What have you read? What has it done to you?

Earlier this semester, I was struggling with what to assign my American Literature students for their required research essay. 

The class was small — just six students — and made up of young adults I had taught in multiple other classes. So I knew them well and recognized they had all written many research essays already. 

I also knew they were exhausted from the school grind: their current courses, the challenges of deciding what to do post-graduation, the endless scholarship applications, and the stress of the pandemic. 

So I decided to take a slightly different approach with the assignment. Here is the prompt I gave them: 

Research Essay 

You are an editor of a future (2060?) Norton Anthology of American Literature series. The section for which you are responsible is entitled, “Literary Influences of a Young (Your Name Here).” 

What material would you include as part of your own influences? Would they include a selection by one or more children’s authors, such as Dr. Seuss and Beverly Cleary? By popular writers, such as J.K. Rowling and Stephen King? Maybe something by one or more of the writers we have explored this semester, such as Zora Neale Hurston and Ambrose Bierce? 

Remember, by 2060, the definition of what is considered “literature” may have grown even more expansive, and is more likely to include movies, websites, and social-media posts. However, traditional books, short stories, and poetry will still play a role. 

Try to focus on individual works: Star Wars: The Force Awakens as opposed to the entire Star Wars saga, or “The Cask of Amontillado” instead of all short stories by Edgar Allan Poe. 

You will need to cite your sources, either in APA or MLA format. You may — and should — reference them through paraphrase, summary, and direct quotations in the body of your paper. The most important aspect of the paper is why. Why did you choose each work? What did you learn from it? What made it so pivotal in your development? 

My hope — fingers crossed! — is that this will be fun, a look back during the tail end of your senior year at material that you enjoyed and that left a mark on you. 

This should be 5-7 pages in a light, conversational style. A minimum of three influences (unless you make a good case for fewer). Fan-gushing is permitted and even encouraged.

 

Eventually, I relaxed the citation requirements to allow students to write more freely about books and writers without worrying about particular editions or volumes. (Anybody who wants the original assignment for in- or out-of-class use, here it is.) 

Students did a terrific job, and they presented portions of their papers for our final class. It was fun to learn what they had read and experienced and the impact it had on them. 

As I sometimes do, I wrote the assignment along with them, adapting it to focus more on my reading habits as an adult, trying to cover one big literary find for each decade of my grown-up life. (I combined my 40s and 50s, since I'm still in the early years of the latter.) 

I'm sharing my response here. It's still pretty drafty, but so be it. 

 My Reading Preferences

I’ve heard it said that reading isn’t the same after sixteen. Up to that age, you absorb everything with no filter, so it goes in raw, unrefined, and stays with you for a long, long time. After sixteen, your reading defenses are engaged. You’ve gained some experience, you know what you like and don’t like, and you know what society — classmates, teachers, relatives, college admissions personnel — expects you to like and not like. So most reading material after age sixteen has a purpose beyond entertainment; part of its goal is to demonstrate the kind of person you are to the people who see you reading it. Maybe more significantly, much of what you read after sixteen is not primarily of your own choosing. It includes material assigned for class, to learn how to ace a certain test, to duct-tape a leaky water heater, lower a baby’s temperature, or care for an ailing parent. 

My earliest pre-sixteen literary experiences are Mother Goose rhymes and Grimms’ fairy tales, read to me by my mom or a favorite aunt. One of the earliest books I remember reading on my own was The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, which contained most of the elements of fantastic fiction that I enjoy to this day — a plucky hero, a long quest, magic, frights, and a happy ending that leads back home. In retrospect, I’m sure my memories of the book are all mixed up with the MGM movie (where Dorothy’s silver slippers became ruby slippers, and where Oz wasn’t a real place, but just a little girl’s dream). Regardless, it started me down a road that eventually led to comic books by the thousands, the Hardy Boys, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ tales of Tarzan and John Carter of Mars, Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King, J.R.R. Tolkien and so many others. Sometimes, on a hot summer’s day or a cold winter’s night, when my other tasks have been completed (or are far enough away, deadline-wise, that I can afford to procrastinate), I find comfort in revisiting these old friends and finding out they are right where I left them — ferreting out clues, swinging through jungles, burying enemies alive, and so forth. 

