My dear old friend Dean Torges, whom I met when I was about twelve, is a master woodworker, a philosopher, one of the most intelligent and most thoughtful men I've ever met. He's a world-famous bowyer, and (this is a compliment from the era of Theodore Roosevelt) a woodsman and hunter of consummate skill. But presently he's building a chicken house. It's a mobile chicken house. A chicken's need for new vistas is something I simply never considered. Still, Dean knows chickens. He's raised them on his little Ohio farmlet for donkey's years and enjoys his own eggs, broilers, and smoked whole chickens. I suppose he knows chickens better than most and if a mobile chicken house will help his fowl, who am I to quibble? He's even built mobile outbuildings, mesh-covered bomb-shelter frames that roll on old lawnmower wheels to keep his chicks out of hawks' talons. Fowlopolis.
He's endured a large ration of kidding about the time he's spent with his elaborate, over-built, fanciful main chicken house. It's a wonder, the Colossus For Rhode Island Reds. I admit to being part of the ridicule: I designed an elaborate windvane for a mythical cupola, as a joke. The cupola is in place and he's cutting the windvane out of sheet-copper presently.
After all the jokes and fun, I find that Dean's chicken house approaches the sublime. I would enjoy sitting on his porch and simply watching his busy Fowlopolis. As an antidote to the ribbing he's getting, I sent him this post:
Dean:
There are burghers and builders who would criticize and even ridicule you for occupying weeks of work with this project. Your project would delight them as an opportunity to prove their superiority in the only game they know: appropriate response. Your response is impractical, disproportionate, questionable because it could be done so much simpler and with less expense. Buy a Home Depot shed, have it delivered, cut some holes, you're done. All this farting around with special shingles and overbuilt framing … who needs it? Get 'er done! Don't sweat the small stuff, and don't try for some high-falutin perfect solution because chickens is chickens and they just don't matter that much. And do the chickens care? Hell, no. This Torges guy is just showing off, making a mountain out of a molehill.
I, for one, admire any wizard who can make a mountain out of a molehill. It's not just a great trick, it's Art. Let's admit right up front that the Sistine Ceiling could have been done with rollers and a nice Benjamin Moore bone white in a sliver of the time it took that greaseball to tart up the place. Who looks at ceilings, anyway? They keep the rain off and there's an end to it.
Some folks would call your chicken house as a quixotic task, but that would be a misuse of the word's original sense. What our jolly wild-and-crazy-guy era doesn't recall is that Don Quixote was a psychopath. He was mad, delusionary, senile. The beauty of the Don was that, even in his madness, he saw goodness and beauty around him. The heroes of that story were Sancho Panza, for sticking with the old fellah and caring for him, about him, and the son-in-law, for going to such lengths to bring the old guy home. You're not mad, Dean. You don't hear the chickens talking to you. (Is there something you're not telling me?) You're not creating a portal in time or constructing an elaborate reliquary. You're building something just-so. My hero, Mr. Rogers, reassured his audience of children that it was fine to "take your time and do it the way you want to." You're expressing the essence of art, Dean: choices beyond practicality that address larger, subtler, sometimes indefinable issues. Your chicken house is not practical but, damn, it will be interesting and in its inimitable way, beautiful.
You know I don't have much truck with organized religions but recently I've been reviewing my peevish, self-obsessed elitism about the church. Like the burghers and builders criticizing your chicken house, I've using bits and bobs of religion to prove my own superiority: I pretend that I'm the logical thinker, the spiritually practical guy, and God loves me more because I don't bullshit Him. But the (broad, many-factioned) church has cherished our myths and stories, has maintained our spiritual culture, and for all its pedophiles and anti-intellectual Bible-thumpers and derelict Popes, it's kept our cultural heritage of love and forgiveness as ideals alive. These aren't practical values. They don't get 'er done when we're assailed by bad guys. They're dangerously impractical ideals. At a glance we might say they've been ignored more often than practiced. They've been subverted thousands of times, marginalized, and redefined to suit. Even so, they're still with us. Not even Dirty Harry could blow them away. The church has, probably unwittingly, been a culturally integrating force.
Now that I have Max and Luc to consider, I wonder how I can frame a set of ideals and values so they can carry them early and make them part of their character later. One oversimplified, gross solution is to say that God wants them to be good, and this is what we think is good. Why? Because God told us. Honestly, one can't sell love and forgiveness on practical grounds. They're like your chicken house: who would buy them? They're too costly and too quirky and they don't fit the observed data. The only way to sell them might be magic thinking, which I avoid. "Why?" Because God said so, that's why.
It's a beginning. And it's a continuum. "We hold these truths to be self-evident …" Do we? Is truth self-evident? Was independence self-evident as anything more than personal convenience for our Founding Fathers? It's an article of faith with us that truth is simple and understandable but this isn't always a workable assumption. I suppose that's the catch with ideals: they often confute practicality.
What good accrued to the Samaritan who comforted the waylaid traveler in the parable? Nothing practical. He lost money on the deal and went on his way. The Samaritan's ideals – impractical chicken houses of the heart – obliged him to act in an unexpected, illogical, impractical manner. Qui bono? The waylaid traveler. The Samaritan received, we hope, some thanks but not even bragging rights.
Bless your ridiculous chicken house, Dean. It's impractical and a massive waste of time. But it's just so. It's a work of art like one of those kinetic sculptures at Boston's Logan Airport: they endlessly lift tennis balls to a height and let them follow a rolling random course down a mechanically changeable path. What does it do? Nuthin'. It beguiles. Those sculptures have given me hours of pleasure and contemplation. Bless you and the kinetic sculpture guy and your chicken house and all who sail in her.
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
I worry when Himself waxes poetic about impracticality. It's like an habitual gambler extolling the graphic and mathematical beauty of poker or craps. His connection to the practical world is already too tenuous. Would I recommend that he tilt at even more windmills with the mad Don? I think not.
