, or questions the values that put Higgins and Eliza at odds. She just feels sorry for the poor girl and thinks her son is a cad, which he is. 

I also don’t like how I moved from Eliza to Shaw by saying that this idea brings us to the biggest rebel of them all: and that’s not true, because there’s no particular reason why Eliza would link us to Shaw. It’s just that I was running out of time and I was tired of analyzing how these characters are or are not rebels; I wanted to get to Shaw and wrap the whole thing up. That idea, that the real rebel is Shaw himself, was the best way I could think of to resolve the difficulty I had (and still have) in figuring out the ending of the play, which seems to ruin every message the play itself could have: Eliza does not join the upper class; Higgins does not soften his misanthropy; British society does not break down its bigotry. The play just sort of ends with this “So that was a thing that happened, 23-skiddoo, let’s go have a drink!” I find it very frustrating. But I pretty much hate my ending more, because I was just starting to open up new ideas about what Shaw’s choices mean, when I just had to stop, because time was running out. So I did the thing I tell students never to do: I brought up new information in the conclusion, and didn’t explore it enough, even though there is a lot to explore there.

But that’s also the good part of this: because the end of this play is a genuinely confusing choice on the part of the playwright, and those choices are absolutely the best things to analyze and figure out. I don’t know if Shaw was really echoing (or prefiguring, since he wrote his almost a century before de la Rocha) Rage Against the Machine, but it’s an interesting thought. If language breaks down, and the norms of literature break down, then the standards of society that oppress Eliza both as a poor speaker of low-class British English, and as a woman, can also break down, because they are just as arbitrary as the other standards. That’s an interesting possibility, one I would like to explore. Did Shaw make Higgins into such a prick because he was trying to criticize all the arrogant middle aged white British men who were surely watching the play? Yeah, maybe; that would be interesting to think about and talk about. I wish I had. Maybe, when my class reads the play, we’ll talk about all of this; and as my students often do, maybe this class will help me figure this out. If they do, I may rewrite this and make it good.

But for now, I’m just going to write on this same prompt using the work I definitely should have used: Fahrenheit 451. I will post that essay tomorrow.

For now, enjoy this song, which I love, but which I forgot entirely was from My Fair Lady. I associate it with a pair of raccoons singing about a La-Z-Boy. And as always in movies like this, please enjoy the absurdity that is a film trying to make Audrey freaking Hepburn seem unattractive if she has dirt on her face. Sure, guys. Sure. Dirty-face-Audrey is super ugly. You bet.

(Also, here is the version with the raccoons, which I still love.)

What’s In a Name?

Dusty 3 Comments

I want to write about the AP exam I scored. But those scores haven’t been released yet, and neither have the examples and so on, which show how the scores were earned; and I don’t want to get in trouble for posting confidential material.

So, without going into too much detail about the exam or the prompt or how a student earned a specific score, I’m going to talk about one general aspect of the exam which I noticed this year more than most: terminology.

In keeping with the theme I seem to have established of talking about my dad, and also of using quotations to center and introduce my thoughts, here is one of my dad’s all-time favorite quotes:

“The map is not the territory, the word is not the thing itself.”

This is from the science fiction novel, The World of Null-A, by A.E. van Vogt. It hasn’t been turned into a meme on the internet — so I’m going to put the cover of the novel here, because it’s awesome.

A.E. van Vogt – The World of Null-A (1948) Review | A Sky of Books and Movies
Wouldn’t you love to live in Purple World? Arches and spires everywhere? STAIRCASES TO NOWHERE?!?

The quote is slightly adapted from a statement originally from Alfred Korzybski, a Polish-American philosopher and engineer, and while van Vogt’s words have not been memed, Korzybski’s have been.

Map And Territory - We Confuse The Map With The Territory

That’s the full quote, and you can see how quickly it makes one’s eyes cross. Here it is made even more confusing by the visuals:

The Map is Not The Territory – Explained in Simple Terms – Welcome to Club Street Post
This was made by someone who does not understand how to explain things.

But that’s okay, here’s the simpler version, complete with standardized background image:

The more observant among you will notice the resemblance to a meme I used in yesterday’s post here.

But really, I prefer this last version, because I also like Watts’s iteration of this — and I love Rene Magritte.

