Dear Jodie Foster: I got it (and it wouldn’t matter if I didn’t)

Posted on April 25, 2016 | Leave a comment

Update:  An article today  in The New York Times confirms–Jodie Foster’s REALLY FAMOUS 2013 Golden Globes speech was a scripted speech.  I was right that it felt intentionally structured.  I was right.  Did I mention I was right? Original post below:

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It’s been a long time since I watched an award show, but my husband was getting our son to bed last night, so I got to turn on the Golden Globes, which has long been my favorite awards show because it never seems to take itself too seriously, and just enough big stars always show up to make it fun.

I missed the beginning, so I missed some good Fey-Poehler moments, but thank-you universe, I got to see George Clooney canoodling Amy Poehler during the best actress in a comedy category moment.

And I got to watch all of Jodie Foster’s speech. Live.

And it made me cry. In a good way. Because it’s 2013, I said something on Facebook almost immediately, and then read a comment and HOLY CRAP–that speech was an instant controversy in a way something can be instant controversy only now, with all our immediate access and RESPOND RESPOND RESPOND modes.  I’m glad I wasn’t looking at f.b. or Twitter when she was speaking, because the people complaining might have colored the speech for me.

It’s a pretty Rorschachy cultural moment, apparently. People who watched the same speech I did thought it was incoherent, fragmented, confusing, and inappropriate. On Twitter and Facebook, people have said she was drunk. On drugs. Unhinged. Or sad. Perhaps in need of professional help.

So far, the only article I’ve read that gets it right (from my perspective) is this one from Salon, “Jodie Foster Comes Out, Gritting Her Teeth,” and even there–I thought she was having more fun than that.

In an attempt to figure out why people are responding so differently, I’ve watched the speech several times and analyzed the transcript. Here’s what I think–it was the tone and the pace and the lack of transitions that made people holler “incoherent!” If you watch the speech again, knowing what’s coming, or look at the transcript, it doesn’t seem so wacky. Or even very disorganized or fragmented.

Some caveats for my analysis: I love Jodie Foster. She could pretty much do or say whatever and I would be fine.

Caveat #2: the speech did feel zoomy to me, sort of flight-of-fancy-paced, but HELLO. I like that kind of zooming, that kind of doesn’t-feel-structured-but-it-is feeling.

What did we expect her to do? I suppose we would have expected a brief “thank you, this town has been very good to me, etc.” speech. Something like her Oscar speech, when she won for The Accused in 1988, a 141-word snippet in which she also thanks her mother. She said, “There are very few things: there’s love and work and family. And this movie is so special to us because it was all three of those things. And I’d like to thank all of my families, the tribes that I come from.”

In contrast, last night’s speech was more than 1,100 words. Nearly ten times as long. Lots of time to do lots more.

And I do know from incoherence. I’ve been teaching first and second-year college students for 25 years now. There’s incoherence (no main point, supporting points that don’t match main point, supporting points that don’t connect to each other), and then there’s subtlety.  I also teach creative writing, including creative nonfiction. There are ways to express ourselves that meander, that don’t add up to incoherence. I think Jodie Foster is more akin to Mary Paumier Jone’s “Meander” than a first-year disorganized essay, or a “bizarre” or “incoherent rant,” as many people are labeling the speech.

What she did, as I outline it, is the following:

