A gripe! (ANOTHER gripe, I should probably say...)

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I'm not the only one who has complained about this:

The WWW enables all sorts of people to have their writing read publicly (I guess published is the word I want), and we're beginning to find out just how terrible the grammar and the spelling of the average person is.

Just in a single user review on Amazon, I got (talking about shoes): "They run true to size, and ... fit my feet perfect!"  I would have preferred to see perfectly, but we know what he means.

"... The insole has a blue jell like material under the heal and ball of the foot."  The proper word, I think, is heel, speaking of feet.  But most times we can tell the difference, and deduce the intended meaning.

"They don't look like the walking shoes you see on the seniors making a trip around the mall, or trying to impress everyone with what you're wearing."  The good spelling on this one is wasted on the sentence.  The second phrase (or is it a clause?) is obscure; it probably has to do with the writer's observation in the previous sentence that the logo is not too big.  Are the seniors walking around the Mall trying to impress everyone with what you're wearing?  What they're wearing?  What the writer is wearing?  Why doesn't he leave the ambiguous seniors out of it?

Anyway, apart from annoying a small minority of people who were taught rules of grammar, syntax, punctuation and spelling, all these linguistically loose cannons are apparently getting their points across.  Furthermore, there is deep annoyance at those who use big words (unless they're the latest thing), and painfully correct language, which is described as pedantic.  So we're in for years of suffering at the hands of young writers who are less apt to follow rules and good examples than to feel the force, and write in a loosy-goosy style of writing.

[Continued]

I think what is happening is that people neglect writing until they're out of high school, and then they find that their friends can figure out what they mean fairly well, despite the horrible lapses in spelling and grammar.  They therefore proceed to write in public forums such as Amazon, Facebook, and sundry blogs as if only their much-forgiving friends were going to read their writing.  In addition, the idiot lobby has been very successful in squelching observations about grammar and spelling (orthography) whenever it comes up ---including some members of the English teaching profession, doing the squelching, I mean--- and so it becomes not quite PC to mention spelling or grammar in polite company.

When I was a kid, I was  moderately careful not to offend anybody.  Then, of course, in the sixties, the fashionable thing was to offend everybody equally, like Professor Higgins, in My Fair Lady, or Pygmalion.  In the Eighties, it was a matter of choosing carefully whom you offend.  In any case, not offending those who are irritated by poor grammar and spelling is no longer high on anyone's priority list.  People like me who are offended by poor grammar and spelling are called curmudgeons (or carmudgeons, and there might be a couple of alternative acceptable spellings) and considered irrelevant.  George W. Bush, possibly the least well-spoken President of the USA was more laughed-at than criticized for his poor English.  Yale University will never live down my scorn for having graduated such a fool.  On the plus side, though, he made several million idiot people out there more confident about their ability to someday make it into the White House.  It must have been startling to be set back by Barack Obama, arguably one of the most intelligent occupants of the oval office.  History will establish the wisdom of Barack Obama, but his intelligence is beyond dispute.

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The Organ, and the Piano

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I recently rehearsed to myself the differences between organ touch and piano touch; that indefinable quality that enables a good performer to make these instruments sound beautiful.  People who are not knowledgeable about the organ and the piano often believe that the techniques of playing the two are essentially the same.  I can't remember why I thought this a good idea, but perhaps I will remember once I get started...

The organ is really several hundred instruments combined, one for each note.  (Actually, so is a piano.)  They're essentially flutes (or trumpets), and there is a large box full of air (the wind-chest), with hoses connected to each pipe.  When the organist presses the key, a switch opens up the air to that pipe, and it sounds.  For a different note, you press a different key, which sends the air to a different pipe.  The longer the pipe, the deeper the sound.  There is a row of pipes, ranging from a pipe roughly 8 feet long for the C below the Bass Clef, to a little 6" pipe two octaves above Middle C.

The organ can supply different tones by switching on different rows of pipes.  Each row is called a rank of pipes, and the organist gets a rank of pipes ready by pulling out a stop.  So once the "trumpet" stop is enabled (i.e., pulled out), if a C is played, the trumpet C will sound.  Obviously, multiple stops can be pulled, and the note on all the corresponding ranks will sound when played.

In addition, organists can make interesting composite tones by combining stops.  You must have heard octave stops (which play an octave higher, along with the stops that play at "ground level"), super-octave stops --playing two octaves above, and so forth.

A useful way of talking about the octaves is to call the standard octave the 8-foot octave.  One octave higher is the 4-foot octave (or 4' octave), an octave still higher is the 2' octave.  For very serious music, organists will couple in sub-octave stops, 16' for instance, which add notes an octave below the usual sound.

There are other, more amazing notes that take some getting used to; for instance, it is possible to add an octave-plus-a-fifth, which could be, depending on the particular tone of the stop, anything from barely noticeable to highly pungent-sounding, and even more amazing stops.

There are basically two main sorts of pipes: flue pipes, which are basically elaborate whistles, like the instrument called a recorder.  Within this type, there are some sub-varieties: "flute" stops, very wide-bored pipes with a strong fundamental note and few harmonics, in many ways similar in sound to ordinary flutes; "diapason" stops, featuring smaller-bored pipes with a characteristic organ sound, and "string" stops, with very narrow pipes, that give a soft, reedy sound thought to be reminiscent of violin tone (to people with strong imaginations).

The other type is reed pipes, or brass pipes.  These are equipped with a reed that gives these stops a trumpet-like quality, or an oboe-like quality.  A reed is a piece of flexible brass, like the things inside a harmonica.  Reed stops are the trumpet-like stops used when an organist wants a very audible, grand sound.  They're rarely used, unless it is necessary to use a loud inner voice contrasted against surrounding flute voices.

