Some Writer

     I really enjoyed writing this essay for Dr. Dial-Driver's Children's Lit class.

     In her foreword for the 60^th Anniversary edition of E.B. White’s children’s classic Charlotte’s Web, multiple Newbery Medal-winner Kate DiCamillo (Because of Winn-Dixie; The Tale of Despereaux) writes that White “loved barns and pastures, dumps and fairgrounds, ponds and kitchens. He loved pigs and sheep and geese and spiders” (vi). He also loved subjects as diverse as “rain, harnesses, pitchforks, springtime, fall, spiderwebs, monkey wrenches and Ferris wheels” (vi). Because of this love for the common bits of everyday life, “every word of this book shows us how we can bear the triumphs and despairs, the wonders and the heartbreaks, the small and large glories and tragedies of being here” (vi). In case the reader didn’t catch this aspect on the first reading, DiCamillo is humorously pointing out that another thing White loved was creating atmosphere-enhancing lists, which can be seen everywhere from the description of farm implements and junk cluttering Zuckerman’s barn (13-14) to Fern and Avery’s summer activities (42-44) to the ingredients of the meals Wilbur and Templeton consume (too many examples to mention all of them).

     Charlotte’s Web is a novel about friendship, which also says a lot about good writing, while also being about growing up and facing death, of which there is plenty on a farm. In 1947 White wrote an essay outlining the “Death of a Pig,” published in the January 1948 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. White begins this essay by stating that the traditional farming practice of butchering a hog for wintertime is natural and accepted without question: “It is a tragedy enacted on most farms with perfect fidelity to the original script. The murder, being premeditated, is in the first degree but is quick and skillful, and the smoked bacon and ham provide a ceremonial ending whose fitness is seldom questioned” (Essays of E.B. White 17). On this specific occasion, one ad-lib interrupted that ancient script’s flow – the pig never showed up for his last supper: “I found myself suddenly cast into the role of pig’s [sic] friend and physician – I had a presentiment that the play would never regain its balance and that my sympathies were now wholly with the pig” (17). This particular pig died of a sickness a short time later, despite White’s best efforts of swine-nursing, and thus depriving him of tasty ham and sausage. But soon afterward he began work on his second children’s novel, which starred a pig protagonist.

     Of course, like his earlier children’s novel Stuart Little and his later children’s novel The Trumpet of the Swan, the animals in Charlotte’s Web can speak English. Can animals really talk? It’s a popular idea in the minds of many, and the wise Dr. Dorian doesn’t completely rule out the possibility when talking with Mrs. Arable: “I have never heard an animal say anything. But that proves nothing. It is quite possible that an animal has spoken civilly to me and hat I didn’t catch the remark because I wasn’t paying attention” (110). Perhaps White was consciously echoing the words of G.K. Chesterton from Chesterton’s famous defense of fairy tales in “The Ethics of Elfland,” part of his book Orthodoxy:

I have always been more inclined to believe the ruck of hardworking people than to believe that special and troublesome literary class to which I belong. I prefer even the fancies and prejudices of the people who see life from the inside to the clearest demonstrations of the people who see life from the outside. I would always trust the old wives’ tales against the old maids’ facts. (Orthodoxy 53-54)

     Still, facts must be dealt with and arranged appropriately. And as Melissa R. Cordell explains in an article on the backstory of Charlotte for the October 2008 issue of children’s magazine Highlights, White “filled a folder with sketches of spiders and notes about spiders at work” (32), and a lot of these notes wove themselves into the tale, including “Charlotte’s description of the seven parts of her leg, what happened when Charlotte’s children hatched, and how her foundation lines differed from her snare lines” (33). College professor Sue Misheff summarizes the work in her 1998 essay “Beneath the Web and Over the Stream,” for the academic journal Children’s Literature in Education, by saying, “Within this fantasy lives a very down-to-earth spider who weaves a bit of magic into her otherwise realistic web which essentially saves her friend from certain extinction” (133).

     Chesterton would agree that a spider’s web is magical; when queried with such unanswerable questions children wonder, such as why birds lay eggs or gravity makes apples fall in autumn, “we must answer exactly as the fairy godmother would answer if Cinderella asked her why mice turned to horses or her clothes fell from her at twelve o’clock. We must answer that it is magic” (quoted in Elfland 57). So would Dr. Dorian, though he uses different language: “A young spider knows how to spin a web without any instruction from anybody. Don’t you regard that as a miracle?” (White, Charlotte 110)

     Another everyday miracle for any writer is having a good editor, and most people in general would considered blessed with a spouse they could both work well and get along with. For White, his wife Katharine filled both of these roles admirably, though she did not officially edit his work. As he wrote in a March 1954 letter to a little girl named Shirley Wiley, “My wife is an editor. An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do, but who has escaped the terrible desire to write” (Letters 358). And writers need editors for the simple reason that White cited when replying to a student’s query: “I can’t explain myself. Everything about me is mysterious to me and I do make any strong effort to solve the puzzle” (Letters 372).

     Still another everyday miracle is the concept of stories themselves, and the immense power they hold. Western author Louis L’Amour said of them in “In the Beginning, There Was the Story…”, a short essay from his reference work The Sackett Companion: “The story was man’s first and best means of transmitting knowledge or information, of preparing the child as well as the adult for what might come” (261). White uses the power of story, in part, to model what desirable behavior looks like and educate readers through new vocabulary, while keeping his adult viewpoint that sees humor in the commonplace. As Charlotte says to Templeton on page 140, “’Humble’ has two meanings. It means ‘not proud’ and it means ‘near the ground.’ That’s Wilbur all over.” In this approach, White creates what Misheff calls “a safe space created by a reasoned approach to a problem” (Misheff 138).

     Even though Charlotte dies, because death is inevitable for all creatures, life goes on for Wilbur, and he must learn to deal with the pain in order to grow and mature (Misheff 137). DiCamillo says this is part of Charlotte’s promise to Wilbur, in addition to being White’s promise to his readers: “Things will continue, life will go on. It will be beautiful, astonishing, heartbreaking. And as long as you keep your eyes and heart open to the wonder of it, as long as you love, it will be okay” (Foreword vii). This is a very important lesson to learn, which can be taught somewhat by sitting at the typewriter and bleeding, so sayeth the Hemingway quote familiar to nearly all English majors. Life’s experiences will teach this lesson to the readers in one way or another at some point in their lives, but books like this one can play an early role in understanding this lesson, which is part of why children’s literature possibly occupies the highest place in storytelling, which in my opinion is the highest form of teaching tools in existence. 

      White also has quite a bit to say about the importance of good writing in general, not to mention common sense, throughout this work. But in terms of finding out what this advice is, we must study his actual words. “If you are engaged in writing a theme about my works, I think your best bet is to read them and say what you think about them,” was the advice he gave a high school student named Arthur Hudson (White, Letters 372). So that is what I tried to do.

     There is the main plot device of the words “SOME PIG,” “TERRIFIC,” “RADIANT” and “HUMBLE” appearing in the threads of Charlotte A. Cavatica’s webs in Zuckerman’s barn and the fairgrounds, of course. No one understands how words could appear in a spider’s web, because it seems utterly fantastic. But again, Dr. Dorian serves as a voice of reason: “I don’t understand it…None of us do. I’m a doctor. Doctors are supposed to understand everything. But I don’t understand everything, and I don’t intend to let it worry me” (108-10). Since “doctor” comes from the Latin “to teach,” this bit of wordplay in that statement about “having to understand everything” is doubly worthwhile. After all, isn’t part of the reason that professors and teachers continue to seek out new perspectives and knowledge of their subjects because they wish to learn more?  And if we tried to understand everything, we would quickly go crazy, an observation which Chesterton expands upon in his earlier Orthodoxy essays “The Maniac” and “The Suicide of Thought.”

