For Tricia

There are many non-verbal ways to tell someone how much they mean to you. You could do something special for them, write a nice letter, or get them a small personal gift. Writers often do this by dedicating a book to someone they love or to whom they are especially thankful. I recently came across a very interesting book dedication. It read:

For
Mary and Nora
who continue to astonish me
with their resilience, patience, and love.

Such nice words. So what is so surprising about this dedication? I found it just behind the title page of the text Research Methods: The Concise Knowledge Base. I can think of many books of which I'd love to have dedicated to me but I'm not so certain the list would include a research methods textbook. Is it enough just to have dedicated a book? Does the actual book make any difference at all? Would you want to show your wife and daughter just how much they mean to you by dedicating your latest book, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthenasia to the Final Solution, to them. Just imagine...

To my loving wife and daughter
without whom The Origins of Nazi Genocide would never exist

A few  pages beyond the dedication is an About the Author page. This is where we learn that Dr William Trochim, author of the research text, is "a professor in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University, and is a faculty member in the graduate fields of education, human development, and community and rural development. Among experimentalists, he is known for his work in quasi-experimental alternatives to randomized experimental designs, especially the regression discontinuity and regression point displacement designs." At the very bottom of the page it reads "He does all these things for the loves of his life - his spouse Mary and his daughter Nora."

Wow, they must feel so warm and fuzzy inside to know that it is becuase of them that he has "extended the theory of validity through his atriculation and investigation of the idea of pattern matching."

This all really made me wonder what I do for my family to show them how much I love them. I thought maybe I should start making more of an effort. Having seen the light, I decided to plan a hike for Tricia and I to do together. We could share something we both love doing and have some alone time. I found just the hike for us in the Upstate at Jones Gap State Park.

To ease Tricia's mind I failed to mention that the trail we would be hiking was listed at "strenuous." After a three hour drive we showed up around 6pm and still had to hike four miles to our campsite. This was when I found out it was actually rated as "VERY strenuous." I never knew a trail could climb so quickly in such little time. After about fifteen minutes, with heavy packs on our backs, we sounded like a couple of chain-smokers trying to run a marathon. Much to our dismay, we looked down and saw our car only about two or three hundred yards below us.

After a while, though, we adjusted to the terrain and did our best to laugh about it. I promised, many times, that we were now at the top of the mountain. This, of course, was always followed by yet another grueling climb. Two hours and ten pounds of sweat later we were sitting on a fallen tree as the woods began to grow dark. We were more than a bit concerned that we weren't going to find our campsite before we lost all light. The chances of staying on the trail by flashlight didn't seem too promising given that the trail was somewhat difficult to track in daylight.  Normally I would have suggested that we could just set up the tent right where we were but there was nothing even remotely resembling level ground anywhere near us.

So we trudged on. And on. And on.

Finally, about eight thirty we came across the campsite. We were very relieved. We quickly set up camp, brushed our teeth, and hopped into our bags. We hadn't eaten dinner (due to some other poor planning on my part) but all was good.

The next morning we woke up early and headed back down, taking another path. While not as tiring, going down was almost as difficult as going up. Still, it was a truly great trail with some amazing views. In our two days we didn't see a single other person until we returned to the park. For hours and hours all we heard was the sound of distant birds and a stream running mostly parallel to our path.

When we finished we were exhausted but quite happy. This had been no simple stroll through the woods. We felt as though we had really accomplished something. And Tricia wasn't even mad that I hadn't mentioned to her how hard it was going to be. She knows I love her. And I don't even have to "develop a multivariate form of structured conceptual mapping" to remind her.

Workin' For the Man

While in high school and college I worked a number of different jobs. My first was at a service station owned and operated by the father of a friend of mine. For five dollars an hour I pumped gas, lubed squeaky doors, and held the flashlight. After a few months of hard work I proved my worth  and was allowed to take on slightly more manly tasks such as patching punctured tires and preparing rum and Cokes. The fact that I was sixteen when I poured and served my first cocktail didn't seem to be of great concern. Neither was the legal obligation to claim me as an employee and pay taxes.

The owner, Frank, was very old-fashioned and the station reflected this. It was a full service station meaning that each car that came in to fill up would obligate me to wash all the windows, check the air pressure in each of the four tires, and raise the hood to check the oil. There was no Speed Pass or credit card machine at the pump. No, this was a slow process that often found the driver getting out of the car to chat with me for a while or to stroll into the station to catch up on things with Frank.