The map is not the territory - Tom McCallum

So the point of this, then, is to recognize the limitations of representation and image — and of language itself. The map is probably the best example, because a map always sacrifices detail for coverage, showing a greater area while not showing everything about that area. If a map showed every detail of the area it depicted, it would be a photograph, not a map — and its value would be limited.

(Though it might be funny sometimes.)

On some level, this shows the difference between “book knowledge” and “world knowledge” — which my students still, still, call “street smarts,” a perfect example of a name that has lasted despite its limitations, which makes it a perfect example of the second half of this statement. If you know the name of a thing, that is analogous to “book knowledge;” and if you understand the thing (which is where I think the quote is going here, to a point about understanding, because certainly with a concrete object there is no doubt that the word could be the thing itself: I’m not sitting in the word “chair” right now.), that is equivalent to the experiential and deeper understanding implied by “street smarts.” Knowing the name for something does not mean you understand that thing, because the word is not the thing itself; again like the map, words reduce specific details in order to gain another value — generally universality, and economy, meaning I can communicate a fair amount of information, to a lot of people, without too many words. If I say I own a black SUV, then you don’t have much detail about my car — but (if you speak English) you have a general understanding of the category of vehicle to which my car belongs, and a general idea of its size and shape and appearance and so on, because we understand what aspects are included in the category “SUV,” and we know the color “black.” Also, as my wife has pointed out many times, with steadily growing annoyance as each year passes, all SUVs look the same — and a large proportion of them are black. But that means, while you can get a general idea of many, many cars with just two words, you can’t really identify those specific cars very well. And you definitely don’t know the things that make my car special, that make my car into my car. Not terribly important to understand the special things about my car, of course; but if you want to understand a person, you need to know much more than their name.

This comes into focus with the AP exam because I teach my students that they don’t really need to know the name of what they are talking about: but they need to understand the thing. This is, clearly, not how all AP teachers instruct their students, because I had MANY essays that used vocabulary the student did not really understand: and it showed. They named things they didn’t really have, because they didn’t understand the thing named. So that I don’t do that, to explain the details lacking in the term “AP exam,” so that you have more understanding of this thing instead of just knowing the name, the essay I scored last month was for the AP Language and Composition exam, which focuses on non-fiction writing, and examines primarily rhetoric. “Rhetoric” is another good example of a word which people know and use without really understanding it, because the connotations of the word have changed; now it mostly comes in a phrase like “empty rhetoric,” and is used to describe someone — usually a politician — who is speaking insincerely, just paying lip service to some idea or audience, without saying anything of substance; or in more extreme cases, using words to lie and manipulate their audience for a nefarious purpose. My preferred definition of rhetoric, the one I teach my students, is: “Using language to achieve a purpose.” What I am doing now in this blog is rhetorical: I am choosing words and using examples that I think will achieve my purpose — in this case to explain my idea, and to a lesser extent, to convince my audience that I am correct in my argument: that knowing the name of a thing is less important than understanding the actual thing.

So in the AP exam on Language and Composition, which focuses on rhetoric — or understanding and explaining how a speaker or writer uses language to achieve their purpose, as when a politician tries to convince an audience to vote for him or her — there are 50 or so multiple choice questions, and three essay questions. This year I scored the second essay question, which is the Rhetorical Analysis question; for this year’s exam (This is not privileged information, by the way; the questions were released right after the exam in May. It’s the answers that are still secret.) they used a commencement speech given at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville by former U.S. poet laureate Rita Dove. The goal of the essay was to “Write an essay that analyzes the rhetorical choices Dove makes to deliver her message about what she wishes for her audience of graduating students.”

Interestingly enough, the AP exam writers have given hints to the students in this instruction, which I’ve taken from the exam. They generally give important context in their instructions, quite intentionally; it’s easier to analyze rhetoric if you understand the context in which the speech or writing was delivered, so knowing that this speech was given at a commencement, at a university, in 2016, gives you a better idea of what is going to be said in the speech — you get the general shape of what is included in the thing named “commencement address.” One of the key aspects of this speech by Dove is both the expectation of what is included in a commencement address, and how she subverts that expectation: and that centers around the term “wish.” That’s the hint in the instruction there, along with the buzzwords “message” and “audience,” which are commonly part of a study of rhetoric and of rhetorical analysis.

