RafeWorld

It’s that time of year again: San Diego Comic Con – the geek pilgrimage to San Diego for a convention that long ago stopped being a comic book show and instead has taken all of the interests of Hollywood and jam packed them into one building. Even shows that have limited genre appeal have started making an appearance. Shows like Castle can get away with it because they star Nathan Filion, of Firefly and “Doctor Horrible” fame. Other shows like Psych and Glee just have large followings, so if you take a large part of the populous, even those who like to dress up like Stormtroopers and Batman, and you’re likely to have enough people who are fans of those shows.

I’m not at Comic Con this year, and I can’t say I’m terribly sad about it. Nor did I get to go last year. The first, last, and only venture I’ve made to the annual event was in 2008, when I attended as a member of the press, if you can really call what I was doing as a blogger and podcaster “press.”

Attending as part of the press means that I didn’t have the typical Comic Con experience. For normal people, they go, they get their badges, they wander around the exhibit hall buying all kinds of cool swag, and they plot out what events they really want to see, often requiring they forego other events to make it into the ones they really want to see. Going as press meant I was there as part of a team – three writers and a photographer – so many of the panels and events we would go to were plotted out in advance.

All of the cool stuff happens in Hall H – a massive, airplane hanger sized room with multiple projection screens so people sitting in the back can see what’s going on up on the microscopic stage. From an entertainment reporter’s standpoint, that’s where the good info comes from, so one person from our team was dedicated to that room. They got in a line at 7:30 in the morning, almost three hours before the room would open up, and eventually plopped down at a seat in the hall. They had to carry food in with them, although as we got better at things we figured out how to relieve them for lunch breaks (helped by the staggering of less interesting presentations in with the popular ones). Not that it matters: Hall H was not for me. With the exception of seeing Kevin Smith and his Zack and Miri Make a Porno presentation (which was at night, after most of the rest of the convention had wound down), I didn’t really see much of Hall H.

Another room, the name of which I forget, also holds a considerable amount of people, and has the second popular stuff – material that won’t have the draw of Hall H sized crowds, but are still pretty big. Luckily, this was also staggered with decent presentations in some of the other rooms, so one person could cover this room and some of the smaller rooms pretty easily, provided they planned when they left and could return to the room. It also was easier for them to grab food. Again, it didn’t really matter to me, because again, this wasn’t me.

Instead, as the one person with broadcast experience, I was saddled with interviews. Celebrities would go do their panel, where they would show new footage of whatever project they were hawking to the masses. Then they would move to a back hallway of the convention center where members of the press had scheduled time for interviews. These interviews took one of two forms:

a. Roundtable discussions, where you sat at a table with four or five other press members and the celebs would rotate from table to table every ten minutes, answering questions from all of the press people at the table. As you might guess, one person would wind up dominating the table time, with others not getting to ask many questions.

b. Red Carpet extravaganzas, where the celebs would make their way down a red carpeted area, moving from interviewer to interviewer. Handlers would move the celebs on every couple of questions, but typically the time allocation was incredibly uneven, and the celeb would have to go elsewhere before they finished the  carpeted gauntlet. Guess who has been within four feet of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Gerard Butler, and Chris “Ludicrous” Bridges (among others)? This guy!

In short, interview duty was miserable. Roundtable interviews worked pretty well. I had enough journalistic integrity to let other people ask questions, but enough of a presence to push my way into getting a chance to ask questions. The problem is, you wind up with a recording of everyone’s questions, and the ethical thing to do is not to run other people’s parts of the interview, which makes it tough to use the audio recording for anything more than transcription, which is more miserable than interview duty.

Red Carpet interviews were a joke, even more miserable than roundtables. My video camera is prosumer – high end consumer gear, but consumer gear nonetheless. I had borrowed a better camera from a friend, but I still looked like a joke among the professional rigs there (seriously, if you’re Gerard Butler, who are you going to make time for – the TV Guide crew with a steadycam rig, or the guy with a fist-sized camcorder?). Even worse, I had no cameraperson. Our photographer didn’t know how to operate video cameras, so she was useless when it came to these types of interviews. This means I was required to run the camera, which means sitting behind the camera, but also had to conduct the interview, which meant holding a microphone out to the celeb. What I really needed was a boom mic attached to my head and a smiley face picture I could stick on the end of the camera so the celeb could look at something and I could work magic from behind the camera.

