Foster Dickson's Blog, page 83

The Anxiety of Too Many Choices

At the end of last year, I felt like I had an overzealous announcer from a cheap TV commercial inside my head, shouting, Everything must go! I had reached a saturation point— a mental one.

Over the last few years, the crazy number of choices provided by the internet and digital media distribution had caused me to build up a seemingly interminable self-assigned “reading list.” Every time I’d see a book I’d like to read, I put it in my Amazon Wish List. If I’d see a movie I’d like to watch— in my Netflix queue!  When I browsed the cable guide, I took full advantage of the DVR’s ability to save every movie on Turner Classic that sounded interesting.

This compulsive hoarding of intended acculturation had also been urged forward by two well-meaning friends: one, my retired next-door neighbor who leaves his weekly Sunday New York Times on my porch when he’s done with it; and the other, a friend who makes a periodic donation of eight or ten weeks worth of New Yorkers, intended for my classroom. Among my ordinary duties as a husband, father, and teacher, I felt like I needed to read them all. (I couldn’t teach an article I hadn’t read, so even reading The New Yorker had become “working.”) Those print publications were stacking up, too.

It may seem pretty harmless, what I just described, but as a person who is driven by a sense of responsibility and by intellectual curiosity, my anxieties had been growing. At any given time, no matter how much I read or watched, I still had thirty or more movies saved on Netflix, a dozen more waiting in the DVR’s Recorded list, five or six dozen books wish-listed on Amazon, a foot-tall stack of Sunday Times, Times Magazines, and New Yorkers reminding me that I was behind . . . The Times’ weekly Book Review and Arts & Leisure sections, where I found a lot of this fodder, were going to be the death of me!

My approach to all of this media had changed, slowly and without my noticing. Though this collecting was rooted in a life-long curiosity and a love of the arts and humanities, I began to feel . . . well, obligated, as though I owed it to all this media – and to myself – not to ignore it. When my wife would take our kids to her mother’s house, my first thought was: which movie could I get through while they’re gone? I found myself neglecting paper-grading to peruse magazines. And that anxiety/obligation was further fueled by the constant stream of articles that friends shared on Facebook, the never-ending scroll of tweets saying “Don’t miss this story,” and the barrage of marketing emails reminding me not to neglect the vendors I’ve done business with.

As the fall 2015 semester ended, the normal exhaustion from grading combined with these excessive self-prescribed duties had worn me out. So I initiated a purge. Something along the lines of that cleaning-out fad where you ask yourself, Will this give me joy? No, I decided, most of it won’t. I deleted obscure, fringe interests first: books on economic theory, articles on cognitive psychology, old foreign films. That only got rid of about a quarter of it. Something more drastic would have to be done. I’d have to be honest about the media I was saving to watch or read because I felt like I had to.

By the week after Christmas, the wish lists and queues were thinned, and the stack of print materials was manageable. I packed up the unread New Yorkers to go back to school, where they are supposed to be. Next, I dove into newspapers that threaded back months. The News and Sports sections went first, since they were outdated, then the Travel sections, since I’ve known all along that I can’t afford those kinds of trips. The Sunday Styles has very little do with me, since I’m OK with boot-cut jeans and button-down Oxfords, and don’t know anyone of marriageable age in New York. I picked through the rest like I was looking for cashews in the mixed nuts. Finally, all that remained were a few Sunday Review sections from November and December.

Sitting in a friend’s kitchen on a rainy New Year’s morning, recovering from a Blue Moon Winter Variety Pack, Clyde May’s whiskey, and scant sleep, those Sunday Reviews and a cup of black coffee were perfect. The same old subjects were there, in mostly half-page treatments: race, medicine, politics, economics, psychology. I was browsing, not reading, I’ll admit, and then came this one: “Addicted to Distraction” from December 6. I’m still convinced that The Good Lord sent that op-ed down from Heaven, just for me!

Though the whole piece spoke to me, this passage did in particular:

Endless access to new information also easily overloads our working memory. When we reach cognitive overload, our ability to transfer learning to long-term memory significantly deteriorates. It’s as if our brain has become a full cup of water and anything more poured into it starts to spill out.