  • Start with an insider joke (“Well, for all of you ‘SNL’ fans, I’m 50! I’m 50!”)
  • Thank the person who introduced her (“I want to thank you for everything: for your bat-crazed, rapid-fire brain, the sweet intro. I love you and Susan and I am so grateful that you continually talk me off the ledge when I go on and foam at the mouth and say, ‘I’m done with acting, I’m done with acting, I’m really done, I’m done, I’m done.’” MORE ON THIS LATER. IT IS KEY.)
  • Comment on winning a Lifetime Achievement Award (““Trust me, 47 years in the film business is a long time….”)
  • Announce that she is going to pull a rabbit out of a hat (“So while I’m here being all confessional, I guess I have a sudden urge to say something that I’ve never really been able to air in public.”)
  • Thwart our expectations (“I’m single!”)
  • Explain why she’s thwarting our expectations (After a weird moment without audio–I thought it was my TV, but the ABC transcript says “audio went out,” she picks up with “…be a big coming-out speech tonight because I already did my coming out about a thousand years ago back in the Stone Age….”)
  • Comment on culture in a joking way (“But now I’m told, apparently, that every celebrity is expected to honor the details of their private life with a press conference, a fragrance and a prime-time reality show. You know, you guys might be surprised, but I am not Honey Boo Boo Child. No, I’m sorry, that’s just not me….)
  • Comment on culture in a serious way (““But seriously, if you had been a public figure from the time that you were a toddler, if you’d had to fight for a life that felt real and honest and normal against all odds, then maybe you too might value privacy above all else. Privacy.”  That BUT SERIOUSLY does count as a transition, btw.)
  • Impart some wisdom (“There are a few secrets to keeping your psyche intact over such a long career. The first, love people and stay beside them.”)
  • Thank people who have helped her (“That table over there, 222, way out in Idaho, Paris, Stockholm, that one, next to the bathroom with all the unfamous faces, the very same faces for all these years.”)
  • Conclude (“I will continue to tell stories, to move people by being moved, the greatest job in the world. It’s just that from now on, I may be holding a different talking stick. And maybe it won’t be as sparkly, maybe it won’t open on 3,000 screens, maybe it will be so quiet and delicate that only dogs can hear it whistle. But it will be my writing on the wall. Jodie Foster was here, I still am, and I want to be seen, to be understood deeply and to be not so very lonely. Thank you, all of you, for the company. Here’s to the next 50 years.”)

What’s so fragmented about that? Just because she didn’t say, “Next, I would like to comment on culture in a joking way.”  Really? We needed that? “And finally I would like to conclude.”

I always tell students that transitions are for readers. They’re kind. They’re considerate. Jodie Foster wasn’t being so terribly kind and considerate, I suppose–maybe that’s why people actually seem offended by the PERCEIVED lack of coherence. We thought she was nice! We thought she loved us and wanted us along!

One reason I think this seemed incoherent is not because she was incoherent; I think it’s because she is so freaking smart. Who the hell tries to comment on culture and impart wisdom at the Golden Globes? Jode.

I don’t know that we’ll ever know if this was ad-libbed or totally planned or partly ad-libbed and partly planned or how sober she was. We just heard her thoughts on privacy, after all.  But it stands up pretty well to analysis.

And it’s hilarious in some ways, even though people were mostly NOT laughing at the right places (not at the Golden Globes and judging from Twitter, not in a lot of homes).  If we go with the notion that the biggest component of humor is surprise, we can see she was going for it again and again–starting with “I’m 50!” and tossing out the almost Schecky Green style of “my fellow actors out there, we’ve giggled through love scenes, we’ve punched and cried and spit and vomited and blown snot all over one another — and those are just the costars I liked.” (Someone should have done a rim-shot. Maybe if she’d slowed down and said, “bah dum bum” we’d have gotten it, but no, she was ZOOMING.)

Then she moved on  “I’m single” and then with “I’m not Honey Boo Boo,” which, if she’d allowed us to linger, could have taken us to layers upon layers of serious hilarity. Jodie Foster, beautiful, in a shiny dress that matched her great blue eyes, fit, strong, brilliant, no she is not Honey Boo Boo. But wow. If she did have a reality show….But we didn’t get time to picture it and giggle to ourselves because she went zooming on to “I’d have to spank Daniel Craig’s bottom just to stay on the air” (which he did laugh at–another reason to love him).

Then there’s all the deep irony of 1)coming out by thanking your longtime lover when HEY!  You just told us you weren’t coming out!  WAIT A MINUTE!  and 2)sending a message to your mother who apparently has dementia and is close to death, which is a pretty goddam intimate thing to do when you were just lecturing us on PRIVACY, 3)and also, there were your sons, which paparazzi are pretty crappy at grabbing snaps of, beautiful boys, right there at your table when you were just lecturing us on PRIVACY….