Despite being on interview duty, which was miserable, and feeling like I was babysitting our photographer a lot of the time (we wound up running a lot of my digital pictures, as well as captures from my video fooage), I still had some good experiences at Comic Con. Among them:

• Meeting the cast of The Big Bang Theory, which was just out of its freshman year. The guys were all pretty awesome, and a conversation between the three leads sounded like something straight out of the show, including comments from Kaley Cuoco that were as clueless about geek culture as her character.
• Meeting Dakota Fanning, who I had maligned numerous times in opinion/editorial pieces. She turned out to be a sweet  young lady who came across as very sincere and nowhere near as precocious as I had (mistakenly) credited her for.
• Seeing one of my writing heroes, J. Michael Straczynski, who spoke for an hour and then signed autographs. It was the closest I came to an average person’s experience of the Con, and it was glorious. I never did get an autograph, in part because I left my copy of his screenwriting book at home, and in part because I decided I’d rather keep him as a hero than meet him in person and possible have that hero aspect ruined.
• Interviewing Robert Englund. It was one of only two one-on-one interviews I got the entire time I was there. I was told I would only get five minutes with him, but he gave me ten, although he only answered one question in that ten minutes. He was pretty friendly and awesome, and it was one of the only interviews I was proud of from the Con.
• Seeing an advance screening of Tropic Thunder. Although I didn’t say hi to any of them, I sat in front of the Ain’t-It-Cool folks, who I’ve appreciated for a long time, and Jay Baruchel (who co-stars in the movie) was in attendance. A special video introduction from Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black, and Ben Stiller alone made this screening worthwhile.
• The Fraggle Rock presentation, which celebrated the anniversary of the show with a live performance by Karen Prell (Red Fraggle) and a screening of an episode. When the opening credits rolled, the audience clapped along with the music without any prompting – a perfect display of fandom. Afterwards, I was one of only three members of the press who showed up to interview Prell and Dave Goelz (Boober Fraggle, but also The Great Gonzo), and the duo gave almost an hour and a half to the three of us. Sure, occasionally the conversation veered farther into territory the Jim Henson Co. rep felt the need to keep us from discussing, but it was awesome to be in the presence of some of the big Muppet pioneers, especially for such a big fan of Jim Henson as I am.

When the Con was over, we all sat down and had a few drinks, which was a nice relaxing experience, but even then I felt sad that I didn’t really get to experience Comic Con. I got to experience a hallway of the Con most people don’t, but it was filled with members of the press that I couldn’t hold a candle to, and other members that showed why the blogging community doesn’t get the respect and professional courtesy other outlets do.

I really think that trip was the beginning of the end for my time as an entertainment reporter, but that’s a story for another time. For now, I just enjoy reading some of the big scoops from Comic Con and knowing that I’m on the other side of the country, in a nice, quiet house with my family – an experience that doesn’t require sitting in a line for hours or maintaining a feud with rival journalists.

That Robert Englund Interview:

The painting that inspired the contest:

If you haven’t read them, my previous two entries talk about my thought process behind my story.

And now, my entry, which (again) is the silliest thing I’ve ever written, after the cut…

Read the rest of this entry »

So where were we… oh yes, the writing contest.

Today seems like an especially apropos day to pick this story back up, as a merciless and ridiculous editor managed to trash my interest in writing more. Fortunately, this was after I had done the bulk of the day’s writing, so the bills got paid anyway, as the saying goes… assuming that’s actually a saying.

So, I first heard about this contest towards the end of the school year. I enjoyed Wil Wheaton as an actor in my youth, when the two of us looked very much alike. John Scalzi, the other brain behind the contest, is a writer I’ve only recently discovered, but I really enjoy (I highly recommend his book Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: Ten Years of Whatever, a collection of highlights from ten years of his blog, which is titled “Whatever”). Put the two brains together, and apparently you get John Scalzi as an orc, against Wil Wheaton, who is mounted upon a unicorn pegasus kitten. Silly, eh? And, to top things off, they wanted fanfic about the picture.

