Foster Dickson's Blog, page 66

On the Edgy Edge of Edginess

Recently, I was listening to a little cluster of students who huddled around a computer, giggling at what each other didn’t know and at what was too old to care about. One proudly explained that she couldn’t name a single Beatles song, though her friend began to sing the chorus of “Here Comes the Sun.” A third proclaimed loudly that Madonna was overrated and that Beyoncé is so much better. This is the same group who call ’60s and ’70s classic rock “dad rock.”

As a dad in Wayfarers, I’m not sure how to respond to this half-joking diminution. It’d be nice to be the cool old dude, but one must be careful not to veer too far and end up like Kevin Spacey in American Beauty or worse, like Dennis Hopper in River’s Edge. Old-dude cool is dangerous territory, even at this late date in pop culture. While it is acceptable for me, in my 40s, to play Pixies louder than a middle-aged man should, it would not, for example, be okay for me to listen to Lana Del Rey at all. (Who’d want to, when you’ve got Velvet Underground & Nico and Portishead?)

Here’s the catch: the double-standard is real, apparent, and obvious . . . and no young person apologizes for it— even though young people readily plead the case when faced with a double-standard dealt out by an older person. For example, if a teenager has something old, then it’s “vintage,” but if I have something old, then it’s just old. Old-dude cool involves knowing all about that undefined and deeply hypocritical line – the edgy edge of edginess – and it means grasping what Bob Dylan taught generations of us: if you have to ask, then you don’t get it.

Probably the greatest benefit of old-dude cool is being able to invoke my inner Dylan. Sometimes it’s necessary to see a teenager behaving badly, and calmly and knowingly say, “Don’t do that. Don’t be that guy.” I know, because I was that guy a few times, and I wish someone had said it to me.

An old proverb says that Time heals all wounds. It also humbles all young people. I used to be young. It was nice, and I had a lot of fun. But I wouldn’t go back to it. Having that energy again wouldn’t be worth losing the wisdom. The simple truth that young people just don’t – and can’t – get is: that’s what makes old-dude cool the coolest cool of all— being so cool that we don’t even care that you don’t think we are.

I’m sure that this generation thinks that the Beatles aren’t worth worrying about and that Madonna is overrated. To them, Madonna is 50 and wearing a lot of make-up and trying too hard. But to us, she’s that girl who rolled around seductively in a fishnet top, at a time when no one else was doing that. They ask the same question about Madonna’s antics that I asked about The Beatles’ mop-tops or Elvis’ pelvis: what’s the big deal? Compared to any episode of Shameless, which they can stream any time, “Like a Virgin” is pretty tame. Ultimately, I can’t fault the snickering students, so I do what old-dude cool tells me to do: say, “Whatever,” and go on about my business.

Filed under: Critical Thinking, Generation X, Music Tagged: 40s, dad rock, middle age, old dude cool, pop culture, vintage

Conservatives against #climatechange

This story that ran on PBS NewsHour on May 14, “Rising Conservative Voices Call for Climate Change Action,” opened my eyes to something I was not aware even existed: sentiments within the larger conservative movement that climate change is real and that action is required.

Perhaps the most intriguing group in this story – at least, to me – was Young Evangelicals for Climate Action (who can also be found on Twitter at @YECAction). The signs they carried and the t-shirts they wore during their march extolled Biblical values about being good neighbors and good stewards of God’s earth, which are both ideas that I completely agree with.

And it’s not just younger conservatives who are mindful of facing these problems. The story also features a Florida Republican congressman named Carlos Curbelo, who along with Democratic counterpart Ted Deutsch created the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus in the US House, and a climate-change solutions report authored by the Conservation Leadership Council, which includes familiar Republican names like George Schultz, James Baker, and Henry Paulson.

There is so much room for far-reaching, bipartisan action on climate change and environmental protection. I don’t care what a person’s political affiliation or religion may be; we all want a safe and clean environment for ourselves, our families, our neighbors, and our descendants, and we can’t let divisiveness, misunderstanding, or a short-term lack of vision jeopardize our access ro basic human needs like clean water, fresh air, and healthy food.

Filed under: The Environment Tagged: climate change, conservative, environment, NPR, YECAction

Fightin’ the same ol’ fights . . .