[And this actually wasn’t the first time she “came out” in public. I’m looking for the link, but she thanked Cydney publicly at least once before and called her her wife–and if her being a lesbian were a secret at all, it was a pretty open secret. I know some people have been angry at her for years for not “coming out” in a big way, but obviously, she wanted to do it her way.]

Caveat #3: I love Robert Downey Jr’s performance in Home for the Holidays, and Foster’s commentary on the DVD of that movie makes it sound like he ad-libbed almost constantly, and that she loved it.

So maybe I wasn’t as startled at the pace and lack of transitions in the speech because Robert Downey Jr. introduced her. He set the tone, and he set the pace. He was ironic almost all the way through, and silly, and almost no one laughed, it seemed, when he praised her for her philanthropy and the Jodie Foster Aquatic Pavilion, which he followed up quickly with a picture of her face photo-shopped onto Bo Derek’s famous “10” shot, with the caption, “Let’s Get Wet!”

He didn’t pause to let any of his jokes sink in. He just plowed on through.

And when she thanked him, she specifically mentioned his “bat-crazed, rapid-fire brain,” and “the sweet intro.”  You know what? The intro wasn’t sweet. It was, I trust, sweetly intended, since they’re friends, but it was mostly for her I think, an individualized, Robert Downey Jr.-ized chunk of what she would find funny.

She just picked up that baton and ran with it, and if we couldn’t keep up, well–we don’t get to hang out with them, do we? We’re not in their league.

Mel Gibson did look a little lost. I’d rather not be in his category of lost-ness.

But it says something, doesn’t it, that the two actors she chose to have at her table are not known for their clear-headedness and decorum? I take from this that she is loyal as the day is long and she has a fondness for the crazy. Both traits I happen to share.

I did feel dizzy at the end of her speech, no doubt, and the “I may never be on stage again” was a very weird moment, but we got a lot of Jodie Foster last night, more than I ever thought we’d get. Just looking at who was at her table–that was a lot, by itself.

She’s been in the public so publicly, so long, I’m not going to say “we got the real Jodie Foster!” There are layers upon layers upon layers there.

But in a room where she feels at home, where she can take whatever tone she wants and zoom however fast she wants, she ended with good news, “I will continue to tell stories, to move people by being moved,” and what I took to be the storyteller’s basic credo: “Jodie Foster was here, I still am, and I want to be seen, to be understood deeply and to be not so very lonely.”

She finished with “Thank you, all of you, for the company. Here’s to the next 50 years.”

That’s why it matters, right, why it was bothering me for people to react to the speech so differently than I did? Because I was, very distantly, keeping her company. I’m 47. Beginning with her picture on the Coppertone bottle (and I could write a whole blog about Coppertone, the very name working as a transporter, and if I ever smell it–wow, I’m gone), she has been a part of my life.

She was never not there.

I wish her well and I loved, loved, loved that speech.

Zoom zoom!

_____

UPDATE: Here’s a story from 2007 when Jodie Foster thanked Cydney Bernard. She isn’t quoted as having said “wife,” so I’m either remembering a different story, or remembering this one wrong, but this is from five years ago.

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Posted in Daring Greatly, Folks I Loves, Writing

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Faithless Delegate, Brokered Heart

Posted on April 8, 2016 | 1 comment

Being a battleground state is exhausting.
My red counties, my blue counties,
my precincts, my wards–they spar and spit
at each other, they tally slights, they want revenge.

The answer to Rodney King’s question is simply we can’t
get along. We don’t even all
get to vote, and still the turnout is huger
than it has been since the early 70s. But

when it comes right down to the chad of it,
my brain and all my good habits
don’t stand a fucking chance against
the power of illogic. This panic attack

is a faithless delegate on the convention floor,
voting for whomever he pleases,
my heart littered with campaign trash. I won’t
demand a recount. I just want everything quiet again.

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Posted in Anxiety/Depression/Yuck, Bloem or Pog, Burnout, NaPoWriMo, On Wisconsin, Poetry, Politics, Uncategorized

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And also I look like Bernie Sanders

Posted on April 3, 2016 | 9 comments

Even with my super-short, super-straight bangs, I was an adorable child:

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Kindergarten Cute

Whatever body-image issues I’ve developed since then, there’s no question in my mind I was cute then.  When I was a baby, one or two of my uncles (depends on who’s telling the story) said there should be a “Marnie Doll” because I was cuter than a Kewpie Doll.