Now, understand, fanfic is one of those venues I have chosen not to go down. I consider myself a proficient writer. I have my weaknesses, mostly from not doing enough of a variety of writing, but I’ve read some fanfic and I know I’m more capable than a lot of the stuff I read. There’s some weird stuff that goes on in fanfic. Weird, unspeakable stuff. There’s a reason why one of the rules of the contest required entries not included explicit sex. Think about that for a second. Now think about all of the different fandoms out there – Star Trek, Star Wars, Harry Potter, etc. Imagine what kind of explicit sex could be portrayed in those fandoms. Now, understand, whatever you just came up with is tame by comparison to some of the things some people have created. I’m not saying all fanfic is erotic or explicit, but a lot of it is – enough to give fanfic a bad name.

I also choose not to write fanfic because I enjoy watching or reading about those characters in the creator’s original manner. I couldn’t dream of what Tolkien really wanted to happen to Samwise Gamgee next; all I could come up with is what I would do with the character next. Well, who is that of interest to? Just me. So why write it? If I’m going to put that kind of time and energy into something, let it be my own original creations, who I have full control over without feeling like I’m deviating from a set path or destroying someone else’s intentions.

Back to the contest. Despite the silly premise, and despite the label of fanfic, I chose to enter the contest for a couple of reasons. The first, and least, was what I talked about before – feeling like I’m slogging through an existence, grinding out a living, but not really using my talent as a writer. The second, and more important reason, is that this contest is for a cause. The winning entry from the contest will go into a chapbook, alongside stories by Wheaton, Scalzi, and several other professional authors. While that’s all well and good, and it would be awesome to see something I created alongside that, that’s not why I entered. The proceeds from the chapbook, which I’m sure I will buy, regardless of what entry wins, go to the Lupus Alliance of America. Lupus isn’t just a good punchline on House M.D. It’s a serious illness and one that has tragically touched my life (that’s an entry for another time). So, anything I can do to benefit the cause… especially if it’s writing a silly story, well…

Like many things I write, ideas for the story percolated in my mind for a while. The original post announcing the contest came during the end of the school year, a time when I had no freedom to write, and many other things occupying my brain. It’s no surprise to me that one of these other things wound up taking the focus of the silly story: the novel Lord of the Flies. The concept for the story that finally came to me offered up a way to structure the story so that it wasn’t quite fanfic, and yet, it is fanfic. The story of Wheaton and Scalzi and the unicorn pegasus kitten is fanfic within the story, but it’s not my fanfic. It serves another purpose, and ultimately, that became a facet of the story I was really happy about.

My next entry: the story itself. Which is still one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever written.

So I’m writing this summer. I’m quickly learning there are two kinds of writing for someone like me.

The parallel I draw comes from the movie Rounders. In the movie, Matt Damon plays a poker player who puts it all on the line in the movie’s opening movie, and loses. The story then shifts to years later, where Damon’s character is in law school, working grungy jobs to get by. His former partner (played by Edward Norton) tries to push him back into big games. Meanwhile, there’s another character lurking around played by John Turturro. Turturro plays small games and keeps his winnings small, but can live just off his skills at the poker table. He grinds out a living with his skills, while Damon’s character winds up only utilizing his skills to win bigger games. But with the bigger games, comes bigger risk.

This summer, I’m much like Turturro’s character, grinding out a living from my writing skills. It isn’t pleasant, and it isn’t a flamboyant life, but it’s kept me from having to get a retail job (or worse). Each day I spend a couple of hours writing a few articles, usually on subject matter I know nothing about (which means I spend more time researching than writing). The desire behind my employers is for brevity, which has always been an issue for me. As a result, I’m flexing writing muscles I don’t usually hit upon. At the same time, I don’t feel very satisfied about it.

So, to help feel more satisfied, I try to do some writing that is more for me. It doesn’t make me money, but it does make me happy. It’s unfortunately taken a back seat, and so writing in that area hasn’t been as prolific as I’d like, but it does give me some “me time” at the keyboard. Projects in this area include stuff for my other site, a novel idea, and other little projects that strike my fancy.