     Another bit of humorous observation about writing occurs during the initial barn-wide planning meeting, where Wilbur protests that he’s not terrific, only to be quickly overruled by Charlotte’s snarky-yet-sensible reply: “That doesn’t make a particle of difference. Not a particle. People believe almost anything they see in print” (89). This is sadly true, and can be seen by reading the political coverage in newspapers or on Facebook. People are quite easy to fool.

     In an essay remembering his Cornell professor William Strunk, White describes his own process of writing this way: “I write by ear, always with difficulty and seldom with any notion of what is taking place under the hood” (White, Essays 256). Is that comment a little strange, coming from the editor/co-author (with Strunk) of The Elements of Style, one of the most influential books on writing in history? Kind of. But at the end of the day, the words that White hammered out just worked. They connected with people, and explained clearly the simple, often-forgotten parts of life’s daily existence in a rural setting. And that’s what counts. Perhaps with the closing lines, he was hoping they could be his epitaph: “It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both” (184). I know that I would be honored to have people say about me.

Works Cited

Chesterton, G.K. “The Ethics of Elfland.” 1908. Orthodoxy. Ignatius Press, pp. 51-70, 1995.

DiCamillo, Kate. Foreword by Kate DiCamillo. Charlotte’s Web, by E.B. White. 60^th Anniversary edition. Illus. Garth Williams. 1952, HarperCollins, 2012, pp. v-vii. 

Cordell, Melinda R. “E.B. White and His Spiders.” Illus. Meredith Johnson. Highlights for Children, Vol. 63, No. 10, October 2008, pp. 32-33. EBSCO. Accessed on 28 September 2016. Web.

L’Amour, Louis. “In the Beginning, There Was the Story…” The Sackett Companion. Bantam Books, pp. 261-262, 1988.

Misheff, Sue. “Beneath the Web and Under the Stream: The Search for Safe Places in Charlotte’s Web and Bridge to Terbithia.” Children’s Literature in Education, vol. 29, No. 3, 1998, pp. 131-141. EBSCO.  Accessed on 29 September 2016. Web.

White, E.B. Charlotte’s Web. 60^th Anniversary edition. Illus. Garth Williams. 1952, HarperCollins, 2012.

--------------. “Death of a Pig.” The Atlantic Monthly, January 1948. The Essays of E.B. White, 1977. Harper Colophon Books, pp. 17-25, 1979.

--------------. “Will Strunk.” 1957. The Essays of E.B. White, 1977. Harper Colophon Books, pp. 256-262, 1979.

--------------. “To Arthur Hudson.” 1 April 1955. Letters of E.B. White, Revised Edition, 2006. Edited by Dorothy Lorrano Guth and Martha White.  Harper Perennial, p. 372, 2007.

--------------. “To Shirley Wiley.” 30 March 1954. Letters of E.B. White, Revised Edition, 2006. Edited by Dorothy Lorrano Guth and Martha White.  Harper Perennial, p. 358, 2007.

The Dark Side of Football

     The second essay for Topics of Advanced Comp was on a critical issue. The Super Bowl was that weekend, so I figured, "Concussions and safety in general in football is certainly a critical issue!" So that's what I wrote about. It scored an 85, which I thought was acceptable, though disappointing.

     The fiftieth edition of the Super Bowl was won by the Denver Broncos on Sunday night, and an estimated 94 million Americans watched the contest, according to CinemaBlend’s Conner Schwerdtfeger. For this reason, an appropriate and timely topic seemed to be focusing on the health risks which can come from football. We draw comparisons between the players on the field and the gladiators of Roman times, forgetting one very important detail: Those gladiators usually died. And even though it is a much slower process for football players, they are getting killed, too.

     Much of the storyline from the early seasons of the high school TV drama Friday Night Lights deals with the aftermath of quarterback Jason Street’s paralysis in the middle of a game closing the first episode.  As head coach Eric Taylor prays in a closing voiceover, “Give all of us gathered here tonight the strength to remember that life is so very fragile….It is these times, and this pain, that allows us to look inside ourselves” (“Pilot”). Over the last several years, the mainstream sports media have turned a much more critical eye on this issue of safety, which has caused many fans to carefully reconsider their positions on the game in general, as well as how to discuss game action. An example of this can be seen in the differences between the introductory videos of the Electronic Arts video games Madden NFL 2000 and Madden NFL 12, both of which are easily found multiple places on YouTube. Almost in its entirety, the opening highlight reel in Madden 2000 was composed of vicious, violent and frightening tackles – thirty-five shots out of the montage’s forty-five total images were of near-decapitations. By Madden ’12, though, many of the shots were of the pageantry surrounding the kickoff(airplane flyover, cheerleaders, etc), and then the editing of the onfield action was extremely stylized, only vaguely resembling a depiction of a game.

     In Brian M. Ingrassia’s history The Rise of Gridiron University, he writes that social scientists of the early twentieth century such as Edward A. Ross and Francis A. Walker helped popularize football by claiming it developed “moral as well as physical tone” as it created young men with “courage, coolness, steadiness of nerve, quickness of apprehension, resourcefulness, self-knowledge and self-reliance” as players subverted their individual wills to achieve a common goal (93, 95). John Sayle Watterson’s book College Football: History, Spectacle, Controversy relates in detail how the game we know as football came to be what we recognize today. Originally it was a corrupted version of rugby played by eastern colleges, mainly those that we now call part of the Ivy League. Games were more or less organized mob scenes, and occasionally massacres. Due to so many players dying either on the field itself or in relation to injuries suffered while playing, the rules of the game were drastically rewritten, thanks to the considerable influence of President Theodore Roosevelt. Some of these rule changes created for safety purposes were the forward pass, a system of penalties, and the notion of having to earn ten yards for a first down. It took a while for all of these changes to have their intended effect, but eventually serious injury or death became the rare and horrible exception (64-69, 118-119).

     One of the modern issues our society worries about concerning football is concussions, or more specifically, chronic traumatic encephalopathy(CTE), which is a degenerative brain disease likely caused by excessive repeated trauma to the neural regions; it was found in a Boson University study that 87 of 91 subjects showed symptoms of CTE, according to Ian O’Connor’s ESPN.com editorial lamenting the death of flamboyant former Raiders quarterback Kenny Stabler.  O’Connor also states that Dr. Bennet Omalu, the pioneer of CTE research, estimates that 90% of all NFL players have CTE, while a Fox Sports article quotes him as suspecting that O.J. Simpson also suffers from the condition. Omalu was recently in the spotlight thanks to the film Concussion, starring Will Smith as Omalu. But what exactly is a concussion? According to the Sports Injuries Sourcebook, “any change in mental status or function qualifies as a concussion” (218). This is typically caused by a sudden sharp blow to the head, as it comes from the Latin word concutere, meaning “to shake violently.” The result is that the sufferer gets confused about his/her environment (WebMD). Since children’s brains are still developing, they jostle around more, which puts them at great risk for receiving concussions. Some, though not all, symptoms of this could be dizziness, nausea, vomiting, blurred vision or altered emotional behavior (Sports Injuries 218). They may be classified as either Grade 1(mildest; patient remains conscious at all times and is merely dazed), Grade 2(worse; patient still remains conscious, but remains out of it and has difficulty answering simple questions correctly), or Grade 3(by far the worst; patient is knocked out) (Sports Injuries Sourcebook 219-20).

     In an editorial for the American Heart Association’s publication Circulation, Gary J. Balady and Jonathan A. Drezner report that 83% percent of linemen are susceptible to developing either hypertension or prehypertension, which could result in a premature death due to cardiovascular disease.

