Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 244

Snow days: One thing I love. One thing I hate.

I'm an elementary school teacher, and today I am home because of snow. 

One thing I love about snow days and one thing I hate:

Many (and maybe most) teachers despise snow days, fully aware of the long, summer days that each snow day costs them. Many parents despise snow days for this same reason, and also because of the childcare headaches that a snow day creates.  

I understand all of this.

I, however, adore snow days. I love them so very much. This is because I think it is short-sighted, presumptuous, and foolish to assume that you will be alive in June to enjoy your long, summer day, so I believe in taking my days whenever I can get them.

I'm serious. And I'm a guy who has been brought back to life twice via CPR. I know what I'm taking about. I could be hit by a bus tomorrow. I'll take today and happily teach for one more day in June. 

One thing I hate about snow days:

I despise any human being who criticizes a school district, superintendent, or school official for the decision to declare a snow day.

Yes, sometimes they get it wrong. They make an incorrect decision. They cancel school when it could've clearly been in session. But it's weather, damn it. I don't know if you've noticed, but it's highly unpredictable.

Even the meteorologists get a wrong sometimes. 

These armchair school administrators are truly the worst. Jackasses who love to make important decisions with no accountability and so often well after the storm is out to sea.   

School officials are simply trying to keep children safe. Children who walk to school and ride buses and stand on the corners of busy intersections, waiting for buses to arrive. 

Excuse them for mistakenly erring on the side of caution. Pardon them for worry about the lives of little kids. Forgive them if the storm didn't arrive early enough or unexpectedly weakened or shifted east and missed us entirely. 

As a parent, I choose caution over inconvenience every time. 

 

An unusual and exhausting but unforgettable weekend thanks to a July night in 2011

I'm often astounded by the places that a story told on a stage in 2011 has taken me.

This weekend I had the honor working with caregivers at Yale New Haven Hospital, teaching them how to tell stories about their own experiences as patients and the spouses, parents, and children of patients to doctors, nurses, and other clinicians in an effort to improve care. It was the second Saturday that I spent with these remarkable people, and their stories were incredibly hard to hear but so moving.

Those hours spent in a conference room at the hospital with those extraordinary people will stay with me forever.  

On Sunday I traveled to Harvard, MA to deliver the sermon on a the Harvard Unitarian Universalist Church. I told stories to the congregation and talked about the healing power of storytelling in your own life and the lives of others. Later, I taught a workshop to about 60 members of the church and members of the community who decided to join us. I met some remarkable people who are hoping to use storytelling to change their lives and the lives of people all over the world. 

Sandwiched on between those two things, Elysha and I produced a Speak Up show at Real Art Ways. Six storytellers joined me in sharing stories about hunger. For some, it was the first time they had ever told a story on stage. Others entered my life years ago through my workshops and shows, and I'm proud to call a few of them my friends today.

So, too, were members of the audience who I have only met through storytelling.

So many of my friends, and some of the best people I know, have entered my life this way.

I ended the weekend consulting with an attorney for the ACLU on his upcoming TED Talk, helping him craft an outstanding talk on subjects near and dear to my heart. Elysha and I are ALCU members, so it was an honor to assist in this important work.  

This was an unusual weekend to be sure. I'm not leading church services every Sunday or teaching a widow to tell the story of her deceased husband's hospital care. Rarely is my weekend so chock full of storytelling the way this one was. 

Frankly, it was exhausting. Also, I missed my family this weekend. A lot. 

But when I'm better rested in a day or so and I've made up for lost time with Elysha and the kids, I'll look back on this weekend and think about how lucky I am that I decided to do something back in 2011 that was hard and scared me to death. 

Budo, the protagonist of my third novel, says that "The right thing and the hard thing are often the same thing."

I try to remember this always, because I know how often embracing the hard thing has led to a weekend like this past one. 

I'm in a constant search for the next hard, right thing. 

The gift of a memory is one of the best gifts of all

While visiting Hyde School in Bath, Maine, I ate breakfast with a teacher and hometown friend named Sean. We got to talking about our childhoods, specifically the time our parents were members of the Boots & Saddles Club, a riding club in Blackstone, MA.

We would ride the back trails together with our parents on horseback, enjoying the quiet of nature, the camaraderie of friends, and the power of the horse beneath us.

All that came to an end for me when my parents divorced when I was seven or eight, but until then, it was one of the joys of my life.

Sean said, "One of my first memories is of your father." He explained that on a ride one day, we stopped to rest. My father, decked out in his cowboy hat and cowboy boots, dismounted, cracked open a can of beer, drank half of it, and gave the rest to his horse. Poured it right down the horse's throat.

