Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 444

Speak Up storyteller: Julie Threlkeld

On Saturday, Elysha and I will be producing our next Speak Up storytelling event at Real Art Ways in Hartford, CT. The theme of the evening is Schooled: Lessons Taught and Lessons Learned.

Doors open at 7:00. Stories begin at 7:30. The event is free, and no ticket is required.

Eight storytellers will take the stage and tell true stories on the assigned theme. During this week, we will be featuring each storyteller here in order to give you a peek at what to expect on Saturday night.

We hope to see you there! 

________________________________

Julie Threlkeld performs frequently in NYC in live shows like Ask Me Stories, Talk Therapy Storytelling and the RISK! Show – whose creator and host, Kevin Allison, describes her stories as providing “the meat in a sandwich of bleak.” She also performs standup comedy.

Julie has written about anxiety for the New York Times’ Opinionator and about the world of professional distance running for Runner’s World and Running Times.

Julie lives in Westchester Country, NY and is very active in NYC’s rapidly growing storytelling scene. She publishes her stories, performances and other creations at modernstories.com and publishes a weekly newsletter of resources for storytellers at modernstoriesstuff.com. She also tweets A LOT at@juliethrelkeld.

For money Julie is a freelance copywriter/editor, content strategist and social media doer. Future creative plans include more oversharing in storytelling, possibly in the form of a longer work consisting of interconnected stories on a theme.

Siri on the NFL and MLB

I was on my way home from a sports bar after watching the New England Patriots beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

My wife was in the kitchen, making dinner, and wanted to know who had won the game. She turned to her iPhone and asked Siri for the score.

I loved Siri’s responses:

 

I also loved Siri’s report on the Giants versus Panthers game, as well as her answer to the question, “What is your favorite NFL team?”

 

When I asked her if she liked the New York Yankees, her answer was just about perfect:

Special K spokesman (or spokeslittlegirl)?

“Dad, can I tell you two things? Number one: Special K is super good. Number two: Can I have more Special K?”

Three minutes later:

“Here, Dad. Special K is so good that I saved a little piece for you. I only ate half of it. But the rest is for you.”

Two minutes later:

“Dad, the only bad thing about Special K is that I eat it so fast. Also, can I more Special K?”

 

If Bobby Riggs intentionally lost to Billie Jean King in The Battle of the Sexes, it matters. The truth always matters.

ESPN recently ran a feature story about the allegation that Bobby Riggs intentionally lost the famous 1973 Battle of the Sexes match against Billie Jean.

I’ve read the piece and then listened to the writer discuss it on a podcast.

Am I convinced that it’s true?

No. But I think there’s a possibility that it’s true.

Amanda Marcotte of Slate responded to the piece with one of her own entitled Did Bobby Riggs Throw His Match Against Billie Jean King? It Doesn’t Matter.

I can’t imagine a more ridiculous title or a worse premise.

Of course it matters. The truth always matters. Even when the truth may damage your cause or harm your narrative, it should always be sought.

In this case, however, the discovery that Riggs threw the match would not change the course or the perception of feminism in any way. In fact, I would argue that Marcotte’s piece does far more damage to feminism than the revelation that Bobby Riggs may have intentionally lost to Billie Jean King. It lends credence and weight to something that is no longer relevant. It implies that the feminist narrative is still dependent on King’s defeat of Riggs, even while she claims that the truth about the match “doesn’t matter.”  

Marcotte’s initial argument is that even if it were true that Riggs threw the match, it wouldn’t matter. Just because male athletes can jump higher and run faster than female athletes doesn’t mean that women should be paid less for the same work that men do or be any less entitled to affordable daycare.

Of course this is true. We all know this to be true. Even the most ardent, angry sexist would be hard pressed to argue that women should be paid less than men because they can’t jump as high. At no time in the history of the universe has this claim been made by even the most idiotic sexist. 

You don’t earn points for stating the obvious.

But it’s Marcotte’s ridiculous knee-jerk reaction to these allegations about an event that took place 40 years ago that risks lending credibility to something that should have absolutely to bearing on feminism at all. 

Is the feminist narrative really so dependent upon a 55 year-old retired professional tennis player losing a match to a 30 year-old female professional at the top of her game?

I hope not.

And has it been forgotten that this same 55 year-old retiree had already defeated 28 year-old Margaret Court, the #1 ranked women’s tennis player in the world at the time, just four months earlier?

In truth, The Battle of the Sexes was was hardly a feminist victory. At best it was a tie, and if you factor in age, it’s hard to argue that Riggs’ loss was a boost for feminism at all.  

Marcotte goes on to predict that after reading this ESPN story:

Every single embittered, sexist man in the country—every Fox viewer, every Limbaugh fan, every visitor to Ask Men—is going to eagerly forward this story to every guy he knows, chortling triumphantly that this finally proves that women are in fact the weaker sex.

Does she really believe that there are hordes of embittered, sexist men in this country still stinging over a tennis match that was played more than forty years ago?

Even if there were men still looking for vindication as Marcotte seems to believe, don’t you think they would’ve already found solace in the age disparity between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs? Riggs was more than a quarter-century older than his female opponents, and he defeated one of them (and according to the tennis rankings at the time, the better one) easily.

Marcotte is crazy if she thinks this potential revelation would even be a blip on the sexist radar.  

I realize that Marcotte’s intention was to say that this tennis match has no bearing on feminism today, and she is right. It doesn’t.

But to assume that sexist men are still angry about this match is ridiculous.

To state that the truth behind the Battle of the Sexes doesn’t matter is equally silly. 