Showing posts with label children's writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label children's writing. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
MY BOYO
Today is my grandson's birthday: Max is three years old, a remarkable human being.
Any grampa would say the same thing. Perhaps we'd all be right. But I hold that Maxwell Ulysses Burger is, on his third birthday, an astonishingly well-spoken and thoughtful person, the beginnings of a citizen and a raconteuer. He has phrase and grace in his speech and he plays with language. He displays an enjoyment with saying something just so, the way he wants it. He reminds me of the cautionary definition of my own profession from the Irish: "A writer is a failed conversationalist."
His early gifts were mechanical. Things in my daughter's household were retro-engineered by Max.
The kid was and is preternaturally diagnostic. He takes stuff apart. Most often, he puts them back together as well.
He sat on my lap when he was just turned two and plucked a ballpoint pen out of my pocket. He looked at it solemnly and set to work. He took it apart, disassembled it into its component parts – barrel, cap, spring, refill laid out on the counter in front of us – then reassembled it. Once he’d screwed it together, he tested it to make sure it worked, click, click, click, click, then put it back into my pocket.
One morning Sally noticed that while she was cooking something he pushed his little kitchen dining table to a cabinet, climbed onto his chair, thence to the table top, thence to the counter top beside the refrigerator. He stood on the toaster oven and retrieved the sack of coffee beans from the refrigerator top. He dumped some beans into the grinder, fumbled the top on, ground some beans (more or less), pulled the top and dumped the ground beans into the filter of the coffee machine, which he carefully fit into its place. He turned it on (no water) and climbed down to his table. Arriving at floor level, he announced brew’s up casually, “Coffee!”
I asked Sally, “You didn’t stop him?”
“No, I was too fascinated. He watches Patrick make coffee every morning and he remembered the steps. For Max it was no big deal, but it floored me.”
Something that floored me was his cognizance of batteries. Nothing in the remote control line works in Max's house. Batteries gone, You can only detect the absence by the weight, since he generally replaces the battery cover. If you want to use the remote, you get Maxwell’s attention: “Max. Can you find the batteries for this remote control for me, please?” Immediate locomotion toward a chair or couch, a disruption of cushions and/or pillows, Max returns with the correct batteries without comment as if to say, “Here, dufous, why didn’t you get them yourself?”
When I was young there was a kind of string-tension toy. It was a dog or cat or horse made of hollow wooden beads (they probably don’t allow them today; choking hazard) strung together and attached to a spring-loaded base. When the string was tensioned, the animal stood upright, if a little silly. If you pushed the big button under the base, the string went slack and the creature fell into a pile of bead-parts. It was a great little toy because the animal stood there one moment, then fell into a pile.
I mention this because it’s the only way I can describe Max’s Terrible Two tantrums: a space of loud whining, no, no, no, he wants it the OTHER way, he doesn’t want THAT, he won’t eat (wear, carry, wash, drink) THAT, mommy, no, no, give me the OTHER, I want the OTHER. The Other is refused. Time Out is threatened. The count to five begins. “Max, I’m counting. One, two, three, four, five . . . Okay then, Time Out.”
Someone in a neighboring yard has eviscerated a swine or a panther: one hears a siren-loud screech. Max is creating a noise louder than any creature smaller than a city bus is capable of producing. It’s an unsettling howl, the noise of a desert djinn or a hurtling bomb. At this instant the boy we know as Max ceases to exist as a cohesive unit and falls into a pile of trunk, head and limbs in a liquid rush to the floor. This sudden dissolution is entertainingly like that string-toy, a complete collapse. The awful noise continues. Tantrum. Off to the Time Out Place of Penitence and Reflection: the stair landing, a place more barren and uninteresting than Devil’s Island or even Bayonne, New Jersey, the very seat of horrors. The bone-bag that was Max is poured onto the Chair of Correction and a timer is set for two, three, or even (life sentence) five minutes depending on the gravity of the offense.
Mutters and two-year-old curses (“Poopie, bad, booger, poopie!”), a diminishing wail, sobbing, cries for forgiveness, vows of being a good boy, now. Accusations of mommy’s impaired judgment, her mean and even wicked nature (“Bad mommy!”). Then a silence. Occasionally this is accompanied by inexpert creeping away scuffs and creaks but largely the time runs out and the timer bell rings.
“I’m done, mommy!” Reconciliation. Obligatory apologies, “I’m sorry that I _________,” fill in the blank. Order restored, authority maintained, chaos and the encroaching jungle held back another day.
Except that Max’s Time Outs were sometimes suspiciously short. Of course. The boyo was mechanically subverting justice. He’d determined the nature of the timer, climbed up onto the Dread Chair of Detention, retrieved the timer, and reset it to something under a minute. Ding! “I’m done, mommy!”
As the parent of a little person, you must be firm but open to friendly compromise. But remember: they’re all sea-lawyers. They’ll argue until hell freezes over, doggedly and energetically. Anyone who thinks that kids have no attention span has never argued with a two-year-old. Avoid negotiation. You always lose, one way or another, today or down the road.
But time off for good behavior – for inventive re-engineering, is only fair, yes?
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
Being close to Himself, I see how deeply and enthusiastically he loves Max and his little brother, Luc. He has a bushel of surrogate grandchildren in the Bay Area whom he loves – Hannah Rose, the Dread Pirate Davis, Julianna, Kent, Ainsley, Elizabeth, et als. But if he has learned anything from these surrogates and his joy at being close to them, it is that he needs family. He loves this place, this topography, this particular micro-climate. He loves his friends here. But it's become apparent to him that being a part of Max's and Luc's lives is essential to his heart. Being a part of his daughter's life is much more important than she acknowledges. The time has come for Himself to make a move away from Mt. Burdell and Indian Valley Road and the Pacific. How he'll relocate to Gainesville, Florida, is logistically nightmarish, especially for a man with a definite phobia about moving. It's a painful time, professionally and personally, for the Old Guy.