It was never really that busy. I can't recall a time when there were ever more than three cars pulled up to the pumps at the same time and even these times were few and far between. This may have been because Frank, for his full service treatment, was charging $1.49 a gallon during a time when you could go a little further down the street and pay only $.99. We had no signs out front to advertise our prices so on the rare occasion that someone pulled in who was not a regular I had to deal with the shock and scolding that always followed after I walked up to their window and told them how much they owed.

Should anyone ever get too upset and try to come in to confront Frank he would have been ready. He kept a small revolver in the bottom drawer of his desk in the back. It was always loaded and on occasion he would slip it into his pocket if someone came in that made him uncomfortable. Usually this meant black people. Frank was about as racist as a man could be. Many days were filled with offensive jokes about every minority imaginable. But most were about blacks. He shared these jokes with his customers and they shared them right back. I never laughed but I never complained either. I guess I was either too young or timid or maybe I just didn't think it would make any difference.

Minus that one glaring flaw, Frank really was a good guy. Perhaps he was just a victim of his times. And, of course, his environment. Sometimes it seems hard to hold that against someone. But then at other times it doesn't at all. We can all learn to grow with the times and see the errors of our old ways. He never did.

A few years later I took a summer job at our city's ten thousand seat outdoor concert ampitheater. I, along with a good number of my friends, worked on the maintenance day crew. This meant walking around with a sweeper kit, power blasting the walkways, and wiping down the seats. Although we were called the maintenance crew we were never actually asked to fix anything. Instead we had the pleasure of taking water hoses and squeegees to the same bathroom stalls that just the night before welcomed thousands of drunken fans who either could not aim their business at the toilets or just didn't care to.

Looking back, it was a terrible job and paid next to nothing. But at the time it was heaven. We hung out and joked each day about the man, got great suntans, and held competitions to see who could collect the most left over "cigarettes" after shows like the Reggae Sunsplash.

We got off at 4:00 and then came back each evening to persuade the security guys to sneak us in to see the concerts. While there must have been a couple dozen groups that played that summer I sadly cannot remember most of them. In fact, when I think about the shows it seems that the music was always somewhere in the background. We quickly snuck back out after each show for fear of being discovered by our bosses or, worse yet, running into the maintenance night crew. They hated us and we hated them. If a caste system were alive and well here in the States then those night crew guys would definitely have been at the bottom. However, they must have been smarter than they looked because they always saved those bathrooms for us.

My next job was in the produce department of a local grocery store. I had went to the district office with a friend and applied and interviewed in the same afternoon. A few days later we both received a call offering us a job. We were told we'd have to cut our hair, though. As was hip in the day of alternative music, we both had chin length hair that we tucked behind our ears. We looked very much like really ugly girls. Tim, after carefully considering the offer, refused to cut his hair but I was desperate for a job. I had already put a new guitar on lay-a-way and still owed a little more than $600. For months I stocked apples and sliced pineapples. Because of my classes during the day I had to work the evening shift which was really boring because it meant working alone. I soon found, though, that if I worked really hard I could get everything finished and still have about two hours to wander around the store and mess with the guys in the other departments. That is, if there were any. Unfortunately nearly everyone else there was middle aged and saw this job as a career that allowed them to feed themselves and their families. I, on the other hand, knew I was going to quit the very day I had enough money to bring home my Telecaster. And I did.

As always seemed to happen, after a few months of freedom I realized I needed money. My mom knew someone who knew someone who could get me a job at K-Mart. I don't know if there ever was a day when being seen at K-Mart did not thoroughly embarrass any teenager or young adult.  If there was I can hardly imagine it. By the mid-90's I can tell you without doubt that K-Mart was not a happenin' place. The building was old, dark, and full of the worse kind of cheap clothing and merchandise. Anyone with any dignity went the extra two miles to the new Wal-Mart across the railroad tracks. There were surprisingly quite a few people without dignity. Some even showed up in their bathrobes and slippers.

I started off working the cash register. You would think that since this job requires you to accurately scan each of the items going out of the store, collect money, and make correct change that only the most qualified employees would be given this important task. But no. Instead this was where all the newbies began. I soon found out why. There is no worse job then working a K-Mart cash register. It seemed as though about a fourth of the merchandise did not ring up correctly on the register. This meant the dreaded price check. I'd reach over for the phone, hit * 7, and speak into the receiver.

"Someone from Women's Wear please call 1-4. Someone from Women's Wear please call 1-4."

By this point the customer, if not already irate, was, at the very least, angry. This was because they knew as well as I did where this was headed.