But my goal in this paper is not to address old friends, as gracious and accommodating as they are. Instead, I want to consider three books or writers that have impacted me as an adult, if only to illustrate that reading can still be the same after sixteen, that it can be a lifelong joy and pursuit. If we stay nimble of mind and open to new influences, we can reap the rewards of reading for a lifetime. 

The first book on my adult list is William Zinsser’s On Writing Well. I first encountered it in an advanced writing class at Mount Union College. Over the years, Zinsser released several revisions, but the gist remained the same: Writing was a worthwhile endeavor, but no piece of writing was ever truly “finished,” and writing was never something that one could master. It could only be practiced and refined. Zinsser preached clarity above all, and his chapter on revising with brackets, placing them around all [the extra] words that don’t belong [in a draft] stuck [with me]. I began to practice what he preached, although never well enough. I still think of Zinsser’s advice every time I revise. When in doubt, I remove the word or words. It improves the work far more often than it ruins it. 

Zinsser also advocated writing as a key component of learning. He believed people never know what they think about a particular topic until they write about it, a principle I still adhere to and have shared with many students. You have to move the fingers on the keyboard or the pen across the page, and when you are finished, you can look back and formulate a position. 

Revisiting Zinsser for this paper has been like reuniting with an old friend. You plan to meet just for lunch to catch up, but instead find yourselves talking until late at night because you are in such pleasant company. 

I have a more complicated relationship with the second book on my list, Choice Theory (1999) by William Glasser. The author believes that nobody can control other people’s decisions, that the best we can do is to provide others with accurate and reliable information so they can make their own choices. “Control,” to the author, is a myth, insofar as it relates to others; the only person’s behavior I can control is my own. I discovered this book as part of research I was doing for a graduate class at Ashland University, and it was a revelation. Prior to reading it, I believed I could control given situations, especially classroom situations, through meticulous planning and careful delineation of rules. Glasser taught me that my goal was an impossibility. When dealing with a multiplicity of attitudes and people, the best I could hope to do is make my position and my rationale known and hope that others would see their way clear to follow my advice. 

Glasser’s book also reinforced the importance of not blindly following any particular life philosophy in all its particulars. While the idea of personal choice and personal autonomy are great motivators, some of Glasser’s other hypotheses and suggestions — for example, that all mental illness is somehow attributable to unhealthy current relationships, as opposed to past or ongoing trauma or atypical brain chemistry — are controversial and run counter to established psychological models. So while I believe wholeheartedly in some aspects of Glasser’s theory, other parts are problematic and even hurtful. 

My final selection isn’t one book, but the entire output of a particular author, Harlan Coben. I was introduced to Coben through a reference in Stephen King’s novel, The Outsider, where a character accused of a horrific murder gave as an alibi a trip to hear Coben speak. The reference piqued my interest in Coben, so during the Long Year of Quarantine I sought out one of his books, Tell No One (2001). It has a typical Coben plot: The main character’s happiness is threatened by some person or event from the past. It could be a missing sibling, a hidden crime, or some embarrassing personal secret. Coben’s books are driven by short, punchy dialogue and multiple twists and turns, sometimes stretching credibility. They also contain some wry observations about modern life, the American dream, and appearances versus reality. Think Death of a Salesman crossed with Die Hard. 

While some of the technology in Tell No One is predictably dated (longish sections talking about the marvels of email for audiences that may not have known much about it), the human interactions still ring true. The novel inspired me to pick up several other Coben novels — The Woods, Don’t Let Go, The Stranger, Stay Close, The Innocent, Just One Look and, most recently, Home. Every book has that same basic jumping-off point, but with fresh or original results. 

A key part of my Coben enjoyment is that my wife and I have been reading his books together. Reading together is a habit we cultivated decades ago but had stopped until pandemic boredom made us start again. Since last year, we have read 49 novels (I keep a list) by a variety of writers, including Sandra Brown, David Baldacci, James Patterson, and Stephen King. But the Coben books are our favorites, and fortunately he is prolific enough to keep us reading for the rest of this year, at least, before we catch up. Reading along with a partner is a great way to experience a book; the conversations are rich and meaningful, and no test at the end ruins the fun. 

I don’t know if Coben’s books will stand the test of time for me — and the fact that I’m already so fuzzy on most of his plots indicates that they are fairly interchangeable — but for now they’re giving us something to occupy our time by whisking us away from the troubles of the world, much like that cyclone first picked up Dorothy and dropped her in Oz, those many years ago. And maybe that’s enough. 