Some things don’t change. These images are the front and back covers of the July/August 1995 issue of Poets & Writers magazine, and both feature an emphasis on saving the National Endowment for the Arts, which was slated to be cut. Back in 1995, we had then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, a Republican from Georgia, whose Contract with America sought to reshape the country around neo-conservative values. That was 22 years ago, and the National Endowment for the Arts obviously survived. Today, we have Donald Trump, ready to zero out the NEA, the NEH, and the CPB. If the House’s recent omnibus spending bill is any indication, the NEA will survive this time, too.

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Filed under: Arts, Literature, Poetry, Reading Tagged: 1995, funding, NEA, poets & writers

HR 244: chock-full of “liberal priorities”

The federal spending bill HR244 was passed by the House of Representatives earlier this week, and not only were the NEA and NEH not cut to zero as the president proposed, their funding was increased, much to the chagrin of the conservative Heritage Foundation, which had this to share among their encouragements to vote no on the bill:

Coupled with these two bailouts, the omnibus spending bill also funds liberal priorities and initiatives. H.R. 244 includes millions in increased funding for Department of Energy (DOE) pet projects, national parks, Amtrak, Head Start, college tuition assistance, the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and even a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) sage grouse conservation project.

I’m still not sure how the arts, the humanities, parks, commuter trains, pre-K, and the sage grouse all became “liberal priorities.” I wonder whether anyone has told the sage grouse community about this, and whether their feathers will be ruffled by it.

Filed under: Arts, Education, The Environment Tagged: Arts, congress, funding, humanities, NEA, NEH, sage grouse

Seven Years’ Worth of Unapologetically Eclectic Pack Mule-ing

Seven years ago today, I published the first post on this blog, “Pack Mule for the School,” in part because I was sick of playing the submissions game: write something, send it out, wait, maybe get an answer, maybe not . . . then look up after that slow process and realize that the piece is outdated so there’s no choice but to scrap it. I started blogging because I wanted to go straight to an audience when I was ready. Maybe a post only reaches two people— but that’s two more than those words would have reached if I went the traditional route, waited, and got a rejection letter— or got no response at all.

In the last seven years, I’ve thrown a lot up here, about 800 posts whose subjects have run the gamut: from explorations of Deep Southern culture to examinations of education policy, from ruminations on teaching practices to pictures of plants I think are beautiful, from elaborations on the importance of voting to celebrations of hokey old horror movies, from opinions about beer and whiskey to ideas about true happiness. Over seven years, I’ve shared the ideas that one Generation X-er in the Deep South thinks about: reconciling my deep roots in this confusing place with my notions of possibility and progress, wondering out loud what would happen if education and voting were as important as college football, and even looking into the unfairness of student-loan debt. Any marketing-advice article will tell you that a writer should maintain focus and develop a niche. It should be pretty clear that I don’t care at all about boxing myself in. I just lump it all under the heading “Deep Southern, Diversified.”

Not too long ago, my children asked me what my favorite song is, and I told them that I have two that I can’t pick between: “The Weight” by The Band and “Wasn’t Born To Follow” by The Byrds. Both appear on the soundtrack to Easy Rider, which is one of my favorite movies, and both songs express, in different ways, how I feel about life: I can see what everybody else is doing, but I’m going to do what I’m going to do. Maybe this “Pack Mule for the New School” thing has rambled around some, but that’s the way my mind works.

Since seven is a lucky number, and since spring is a good time for airing out and shaking off the dust, I see the signs telling me that it’s time to do something different. After 168 writer-editor-teacher quotes, twenty Southern Movie posts, ten Passive Activist posts, twelve Some Other News from Around the Deep South posts, eighteen Chasing Ghosts posts, a few Deep Southern Gardening posts, and whole slew of others, the scope and tenor of “Pack Mule for the New School” is going to change.

First, many of the posts from 2010 – 2017 will remain available, though I’m removing some of them to trim the fat, taking down the posts that announced events or appearances, that commented briefly on then-important matters, etc.

Second, new posts will be published less often and with less regularity than three times a week on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays.

Finally, updates about my writing work, such as author appearances and publications, will now go up on my new author website, www.fosterdickson.com. “Pack Mule for the New School” will still be where I continue to prattle about the subjects that rattle around in my mind. The author website will be where I post updates about what I’m up to.

The image above was taken by tapestry artist Tommye Scanlin in the summer of 2010 (about the time I started this blog) in the woods behind the Lillian E. Smith Center in Clayton, Georgia. The man in front of me, with the machete, is artist Robert Fichter. 