Three minutes later.

"Someone from Women's Wear please call 1-4. Someone from Women's Wear please call 1-4."

I was afraid to look the customer in the eye. Their anger would no doubt be directed toward me and I was at the complete mercy of someone else, somewhere in that store, to call me back. Sometimes they were with another customer. But other times they were on break or in the stock room and just didn't feel like taking the call.

I was yelled at a lot. It didn't matter that I wasn't at fault. I was convenient and they felt as though they were not being treated like a valued customer. Of course, they weren't. 

About a month after starting there I was promoted to the sporting goods department. This was a great job because the boss back there was soft-spoken and a truly nice, hardworking guy. I stocked shelves, drilled bowling balls, and sold guns. The guns were the only part of the job I hated. Customers would come in, hold them up to their shoulders, and proceed to ask me a series of questions. It didn't matter what the questions were because I could guarantee you that I didn't know the answer to any of them. I'd refer them to the accompanying paperwork.

Sometimes the customers were in a hurry for their rifles. I'd pull out the forms they had to fill out and explain that the state of Illinois required that we keep the gun for a set number of days before they could walk out of the store with them. They all understood this but it irritated them all the same. They somehow thought I was at liberty to ignore this law and let them carry it out the same day. I was not. If it were up to me I'd have prefered a store like K-Mart not even sell weapons. Especially to the very same customers who would soon find themselves at the checkout station waiting forever for a price check.

The Power to Read, The Power to Imagine

"I love this book! I love this book! I love this book!"

Those were the words coming from Madison this past Thursday during independent reading time. A few weeks ago we were at the library and she asked me if I could recommend any books that might make her cry.

"Make you cry?" I asked.

"Yeah," she answered. "My mom and I really like to read books that make us cry."

This should have been an easy task because there are a whole host of books that are sad or touching in some way. Certainly, there are more than enough that can bring you to tears. But, as always seems to happen to me when put on the spot, I drew a blank. So Madison and I walked up and down the isles browsing book after book.

"Ahhhh!" I exclaimed. "This is the book for you!"

She looked the cover over.

"See there," I said. "The girl on the cover even looks like you."

And she did. Right there on the cover of Love, Ruby Lavender was an irresistible red-headed girl covered in freckles.

"Will it make me cry?" she asked.

"I think it might,' I answered. "There is an emotional ending. But the thing is that different books make different people cry for different reasons. What might make me cry might not make you do the same. You'll just have to read it to find out."

So here we were all spread out in the floor with our books two weeks later. Love, Ruby Lavender, while absolutely wonderful, is not an easy book for a second grade reader. For two weeks Madison had slowly made her way through page after page. And while parts of the book were hard for her she persevered well enough to completely fall in love with the characters. After two weeks she was down to her last few pages and although there were no tears for her in this particular story she was sad to finish it and say goodbye to all those characters who had become her friends.

Just twenty minutes earlier I had finished reading the final chapters of our class novel, Ruby Holler. At three hundred ten pages, this was by far the longest book I had read all year. It is the story of two orphans, Florida and Dallas, who are as behaviorally challenged as children can be. As a result of their terrible lives, they trust no one and respect no one.And as much as I love this book I feared even starting it. I was afraid it would stretch out across weeks and weeks and that the kids might lose interest or that we might not finish it before the end of school. Yet here we were wrapping it up only twelve or thirteen days after starting it. I had been reading twenty or thirty pages each day and still the kids groaned and complained when I stopped to put the bookmark back in.

"One more chapter," they'd beg. "Please!"

Sometimes the pleading worked and other times it didn't. Regardless, how wonderful it is to be a part of a school where we can fall in love with a book and devote twenty-five or thirty minutes a day to reading it without my having to worry about defending this use of class time. Many other schools would ask that I explain to them what state standards I'm addressing. What are the learning outcomes for your students? they would ask. I know because I've heard these questions before.

And perhaps it is a fair question. There are a lot of things to teach and guide kids into discovering for themselves over the course of a day, week, and year. Often times it will seem like there just isn't enough time to accomplish all that I would like to get to with my class. So then...why read aloud? What are they learning.

They're learning to love books. And love stories. And love language. But perhaps most of all they are learning to imagine.

This past week I was reading through JK Rowling's commencement speech to the 2008 graduates of Harvard University. Someone had sent this along to me a year or two ago and I enjoy revisiting it from time to time. I don't know that I had ever realized that Rowling, the wildly popular author of the Harry Potter series, was so amazing and brilliant until I read these words. I'd love to pass just a few of them along. In these excerpts she sums up the crucial importance of imagination.

...Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have not shared.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise. 

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid. 

What is more, those who choose not to empathise enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy. 

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality. 

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing. 

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped change. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

I'd love to believe that these very thoughts had been in my head all these years. I'd like to say that this is the very reason I devoted so much time to sharing books and imagining other people and other worlds. But it wasn't. I did it only because it seemed logical. And it was fun. How nice it is, now, to have someone so articulate and thoughtful and brilliant come along and offer such sound reasons for spending time each day imagining.

It Isn't Easy Being Green

To steal a line from Forest Gump: “I am not a smart man.”

Now, in the movie Forest used this phrase to make clear to Jenny that despite his lack of intelligence he was able to both understand and feel love. I, on the other hand, have no need to follow this phrase with the word “but…”. For me there is no more. Simply put, I am not a smart man.

I’m the guy who looks for his glasses when they’re sitting right on top of his head. Or worse, the guy who searches the house for his car keys only to find that he already has them in his hand.

I say dumb things too. Once, in the seventh grade, someone was talking to me about a favorite Jan and Dean song. I responded “Jan and Dean? Who’s in that band?”

Perhaps it’s because I’m too quick to respond. I don’t think enough. The people who know me best say it’s largely because I don’t really listen when others are speaking. At my last school there were a number of teachers who would impersonate me by looking up with a blank face and saying “Huh?” Sadly, though, this wasn’t too far from being accurate. I do daydream a lot and I definitely have selective hearing.

Still, I can live with this. Probably because somewhere in the back of my mind I believe I could change. Somewhere in the back of my mind I believe that I really am smart. And then something like this happens…

Recently, the Department of Health and Environmental Control, along with Keep the Midlands Beautiful, hosted a lawnmower exchange in the parking lot of the Colonial Life Arena. Residents of Columbia were asked to “Mow Down Pollution” by trading in a gas-powered lawnmower in exchange for a heavily discounted electric model. The discount: $124 off the regular price of either a 14” mower (now $150) or a 19” mower (now $250).

This was very appealing. Tricia and I used to have an electric model and I loved how much quieter and lighter and environmentally friendly it was. However, dealing with the 100ft cord was maddening. If it wasn’t constantly coming unplugged (which it was) then it was constantly having to be tossed over to the other side of the mower so that I could turn a corner or change directions for my next pass. The mower eventually broke down and I really wasn’t too heartbroken about it.

So once Tricia and I checked our budget and saw that we could afford to replace our gas mower I checked the Neuton website to find out more. I was hoping to see that this electric mower would be different. That it would be better. The first thing I noticed: no cord! Instead, the mower was powered by a pull-out battery that charges in the garage. And then when I watched a small handful of videos offered on the website I noticed that it was so quiet you could actually hear people talking in the yard. You could hear birds singing. I can’t say that I remember ever wishing that I could hear the birds singing when mowing the lawn but now that I thought more about it I realized it would be awfully nice.

Another great feature I noticed was that there was no pull-cord. Instead, you simply press a big orange button and then pull back a lever on the handle. No longer could Tricia say “I would have mowed the lawn this morning while you were gone but I can’t get it started. I’m not strong enough to pull the cord.” She’s gotten a lot of mileage out of this excuse. With the new mower she’d either have to join me in the pleasure that is mowing the lawn or come up with a newfound grass allergy.

I was definitely sold. I checked the DHEC website and saw that the exchange began at 9am on Saturday morning. The first 115 people to show up with their mowers and a proof of residency would drive away with the new mower. Anyone coming later could still receive a coupon to be used when buying directly from the dealer, Neuton Mowers. I set my alarm for 7:30 and planned to leave the house at 8:15 so that I could be there right at 9:00.

Thanks to some speedy driving I showed up a few minutes early. I was just making the right turn at Greene Street when I looked down at the clock and saw that I was ten minutes early. I’ll just hang out on the street for a while until they’re ready to let people in, I thought. I anticipated being a bit embarrassed to be so early. I imagined I’d be the only one there.

I wasn’t.

The first thing I noticed was that they were already letting cars into the parking lot. A whole lot of cars.

The second thing I noticed was that the car in front of me was about to take the very last spot in the lot.
When I tried to pull in, the back end of our van was hanging out into the road.

The third thing I noticed was that when the volunteer working the entrance handed me a line card it read: sixty.

