This week, my students and I read Edward Hoagland’s essay “The Courage of Turtles.“. I love Hoagland’s writing (if not turtles, in particular) because it is so descriptive. My students seemed to appreciate for that reason, too.

What divided my classes a bit about the essay was the end. Hoagland spends a few hundred words describing turtles – the various kinds, the ones he owns, where he finds them, how they can die easily in captivity – basically, the first section of the essay is an ode de la turtle. But at the end of the piece, it takes a turn (at most good essays do) and becomes much darker. Hoagland tells us about how he bought a turtle in Manhattan, thinking it would make a good pet, only to discover it was a Diamondback that preferred brackish water, not fresh water. At home, the turtle is “morose” and “spent his days thumping interminably against the baseboards.” Out of exasperation, Hoagland decides to carry the turtle to the Hudson and set it free. After he tosses the turtle into the water, he realizes the animals is “afraid” and realizes “that I must have done the wrong thing.” The turtle couldn’t survive in the rough water.

The final line of the essay is what we debated in class – “But since, short of diving in after him, there was nothing I could do, I walked away.” Some of my students thought Hoagland cruel to walk away; some thought he had no real choice in the matter. My interpretation rests on one phrase in that line – “short of diving in after him.” These six words tell me that Hoagland knows he had a choice, albeit a dangerous one, and that he feels bad about himself for making the choice he did. This phrase allows me to feel sympathy for the writer while still grieving the turtle. And since the entire essay is about Hoagland’s feelings for these animals, I find this last line to be quite fitting and masterful.

Hoagland’s last line shows, I think, the power of one phrase. Think how different that line would be if he just said, “There was nothing I could do; I walked away.” That’s the line of a heartless fellow.

Sometimes a simply set of words – in an essay (and in life) – can make a world of difference in how the people around us experience our stories. Our honest, aware sentiments wrought well in words can alter a perception monumentally.

Unless like one student, your love for turtles overwhelms all else, and well, then, what’s a writer to do.

– Diamondback Terrapin

Filed by Andi at 5:30 am under Book Recommendations, Teaching Triumphs and Travails, Written and Wrought
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When we talk to people, we automatically adjust our word choice, tone of voice, and length of sentences to match the age, knowledge, and relationship we have with our listeners. In English teacher terms, we are “aware of our audience.”

Sometimes, though, when we write, we forget that a person is on the other end of that communication. This is especially true of online communication, like email, but it’s often true in more traditional forms of writing like business reports and memos. We have a standard format, and we use it no matter to whom or for what we are writing.

Maybe we do this because of the way we’re taught to write in schools, where the teacher is our only reader, and so we write a generic format that we’ve been taught to adopt. Hopefully, as teachers, we are moving away from these audience-less forms of writing and asking our students to engage more formally with audience analysis.

There are some great ways for us to think about writing for particular people or groups. We can look at advertisements and think about how those ads target a specific audience – how does an Old Navy ad differ from one for Folgers, for example? We can look at letters to the editor or email campaigns and see how the writers made choices for their particular constituencies. We can just think about our own communication choices – what would you say to your “BFF” that you wouldn’t say to your grandparents?

If we can be more aware of our audiences, we will be more compassionate, informed, and effective communicators.

Filed by Andi at 6:48 am under Teaching Triumphs and Travails, Written and Wrought
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Last night, I was at an orientation for my new teaching job. As usual, I was early, so I got my agenda and (dreaded) nametag, settled into a chair, and started to read. I have slipped in this habit of reading in the gaps of time in my day, but it’s a pattern I’d like to readopt.

In high school, I’d read between class, devouring a few pages of Frankenstein before English started or making my way through a novel before Calculus. I used books as a way to fill the spaces between things, and I not only read a lot of books this way, but this pattern also helped keep me out of trouble. I wasn’t a kid prone to trouble – goodie-two-shoes really fit me – but I am a woman prone to worry and, honestly, nosiness. I get involved in the problems of others by overhearing conversations, or I get wrapped up in my own concerns in unhealthy, unintentional ways. Reading keeps me focused on something meaningful.

I had this lesson yesterday as I waited for a doctor’s appointment. It had been almost an hour, and I was getting frustrated. I did have a book (Ann Patchett’s Truth and Beauty) with me, and that helped me stay busy. As my frustration started to build, I noticed that a copy of the Desiderata was hanging on the wall above the examination table. It has been years since I read that poem, so I stood up and gave it a look. These lines jumped out to me –

But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Talk about a well-placed poster. I thought about the words, took comfort, and went back to my book. A little grace extended, again, through reading.