Any grampa would say the same thing. Perhaps we'd all be right. But I hold that Maxwell Ulysses Burger is, on his third birthday, an astonishingly well-spoken and thoughtful person, the beginnings of a citizen and a raconteuer. He has phrase and grace in his speech and he plays with language. He displays an enjoyment with saying something just so, the way he wants it. He reminds me of the cautionary definition of my own profession from the Irish: "A writer is a failed conversationalist."
His early gifts were mechanical. Things in my daughter's household were retro-engineered by Max.
The kid was and is preternaturally diagnostic. He takes stuff apart. Most often, he puts them back together as well.
He sat on my lap when he was just turned two and plucked a ballpoint pen out of my pocket. He looked at it solemnly and set to work. He took it apart, disassembled it into its component parts – barrel, cap, spring, refill laid out on the counter in front of us – then reassembled it. Once he’d screwed it together, he tested it to make sure it worked, click, click, click, click, then put it back into my pocket.
One morning Sally noticed that while she was cooking something he pushed his little kitchen dining table to a cabinet, climbed onto his chair, thence to the table top, thence to the counter top beside the refrigerator. He stood on the toaster oven and retrieved the sack of coffee beans from the refrigerator top. He dumped some beans into the grinder, fumbled the top on, ground some beans (more or less), pulled the top and dumped the ground beans into the filter of the coffee machine, which he carefully fit into its place. He turned it on (no water) and climbed down to his table. Arriving at floor level, he announced brew’s up casually, “Coffee!”
I asked Sally, “You didn’t stop him?”
“No, I was too fascinated. He watches Patrick make coffee every morning and he remembered the steps. For Max it was no big deal, but it floored me.”
Something that floored me was his cognizance of batteries. Nothing in the remote control line works in Max's house. Batteries gone, You can only detect the absence by the weight, since he generally replaces the battery cover. If you want to use the remote, you get Maxwell’s attention: “Max. Can you find the batteries for this remote control for me, please?” Immediate locomotion toward a chair or couch, a disruption of cushions and/or pillows, Max returns with the correct batteries without comment as if to say, “Here, dufous, why didn’t you get them yourself?”
When I was young there was a kind of string-tension toy. It was a dog or cat or horse made of hollow wooden beads (they probably don’t allow them today; choking hazard) strung together and attached to a spring-loaded base. When the string was tensioned, the animal stood upright, if a little silly. If you pushed the big button under the base, the string went slack and the creature fell into a pile of bead-parts. It was a great little toy because the animal stood there one moment, then fell into a pile.
I mention this because it’s the only way I can describe Max’s Terrible Two tantrums: a space of loud whining, no, no, no, he wants it the OTHER way, he doesn’t want THAT, he won’t eat (wear, carry, wash, drink) THAT, mommy, no, no, give me the OTHER, I want the OTHER. The Other is refused. Time Out is threatened. The count to five begins. “Max, I’m counting. One, two, three, four, five . . . Okay then, Time Out.”
Someone in a neighboring yard has eviscerated a swine or a panther: one hears a siren-loud screech. Max is creating a noise louder than any creature smaller than a city bus is capable of producing. It’s an unsettling howl, the noise of a desert djinn or a hurtling bomb. At this instant the boy we know as Max ceases to exist as a cohesive unit and falls into a pile of trunk, head and limbs in a liquid rush to the floor. This sudden dissolution is entertainingly like that string-toy, a complete collapse. The awful noise continues. Tantrum. Off to the Time Out Place of Penitence and Reflection: the stair landing, a place more barren and uninteresting than Devil’s Island or even Bayonne, New Jersey, the very seat of horrors. The bone-bag that was Max is poured onto the Chair of Correction and a timer is set for two, three, or even (life sentence) five minutes depending on the gravity of the offense.
Mutters and two-year-old curses (“Poopie, bad, booger, poopie!”), a diminishing wail, sobbing, cries for forgiveness, vows of being a good boy, now. Accusations of mommy’s impaired judgment, her mean and even wicked nature (“Bad mommy!”). Then a silence. Occasionally this is accompanied by inexpert creeping away scuffs and creaks but largely the time runs out and the timer bell rings.
“I’m done, mommy!” Reconciliation. Obligatory apologies, “I’m sorry that I _________,” fill in the blank. Order restored, authority maintained, chaos and the encroaching jungle held back another day.
Except that Max’s Time Outs were sometimes suspiciously short. Of course. The boyo was mechanically subverting justice. He’d determined the nature of the timer, climbed up onto the Dread Chair of Detention, retrieved the timer, and reset it to something under a minute. Ding! “I’m done, mommy!”
As the parent of a little person, you must be firm but open to friendly compromise. But remember: they’re all sea-lawyers. They’ll argue until hell freezes over, doggedly and energetically. Anyone who thinks that kids have no attention span has never argued with a two-year-old. Avoid negotiation. You always lose, one way or another, today or down the road.
But time off for good behavior – for inventive re-engineering, is only fair, yes?
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
Being close to Himself, I see how deeply and enthusiastically he loves Max and his little brother, Luc. He has a bushel of surrogate grandchildren in the Bay Area whom he loves – Hannah Rose, the Dread Pirate Davis, Julianna, Kent, Ainsley, Elizabeth, et als. But if he has learned anything from these surrogates and his joy at being close to them, it is that he needs family. He loves this place, this topography, this particular micro-climate. He loves his friends here. But it's become apparent to him that being a part of Max's and Luc's lives is essential to his heart. Being a part of his daughter's life is much more important than she acknowledges. The time has come for Himself to make a move away from Mt. Burdell and Indian Valley Road and the Pacific. How he'll relocate to Gainesville, Florida, is logistically nightmarish, especially for a man with a definite phobia about moving. It's a painful time, professionally and personally, for the Old Guy.