Sixty!

I was worried about being too early and having to wait a few minutes for them to finish getting set-up. Meanwhile there were fifty nine other cars in front of me. Fifty-nine cars that would have to snake through the lot. Fifty-nine cars that would have to unload their mowers. Fifty-nine cars that would have to make their way up to the one salesman. Fifty-nine cars that would have to choose what model they wanted. Decide if they want any of the accessories. Pay. Have their mowers loaded into their cars. Fifty-nine!

It was a much longer morning than I had anticipated. Two hours later I was finally pulling away with our new mower. However, the long wait didn’t end there. Once I got it home and assembled the mower I had to wait fourteen hours for the battery to charge. I was so anxious to start it so that I could hear the quiet hum I had been promised.

The next morning I headed out to the garage to finally start it up. I pulled the small charger chord out of the battery, lifted up the “hood”, and carefully slid the battery into its dock. As I remembered from the directions the day before, I pushed the orange button and then pulled back on the levers.

Nothing.

By this point Tricia and Ainsley were standing at the door watching. Sadly, starting the new mower qualified as quite a happening in the Hass household.

“What’s wrong?” Tricia asked.

“I’m not sure,” I answered as I tried pushing the button again and then pulling the lever.

“Where are the directions?” she asked.

I picked them up from the floor. Thankfully I do not suffer from the stereotypical male stubbornness that is never reading the instruction manual or asking for directions. I’m generally thankful to get all the help I can.

I read the instructions again, pushed the orange button, pulled the lever. Pushed the orange button, pulled the lever. Pushed the orange button, pulled the lever. It was Einstein that said that "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Great, now I was both stupid AND insane.

I tried charging the battery at a different outlet. No luck.

I tried e-mailing the company for advice. No luck.

I tried using the replacement battery that Neuton sent me. No luck.

Finally after more than a week of the seemingly dead lawnmower sitting in our garage Tricia decided that she’d give it a shot.

“What do I do?” she asked.

“First you push that orange button and then you…”

She held the orange button down with one hand and then started to pull the lever with her other hand.

“No,” I said. “You don’t keep holding the orange button down. You’re supposed to let it up before you…”

The mower started right up.

“Never mind,” I said. I was both defeated and relieved.

After eight or nine days of reading the instructions over and over, complaining to the support folks at Neuton, and receiving what wound up being an unnecessary replacement battery, Tricia solved the problem in just a few seconds. The most important thing she probably did was to ignore my instructions and do what made sense to her. Things work out this way often. Far too often.

So I’d like to say this is the last boneheaded thing I'll do. That from here on out I won’t ask dumb questions, wonder what everyone around me is talking about, or forget what Tricia told me she really wanted for Mother’s Day. I’d like to say this. And somewhere in the back of my mind maybe I really do believe this could be true.

But I wouldn’t count on it.

A Great One Liner

It's long been a family tradition to embarrass one another with less-than-flattering stories of our childhoods. Spend just a few moments with my mom's family and you will be told that she was breast fed until what we now refer to as the 'tween years.

"Mom used to take her behind the door," one of her brothers will boast. "It just didn't seem right with her having a full set of teeth and all. Especially since some of them were permanent!"

She swears this story isn't even true. However, the one about her coming out of the water only to have her swim top fall off is. Again, though, there's some disagreement as to exactly how old she was when this happened. She swears she was only six or seven while others argue she was old enough to draw stares.

It's not always the kids in these stories who are made out to be the boobs. Tricia enjoys telling the story of the time her mom ran over her arm in the driveway. I like to remind my mom of the time she put an entire jar of vaseline in my hair for Halloween. It took three full bottles of vinegar to get it back out.

Of course, a number of the stories tend to involve the kidspeak mispronunciations of childhood. When I was little I used to call shampoo "pamshoo", airplanes "mertmanes", and - much more common- spaghetti "pisghetti." Harper used to call oatmeal "opinope." Muluken, much older but still very new to English, often confused the words "understand" and "stand." This was quite problematic when he told his first grade teacher "I can't stand you."

One of my favorite kidspeak stories happened just a few days ago. Having not worn a tie for three years, I decided to throw one on for school last week. When I came downstairs I was greeted by quite a collection of odd looks and questions from the kids. They were much more amused than impressed. Not long after we got to school, Ty was wondering through the Gathering room when he came across another male teacher in our school who was also wearing a tie. With perfect comedic timing he looked up at Mr. Foote and declared...

"My dad's wearing the same costume today!"