One of these projects came from some blogs I follow, writer John Scalzi and writer/actor Wil Wheaton, who ran a contest via their blogs. Details on the contest are here, although I’ll write a little more about it as a whole in my next entry (for the lazy and to keep some sort of narrative history here). The end result (which I’ll also post later) is undoubtedly one of the silliest things I’ve ever written, but for some reason I’m very proud of it. I think it’s mostly just because I completed it. The satisfaction of submitting something that wasn’t for the grind, but more for my own pleasure (and if other people get any enjoyment out of it, bonus).

Tomorrow I’ll talk a little bit about the contest: what drew me to it, and what turned me away from it.

So this is a bit of a strange story, and one without much time for reflection/perspective, but it’s almost too important to put out there, if only to answer some people’s questions.

Midway through last week we had a solicitor ring the doorbell, interested in making some money by mowing our lawn. These sort of requests have grown more and more frequent where we live, whether it’s mowing the lawn or shoveling the driveway in the winter. I guess with so many people affected by hardship, it’s no longer the kids of the neighborhood looking to make a few bucks through this sort of manual labor. Our yard was barely in need of mowing, and I was literally on my way home to take care of the task when he rang the doorbell, so my wife kindly told him no and moved on with things. I came home, was a little annoyed at the inference of someone asking if they could mow (our yard didn’t look <i>that</i> bad), and told my wife I was happy she passed the opportunity by. We aren’t poor, but expendable cash just isn’t there for something like this that we are fully physically capable of taking care of ourselves.

Fast forward to Friday. It was the end of an exhausting week. I’m super-stressed over an additional project I’m working on for the school (thanks Jeff!) and I just want to kick back and relax. I’ve fed the boy dinner, am just sitting down for my own dinner (had my salad in hand), when the doorbell rings. Kristi answers and it’s the guy again. We’ll call him “E”.

This time “E” wasn’t here to mow our yard. Instead he was working on the neighbors yard when something went wrong with his mower. He wanted to borrow a couple of screws and see if I had some tools he could use. At first he tried to explain it to Kristi, but then assured her I would know what he was talking about. Meanwhile, I’m in the living room overhearing all of this, quite sure that I have no idea what he’s talking about. I decide to do the right thing – to be a good person – and see if I can’t help “E” out.

I trudge over to the neighbor’s back yard where “E”‘s mower sits. Some sort of plate with electrical wiring attached has come loose, and “E” is worried that the whole mower will catch fire if he doesn’t secure it. I have no idea – I’m about the farthest you can get from being mechanically minded. Give me a computer, I can figure things out, audio/visual components and I’m in heaven, but things like engines, cars, mowers, and the like confound me. I’m just not that guy.

As “E” starts telling me his problems – and they are many – I notice a loose bolt on the mower, which we can use to attach the plate. I don’t have a bolt-driver, so it’s a temporary solution, and it actually doesn’t fit in the hole properly. I think it would have held it there, but “E” wasn’t happy with the solution.

At this point, I’m beyond the limits of my knowledge. I found a part for him to use and it doesn’t work. I suggest he maybe ring doorbells of other people in the neighborhood, or at worst case there’s a True-Value Hardware down the street. “E” looks at me like I’ve insulted him, asking how he’s supposed to get there, because he’s on foot. His response is more then a bit bothersome, however, because he’s gotten aggressive in tone. I suddenly have an image of him grabbing my screwdriver and stabbing me in the next-door neighbor’s yard. Imagine Kristi looking out the window and seeing <I>that</i>. So I offer to drive him to the store, in hopes we can find a part that will fit (but in reality pretty certain it’s not something we can just walk in and get).

We drive to True-Value. It’s closed. Apparently the family-friendly hardware store closes at 6pm. “E” is starting to get more upset. He knows he interrupted my dinner, for which he is apologetic, but he assures me he hasn’t eaten all day. Besides, “we” have to get this mower working so he can finish several jobs before daylight fades. Suddenly, I realize in his mind this has become a problem “we” need to solve – you know, “our” problem. This is especially worrisome, because in my mind there is no “we”. I’m just helping out a fellow a little down on his luck. In his mind, I now share the problem.