Okay, that wasn’t interesting. I’ve lost you here, I realize. Let me use fewer words and just give you the general gist of my point: when students were analyzing Dove’s rhetoric, they did much better if they explained what she was doing and why, but didn’t know the proper name for her strategy; some of them knew the name of the strategy — or of a strategy — but couldn’t really explain it. They had the name, but not the thing itself.

Partly that’s because the study of rhetoric is very old, and thus has an enormous amount of terminology attached to it: much of it based on Latin and Greek roots, which makes the words sound really smart to modern speakers and readers of American English. It’s cool to use the words “antithesis” and “juxtaposition” and “zeugma,” so students remember the words and use them for that reason. I think it is also partly because a number of AP classes focus on remembering the word for something, rather than knowing the thing itself, because lists of words are easier to teach and easier to memorize and easier to test. Partly it’s because students under pressure try to impress teachers with the things they can do, to dazzle us and make us not notice the things they can’t do — like actually explain the thing they named.

Again, I don’t want to get into too many specifics on this particular essay because it hasn’t been released yet and I don’t want to get in trouble, so let me just give general examples.

There’s a rhetorical device called “polysyndeton.” (Cool name, isn’t it? Little annoying that the two y‘s are pronounced differently…) It means the use of more conjunctions than would be strictly necessary for grammar. If I listed all of my favorite activities and I said, “I love reading and writing and music and games and spending time with my pets and eating delicious food and taking walks with my wife,” that would be an example of polysyndeton. And if you were writing an essay about my rhetoric (Please don’t), you could certainly say that I used polysyndeton, and quote that sentence as an example. And if you used that sentence, it would be a correct example, and the person scoring your essay would recognize that you know what polysyndeton is, and you correctly defined and identified it, which is surely worth some points. Right?

But what does polysyndeton do? What did I do when I wrote the sentence that way, instead of, for instance, “I love reading, writing, music, games, spending time with my pets, eating delicious food, and taking walks with my wife.”? The ability to understand that, and to explain that — and, most importantly for the AP exam and for rhetorical analysis, the ability to explain how the effect I achieved through the use of polysyndeton helps to deliver my message, to achieve my purpose — that’s what matters. Not knowing the name.

(It’s a bad example here, by the way, because I made up the sentence just to show what the word meant, so it isn’t really part of my larger purpose; the purpose of using polysyndeton there was just to show what the hell polysyndeton is. And sure, I guess it was effective for that.)

The worst offenders here, on this year’s exam as in most, are the terms logos, pathos, and ethos, which are words used to describe certain kinds of argument, and also certain aspects of rhetoric. The words are Greek, and were chosen and defined by Aristotle; most rhetoric teachers at least mention them, usually, I imagine, as a way to show that there are many different ways to win an argument and to persuade an audience. That’s why I mention them in my class. But while a lot of students know the words, they don’t understand the thing itself, and so they find items in a passage they’re analyzing that looks like it belongs in one of those categories. Like statistics, which they identify as logos arguments, meaning arguments that appeal to reason and logic, which is indeed one way that statistics can be used. Dove uses a statistic in her speech, and a raft of student writers identified that as an instance of logos. The problem is that it isn’t logos, partly because it’s not a real statistic — she uses the phrase “150% effort,” and at one point lowers that to “75% effort” and “50% effort;” but at no time is she trying to present a reasoned and logical argument through the use of those numbers, which of course don’t come from any study or anything like that — and even more, because she’s not really trying to persuade her audience.

She was telling her audience an anecdote. And that’s where I ran into a stumbling block, over and over again in reading and scoring these essays: just because students know the name for something doesn’t mean they understand the thing: and just because students remember the name for something doesn’t mean they remember how to spell it.

Let me note, here and now, that these students are brilliant and courageous for even trying to do this damn test, for even trying to write three college-level essays in two hours AFTER answering 45 difficult multiple-choice questions in one hour. Also, because this was written under pressure in a short time frame, and with almost certainly only one draft, mistakes are inevitable and should be entirely ignored when they don’t get in the way of understanding. I knew what every one of these students were trying to say, so I ignored their spelling, in terms of scoring the essay. I also ignored their generally atrocious handwriting, not least because mine is as bad as any of theirs and usually worse.