I’ve described this same phenomenon to friends, family, even students. In my work as a writer and teacher, I deal in the exchange of information; I take it in from multiple sources, process it in the context of my specialized knowledge, and give it to other people in my own way. And sometimes I get mentally full. Reading Tony Schwarz’s analogy told me my problem: my”cup” was overflowing and I was determined to keep pouring.

Earlier that morning, I had been telling my wife and our friends that this year was the only one I could remember when I had no resolutions. I was just too tired to try anything new. The afternoon before, we had been debating about Pope Francis’ resolution list, things like “Don’t gossip” and “Be happy.” Those are too hard, we decided.

Reading that Times op-ed, I knew what my resolution would be. This year, in 2016, I’m reclaiming my humanity from its flustered remnants. I no longer want to be someone whose life revolves around media, who has to read everything, know everything . . . which is going to be hard, too. At least it will be for me. Because I am deftly interested in so many diverse subjects – literature, writing, journalism, history, Southern culture, race relations, social justice, education, arts education, poverty, over-incarceration, food, gardening, the environment, beer, movies, music – it’s going to be hard to let much of it go by, to miss some things knowingly, in order to get back to living. I’ve had to admit – or maybe even re-learn – that media consumption is not living. I think that Tony Schwarz is correct: I too had become addicted.

As I was cleaning out in January, I came across a yet another issue of The Atlantic that I had saved – “The Culture Issue” from May 2012 – and was struck by its cover story: “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” One passage told this:

But it is clear that social interaction matters. Loneliness and being alone are not the same thing, but both are on the rise. We meet fewer people. We gather less. And when we gather, our bonds are less meaningful and less easy. The decrease in confidants—that is, in quality social connections—has been dramatic over the past 25 years. In one survey, the mean size of networks of personal confidants decreased from 2.94 people in 1985 to 2.08 in 2004. Similarly, in 1985, only 10 percent of Americans said they had no one with whom to discuss important matters, and 15 percent said they had only one such good friend. By 2004, 25 percent had nobody to talk to, and 20 percent had only one confidant.

Though I have hundreds of Facebook friends, Twitter followers, etc. I couldn’t tell you the last time someone called me to ask how I’m doing. Nor have I done that for others. We think we’re keeping up with each other, and we think we know how each other are doing, but what’s there on the screen isn’t real. Facebook posts are selective as hell. They represent how we want people to think we’re doing. And when someone crosses a line, maybe posting too often about mundane things, or expressing a harsh political opinion, or sharing deep sadness, most of us get annoyed and back off— something a friend would never do.

All of the time I’ve been saving, by not hysterically devouring rapid-fire information, has come in right handy so far. I’ve been a better teacher, I think, and have been better able to concentrate when I’m working on my Whitehurst book. Though I haven’t sworn off media nor social media, eliminating the needless browsing has opened some minutes to let my mind rest, process the day’s events, and get ready for another day tomorrow. It’s strange to think how we can trick ourselves into believing so strongly in the importance of something that isn’t nearly as important as living.

Filed under: Random, Reading

A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week #106

The foundation and fountain-head of good composition is sound understanding. The Socratic writings will provide you with material, and if you look after the subject-matter the words will come readily enough. The man who has learnt duty to his country and his friends, the kind of love he should feel for a parent, a brother, and a guest, the obligations of a senator and a judge, and the qualities required in a general sent out to lead his armies in the field— such a man will certainly know the qualities that are appropriate to any of his characters. I would lay down that the experienced poet, as an imitative artist, should look to human life and character for his models, and from them derive a language that is true to life.