I offer to drive him to Lowe’s at this point – we’re already in the car. The problem hasn’t been solved. The least I can do is take him to another store. As we make the several mile drive, “E” continues to make small talk. Truthfully, he doesn’t stop talking. He shares all of his problems – his cell phone is about to be shut off if he doesn’t pay his bill, his friend lost his apartment key so he can’t get in without the landlord, and the broken mower isn’t even his – he borrowed it from someone he works for and has to return it, and this is the second time this week it’s broken. Okay, I figure maybe it wasn’t fixed properly the first time, and maybe the plate wasn’t secured when whoever fixed it fixed it. When I suggest this, however, “E” looks at me like I don’t understand anything he just said, because it was a blade problem beforehand. I decide to just leave things be.

Even worse is when “E” talks about the mowing he’s doing in order to make ends meet. He has to get this one house finished (my neighbor) in order to get paid so he can keep his phone active (which is why “we” have to fix “our” mower). This makes no sense to me. My neighbor isn’t home. If he was home, he’d be helping “E” out instead of me. So even if “E” gets the yard done, he’s not likely to be paid tonight, because the purse-bearer isn’t around to pay him. Meanwhile, when he talks about my house, his tone shifts, as if I personally offended him by choosing to mow my own yard instead of paying him to do it. Clearly, the man is unstable.

The gem of the conversation comes when he starts explaining he’s just a worker trying to make a living, and the President hasn’t done much to help things out. I’m informed that there’s a DVD you can buy that catches the President in several lies (how many yards do you think “E” would have to mow in order to buy that DVD?) and… yes, he actually said this.. how they say the President is… Muslim. Yes, we’ve come back to that now-massively debunked myth. And I’m driving the carrier around my part of the city trying to help him find a lawn mower part that he’s just expecting any employee at a hardware store to be able to identify and replace. And I’m the crazy one when I say he’s not Muslim.

At this point in the conversation, I had a very strong moment of clarity, thankful that I’m an educated person.

As I expected, Lowe’s wasn’t able to help. Without seeing the hole, they couldn’t just give “E” the proper sized bolt/screw, exactly as I expected. They suggested some metal duct tape that could handle the heat and hold the plate in place, but at a cost of $7-$8 a roll, it wasn’t a feasible solution. As bad as I felt for “E”, it’s not like I was in a good position to pay that either, and at this point in the evening I was certain “E” was pretty unstable and I just wanted to get rid of him. My attempt at helping out someone had gone far beyond logical boundaries, I was hungry, and honestly I was a little fearful of how “E” might react as things proceeded.

Thankfully, the ending of the story as I know it is simple. I drove home, dropped “E” off at the neighbors, and went inside to eat my dinner surrounded by my family. “E” started mowing again and from what I can see he finished the job, at least at one of the homes he was working on, so the mower held on long enough for that.

There’s a part of me that really hopes I don’t see him again, and I’ve warned my wife about answering the door. In retrospect, she says he did seem quite agitated when she told him I was on my way home to mow the yard, so I truly think “E” is a little unbalanced – to the point that I may consider calling the authorities if he remains a constant presence in our neighborhood.

So there you go. I tried to help a guy out, went way beyond normal measures to do so, and instead of helping now I’m nervous about my neighborhood to the point of considering involving authorities. How’s that for doing a good deed?

This weekend was Palm Sunday weekend, a time that tends to bring on an air of reminiscence for me. Add in watching Hot Tub Time Machine, a movie about three guys who time travel back to the past with the opportunity to relive one fantastic day of their youth (and the soul-searching of where life and relationships have gone wrong), and I’ve been in a relatively pensive mood for the past three days.

You see, for years, Palm Sunday Weekend was the weekend my family would head to Georgia for a spiritual retreat. The explanation of the retreat is complex, especially since religion is one of those topics I don’t feel comfortable discussing at length here. Truth be told, spirituality was the reason for the journey, but for me, a teenage boy, that reason quickly changed. The first year we went on the retreat I met her, the first love I would have, and after that, every year my motivation for making the trip would be to see her, not necessarily for the spiritual side of things.

Lilly was a girl unlike many I had met at that point in my life. There wasn’t a strong female presence in gaming like there is today, and most of my youth was devoted in some shape or form to gaming, so she instantly caught my attention. Add on top of that her keen intellect, individuality, and looks, and I was smitten instantly. I can still remember the first time I saw her vividly. While nowhere close to the romantic moments that make it into books or film, it’s a moment that is uniquely mine.