Friday, February 12, 2010
MINE CANARIES
CREATIVE PEOPLE have always lived in the thin ends of the bell curve, out on the fringe, scuttling about and picking at the table scraps of big money. The exhibits I've had a hand in designing, the books I've created, the articles I've written, the films with which I've worked – they've all been secondary fruits of "loose money" freed up for social projects by embarrassingly large profits. When profits dip, artists are the mine canaries of capital flow: we fall dead off our perches before the big guys can feel the pinch. Looking around me I see a lot of empty perches. And there's a bit of a rasp in my throat, as well.
What follows is part of a reply to the director of the Bay Area Discovery Museum, a lovely place for little guys. I proposed we collaborate on some exhibits and he, graciously and reluctantly, confessed that the BADM didn't have the funding to pursue anything new in this crunch. I replied:
Yes, the economy is harsh, but I can’t imagine any other result from our global adventuring. As Shackleton said, “Adventure is a sign of incompetence.” We don’t seem to manufacture anything in the hardware store, now. Many of our best young men and women are scattered across the world fighting and dying for folks who don’t want us there. We’re fouling our nest but can’t seem to stop. The rolling juggernaut of corporate America more or less ignores all our objections and cries. Yet we DO live in a favored land, and our culture IS strong, has a work ethic, and has good roots. The problem could be that our leaders don’t demand much of us, or much more than merely spending. The children you and I try to encourage will reap the whirlwind, and that right soon.
My current book project is Black Bonfire, about the end of cheap oil. It’s inevitable, calamitous, and much, much closer than I imagined when I began the book. The book is directed at young adults, giving them an overview of energy as they enter adulthood, as they become citizens. When you want to do an exhibit on just how deeply oil has become the warp and woof of life, give a shout. If you’re sitting inside, everything you see – from wood paneling to steel shelves to plastic pens – is or was put together by oil. Oil that we won’t have.
So how do we, as creative workers, survive the present economy? Dunno. We’ve always been on the fringe, depending on an upstream flow from the largesse of wealthy patrons, not too far removed from Cosimo de Medici. I suppose we can hope that the wealthy will always be wealthy. I’m not sure that will be borne out in the cultural upheaval. I don’t want to sound apocalyptic but major institutions will change. The hoary dictum, “What good for USSteel is good for the country” isn’t quite so true.
Perhaps we’ll survive like that marvelous soul William Kamkwamba, who built a windmill in his yard from junk and electrified his African village. What do we need with the Incredible Hulk and Batman when we have Kamkwamba? Perhaps we’ll build our exhibits out of local junk, building from the midden pile of Marin society. Our work could come to resemble the ancient trade of the storytellers who traveled from village to village, sitting under trees and eaves to spin out tales that amazed and informed.
[Jon Steward interviews Kamkwamba at http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-october-7-2009/william-kamkwamba]
Artists. We're all canaries trying to survive this oppressive atmosphere, clinging to our wobbly little perches with our feeble claws, and still singing brightly. How many friends do you have who are paralyzed by dread and frustration? On the other side, how many artists do you know who are doing jes' fine? If it weren't for Zoloft, we'd have a mass suicide of artists (something like M. Night Shyamalian's The Happening) and the balance of the population would say, "Whatinhell have they got to complain about? All they do is sing and swing."
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
What Himself neglects to acknowledge is that living on the fringes is a choice, not a profession. I could be demonizing the victim by bracing him thusly, but living on the fringes is inherently dangerous and unstable. The deep, strong current is where the action is, not the back eddies in the reeds. It's artistic hubris to assume the world will pull you triumphant from the edges and proclaim you its darling. Himself has a task: get into the mainstream or perish. This is harsh advice but so is the economy.
What follows is part of a reply to the director of the Bay Area Discovery Museum, a lovely place for little guys. I proposed we collaborate on some exhibits and he, graciously and reluctantly, confessed that the BADM didn't have the funding to pursue anything new in this crunch. I replied:
Yes, the economy is harsh, but I can’t imagine any other result from our global adventuring. As Shackleton said, “Adventure is a sign of incompetence.” We don’t seem to manufacture anything in the hardware store, now. Many of our best young men and women are scattered across the world fighting and dying for folks who don’t want us there. We’re fouling our nest but can’t seem to stop. The rolling juggernaut of corporate America more or less ignores all our objections and cries. Yet we DO live in a favored land, and our culture IS strong, has a work ethic, and has good roots. The problem could be that our leaders don’t demand much of us, or much more than merely spending. The children you and I try to encourage will reap the whirlwind, and that right soon.
My current book project is Black Bonfire, about the end of cheap oil. It’s inevitable, calamitous, and much, much closer than I imagined when I began the book. The book is directed at young adults, giving them an overview of energy as they enter adulthood, as they become citizens. When you want to do an exhibit on just how deeply oil has become the warp and woof of life, give a shout. If you’re sitting inside, everything you see – from wood paneling to steel shelves to plastic pens – is or was put together by oil. Oil that we won’t have.
So how do we, as creative workers, survive the present economy? Dunno. We’ve always been on the fringe, depending on an upstream flow from the largesse of wealthy patrons, not too far removed from Cosimo de Medici. I suppose we can hope that the wealthy will always be wealthy. I’m not sure that will be borne out in the cultural upheaval. I don’t want to sound apocalyptic but major institutions will change. The hoary dictum, “What good for USSteel is good for the country” isn’t quite so true.
Perhaps we’ll survive like that marvelous soul William Kamkwamba, who built a windmill in his yard from junk and electrified his African village. What do we need with the Incredible Hulk and Batman when we have Kamkwamba? Perhaps we’ll build our exhibits out of local junk, building from the midden pile of Marin society. Our work could come to resemble the ancient trade of the storytellers who traveled from village to village, sitting under trees and eaves to spin out tales that amazed and informed.
[Jon Steward interviews Kamkwamba at http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-october-7-2009/william-kamkwamba]
Artists. We're all canaries trying to survive this oppressive atmosphere, clinging to our wobbly little perches with our feeble claws, and still singing brightly. How many friends do you have who are paralyzed by dread and frustration? On the other side, how many artists do you know who are doing jes' fine? If it weren't for Zoloft, we'd have a mass suicide of artists (something like M. Night Shyamalian's The Happening) and the balance of the population would say, "Whatinhell have they got to complain about? All they do is sing and swing."