I just thought this was a fine example of knowing a term but not really knowing it. Ya know?

(Also I apologize for the image quality. Just trying to make a point. And the picture is not the point.)

The first one gets it right. Another one gets it right — but spells “English” as “Enligh.” Also please note the spelling of “repetition” which students repeatedly struggled with.

Fun, huh? I scored 695 essays this year. Last year it was over a thousand. And that exam passage also used anecdotes.

I’m really not trying to mock the students; just using this fact to show that knowing a term doesn’t mean you understand the term, because the word is not the thing itself. By the same token, knowing the spelling doesn’t mean you know the term, or that you understand the thing itself; which is why we ignore misspellings in scoring these essays. I think understanding the thing is much more important than knowing the word — and I’m a word guy. I love words. (Flibbertigibbet! Stooge! Cyclops! Wheeeee!) But I’m a word guy because I think this world is magnificent and incredible, and I want to understand as much of it as possible; words help me to do that, and to share my understanding of the world we live in. That complicated image I used above to show how some people can’t explain things well? Here, I’ll bring it down here so you don’t have to be confused which one I’m talking about.

This one.

This makes a few important points, even if it makes them badly. I do like how it goes from an image of the Earth, to a jumbled collage of colors inside the head, to the one word “world.” I think that, once you can follow it, makes this point well, how much translation and simplification happens between observed reality and the words we use to represent them. Though it should also lead to another head, of a listener, and show how that one word activates their own jumbled collage of colors in their head represented by the word “world.” (Far be it from me to suggest making this more complicated, though.) Because communication happens between two minds, and both minds contribute to the communication: which is why language works despite this simplifying process.

I do also like the statement at the bottom of the image: “Change the map, you change the world.” (Even though I hate how they capitalized and punctuated it.) Because that’s the last point here: while words are not the things they represent, they are incredibly important to our understanding of the world and our reality. Because we think and communicate in words. Not exclusively: my wife, for one, is deeply eloquent in communicating with images; my dogs can communicate with a look; musicians communicate with sounds that are not words. And so on. But language is our best and most effective form of interpersonal communication: and also one of the main ways we catalogue and recall our knowledge inside our heads. So getting the names of things right is incredibly important to our ability to use the information we know, and to communicate it to others. And what is the most important factor in getting the names of things right? Understanding the things we are talking about.

Because a rose by any other name would smell as sweet — but if you want people to know you are talking about one of these, you better call it a rose.

How to Say Rose in Different Languages | 1800Flowers Petal Talk

And for my sake, please spell it right.

In Memoriam

Dusty 1 Comment
Tis Better to have Loved and Lost #Inspiration #Tennyson – Poems for Warriors

I am now always suspicious of quotations that I find on the internet. Too many of them get misquoted and misattributed; particularly when they are turned into lovely images with flowers and weathered wood in the background, as this one is.

Like this, for instance.

Be not afraid of going slowly, be afraid only of standing still. – FS News Online

There are many iterations of this one, which does in fact seem to be a Chinese proverb. Though the other images don’t have a baby sea turtle in them, so, y’know — lame. But definitely a Chinese proverb, at least according to the majority of the Google results.

Or wait: maybe it’s from a fantasy series by an author named Jeff Wheeler. Who created a culture named Dawanjir. (To be fair, the series is strongly influenced by Chinese culture, according to Goodreads. But still. This meme just says it is a Dawanjir proverb, and then slaps the author’s name under it.)

Jeff Wheeler Quote: “Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still. – Dawanjir
Also, where’s the turtle?

Or maybe it was this Joshua Muax guy?

I'm not afraid of growing slowly,as long as i'm not standing: OwnQuotes.com
I love that this website is called “Ownquotes.”

No, wait, I’m wrong — it was Benjamin Franklin who said it.

Benjamin Franklin quote: By improving yourself, the world is made better. Be not...

(Benjamin Franklin is probably the one person most frequently given internet credit for stuff he never said.)