     While the highest-profile levels of anxiety about the health risks that come with playing football will naturally be towards the professionals, they represent only a miniscule fraction of those playing football in America. There are thousands of college teams, high school squads and youth football teams. This gambling away of present health for the slender chance at cashing in on a fortune can be devastating if the player loses. Kathleen E. Bachynski and Daniel S. Goldberg report in the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics that two-thirds of Washington State high school players stayed in games after an occurrence of a mild traumatic brain injury, or concussion (“Youth Sports” 329). This Russian roulette with one’s health is well-chronicled in H.G. Bissinger’s book Friday Night Lights(which was the inspiration for the TV show) in the case of Boobie Miles, who was primed to be the star running back of the 1988 Odessa Permian Panthers. Instead, he shredded his knee in a preseason scrimmage, which dashed his dreams of attending a Division I school (53-57, 66-69). He is now an overweight diabetic with a prison record living in a trailer with his girlfriend and a lot of child-support payments to his ex-wife, according to Bissinger’s follow-up article for the ESPN-affiliated Atlantic-esque pop-culture-oriented Grantland website, entitled “Where Is Boobie Miles?”, which was actually an excerpt of his sequel After Friday Night Lights.  

     Which takes us back to wondering, is it ethical to allow young men to throw away their health in order to satisfy the public’s need for a spectacle in order to avoid doing household chores? There are many other reasons for fans to follow football, of course, perhaps keeping track of their alma mater, or sportwriters and broadcasters following their assigned beats. The Romans were skilled warriors; which is why they left such a mark on Western civilization. There is a football stadium in California known as the Coliseum; which is an obvious tribute to the earlier Roman Colosseum. We stage our fights in this arena, replacing the sand with painted grass, and we may call players “gladiators”; which comes from the Latin word gladius, meaning “sword.” There’s something we forget often, though: most of the time, those gladiators in the Colosseum were killed. And so are football players; it’s just a slower process. CTE is just one of many swords ending their run. Bachynski and Goldberg write that “the most affected population when it comes to brain injuries is also the most vulnerable,” as developing adolescents have weaker neck muscles and still-developing brains, together with the possibility of not being able to fully recognize and understand the responsibilities which come from playing sports like football (“Youth Sports” 324). Think of Boobie Miles or Jason Street. Can we condone this slow slaughter of future generations by tolerating it now? These are tough, introspective questions, which must be answered on a personal case-by-case basis.

     In our state, the shorthand way the rest of the country remembers where we are is because of the crimson and cream of the University of Oklahoma Sooners. Football is taken extremely seriously at a local level; just look at rivalries such as Jenks-Tulsa Union, Checotah-Eufaula or Henryetta-Morris. But as much energy is invested in the Sooner State, down south in Texas it’s even bigger, with the Dallas Cowboys, Texas Longhorns, TCU Horned Frogs, Baylor Bears, Texas A&M Aggies, and many other high-profile squads. On a high school level, the competition is even fiercer; due to the sheer size of Texas, there are 704 public schools that currently make the playoffs, according to Tuesday Morning Quarterback columnist Gregg Easterbrook (“Friday Night Bloat”). That represents a lot of the competitive tension which kept the TV version of FNL humming, as audiences followed the Dillon Panthers’ quests for that gold ball trophy. But as Easterbrook points out, that also results in that many more chances for injury. To win a title, a Texas high school squad must play through 16 games – the equivalent of a full NFL season. Again, these are high school students. They are still developing physically, mentally and emotionally, and must do ordinary things like schoolwork as well. They are not professionals; it isn’t their sole job to win football games. This seems troubling. But at the end of the day, as FNL’s Coach Taylor said to close the pilot, “We all are vulnerable, and we will all, at some point in our lives, fall. We will all fall. But we must carry this in our hearts: That what we have is special, that it can be taken from us, and that when it is taken from us, we will be tested.” Is it hard to imagine the landscape of the Midwest, Texas and the South without football? Yes. But that might perhaps serve a greater good, if it prevents injuries such as these from occurring. However this story of football’s place in modern society turns out, it should be interesting to watch from the bleachers.  

Works Cited

Bachynski, Kathleen E. and Daniel S. Goldberg. “Youth Sports & Public Health: Framing Risks of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury in American Football and Ice Hockey.” Journal of Law, Medicie & Ethics 42.3 (2014) 323-33. CINAHL with Full Text. Web. 8 February 2016.

Balady, Gary J. and Jonathan A. Drezner. Circulation. 128.5 (July 2013) American College of Cardiology Foundation and American Heart Association. 477-80. MEDLINE. Web. 8 February 2016.

Bissinger, H.G. Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team and a Dream. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1990. Print.

------------------. “Where is Boobie Miles Now?” Grantland. ESPN. 30 April 2012. Web. 4 February 2016.

“Concussion (Traumatic Brain Injury).” WebMD. WebMD. N.d. Web. 4 February 2016.

DR_C. “Madden 2000 Intro.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube. 12 August 2009. Web. 4 February 2016.

Easterbrook, Gregg. “High School Football’s Friday Night Bloat.” Tuesday Morning Quarterback. New York Times. 24 November 2015. Web. 4 February 2016.

Ingrassia, Brian M. The Rise of Gridiron University: Higher Education’s Uneasy Alliance with Big-Time Football. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2012. Print.

O’Connor, Ian. “Another CTE case, another reason football needs dramatic change.” ESPN.com. ESPN. 4 February 2016. Web. 4 February 2016.

“Pilot.” Friday Night Lights. (1.01) Writ. Peter Berg. Dir. Peter Berg. Netflix.

Saraf, Sid. “OJ Simpson likely suffers from CTE, says Concussion doctor.” FoxSports.com. Fox Sports. 29 January 2016. Web. 4 February 2016.

Schwerdtfeger, Conner. “The Super Bowl Ratings Were Apparently Huge, Of Course.” CinemaBlend. Gateway Media. 8 February 2016. Web. 9 February 2016.

Sports Injuries Sourcebook: Basic Consumer Health Information about Sprains and Strains, Fractures, Growth Plate Injuries, Overtraining Injuries, and Injuries to the Head, Face, Shoulders, Elbows, Hands, Spinal Column, Knees, Ankles, and Feet, and with Facts about Heat-related Illness, Steroids and Sport Supplements, Protective Equipment, Diagnostic Procedures, Treatment Options and Rehabilitation, Along with a Glossary of Related Terms and a Directory of Resources for Additional Help and Information. Third edition. Ed. Sandra J. Judd. Detroit, Mich.: Omnigraphics, 2007. Print.

Watterson, John Sayle. College Football: History, Spectacle, Controversy. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. Print.

Ya boy MiMz. “Madden NFL 12 – Opening Introduction.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube. 29 August 2011. Web. 4 February 2016.

Remembering the Challenger Explosion

     (Originally posted to Another Lover of the Blade.)

     Thursday marked the thirtieth anniversary of the Challenger explosion. I was really surprised(and disappointed) that I couldn't find any TV specials about it. (Scowling particuarly hard in the direction of the History Channel.) This YouTube video archived the live news feed of the explosion. That night, President Ronald Reagan gave the following speech, written by Peggy Noonan. (Emphasis mine.)