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
What Himself neglects to acknowledge is that living on the fringes is a choice, not a profession. I could be demonizing the victim by bracing him thusly, but living on the fringes is inherently dangerous and unstable. The deep, strong current is where the action is, not the back eddies in the reeds. It's artistic hubris to assume the world will pull you triumphant from the edges and proclaim you its darling. Himself has a task: get into the mainstream or perish. This is harsh advice but so is the economy.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Armored Adolescents
I’VE JUST RETURNED from a school-visit trip to inner California, to a city south of Sacramento. These visits are always glad events on both sides: I get paid, kids get entertained, and some of them will remember a few of the things I’ve said. I do school visits because kids should know that art in writing and images isn’t generated by a computer program, but by real, thinking, wage-earning, involved people.
Candidly, it may be better for me than for them. I’m thrown into direct dialogue with my primary audience. Their questions and comments are navigation tools. I engineer a channel for them to talk to me, and through me to the editors and publishers. The line is, for a brief time, open.
And they have something to say. I hear what interests them and sometimes what bores them. I often ask them what they’d like to read about but this isn’t a fair or a productive question. They like what they know. It would take unusual creativity and perception for anyone to choose a fresh topic. Look at the books we read as adults. Do we know just what we want? No, we’re constantly surprised at the subjects. Kids are even less prepared to select a shelf in the library as their own.
When I’m talking to kids I’m moving constantly, walking among them, singling out this one or that one to answer a question we’re considering, touching a head or shoulder or gently teasing someone who looks like he or she will enjoy it. There’s a kinetic component to the interaction and an intimacy I couldn’t get from a stage. I’ve used a microphone once and I didn’t like it, though at the end of a day my voice is strained.
I have a few theme-sets as PowerPoint programs, usually about art and its important place in life. I insist that the image of art as a lovely creative pastime is ridiculous; art is hard. I ask them to look around them: everything they see was designed, for better or worse. The linoleum under their feet, the acoustic tile overhead, the clothes they wear, the lighting fixtures above and the building around them – all products of an artistic process, a balance of selections. My visit gives them a glimpse of a life in the arts.
I have one program called “How to Rite Gud,” about the importance of the one great art, communication. It underscores the absolute necessity of knowing how to use your own language to get what you want and need. It is, I tell them, their job for the next sixty years, to reach through the glass wall of alienation with the tool of language.
After the set-piece I show them some of my illustrations. I tell them what I was trying to communicate, and I sometimes ask them what they see in the illustration before I address it. I describe some of the illustration tools I used – cutaways, ghostaways, simplification, compressed story-telling, special perspective, &c. After they’re “entertained” by pictures, I throw the last half of my visit open to questions.
The situations aren’t always ideal, the audience isn’t always perfectly quiet (especially little guys – I speak to kindergartens and up through high school). Between the slide show and questions I normally ask them to stand up, raise their hands up, and bounce up and down on their toes for a few seconds, then sit down all at once to make a big noise. It bleeds off some energy and resets their attention. Before the first group of students enter I learn from the teachers what the local “quiet” signal is – usually two fingers held up; one by one kids hold up their two fingers until everyone is quiet. I use it sparingly and it’s seldom needed.
This format has worked well. The questions take up more time than we normally have. One of the teachers usually gives me a five-minute hand sign and I ask for three or four more questions. There are always kids who grouse that they didn’t get to ask their question. It’s a lively interplay. But part of my first day’s visit went badly.
The first of three session was with a cafeteria full of 4th through 6th graders. Delightful: lots of questions, high interest, good humor and attention, eager to be joshed and wowed. Grand. The last session was kindergarten through second grade, antsy but dear, sweet-faced and willing to be pleased. Unblunted happiness. Between these two, however, was an ordeal with 7th & 8th graders, largely black and Hispanic kids. For a time I thought there was an excellent chance of being lynched.
They were armored. Nothing I could throw at them went home, nothing called up a reaction, nothing roused them out of a sullen, show-me torpor. They talked openly and jostled one-another during the first part of my presentation. A few incipient scuffles between jousting boys were suppressed by teachers who often looked at me with hopelessness and raised their hands, “What can I do?” Curiously, there was not a gender break in the rowdy but pouting behavior that I could mine for reaction: the girls were as distant and cold as the boys.
I could not cajole or enlist or pry forth any participation. I can usually get someone wearing a decorated sweatshirt to stand up and point out that the lettering on the shirt, the shirt itself, the color, the fabric was all designed, a production of the arts. I can usually call out someone’s hair style and ask if this was a piece of personal art. Not a single member would venture a question or participate. Falling back on a well-used standby, I picked this one and that one, “What design arts are in your life?” “Do you know any artists?” “Does art touch your life?” Nothing. Nothing beyond “I don’t know.” There was no voltage bridge between my energy and their dark entrenchment. I failed them.
How should I have confronted them? I tried to insist that their lives or at least the quality of their lives depended on learning some of the arts of communication. I offered them a window of opportunity, in this school, at this time, to talk about the barriers they faced. They must, I said, become culturally literate – they must learn the common ground of speech and images the world recognizes as a useful language as their only path to employment and inclusion. I tried to explain that their conscious span of, say, ten years acquaintance with a restricted culture couldn’t help them through the Big Culture of the nation. How could a splinter culture see them through difficulties and disappointments to a good life, a better life than they and their parents knew. Unless they fashioned the tools of their own survival in this school’s classroom workshops they would die . . . if not factually, spiritually; if not now, soon, much too soon. Nothing.
How to reach them? What cipher could decrypt their private redoubt of comfortable boredom?
It set me to wondering how they view life. Do they even see themselves surviving beyond next year? Do they have goals?