When I was a baby, my parents and brother and I got one of the two good pictures of the four of us we’ve ever managed to get:

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There’s also a picture of us in the 80s that’s pretty good. But in general, the four of us don’t photograph well together.

Recently, my Great-Uncle Logan passed away, and my cousin Jewell is going through his photo albums to divide up the pictures. She’ll give the originals to my mother, but she scanned this one and sent it to me:

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This is generally how it goes when the four of us have our picture taken. The looking in different directions. The some of us all swanky and others not so much. In this one, the squinting. Still, I’m loving this picture. First, my mother looks remarkably like one of my younger cousins & I always find those resemblance moments compelling.

And also I look like Bernie Sanders. When I posted this on Facebook, a few people tried to tell me I was actually cute, but I said, no, no–I was a cute child, but this is not a cute picture of me.

Thus, my thoughts when I saw it were “I look like Bernie Sanders” and “Mom looks like Jamie” and also “Mom looks so cool!”

When my Mom saw the picture, she was trying to figure out what year it was.

When my brother saw the picture, he agreed that I looked like Bernie Sanders, but pointed out it was before Dad went to Vietnam–he knew because Dad didn’t have much of  a tan.

Dad agreed it was before Vietnam because he came back from that war with a higher rank and medals.

The Bernie Sanders pic made us all remember the following picture, the first one of all of us when Dad came back from Vietnam (Mom’s standing behind Dad–you can see her hair a little–again, challenging to get a good pic of all four of us).

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I don’t know if the four of us were ever happier than we were in that picture. In that moment.

After that, we would have two adolescences and career challenges and the ordinary life stresses of keeping it all together as adults and then weathering deaths in the family and now my father’s memory is so spotty that he’s confabulating–remembering things that didn’t happen. When he saw the Bernie Sanders pic, he talked about remembering seeing it before, but Mom and I are pretty sure we never saw it. That Uncle Logan snapped it, and it went in their photo albums, and we’re just now seeing it.

That’s the thing about confabulation–it’s hard to know if I should play along (at which point I almost feel like I’m gaslighting myself) or challenge Dad (which is troubling, since the confabulated memory seems as real to him as any other). And in this case, does it really matter? Probably not.

But if we skip to the end of the war and focus on the picture of Dad holding Brian and me, Mom right behind, that white car in the drive–we’re on Gran’mommy and Gran’daddy’s back porch, in their old house on the farm (before the new house, before they had to sell the farm).

If we focus on that picture, well, it’s just pure bliss. I’m sure of it.

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Posted in Family, Opdyke, Searching, Uncategorized

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Purgatory, Kentucky (5/7)

Posted on February 8, 2016 | 4 comments

I like to have a quiet place to pray,
and sitting, waiting, in my truck, well that’s
about as quiet as it ever gets
because the radio died in ’88.
When a radio dies where does its music go?
They say sound waves never really go away.
I don’t understand what all I know
about that. I guess I believe that sound’s a wave.
I guess I believe there are tiny bones in my ear,
a hammer and an anvil and a horseshoe? Is that right?
I wonder if they’ll be taking questions there.
I wonder if it’s always kind of twilight.
There’s the ferry now—I guess it’s time
I got myself in gear and got in line.

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Ferry on Highway 169 somewhere in Kentucky (a Creative Commons shot from Edlitmus on Flickr)

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Posted in Bloem or Pog, Car Sonnets, Creativity, Poetry, Purgatory Kentucky, Uncategorized, Writing

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David Bowie, RIP

Posted on January 11, 2016 | Leave a comment

There’s so much to say.  I wasn’t ready for this death.  I hope I can say more at some point.  In the meantime, I’ll re-run a little poem I wrote when he released “Walking the Dead” a couple of years ago–a song and album for which I was so grateful. I hadn’t even realized how much I’d needed a new one from him.