Finally, there are composite stops, consisting of two pipes for every note, each tuned slightly differently from the other, which causes beats when they're sounded simultaneously.  The less said about these stops the better (though they are regarded with favor by a large proportion of organists: vox melodia, vox harmonia, vox celestis, vox humana, and other such voxes are used to describe these awkward stops).

The piano is a very different thing.  Each note corresponds to a string (or up to three strings, all tuned in unison), which is struck by a hammer.  In the harpsichord, it used to be a claw that was dragged past a string, plucking it.  Here, it is a hammer, which must then be quickly removed before it interferes with the string.  The history of pianos is partly the history of the ingenious ways that were found to make the hammer bounce off the string right away: the so-called escapement.  So when you press the key ---and keep pressing it--- the hammer has hit the note and fallen away; the feeling that you're still connected to the note is an illusion.  Of course, once you release the key the dampers come down and silence the string, just as you expect.  (One of the cleverest bits of invention in pianos is the ability to play quick repeated notes.  The hammer falls away after the first note, but is kept ready for a subsequent note, just in case it is needed.  Once the key is completely released, the hammer falls all the way down.  It is almost too complicated a Rube Goldberg arrangement for the average person to learn.  In any case, most of us have played a piano, and we know what it feels like.)

[The diagram above shows the so-called double-escapement mechanism invented by Sébastien Erard, and is an annotated version of an image from Wikimedia Commons.]

Here is a video clip of a key hitting a piece of wire in lieu of a string.  [There are small differences that various piano manufacturers have patented, so this clip may not show what's going on inside your piano, for instance.]



When one plays a piano, one knows that the note keeps sounding as long as you keep pressing on it.  But, obviously, you can't be pressing on the string, because that would damp the sound, and you would simply hear a thud.  What you are pressing against, actually, is just the wooden floor of the keyboard.  It is a clever illusion that has been arranged by the piano engineers that keeps us convinced that our fingers have a direct physical connection to the sound.

In both the piano and the organ, once the key has been pressed, it is the instrument that manages the sound, except that we stop the sound by releasing the key.  All the expression an organist can bring to bear on the note has to be packed into two things: when to press, and when to release.  So in organ music, the fine details of rhythm and phrasing have a lot to do with timing, and an organist chooses the moment at which he or she presses each key with great care.

With a piano, however, there are ingenious devices that enable the player to control the sound.  The velocity with which the key is pressed determines the volume of each note, unlike in the organ, where the volume for the entire instrument has to be set by a pedal.  So when a pianist emotes, and hammers on the keys, he really is making a difference in the sound.  (You can emote at an organ keyboard, but it makes no difference; you can only make it louder by opening up a sort of louvre blind that lets more of the sound through.  Or by adding another stop to your mix.  And only part of the ranks are inside the louvre box (the Swell Box); the rest of the organ is sitting right outside, its volume controllable only by shutting off or turning on ranks of pipes.)

It is this design feature which enables the player to actually affect the volume of each note individually that gave the piano its name: Pianoforte, which means soft-loud.  It's predecessor, an instrument called a fortepiano that was invented around 1750, around the time of Bach's death, had a somewhat simpler mechanism (or action), and was a far smaller and lighter instrument than modern concert grand pianos.  Those old fortepianos had wooden frames on which the (bronze, probably) strings were stretched, and the hammers might have been leather (rather than felt, as they are today).  The bigger, more powerful pianos were developed in the 19th century, and already during the time of Beethoven, there were pianos made with heavy cast-steel frames on which multiple strings could be stretched to high tension.  The higher the tension, the longer the string could be, with a proportional gain in volume, enabling the piano to compete with the larger orchestras of Beethoven's time, and so making piano concertos for large forces possible.  Fortepianos were essentially chamber instruments; indeed Mozart's piano concertos were chamber works, even if the audiences might have numbered a couple of dozen.

Here is Mozart's amazing concerto K 466 in D minor, featuring a fortepiano and a small orchestra.



Here is the same piece played on a modern piano, with modern orchestra:



[Also listen to this version by Gabriella Montero for a less jaunty version. Here is Mitsuko Uchida, a well-known Mozart performer, playing and conducting the same concerto.] 

Modern piano technique, though, is complex; pianists interact with the instrument in complicated ways, and they can convince themselves that caressing the keys in particular ways enables smoother, or more nuanced phrasing of a piece of melody.  The amazing thing is that these techniques actually do influence the phrasing, ultimately via the hammer velocity, the damping, and to a minor degree, even the escapement.  In addition, because of the high tension of the strings, and because the pedals can keep all the dampers off if desired, many amazing effects are possible, via sympathetic vibrations.  A sympathetic vibration is when a second string begins to vibrate, urged by the vibration of a related string; an octave, or some other related note.

To make the point perfectly clear: in playing an organ, once the key is pressed, there is absolutely no point in fussing with the key; you cannot influence the tone any further, except by releasing it.  Furthermore, you cannot influence the note by playing the key hard, or soft.  With a piano, too, you really can't do anything to the key to make a difference to the note, except to release it.  But how hard you hit it (the hammer velocity) does indeed affect the volume.  In addition, experienced pianists exert fine shades of control over the hammer velocity, through sheer experience, and through all sorts of mental devices that may even involve imagining features in the piano that do not exist, but ultimately do affect the tone, through the hammer velocity.

[To be continued, with examples!]

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Saddam Hussein, Curveball, WMD, and the Iraq War

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In a recent interview, an Iraqi national who gave fabricated intelligence to the Germans has emerged as the major supplier of excuses to invade/liberate Iraq.