Perhaps that’s what I should have asked: What are your goals? What do you want from life? What do you think life might provide for you? How hard will you work for it? Do you feel school prepares you for it? Or do you feel so lost that the effort to succeed is a painful reminder of inevitable failure?
They live in a heavy gang area. Entrances to the neighborhood turfs are marked with graffiti pronouncements that the land belongs to Black Bloods or other gang identities. Would I want to belong to something larger than my family if I lived in this blasted, flat, monotonous, and financially forsaken plain? Bedsheet curtains at grimed windows, lifeless streets, 60% unemployment among the parents of these preternaturally aged, pathologically dispirited, soul-diluted children. Their principal shook her head as she told me that of the 58 students in the 8th grade, 38 are failing in both language and math.
Who can swoop in to save them? A black or Hispanic god-breathing evangelist? A born-again athlete? A boxer with a message? A reformed criminal? A tough hero? But these kids don’t have heroes as I knew them at their age. Heroes have always offered us a handle to lift and guide kids. Buffalo Bill isn’t the kind of role model they buy. A pimp-daddy, wealthy, dark-side rapper with a tough posse and a fly ride might be impressive, but what useful message could he suggest? And what message do they need to stir their energy toward something positive?
It’s important to recognize that these aren’t stupid kids. They represent the normal span of intelligence in any school, whether or not they bother to fill out all the blanks on the intelligence tests. All tests are snares to their suspicious instincts. Don’t expect tabular data to represent them or correlate any theory. Any cure or balm to the situation must be intuitive and inventive. Where are the handles? What are their pressure points? What can their immediate society offer to give or take away that can guide them? The carrot or the stick or both, applied lavishly?
Perhaps I can build a better presentation that will call up some recognition of reality. But I’m a middle-class whitebread writer and carry no persuasive credentials – no wealth, power, sports fame. What can I offer them?
In my last session of the day, the faces of the little guys, kindergarten through 2nd grade, were like delivering angels. They shone with delight and each of them wanted to shake my hand. Driving back to the motel I asked myself if those seraphic smiles would be worn down into the dishwater gray depression I confronted in the morning. I’m afraid for them, K through 12.
Braxinoso speaks:
Certainly an inordinate concern for reaching children marginalized by a short-sighted society smacks of narcissism, as if Adkins, himself, could turn their attention toward productive thoughts. The deadening effects of poverty and the low priority we place on education is systemic. Hundreds of fine teachers and dozens of caring visitors won't undo that Gordian knot, and this particular class of adolescents may be forfeit.
Braxinoso
Candidly, it may be better for me than for them. I’m thrown into direct dialogue with my primary audience. Their questions and comments are navigation tools. I engineer a channel for them to talk to me, and through me to the editors and publishers. The line is, for a brief time, open.
And they have something to say. I hear what interests them and sometimes what bores them. I often ask them what they’d like to read about but this isn’t a fair or a productive question. They like what they know. It would take unusual creativity and perception for anyone to choose a fresh topic. Look at the books we read as adults. Do we know just what we want? No, we’re constantly surprised at the subjects. Kids are even less prepared to select a shelf in the library as their own.
When I’m talking to kids I’m moving constantly, walking among them, singling out this one or that one to answer a question we’re considering, touching a head or shoulder or gently teasing someone who looks like he or she will enjoy it. There’s a kinetic component to the interaction and an intimacy I couldn’t get from a stage. I’ve used a microphone once and I didn’t like it, though at the end of a day my voice is strained.
I have a few theme-sets as PowerPoint programs, usually about art and its important place in life. I insist that the image of art as a lovely creative pastime is ridiculous; art is hard. I ask them to look around them: everything they see was designed, for better or worse. The linoleum under their feet, the acoustic tile overhead, the clothes they wear, the lighting fixtures above and the building around them – all products of an artistic process, a balance of selections. My visit gives them a glimpse of a life in the arts.
I have one program called “How to Rite Gud,” about the importance of the one great art, communication. It underscores the absolute necessity of knowing how to use your own language to get what you want and need. It is, I tell them, their job for the next sixty years, to reach through the glass wall of alienation with the tool of language.
After the set-piece I show them some of my illustrations. I tell them what I was trying to communicate, and I sometimes ask them what they see in the illustration before I address it. I describe some of the illustration tools I used – cutaways, ghostaways, simplification, compressed story-telling, special perspective, &c. After they’re “entertained” by pictures, I throw the last half of my visit open to questions.
The situations aren’t always ideal, the audience isn’t always perfectly quiet (especially little guys – I speak to kindergartens and up through high school). Between the slide show and questions I normally ask them to stand up, raise their hands up, and bounce up and down on their toes for a few seconds, then sit down all at once to make a big noise. It bleeds off some energy and resets their attention. Before the first group of students enter I learn from the teachers what the local “quiet” signal is – usually two fingers held up; one by one kids hold up their two fingers until everyone is quiet. I use it sparingly and it’s seldom needed.
This format has worked well. The questions take up more time than we normally have. One of the teachers usually gives me a five-minute hand sign and I ask for three or four more questions. There are always kids who grouse that they didn’t get to ask their question. It’s a lively interplay. But part of my first day’s visit went badly.
The first of three session was with a cafeteria full of 4th through 6th graders. Delightful: lots of questions, high interest, good humor and attention, eager to be joshed and wowed. Grand. The last session was kindergarten through second grade, antsy but dear, sweet-faced and willing to be pleased. Unblunted happiness. Between these two, however, was an ordeal with 7th & 8th graders, largely black and Hispanic kids. For a time I thought there was an excellent chance of being lynched.
They were armored. Nothing I could throw at them went home, nothing called up a reaction, nothing roused them out of a sullen, show-me torpor. They talked openly and jostled one-another during the first part of my presentation. A few incipient scuffles between jousting boys were suppressed by teachers who often looked at me with hopelessness and raised their hands, “What can I do?” Curiously, there was not a gender break in the rowdy but pouting behavior that I could mine for reaction: the girls were as distant and cold as the boys.