As the years progressed, Lilly and I became closer. We wrote letters constantly and called each other once a month or so. Long distance calls were a luxury for me, so we had to keep them short and we’d alternate who called who, so as to share the cost. As with most teenage loves, these things were never enough for me. Letters and infrequent phone calls were enough for Lilly to be my girlfriend, and the relationship lacked the complexity of having her nearby in person, but it was a long-distance relationship, and those are hard, particularly on teenagers. I wonder how different our relationship would be today with the Internet, text messaging, Skype, and the other wonders of the modern technological age. At the same time, there was a romance to our letters that would be unmatched by e-mail and texts. For years, however, Palm Sunday weekend was the one time my heart could soar, because I would get to see her in person – an experience that was unmatched in any of our correspondence.

Eventually we got to a point where we were able to see each other outside of that one weekend. Again, spiritual retreat was the excuse that provided the experience, but love was the true motivation. Much like the first time I saw her, I can vividly remember other important moments – the first admission of love, the first kiss, quiet nights sitting at a lake house, looking out at the stars with a beautiful girl by my side. This is the stuff poetry is written about; the place dreams come from.

Like all good things, the relationship came to an end, and like most foolish moments, it was the guy’s fault. While I can remember the good stuff vividly, I have no idea what foolishness entered my brain to make me end the relationship. I just remember that it caused her a great amount of hurt and, once the moment had cleared from my mind, I hurt as well. I spent almost a year mentally and emotionally aching from my own foolishness, and right before the next Palm Sunday Weekend, when I knew I would see her again, I made my mind up to seek forgiveness and win her back again. I didn’t get her back again, and in the ultimate romantic irony, she met her future husband that same weekend. That was the last time I saw her… the last Palm Sunday weekend I made the trip to Georgia.

I have very few regrets in my life. I don’t believe much in regrets. We can’t fix the past. We can’t take back the mistakes we made. My relationship with Lilly taught me that – a lesson learned painfully. I know we’re both in good places in our lives now, both married, both with children of our own. I wouldn’t trade my current place in life for anything. But there’s a part of me that can’t help but feel a bit wistful every year on Palm Sunday weekend over the first relationship that taught me what both the glory and the pain of love could be. There will always be a part of my teenage heart that loves her, remembers the time we had together, and regrets the sorrow I caused both her and myself.

(NOTE: Yes, the image is that of her, circa 1990ish. Interesting how a blurry picture from the time turns into an interesting metaphor decades later, eh?)

Lately I’ve been carrying weight on my shoulders. This is obvious to those who are around me, as I repeatedly face the question, “Are you okay?” The truth is, no, I’m not okay. But then, neither are the people asking the question, so how can they possibly help? Unfortunately, this is a burden that cannot be alleviated or transferred. It simply is to be carried.

I have no intentions of turning this blog into a study of teaching, but since that’s what’s bothering me lately, I’m going to vent about it just a little bit. That’ll make two entries about teaching in a row, so expect the next entry to be about something else. Unfortunately, this is about the ugly side of teaching – the political side – the side I had hoped to avoid for as long as possible. Unfortunately, as long as possible wasn’t even long enough to make it through to tenure.

This week sees students in Virginia taking the first of their End-of-Course English SoLs. While this is a test that assesses 11 years of educational training, it falls to 11th Grade English teachers to review and reteach to ensure students pass the test. With the weather in Virginia this year, we have had less classroom time, which means my time covering this has been a little more concentrated than usual, but I stand behind my methodology and my students. I have no doubt my students will do well on the test, but the stress is there, nonetheless.

Meanwhile, our economy is in a state of disarray (at best). Millions of dollars are being cut in education alone. In my school district, schools are being closed and the plan is (currently) to eliminate almost 40 teaching positions. This doesn’t include non-faculty staff who will also find themselves trimmed. Some of these will be taken care of through retirees who are opting to bow out early thanks to a few incentives, but some people will lose their jobs. I don’t anticipate being one of those, but Fate always has a tricky way of tapping you on the shoulder and then ducking behind your back when you turn to look. Therefore, the stress of the current educational world is heightened.

