April 2007 Archives

I sing the general!

There's irony in that, not least because the single most common comment I write on student papers is "EXAMPLES?" But it's also true that I often regret the way our world so often seems constructed for specialists. We rely on special knowledge and experience in practically every area of our lives. We live in houses built by crews of people who specialize in mortaring bricks, hooking up plumbing, running wires, or joining lumber. We amuse ourselves by viewing programs made by individuals whose sole responsibility is the placement of the boom microphone, or the choice of background music, or even the insouciant attitude displayed by a single actor's hairstyle. Even in the kitchen, mixing whatever we can find in the fridge into a casserole, we're dependent on farmers who usually specialize in one crop, processors who handle particular foodstuffs, manufacturers who make heating elements for one particular brand of oven.

There was a time when a homesteader had to be a master or mistress of all trades; at best, you'd pair up so that one person handled the outside jobs and the other the inside jobs. If you worked outside, you had to be able to handle clearing a lot, building a house (including laying a foundation, putting up walls, assembling a roof, etc.), raising and caring for animals, plowing and planting and reaping, hunting and dressing, you name it. Indoors the tasks included weaving, sewing, dyeing, mending, cooking, cleaning, midwifery, canning, composting, nursing, and of course child-rearing, a task that involves thousands of minor tasks in itself. Nowadays, those jobs would take a team of dozens; finding two people to do them all would be a near-impossibility. Heck, nowadays it'd be hard to find someone (other than a homemaker, the last unspecialized worker in America) who could competently handle more than two or three.

What's interesting, though, is that modern American life has become ever more specific, even as Homo sapiens remains a success in the most general of ways. We're not particular about what kind of climate or terrain or population we live in, we can eat fish or flesh or fowl or fettucine, and we can adapt to conditions that can and do wipe out other species with little fuss.

If you're wondering whether I've got a dog in this fight, or perhaps an ox who's getting gored, you're right: I am an unrepentant generalist, a man whose interests are many and whose expertise in each of them is limited. These days, alas, a Renaissance Man has little room (outside of a Renaissance festival, at least) in which to indulge his varied interests. For the most part, the world wants to know what thing you do best, and if you happen to do anything else (let alone do it well), people seem vaguely surprised by the fact.

I mention this because I just had a colleague come into the lobby, where I was playing James Taylor's "Sweet Baby James," and express her shock that I play the piano. It's nothing new, of course, as my faculty bio makes clear. I've played for over 30 years, and occasionally even made a little money at it. The fact that I'm not especially good at it--I'm self-taught, so I can only blame my teacher--is beside the point. No, I can't sight-read, and no, my left hand isn't remotely competent to do more than find the tonic (and maybe the fifth, if I'm feeling daring), and no, I don't sit up straight or hold my fingers properly. But I play anyway.

I play because I like the challenge of translating the music I hear in my head into sounds I can really hear. I play because I enjoy adding new flourishes to existing songs, or hearing how songs written/played on guitar sound when they're rendered on piano. I play because it makes me happy to put aside my habitual dependence on words and communicate thoughts and emotions in a non-verbal fashion. It's not what I'm specially trained to do, it's not how I make my living, and it's not something I do better than specialists and professionals in the field. I do it because the process of specializing too often reminds me of the Widder Douglas cooking all Huck Finn's foods separately, instead letting the juices swap around.

Yes, I'd prefer that my brain surgery be done by someone who's a qualified brain surgeon, and I'm happy that I can make a living using my own expertise in education and writing, but I do sometimes wish that specialization was the exception and generalization was the rule.

G.K. Chesterton once said, wisely, "A thing worth doing is worth doing badly." I'm ready, willing, and able to show how that saying applies in real life.

6:47 PM

Every so often I flip back into the archives of this journal and look to see what I was thinking and feeling lo, those many months ago. I recently took a quick look back at what I'd written about my first reading--and yes, I still recall the specifics: March 19, 2003, at the Cavalier Inn, for the Virginia Festival of the Book--and I found myself vaguely amused at my nervousness and naiveté. Now that I've had to justify my writing in front of audiences from California to Cape May (and had to watch that writing critically analyzed in a number of places outside my control), I'm a little more confident in what I do well and less defensive about what I don't do as well. I suppose that's part of a writer's development, but it's strange to realize how much I now take for granted about myself and what I write.

In a way, though, I kind of wish I still had that same sort of gee-whizness in me, because the process of turning my Word documents into books continues to baffle me at times. Unfortunately, now I'm supposed to know what I'm doing, so I feel a vague guilt when I don't.

In any case, I've got a bunch of stuff out there just now. One completed manuscript is sitting on an editor's desk. A proposal for another book is sitting on another editor's desk. And I'm talking with an agent about still another project. Add to that the finished manuscript that's currently sitting in my study--I'm still not sure I'm happy enough with it to send it out yet--and I'm looking at a big backlog of writing.

In a perfect world, this pile of words will shortly turn into four separate books. In a less perfect world, we'll get only one or two books out of it. And in the worst of all possible worlds, it will remain a pile. But at least now I have legitimate hopes that I'll be back at the Cavalier Inn, reading something that I've written, before I have to start trying to come up with a new idea for a book.

5:01 PM

Testing out an attempt to post something more complex than a simple illustration... a .gif file, perfect for LOTR fans! Click on it, wait a sec if you have a slow connection, and enjoy! Someday I'll remember the creator and give him/her the proper credit... the pauses are sheer genius.

10:35 PM

Whenever Kelly's out of town, as she was from Friday until last night, I get rather listless. Instead of writing, or going to the gym, or even getting up and going birding, I sit around reading (often something I've read before), or if I'm feeling especially productive I might grade some papers. I never reach the end of our time apart feeling as though I've gotten much done.