A genius author and I have something in common. I’m not quite the hack that I thought I was.

Tom Perrota, author most recently of The Leftovers (which is about to become an HBO series), is a far better writer than me, but it would seem that he and I have something in common. When it comes to choosing the settings of his novels, Perrota tends to choose the locales that he is most familiar.

From a recent Wall Street Journal interview:

It’s just laziness. This is what’s right in front of me. I’ve chosen to live there. I’ve never been the kind of writer who goes off in search of a book.

I have often said that with all the stuff that I have to make up in order to write a novel, why would I spend time inventing a place when there are perfectly good places all around me?

As a result, all three of my novels are set within just a few miles of my home.

Is this laziness? Absolutely. But it turns out that Tom Perrota does this, too, and for essentially the same reason.

I feel like slightly less of a hack today.

This pint-sized hockey fan makes your average fantasy football player look like a joke.

I have such respect for this little girl. The passion that she possesses for her favorite hockey player is beyond impressive. She makes the fantasy football  fanatics of the world look like little boys playing with Pokémon cards on the playground. 

Even her request for food at the end of the video is perfect. This little girl truly understands how to love and embrace a sport.

She’s probably about three or four years older than my son, but if I could arrange a marriage between the two of them, I would seriously consider it. And I think he’d thank me for it later.

He could do a whole hell of a lot worse than this little girl. 

Apparently a lack of intelligence and decency will not prevent you from getting into college

LSU frat Delta Kappa Epsilon hung a banner for Saturday’s LSU-Kent State game that said, “Getting massacred is nothing new to Kent State,” referencing the 1970 Kent State shootings.

If the majority of the fraternity was aware of this banner (and it’s hard to imagine that they were not given its placement, the LSU chapter of Delta Kappa Epsilon should be immediately disbanded and be forced to vacate their house.

It just goes to show you that even with the rigorous admissions standards of today’s colleges, idiots are still more than capable of gaining admission to college.

My brothers are gone, and my heart hurts.

I leave for Camp Jewell with my fifth graders this morning for three days of outdoor adventures in the woods of northwestern Connecticut.

This will be my fifteenth year at Camp Jewell. When I first brought students to this camp back in 1999, I was a rookie teacher who had been asked to go because of the limited number of men in our elementary school and my years of experience at Boy Scout camp.

It was soon discovered that I know every camp song ever sung, play a mean game of Simon Says and can yell loud enough to be heard on the other side of the lake.  

I’ve been going ever since.

The memories that I have from the last fifteen years spent at that YMCA camp are astounding. Many are hilarious. Most are unforgettable. Quite a few are truly inspiring.

Camp Jewell is also a deeply personal place for me. I had my first real conversation with my wife at Camp Jewell as we hiked around the lake together with a group of fifth graders on a bright, Wednesday afternoon. Elysha and I first got to know each other while camping in the forests around that lake.

She and I brought students to camp for six years before she switched grade levels and then stopped teaching entirely in order to raise our children. We started out as friends for those first two trips to camp before we returning as a couple for the next four.

It’s been five years since Elysha returned to Camp Jewell with me, and I think about her and all the times we shared constantly while I’m there.

For my first fourteen years at camp, I was joined by a group of three other men: my former principal and two music instructors. Other male teachers have come and gone during that time, and some still return from time to time, but these three men were the core group who have been camping with with me every year that I have returned to Camp Jewell. Combined, we had almost 75 years of experience bringing students to the outdoors. Once the kids were in bed, our evenings were filled with stories of all the previous adventures that we had shared together. We would laugh well into the night at tales already told dozens of times before but still as funny and moving as the first time we heard them.

This year marks an enormous change in my life. While I return to camp for my fifteenth year, there is only one other male teacher with any experience at camp, and his totals a single year.

My principal has retired. 
The instrumental music teacher has been promoted and now wears a suit.
The vocal music teacher won’t be able to join us this year.

The three men whose lives and experiences were so intertwined with my own at camp are now gone.

I was texting with my former principal about this last night and he wrote, “You are the history and tradition keeper now.”

I told him that this makes me sad. I don’t want to be the history and tradition keeper. I don’t want to be the bearer of all the stories and memories from the decades that our school has been bringing children to Camp Jewell.

Who will chime in when I tell the story of the time I recited French love poetry to my former principal while he wore a mop on his head as part of our rainy-day, spur-of-the-moment, teacher talent show?

Who will tell the other half of the story about the time I got lost in the woods in the middle of the night during a thunderstorm? The half about how no one noticed that I was missing even though I was gone for almost two hours?

Who will tell all the stories about the years before I first arrived to Camp Jewell? All those stories I love and remember but did not actually experience firsthand?

Who is going to play the guitar on Friday morning and sing, “It’s Time To Get Up!” to darkened rooms filled with bleary-eyed children?

When you spend fifteen years doing something with people, and especially when that fifteen years includes living with them, side by side, they become a part of you. You get to know them in a deep, fundamental way. You find yourself finishing their sentences, anticipating their movement and trusting them like few people in this world.

This morning I return to the woods feeling a little bit alone for the first time. There are female teachers joining us, and I have known some of them for just as long, and a few are some of my closest friends, but they will be up the hill, in a cabin of their own, and they are like sisters. Not brothers.

My brothers are gone. I am the last man standing from our group of four. This year’s trip marks an enormous change in our school and my life, and while I normally invite and even embrace change, this change involves the absence of friends. The journey forward without those who matter most.

Sometimes change is hard because it hurts your heart.

One of the best political ads ever made

My three favorite people

Can you blame me?