  "...Today is a day for mourning and remembering. Nancy and I are pained to the core by the tragedy of the shuttle Challenger. We know we share this pain with all the people of our country. This is, truly, a national loss. Nineteen years ago, almost to the day, we lost three astronauts in a terrible accident on the ground. But we've never lost an astronaut in flight - we've never had a tragedy like this. And perhaps we've forgotten the courage it took for the crew of the shuttle. But they, the Challenger Seven, were aware of the dangers, and overcame them and did their jobs brilliantly. We mourn seven heroes: Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gergory Jarvis and Christa McAuliffe. Wemourn their loss as a nation together. The families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy. But we feel the loss, and we are thinking of you so very much. Your loved ones were daring and brave, and they had that special grace, that special spirit that says, 'Give me a challenge, and I will meet it with joy.' 
     "They had a hunger to explore the universe and to discover its truths. They wished to serve, and they did. They served all of us. We've grown used to wonders in this century: it's hard to dazzle us. But for 25 years the United States Space Program has been doing just that. We've grown used to the idea of space, and perhaps we've forgotten that we've only just begun. We're still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers.
     "And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's takeoff: I know it's hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew were pulling us into the future, and we will continue to follow. 
     "I've always had great faith in, and respect for, our space program. And what happened today does nothing to diminish it. We don't hide our space program, we don't keep secrets and cover things up, we do it all up front and in public. That's the way freedom is, and we wouldn't change any of it in a minute. We will continue our quest in space; there will be more shuttle flights, and more shuttle crews, and yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. Nothing ends here. Our hopes and our journeys continue. 
     "I want to add that I wish I could talk to every man and every woman who works for NASA, or who worked on this mission, and tell them: 'Your dedication and professionalism had moved and impressed us for decades. And we know of your anguish. We share it.' 
     "There's a coincidence today, on this day 390 years ago the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Canada. In his lifetime, the great frontiers were the oceans, and a historian later said, 'He was raised by the sea, lived on the sea, and he was buried by it.' Well, today, we can say of the Challenger crew, their dedication was, like Drake's, complete. The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye, and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God."

     This is an amazing speech. The world has gotten so cynical, I'm ashamed to say that I wonder exactly how much of this was heartfelt and how much was acting. But that doesn't matter, because it works either way. It had been a long time since the country had had a disaster of this scale(JFK's death, probably?); and we were hurting. We needed to hear this message, to calm our nerves and assure us the world would keep spinning. The language he used is extremely plain and everyday; even the multisyllable words are common and simple, like "coincidence" and "Challenger". It's easy to understand. And it's comforting. Inspiring, even. (The cynical part of me wonders what are we inspired about, like it does during the Olympics.)
     But that paragraph speaking straight to the kids - that's one of the greatest parts of this speech. Mom was one of those kids watching; I was watching fifteen years later when 9/11 happened. Resgan just explained what happened, like Mr. Rogers advised, and he didn't hide that he didn't understand it all yet, either.
     But as a nation, we mourned. Together. This happened in the aftermath of 9/11, but grief brings people together far closer than anything else does. It's comforting, somehow, particularly in these times we live in now, to realize that it's possible for an entire country to be weeping in response to an event. Maybe that's just because we're constantly at each other's throats about race violence or gay rights or abortion or any of the other things ripping the nation apart right now.
     "They had that special grace, that special spirit that says, 'Give me a challenge, and I will meet it with joy.'" (Looking at you, Leslie Knope.) That might be one of the most perfect and inspirational epitaphs you could ask for.
     Think about it.
     Don't you want to have someone say that about you when you're gone?
     I just shook my head at the part where he said "we don't keep secrets and cover things up, we do it all up front and in public. That's the way freedom is, and we wouldn't change any of it in a minute." We don't do that any longer. Maybe we never did. But a lot of things change in thirty years, and a lot of that freedom, that feeling of invincibility, has gotten lost somewhere along the way. And it's really sad.
     That final phrase is amazing. "...and they slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God." "Surly" means "ill-humored or ill-tempered" according to my copy of the Webster New American Handy College Dictionary, which is a great way of looking at this life, because it's just so true. And while Dale Hinshaw from Philip Gulley's Harmony novels might be a weirdo who could've come straight from Pawnee, he has good intentions, most of the time. But anyway, he said once that being faced with sickness was bound to turn our thoughts to the eternal. This is especially true in times of massive tragedy like this.

     I don't know, I've always said pop-culturally I belonged to the 80's. So that might have played a part in the solemnity that was the anniversary, why I couldn't concentrate on school. Or maybe it's just my love of history. One of the most amazing sights at the Newseum while on Youth Tour in D.C. June 2011 was the local paper right after the disaster from Christa McAuliffe's hometown. The scale of the event had something to do with it; cell phones and the internet didn't exist yet. But I read somewhere that 85 percent of the country knew what happened within one hour. It just needed to be talked about. 

The front page of the Concord (N.H.) Monitor from Tuesday, January 28, 1986. Concord was the hometown of civilian astronaut Christa McAuliffe, a teacher at the high school.

Modeling Christlikeness in a Sitcom-like Stage Family

    This personal essay was for Topics of Advanced Composition. It scored a 93, and Dr. Dial-Driver just gave me one of those "Really?" looks when I turned in a revised version. That got 100 points.

            Talking about the citizens of Pawnee, Indiana, Parks and Recreation’s Ben Wyatt says at one point, “You know, it’s weird. I’ve been to a lot of towns…usually people don’t care about anything. I mean, don’t get me wrong, they’re weirdos, but….they’re weirdos that care” (“Time Capsule”). For a while around the Northeastern State University campus, and to a lesser extent the city of Tahlequah or Cherokee County generally, if “the SWAT team” were mentioned, the speaker likely didn’t mean a squad of heavily-armed law enforcement officers. Instead they were talking about the drama ministry of the Baptist Collegiate Ministries, which was considered as somewhat of a loose cannon amongst the tight-knit community of BCM outreaches. But we cared about each other. And that was important.

            I was a loner growing up, for the most part. Not that I didn’t like people – it’s more just that I like a small group of specific people, and if someone is able to gain my trust in order to be called a friend, then that trust is nearly indestructible. I had acted in middle school musicals with our homeschool co-op and really enjoyed that, but in general, Oklahoma is rather lacking in acting opportunities. So there was just the occasional murder-mystery, and quoting good TV lines with my siblings. But in general, nothing, which didn’t do much to take my mind off a disastrous freshman year of college or the violent implosion of the sarcastic, witty and creative support group that served as our personal Buffy-type “Scooby Gang” for me and my friends in surviving high school.

            The project known as “Students with a Testimony” began when Samantha Hill transferred to NSU around the spring of 2012 from Carl Albert; their branch of the BCM had a drama ministry primarily used as a tool for evangelization, and Sam wanted to continue that work in and around Tahlequah. She obtained the blessing of NSU BCM directors Bob and Debbie Lipscomb, and then the project was off and running. So she set out to round up some team members through word-of-mouth.

“I pretty much just had to go out on a limb, finding strangers who wanted to be a part of the BCM and say, ‘Hey, are you a Christian? Would you like to share your testimony?’” she said during an interview for an unpublished newspaper article in September 2013. “I was the crazy girl that everyone saw coming and, believe me, they’d run the other way, because they knew exactly what I was wanting to recruit them for.”

Sam tried to recruit me to immediately join the team when I came to Tahlequah in fall 2012, but I declined, since I thought I had better focus solely on schoolwork until I was more adapted to campus culture. Besides, I was more involved at the time with Campus Christian Fellowship, another ministry which has (though no one on either side wants to actually admit it) a fierce rivalry with the BCM. She got about a dozen people to sign up, though; and they performed a handful of shows in churches of various sizes, interspersing testimonies and Scripture with music and comedy sketches.

      Through a mix of gentle pestering by Sam throughout the year and knowing several other people who attended the BCM regularly, together with realizing that CCF wasn’t at all a place where I could grow spiritually, I started going to the Monday-night worship service, and gradually discovered that this was a good organization to be a part of. When fall 2013 started up and the SWAT sign-ups were passed around, I figured that I ought to dive deeper into helping out. It had been forever since I’d acted in anything, and besides, it was a ministry opportunity. The team was made up of mostly new faces this time around, with Haley Ritter co-leading the group with Sam for a semester.