Filed under: Generation X, Teaching, The Deep South, Writing and Editing Tagged: Alabama, blogging, eclectic, Education, Generation X, Pack Mule for the New School, writing

They: An Evolutionary Tale

During fourteen years of teaching, I’ve spent a lot of time marking the improper use of pronouns. The way that some high school students, especially younger ones, switch pronouns so fervently has driven me nearly mad. In just one paragraph, I might get something like this:

I think that teenagers shouldn’t have curfews. You know when you need to be home your parents don’t. If a teenager wants to be out late, they should be able to.

No, no, no, I reply with my red pen. The first sentence utilizes first-person voice – the writer’s voice – but begins with the flabby phrase, “I think that.” The second sentence – a run-on that’s actually two sentences and needs punctuation – changes to second-person, which should be used to speak directly to the reader, but in this case, isn’t. The sentence instead utilizes a non-voice that speaks both for the writer and for the subject of the paragraph. Finally, the third sentence shifts once again, this time to third-person, while committing an agreement error between “a teenager” singular and “they,” which is plural.

The grammarian in me cringes at the weak, inefficient, and inexact writing that is caused by pronoun errors. I’m not some schoolmarmish stickler for rules and regulations, not in the slightest, but this kind of writing I equate to a quarterback throwing the football ten feet over an open receiver’s head: we can tell who he was throwing to, but he didn’t have the remotest chance to connect and accomplish anything.

Grammar is a system, like a city’s transit system. No matter how badly you want the Main Street bus to pick you up on Third Avenue, it probably won’t. I know about the attitude that grammar is a mass of useless, erudite restrictions created to confuse otherwise competent speakers and writers, but that dim view overlooks the societal need for agreed-upon transactional standards: in traffic, in law— and in language.

Because I regard the English language and its grammar as systems that function reasonably well, I have a near-total disdain for the new fad in pronouns. It broke my heart when, in 2015, two of my favorite publications, The Atlantic and The Washington Post, endorsed “the singular they.” A few months later, in early 2016, The New York Times Magazine‘s Amanda Hess also wrote about the long history of the quandary in “Who’s They?” in which she acknowledges:

These gender-neutral constructions, which not so long ago may have sounded odd or even unthinkable to traditionalists, are becoming accepted as standard English.

While this fact of acceptance makes my writer-teacher self want to let out a primal scream a la Stanley Kowalski, Hess reminds her reader that singular they is already used commonly, especially when the gender of the person discussed is not known. True, I thought, I’ll give her that one. Then Hess threw this bone to non-believers like me:

It’s precisely the vagueness of “they” that makes it a not-so-ideal pronoun replacement. It can obscure a clear gender identification with a blurred one. Think of genderqueer people who are confident in their knowledge of their own gender identity as one that simply doesn’t fit the boxes of “he” or “she”: Calling all of them “they” can make it sound as if someone’s gender is unknowable; it’s the grammatical equivalent of a shrug.

Exactly!

I’m well aware of how language is political. Whereas a culture’s normalized values can exclude, oppress, devalue, and dominate some people and groups, those values are embedded in its language. Modern American English is rife with oppressive terminology, some of which has been dismantled in recent decades. The Political Correctness movement took dead aim at demeaning words and phrases, and though it reached absurd pinnacles that have drawn the ire of right-wingers, the movement did achieve genuine progress in affecting the ways that Americans regard each other.

Because I’m aware that language is political, I’m also aware that we’re at a watershed moment in American culture with this whole singular they business. The language is changing, and many of us don’t like it. But it isn’t as simple as saying, People who don’t like singular they must have a problem with gender neutrality or gender fluidity. That’s just not so.

Here are my ideas: As human beings, we don’t name something unless it matters to us. The first thing we find out from people we meet are their names, and we feel badly if we can’t remember someone’s name. In like manner, cultures give derogatory names to people who are viewed as problematic, who confuse norms and values, or whose lives stand in the way of hegemony. For centuries, there have been no shortage of ugly terms for people we today call lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. However, today, we are experiencing a societal effort to name – to properly and respectfully name – people who have same-sex romantic relationships, people who have both same-sex and opposite-sex relationships, and people who understand themselves to be neither male nor female. And that linguistic transition is proving difficult for many people, because the societal transition is hard. Our culture is moving away from widespread notions that heteronormative “traditional values” are the only valid way to live, and it is moving toward a system of values that is more inclusive, more tolerant, more open.