This one is from a 1907 book of sermons by William L. Watkinson
This one’s from a 1919 religious advice publication, written by Rev. H.K. Williams.
PosterEnvy - Ben Franklin Healthy Quote - NEW Humorous Nutrition Poster (he039)
This one’s just mean.

But it turns out that, in fact, my first meme has it right:

Alfred Lord Tennyson - 'Tis better to have loved and lost...

That is the actual quote, and it was originally written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in a poem (a VERY LONG poem) he wrote after a good friend, Arthur Henry Hallum, died young. The poem is called “In Memoriam A.H.H.” And I would quote it here, but — seriously, it’s over 180 pages long. It’s here, if you’d like to read it.

All of this is a very roundabout way to come to my question: is this true? Is it better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all?

I started thinking about this last week, when I went to visit my father and help out with the memorial for his wife. My dad’s wife Linda (who was, of course, my stepmother, but I never ever called her that or thought of her that way) passed away in February, from complications from paraplegia, which she had lived with for about two and a half years. She and my father had been together at that point for thirty years, give or take; they had been married for almost twenty-five years.

No photo description available.

Linda’s passing was hard. The two and a half years before that had been extremely hard, on both Linda and my father. The four months after her death were very difficult for Dad, as well. And so at the end of all of that, I certainly found myself wondering: was it worth it?

I won’t presume to even try to answer this for my father; I only bring up his love and loss to explain why my thoughts turned down such a cynical and morbid path. When I was thinking about this, I was thinking about myself and my wife: we also have been together for almost thirty years, and married for nearly twenty. I hope and expect to be with her until one of us passes: and that thought was the one that started me on this track.

Let’s be clear: the answer is yes. Without a doubt, it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. I would never give up my wife, or my life with my wife, no matter how difficult the end of our lives together may be. And I have some idea, now, just how difficult it may be, for one or both of us — but that doesn’t matter, because suffering would never wash out all the incredible happiness and the years – decades — of simple contentment which my marriage has brought me. I do not undervalue contentment, as I hope you don’t, either — as many people do when they think about love, and how love changes from fiery passion to simple human affection and connection. The novel The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, with which I have tormented several years’ worth of AP Literature classes (The book is good, but it’s written in Victorian English, which is not my students’ cup of tea; and the main character is intentionally obnoxious in some ways, which makes it hard to sympathize with her. Actually, all the characters are obnoxious, which generally makes students want to give up on the book.), features a protagonist who believes that life should be mad passion, extreme highs and lows, especially in love; this leads her to unfortunate decisions and a bad ending. My romance has stayed more passionate than many, I think (Mainly because my wife is SUPER hot); but even if it fades to simple companionship, I think that would be a wonderful thing to have in my twilight years.

More to the point, there are people who avoid romance and particularly commitment because they believe that the fire fades, that the passion diminishes; and that is somehow sad — and therefore they avoid love because they don’t want to suffer that diminishment. For them, tis better to have never loved at all, than to have loved and then lost that love, at least the passionate part of that love. And those people are clearly wrong.

But here’s the thing: I don’t know if they are. They don’t know if they’re right. Tennyson didn’t know if he was right: because there’s no way to compare the two states of being. If you have loved and lost, then you can’t have never loved; if you’ve never loved, then you can’t have loved and lost.

I’m not trying to logic my way into a clever Gotcha! to disprove Lord Tennyson; even I’m not that annoying, I hope. It’s not that we can’t live two lives in order to compare them: it’s that we can’t possibly know what our lives would be like if things went differently. I think about this a fair amount, not least because I’m a fantasy writer who reads and teaches science fiction as well, and so I have spent more than my fair share of hours thinking about time travel and alternate history. I’ve read (and taught) about the butterfly effect, and about the multiverse; I wrote two books about a time-traveling Irish pirate (They’re right here, and I swear to you that Book III will be out by spring of next year), for Pete’s sake. And in my own life, I have thought extensively about the slow accrual of causal events, themselves too insignificant to recognize, which add up to something significant, in terms of my life with my love: because if I had not been a screwup in high school, and therefore lacked the GPA to get into a four-year school; if my father had not lived and worked in California and had a friend who taught physics at UCSC, who mentioned to my father that UCSC had a creative writing program; if I had not gone to the community college after high school in order to transfer to UCSC to study writing; if my counselor there had gotten my transfer credits right and I had finished at community college in two years instead of three; and if I had not been wearing a button that said “A dragon on the roof keeps burglars away” and thus gotten into a conversation with a fellow gamer nerd who became my friend and eventually helped me get a job distributing student IDs at the school — I would never have met my wife. All those ridiculous coincidences had to happen in just that way for me to find the love of my life. And also, let me say, there are just as many on her side: just as many ways that her path could have taken her far away from me. Which would have changed both of our lives.