     “I actually heard about SWAT when I first met Sam and Haley, they were telling me about it, and it seemed like a really, really cool way to do ministry,” said Elizabeth Hodge in an interview from September 2013. “I’ve been involved in theater most of my life, but never have done any kind of ministry like this before. It’s a really cool way to spread the Gospel, because you don’t have to go five thousand miles away and spend five thousand dollars.”

     Once we’d gotten the sketches memorized, life quickly turned into something of a sitcom: Friends was blended into Full House and the sketch comedy group Studio C, and then that combination was added to the YouTube series Messy Mondays, as I put it in a blog post simply titled “SWAT.” But we really did become like family. Sam was the mom of the group, Haley the drill-sergeant aunt. And together, they kept things running with a mix of strictness and sweetness. Jacob was the cool older cousin, while Elizabeth, Susan and I were like siblings. Neighbors included the spacey janitor James, four-wheeling Becca, obnoxious Scott (everyone hated him), couple Skylar and Ja Li Si (we gave them a hard time, of course), while Caleb and Holly were always sort of hanging out in the corner. New additions to the cast several weeks in were TJ, serving as the fiery deadpan snarker in addition to doing voiceovers, while Justin turned out to be a jack-of-all-trades, doing everything from locating churches to running sound equipment and acting.

     There were a lot of coffee runs to McDonald’s when someone had a lot on their mind –

“Random coffee runs late at night make for a gem of a night,” Elizabeth tweeted once – and there was entertaining improvisation out of necessity, and malapropisms galore (well-chronicled in my video “SWAT Blooper Reel”). Road trips to and from shows were also very…interesting, to say the least. As Elizabeth said, “The basic theme of all our road trips is, like once we get there, you ask: ‘…But did we die?’ And that sums up everything perfectly.” For example, there was that night we went looking for the invisible church in Sallisaw.

     Having put together a silent project to go with the Lifehouse song “Everything” for a charity fundraiser/talent show, we were invited to perform it at a revival at Deliverance Baptist the next week. We didn’t usually do shows on Wednesday nights unless it was a special occasion, and this definitely counted. Thing was, though, we’d lost several key props between performances, since it was supposed to be a one-time thing. And several people were late, adding to the tension. So we nervously played ping pong to pass the time, then split up, one group racing to Wal-Mart for glass-bottled root beer, the other group flying to Dollar Tree for play-food money. We got to Sallisaw with a half hour to spare, more than enough time to find the church…..except that none of us can find it on our phones’ maps. We did find three other churches, which all turned out to be the wrong ones. So we finally talk Jacob into calling the pastor, where he’s given directions which sound straightforward enough: “At Wal-Mart, turn right onto Maple and then drive a ways, and then another right.” Maple is located, but it leads to a really sketchy-looking neighborhood….and none of us (ten people in three vehicles) had ever been to this city before, so we were completely lost. And by now it was pouring down rain. Susan and I ask for directions from some terrified construction workers at the Assembly of God, which turns out to be another dead end. (Also, we realized once we got back in the car that she was already in costume as Death.) We get a lead on another place it might be, which takes us several miles out of town and past three burned-out buildings which were at one point churches. The search has now taken an hour and fifteen minutes, all five occupants of our car vote for giving up and finding dinner. We relay this information back to the other two cars, and then eat and drive back home to Tahlequah, crying in frustration yet knowing the situation was hilarious. . This experience was recapped in far more detail in my blog post “Getting Lost.”

     Weather slowed the beginning of our spring semester’s schedule, but the execution of the performances was greatly improved, due in part to the addition of Drew and Ashleigh as tech crew and about a quarter of the cast dropping out. We banded together often to cover roles whenever necessary, and strengthened connections with the other BCM ministries, as the more musical of us joined the worship band. Organization-wide lunch hangouts were a staple of Friday afternoons, and watch parties during Thunder games caused much screaming and strangling of pillows. The overall atmosphere was much like working in Pawnee’s Parks Department, and when you enjoy your coworkers, coming in every day is awesome. Most of us spent nearly every nonclass moment in either the BCM’s basement, living room or office. Special SWAT events included Christmas caroling at a senior citizens’ center - three days before Thanksgiving - a birthday party picnic, and a game night featuring intense rounds of Catchphrase and Apples to Apples. An elderly pastor in Muskogee even gave a handful of us marriage advice after the show one night. (”If you live long enough to say ‘Yes, dear,’ you’ll live to learn everything else.”) Pretty good advice.

      After Sam and her husband moved once she graduated, the way everyone planned the leadership transition to take place was for Susan to take over the reins the next year, with me taking the second-in-command role which Haley had filled. But there were a lot of family problems at home, which meant that I had to leave for a semester in order to help out. Susan’s theater duties kept her too stressed to run SWAT properly, so it was absorbed into the worship band, where it limped along for the rest of the year before apparently being shut down sometime in spring 2015. And by then transfers happened – Skylar and I came to RSU, Elizabeth went to NSUBA, Caleb to Southwest Baptist, etc. And life happened, too – Justin and Ashleigh fell in love almost immediately, and their wedding will be held in a couple months. Jacob is engaged now, and Haley got married. Ja Li Si became Miss Cherokee last year, and began dating Sam’s brother. Graduations will begin proceeding in a couple months.

     We weren’t that successful at evangelizing, but we did do well at encouraging those who needed it – whether that was audience members, relatives, friends or castmates – through the spiritual valleys, discouragements, breakups, general insecurity and school panic of this life. We were a team, which doesn’t come up very often. You don’t really get that Parks and Rec vibe in real life very often. And when you do….that ought to be treasured. “A team isn’t a bunch of kids out to win; a team is something you belong to. Something you feel. Something you have to earn,” Gordon Bombay said in The Mighty Ducks. We earned that, and you don’t let those ties fall slack. So we still keep in touch, and have mini-reunions whenever possible. I may be allergic to college, but SWAT has definitely been one of the highlights.

Works Cited

Coburn, Wesley. “Getting Lost”. Blog post. Another Lover of the Blade. Blogger. 21 November 2013. Web. 17 January 2016.

--------------------. “SWAT”. Blog post. Another Lover of the Blade. Blogger. 9 November 2013. Web. 17 January 2016. 

-------------------. “SWAT Blooper Reel”. Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube. 29 December 2014. Web. 17 January 2015.

Hill, Samantha. Personal interview. 9 September 2013.

Hodge, Elizabeth. Personal interview. 9 September 2013.

------------------ (HodgepodgeEH). “Random coffee outings late at night make for a gem of a night.” 7 March 2014. Tweet.

The Mighty Ducks. 1992. Dir. Stephen Herek. Buena Vista Pictures, 1992. DVD.

“Time Capsule”. Parks and Recreation: Season Three. Writ. Michael Schur. Dir. Michael Schur. NBCUniversal Television Distribution. 2011. DVD.

One of Shakespeare's Most Dramatic Scenes

     The last main essay for my Shakespeare course at Rogers State University.

          Act Four, Scene One is basically the scene in Much Ado About Nothing. First we have the horrifying behavior of Claudio in ruining the wedding by accusing Hero of being unfaithful, and then Leonato’s rage, and then the smoldering anger of Beatrice and Benedick’s swooping in to challenge Claudio to a duel, while he and Beatrice finally admit that they love each other. There are so many intense emotions felt throughout by the characters as the audience is taken on a roller coaster ride of despair and lividity while knowing this will somehow lead into the pleasant ending of a comedy, which typically is a wedding.