So today, as I teach my first classes of the semester, I will carry my book close by as a way to keep me busy while I wait for class to start, as a way to fill my time between classes, as a way to keep perspective in my day.

– by Mark Kennedy

Filed by Andi at 5:47 am under Book Recommendations, Teaching Triumphs and Travails, Written and Wrought
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Last night, I was really enjoying Ann Patchett’s memoir Beauty and Truth as I dozed off in bed, and it got me thinking about why I love good books so much. Nothing in the world – and I think I really do mean nothing – gives me as much pleasure as a really good book. So here are the top ten reasons I love them.

10. They give me a place to go that is outside of myself. When my life seems too much with me, or when I need a break from thinking through something, books allow me moments of escape. They require my attention more than TV, and they grip me more than any movie could.

9. They introduce me to people and places I may never meet or visit. I think of Barry Lopez’s essay on road kill in his book About a Life. I am certain I will never take a road trip where I stop to bury or at least move aside every animal killed by a car because I feel such compassion for them. Or Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert; it’s unlikely that I’ll have the time or cash to travel to Italy, then India, then Bali, but I went with her when she did it.

8. They remind me that sometimes there are actual products that come from hard work. So much of life is about relationships – in my personal life, in teaching – and while relationships can be highly rewarding and wonderful, they don’t usually produce a product. With a book, I can actually see the work that a writer has put in, and I find that very inspiring.

7. My ideas of what humanity should be are shaped by books. From the Bible, to The Chronicles of Narnia, to Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, to Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies, books are the way I most easily and privately bear witness to what is glorious and painful about humanity. They set my gauge for what people could be and what I should be (or what I should not become).

6. Some of my best friends are people (and animals) I’ve met in books. Peter in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Charles Wallace inA Wrinkle in Time. Asher in Chaim Potok’s My name is Asher Lev and The Gift of Asher Lev. (Interestingly, the characters that came easiest to mind where young males. I”ll have to ponder that one.)

5. I love the smell and weight of pages in my hand. That’s it. I just love it.

4. Books give me the chance to study craft and style almost without noticing. As I’ve said, I learned almost everything I know about writing from reading books, and I didn’t read to learn how to write. Most of the learning came through simple observation and emulation.

3. I love the lessons that books can teach me. This is different than books with morals, like The Left Behind Series; I really hate those. But books that can show me some insight about humanity stir something in me. I think of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road or Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany or the essays in JoAnn Beard’s collection The Boys of My Youth.

2. The feeling of accomplishment and, sometimes, of deep sadness when a book is finished keeps me seeking that thrill again and again.

1. C.S. Lewis once said, “We read to know we’re not alone.” Well, that’s the core isn’t it.

– C.S. Lewis

Filed by Andi at 6:10 am under Book Recommendations, Teaching Triumphs and Travails, Written and Wrought
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Often in my classes, students say, “I hate to revise. It feels like to destroys the original intent of the piece. I like the rawness of what comes out on the first draft.” When I hear these comments, and they come in almost every class, I know it is part of my job to help them understand that good writing only comes – most of the time – through revision.

These students believe that their first drafts are the most true, most real because they think that anything tempered cannot be beautiful. It seems that they think the ephemeral, the momentary, is most powerful, more honest than that which is crafted or fleshed out. I think this may be a product of our culture where we tell people to “speak their mind” when what we really are saying is that they should have license to say anything, even when it’s not the deepest truth of the moment.

I also think this resistance to revision comes, in part, from a desire to see experience and inspiration and creativity as simplistic. It’s as if we believe that each idea has only one facet instead of being as multi-faceted as a prism. We think that if we capture it “right” the first time then there’s no value to exploring the depths of the idea, memory, or scene. It’s like we write with a “reality show” mindset.

But the truth is far more complex than that. Each moment, each idea has many angles off of which we can bounce light, but it is usually only with more reflection, only with more time and more energy put toward something that we can see that. We see the chance to re-vise – to re-see – experience so that we can know it’s full beauty or pain.

Perhaps this is why we have a world that functions on a 24-hour cycle; each day we get to wake and re-see our experience with fresh eyes. Our writing deserves the same chance. So sleep on your work at least one night – write that composition essay two nights before it’s due and then look at it again the next day with fresh eyes; draft that report for work and then leave it on your desk while you go home and have a nice dinner; hide your novel’s first draft in a drawer for a few days while you work on something else. This re-vision – the act of seeing something new – is something each of us is graced with. Can we have the patience and belief in the beauty of depth to see it?

Filed by Andi at 6:30 am under Teaching Triumphs and Travails, Written and Wrought
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