_____

Bowie’s Voice

starched linen right when
it’s not so stiff

piece of paper twisting
in a breeze

sheet of metal
a thin sheet
its sound waves
emerging at the quiet snap
of bending this way
and then that

Bowie’s voice
in “Where Are We Now”
quavery
elegant
sad

exactly how we ought to speak
to the dead, were we to speak
to the dead, were we dead,
were we out walking the dead.

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What’s Waiting on the Other Side of Turmoil?

Posted on November 26, 2015 | 1 comment

–a Thanksgiving poem in a difficult time,
ending with a paraphrase of Julian of Norwich
which also contains a reference to Husker Du

 

What’s waiting on the other side of turmoil?
We can hope, but the ugly truth is we don’t know
if all will be well and every everything will be well.

We’re partial to our own peculiar ordeal.
Our depth of field’s so shallow it can’t show
what’s waiting on the other side of turmoil.

It’s hard to line up the practical with the theological.
Would Julian say, if she got her car stuck in the snow,
“all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well?”

I bet she sometimes just muttered “oh well.”
I bet she had her doubts a mothering God controlled
what’s waiting on the other side of turmoil,

the gruesome news, the shit at work, the hell
through which we make each other go and go and go.
If all will be well and every everything will be well,

the obvious question is when? Does anyone know?
Could one tiny seed of calm actually grow?
What’s waiting on the other side of turmoil?
When will all be well? Will every everything be well?

_____

It does seem to me the setting on turmoil is turned way up lately.  But this Thanksgiving I am trying to nurture little seeds of calm where I can.

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Vanessa Quivertail when she was a baby kitteh.

 

 

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Posted in Bloem or Pog, Family, God Stuff, Searching, Uncategorized, UW System, UW-Richland, Writing

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Bread to the Wise

Posted on November 1, 2015 | Leave a comment

It’s the story of our times: turmoil and reorganization at my job. Survivor’s guilt. Wanting to get a t-shirt or a lapel pin that says, “I know how lucky I am to have a good job.”

But here’s how my brain works–I comfort myself with wisdom literature.

Ecclesiastes is my favorite book of the Bible after Habakkuk and Mark. (Actually I don’t know what my favorite books of the Bible are–I typically hate lists like that. But those three would be in my top ten.)

So this verse occurred to me today: Ecclesiastes 9:11
“Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the skillful; but time and chance happen to them all.”

Sometimes the right person loses their job and the right person gets hired for the new structure.

But a lot of times, it’s the opposite.

So, continuing in the theme of wisdom literature, now that I’m in a system with more supervisors than ever who aren’t local, this occurred to me:

Hello, I must be going!

Hello, I must be going.

Hello, I must be going.

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The Everbearing Hump of Midterm

Posted on October 26, 2015 | Leave a comment

A carefully cultivated, fully composted first crop
of green beans–so much better than canned.

That one tunnel with the bend
where you always panic briefly and want to stop
when you can’t see either end.

A subterranean pimple, perfectly round,
on the cusp of emerging, not quite ready to pop.

The good, the bad, the ugly, the suspense,
the tension, the heat of it, the standoff.

A phoenix dragging and puking and down
and not yet gloriously finding its lift.

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Posted in midterms, Poetry, Teaching

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IF I DIE IN MY CLASSROOM—a teacher’s ballad

Posted on October 17, 2015 | 6 comments

I hope that right before it happens
I do something heroic,
but knowing me and how I panic,
I more than probably won’t.

I hope I’m wearing something cute.
I wonder about my hair.
I hope I look good on the floor.
I hope I say more than “don’t shoot.”

I keep on saying hope.
I hope, I hope, I hope.
But hope? I actually don’t have much.
I think it’s mostly luck—

If I have to die in class, I hope
I’ve just said something noble
that really made them think.
I hope I’m really quotable.

What else? I didn’t stay up late
to finish grading papers.
I made love to my husband instead—
I barely let him out of bed.

When I dropped my son off at school,
“I love you,” “I love you too”
is what we said. It’s what we say
so many times every day.

I hope my death makes people work
to figure out how to stop
the massacres. But if Sandy Hook
didn’t, my death won’t help.