Oh, and lets not forget those ever-popular words these days: “Next year is supposed to be worse.” That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. The budget is not only bad this year, with schools closing and teacher positions being eliminated, but it’s anticipated to be worse next year. What happens when districts run out of schools to close, and we hit the age cap where all of the older teachers have retired and the younger teachers still have years to go until they can bow out? So, if the current stress isn’t bad enough, there’s more on the horizon.

Last week, my area Congressman held an open Town Hall meeting via conference call. I knew nothing about it until I received a phone call asking if I wanted to opt into the conference. For the first time, I did. I sat and listened for 45 minutes as the Congressman took questions ranging on immigration (a question which bordered on offensive) to social security (a popular topic) before an question about the current state of the educational budget came up. As a Congressman, he pointed out that questions and concerns on that subject needed to be pointed toward local government, as that was determined at the state and local level. Great sidestep Congressman.

To tie the topics together – SoL testing in the state of Virginia is part of the state’s conformity to the No Child Left Behind Act – a Federal piece of legislation. I take a big issue with my field being ordered around by Federal legislation, but Federal legislators sidestepping the issue when education is brought up. If we are truly expected to concede to this piece of legislation and ensure “no child is left behind,” then someone had better figure out where the funding for such a noble effort can come from, because with schools closing and educators being left behind, you can guarantee students will be lost in the mix as well.

Meanwhile, one of the hardest areas hit in the world of education is technology. My students currently have access to laptop computers, although the district has already started phasing that out. As my school’s technology resource instructor put it, it’s hard to justify buying laptops and carts for the machines when people are losing their jobs. I agree wholeheartedly with this statement, but it means we are moving away from preparing our students for the world beyond high school. Look at the register the next time you step into a Wal-Mart or Taco Bell. They are more and more computers and less and less simple machines. Students have to have a grip on technology to make it in the outside world, yet education is regressing away from technology and focusing more and more on preparing them for one test.

All of this leads to a frustrating environment, because I didn’t get into teaching to see students fail in the outside world, nor did I change to this career to help students prepare for one single test that doesn’t mean anything outside the walls of public education. When the focus of the educational environment shifts so hard in that direction this time of year (and it has every year I’ve been a teacher, with both SoL testing and budgetary crises formulating at the same time), I often need a reminder of why I did get into teaching. Someone asked me this last year: why did you get into teaching? My answer borrowed heavily from Thoreau (see Dead Poets Society), but since I haven’t gotten to that point in my year yet, and am currently focused on poetry, I thought I’d include this gem from Taylor Mali that goes right to the core of my being.

I got into teaching because I wanted to make a difference. And I have. In only a few years, I know I have affected and influenced students, not only in my heart, but in comments and feedback I have gotten from those in my classroom. It is something I plan on continuing to do for some time. So I’ll take the burdens and ridiculousness of the current political landscape and educational atmosphere and carry it as long as I have to. And if you see me lost in thought while all of this is going on? I’m just remembering the last line: I make a god-damned difference. What about you?

…death will come to you off the sea,
a death so gentle, and carry you off
when you are worn out in sleek old age
Your people prosperous all around you
All this will come true for you as I have told.

When I was younger, I read a translation of The Odyssey that finished the story with the death of Ulysses, featuring the hero as an old man, waking up one morning, climbing up a hill, sitting down, and proclaiming that he was ready to die. Although non-canonical, I always liked this image of one of my favorite heroes – someone who had been so many trials and tribulations, but when death came, it came on his terms. It’s an image that I felt was solidly reflected in the end of Babylon 5, which may be a big part of the reason the end of that series resounded so well with me.

In the past year, I've watched two of my own personal heroes fall. One was claimed by death, the other by politics. To some degree, both of them fell as Ulysses did in my young adult translation - on their own terms. Yet, in their falling, I can't help but think how deeply these people have affected and influenced me.

The first of the two, D.J. Keith, was a math teacher... no, was the math teacher at my high school. That’s not to say other teachers weren’t as good or knowledgable, but there was just something to Mr. Keith that set him apart. He was a teacher you didn’t mess with. He had a reputation far and wide for being no-nonsense. A student who was reading a novel instead of paying attention to the lesson found his book being tossed out the second-story window to get the student’s attention back, and another student who was misbehaving found himself being dragged out into the hallway – desk and all.