For the better? For the worse?

Who knows? Who can possibly say?

One way it could have gone differently would have been if I had been able to succeed as a student in high school. I got my first Ds and Fs in my freshman and sophomore years, mainly because I did not have study habits. But I developed those study habits, quickly, when I went to community college; so certainly I could have had them in high school. If I had stayed in my honors tracks and earned good grades, I might have followed most of my friends, who went to Ivy League or similar top-tier schools. I might have ended up a lawyer, as many of my friends in high school did. I love argument and I write and read well, so it would make sense. My oldest friend did that, and he started his own law firm; could I have joined him in that? Could it be McGuire, Humphrey and Associates, LLC? (No question Josh would get first billing, by the way.)

Would I be happier that way? Ignoring for the moment the obvious other possibility that goes along with that alternate track, which is that I would have met and fallen in love and presumably married someone else; and though she would not be as perfect and wonderful as my wife is — because there is no one as perfect and wonderful as my wife — I had fallen in love before I met my wife, and so I could probably fall in love with someone else. But forget that: the question is, would I be happy if I never fell in love, or at least never married?

My brother Marvin is three years older than me, so he’ll be 52 this month. And though I don’t know all the details of his romantic life (and don’t want to pry), I know that he has never lived with a woman and never married a woman. (Also I know that he is not gay, which wouldn’t matter to me in the slightest either way, but one of my favorite stories is from when Marvin had dinner with our dad and Linda, and after a prolonged silence at one point, Dad and Linda burst out with, “You know, it’s okay if you’re gay.” To which Marvin responded, in some way, “Thank you? But I’m not?” Which is a scene that still cracks me up. But Dad and Linda thought they should say that because Marvin had not brought home any women to meet them, and so they made a reasonable assumption.) Marvin is exceptionally accomplished: his degree is in music composition, and after he graduated he became a digital editor in a recording studio, teaching himself how to handle the equipment and the tasks involved; and then after that, he became a self-taught software engineer and web designer, which he now does professionally — all the while keeping up his music; he sings and plays several instruments, in addition to writing and arranging in several different genres. (Also, he can ride a unicycle off-road.) And the question has to be asked: would he have been able to do all that if he had gotten into a long-term romantic relationship? Would he have wanted to do the same things? Or would he have made entirely different choices?

To the point: my brother is essentially a happy man. I am also essentially a happy man. Though our father has not been all that happy for the last few years, for a very long time before that, he was an extremely happy man — and, now that he has moved through the most immediate grief, and reached the closure of a memorial service, I think he can be happy again. Our mother, by the way, has been single since she and Dad divorced in the early 90s; and she is also a happy woman, most of the time. She had one proposal, some years ago, from a man she had been dating; she turned him down. And went happily on her way.

So is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? Frankly, I don’t think it’s possible to decide.

What is definitely true is this: once one has found love, real love, love that brings joy and contentment, love that lasts as long as life does and then even beyond that: there is nothing that would persuade one to give that love up. Not even the knowledge that some people might be happier living without that kind of commitment, that kind of potential turmoil, and without the devastating grief that waits at the end for all of us who love another person. I love my wife, and I always will; and that is who I am. Would I be happier if I had never met her? No: because that would not be me. That would be some other dude. Maybe a happy dude, but not me. My life became mine when that gorgeous woman came up to me in the cafeteria at Cabrillo Community College and said, “Hey — do you like gum?”

In truth, I love it. And her. Forever.

No photo description available.

The Festival of Books

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I meant to do this sometime over this past week, but honestly? I was EXHAUSTED.