I keep on saying hope.
I hope, I hope, I hope.
But hope? I actually don’t have much.
I think it’s mostly luck—

the upset student isn’t mine,
the unhinged parent isn’t here,
the disgruntled coworker is fine
(since his new meds he’s better).

When I lock the door and pull it shut
I tell my students that’s it—
that’s all I can do to keep them safe.
I hope I remember to pray.

I keep on saying hope.
I hope, I hope, I hope.
But hope? I actually don’t have much.
I think it’s mostly luck—

I have this badass dream.
I make myself a deputy.
I buy a gun. I take a class.
I shoot at cans.

I buy a fetching little holster.
I wear it when I teach.
I see the bad guy reach.
I blow him away. I’m faster.

You don’t have to know me well
to know how unlikely that is.
Much more likely I’d shoot myself.
Accidentally shoot someone else.

If I have to die in class,
I hope it isn’t soon.
I hope it’s me having a heart attack.
I hope it’s not a gun.

______

Two Wisconsin legislators started the week off with a bang by introducing a bill that would repeal the ability of University of Wisconsin and Wisconsin Technical Colleges institutions to ban firearms on campus. They are Republican, obviously.

Other Republicans have supported them by saying a gun is a tool the same way a smartphone is a tool. Let’s talk about tools. (Cf my friend Chuck Rybak on tools.)

Three Democratic legislators have now proposed a bill that bans concealed carry on campuses.

I think it’s a cowboy fantasy that more guns make good people safer, but I get the fantasy. I find it really appealing. Two of my favorite shows ever have Timothy Olyphant shooting all kinds of bad guys. If I could teach next door to Seth Bullock? Or Raylan Givens? Hell yeah, let’s arm the teachers and the students.

This photo is by Prashant Gupta. It appeared in this story: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/timothy-olyphant-justified-time-article-1.1728226

This photo is by Prashant Gupta. (Click for story it appeared in.)

But you know what? None of my colleagues inspire me in that particular way. And my students? Well, actually–some of them are pretty bad-ass. If I knew for sure they’d be on my side….

Since I’m wondering who’ll protect me, should I arm myself? I looked up the requirements for concealed carry in Wisconsin. I’d need to take a firearms safety class. I’ve been thinking about it, actually–not because I want to own a handgun, but because I want to shoot one. I have a novel that has guns in it, so I’m curious.

But that’s research. In real life, I’m a dorky, middle-aged woman with poor hand-eye coordination. No one who knows me would feel safer if I were armed.

Oh–and then there’s the question of evidence. My friend Ryan Martin has a great blog, and he points out some facts—

  • more guns = more gun violence
  • more guns = more suicides

One of the pages he cites is fascinating to me. It has a long section on why the estimates of successful self-defense with guns are probably way over-reported, but also this:

“The study found that in incidents where a victim used a gun in self-defense, the likelihood of suffering an injury was 10.9 percent. Had the victim taken no action at all, the risk of injury was virtually identical: 11 percent.”

And this:
“What’s more, the study found that while the likelihood of injury after brandishing a firearm was reduced to 4.1 percent, the injury rate after those defensive gun uses was similar to using any other weapon (5.3 percent), and was still greater than if the person had run away or hid (2.4 percent) or called the police (2.2 percent).”

(I plan to look up that study to read it for myself–haven’t taken the time yet, but I will.)

So if I’m paying attention to that, I get a very strong urge to start practicing using my rolling backpack as a weapon (I did mention I’m a dorky middle-aged woman).  So even though the UWPD and the FBI recommend running or hiding and only fighting as a last resort, hm….

(I need to keep working to get in shape so I can actually run, btw.)

Let me be clear about one thing–I think it’s morally repugnant to blame victims of violence for not fighting back. (I’m not even going to link to people who say things like that. Shame on them.)

In any case–don’t ask me about guns on campus.  Ask law enforcement officials. UW Police are against it. And if police officers are too liberal for you, listen to this guy, quoted in an article from Wisconsin Public Radio:

“…Rick Esenberg, president of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, said he didn’t see evidence of greater danger. ‘(Science) is really unanimous in showing that concealed carry doesn’t lead to any increase in gun crime,’ he said. ‘The debate is really over whether it reduces gun crime.'”