"That was the coolest thing I'd ever seen," Sean said. "I wanted to be just like that guy someday."

Rarely in my life have I been given a better gift than the one Sean gave me that day. The memories of my father are limited. He left my home when I was very young and exited my life at the same time. I rarely saw him after the divorce. 

It's a pain in my heart that will never be healed.

But to hear a man talk about my father in such heroic terms, to be given a new image of my dad, a new memory of sorts, was worth the world to me. I was with Dad that day when he poured half a can of beer down a thirsty horse's throat. I may have been standing just a few feet away.

But I don't remember that moment. Or I missed it entirely.  

When you have so little of something so precious, the gift of a little more of that rare and precious thing is priceless.   

I told Sean that I would speak about the moment he shared that memory with me onstage one day. I told him that I would craft it into a story that will make people cry. I know this because I nearly cried when he told me about his memory of my father. 

Sean was surprised. It didn't seem like much to him. But that is the thing about stories:

They are not the measure of what has happened. They are a measure of how a moment has filled our heart. Or cracked it open. Or broken it into pieces. The importance of a moment is often unseen by anyone but the storyteller, and it's the storyteller's job to make the importance of the moment as clear as possible to the audience. 

On Sean's end of the table, not much happen. He shared a memory.

On my end of the table, my heart cracked open, spilling out thankfulness and regret, pride and sadness, and a longing for something I can never have. He didn't see any of this, because it all happened on the inside. But of all the things that constantly rattle around in my brain, searching for a home, that moment has been rattling around the most, trapped in the mechanics of thinking and emotion that fill my head. 

It'll be a story, all right. A good one if I craft it well. Also a moment I'll never forget.

And an incredible gift. 

The Georgia Senate is controlled by bigots in the pocket of the NRA

In the last two weeks, the Georgia Senate has made two unfortunate decisions:

Last week, they approved a bill eliminating a tax break for Delta Air Lines after Delta eliminated its discount program for NRA members.

Delta offered discounts to NRA members flying to their annual meeting. In 2017, this discount was utilized by a total of 13 people. As a result of Delta's decision, they will lose about $20 million dollars in savings per year.

To Delta's credit, they doubled down on their decision, issuing the following statement:

“Our decision was not made for economic gain and our values are not for sale, We are in the process of a review to end group discounts for any group of a politically divisive nature.” 

Two weeks ago, the Georgia Senate has passed a measure that gives adoption agencies the right not to work with LGBTQ couples.

There are more than 100,000 children in foster care in America awaiting adoption, and every year, about half of those kids are adopted. The average wait time for a foster child to be adopted is 7.7 years. Nevertheless Georgia senators feel it's better to keep these children in foster care rather than allowing two women or two men in a loving relationship to adopt them. 

You know... because same sex marriage is a sin. The Bible says it, so it must be true. 

Just like the Bible endorses: 

Slavery: “Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the cruel.” (1 Peter 2:18)

Misogyny: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.” (1 Timothy 2:12) 

Infanticide: "For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him." (Leviticus 20:9)

Discrimination against the disabled: "He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord."(Deuteronomy 23:1)

I've been to Georgia several times in my life. I've spent time on Georgia beaches and spent a weekend of hilarity in Atlanta.

I've enjoyed my time there, but I don't think I'll be returning anytime soon. 

From genius to Bart Simpson

When I stepped out of the shower, I found my five year-old son, Charlie, reading the graphic novel version of A Wrinkle in Time on our bed.

Charlie's full name is Charles Wallace. He's named after a character in the book. 

Elysha is reading us the original version of A Wrinkle in Time every night, so even though Charlie is in kindergarten, the background knowledge he has allows him to read the comic book. 

Seeing him sitting there was pretty great. 

Once I was dressed, I sat beside him on the bed.

Hey, Dad," he asked. "Does 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 equal 100?"

"Yes," I said. "How did you know that?"

"I was just thinking about it while you were getting dressed."

My son is clearly a genius. Elysha and I are raising the next Einstein. 

Once second later, Charlie jumped on top on me, licked my cheek, cackled, pushed me down, and shouted, "Smell my butt!"

Maybe not Einstein after all.

Boy vs. Girl: Our 100th episode

Boy vs. Girl, the podcast that I produce with my partner, Rachel Leventhal-Weiner, just published our 100th episode. While I don't often get excited about round numbers, 100 is a pretty good number. 

Boy vs. Girl is a podcast about gender and gender stereotypes. Rachel and I each bring a topic to the table each week, and then we answer a mystery question from a listener.

