There Is A Time And Place For Everything, And This Is Not It

Hey!

It’s me.

I know. It’s been a while. About a month, in fact, since I last offered up any pearls of wisdom in this space. (Some might argue that as for the pearls, it’s been much longer than that.)

The last time I went this long between blog items, I supposed that the gap had not been caused by a lack of inspiration, or interest in writing. Plenty of subjects have jumped up in the last month and said, “write about meeeee!” But I found that most of them were worth about one Facebook status post. In this space, I average between a thousand and two thousand words per post. Maybe it’s because I look at these blog posts as surrogate newspaper columns. After all, that’s what I wanted to be when I grew up, at about age 12 … a swashbuckling newspaper columnist. Three times a week and an expanded column in the Sunday color supplement! I don’t write mere one-liners. I write substance.

Or I try.

Also, well … the Winter Olympics.

Folks who have the misfortune to be connected with me on the local Book of Face will have noted that during Olympic fortnights … I, um, don’t get out much. For every televised ice dancing twizzle, every bobsled skid, every hockey line change, every eye infection, there Must Be A Status Post!!

So it might be hypocritical to suggest that it’s best to pause and reflect before posting on this blog, if I continually join the rest of couch-bound humanity in Facebook-reacting instantly to whatever is on the teevee right this second. Don’t I repeatedly remind my students that “not everything merits an instant verbal response”? I do indeed.

But there are times when it’s probably best to pause and reflect. To hold off. To keep the knee from jerking.

A couple of nights ago on the NBC Olympic primetime telecast, there was a moment of squirm that got my attention because it took none of those exit ramps.

 

American downhill skier Bode Miller had just rocketed his way down a mountain some miles outside of Sochi, Russia … posted a possibly-medal-worthy time … and then stood watching as skier after skier, about two dozen of them in all, followed him down the hill. However many seconds it takes for two dozen skiers to ski that course, times about a thousand, is how long it probably felt to Miller, until all the results were recorded and he could be sure that indeed, he was going to be able to stand on a podium and have a bronze medal wrapped around him.

And, as is always the case when such events are televised, before he could enjoy the medal-application, he was obligated to do one more tiny thing: get interviewed.

Former US skier Christin Cooper was in the “sideline reporter” role for NBC’s ski coverage that day. There are usually very few post-event interviews that will win awards with Edward R. Murrow’s name on them. And of those few, nearly none are conducted by people who are thrust into the role of journalist by way of erstwhile athletic prowess. So Ms. Cooper had a number of factors working against her to begin with. Not her fault.

Cooper asked Miller how this, his sixth Winter Olympic medal, felt different than the others he’d won.

Cooper: “For a guy who said the medals don’t really matter, they aren’t ‘the thing,’ you’ve amassed quite a collection. What does this one mean to you in terms of all the others?”

Miller: “This was a little different. With my brother passing away, I really wanted to come back here and race the way he sends it. So this was a little different.”

Miller was referencing a difficult subject: his younger brother, Chelone, died last year after apparently suffering a seizure which may have been related to a brain injury suffered in a previous motorcycle accident.

Cooper followed up on this – as a good journalist would, whether she’d had prior knowledge of this subplot or not.

Cooper: “Bode, you’re showing so much emotion down here. What’s going through your mind?”

Sadly, this was a clunker of a follow-up question. Regardless of whether the audience had been alerted to the emotional baggage Miller was carrying (and NBC had made certain that its audience had, in spades), a proper follow-up question might have veered away from generic cliché and toward more establishment of context. Help your audience. But Cooper isn’t the only sideline reporter ever to ad-lib an interview question that failed to rise to the level of Shakespearean prose.

At her question, Miller’s composure slipped. It took a long while before he could muster a reply.

Miller: [long pause] “A lot, obviously. A long struggle coming in here. And, uh, just a tough year.”

At this point, I expected Cooper to observe that the interview was probably right on the edge of over thanks to Miller’s imminent inability to find his voice. I also expected her to head for the vaguely gracious “congratulations on a terrific race” and throw it back to her two colleagues “in the booth” somewhere nearby. The cadence of the average brief post-race interview had been adhered to. Wrap it up, let the other two voices create an audio transition while the camera lingers on the racing hero for a couple of beats, cut to the final-results leaderboard graphic, and we’re home free.