– from “On the Art of Poetry” by Horace, translated by TS Dorsch and found in the Penguin Classics edition, Classical Literary Criticism

Filed under: Literature, Poetry, Teaching, Writing and Editing

Presenting Journalist @ Douglas Anderson

I’m quite proud to share that, in early March, I will be presenting at the Douglas Anderson Writers’ Festival in Jacksonville, Florida. This year’s festival, which is put on annually by the creative writing department at the Douglas Anderson School of the Arts, has poet Richard Blanco and novelist Ron Carlson as its featured writers. I will be presenting about my journalistic work. Information about dates, panels, presenting authors, and tickets can be found on the festival website.

Hope to see some of you there!

Filed under: Author Appearances, Forthcoming, Teaching, The Deep South, Writing and Editing

What’s New in Old School

When I saw Leyla McCalla’s name on the program for the opening-night reception at the National Artist Teacher Fellowship convening in Boston last October, all I saw was: cellist. Oh goodie, I thought, modern classical music . . . That’s just what I want after a long day of airport foolishness. Because I failed to read very far into her bio, I missed the fact that she had been among the several differing line-ups of critically acclaimed and Grammy Award-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops, an African-American old-time band whose music I really enjoy but whose names, frankly, I never bothered to learn. (Rhiannon Giddens was another of the members.) As the other teacher-artists and I sipped on drinks and munched on high-end catering, my interest was piqued by an old banjo lying on the floor among the mic cables that surrounded a chair with a cello leaning on it. It was when I saw Leyla McCalla in the hallway prior to her solo performance that I knew she looked familiar.

I went back and actually read what had been given to me— and then I got excited! A Southern boy who’d spent the whole day heading north, I was glad to see they’d brought the South to me. I got a fresh beer, perched myself on our impromptu front row of gathered chairs, and got ready to soak it in.

That night, McCalla played, for about a half-hour, a range of songs completely unlike what I knew from the Carolina Chocolate Drops.  This material, much of which can be heard on her 2014 album, Vari-Colored Songs, was a one-eighty from the foot-stomping barn-dance music I was expecting. Her songs were delightfully polished and subtle and personal when compared to the raw whine of insistence that can mark old-time music’s high-pitched harmonies, squeaky fiddles, and blazing-fast picking. No, these solo sounds were fine flowing linen, not sturdy burlap or patchwork quilt.

After the release of Vari-Colored Songs, which bears the subtitle “A Tribute to Langston Hughes,” McCalla and her then-new album were discussed (and hailed) far and wide in early 2014 in Paste, Afro-Punk, the New York Daily News, and on NPR, including a feature spot on “Folk Alley.” I’ll admit right now that, for all of my fascination with good music, I’m nearly inept at knowing what’s-new, so what’s-kind-of-new usually falls on my head fortuitously. That night last fall, Leyla McCalla’s music did just that.

Back in 2013, when I was still listening to my Chocolate Drops CDs, completely ignorant of McCalla’s solo work, The Guardian was reporting this:

She soon became a fixture on the streets of New Orleans, strapping her faithful cello on her back and riding her drop-handlebar bike to a regular spot in the French Quarter, outside the police station.

which sounded a lot like The Music Maker Foundation’s video snippet on McCalla, featuring a similar scene:

The more I fished around, learning what I could about this young musician, songwriter and singer, the more charming she became to me. The person she had been face-to-face, with an endearingly youthful smile and a resonant handling of emotional subjects, was also the person who appeared in the videos and articles.

When I passed an email back and forth with her and her manager last October, McCalla was going into the studio, and didn’t have time for an interview right then. Though the pair didn’t share much, I found out what I should have already known when I checked her website’s blog, which had this tidbit posted from last September:

I am so excited to be headed back into the studio in October to start working on my second album, A Day for the Hunter, a Day for the Prey, who’s name was inspired by a book of that same name by Gage Averill about the intersection of music, power and politics in Haiti. I have so many exciting guests and collaborators to announce, I can’t wait to share more info soon!

We’ll have to wait and see who these “guests and collaborators” will be. Just me, I’m looking forward to seeing what’s new in old school.

In the nearer future, McCalla and Rhiannon Giddens will be sharing the stage later this month: they’re playing Lincoln Center on February 24. As much as I love live music, I can’t lie and say there’s even a chance I’ll be there . . . but hey, what’s it hurt to hope?