            But first, to recap what has happened which led up to this scene: Claudio and Hero fell in love; Benedick and Beatrice once were in a relationship before he left her, Don Pedro is trying to get them back together, and finally, Don John is enacting what revenge he can for losing a civil war to Don Pedro by trying to cause as much mayhem as possible, which included enlisting the help of several cunning assistants in making it look as if Hero were unfaithful in having sex with another guy on the eve of her wedding. Dogberry would have been able to foil this plot if was not handicapped by his own ineptitude and Leonato’s impatience.

            This wedding scene is handled well in Joss Whedon’s theatrical adaptation; particularly in Clark Gregg’s Leonato’s confusion on lines 6-7 of the play script, and Alexis Denisof’s Benedick’s attempt to get things back on track with lines 20-21. Claudio believes he’s doing the right thing, which does not make his actions and words any less horrendous in this scene, but it does sort of allow the audience to understand where he is coming from in calling Hero “a rotten orange” (31) and “an approved wanton” (43). As an example of body language, which cannot come through the bare skeleton of the script’s dialogue, in the film Don John(played by Sean Maher) casually snatches up a cupcake as he strolls away from the wedding, his task completed. This adds the perfect amount of “What a jerk!” felt by the audience.

Is there a more painful utterance in Shakespeare than Claudio’s speech from 99-103? “O Hero! What a Hero hadst thou been if half thy outward graces had been placed about thy thoughts and counsels of thy heart? But fare thee well; most foul, most fair! Farewell, thou pure impiety and impious purity!” Mignon Fogarty explains in a “Grammar Girl” blog post titled “Why Did People Stop Saying ‘Thou’?” that it was generally addressed to a social inferior; which adds to this passage’s heartbreak. Hero faints and is presumed dead, and the Friar proposes a long-winded, well-intentioned, but dubious solution which is generally agreed upon.

       Some time later, (line 255 in the same scene in the script, a separate scene in the film,) Benedick comes upon Beatrice weeping bitterly. They agree that Hero was wronged (259-260), and the enormity of this calamity forces them to admit freely what the audience has been wanting to hear for so long: “I do love nothing in the world so well as you.” “You have stayed me in a happy hour. I was about to protest that I loved you.” (267, 282-283) This touching scene is then flipped immediately on its head with Beatrice’s request that Benedick kill Claudio (288). Beatrice’s fury at Benedick’s reluctance to comply is portrayed brilliantly by Amy Acker; the tongue is the only war tool available to the woman of Elizabethan times, and Beatrice is a master fencer with it, lashing him with barbs such as “You dare easier be friends with me than fight with mine enemy,” (297-98) and more deeply wounding, “Or that I had any friend who would be a man for my sake! But manhood is melted into curtsies, valor into compliment,” (315-17) Benedick does not wish at all to do battle with his friend, of course; yet the honor of the family of his wife-to-be is at stake here, so the carefree acquaintances of military days must pass into the mists of time. After one more question to sum up the situation, he charges forward into action: “I will challenge him.” (329) Just before and just after that, he says some odd things worth pondering: “Think you in your soul the Count Claudio hath wronged Hero?” (326-27) and “As you hear of me, so think of me.” (331-32)

      It could still be the love endorphins talking, but a highly agitated woman would be liable to say anything was the opinion of her soul at the moment. This seems like a very quicksand-like foundation to go confront one’s best friend about in a matter of life and death, even if the woman asked is his new girlfriend. Also, almost everything in this play revolves around eavesdropping, overhearing conversations and misinterpreting that information. Benedick is casting his reputation to the wind and hoping that all will turn out aright; does he know that Don John has left by this point, so the chance of further mischief is slight? Or is he saying that with complete faith in her loyalty? Possibly this “growing up” of putting her and her family ahead of his army pals is what will allow Beatrice to keep her faith in his actions and abilities. It would depend greatly on how that scene was played, how we as audiences are supposed to interpret that. Finally, could Shakespeare have intended this to be a “breaking the fourth wall” moment, where both Beatrice and Benedick know that they are in a play, and that things will turn out happily by the curtain? In that case, it wouldn’t matter what other people said about him, because the outcome of the conflict would be assured. This is not a likely explanation, but it is interesting to think about, even though it is likely wild speculation.

      At this scene’s conclusion, roughly half the characters believe Hero is dead, Claudio could potentially be killed(but he lives, the conflict ends peaceably), and turns out that Fogberry had the answer to Don John’s participation the whole time. Both sets of couples are wedded, the audience breaths a sigh of relief, either shaking their heads in puzzlement of the play’s ending, which focusing on the imminent capture of Don John, or chuckling at the lighthearted ending of Whedon’s film, where Benedick urges Don Pedro to find a wife. In my opinion, the movie ends on a note more in keeping with the lighthearted elements of this play. 

Works Cited

Fogarty, Mignon. “Why Did People Stop Saying ‘Thou’?” Grammar Girl, Quick and Dirty Tips. 12 December 2014. Web. 23 November 2015.

Much Ado About Nothing. Dir. Joss Whedon. Perf. Amy Acker, Alexis Denisof, Reed Diamond, Clark Gregg, Fran Kranz, Sean Maher, Jillian Morgese. Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions. 2012. Netflix. Web. 15 September 2015.

Shakespeare, William. Much Ado About Nothing. 1599? William Shakespeare: The Complete Works. Ed. Stephen Orgel and A.R. Braunmuller. P.p. 371-400. New York: Penguin Books, 2002. Print. 

The Importance of Food and Mealtime in Stories

     This was an essay for American Lit, I was going to base it on the use of weaving faith and superstition throughout the plotline of several novels, but realized at the last minute that there was no way I could do that effectively. So at the last minute I changed the topic to the use of food and mealtimes throughout novels, which Dr. Mackie said was a really good topic, but the essay needed a lot of work. I knew that, but a poorly-written essay is better than one turned in past deadline. It got a 79, which is higher than I would have given it, but that just barely kept me from getting an A in that class(I had an average of 88.9). Oh, well.

     In literature, often overlooked are minor details of daily living, if they are not relevant to the plot in some way. One of these aspects is mealtime; though the presence of food in general often serves as the setting for an important scene and/or emotional turnaround, or where important background exposition is revealed. I will try to showcase how food and mealtimes are important in novels.

     Through her novels, mostly situated within the small Appalachian village of Mitford, North Carolina, Jan Karon writes in a very down-to-earth, everyday manner. Characters do laundry and go grocery shopping and work through chores on Saturday; they work crossword puzzles and pray and read the local newspaper. Most of all, they eat. And many cook. In her anthology collection/scrapbook The Mitford Bedside Companion, Karon responds to numerous reader fan mail commenting on all the food in the books(which includes everything from apples, buttermilk biscuits, and Sara Lee pies to bouillabaisse, gizzards and lethal orange marmalade cake). She says on page 49,

“Why is there so much food in the Mitford books? First, food is a great way of communicating. When I write about Dooley loving fried baloney sandwiches, you can connect with that. When I write about Puny baking cornbread and Louella frying chicken, most of you can relate to that. Food is something we can all understand; it’s a common language.”

     A little farther down the same page Karon explains that besides that, she had left a successful advertising job to launch her writing career, and the reason the first book was filled with food references was “largely because my cupboards were bare, and I was writing hungry.”

      When hungry, it can be difficult to think properly, which can lead to poor decision making. The most obvious example of this is the biblical story where Esau traded his birthright to his younger brother Jacob as payment for a bowl of lentil stew (Genesis 25:29-34). Drinking alcoholic beverages throughout history has been seen as a social pastime, depicted in many literature and films. The impending decision about Jig getting an abortion in Ernest Hemingway’s short story “Hills Like White Elephants” is discussed over beers, while she proclaims that everything in life tastes like licorice. “Especially all the things you’ve waited so long for, like absinthe.” Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises is filled with characters who exist in an alcohol-induced fog of addiction, living out Jig’s thought that “That’s all we do, isn’t it – look at things and try new drinks?” The characters of Eugene O’Neill’s play Long Day’s Journey Into Night would probably agree; as Mary says of addictions in Act Three, “It kills the pain. You go back until at last you’re beyond its reach.”