None of that happened. Cooper continued. I, a veteran of numerous journalism classes and televised sporting events, froze. I had a sudden sense that this train was in danger of vacating the rails.

Cooper: “I know you wanted to be here with Chilly experiencing these Games; how much does it mean to you to come up with a great performance for him? And was it for him?”

Miller: “I mean, I don’t know it’s really for him. But I wanted to come here and uh — I don’t know, I guess make myself proud.” [pauses; wipes tears from his eyes]

Okay, so we’ve really established that this is an Up Close and Personal Emotional Moment, the kind that network teevee completely adores. We have reached inside, past the Game Face of the Olympic athlete, and discovered that the athlete is in fact a human being, and does in fact have emotions, and we have witnessed them … in brilliant high-definition. Now we can wrap this up, at a level of only six out of ten on the Uncomfortable Scale.

No we can’t, apparently.

I heard Cooper draw breath, as if to speak again; and I heard myself, reflexively, and with complete lack of self-editing, whisper toward my teevee set, as if that would help, … “Oh my good Lord, please, back off!”

Time to stop being an investigative journalist – or whatever Cooper was in great danger of becoming. Time to be a sympathetic human. This is not 60 Minutes. You are not Bethany MacLean going after the Enron “smartest guys in the room”.

Cooper: “When you’re looking up in the sky at the start, we see you there and it just looks like you’re talking to somebody. What’s going on there?”

I can’t remember the last time I heard that much “dead air” on primetime network teevee.

Miller physically could not answer the question. He sank to his knees and hung on to the fence that separated the competition area from the press. Cooper’s voice could be heard whispering “…sorry,” but it was too late. By what felt like several weeks.

 

The online Twitter universe essssploded. My Facebook timeline did likewise. In the next few hours, both Cooper’s journalistic skills and her essential character were assessed equally harshly.

And I could have leapt to the blog machine and joined in; might have cranked out a critique of her performance that would have made her ears bleed, from nine time zones away.

But it was late, and I suddenly just wanted to crawl into bed (also, the better to get up at Absurd O’Clock the next morning and watch the all-important US/Switzerland men’s curling round-robin match) (don’t judge; I’ll go another 47 months without this stuff). I opted to let it rattle around in my brain a bit and go find a transcript the next morning, so as to see if I’d heard what I thought I’d heard.

But as I closed down my computer, a thought occurred to me: there are at least two possible scenarios at work here.

One is this: Christin Cooper took whatever meager journalistic skills she may have had … and set them aside, seeing an opportunity to instead become no better than a gossip columnist, digging in on that one gap in Miller’s armor and ensuring an emotional scene that would make great headlines or great video. Lookee: I got a scoop.

Another is this: the suits in the corner offices at NBC Sports knew about Bode Miller’s brother way ahead of time. And they decided that if they could possibly find a way to bring that subplot fully into focus somehow – in any way that had more impact than any mere pre-packaged human-interest video segment – then they should do so. Great for ratings. And word was sent down to the broadcast personnel assigned to Miller’s races: “this is what we need. Get it.”

It could well be the latter scenario, since what I was watching that night was the re-broadcast of video that had aired live, earlier that day. Sochi is nine hours ahead of 30 Rockefeller Center. The producers and editors at NBC had up to nine hours to look at the raw video, make a couple of assessments, and decide what they wanted to air during primetime. And it’s possible, even likely, that somebody at NBC Sports (whose humanity license needs to be revoked) watched Cooper’s interview at least once, probably twice, maybe even thrice, and decided … “it’s perfect. Run it. As is.”

Welcome back to this week’s episode of “I Can’t Decide What’s Worse”!

The arguably hyperbolic backlash against Christin Cooper’s performance may or may not have been misdirected; but it was definitely not insignificant.  Because it came from decent human beings who instinctively felt the need to push back against a broadcasting decision which might have been placing “great teevee” higher than simple decency.

