Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 587

What writers cant teach one another

As an author, I'm always happy to answer the "Where do you get your ideas?" question, especially when it's asked at one of my author appearances.

My ideas tend to come from a wide variety of sources, so this question often opens to the door to a great deal of anecdotal material that I can use to entertain an audience.  

Oftentimes, a novel is a combination of ideas.  The innocent comment of a friend, an incident in the news, a piece of personal history and an unanswered question all woven together to form a story.   

But when aspiring writers ask me where I get the ideas for my novels in hopes of finding ideas of their own, I can't help but wonder:

Has any writer in ever asked this question of another writer, listened to the answer and thought, "Oh!  That's where ideas come from! Now I know exactly where to look!"

Of all the things that writers can teach one another, it seems to me that finding the ideas for stories is not one of them.

But this comes from an author who is fortunate enough to have no problem generating story ideas, so perhaps I am wrong?  

Thoughts?

I dont agree with him, but I can respect his answer

Did I just hear an Evangelical Republican candidate admit that he does not know if the Bible should be taken literally?

Did I just hear him say that the seven days of Creation might represent different periods of history rather than seven rotations of the planet? 

Did he just acknowledge that metaphor may have existed in Biblical times?

I still think it's narrow-minded to reject the overwhelming scientific evidence that supports evolution, and I still would not vote for the man, but that doesn't mean I can't respect him.

And with this intellectually honest answer, Mike Huckabee has earned my respect.  

Dickens and Dicks

A reader sent me this photo with the heading "In good company."

I couldn't agree more.

And while it's not quite Dicks, please note that no one asked Charles Dickens to change his last name for the sake of decorum.  

Buttered side up, thank goodness

This is the risk you accept when you allow your two-year old daughter to type on your computer. 

A slice of bread left behind on the mouse pad.  

No bullets? Seriously?

Have you heard about the heroism of F-16 pilot Lt. Heather Penney? 

She was the USAF pilot who was ready to sacrifice her life to bring down the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 on September 11, 2001. 

From The Daily Beast:

Armed jets weren't kept on standby at the time, so Penney and her commanding officer had only their planes to use against the hijacked airliner. Three planes had already hit the towers and the Pentagon when her commander told her to scramble her plane.

"I'm going to go for the cockpit," said her commander.

"I'll take the tail," replied Penny, a rookie at the time.

They didn't have to, because the passengers on the flight brought the plane down themselves. "I genuinely believed that was going to be the last time I took off," she says. "If we did it right, this would be it."

The bravery of these two pilots is extraordinary (I'm assuming her commanders name has not been release at his request), but I can't help but wonder why there wasn't a single plane armed for combat at the time of the attacks. 

Does the Air Force really keep all of its F-16 fighters entirely unarmed until needed?

Doesn't this strike you as slightly unprepared?

The complications of marrying a Jewish woman

I was listening to comedian Mark Maron speak to writer and comedian Carol Leifer on Maron's popular podcast WTF. He was asking about what it was like to come out of the closet to her parents after years of being married to a man and living a heterosexual lifestyle.

Leifer described her parents as surprisingly supportive and happy that their daughter had found a woman to love.

"So you're not disappointed in me?" she asked.

"We were disappointed in you when you married that Gentile," Leifer's father said. "Not now."

Leifer went on to explain that the fact that her girlfriend was Jewish actually made the situation more palatable to her parents. It turns out that as long as she was marrying a Jew, it didn't matter if it was a woman or a man.

Maron, also Jewish, laughed, and when I've mentioned this exchange to others since then, they have laughed as well.

I did not think it was funny.

Being married to a Jewish woman and not being Jewish myself, I did not find any amusement in this story.

It's a story I live with constantly, and it never gets funny.

A few weeks ago, Elysha, Clara and were visiting a local Jewish Community Center with a friend to let the kids play on the indoor playscape. I sat down on a bench beside two older men waiting to play racquetball. One of the men was talking about how annoyed he has been with his daughter for marrying outside the faith. The other man said, "My daughter did the same thing. Eventually you accept it. You never love it, but it won't always bother you as much as it does today."

Later on, I met a woman responsible for arranging cultural events for the community center. We began talking, and the fact that I am an author came up. She mentioned that she might like to have me speak to the community center's members sometime.

"Are you a member of the JCC or thinking of joining?"

Another woman said, "Oh, Matt isn't Jewish. His wife is."

"Oh," the first woman said, and the conversation fizzled out.

Later my wife asked what I thought of the JCC and wondered if I would ever want to become a member. I told her that while I thought the place was great, I didn't think that I could ever feel completely comfortable there and explained why.