Saddam Hussein had been a vicious dictator, a thorn in the side of the moralist Republican administrations in the US (Reagan, Bush 1, Bush 2), as well as the moderate Democrat administrations (Carter, Clinton).  There is absolutely no doubt that Saddam was vicious, cruel, unbalanced, deceitful, vindictive and a liar.  There may have been sneaking suspicions among more impressionable Americans that Saddam's people had nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.  But some of us knew all along that Saddam's greatest delight was to frustrate the Americans for the simple reason that he (and his fellow Iraqis, along with most of the world) did not appreciate the attitude of the sector of the US population that considered this country to be a sort of super-policeman over other countries.  Saddam was bluffing, and most of us knew it.  Even the UN WMD inspectors began to realize it; Saddam was making The West spend an enormous amount of money on a total wild goose chase.

One can easily imagine that any red-blooded Iraqi could be goaded to his or her limit, and begin to think that any lie that could bring Saddam down was worth it.  Under ordinary circumstances, American intelligence would have seen through this childish dissembling, and dismissed the story.  But evidently it suited our spies to pretend to believe this fake intelligence, and persuade Colin Powell to tell the United Nations General Assembly that Saddam Hussein's bluff had to be called.  Colin Powell is now in the awkward position of a man who was manipulated by American Intelligence, or a man who chose to lie to the UNO on behalf of American Intelligence.

What morals can we draw from this story?  The CIA is our tiger, but is it safe to ride it?  What is the cost in lives, both American and Iraqi?

Can we continue to pretend that removing Saddam was a simple office procedure, not requiring hospitalization?  Were we confusing toppling a regime abroad with a dental extraction?  Were we thinking: we have to help our Iraqi buddies out, no matter how much the cost?  It is absolutely no fun trying to guess at the hidden motivations of the Bush Administration; the forces at work there were utterly disgusting, and I pity everyone who voted for Bush, and the pathetic excuse for a Supreme Court that gave him the 2000 election.

I can understand Curveball, still unrepentant after the loss of close to a million lives.  After all, he was an amateur liar.  But I cannot understand the machinations of the Pentagon and the Bush White House, and no doubt they're only too happy to keep it that way.

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Wisdom from the Dalai Lama!

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I found these quotes on a website; I wanted to remove redundancy (despite the fact that judicious repetition is a principle of effective teaching).

Dalai Lama:

“All major religious traditions carry basically the same message, that is love, compassion and forgiveness; the important thing is they should be part of our daily lives.

“Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.

“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.

“I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest. I do not judge the universe.

“If you have a particular faith or religion, that is good. But you can survive without it.

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

“In the practice of tolerance, one's enemy is the best teacher.

“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.

“My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.

“Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend - or a meaningful day.

“Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them.

“Sleep is the best meditation.

“Sometimes one creates a dynamic impression by saying something, and sometimes one creates as significant an impression by remaining silent.

“The purpose of our lives is to be happy.

“The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness.

“The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual's own reason and critical analysis.

“This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

“Today, more than ever before, life must be characterized by a sense of Universal responsibility, not only nation to nation and human to human, but also human to other forms of life.

“We can live without religion and meditation, but we cannot survive without human affection.

“We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.

“Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace.

“Whether one believes in a religion or not, and whether one believes in rebirth or not, there isn't anyone who doesn't appreciate kindness and compassion.

“With realization of one's own potential and self-confidence in one's ability, one can build a better world.”

There are some interesting ideas here that you might miss:

(1) It seems clear that what he is teaching is not really a religion.  Buddhism, as taught by some teachers is a moral code.  There are no temples, and the philosophy is kindness.  The principle used to be called compassion, but kindness seems to get the idea across a lot more simply.

(2) Be kind not only to people, but to animals.  In lesser religions, heaven is reserved for humans.  But the Hindu framework on which Buddhism is structured allows for transmigration of animal souls as well.  If you take away the mythology, you are left with the principle that you must treat all life as well as you treat human life.  Being carnivores (or omnivores), we find this difficult to understand, or at least to adopt.  But at another level, it may be understood to mean: be kind to the Environment or the ecology.  We all live or die together.

(3) The seeds of kindness are grown in gratitude.  Christians know this well, but somehow Christians have learned how to be thankful without feeling the need to give back proportionally.  (That's probably true of institutional Buddhists as well; institutional religion is utterly empty.)

(4) There is a suggestion that, just as it is more blessed to give than to receive, it is as great a pleasure to be kind as to receive kindness.

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Trying to Reform the Third World

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Though, at first, I was suspicious of Western attempts to spread Democracy and general Enlightenment in the Third World, and imputed the vilest of ulterior motives to all attempts to do so, I am beginning to see that a good proportion of those who support these changes and general "improvements" of the Third World do so out of very altruistic motives.

Here are some of the objectionable aspects of life in the poor nations of the East that Europeans and North Americans find intolerable:  (1).The lives of women are burdensome, and seem to be dictated by the needs of often cruel and ignorant men.  (Americans are faced with the fact that life in Utah, for instance, is very similar, but the freedoms written into the Constitution of the USA make it impossible to deal with the aspects of Utah life that are still under the control of conservative males.  It is so much more rewarding to try to make changes in the East.)  (2) The rulers of many Eastern and African nations put themselves into power using a superficially democratic method, but then keep themselves in power in a dynastic style, with sham elections, and militias of armed thugs.  Despotic rule, in other words, continues.  (3)  Great poverty and great wealth exist side by side in the East and Africa.  The quite legitimate imperative of affluent Americans to mitigate the starvation and the poverty of the Third World is frustrated by the corruption of the ruling elite, and in a few cases the corruption within the Third World local offices of global charities and NGOs.  A large proportion of the charity dollars goes into infrastructure, and the local coordinators of the NGOs, modestly paid by American standards, are highly over-paid by the norms of the countries where they work.  There just isn't anyway this conundrum can be resolved.  If the local coordinators were to be paid according to local norms, they would find it impossible to travel to the international headquarters, spending the sort of money that the organization expects them to spend; if they are paid according to a Western Hemisphere salary scale, it will naturally cause enormous rifts between them and other local workers, which would lead inevitably to theft and corruption.