The Festival of Books was last weekend. I had a booth with my two wonderful partners and fellow authors, Lisa S. Watson and Amanda M. Cetas. Together we are:

This is our second year all together; Lisa and I shared a booth in 2019, as well, with the amazing book editor/writing coach Adriana King. This year, like last year, we had the very same booth, in the same spot (which is not really a corner, though we got a corner booth; but it’s okay, because the two open sides give all three of us room to display — and as you can see, Amanda has a LOT of stuff to show: two young adult historical novels, a teaching guide for them, an RPG sourcebook, and a fantastic illustrated children’s book about a troll who smells a bad smell. That’s a handmade knitted version of the troll, standing on the right side of Amanda’s display. Lisa’s display of poetry, short fiction, and one of her novels is visible in the group shot, on the left side of the table), and this year, like last year, went pretty damn well.

This year, like last year, was pretty anxiety-inducing, especially since I only sold nine books the first day. Nine books is wonderful, and I’m extremely happy when anyone just stops by the booth and lets me talk about Damnation Kane; but the booth and everything is pretty expensive, and nine books was not going to cover the cost. Fortunately I did better the second day — twice as well, in fact — and so the Festival was, once again, a success. Even if I hadn’t sold any books, it would be joyful to see so very many people who love books, all in one place; and the fact that I got to reconnect with a few people who had bought my books in the past — and one fellow pirate afficionado, the remarkable Jack McDowell, who created and personifies Captain Rat (Who will someday cross paths with Damnation Kane, I have no doubt) — and got to see friends and colleagues and students, both present and past, makes the whole thing an absolute blast.

But it’s tiring.

It started early, the wearing out: not least because this whole two-plus months of 2023 has been tough. But also, I tried to finish my third Damnation Kane book for this Festival, and didn’t get it done; and then I tried to publish my vampire novel Brute, and didn’t get that done either. And then I went to get bookmarks printed, with my name and website address on them, but when I went to pick them up Friday afternoon, the shop was closed. Turns out the hours posted on the web are not their actual hours. AND I tried to get my personal domain, theodenhumphrey.com, to point to this site, since this is going to be my main online hub for the foreseeable future — but doing so killed my email, which is hosted by the same company. So there was a bunch of crap to deal with before the Festival even started.

And then there was the Festival itself: standing by the booth all day, for eight hours a day, is not easy. (Also my pirate hat does not shield me from the sun: I got sunburned on both ears. On my ears! Ridiculous. And itchy.) Greeting people who approach, and trying to keep my energy up and be positive with them, even though my inner introvert is screaming the whole time, is even more not easy. (By the way: after three years of selling a pirate book at this Festival, I have learned this: older Caucasian men who approach because they see the cover image of the ship, and who take a minute to read my sign, do not want my book. They are often military veterans, and almost invariably looking for accurate historical maritime fiction. As soon as they see “Fantasy” and “Time travel” they walk away. No big deal, of course, but I don’t even try to talk to them beyond a polite greeting. [There are exceptions, which is always nice; I like people who like my story idea, whoever they are.]) Doing all this on a weekend in between two weeks of teaching?

Oof.

So while I meant to post this on Sunday last week, and then told myself to do it every day of the last seven days, I’m doing it now.

On the plus side, this is now Spring Break at my school, and so I plan to add another post over the week sometime, with a proper essay — and then another one next Sunday, so I can keep up with my posting rate, if not exactly my schedule.

Also, thanks to my incredible wife’s brilliant idea, I set out a mailing list signup, and I got people who signed up — which means as soon as I post this, I’m going to send out my very first author’s newsletter. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, please use the Contact link on this page, at the top just under Home and About. I’ll be happy to put your name on the list.

I will also state here, categorically, that Brute will be published soon; and that the third volume of The Adventures of Damnation Kane will be published as well, before another year passes. I swear it.

Thank you to everyone who bought a book, everyone who signed up for the mailing list, everyone who stopped to talk to me and complimented the idea of a time-traveling Irish pirate — and thank you to everyone who came out to celebrate books. And the biggest thank you of all to Lisa, the Poet, and Amanda, the Pilgrim, for sharing this whole experience with me.

See you next year!

We’re out of order: this is, from left to right, the Pirate, the Poet, and the Pilgrim.

Please check out Amanda’s books and website here: https://www.amandamcetas.com/

You can find Lisa’s work here: and all of it is fantastic. Lisa S. Watson