     Though not using drink as a means of escape, Nick Carroway of The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is perhaps running away from the memories of that New York summer by locking the experience into printed form. Jay Gatsby built up his ridiculous façade to disguise his anguish over Daisy’s marriage to Tom, but the hullabaloo camouflaged well the fact that “he was just the proprietor of an elaborate road-house next door” (64). Gatsby uses mealtime and alcohol memorably; most of the first chapter introduces us to the main characters through an extremely uncomfortable dinner party (6-17). The second chapter is primarily concerned with the bizarre evening at Tom and Myrtle’s trysting place, which Nick cannot remember too well due to being drunk most of the night (24-37). It is over a meal at a fancy New York restaurant where the shadowy side of Gatsby’s business dealings is briefly revealed to the reader (69-73). Everyone is partially drunk that day in August when Myrtle Wilson is run over (114-141), and then in the aftermath that night Tom and Daisy “conspire together”, in Nick’s words, over cold fried chicken and ale (145).    

     But more often the sensory experience of consuming certain foods lends itself well to forming associations with experiences involving that food; which is what John Tobias’ poem with the extremely long title “Reflections on the Gift of a Watermelon Pickle Received From a Friend Called Felicity” is about. As Tobias says:

“…The summer which maybe never was

Has been captured and preserved.

And when we unscrew the lid

And slice off a piece

And let it linger on our tongue

Unicorns become possible again.”

     Watermelons ruled that summer when “the purpose of knees was to be skinned”; according to the poem, and E.B. White picks up on this theme quite a bit in Charlotte’s Web, from the opening chapter describing the momentous breakfast one spring morning in the Arable kitchen (7-13) to the listing of all the edible things summer brings (50-51) to the old sheep’s recitation of the paradise of food Templeton will find at the county fair (130-131). Listing all the places food drives the story forward would be citing almost the entire book.

In another novel written for juvenile readers, S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, it’s while Ponyboy and Cherry are getting popcorn and Cokes at the movie theater where they discuss the differences and similarities between the Greasers and the Socs, exposing each to the view that those “on the wrong side of the tracks” might not be so terrible after all (38-43). Coca-Cola realized that trendy music could help marketers target the young demographic which Ponyboy, Cherry and Hinton all fell into, using widespread TV and radio advertisements starring the likes of Ray Charles, Libby H. O’Connell writes in her history of The American Plate (238). And while popcorn had a long tradition of being an American snack food, O’Connell states that its’ big break came from the invention of the electric corn popper in 1925, which was soon picked up widely by movie theaters, providing an affordable draw during the Great Depression and then providing servicemen a taste of home on military bases during World War II (261).

     Besides providing sustaining energy, meals can also be, in the formal definition of UCLA scholars Elinor Ochs and Merov Shohet in their journal article “The Cultural Structuring of Mealtime Socialization”, “cultural sites where members of different generations and genders come to learn, reinforce, undermine, or transform each other’s ways of acting, thinking and feeling in the world.”

     That transformation of acting and thinking which can occur over shared meals is part of what makes Celie’s and Squeak’s revolt during a family meal even more shocking in Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple (198-204). Harmony is just somewhat expected during mealtimes, and so it’s doubly astonishing when that social civility is snapped. At the book’s close, a barbecue is one of the staples of the family reunion, thus reestablishing the sometime-frayed communication channels between former partners, extended family and parents and children (287-288).

     In Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie, the girls’ Christmas is made immeasurably brighter by Mr. Edwards’ visit bearing gifts from Santa Claus for Mary and Laura. These presents include a tin cup, a peppermint stick, a cake made of white sugar and a penny for each of them. And for the whole family, there are sweet potatoes to go with the Christmas turkey (248-252). Moving ahead about six years and changing the scenery from the Kansas prairie to the South Dakota prairie, the Ingalls’ Christmas with their friends the Boasts is brightened by the meal of roasted rabbit, dried apple pie and popcorn (198-200).

     And sometimes the conversation over meals can reveal insights or revelations which would have no other outlet. In a place as ultra-conservative as Philip Gulley’s Harmony, Indiana – which is anything but harmonious – the conversation in the Coffee Cup restaurant during a slow winter month revolves around the first bikini ever sold at the Five and Dime (Life Goes On 193-194). The townspeople can be unlovable curmudgeons who hate everything to the point where the best thing anyone can say at the funeral is “He did like Cheetos” (Signs and Wonders 146). But it in this town, over a piece of terrible-tasting leftover pot roast, that a father accepts that his son is gay (Signs 185-186). 

     Going back to Karon’s North Carolina in her first book, At Home in Mitford, the town’s favorite clergymember Father Tim Kavanagh meets his pretty next-door neighbor Cynthia Coppersmith the children’s book author/illustrator when she knocks on his door in a rainstorm to borrow a cup of sugar for a cake; they end up devouring a rack of barbecued ribs he had just made (At Home 142-144). From that first interaction, a friendship blossoms which eventually leads to their marriage. There are times when the strain of preaching gets to be too much, so those are where Father Tim can take a break and go visit the cabin of his friend Homeless Hobbes for encouragement and a bowl of stew in equal measure (At Home 236-240).

Edgar Guest begins his poem “The Perfect Dinner Table” by pointing out that the tablecloth is slightly dirty from little hands, the food is not fancy, and it is only him, his wife and their children at the table (Book of Virtues 241-242). The next two stanzas describe the excited chattering of the kids describing their day and the minor impolitenesses of putting elbows on the table or talking with one’s mouth full. It is a perfect example of the domestic focus and warm tone which so often comes through in Guest’s poetry. But the final stanza closes it out thusly:

“At many a table I have been

Where wealth and luxury were seen,

And I have dined in halls of pride

Where all the guests were dignified;

But when it comes to pleasure rare

The perfect dinner table’s where

No stranger’s face is ever known;

The dinner hour we spend alone,

When little girl and little lad

Run riot telling things to Dad.”

     That is idealistic, but if your dreams are not slightly out of reach, what would be the point of aiming at them? Most dinnertimes do not follow such a placid, well-trodden path – there will of course be battles over finishing the peas or corn - but that makes the times when it does happen shine brighter. Throughout this essay I tried to showcase instances of the ordinary routine affecting the extraordinary events of plotting; this does not the quality of a Red Lobster meal, instead seeming more of a Hamburger Helper type of paper. 

Works Cited

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. 1925. New York: Scribner, 2004. Print.

Guest, Edgar. “The Perfect Dinner Table”. 1916. The Book of Virtues. Ed. William J. Bennett. New York: Touchstone, 1993. Print.

Gulley, Philip. Life Goes On. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004. Print.

-----------------. Signs and Wonders. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003. Print.

Hemingway, Ernest. “Hills Like White Elephants”. 1927. PDF file, Massey University. Web. 11 November 2015.

Hinton, S.E. The Outsiders. 1967. New York: Viking, 2007. Print.

Karon, Jan. At Home in Mitford. New York: Penguin, 1994. Print.

---------------. The Mitford Bedside Companion. Ed. Brenda Furman. New York: Penguin, 2006. Print.

Ochs, Elinor and Merov Shohet. “The Cultural Structuring of Mealtime Socialization”. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development. Wiley Periodicals. Spring 2006. Web. 11 November 2015.