Filed under: Arts, Louisiana, Music, The Deep South

A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week #105

I’ve enjoyed a lifetime love affair with English teachers, just like the ones who are being abused in Charleston, West Virginia, today. My English teachers pushed me to be smart and inquisitive, and they taught me the great books of the world with passion and cunning and love. Like your English teachers, they didn’t have any money either, but they lived in the bright fires of their imaginations, and they taught because they were born to teach the prettiest language in the world. I have yet to meet an English teacher who assigned a book to damage a kid. They take an unutterable joy in opening up the known world to their students, but they are dishonored and unpraised because of the scandalous paychecks they receive. In my travels around this country, I have discovered that America hates its teachers, and I could not tell you why. Charleston, West Virginia, is showing clear signs of really hurting theirs, and I would be cautious about the word getting out.

from “A Letter to the Editor of the Charleston Gazette” dated October 24, 2007, written by the novelist Pat Conroy.

(The letter was written in response to a teacher named Makenzie Hatfield having problems with parents who didn’t want her to teach Conroy’s novels because of their content.)

Filed under: Education, Literature, Reading, Teaching, Writing and Editing

TBT: The Ten Commandments protestors

Back in late 2003, I went down several times to watch the antics and shenanigans at the Ten Commandments protests that centered on the removal of Roy Moore’s 5,280-pound monument from Alabama’s Heflin-Torbert Judicial Building. The lackluster protests that occurred there and at the nearby Frank M. Johnson, Jr. Federal Courthouse were only made interesting by the bizarre assemblage of characters. These pictures were taken in September 2003. They’re my Throwback Thursday offerings to you.

This truck was one of the highlights. It repeatedly circled the block around the federal courthouse where Judge Myron Thompson was hearing the case. Thompson ruled against Alabama’s Chief Justice, who then defied the court order and was removed from office. His monument was soon removed from the Judicial Building, too.

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The other image I got when I was standing behind some of the protestors outside the federal courthouse. I had to get close to get this shot of their signs. The one of the left is fairly innocuous. The one on the right, however, is more foreboding. At the bottom, after a list of people the man would like to see impeached, it reads: ACLU DROP DEAD PS 55:15. If you go to the King James version of the Bible and find Psalms 55:15, you’ll find this: “Let death seize upon them, and let them go down quick into hell: for wickedness is in their dwellings, and among them.” (Additionally, though you can’t really see her from this angle, the woman standing with the two men was draped in a Confederate flag. A hint of her red flag can be seen beside the man on the left.)

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Filed under: Alabama, Bible Belt, Local Issues, The Deep South

February’s Southern Movie of the Month

In honor of Black History Month, this month’s movie is 1967’s “In the Heat of the Night,” one of the seminal Southern Civil Rights movies. At the time this film was made, its star was at his peak— “The Defiant Ones,” “Raisin in the Sun,” “Lilies of the Field,” “Patch of Blue,” and “To Sir, With Love” were all behind him, and still to come were the groundbreaking “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” and the mystical “Brother John.” In this one, Poitier plays Virgil Tibbs, a black Philadelphia homicide detective stuck in small-town Mississippi, where he casts an embittered pall over a murder investigation by the police chief, Gillespie, played by Rod Steiger. The chemistry between the two characters carries all the weight of Southern change with it, offering no easy answers.

We meet Virgil Tibbs a short ways into the film, after we spend a few moments tagging along with ne’er-do-well police officer Sam Wood (Warren Oates) who is cruising through the late night shift. Until Sam rolls up on a dead body in the middle of their sleepy downtown, the most exciting things that happen to him are spying on a topless girl through her open window and being perplexed the local diner boy hiding the pie from him. After the discovery of the body, which turns out to be Colbert, an industrialist who has come to town to build a factory, Gillespie orders Sam to search high and low for the killer, who can’t be far off. And who does Sam find? A black man, a stranger in town, sitting alone the train depot, with a wallet full of cash.