To her credit, she understood completely.

It's a difficult space in which to live, married to a Jewish woman but not being Jewish myself, and the difficulty exists only because of the Jewish demand to marry within the faith. It creates a situation in which I often feel not only like the outsider but also the interloper, and it leaves me wondering where I stand in people's minds.

Take my wife's family for example. Elysha's parents, sister, aunts and uncles, cousins and grandmother have embraced me like one of their own, and I'm so grateful to them for their love and generosity. Her immediate family in particular have made me feel at home in a way that no other family ever has.

I love them all dearly.

And yet in the back of my mind lingers this thought:

Certain members of Elysha's family, like many Jews, would never have considered marrying outside the faith, and therefore none of them would have ever considered me marriage material for themselves or their children.

Had it not been for Elysha, my membership in their family would have been unthinkable for some.

Had they or their children been looking for a suitable spouse I would have never been considered.

Here's a good way to think about it:

It's socially acceptable, culturally expected and commonplace for Jewish parents to impose the expectation that their children will marry within the Jewish faith. It is a belief that is publicly articulated, and to do otherwise in some families can damage the family beyond repair.  Some Jewish parents have gone so far as to disown their children and mourn them as if they had died.

It's something that Mark Maron and Carol Leifer can laugh about despite the unfortunate truth behind this belief.

But what if we replace the word Jewish with black or Hispanic?

What if Leifer's parents had said that they were disappointed in her for marrying a black man?

Would she have been so willing to tell that story on the podcast?

Would it have been as amusing?

I don't think so.

What if the man outside the racquetball court had been upset because his daughter had married a Puerto Rican?

Would he have been so willing to share this disappointment with a stranger sitting next to him?

I suspect not.

And what if Elysha called her family tomorrow and said that after much deliberation and conversation with me, she has decided to forgo Judaism in favor or another religion or no religion at all?

While Elysha's family is one of the most understanding and accepting of Jewish families, I suspect that this news would not go over well with all parties.

At least at first.

I suspect it could be a source of disappointment and even anger for some.

But what if Elysha called her family tomorrow and told them that I had decided to convert to Judaism.

I suspect this news would go over quite well.

This dichotomy never entirely leaves me.

When I hear people like Maron and Leifer joking about these issues on a podcast or a man openly expressing these beliefs while sitting beside me in a community center, it makes me feel like an interloper again.

While other religions place similar expectations on their children, the Jewish expectation to marry within the faith is especially strong. When we were engaged to be married, Elysha would come home at least once every couple weeks and tell me about the code that Jews use to determine if I was Jewish.

"What's his last name?"

Sadly, had my last name been Dickstein instead of Dicks, our pending nuptials would have been received with considerably greater joy by some.

It's the difference between tolerance and acceptance. 

This feels like 99% acceptance.

"You can marry Elysha, but someone of similar beliefs could never marry one of my children."

"You don't have to be Jewish, but your wife and children had better be stay Jewish."

As unfortunate as the sentiment is, it makes me feel lucky, because Elysha's parents and family are outliers when it comes to their acceptance of me. Elysha's parents embraced me immediately, without question or reservation.

I know Jewish parents who would make their child's life hell of he or she chose to marry outside the faith, which I find amazing. 

Imagine the audacity and selfishness required for parents to believe that they have the right to screen out potential spousal candidates based upon religious beliefs.

In today's world of interracial and homosexual marriages, it's almost medieval.  

My hope is that with time, the Jewish community at large will become more accepting of interfaith marriages and make us less-Chosen people feel more genuinely welcome.

Making me good enough for Elysha but never for their own daughter is an unfortunate quality that the world could do without. 

Sunday morning epiphany

She dragged her chair across the room, asked for a blanket, and grabbed a pile of books.

She's only two-years old, but she understands the purpose and meaning of a Sunday morning perfectly.

   

A teachers memory of 9/11

The following is a piece I wrote and posted a year ago on the ninth anniversary of the September 11th attacks. 

__________________________________________________________________

I was teaching my third graders when my classroom phone rang around 9:00.  It was my ex-wife, calling to tell me that a plane had hit the Word Trade Center.  She said that it was likely a commuter plane, but if I had some free time, I might want to turn on the news.

"All the networks are covering the story," she said.

It was 2001 and I did not own a cell phone.  Though the Internet was up and running, it was not nearly as ubiquitous as it is today.  My ex-wife knew that in those days, once a teacher entered a school, he or she was often encased in a protective bubble, unaware of outside events until the school day ended.  No televisions.  No radios.  No smart phones.  And little time for phone calls.  The outside world did not exist while we were teaching.  As a result, she would occasionally call me with breaking news, giving me a chance to step away at lunchtime to catch up on world events.