If you think about it, readers are real-life Dorothy Gales, waiting for a whirl of words to transport us somewhere else, a place where we can make sense of the real world by looking at it through somebody else’s eyes, at least for a little while. After you turn sixteen, you might be able to see the trick up the magician’s sleeve, but it’s still magical enough to enchant and delight. May all your reading experiences do the same. 

CS :)

May 2021

Pomp and Circumstance(s) for a lifetime of learning

For students and parents, the importance of graduation should never be understated, and in most commencement speeches, it isn’t.

There’s a reason for all the treacly language. Graduation is a major milestone — one door closes and another opens, turn the page, the bird must leave the nest, yadda yadda yadda.

My own graduation observations, borne of many years of living and teaching, aren’t any more original than those cliches, so readers looking for something fresh should check out “Beetle Bailey,” where Sarge is probably yelling at Beetle again, or “Blondie,” where Dagwood is likely building or inhaling a kong-sized sandwich for the zillionth time.

On second thought, maybe stay right here.

I see today’s seniors as tomorrow’s freshmen, whether they go on to college or not. Seniors are confident and brash. They’ve managed, through a combination of hard work, natural talent, skill and attrition, to reach the top of the high-school heap.

By that last day of school, when they stride through the halls alternately tearful and triumphant, most of them clearly understand their place in the school hierarchy.

But when they head off into other pursuits, the old doubts and uncertainties reappear. First day at college or university? At boot camp? At a construction site? Behind the counter? They are all freshmen again.

Hopefully, they meet these challenges with problem-solving skills polished over 13 years of formal education, so they aren’t completely gobsmacked.

Because a lifetime is one karmic wheel of freshman/senior experiences. When you sign paperwork for a 15- or 30-year mortgage, you’re a freshman again. When you’re awake at midnight, googling what to do with a feverish 4-month-old, you’re a freshman again.

Most of us, at any point in our lives, toggle between freshman and senior standing. For the last year, the entire world has been in freshman mode regarding the pandemic, which explains a lot about how we’ve responded.

As a writer, I’m in the middle of my sophomore year. (Readers are forgiven for thinking sixth grade.)

As a husband, I'm a junior. (My wife may feel differently, and she will be right in whatever she decides, the acknowledgment of which is how I’ve reached junior standing.)

As a father, I’m a senior, if only because our one and only is happy and healthy and living independently of her mother and me.

But if I buy a zero-turn-radius mower, it’s back to freshman status. Ditto reading James Joyce’s “Ulysses” (one of these years). Or finally getting serious about playing guitar. Or learning ancient Sanskrit. Or dealing with the reality of being eligible for AARP.

Actually, that’s not a bad thing. Not AARP eligibility, which is soul-crushing, but the constantly churning freshman/senior ranking. With freshman status comes doubt and uncertainty – unpleasant in the moment but essential in the long-term.

In his introduction to the drama “Doubt,” playwright John Patrick Shanley observes that “when a man feels unsteady, when he falters, when hard-won knowledge evaporates before his eyes, he’s on the verge of growth.” Additionally, he notes, “Doubt requires more courage than conviction does, and more energy; because conviction is a resting place and doubt is infinite — it is a passionate exercise.”

Growth. Courage. Energy. Passion. These sound like valuable experiences.

So I wish this year’s graduates a pleasant mix of senior and freshman moments. Senior for the stability and confidence, freshman for the physical and cognitive challenges that come from grappling with new adventures and the empathy gained by being fish out of water.

Learn to swim, and then crawl onto shore and keep evolving.

chris.schillig@yahoo.com

@cschillig on Twitter

'Sorry for the wait times'

I knew a business owner whose philosophy was to pay a few top people — ”star performers” or “alpha dogs,” he called them — a decent wage to keep them loyal and productive.

The rest of the business’ positions were designed to be transient — lower-paying, entry-level spots for people to learn the ropes, gain some skills and then go elsewhere. They would then be replaced by another crop of newbies.

It was a pretty good plan, I guess, if the owner’s main goal was to sleep at night.

It didn’t work out so well in the waking world. The expected churn of eager new recruits, who gain marketable skills and go forth to greater renown and salaries, didn’t occur. Instead, the newbies stayed and stayed, growing more disgruntled with each paycheck.