O’Connell, Libby H. The American Plate: A Culinary History in 100 Bites. Naperville, Illinois: Sourcebooks, Inc., 2014. Print.

O’Neill, Eugene. Long Day’s Journey Into Night. 1956. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Vol. D. Ed. Nina Bayim and Robert S. Levine. 402-480. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2012. Print.

Tobias, John. “Reflections on the Gift of a Watermelon Pickle Received From a Friend Called Felicity”. 1963. PDF file, University of Florida. Web. 11 November 2015.

White, E.B. Charlotte’s Web. 1952. New York: Dell Publishing, 1972. Print.

Wilder, Laura Ingalls. By the Shores of Silver Lake. 1939. New York: Scholastic, 1953. Print.

-------------------------. Little House on the Prairie.1935. New York: Scholastic, 1953. Print.

Fantasy, "Ocean" and Neil Gaiman

     The fourth major essay for Dr. Dial-Driver's Lit Traditions course at Rogers State University. It was the highest-scoring of the four at a 91; and considering that I didn't know what a literary analysis looked like when the course started, I'll take that.

     Neil Gaiman says in the acknowledgements of his novel The Ocean at the End of the Lane that it was intended to be merely a short story, but that it just kept growing until it was a novel-length project. This happens sometimes, for as Stephen King states in his memoir On Writing, “The writer who is serious and committed is incapable of sixing up story material the way an investor might size up various stock offerings” (159). Readers are not particularly drawn to books in order to analyze how they are crafted structurally; instead they want to experience a good story (King 160). Ocean is a little bizarre, and certainly different than most novels on bookshelves, but overall can be reckoned a worthwhile read.

     To begin with, this is a fantasy novel which is marketed at children. (Apparently I was wrong on this point, but I've never been very good at defining target audiences.) To be fantasy is to inhabit a “Perilous Realm” which “cannot be caught in a net of words; for it is one of its qualities to be indescribable, though not imperceptible”, as J.R.R. Tolkien said in his essay “On Fairy Stories”. The world of Ocean can be felt easily, but trying to define it in concrete terms is impossible. While writing it, Gaiman was plagued by a nagging question, which became the title of an article he wrote for Horn Book Magazine: “What the [Very Bad Swearword] Is a Children’s Book Anyway?” As Gaiman describes the then-work-in-progress, “It has magic in it. It has a Sense of Wonder in it, and strangeness. It’s a book about the incomprehensibility of the adult world.” Very much autobiographical, the book was written to try to explain to his wife what his childhood had been like.  As King says, because readers love reading about ordinary people working, “God knows why, but they do” (On Writing 161), perhaps that is why the Narrator of Ocean lives so deeply in books: “Growing up, I took so many cues from books. They taught me most of what I know about what people did, about how to behave. They were my teachers and advisors” (77). Gaiman is an author, so therefore he is writing about his own work here. Good authors, as Tolkien pointed out, “create worlds in which your mind can enter.” These Secondary Worlds are soap bubbles; as they disappear the moment disbelief enters the scene. As long as we are inside the soap bubble, all the rules of the tale’s reality are true. 

In “On Fairy Stories” Tolkien wrote that “the trouble with the real folk of Faerie is that they do not always look like what they are; and they put on the pride and beauty that we would fain wear ourselves. At least part of the magic that they weird for the good or evil of man is power to play on the desires of his body and his heart.” Once the opal miner commits suicide, nothing is quite how it appears. Ursula Monkton quickly ensnares the narrator’s father and his little sister; and a tent-creature or worm-thing is certainly not they thought they saw when she was hired as governess.  The Hempstocks are just “good country people”, their neighbors would say – and they are good, befriending and protecting the Narrator throughout the story. They are odd, though. Lettie especially is an enigma; at face value she is eleven, but it is implied that she has been eleven for a very, very long time. Her ocean is mystifying, as is almost everything else related to the Hempstocks. What exactly happened at the end by the pond is hidden by the tricks of memory and the distance of forty years’ clutter, but it is possible that Lettie sacrificed herself for our Narrator; coming as close to dying as is possible for those of her kind.

     Ursula Monkton, or the creature calling herself by that name, is eventually defeated, and the hunger birds are driven away, much to the cheers of the audience. This constant fight between good and evil, black and white, light and dark has been going on as long as there have been humans, going back to the Garden of Eden. We are rooting for the Narrator to survive these trials, even though if we step outside the tale for a second we realize that of course he must have gotten through if he’s telling us this story forty years later. Paul Asay says in his book Burning Bush 2.0: “We want the good guys to survive and the bad guys to get their due. That’s Storytelling 101” (68). This could be why we still say someone has an Achilles heel or posesses the Midas touch, and why we study tragedies like Oedipus and Medea in courses like this one. For as the Narrator tells us: “I liked myths. They weren’t adult stories and they weren’t children’s stories. They were better than that. They just were” (53). Asay continues: “There are echoes of a universal right and wrong here –and the belief that the universe itself will punish wrongdoers.” (Bush 68).

     Gaiman’s description is very vivid and cinematic, and his narration flows like dialogue, which “either moves the story along or reveals information about the character,” as screenwriter Syd Field wrote in The Screenwriter’s Problem Solver (183). The details he points out to us often accomplish both tasks. We never learn the Narrator’s name, but because Gaiman is able, to quote Field again, to “feel comfortable in his [character’s] skin, the dialogue [is] individual and appropriate,” capturing the character of that character (183). We feel with him the terror and revulsion of the adults’ way of looking at things, their conventional way of skipping to the boring, nonessential tasks. Adults have stories that never make sense to a child’s mind; “They made me feel like there were secrets, masonic, mythic secrets, to adulthood. Why didn’t adults want to read about Narnia, about secret islands and smugglers and dangerous fairies?” the Narrator wonders on page 53. Gaiman the author might have answered his creation’s question in “What the [Swearword]…” where he points out that adults often look for logical, well-thought-out answers. Authors, and stories, are not very good at giving those appropriate answers. They are very good, however, at giving answers which may be “unreliable, personal, anecdotal and highly imaginative. These things can be drawbacks.” Towards the end of the article, Gaiman admits to the reader what he knew all along: “You do not come to authors for answers. You come to us for questions. We’re really good at questions.” The reader is left to puzzle out answers to many of the questions Ocean raises on his or her own, which is part of the reader-writer contract, because, like Tolkien said, “Fairy stories [are] plainly not primarily concerned with possibility, but with desirability.” This could be why the concept of fanfiction is so popular, giving a second or third (or sixteenth) chance at getting that favorite couple from that one TV show back together again.

     “A story only matters, I suspect, to the extent that the people in the story change,” the Narrator concludes on page 170. But it should be remembered that the reader is one of the people on the journey that the plot takes, and so perhaps that is Gaiman the author speaking there. Words have power, and stories can changes lives. If the reader is changed – inspired to encourage others, made more courageous, makes up or changes their ideas on an issue – then the story matters.  

Works Cited

Asay, Paul. Burning Bush 2.0: How Pop Culture Replaced the Prophet. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2015. Print.

Field, Syd. The Screenwriter’s Problem Solver: How to Recognize, Identify, and Define Screenwriting Problems. New York: Dell, 1998. Print.

Gaiman, Neil. The Ocean at the End of the Lane. New York: William Morrow, 2013. Print.

-----------------. “What the [Very Bad Swearword] Is a Children’s Book Anyway?” Horn Book Magazine 88.6 (2012) 10-22. Professional Development Collection. Web. 5 November 2015.

King, Stephen. On Writing. New York: Scribner, 2000. Print.

Tolkien, J.R.R. “On Fairy Stories”. 1947. University of California – San Diego. PDF file. 5 November 2015.