I hung up the phone and continued teaching, wondering how a pilot could accidentally fly into one of the largest buildings in the world.

"What an idiot," I remembering whispering aloud as I returned to my lesson.

Ten minutes later she called back.  "Another plane hit the second tower.  It's an attack."

I hung up the phone and turned to my students, who were busy solving math problems.  I had to smile and continue to teach them, knowing that something terrible was happening outside the walls of our school.  As I spoke about subtraction with regrouping, I tried to imagine what was happening in New York City.

At 9:30 I dropped my students off for vocal music class, pulling their teacher aside and whispering, "Two planes have crashed into the World Trade Center.  It's a terrorist attack."

I headed for the principal's office to see if he even knew that the attacks were taking place.  The small television had been moved onto his desk, and he a several others were watching the events unfold.  We watched the towers burn together in near silence.

A couple minutes later news came that The Pentagon had been hit.  There was discussion that this might be the tip of the iceberg, the first in a long series of terrorist attacks.  There was speculation that there could be more planes, many more planes, flying to many more targets around the country.  We listened to new anchors report on the casualties and speculate on the numbers still awaiting to die in the towers.  

Someone in the office said, "We are at war."

Just before 10:00, we watched the south tower fall.  I couldn't believe my eyes.  I remember thinking that it was as if the tower had been built of ash and bone.  There were several people in the office at the time, and at least two uttered a quiet scream as the tower collapsed.

A minute after it fell, I left to pick up my students.  I remember walking to the basement stairs, feeling saddled with momentous and awful information that I could not share with my kids.  Information that I did not want to share with them. 

I remember thinking that I would try to make this school day as normal and happy for them as possible, knowing that the world was changing before our eyes.  I remember envying them, too, thinking about how fortunate they were to have one more day of peace and normalcy than the rest of us.  I decided that I would build a protective cocoon around them that day, making sure that whatever we did was normal and fun and spirited and full of laughter.  I wanted this last day for them to be the best it could possibly be.

Parents began coming in to pick up their children as news spread, but only a few left my class early.  Most of us remained together, learning and laughing as buildings burned and people died,  As their parents took them by the hand and led them out the classroom door, I felt sorry for them, knowing that they were returning to the real world where planes flew into buildings and mighty towers collapsed onto city streets.

I remember thinking that nothing will ever be the same for them.  The safety and security that infused my childhood would no longer exist for them.  Their country had been attacked.  Civilians had been killed and buildings had been knocked down by our enemies.  Our borders would never feel quite as secure as they once had.  I wondered if Americans felt the same following the attack on Pearl Harbor.

In many ways, the world did not change as much as I had feared, at least for my students.  America went to war, terrorists continued to threaten our safety, and civil liberties eroded under the threat of more attacks.  It's a very different world today, but my students remain as happy and as enthusiastic about the future as ever.  The students who I teach today were born in 2001 and view 9/11 as a history lesson, something that happened before their time.  And while the ramifications of the attacks will continue to impact their lives for years to come, their childhood remains blissfully intact for the most part.

Like the kids who I was teaching on the morning of September 11, 2001, these children see the future as full of hope and promise.

And I love them for it.  

Not many people could make it through this chart

I'd laminate this and carry it around, but people would either be dishonest when answering the questions or naïve about their own prejudices.

Tag me in!

Here's the job I want:

When a lunatic-intimidating-bully on a reality television show or talk show loses his or her mind and verbally assaults a weaker member of the cast, I'd like the victim to be able to hit a big, orange button and tag me in to counterattack.

I have many flaws (and am working on a post that lists the most egregious of them), but verbal combat ain't one of them. 

I love verbal combat. 

I am a verbal combat ninja. 

I am ruthless, relentless and well armed for almost any situation. 

I am capable of some serious verbal jujitsu.

I can probably thank my evil stepfather for this skill.  He provided me with a lifetime of experience in this regard.  

Sadly, there are simply not enough opportunities to use this skill in my life.  Try as I might, my opportunities for verbal sparring are hampered by a tragic tendency toward reasonability, moderation and decorum in the general public. 

But not on reality television. These shows are chock full of mouthy lunatics and inarticulate, overconfident fools who manage to win verbal sparring contests through sheer force of will. 

These are the ones for whom the big, orange button is designed.

Tag me in and let me take them down with a combination of logic and aggression. 

Who knows a reality show producer who might be interested in my services?