I could not cajole or enlist or pry forth any participation. I can usually get someone wearing a decorated sweatshirt to stand up and point out that the lettering on the shirt, the shirt itself, the color, the fabric was all designed, a production of the arts. I can usually call out someone’s hair style and ask if this was a piece of personal art. Not a single member would venture a question or participate. Falling back on a well-used standby, I picked this one and that one, “What design arts are in your life?” “Do you know any artists?” “Does art touch your life?” Nothing. Nothing beyond “I don’t know.” There was no voltage bridge between my energy and their dark entrenchment. I failed them.
How should I have confronted them? I tried to insist that their lives or at least the quality of their lives depended on learning some of the arts of communication. I offered them a window of opportunity, in this school, at this time, to talk about the barriers they faced. They must, I said, become culturally literate – they must learn the common ground of speech and images the world recognizes as a useful language as their only path to employment and inclusion. I tried to explain that their conscious span of, say, ten years acquaintance with a restricted culture couldn’t help them through the Big Culture of the nation. How could a splinter culture see them through difficulties and disappointments to a good life, a better life than they and their parents knew. Unless they fashioned the tools of their own survival in this school’s classroom workshops they would die . . . if not factually, spiritually; if not now, soon, much too soon. Nothing.
How to reach them? What cipher could decrypt their private redoubt of comfortable boredom?
It set me to wondering how they view life. Do they even see themselves surviving beyond next year? Do they have goals?
Perhaps that’s what I should have asked: What are your goals? What do you want from life? What do you think life might provide for you? How hard will you work for it? Do you feel school prepares you for it? Or do you feel so lost that the effort to succeed is a painful reminder of inevitable failure?
They live in a heavy gang area. Entrances to the neighborhood turfs are marked with graffiti pronouncements that the land belongs to Black Bloods or other gang identities. Would I want to belong to something larger than my family if I lived in this blasted, flat, monotonous, and financially forsaken plain? Bedsheet curtains at grimed windows, lifeless streets, 60% unemployment among the parents of these preternaturally aged, pathologically dispirited, soul-diluted children. Their principal shook her head as she told me that of the 58 students in the 8th grade, 38 are failing in both language and math.
Who can swoop in to save them? A black or Hispanic god-breathing evangelist? A born-again athlete? A boxer with a message? A reformed criminal? A tough hero? But these kids don’t have heroes as I knew them at their age. Heroes have always offered us a handle to lift and guide kids. Buffalo Bill isn’t the kind of role model they buy. A pimp-daddy, wealthy, dark-side rapper with a tough posse and a fly ride might be impressive, but what useful message could he suggest? And what message do they need to stir their energy toward something positive?
It’s important to recognize that these aren’t stupid kids. They represent the normal span of intelligence in any school, whether or not they bother to fill out all the blanks on the intelligence tests. All tests are snares to their suspicious instincts. Don’t expect tabular data to represent them or correlate any theory. Any cure or balm to the situation must be intuitive and inventive. Where are the handles? What are their pressure points? What can their immediate society offer to give or take away that can guide them? The carrot or the stick or both, applied lavishly?
Perhaps I can build a better presentation that will call up some recognition of reality. But I’m a middle-class whitebread writer and carry no persuasive credentials – no wealth, power, sports fame. What can I offer them?
In my last session of the day, the faces of the little guys, kindergarten through 2nd grade, were like delivering angels. They shone with delight and each of them wanted to shake my hand. Driving back to the motel I asked myself if those seraphic smiles would be worn down into the dishwater gray depression I confronted in the morning. I’m afraid for them, K through 12.
Braxinoso speaks:
Certainly an inordinate concern for reaching children marginalized by a short-sighted society smacks of narcissism, as if Adkins, himself, could turn their attention toward productive thoughts. The deadening effects of poverty and the low priority we place on education is systemic. Hundreds of fine teachers and dozens of caring visitors won't undo that Gordian knot, and this particular class of adolescents may be forfeit.
Braxinoso
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
We Begin
Writing for young people can be a dangerous business.
An author of mystery novels is customarily pictured with a cigarette and a bottle of scotch. It's easy to visualize a writer of history in a tweed jacket with a cup of rapidly cooling tea rattling to the pounding of his keyboard. Investigative journalists are pictured knocking out their hot stories in rolled-up shirtsleeves with battered fedoras still clamped on their beans, periodically shouting "Copy!"
Children's authors are easily seen wearing red rubber clown noses, surrounded by bubbles.
Like prostitution, the business of children's literature has been compromised by amateurs. Every grandmother on this spinning blue orb believes she can and should create a cute story about fur-bearing animals with alliterative names, colorful little teapots, talkative Chihuahuas, or magic garden decorations that spring into horrifying, Day-of-the-Dead life. Otherwise sober authors seize on the money-making notion of writing a kiddie book and pursue this hollow illusion of wealth into embarrassing doggerel, cherishing the odd belief that children appreciate rhymes more than sense.
The truth of the medium is that writing for children is much more difficult than writing for adults. I can attest honestly because I've written on both sides of the catalogue. Children demand sense and clarity more than antic cuteness. They haven't had the numbing experience of reading college textbooks, so their attention spans will turn on their size 3 heels before Peter Panda can blurt out more than a few sappy truisms.
Writing for children is wooing an intelligent, judgmental and uncompromising audience. The great skill of it is not in dumbing down or using small words (kids are remarkably multisyllabic), but in creating a Shaker simplicity of construction and form. It's not the vocabulary that restricts, it's the sentence structure and the creation of logical concepts.
The saddest thing about most children's literature is the lack of respect for children's intellects. A commonly-held belief among grandmothers and hacks is that writing a kid's story is an easier approach to literature than novels, because children don't require much in the way of detail, fact, historic accuracy or research. That is: children are weak and stupid and will be grateful for anything set before them.
Fact: reading children are as bright as they'll ever be; they lack only experience. Their logical faculties are well-developed and they can spot a phony sooner than most adults. They also have a sensitive awareness of being manipulated.