The media of the Western Hemisphere, now abetted by global technology such as cellphones and the Internet, is very influential.  The residents of the Third World look hungrily at the freedom and the lifestyles of those in the West.  They don't realize that (A) the freedom of the West is getting to be rather an empty thing; there is freedom to do all sorts of things provided you've got the money.  Those who have the money are beginning to be rather a small minority.  A recent study of the facts of the matter revealed that while the richest 5% of Americans enjoyed incomes that increased between the late 90s and the present, the so-called Middle Class made do with incomes that were essentially static, and a small proportion of the Middle Class actually found themselves in the working class.

(B) The citizens of the Third World gaze balefully at their political elite (which is essentially the same as the economic elite), and see political systems ---put in place by colonial powers, for the most part, with great altruism in the recent past--- that are not working.  They fail to see that the political systems of the West are not working either.  The not-workingness of political systems appears to be something that is intrinsic to human society.  The effort to subvert political systems never sleeps.  In order to have a working political system, it must effectively manage the economy, and in order to have a good economy you must have an effective political system.  One can easily see that any accident can ruin this unstable net of dependencies.  And human greed precipitates accidents all the time in the West, just as in the East.

The Democratic process depends crucially on the ability of a people to identify and support leaders.  The US political system invests millions of dollars just on this process alone.  The Republican National Committee is said to be in debt to the tune of 23 million dollars---I could be off by a decimal place or two.  The Democrats are in debt for about a third of that amount.  In addition, the Federal Government spends several millions of dollars in Presidential Elections, just to subsidize the expenses of the main candidates.  This amounts to more than the entire GDP of many small countries.  It is the easiest thing in the world for the Establishment in poor Third World countries to stifle the emergence of potential leaders.  And the leaders that do emerge are often the villains of the future.  The recent history of Africa is a lesson in the futility of believing in political heroes.  Nelson Mandela stands out as a counterexample of a man whose ethics have not succumbed to expediency, and of course we really know too little about him to make a once-and-for-all determination of his character.  All the other leaders have shown themselves to be weak, over the past half century.

My main point is the following: Democracy in the USA is very close to being broken.  Its successes in the thirties and the sixties were due to abnormally high levels of idealism among the population, the recognition of social injustices that seemed inconsistent with the life of a great nation that considered itself instrumental in ridding the world of two oppressive imperialistic regimes, namely Germany and Japan.  But the psychological forces at work to stoke the engines of the stock market worked against the very feelings that made it possible for the country to bounce back from the Vietnam War ---or maybe it never did bounce back.  Could it be that millions of Americans saw that they could never make it big unless they prevented everybody else from doing the same?  When did we discovered that The Pie was finite, so that to get a piece of it meant shutting out all the other "losers"?

There is a cadre of insane conspiracy-theorists who are here to stay, and a large sector of the population that hangs on their every word.  Recently, Frances Scott Piven, vilified by Glenn Beck with great determination, described why she had been singled out for this honor.  Ms Piven has been a Sociology professor at City University of New York, and a leftist of note.  But Glenn Beck objects to her agenda of orchestrating social reform as a conspiracy against Capitalism itself.  Glenn Beck makes his money by cheering on the Capitalist Bloc in the US, and it seems that he has been deceived into thinking that he is actually a member of it.  The Capitalist Bloc is not a safehouse or a fortress; it is a battlefield.  Glenn Beck will only enjoy its largesse so long as he is helpful to them. [Added later: there is some evidence that Beck is beginning to embarrass some sectors of the conservative coalition.  But they're tolerating him for the present, since he appears to be helpful.  But he will eventually become a liability, just as some voices on MSNBC have become an embarrassment to the Democrats.]

It will take a while for the nations of the Western Hemisphere to spiral into anarchy.  The rise of organized crime in Mexico is just a small portent of things that are to come.  (The large proportion of Mexican Immigrants into this country are probably the few who are courageous enough, and upset with their drug lords enough to take the desperate step of trying to cross the border.  They should be more welcome in this country than the terrible people who buy Mexican drugs, who are largely among the white middle class.)  So we can stagger along for several years while the political system self-destructs.

It is possible that, by some miracle, things go the other way.  Barack Obama promised a change in direction in American politics, and he may still make a change.  But the level of intelligence of the population at large seems not up to the task of abetting enactment of good legislation, and hindering that of bad legislation.  So it is clear that the political system is going to be hostage to the feelings of the flighty public.

The successful democracies of the West appear to be those in which there is no great influx of immigrants, there are great natural resources, the climate is largely hostile, and the population small and largely non-religious.  Racial diversity, a comfortable climate, a large population, and strong religious feelings all spell death for a smoothly-working political system.  The prospects for all of us are bleak.  It is too much to expect that a steady stream of forward-thinking, charismatic leaders will come forward in this country to save us.

Postscript:  The thrust of this post was that none of us really has a good system to offer emerging Third World democracies.  In principle, Democracy is totally awesome; in practice, it is only a matter of time before human frailties find ways to defeat it.