Much to the chagrin of all involved, Virgil is the wrong man. And not only is he the wrong man, he is a homicide expert whose big-city chief tells him to stick around and help the small-town force to find the killer. The complexities of segregation ride along with the two police men: who will assist the black man performing the autopsy on a white man’s body in a white mortuary? why is Virgil riding in the front seat of the patrol car?

The second wrong suspect they arrest is Harvey, a local loser who is found with the dead man’s wallet, but Virgil knows better when he arrives among the slew of white officers who are congratulating each other with toothy grins and slaps on the back. Harvey is left-handed, and the killer was right-handed, Virgil tells them, having struck the victim on that side. After the dead man’s wife questions the sad moral state of the town, and after Virgil refuses to relinquish the evidence from the autopsy, he and Gillespie have to keep working.

In one of the most exhilarating scenes in all of movie history, Virgil insists that he be allowed to face down the local “fat cat,” the aristocratic cotton baron Endicott. Wedged in the soles of Colbert’s shoes, he has found osmunda, a substance not normally found in walking-around Mississippi; it is  used to root “air plants,” like ferns or orchids. And what do they find Endicott’s greenhouse loaded with? Orchids. The scene begins with Endicott’s polite condescension, but it quickly turns nasty when Virgil’s tone becomes accusatory. The old white man slaps the black detective— who slaps him right back! No one in the room knows what to do, all are frozen in time, until Endicott proclaims in a grumble, “There was a time when I could have you shot.”

If having Virgil Tibbs there, in a Deep Southern small town doing police work, was already precarious, now it’s downright dangerous. After the face-off with Endicott, everything has gone awry. Even Sam, the wayward police officer, has become a suspect, because of a large deposit of cash into his bank account. Another plot strand emerges, too, when the topless girl from the opening scenes is dragged into the police station by her brother, who claims that Sam has gotten her pregnant. Then the conflict widens when Virgil is chased by white racists into an abandoned auto shop, where Gillespie narrowly rescues him.

But Virgil is so close to finding the truth. The two men retire to Gillespie’s little house for a whiskey and a talk, during which the private tensions of integration surface; the two men’s egos struggle, push and pull, with a mixture of testy defensiveness and delicate cooperation.

In the end, Virgil instigates the finale when he goes alone to face down the killer in the middle of the night, trying to surprise him at the shop of the local back-room abortionist. There, the tangled web shows its full intricacy. Everyone shows up: the pregnant girl, the girl’s brother, the cafe boy who hides the pie, the gang of racists. Virgil finds himself in the middle of circular firing squad.

I’ve probably already ruined enough of the story, so I won’t tell you how Virgil manages the scene. But he does. Sorry, but I have to spoil that. Gillespie sees him off on the train, both men struggling against the bonds of their tenuous friendship.

The Harvard Crimson‘s 1967 review of “In the Heat of the Night” argues that this movie succeeds in its characters but fails as a mystery, remarking also that Poitier “ends up doing just what he has done in his last dozen interchangeable movies.” I disagree about the mystery part; I didn’t see the end coming the first time I watched it. However, the criticism of Poitier’s characters from this period being “interchangeable” is a fair assessment. But, on the flip side, the movie won a slew of awards: Oscars in 1968 for Best Picture, Best Actor (Rod Steiger), and Best Screenplay Adaptation; Golden Globes in the same three categories; and more from BAFTA, New York Film Critics Circle, and the Grammys.

As a nugget from the quasi-historical mythic South, “In the Heat of the Night” does succeed in intermingling some very real aspects of that culture, and not justice racial tensions: the need for industrial development to remedy high unemployment, a suspicion of outsiders (even those who bring good things), corruption and indifference among small-town police, mob violence in handling disruptions of the status quo,  and unofficial kinds of power held by wealthy elites. The movie also manages to maintain the humanity of the characters, while still having them be symbols. Rather than having Gillespie and Sam and the other officers be cardboard cut-out Southern villains, they have real flaws and exhibit profound levels of conscience; we even see Virgil display Northern prejudices against Southern culture, uncomfortable truths that Gillespie calls attention to more than once. This movie is (thankfully) so much more than black-good/white-bad.