Fact: making a bicycle pink doesn't make it a girl's bicycle, and abandoning reality doesn't make a story suitable for children.
Fact: Alice In Wonderland is vastly overrated as literature and most children find it confusing and scary. Like much "beloved" children's literature, it is more appreciated by jaded adults than by kids.
Fact: Writing for children demands the same care in description, rhythm, style and the balance of language that the best writing for adults displays. Except that the children's writer must work on a smaller and more restrictive canvas, and speak to a more distractable audience, and compete with Sesame Street in the background. Grace, lyricism, just-so wordplay and careful observation of the human condition are necessary parts of all literature . . . and are critically important in serious (that is, successful) work for children.
I've written for children and adults in more than thirty-eight books, innumerable articles, narrations, texts and scripts. My particular oeuvre is non-fiction for children. You can see a list of my books and a brief bio at www.janadkins.com. Much of this blog will be discussion and controversy about writing for kids. I'll be contending that good writing is good writing, and that writing well in one field doesn't necessarily translate to success in another. I've been lucky: most of my life's work has been explaining things – tab A and slot B. I've explained things in text and image, for kids, adults, National Geographic, museums, film and corporate reports. I've had a chance to train up to the task of writing plainly for young people. I'm opinionated and passionate about this tiny part of the publishing spectrum.
The purpose of this blog is to invite discussion and argument, welcome dissent, bring in examples, and encourage a more detailed look at what we do. Beyond children's literature we'll also deal with other favorite topics: food, cultural phenomena, maritime heritage, hiking, sailing, tools, pens, and illustration. We begin.
Jan Adkins
Braxinoso speaks:
Adkins can be tiresomely stuffy about his hobby horses. He can lose perspective as easily as a cocker spaniel can lose a tennis ball in the weeds. When he gets on a rant he waxes wordy, even florid, and can sound like a passed-over assistant professor. In my small way I'll try to keep him on-track and restrain his grander tendencies. But one doubts it will do much good.
Braxinoso
An author of mystery novels is customarily pictured with a cigarette and a bottle of scotch. It's easy to visualize a writer of history in a tweed jacket with a cup of rapidly cooling tea rattling to the pounding of his keyboard. Investigative journalists are pictured knocking out their hot stories in rolled-up shirtsleeves with battered fedoras still clamped on their beans, periodically shouting "Copy!"
Children's authors are easily seen wearing red rubber clown noses, surrounded by bubbles.
Like prostitution, the business of children's literature has been compromised by amateurs. Every grandmother on this spinning blue orb believes she can and should create a cute story about fur-bearing animals with alliterative names, colorful little teapots, talkative Chihuahuas, or magic garden decorations that spring into horrifying, Day-of-the-Dead life. Otherwise sober authors seize on the money-making notion of writing a kiddie book and pursue this hollow illusion of wealth into embarrassing doggerel, cherishing the odd belief that children appreciate rhymes more than sense.
The truth of the medium is that writing for children is much more difficult than writing for adults. I can attest honestly because I've written on both sides of the catalogue. Children demand sense and clarity more than antic cuteness. They haven't had the numbing experience of reading college textbooks, so their attention spans will turn on their size 3 heels before Peter Panda can blurt out more than a few sappy truisms.
Writing for children is wooing an intelligent, judgmental and uncompromising audience. The great skill of it is not in dumbing down or using small words (kids are remarkably multisyllabic), but in creating a Shaker simplicity of construction and form. It's not the vocabulary that restricts, it's the sentence structure and the creation of logical concepts.
The saddest thing about most children's literature is the lack of respect for children's intellects. A commonly-held belief among grandmothers and hacks is that writing a kid's story is an easier approach to literature than novels, because children don't require much in the way of detail, fact, historic accuracy or research. That is: children are weak and stupid and will be grateful for anything set before them.
Fact: reading children are as bright as they'll ever be; they lack only experience. Their logical faculties are well-developed and they can spot a phony sooner than most adults. They also have a sensitive awareness of being manipulated.
Fact: making a bicycle pink doesn't make it a girl's bicycle, and abandoning reality doesn't make a story suitable for children.
Fact: Alice In Wonderland is vastly overrated as literature and most children find it confusing and scary. Like much "beloved" children's literature, it is more appreciated by jaded adults than by kids.
Fact: Writing for children demands the same care in description, rhythm, style and the balance of language that the best writing for adults displays. Except that the children's writer must work on a smaller and more restrictive canvas, and speak to a more distractable audience, and compete with Sesame Street in the background. Grace, lyricism, just-so wordplay and careful observation of the human condition are necessary parts of all literature . . . and are critically important in serious (that is, successful) work for children.
I've written for children and adults in more than thirty-eight books, innumerable articles, narrations, texts and scripts. My particular oeuvre is non-fiction for children. You can see a list of my books and a brief bio at www.janadkins.com. Much of this blog will be discussion and controversy about writing for kids. I'll be contending that good writing is good writing, and that writing well in one field doesn't necessarily translate to success in another. I've been lucky: most of my life's work has been explaining things – tab A and slot B. I've explained things in text and image, for kids, adults, National Geographic, museums, film and corporate reports. I've had a chance to train up to the task of writing plainly for young people. I'm opinionated and passionate about this tiny part of the publishing spectrum.
The purpose of this blog is to invite discussion and argument, welcome dissent, bring in examples, and encourage a more detailed look at what we do. Beyond children's literature we'll also deal with other favorite topics: food, cultural phenomena, maritime heritage, hiking, sailing, tools, pens, and illustration. We begin.
Jan Adkins
Braxinoso speaks:
Adkins can be tiresomely stuffy about his hobby horses. He can lose perspective as easily as a cocker spaniel can lose a tennis ball in the weeds. When he gets on a rant he waxes wordy, even florid, and can sound like a passed-over assistant professor. In my small way I'll try to keep him on-track and restrain his grander tendencies. But one doubts it will do much good.
Braxinoso
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