This flawed business strategy is similar to the one embraced by Americans who object to paying workers a living wage. They will argue, like the business owner in my example, that some jobs are designed as starters, that people in these jobs will eventually move along, and that paying them more only devalues the workers who have improved themselves through further training.

The sad reality is that many Americans are trapped by low wages. They can barely afford to keep body and soul together, let alone budget for reliable transportation or additional education. Any hope for the future is buried by the day-to-day challenges of the present.

So they remain, toiling at low-paying job or a series of them, suffering the indignity of being “essential” without the salary that should accompany the designation. Maybe if they worked one position with a living wage, they could afford the training to transition into better employment.

That so many Americans refuse to recognize the deleterious impact of low wages betrays the contempt they have for the very people who keep the wheels of industry turning.

This contempt is apparent in the reactions of many owners who are competing with a $300 federal weekly bonus, scheduled through June 26 in Ohio, during this global pandemic. The bonus means it is temporarily more cost-effective for many workers, especially in the service industry, to stay home and collect benefits than to resume minimum-wage drudgery.

Smart employers, meanwhile, are finding ways to entice workers back with flexible hours, real pathways to advancement and even — gasp! — competitive wages.

Less savvy employers take to the signs and chalkboards in front of their establishments, whining to customers about how sorry they are for long wait times, but “nobody wants to work.”

These passive-aggressive missives shift the blame for the company’s faulty business model onto the back of the workforce. A more honest message would be: “Sorry for the wait times. Workers aren’t willing to be taken advantage of right now.”

But have no fear — the capitalistic urge toward exploitation is reasserting itself. Many states, including Ohio, soon will require workers to prove they are looking for work while collecting unemployment. In effect, these states are forcing workers back into poverty a few months earlier.

Other states are cancelling the $300 weekly bonus altogether, citing alleged employee shortages that are keeping the economy from bouncing back fully.

Taking money away from struggling Americans is not the answer. Instead, we as a society need to address the inequalities of a system where, in 2018, the average CEO made $265 for every dollar the average worker made, the largest such gap in the world.

Fixing a broken system doesn’t mean all jobs are worth the same salary or that workers should be disincentivized from trying to better their situations. It does mean that everybody deserves fair wages based on the cost of living in the place they live.

If this idea is somehow radical or revolutionary, it speaks to how far we’ve traveled down a road where workers are valued less as human beings and more as capital to be exploited.

chris.schillig@yahoo.com

@cschillig on Twitter

A great teacher forges a chain

As Teacher Appreciation Week comes to a close, take a moment to salute former educator Gary Duschl.

Duschl, of Virginia Beach, entered the 2021 Guinness Book of World Records after fashioning the world’s longest gum-wrapper chain, which measures an impressive 106,810 feet.

He began his masterpiece in 1965, the same year American combat troops arrived in Vietnam, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act and “A Charlie Brown Christmas” first aired.

Duschl’s website, gumwrapper.com, doesn’t indicate what subject he taught. However, he told me by email that he spent most of his working years as a general manager in several manufacturing operations. After he retired, he taught part-time, certifying painters and sandblasters for work on U.S. Navy vessels.

When I showed my students a short video about Duschl, many were impressed by his persistence in ripping each gum wrapper and folding it multiple times to forge the chain.

Some students sympathized with his wife. She shared how, early in their relationship, Duschl’s wrapper project snaked throughout their house. (He now stores his creation in specially constructed plexiglass display cases in just one room.)

At least a few students wondered what else he could have done with his time. This crossed my mind, too. Duschl told Guinness that his chain contains more than 2.5 million gum wrappers, and that he has fashioned at least 5.33 feet of chain each day for the last 55 years.

In that time, pondered Uncharitable Me, he could have learned multiple languages and several instruments, raised money for charity, taken up ballroom dancing ... and the list goes on.

But that’s Monday-morning quarterbacking. My house also is littered with the detritus of hobbies and interests — thousands of comic books, an acoustic guitar, several unfinished manuscripts — all of which took time that I could have spent on activities more productive, more profitable or both.

And I don’t need to flip through the latest Guinness volume to know that I’ve not broken a single record for doing anything.

Looking at the gum-wrapper chain from a different perspective, one can argue that Duschl is emblematic of what makes a teacher great.

First, he started his chain after a student showed him how to fold gum wrappers. This demonstrates a willingness by the teacher to learn. Education should be a two-way street.