A recent article by George Lakoff  describes (at length) what the stereotypical Conservative really wants.
Read through the conservative responses to the article; some of them are very persuasive.  Many conservatives ---as the responders point out, presumably counting themselves among these--- are just sick of what they think of as panhandlers who find a totally unproductive life comfortable, what with Welfare and Social Security.  (Many Democrats agree that HUD is a cesspool that should be cleaned out.)  But Clinton showed how it is possible to put the brakes on Welfare; we can all agree that corruption and abuse of Welfare dollars must be slowed down and stopped, keeping the money flowing to deserving cases.

If wages were high enough that being employed was far superior to being on Welfare, one assumes that people would begin to look for work.  But it is useful [to Business] to keep labor costs low.  But one day, when labor costs in foreign countries are as high as they are here, how will we cope with the problem?

By their very nature, Democrat solutions to American problems are compromises.  Conservative solutions, on the other hand, are arbitrary and inflexible.  What can I say?  The system is broken.

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Emily: an excerpt from a piece of fiction

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[An excerpt from a story I have abandoned.  This segment is dedicated to a friend, who recently lost a friend under tragic circumstances, in New York City.  No lessons are to be drawn; there are no morals to this story; it is just a reminder to all of us that in the midst of life we are with death.  As someone once wrote: it is good to learn early that death is a neighbor, and not a cruel joke that is suddenly sprung on us.]

The literature class which Emily had at 10, was easy to prepare for.  Unfortunately, one wise-ass took exception to reading from the other book, at which point there was a mass objection to the business of studying literature in the first place.

“Look,” she said, “it’s far too late to be upset at having to study literature after you’ve signed up for the course. What are you doing here, if you prefer not to study literature? This is a waste of time, and you know it!”

Unfortunately they got Emily angry, and soon she was winning battles, but losing the war. In the end, she got them quiet by yelling at them, wasted a lot of time, and managed to actually hurt the feelings of several of the students. She felt rotten by the time the class was over, and marched off to her office, fuming.

Luckily for her, a new colleague, Sheila, rescued her, and insisted on their going for an early lunch into town. Emily knew a very quiet restaurant, and they ordered sandwiches, and began to talk. Before Sheila could bring up whatever she wanted to talk about, Emily had told her all about the terrible literature class, and got herself into a state of mild depression.

The description of the disaster with the literature class made Sheila smile. It was an easily avoidable mistake, if one was careful to not take things too personally. But it showed that Emily took her students more seriously than even Emily herself realized. This was surprising, because Sheila assumed that the more seasoned the professor, the less seriously he or she would take the students. Emily was a fifteen-year veteran, Sheila knew, and it was startling to learn that Emily could make herself so vulnerable even with so much experience under her belt.

“I thought I had it bad,” said Sheila, commiseratingly.

Emily’s cell phone rang just as they left the restaurant. Mumbling a soft curse under her breath, she pulled it out; it was Bill. Emily flipped open the phone, while Sheila stood and waited for her.

“Bill? What’s up?” she asked gently.

Emily’s face grew worried, as Sheila watched her listening.

“Hang on, I’ll get there as soon as I can, sweetheart. I’m on my way, okay? Just hold on!”

“Who’s Bill? What’s happened?” asked Sheila, looking concerned.

“He’s fallen; it’s my guy ...” Emily looked distracted as she put away her phone in her purse. She turned to look at Sheila. “I think I’d better walk straight home; you go on back to the office!”

Sheila insisted on driving Emily home.  Within a couple of minutes, they were at the house. Sheila followed Emily right inside, noting in passing the rather untidy state of the place. Bill was in the little half-bath downstairs, and blood was pouring out of his scalp; he had evidently hit the sink on the way to the floor.

“Oh dear god,” Sheila said under her breath.

In the end, the paramedics said that there had been no need to hurry. Still, Emily was grateful that Sheila had pushed the issue.

“He’s not going to last long, Sheila,” she said, as they followed the ambulance in Sheila’s car.

“How old is he? He looks a lot older ...”

“Yeah; he’s seventy ... they’re a kind of stroke, you know. Not the massive strokes, but just little ones ... I think he had one last night.”

“Really? And there was no sign, nothing?”

“No ...”

“You poor thing!”

Emily shrugged. She looked at Sheila as if seeing her for the first time. “Thank you for ...”

“Of course, anytime!” Sheila said, softly.

Early the next morning, Emily’s student Laura was waiting on the steps of her own apartment building, and Emily could see her from her bedroom window.  Laura was a so-called non-traditional student, who, it turned out was a young unmarried mother in her late twenties, and who had been delighted the previous evening to discover that they were neighbors.  She had walked home with Emily, and seeing the cluttered state of the house, had insisted on helping to tidy it a little.  Now Emily hurried downstairs and stepped outside. Seeing her, Laura quickly crossed the street, dodging the early-morning school-bus traffic, and ran up the steps.

“Need help with Mr Bill?” she asked, breathlessly.

Emily nodded, and let her in. Already the floor was significantly clearer than it had been in months. Laura had put things in neat piles so that it was possible to walk through the house without tripping on stuff.  Following Emily upstairs, the two women helped Bill with his morning's ablutions. 

Bill gazed at Laura, and she smiled back down at him, giving him a sweet good morning.

“How are you feeling, Bill?” Emily asked, her eyes threatening to leak tears, but still under her control.

“Fine,” said Bill, as always. “Who’s that?” he asked in a loud whisper, assuming that Laura was gone. But she was standing behind him, just out of sight.

“That’s Laura, Bill,” Emily said, with a smile. “She lives across the street, and she’s going to help us with cleaning!”

“We can manage,” Bill said, anxiously. It had been years since he had contributed to the household, but he still had the annoying habit of expressing an opinion about their expenses.

“The Dean is subsidizing it, Bill. Don’t worry about it.”

“Oh.”

Laura stepped out where Bill could see her, and smiled at him warmly.

