A thought worth considering

William Faulkner's 1950 speech accepting the Nobel Prize in Literature is worthy of your consideration. Search: American Rhetoric top 100, and you'll find some amazing speeches. The one by Faulkner has some great moments. You'll be left to consider the craft of word selection and composition. You'll also, if you've written anything for public consumption, be left in awe of your duty as a writer. Check it out. Revel in the words of a master.

Making Sense of the Symbols

I find myself driving down the road making mathematical equations out of license plates. Do any of you, or am I alone in this? It's this need to create order out of disorder. Sort of like the nonsense text verification that appears when leaving a friendly message on someone's blog; jsqsspd, or klbxmz. I will look at those letters just scratching my brain trying to come up with a sentence or word. Rarely does anything emerge, but I try. This explains why I quit doing word scrambles at showers a long time ago. Most people would just be getting rolling and I'd be done. Kind of embarrasing. What does it all mean?

Back to school

I was invigorated by my experiences in my first night of university classes in over 10 years. The first class was 70+ students and I was the only non-trad. That class will definitely be an easy A. The professor loves to talk and barely takes a breath between sentences. Last night we covered: what is a degree in communication studies and what can you do with it. That's what will be on our first quiz. Confirmed that this is a major I could like. He discussed how hard it is to explain to people what a comm studies major is or what you can do with it as opposed to getting an accounting degree. The snotty girls next to me kept rolling their eyes. I won't sit by them again. After class I met a very nice girl who I will definitely look for when our class meets again.

According to my notes my next class was supposed to be in the same room. Well, it wasn't. Thankfully I figured that out in the 15 minutes between classes. I had a moment of panic when I didn't know where to get information about my next class, but there were people in the hall so I asked hopefully, "Comm 109?" There was a grunt and a point toward another room in the same hallway. My biggest fear was for naught.

Second class is being taught by a PhD student. He's the speech and debate coach for the university. The shirt and tie were snappy, but something was lost on me about the tennis shoes with orange laces. He likes to perform, as one would expect. This class will not be boring. First assignment in his class was worth 5 points. Find his office and sign the sheet on the door. A nice girl in her 30s named Joscelyn and I walked with him to his office and got our five points. There were already 13 signatures on the door. Okay, maybe we were a little slow, but we got there. Our next assignment is a 2-4 minute narrative speech. Basically tell a story in 4 minutes. I can do that!

I said to Jeff, you know the speech class that everyone dreads taking in college? That's my major!

Learning from the past

When my dad died almost 5 years ago one of the treasures I inherited was a journal my grandfather had written. Why it took me these 5 years to open the cover I have no idea. I sat one cold winter Saturday and read the whole thing. The words are poignant at times, factual at others. It takes him several years of writing, he was good enough to date the entries, to tell his story. Grandpa talks about his twin brother Clayton who apparently had cerebral palsy. There was no special school or social programs to aid in his development, just a family who loved and cared for Clayton the best they could, and his was a life well lived. Grandpa explores the question of why he was fine and Clayton was not, what was God's plan in that? The answers are as beautiful as the heart that asks the questions.

Grandpa had three wives in his 80 some years on earth. He loved them all dearly and trusted that God sent the perfect woman to him at each stage of his life. What a testament.

Maybe more intriguing than the actual words on the page are the gaps and the handwriting. The script that becomes less clear over the years. His writing became his work after he could no longer manage the apartment complex where he lived. The telling gap in entries as he dealt with Bernice's leukemia and her eventual death says that he was giving all he could elsewhere, the journal would have to wait.

I'm delighted to have this handwritten history of the days he was here on earth. Lessons to be learned. Paper and ink don't go the way of lost computer files and changing technology. It's a challenge to me to leave a history, something that will be meaningful to future readers. That requires living a life worthy of our high calling.

Overkill!!!

Writers are story tellers in our hearts. We can't wait for something interesting to happen in our lives so we can process it for a few minutes, days, weeks, and then share it with someone else.

Story telling is an ancient tradition that has transformed cultures. Unfortunately we no longer sit around a communal fire each night to cook our meals. We don't gather at the town well to draw water and share stories. In my circle we don't quilt, or raise barns, or even have a large family gathering as often as I would like.

Thus we are relegated to electronic communication. The problem is the loss of inflection. We can't twist the words ever so slightly to imply sarcasm, or indicate our enthusiasm for the climax of the tale by increasing the tempo. We are left with italics, bold-face type, and exclamation points. All sad imitations of the great art of the story told live.

This communicative style has crept into my work place. I had an IM conversation with a coworker with whom I was having a disagreement. This discourse was so distressing that I printed it to save, to show others what a jerk he had been and how righteous I was in not stooping to his level. The third party I handed it to for review looked at me in all seriousness and said, "Don't ever have a conversation like that again over IM." Why not, I wanted to know. He pointed out that because of the way I've learned to talk to people via IM doesn't leave me smelling like a rose in this situation. Sure enough, there were exclamation points all over the place!

He also reminded me, that just like I had done, the other party probably printed and saved the conversation. That's not a good thing.