I try to start fights whenever possible. 

If we were producing a sitcom, 100 episodes would be enough to enter syndication and guarantee ourselves a steady stream of income for years and years to come. Sadly, we're not producing a sitcom and have yet to make a dime off our podcast, but that might be changing soon. 

If you haven't been listening, we have an extensive back catalog of podcast waiting for you. A regular reader of my blog recently suggested that I start a podcast, so I felt a little foolish having to tell her that I've been podcasting for more than two years.

I apparently haven't been promoting it enough.

Give it a listen. You can find it on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

I recommend Overcast. 

This is the way to live

Last night I met my in-laws, Barbara and Gerry Green, at a restaurant in New York for dinner before performing in a storytelling show down the street. As Elysha and I walked in, we found Barbara and Gerry sitting at the bar, eating salad and chatting with the bartender.  

As I sat down, they introduced me to the bartender, a woman in her early thirties who was an actor and a self-described Shakespearean nerd. She chatted with us for the entire meal, and shortly before I left for sound check, Barbara had exchanged business cards with her.

Less than an hour later, Barbara and Gerry arrived at the theater space. Within five minutes, Barbara was chatting with a woman named Denise, whose chair was quickly moved over to our table, where it remained for the rest of the night. Between stories and during intermission, Barbara and and Gerry chatted with Denise, and by the end of the night, they had exchanged contact information, too. 

I think Barbara started talking to Denise because they had a similar hair style. That was all it took to launch a possible future friendship.

My wife, Elysha, is famous for knowing a lot of people. We actually have a friend who begins conversations with new people by asking, "Do you know Elysha Dicks?"

The answer is yes so often that it's turned out to be an effective ice breaker.

This is where she gets it. This is where she learned to enter a space and make a new friend. Again and again and again.  

When it comes to Elysha, the apple does not fall far from the tree. Actually, I don't think it's even fallen off the tree.

A sign, a grade book, and a bathtub are just a few of my memories of Hyde School

I had the honor of spending two days in Bath, Maine, recently, visiting with the eleventh and twelfth grade students of Hyde School. I taught them about storytelling, performed my one-person show in the evening, and hosted a story slam on the final afternoon of my visit. 

It's a fantastic school, filled with some of the hardest working teachers who I have ever met and a diverse group of students who are ready to take on the world. 

Great storytellers, too. They had incredibly compelling stories, and they told them so well. 

I had many big, beautiful moments at Hyde School that I will never forget. Moments with students and teachers that will stay with me forever. But a few of the smaller things that I loved:

This sign is posted in the main academic wing of the school. I just love it.

I met a teacher who is still using the identical attendance and grade book that my teachers were using when I was in high school. The nostalgia of seeing the grade book was almost overwhelming. I found myself staring down my French teacher, Mr. Maroney, arguing about a test grade, or debating my homework completion with Mr. Compo. 

It's funny how a single object can transport you to the past so quickly and easily.

I also took my first bath in a clawfoot bathtub. I was in Bath, Maine, and the bathtub was beautiful. It felt meant-to-be. 

The bath lasted about four minutes before I got bored and decided to take a shower and be more productive.  

I've never understood the allure of a bath. 

4 good ideas and 4 bad ideas about book clubs

PopSugar's Elyssa Friedland offers 10 tips for a successful book club.

I've been a member of a book club for more than a decade. Six people - three couples - meet and talk about books over dinner 6-8 times per year.

I've also visited with well over 100 book clubs over the course of my publishing career. It's been interesting. I've learned that book clubs are as diverse as the books themselves.

I've seen some crazy things.  

I love my book club, and I love visiting with book clubs. That said, I'm not a fan of this PopSugar list.  

I didn't like the list right from the start because it has ten items. When it comes to list, I never trust round numbers, and ten is the worst round number of all. A list of ten items almost always means that that effort was made to bring the list to this round number, so it's likely that a less-than ideal item was added to the list to bring it to ten or a useful item was left off the list to reduce it to ten.

Why magazine editors like this number so much is beyond me.

Would "Want to Have a Successful Book Club? Here Are 9 Tips" been so bad?

I also strongly oppose some of the ideas on the list. The most egregious:

1. Don't do it with your best friends.

While I appreciate the idea that diversity in a book club can offer a variety of perspectives, a book club is supposed to be fun. If I can't hang out with my closest friends and talk about books, that's probably not going to be fun.

3. Send out advance questions and pass them out at the book club.

This sounds like an excellent way to turn reading into work, the equivalent of a teacher assigning a book report. Can you imagine being handed a list of questions prior to your book club meeting?