“Well, we’d better be going,” Emily said, after she had fed Bill his breakfast. He was comfortable on an easy chair, with his magazines within reach, but he could not use his hands enough to open them up and read. And he could only barely operate his cell phone, too. Emily simply had to take a chance that he would be all right for an hour and a half, while she taught her early class, and then she would hurry back to check on him.

After class, Emily hurried to get her things together. She had brought everything with her, so that she did not need to go to her office. Laura was waiting for her near the door, impatiently watching her classmates fumbling with their things, or fussing over their little concerns with Emily, who was being unbelievably patient. Finally, the last student had got his questions all answered, and Emily walked to the door. Soon they were hurrying out to the street, and heading home.

“I’ll come in with you, just in case,” Laura said quietly.

“No, no; go eat. You must be starving!”

“I am, but I’m coming in with you anyway.  Miss Emily, I’ll stay with him until my two o’clock class.”

“No, Laura, please, you don’t have to.  If something happens, it’s too much of a responsibility.  I don’t like the idea of you being stuck here with Bill, and something really serious happening. Anyway, the nurse will be here.”

“Oh, yes; I forgot. That’s right.” She let out a breath of relief, and Emily realized that Laura had not been looking forward to doing what she had proposed.

It was a bright, sunny day, and the temperature was well into the eighties. Emily led the way in, and they both gazed together on the sad scene. Bill was slumped back in his chair, and he wasn’t breathing.

“Oh my god, call, call!  He’s not breathing!” gasped Laura, looking frantic. But Emily knew the worst; she leaned close to touch him, and snatched her hand away. Despite the warmth of the weather, Bill was cool to the touch. He was long gone.

Between them, Emily and Laura took care of the numerous irritating details that followed a death. Things were made worse by the fact that Bill and Emily were not married.

The body had been taken to the mortuary, from where it would go to the funeral parlor. Emily had tried to have the body buried with the minimal amount of toxic packaging of it. Bill and she had both agreed that the embalming and the treatment of the coffins were all bad for the earth. But it was impossible to sway the funeral directors. Every material and procedure available was of the worst and most poisonous kind, and that made Emily weep.

“I don’t understand what you want,” Laura said, after Emily had cried for a while in Laura’s big old Thunderbird.

“It’s simple,” Emily said, once she had wiped her tears. “It isn’t good to put poison into the earth. To bury poisons, you understand?”

“Oh. You mean, like chemicals?”

“Yes; they use chemicals to keep the body fresh, like a preservative. Preservatives are actually mild poisons. Or not so mild.”

“I see,” Laura said, nodding thoughtfully.

“Also, treated lumber has bug repellent. Coffins are made to last underground. In other parts of the country, you can get a coffin made out of untreated wood. Poor Bill wouldn’t be polluting the ground posthumously in certain parts of California and Colorado, for instance ... Don’t mind me, Laurie ... I don’t have the energy to care anymore.”

“I think that’s real decent of you, Miss Emily. I’m glad you tried your best. I guess I learned something.”

Emily smiled at Laura. She asked to be taken home, and Laura fired up the old monster, and they putt-putted back to Emily’s empty house. Laura dropped her off, and drove off to park the ancient roadster in the lot she had leased for it, and returned several long minutes later. Then Laura helped Emily into her robe, and encouraged her to get comfortable on the sofa. She went off into the kitchen, saying something about getting some supper ready. Emily had noticed far too late that they had both missed their afternoon classes.

It was odd to have Laura moving silently about the kitchen, and Bill gone. Tears pricked at Emily’s eyes, and began to stream down her cheeks. Emily muffled her sniffs as well as she could, but she sensed that Laura was even quieter than she had been. Emily tried to think of something active she could do, such as put a few more clothes in to wash, but it was as if her muscles simply would not work. She sat, miserably, and felt sorry for herself.

Half an hour later, Laura came to lean against the arch that led to the combination kitchen and dining-room.

“I know!” Laura said softly, her eyes shining with understanding. Emily felt utterly unworthy of the sympathy of the tender-hearted young woman. Emily shook her head, unable to respond, or even to think. Laura came close, and knelt by her chair. “Come and eat,” she urged, her voice soft, and took Emily’s hands in her own, and tugged. “Shall I bring it out, so you can eat out here?”

Emily made a special effort, and got out of the recliner.

“Thank you, Laura ... I appreciate all you’re doing, dear.” She moved slowly to the kitchen, with Laura’s arm around her shoulders. “It’s as if ... I don’t have any energy...” The aroma was vaguely familiar. “What is it?”

“It’s only Ramen noodles,” Laura confessed. “I thought I’d fix something simple; you’re probably not in the mood for anything complicated. Come and sit!”

For the first time in literally years, it was actually possible to sit at the dining table. It had been so piled high with empty dishes, Emily and Bill had eaten seated on the sofa for as long as Emily could remember.

The noodles had been supplemented with chopped fried onions, and chopped odds and ends, and guiltily Emily felt herself getting hungry. Laura served her, and served herself, and they sat down to eat.

“Do you eat this stuff often?”

“Too often,” Laura admitted. “It’s not very nutritious, but it’s better than nothing!”

“Just perfect for today,” Emily said, smiling. There was an astringent taste and flavor to the meal that cleaned the palate and the nasal passages, and made Emily feel better, and hungrier.

As they approached the bottom of the dish of soup, Emily began to panic. She was not superstitious, but she felt desperately unwilling to stay the night alone.

“May I come ...” Emily swallowed hard, and continued. “May I stay over at your apartment ...?”

Laura nodded gravely. “Of course, Miss Emily; you’re welcome. It’s really small, though, I have to warn you ... and,” she blushed, “there’s crap on the walls; posters and stuff!”