The more I learn about teaching, the more I know I could never get away with the things Mr. Keith did. They just wouldn’t be tolerated in today’s educational world. I think is somewhat a shame, because Mr. Keith had an attitude and a manner that demanded respect. Even students who didn’t have him as a teacher, or didn’t do well in his class, couldn’t defy him. I was a weak math student… no, I was a lazy math student, and he called me on it perpetually. I think it’s one of the few things that led to my wake-up call my senior year, when I finally proved all the teachers were right – I had the potential and just wasn’t living up to it.

I had the utmost respect for Mr. Keith, and even though I can’t apply his philosophies to my classroom, I know there is his influence there. I hear his words echo in my voice at times, when I talk about being “fair” or I help stall to not give an assignment over the weekend. He was larger than life, an image I often find myself trying to present. I think of all the students who were touched by having him as a teacher, and I mourn those who will never have that chance. If I can carry on only a tenth of his legacy, I will count my career as an educator as a success.

On the other hand, we have someone who wasn’t a teacher, but affected my decision to become a teacher greatly. Danny was the biggest pain in the butt to my co-workers when I worked as an Audio-Visual manager, but once you got to know him… once you paid him respect and earned his respect in return, he was an amazing person. Unlike Mr. Keith, Danny is still around, just having stepped down from the role in which I worked with him. His influence is just as unmistakable, however – possibly more so, since he’s one of the people I turned to when I was thinking about changing careers. Danny supported the idea, both challenging and cultivating it. That was what I needed, because it quickly showed me that teaching isn’t a walk in the park, but that I had shoulders to lean on if I needed them.

I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to tell Danny how influential to me he was before he stepped down from his position. I didn’t have that same opportunity with Mr. Keith, although I had run into his wife (also a teacher, and also a large influence on me) right before I got my teacher’s license and told her of my career change. I hope he heard through word of mouth, and I hope he didn’t cringe if he did.

I got into teaching because I wanted to have an effect on the world, to know that I had made a difference. These are two men who have accomplished this, even if they only made a difference to me. I walk in their footsteps, but even my sizable feet don’t come close to filling those steps.

I’m not sure what changed, but I was finally able to import my old blog into this one. I’m betting none of the old images work, so they may be ugly old entries, but at least the history is preserved in one place instead of pointing people to separate areas.

Yay!

I admit, it’s been a while since I’ve written in here. Unused stories for Cinema Blend aside (who I don’t even write for anymore), I really haven’t written much of anything in over a year. In that time so much has happened, and I’ve done a poor job of documenting it. I could use the excuse that I’m so busy, but at the end of the day it’s just another excuse. Meanwhile, I have every excuse in the world to actually be posting.

For one, recently several of my colleagues have started their own blogs. My first response to this was “welcome to ten years ago, when blogs were actually popular.” Frankly, that’s a bit rude. Blogs are still popular, although starting them is no longer cutting edge. Initially, I felt like looking down upon them, because they are starting to do something I’ve been doing for years. But I haven’t been doing it for years, as the dates between posts shows. I’ve had a blog for years, but updates have been sporadic at best. I should be proud of my friends, not condescending, and I am. Working around so many people who are afraid of technology, or hate it, so the notion that my peers are starting their own blogs is exciting. I look forward to reading what thoughts they choose to share, and hopefully sharing some of my own with them.

The bigger incentive to blog is that for three years now I’ve asked my students to keep their own blogs. It’s an assignment in my class, so a lot of them do it because they want a grade, but some of them actually get into the assignment and I get to know them. Meanwhile, my blog sits collecting dust. I was taught to model what I teach, but I haven’t been doing that at all. That needs to change.

So, it is my goal to be much better about updating. I still don’t want this to become mindless drivel about what’s going on in my life (and, frankly, so many people that I know are aware of this blog’s existence, so posting thoughts about them here would be a bad idea), but a place I can share thoughts, stories, and reflections.

One last thought – in the past few months someone who “is hairy” has discovered this blog and left meaningless comments that have been marked as spam. I suspect this is a student, either current or former, who has nothing better to do with their time than troll a dusty blog. Congratulations. Now go read a book, find a girlfriend, or do one of the vast list of things that would make better use of your time than trolling here. After all, remember how William Cullen Bryant suggested we live our life:

So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

Will your empty comments and wasted time satisfy you when your time has come to a close?