I can’t lie: “In the Heat of the Night” is one of my favorite movies.

Filed under: Civil Rights, Film/Movies, Mississippi, The Deep South

A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week #104

If you’re ever in doubt about how to end your story, think in terms of a positive ending. We’re talking Hollywood here, and I think the purpose of art, or entertainment, is to entertain. That doesn’t mean that everybody lives happily ever after, but that people walk away from the theater uplifted, fulfilled, spiritually aligned with their own humanity.

— from the chapter “Story and Character” in Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting by Syd Field

Filed under: Education, Film/Movies, Teaching, Writing and Editing

The Passive Activist #6

We Americans are living with an unprecedented absence of leadership. In the Deep South, we have lived with this void for most of our history, so we’re a little more used to it than the rest of the nation— but that doesn’t make it OK. In the face of Congressional deadlock, soaring national debt, secular/religious strife, rogue policy actions by state legislatures, mistrust of the police, declines in public education funding, exorbitant college costs, internet predators and trolls, crumbling labor unions, global warming, and neon-colored running shoes,  the Passive Activist series offers ideas for how ordinary people can create and implement positive change in our own lives. Movements are made up of people.

#6. Stop using disposable razors.

Let’s do some math. Let’s say you’re an average guy with an average beard, and you shave three times a week, changing your blade once a week. That’s 52 blades per year. If you did that from your 20s through your 60s, you would use about 2,500 disposable razors and/or blades over five decades.  And if every guy on your street did the same thing, we’d be talking about tens of thousands of these things going in the landfills— just from the guys on one street! Ridiculous . . .

It’s perfectly normal for a man to teach his son to shave using those cheap orange-yellow Bic razors. Those are training wheels for your man-face. But once a young man grows out of chin acne and being proud of his farts, he should also grow out of disposal plastic razors. Most men then graduate to something a little pricier, maybe Mach III blades, but in terms of green-ness, that habit isn’t much better.

Unless you’re some kind of nut who breaks things constantly, a straight razor would last you much longer. A kit that includes a strop costs about $100. By contrast, a twelve-pack of those orange-yellow Bic razors costs about $4. Or if you use the good blades, that are $7 per pack of three . . . So yes, it’s more expensive to buy a straight razor, but with disposables, you’ll still have to buy more razors for decades. At the end of that same time frame, you’ll still have your straight razor, if you buy a good one.

That’s not to mention the environmental cost. If you saw my earlier blog post about the Pacific Ocean being littered with plastic, then you can imagine how much you’ll be contributing to that by continuing to use plastic razors or blades.  Fifty per year for fifty years—  2,500 razors or blades per clean-shaven man.

I will admit, one downside to a straight razor is learning to use it. When I got one in my 20s, I did cut myself several times, mainly on my chin and around the corners of my mouth. Those spots are hard to maneuver with that larger blade. I answered that quandary by wearing a goatee, but another guy might tough it out and learn to shave his whole face better than I did. It’s a moot point for me right now; I wear a full beard and don’t shave at all.

One day, this hipster beard fashion is going to go out of style, and all the cool cats are going to have to figure out how to keep their faces clean again. When that time comes, spend the hundred bucks and stay away from all that plastic.

Filed under: Education, Social Justice, The Environment

AUM’s Southern Studies-themed Liberals Arts Conference

Coming up in about two weeks, Auburn University at Montgomery will host their eighth annual Liberal Arts Conference (AUMLAC for short), which has a Southern Studies theme. The conference will be held on Friday, February 5 and Saturday, February 6, 2016. This year’s keynotes are: English professor Trudier Harris from the University of Alabama, historian Kenneth Noe from Auburn University, and art professor Kathleen Robbins from University of South Carolina. Panels begin at 9:30 AM on Friday and finish up at 4:00 PM on Saturday.

Filed under: Alabama, Arts, Literature, Reading, South Carolina, Teaching, The Deep South