“I don’t care,” said Emily.

“Shall I come with you on your errands?” Laura asked, the next morning.

“I don’t think I need to be driven around; I can just walk...”

“Okay; we can walk, if you’d like company, anyway?”

Emily looked at Laura, feeling a little defensive. “You don’t have to fuss over me, Laura; I’ll be all right, you know.”

“Just for a couple of days, Miss Emily ... It’s just not right for you to have to ... do all this stuff alone. You know what; I guess I’m thinking: if my husband, or boyfriend, or whoever, died on me, I’d like to be fussed over, you know, a little.”

“All right; a fuss for a fuss. If I’m still around when it happens, I’ll fuss you up for a couple of days!”

The hardest visit, in some ways, was to the church, where Emily had to negotiate some sort of funeral service, and Laura was quietly helpful there, suggesting alternatives, and paraphrasing Emily’s requests to the minister, and vice versa, though Emily could not for the life of her think why her perfectly normal speech could not be understood by the minister. He was quite young, and she finally assumed that she was not efficient at communicating with Youth. That accounted for some of the hostility she received from her students, she thought.

“Well, don’t worry about a thing,” said the young minister, with a lovely smile. He really was an attractive young man, and Emily could see that Laura was quite taken with him. She also approved of the way Laura conducted herself; her eyes shone when she spoke to Rev. Wynn-Jones, which was his name, but she was a perfect lady. “I’ll call you on Saturday morning, and I’ll see you in the afternoon, at er, Green Hills?”

“Thank you very much,” Emily said, with a smile.

Emily was tense and uncomfortable, in anticipation of the funeral the next day. It was strange to have to oversee an event in which she really had no formal place; after all, she wasn’t Bill’s spouse. The family had not contacted her yet, except for a nephew Charles, who lived in England. Emily had met Charles years ago, and had liked him; Charles had been pretty much the only one Emily had really liked. The rest of them were rather stuffy and suspicious of her. They neither liked the fact that she was an academic (they didn’t like Bill being an academic, either,) nor had they considered Emily as having enough of a pedigree to qualify to be Bill’s wife. In fact, Emily had a large proportion of her ancestors descended from the original Mayflower pilgrims, and a few descended from even earlier immigrants. But she had disdained to reveal this to Bill’s family, since it really was none of their business. Bill had had a few clues about it, and had kept it under his hat, bless him. Charles had phoned in his condolences, and told her that he was working on having the family contact her, to give some support for the funeral arrangements, before it was too late to change anything.

Emily woke around ten, and soon afterwards Laura was over to help with breakfast.

“I can fix breakfast, Laura, for heaven’s sake! I was fixing breakfast long before you were born, dear.”

“Okay, Miss E, fix your breakfast ... I didn’t mean to invite myself, ma’am; I can do with some cereal, whatever you have ...”

“Oh don’t be silly! Of course you’ve got to have a good breakfast!”

Laura sat on the step-stool, slowly, looking at Emily uncertainly, and Emily waited.

“Ms Dearmer — I hope I’m not too much in your face ... maybe I should not get in your hair so much, huh?  I guess I kinda take over, sometimes.  Just say the word, Miss E; I’ll try to give you some room, or if you say I’ve done enough ...”

Emily began to panic. She suddenly realized that Laura was all that was keeping her on an even keel, and the prospect of her staying away was utterly unthinkable. She blurted out something that it was way too early to say, after knowing Laura for a mere week:

“Laura ... don’t even think of staying away, you hear?”  She ran out of steam, seeing Laura’s intent look, as she tried to understand what Emily was saying.  More softly, Emily added,  "You’re welcome here ... any time at all, Laura.  No one more welcome than you!”

Emily watched her friend, her anxiety turning into a new tenderness, as Laura’s face expressed gratitude. It was almost as if Laura had dreaded some brutal response, and was overwhelmed by what she got instead.
“That’s so like you, Miss Emily,” she said, dropping her eyes, nervously tracing a design on the floor with her foot. “Even if I am in your way, you wouldn’t admit it ...”

Emily gave her a patient smile. “Well, I suppose that’s true. But I really mean it, Laura; you should be able to tell by now, that ... without you, I just couldn’t ... manage ...”  Feeling overwhelmed, Emily sat down, and regarded Laura with her sad eyes, looking so very tired that Laura had to believe her.

Presently, Emily found herself being guided, gently but firmly, in with Bill’s mother and Charles, to sit with the family, in an inconspicuous part of the area set aside for family members. Young Laura was seated a little further back and across the aisle, but where Emily could see her, and get a supportive smile every now and then. The casket had stood open for Bill’s family and friends to pay their last respects, and when the service started, the casket was closed, and moved to the front of the church.

“But those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings, like eagles, ...”

Emily wondered whether Bill would welcome being able to fly around. But, behind the cynicism of the thought, she could see Bill’s eyes as they had been in his younger days, filled with the light of intelligence, eager to find out, eager to give of his knowledge, eager to see what was over the next hill. Yes, she thought, he would like wings, at least for a while. As for herself, Emily thought she would like a soft bed, and a down comforter.