I suppose part of that feeling is that her absence means I have to put aside larger concerns and take care of some chores that often fall to her--dishes, dog, laundry, etc.--but a lot of it, I'm quite sure, is simply being thrown off balance by her absence. Even if we're not doing anything together, I rely on the unconscious knowledge that she's at home, or at work, or maybe downstairs, and she could come do something with me if I needed her to. She's not really gone; she's just out of sight for the moment.

When she's out of town, though, I am constantly reminded of her absence; it's as though I can't see out of one eye, or have one ear blocked up. There may be nothing there for me to see or hear, but my inability to detect that nothing is in itself a huge distraction. I can't concentrate on what's there because of what isn't.

Since we've now been married a little over 20 years, I probably shouldn't be surprised at my reaction, but it's worth some thought.

Love, like nature, abhors a vacuum.

4:17 PM

LBJs:

*If you want to listen in, this THURSDAY (April 5th), Greg Jacobs and I will announce Woodberry Forest's varsity baseball game against St. Christopher's School through the Woodberry Forest School website. Game time is 4:00 p.m.

*As promised, I've got a photo from my panel at the 2007 Virginia Festival of the Book:



From left to right, that's Jonathan Alderfer (artist and co-author, The National Geographic Society Field Guide to the Birds of North America), Grayson Chesser (woodcarver and co-author, Carving Decoys the Centuries-Old Way), and yrs. truly.

*I've just discovered that Stephen Jay Gould's various baseball pieces, along with several new autobiographical sketches, have been collected in one volume: Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville. I got it from the library, since I already have so many of these pieces in my umpty-ump Gould books, but I'm happy to see Steve's essay on Bill Buckner getting attention again. For the last time, people, Bill did not lose the '86 series for the Red Sox! At the worst, he cost them a chance to go to extra innings in the sixth game of a seven-game series. When that ball ran through his legs, the Sox had already collapsed, the Mets had already rallied with two outs, and the game was tied. Had he fielded it cleanly, the Mets still could have won Game Six in extra innings. And no matter what he did, there was still Game Seven to decide it. So give him a break, okay?

*Speaking of baseball, just as real baseball is upon us, so is fantasy baseball, and the Injustice League is once again home to my squad, the Varied Buntings. After carefully setting up my draft for the past two years and never finishing higher than 4th place, I opted to interfere with Yahoo's draft rankings less this year, just to see if that worked any better. So far I'm happy; my pitching looks strong, in particular, but I'm a bit thin at some spots. The roster:
Starting Pitchers: John Smoltz, C.C. Sabathia, Dontrelle Willis, Brett Myers, Rich Hill
Relief Pitchers: Francisco Rodgriguez, Scot Shields, Joe Borowski
Catchers: Joe Mauer, Kenji Johjima
1B: Ryan Howard, Lance Berkman, Carlos Delgado
2B: Josh Barfield, Rickie Weeks, Marcus Giles
3B: Bill Hall, Rich Aurilia
SS: Stephen Drew
LF: Carlos Lee, Scott Podsednik
CF: Vernon Wells, Curtis Granderson, Willy Taveras
RF: Moises Alou

I've also got RP Eric Gagne on the DL; if he ever gets healthy, he'll be useful. As you can see, the team is loaded at first, second and catcher, but thin at short and third. Here's hoping we can make this season work.

*I've heard rumors that there are more allergens in the air this week then there have ever been. I believe it. I've been popping Sudafed and Benadryl alternately all week, and I'm still averaging only about five hours of sleep a night thanks to coughing fits. Even last night's thunderstorms didn't tamp the stuff down. Feh.

*Kelly has finally watched the entire run of Due South on DVD. Unfortunately, this probably means that her yearning for a hot Mountie will now probably have to go unrequited even in video form.

*Speaking of unrequited yearnings, I must urge everyone to go out and watch The Venture Bros. on the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. Not only is it a superb and hilarious homage/parody of Jonny Quest, and not only does it feature Patrick Warburton (star of the live-action version of The Tick) in the role of knife-wielding bodyguard Brock Samson, and not only does it open one episode with an astonishing and hilarious take on the lyrics of (of all people) David Bowie, but it also contains what must be the greatest role-playing-game-related throw-away line ever:

"Oh come on! You're gonna kill me because I had fake sex on graph paper with a girl who barely spoke to you in real life?"



Really, check it out.

*In a couple of weeks, I'll be taking my turn as lecturer for our interdepartmental seminar, "Genius at Work." So far we've had a history teacher talking about biologist Charles Darwin and jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes and an art teacher talking about architect Filippo Brunelleschi; next week it's a psychology/photography teacher talking about philosopher William James. Then it'll be my turn: an English/speech teacher talking about a cartoonist, Pogo's Walt Kelly. The only things standing in my way: not knowing how to use the school's scanner, not being able to find copies of the strips Kelly drew after Prince Edward County, Va., closed its public schools rather than integrate them, and having only forty-five minutes to talk about my all-time favorite comic strip. OK, OK, I'd have to rank Doonesbury pretty high up there, too, but though Trudeau may be as good a writer, he can't draw as well as Kelly (which GBT would be the first to admit.)

*Since I'm still waiting to hear from an editor about one book project, I decided I might as well get another book proposal together so I can wait to hear about two at the same time. (If nothing else, I'm efficient.) I'm hoping to get that wrapped up and sent out by the end of this week, good lord willing and the pollen count don't rise.

*Spring is here! The Goldfinches aren't quite in breeding plumage yet, but the Chipping Sparrows are here in full force.

7:53 PM