I can't.

If this happened to me, I think I'd find myself trapped between the desire to tear up the list in the person's face or fold it into a paper airplane and throw it at the person's eyeball.

Don't make a book club more than what it's supposed to be: A conversation about the book.

4. Do it at work.

I hate this advice. It presumes that most American workplaces offer employees control over their time and space. It's simply not true. Millions of Americans are working in factories, retail establishments, the service industry, and for the government, not to mention the enormous numbers of people who are unemployed, retired, or opting out of the workforce. For a majority of Americans, conducting a book club at work would be impossible.

Do you want your local DMV worker using taxpayer money to discuss the intricacies of the latest Jonathan Franzen novel?

Do you really think the sales rep at Best Buy or the waiter at Applebees or the mechanic at Pep Boys is going to be afforded the time to gather with fellow employees in the break room to debate the portrayal of racism in Huckleberry Finn? 

Do you really think that your hairdresser or furnace technician will be gathering at the end of the day to discuss the brilliance of the latest Matthew Dicks novel?

This is advice for the precious few whose boss might think it lovely for employees to gather and discuss literature or who have the opportunity to take a long lunch simultaneously. 

This just doesn't happen for most people. 

Also, alcohol always makes book club better. Can't drink at work. 

9. Have a cell-phone bowl (like a key party).

No, this is not like a key party at all. A key party is a strategy used by swingers to determine their sexual partners for the evening. Keys are randomly selected from a bowl, and the key you choose corresponds to the person who you will be having sex with later that night.

This sounds like an exciting new model for a book club, but I don't think it's what Elyssa Friedland meant when she proposed collecting phones at the beginning of the meeting.  

This is a proposal to treat adults like children, which never sits well with me. If your book club is populated by adults, and one of them is staring at his phone all night, say something. Ask him to stop. Un-invite him from the book club. Don't impose rules that stop adults from being adults. 

All that said, I like a few of Friedland's ideas a lot. 

2. Rotate who chooses the book (a policy my book club uses).
5. Call the writer (I'm often called and asked to visit).
8. Give ample time between sessions.
10. Venture into nonfiction.

These are all good ideas. Reasonable and doable ideas. 

Friedland says that book clubs sound amazing in theory but in practice tend to fall short. She gives the average book club about three meetings before the deterioration begins. 

This has not been my experience. My book club has not wavered in the slightest, and the book clubs that I visit are enthusiastic, tightly-knit groups of mostly women who love reading and discussing literature.

Even mine. Happily so. 

Being a jerk and needing food stamps are mutually exclusive conditions

I was standing in line behind a man at a local convenience store, waiting. His credit card was being rejected, and he was clearly getting frustrated.

He turned to me. "Do you want to go first?" he asked.

"I'm fine," I said. I was catching up on the day's news. I didn't mind waiting. But I was curious now, so I leaned over to determine the source of the problem. The customer was trying to buy a gallon of milk and a carton of orange juice. He swiped his card again and again.

Still rejected.

The cashier was also becoming frustrated. The two men raised their voices and argued over why the card wasn't being accepted. The customer insisted that it should be accepted, and the cashier insisted that there was nothing he could do.

Their interaction quickly became contentious. 

Finally the customer took some crumpled bills from his pocket and paid in cash. As he slid his card back into his wallet, I noticed that it was a SNAP card: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. 

As the man left, the cashier turned to me. "These damn food stamp guys think they own the world. I hate these guys. Such idiots."

Ordinarily I try not to respond to comments like this, but this one was too much to resist. 

"I grew up on food stamps and was still hungry all the time," I said. "And my parents worked." 

The cashier just stared at me. I'm not sure if he didn't know what to say or failed to understand the purpose of my statement.

I continued. "Being a jerk and needing food stamps are mutually exclusive conditions."

He just kept staring.

I pushed my soda forward, and he scanned it without saying a word. I paid with my debit card and turned. I wanted to add, "And it's bad business to talk about customers behind their backs. Cowardly, too."

But I didn't. I decided that I has said enough and would like to return to this convenience store in the future.

But it's remarkable to me how Americans can watch HUD Secretary Ben Carson pay $31,000 for a conference table or Trump cabinet members spend millions on first class airline tickets and private planes or Trump himself cost American taxpayers more on security for his constant trips to his golf resort in one year than Obama cost Americans in eight years in office, and yet so many of them shrug off these unnecessary, exorbitant expenses as the price of doing business.

But help an American bridge the gap between meals and you become a "food stamp guy," worthy of your anger and derision.