For the first time, Emily found herself articulating the thoughts of a soul that longed for release. Komm, süsses Tod, Come, sweet death, she said in her heart. It was not that she actively longed to hasten her own death, but that she could not see the point of grinding on. She considered the misery that she had been feeling for so long, while with one ear she listened to the deeply moving poetry from the Bible that was being read, and then expounded upon by the youthful Wynn-Jones. I must sincerely confess, he said, that I cannot identify, from personal experience, with those of you who knew Dr Bill Woodward. Nobody I ever knew personally has died; all my grandparents are still alive. Emily mentally shook her head. What was this mere child doing, trying to be a pastor to a fair-sized congregation, with all his relatives still alive? How could he know what it was to bestow your love and your care and your worry and your patience on someone, and then have them leave you behind? But we must understand, he was saying now, that those we love are only on loan to us. Death is built into our design; we are not permanent creatures!  If we were, we could probably not show the goodness we do manage to show.
It was startling to hear those thoughts from the lips of a kid whom Emily had dismissed as a mere lightweight. She thought about them a long time, forgetting her anger and impatience with Bill and herself.  If one lived forever, it was conceivable that one could get sick of being nice; you’d tell people to get a grip, and suck it in.

Anyway, when she was put in someone’s car and driven out to the graveyard, and watched the body being laid in the earth, her heart was heavy. In no time, it seemed, she was alone in her house, saying farewell to the last of those who had cared to check on her. Even Laura was gone, and Emily could see her through her window, washing something at her sink. She thought Laura looked back, but there was a sheer curtain that distorted the view slightly, and she could not be sure.

What's the Point? The Joy of Being Alive

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I recently posted a video clip of Ken Robinson, in which he tried to persuade us that perhaps our time is better spent teaching grade schoolers such things as Art, Music, Theatre and Dance than mathematics, language, and social studies. I found it hard to disagree, since I held the opinion that all of elementary school and middle school mathematics could be learned over a single summer (by a suitably motivated and intelligent student), to get ready for Grade 9.

Just today, I read an article on the Web that described how Finland decided in 1979 to make changes to their curriculum, because their students were lagging behind in mathematics and science. And how did they do this? By, among other things, planning playtime for their grade schoolers, up to an average of 75 minutes a day (compared with about a third of that for US schools).

Ken Robinson conjectured that young kids are far more gifted than we can understand, looking at the same kids once they've grown up. (We might not agree entirely with that; after all, our youngsters have brought home some singularly stupid classmates over the years.  And sometimes we wonder whether Junior is entirely all home, himself.  Even the lights seem to be off.)  However, we must grudgingly concede that kids at least have an almost miraculous capacity for enthusiasm.

Most kids. Some of them have had that enthusiasm thumped out of them early, and they settle down to a more mature grim bored-ness that can be so satisfying to us adults. What is the point?  This is the question they begin to ask; and though it is comforting to know that one's children are finally appreciating (or rather, deploring) the universe from one's own jaded point of view, one wonders whether all that immature enthusiasm might not have been good to keep around just a little longer.

A story I often tell is about a 9th-Grade teacher of mine who refused to teach us Physics late in the afternoon. Instead he read aloud from books (A Tale of Two Cities) in the late afternoon Physics periods, but taught us physics when the periods happened to fall in the mornings. The experiment was a stunning success. How did we manage to learn all the physics we were intended to learn in half the contact-hours?

In times gone by, children did not have to be convinced about the sheer joy of life. Today the situation is different; they too often equate the good life to material amenities, such as computers or sport vehicles. Why do they need to persuaded about the intrinsic value of existence?  Is it necessary to resort to filling them with religious propaganda to convince them of it?  Will we have to tell them that the main reason for living is that Jesus wants them to live?  Why are they so jaded so soon?  Could it be that giving more structured leisure time to the kids could offset this lack?  Must we think of kids as being in school to do a job, and an hour of play is an hour wasted?

Art, Music, Dance and Drama are actually kinds of organized social playing. (Art teachers will hasten to reassure us that it is serious business, but perhaps they are not the best judges of this.)  I think the most important lesson kids can learn in grade school is of the richness of experience that is available to them.
 
All the experiences out there, just for the taking!  Art, music, dance and drama are just the beginning!

We must begin to grow adults who share in this vision! Young teachers are certainly enthusiastic, but many more mature teachers have the capacity for fun that I believe is valuable in a teacher at the elementary level.  I have found that the older I get, the more I delight in simple things: the sight of little people on their way to school, the arguments of young adults trying to establish some obscure point; pets in the house of a friend; a bunch of sparrows hunkered down in a hedge. A few years ago I would have just yawned and said, yeah, right. Just stay out of my way.  But now, as my time on Earth draws to a close, everything seems delightful and precious. Why do we need to wait until we're almost dead to appreciate the delights of simple things?

Now, I must hasten to make it clear that I do think arithmetic and spelling have their place. But the sheer joy of existence is now an important subject to teach little people, before we forget its truth ourselves.  The pleasure of physical movement, interacting with each other in games and goofy play: what better time to do it than when you're in elementary school?

A word of warning, though. Some teachers have the knack of destroying the fun of anything. You can teach kids that even a jig-saw puzzle is not fun, but work.  The same goes for making a woodworking project, or a sewing project.  Some people cannot stand the thought that some other people can make everything into fun. I don't mind anything being fun, as long as, at the end of the day, the students can solve a problem in that subject area.

Obviously, though, even the best plans for educating the very young can be held hostage by the unenlightened citizens in a School Board.  School Boards in the USA are more often the jealous guardians of mediocrity than advocates for excellence.  The more I think about this, the more I'm becoming convinced that elementary education should be delivered in two separate layers: the more traditional curriculum by one team, and a more diversified, less regimented layer by a team of volunteers, involving parent participation, and participation from ordinary citizens (in contrast to teachers).  ---I almost forgot:  the point is that the second layer of "school" can be kept out of the clutches of the School Board.

This idea has drawbacks; mainly that students will begin to compare the two sets of experiences to the detriment of the former, causing yet more bitterness among the teachers of traditional skills.


Well.  Let's keep thinking.  Education is everybody's problem; that's the main thing to keep in mind.  We've got to stop thinking about it as free babysitting while we work.


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