Despite being in favor a more open and accepting society, I don’t like the acceptance of the singular they. Even though I may live with it, I don’t believe that I ever will like it— and I’m not being an old fuddy-duddy who won’t get with the gender-issues program. I will readily acknowledge the shortcomings of Manichean dualism, especially regarding what gets excluded, ignored, and demeaned. No, I don’t like singular they because it is inexact. The word they, in Modern American English, is a pronoun that refers to a group of humans, animals, or other beings. (We may refer to people, dogs, or ghosts as they.) While a person can be gender-neutral, that person cannot be multiple people. And the word they refers to a group. It is plural. And to refer to one person in the plural, logic tells me, does not make sense. Therefore, grammatically, they is not the word we are looking for.

The acceptance of singular they represents a moment in the evolution of English. Just as the Great Vowel Shift changed pronunciations, just as thee and thou were dropped in favor of you, and just as Americans discarded the “u” in the spelling of the words color and  armor, so shall we now recognize they as a singular gender-neutral pronoun. If our major news outlets are accepting singular they, I feel certain that editors and publishers of other media will soon or have already. And that will happen despite my objections— and despite my difficult balancing act, standing firmly as both a social progressive who endorses the acceptance of diversity and a linguistic traditionalist who can’t condone improper usage.

Filed under: Critical Thinking, Education, Teaching, Writing and Editing Tagged: gender equality, gendering non-conforming, grammar, they

A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week #168

The perpetual blind spot that gives us the impression that we are separate from the rest of creation also may have fostered the belief that we are in control, not only of our environment but also of ourselves. Debate regarding the truth of this belief used to be primarily a religious matter, known as the “free will/determinism” argument. Disagreement centered on the amount of freedom the Creator had given us to act, or more specifically to sin or not to sin.

Back when most of Western civilization believed that God was in control of our lives, we often assumed that He could be bribed with a few good deeds or contrite supplications, which left us some degree of choice over our destiny. However, in the twentieth century, science has investigated the free will/determinism question by taking a close look at the biological and psychological makeup of the individual. As the ancient saying goes, self-knowledge is usually bad news.

– from Crazy Wisdom: a provocative romp through the philosophies of East and West by Wes “Scoop” Nisker

Filed under: Critical Thinking, Teaching, Writing and Editing Tagged: editing, philosophy, self-awareness, teaching, wisdom, writing

Sallie Mae and Me, in the Trump era

Back in 2015 and 2016, I made significant efforts to figure out what my Sallie Mae/Navient student-loan debt is doing to me financially, moreover how to alleviate or lessen those effects, and I wrote about those efforts in a series of posts titled “Sallie Mae and Me”. In those efforts to reduce either my interest rate or my balance, I was rebuked by the “customer service” people at the multi-billion dollar corporation that consumes much of my payments with interest. Since then, not much as changed in my situation . . . or in my attitude.

I do have a dog in this fight, but I want to see it fixed for more people than just me. I’ve paid thousands of dollars to Sallie Mae/Navient over the last eight or nine years, and my balance is just now getting below the amount I borrowed. When I think about how that same sum of money could have been spent in my local economy, having a positive effect on a community that I care about, it only makes my disdain grow larger.

What has also made my disdain grow larger is this little nugget from NPR earlier this month: “Teachers, Lawyers and Others Worry About Student Loan Forgiveness.” The short article explains that some young professionals who have taken part in loan-forgiveness service programs are now being told that their service may not count, that the organization for which they worked may not be an eligible program, and that years of low-paying non-profit work may be for naught. As you can imagine, those people are pissed. I would be, too. (I looked into some of the these programs, but wasn’t eligible for any of them.)

There was supposed to be some light at the end of the tunnel on this issue. Back in October 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump unveiled his plan for handling the student-loan debt crisis. His pronouncements conveyed two basic ideas: the first would cap repayment at 12.5% of a borrower’s income, and the other would reward fifteen years of good payments with total forgiveness. I’ve easily paid 12.5% of my income to Sallie Mae/Navient already, and I’m more than halfway to fifteen years of repayment. Either way is fine with me.