(Note:  I do want to research what he says about science & concealed carry.)

EVEN HE THINKS UW OFFICIALS SHOULD MAKE THE DECISION,

NOT LEGISLATORS:

“[Esenberg] also suggested that campus authorities, as opposed to the Legislature, might be better positioned to decide on concealed carry policies for universities. ‘I don’t think you have to pass a bill about everything,’ he said.”

“I don’t think you have to pass a bill about everything,” he said. That cracked me up.  An actual libertarian kind of scolding repubs for over-legislating.

None of this is funny. Too many people have died. Too many children have died. But this guy is funny, and I turn to humor, because nothing else apparently works. And it’s not so much that humor works, but that it makes me feel better. I think nothing works, thus the general lack of hope.

We can’t work together to figure it out. People I love and/or respect  (sometimes both! really!) disagree with me in part or in whole about what ought to be done.

What I’m sure we’ll keep doing is disagreeing. What I wonder if we’ll ever do is work together to figure it out.

In the meantime, I’ll wake myself up, like I did this morning, with a poem forming in my head about “if I die in my classroom.”

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Posted in Teaching, UW System, UW-Richland

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How You See It, How You Don’t

Posted on September 13, 2015 | Leave a comment
Amery Harrington playing a character who doesn't like what she sees in "490 Freaking Times"

Amery Harrington playing a character who doesn’t like what she sees in “490 Freaking Times”

It’s entirely possible that my drive to write in multiple genres is yet another marker that helps explain my diagnosis of Adult ADHD.

(Other markers include truly impressive procrastination skills and a sort of fundamental inability to shut cabinet drawers and doors.)

I can’t help it. Well, I don’t know if I can help it or not, actually. I don’t want to help it. I don’t try to help it. I just keep writing all kinds of everything.

I want to write and publish poetry, and I’ve done that this year. Here’s one I’m really pleased with, one of the more honest things I’ve written, explaining why I’m not (currently) involved with organized religion. The title sort of says it all, “Fuck the Life Abundant.”

I want to publish journalism–op-eds and academic subjects tailored for a general audience, and I do that every month in a column called “Pedagogy Stew” in the Voice of the River Valley.

I want to write and publish creative nonfiction, and I’ve done that this year. Front Range Review published a piece called “Chat Road,” not available online, sorry. I also have some pieces that will appear on Wisconsin Life sometime this winter.

I want to write and publish fiction–still waiting to hear from several places I’ve submitted fiction to this fall. But as I like to tell myself right when I’ve sent something off, “I’m currently un-rejected from a number of good publications.”

And I want to write plays that get produced. That one is taking me years and years to get to, but I keep at it, and two nice things have happened so far this year–one 10-minute play got a reading at the annual meeting of the Friends of the Spring Green Community Library. Three students and an awesome community theater actor read that.

Coming up this weekend is something even more fun. I was excited to be asked to write a piece this summer that could be used by Spring Green’s River Valley Players and Taliesin School of Architecture students.  The idea of the evening is a collaboration between the two groups, and the theme of the pieces that will be performed is “perspective.”

My play is a short one-act, five scenes–the same thing from multiple perspectives. It’s called “490 Freaking Times.” (Bonus points if you get the allusion right away.)

The play is set at a wonderful local bar called The Shed--the background is a picture of the Shed.

The play is set at a wonderful local bar called The Shed–the background is a picture of the Shed.

Here’s a funny story. Terry Kerr is directing the play and working with everyone to stage stories from the Taliesin students. Her original idea for the play was to do something like a book called Elements of a Scene, in which the same thing happens multiple times from multiple perspectives. The title got twisted in communication somehow to where I thought I was being asked to adapt Strunk and White’s Elements of Style for the stage. And I still said yes!

It’s true. I am often up for anything. (Another marker for ADHD?)

So if you’re local, and available, please come on out! Friday 9/18 at the Gard in Spring Green, Saturday 9/19 at Hillside Theater at Taliesin. 7:30 both nights, tickets available at the door, goodwill offering.

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