Duschl made his chain from gum wrappers that his students donated. After all, there is no way that he chewed all that gum himself. (To do that, he estimates that he would have had to chew a stick of gum every 10 minutes, day and night, for the past five decades.) By soliciting student contributions, he gave them a voice and a stake in a successful outcome, as great teachers do.

His attention to detail is evident in many precise comparisons. The wrapper link, he notes, is as long as 356 football fields and as tall as 73 Empire State Buildings. Great teachers connect the known and the unknown, scaffolding what students can’t do with what they can and helping them to visualize the final product.

A page of Duschl’s website lists other people who have forged gum-wrapper chains, from 20,177 feet in Germany to just 20 feet in Pennsylvania. Like all great teachers, he is willing to share the credit.

Another section of Duschl’s website provides step-by-step instructions for making gum-wrapper links, along with an email link for more help. Great teachers give clear directions, clarifying and offering extra support as needed, and they urge collaboration.

So, raise a pack of Wrigley’s in honor of Duschl. All educators should aspire to show students, by word and deed, the value of blazing their own trails and not folding under pressure.

Or, in Duschl’s case, folding — again, and again, and again.

chris.schillig@yahoo.com

@cschillig on Twitter

Making it harder for marketers to find us

I opened a fortune cookie the other day and found an ad for a tax-preparation service.

Like a bird dog pointing quail, the marketers had found me. This time, it was on the back of a paper prophecy, in the steamy depths of a brown bag that housed my beef and vegetable combo.

Marketing is a ubiquitous part of modern life. Look around right now and count the number of logos you see. If you’re inside, chances are it’s a bunch. Even outdoors, you are probably within view of a few, especially if you’re reading on a screen.

From my desk, I spy the logo on my shirt, another on my computer, one on a package of gum and a fourth on my key fob.

How many ads does the average person see in a day? Estimates range from 5,000 to 10,000. This number seems ridiculous until you consider car logos, website banners, billboards, food boxes, toothpaste tubes and emails.

Going all day without exposure to a message trying to sell you something is as impossible as not thinking about the color red after somebody has told you not to think about the color red.

Worse yet are the marketers who are selling YOU — your tastes, habits and browsing preferences — to other marketers.

Apple this week made it harder for app developers to nose around in our business. The new iOS 14.5 update has a pop-up screen that prompts users to allow or not allow sites like Facebook or Google to track them across other applications and then share that data with third parties.

If you’ve ever wondered how you can search for a particular item on your phone and then find an ad for that very item on a shopping site later that day — well, that’s how. You’ve been sold.

The old saying — if the service is free then you are the product — has never been more true. Apple, it seems, is trying to build good will by allowing users to reclaim some of the privacy the computer giant itself stole over the last decade.

I know a couple of people — friends of friends, let’s call them, to protect their identities — who believe that unseen forces are spying on them through televisions, modems, phones and tablets. And by spying, I mean real James Bond, Inspector Gadget-style snooping, with sophisticated listening devices and human technicians on the other end.

The truth is more prosaic and more frightening. Big Brother doesn’t need to listen without our consent — we give it away ourselves every time we scroll past the legalese on a new app and click “allow.” Real people aren’t monitoring us; algorithms are.

Not that consumers have much choice. Manoush Zomorodi, writing for Time magazine in 2017, notes that it would take around 76 hours annually to read the plethora of user agreements we are subjected to. Declining the privacy invasion means declining the app, and who wants to do that?

Some of the companies affected by Apple’s renewed emphasis on privacy are crying foul. They anticipate revenue streams and knowledge of our browsing habits will dry up.

Facebook is especially miffed. All those pictures of kids and dogs and quizzes about what your favorite dessert says about your personality add up to significant information for CEO Mark Zuckerberg to hock on the downlow.

But nothing Apple is doing is new or revolutionary. The company has just taken tools tucked away in the bowels of its operating system and made them more prominent. The fear among big companies is that more of us will use these tools to close the blinds.

I plan to start clicking “Ask App not to Track” more often than I click “Allow.” At least until it limits how much I can accomplish with a given app.

When functionality goes away, I might find myself back on the Great Data-Giveaway Train. I suspect a lot of other people will be riding with me. This is both a comfort and a caution.

As Izaak Walton says, “Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter.” It sounds like the message on a fortune cookie, maybe with an ad for a travel agency on the back.

chris.schillig@yahoo.com

@cschillig on Twitter