Yet, in the six months since then-candidate Trump shared those proposals, his actions as president don’t indicate the likelihood of relief for people like me. In a mid-April, the Wall Street Journal‘s Josh Mitchell reported, in “Trump Administration Scraps Obama Plan for Student-Loan Servicing,” that the president ordered his Secretary of Education Betsy Devos to cut costs in her agency, and she has dumped a set of pro-consumer regulations that she said cost too much. As a result,

Shares of Navient, Inc., one of the government’s main servicers, rose more than 2% after Ms. Devos’s announcement.

Mitchell also wrote that about “eight million Americans are at least a year behind on $137 billion in federal student debt.” That sounds like a lot of people who could use some help from a president who campaigned that he would put “America first.”

Put simply, the nation’s staggeringly high student-loan debt totals hurt everyone in the country, even people with no loans. Earlier this month, the NPR story, “A New Look at The Lasting Consequences of Student Loan Debt,” shared another sobering conclusion about how having this many people with this much debt hurts the overall economy. In this case, having tens of thousands of dollars in student-loan debt can cause a young person not to be able to buy a house, because the resulting lower credit score can necessitate larger down payments and greater interest rates— money they don’t have. And when fewer people buy houses, that hurts mortgage brokers, realtors, builders, contractors, landscapers, home stores— whole sectors of the American economy that have nothing, per se, to do with higher education.

However, I don’t see this businessman-president making middle-class Americans a priority over wealthy investors. For now, I’ll just keep putting the money I’d otherwise spend around town into Sallie Mae/Navient’s coffers, and their stockholders can enjoy another bottle of bubbly on me.

Filed under: Critical Thinking, Education, Generation X Tagged: debt, Sallie Mae, student loans

A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week #167

Poetry of witness presents the reader with an interesting interpretive problem. We are accustomed to rather easy categories: “personal” and “political” poems— the former calling to mind lyrics of love and emotional loss, the latter indicating a partisanship that is considered divisive, even when necessary. The distinction between the personal and the political gives the political realm too much and too little scope; at the same time, it renders the personal too important and no important enough. If we give up the dimension of the personal, we risk relinquishing one of the most powerful sites of myopia, an inability to see how larger structures of the economy and state circumscribe, if not determine, the fragile realm of individuality.

We need a third term, one that can describe the space between the state and the supposedly safe havens of the personal. Let us call this space “the social.”

– from the “Introduction” to Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness, edited by Carolyn Forché

Filed under: Poetry, Social Justice, Teaching, Writing and Editing Tagged: Against Forgetting, Carolyn Forche, editing, teaching, writing

And then there were none.

As an avid student of Alabama history and culture, I believe that we have just lived through an historic moment in our state, one that will be summarized and described by historians, one that will be dissected and analyzed by media pundits and political science professors. In less than a year, we in Alabama have lost all three duly elected leaders of all three branches of state government, each man from his own scandal.

In June 2016, Speaker of the House Mike Hubbard was convicted on 12 counts of ethics violations, removed from both his Speaker position and from his seat in the state’s House of Representatives. The counts stemmed from allegations that he used his office for personal gain. He is appealing his convictions.

In September 2016, Alabama’s Chief Justice Roy Moore was essentially removed from office, having been suspended for the remainder of this term for violating a federal court order to allow same-sex marriages to proceed. Moore’s appeals were defeated.

Then earlier this week, in April 2017, Governor Robert Bentley resigned from his job shortly after pleading guilty to two misdemeanors related to campaign finance violations. Bentley was undergoing an impeachment effort by the legislature, which centered on an alleged affair with a female advisor. The release of the impeachment committee’s report, which contained examples of text messages between the two, seemed to lead to his resignation.

Now-former Governor Bentley basically ended the same way he started: in hot water and apologizing. Back in January 2011, only minutes into his first term, Bentley remarked in his inauguration speech, “Anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister, and I want to be your brother,” then had to make a hasty public apology after an immediate backlash. As Bentley made his final speech, his themes were again God, prayer, and forgiveness.

Three duly elected state leaders, three unrelated controversies , three political downfalls. If this has ever happened in this way in American history – in any state – I can’t find the person who can tell me about it. And despite all of the talk, I also can’t find anyone who can tell me what this means for Alabama . . . there are only about 4.7 million of us who would like to know.

(Notwithstanding our internal uncertainty, it is certain how we’re being regarded nationally. Just take a gander at what came out in Esquire yesterday: “Alabama Has Fully Lost Its Mind: Where Do We Begin?”)

Filed under: Alabama Tagged: Alabama, scandal