Snort

Some stories should be told. Other stories should never be told. Some stories sit right in the middle there.

 

If you’re a regular reader of this space, you know that my church gig (adult choir and other sundry permutations of sacred music) has provided moments both inspiring and loopy.

This morning’s service managed both.

So far this program year, our choir has brought a rather impressive “A” game. Yes, the program year is only two weeks old; but what a fortnight! Many voices, all in rather good form. The choir sound rushes past me, and I set aside a fraction of my otherwise-engaged brain just to enjoy. I have the best seat in the house, I think.

We’ve also picked up right where we left off, back in June, in the sense of humor department. Our bass section has not lost a step in this regard. The altos that traditionally sit in front of them have continued to develop their ability to dish it right back to the basses where appropriate (and funny). The tenors are quite frankly lagging in their traditional role as the cut-ups of their choir; but we’ll watch some game films and they’ll solve a few things, I’m sure.

Before last week’s service, the choir retreated to our rehearsal room to go over a few details before the morning began. Our senior pastor came in, with the intention of making a couple of brief remarks and then leading us in prayer. “Morning, choir! It’s been a long summer. I’ve missed you.” Not missing a beat (appropriate for musicians), one of our basses cracked back, “Yeah, where ya been?”

This week, the choir got up and sang a curious anthem, a quodlibet (hotshot music major term for “partner song”) combining the gospel song “I Believe” and J.S. Bach’s “Ave Maria”. Hit it out of the park. After service, a couple of folks from out of the congregation tracked me down to tell me they’d had tears in their eyes, during that anthem. (“For the right reasons, I hope,” I joked; but thanked them kindly.) And the other anthem of the day was a nice, slow 12/8 rendition of three verses of “Jesus Loves Me, This I Know”. Considering how much work the Quodlibet had been, I figured that “straightforward and well-known” would be a wise choice for the other music slot. When a group knows a melody real well, it gives them the opportunity to sing and not worry. …Sure enough.

By contrast: toward the end of every service, one of our pastors briefly summarizes some of the “opportunities for service” that are scheduled for the coming week (better known as “announcements”). This morning, as our associate pastor did so, he came to an announcement that dealt with a few books that our congregation is being encouraged to read, in preparation for some conversations later in the year.

He came to one of the book titles, and faithfully read it out loud. For the sake of dignity in this space, I shall not include that title here. Sometimes a reader’s imagination can fill in a blank or two. In this case, please take my word: I’m sure that the book’s author had regarded his title as completely innocent.

But a number of choir folk recognized that a phrase inside that rather lengthy title could have been interpreted in a way that (let’s just say) had nothing to do with the church Sanctuary, but rather with the public restroom next to it.

Yes. Our bass section (and I think a few folks across the Chancel in the soprano loft) took note of the opportunity for toilet humor. In church.

 

The sequence of events ran thusly:

Our associate pastor read the title of the book.

There was a brief silence.

Followed by the continuation of the announcements.

Followed by a moment where a number of choir brains processed that title and its alternate meaning.

Followed by a moment of rustling.

Followed by one of the most intense moments of silence that arguably should have included a *snort* sound effect from somebody, but miraculously didn’t.

The service moved on. “They sang a hymn and went out.” Thanks be to God.

 

Earlier this evening, I sent an eMail to a trio of bass gentlemen which said, in part, “You should know that during this morning’s service, [at that Moment,] … I could not allow myself to make eye contact with any of you.”

In fact, as I think of it, it was also guaranteed divine intervention that my brother-in-law Kevin, at the organ console which faces toward the alto/bass side of the choir loft, couldn’t allow himself to make eye contact either.  If either of us had done so, it might have been all over except for the murmurs of the parishioners in the congregation who would have been wondering why half the choir was crying.

One of my bass section colleagues replied to my eMail, saying that another bass “nudged me right about the time I was about to open my mouth. And it was one of the few times that I actually said, ‘Don’t go there.’” That nudging bass reported that he had just chewed the inside of his cheek and looked at the floor. And the third bass (yes, this might as well be Abbott and Costello) eMailed me, “For once in my life I decided to remain silent.”

I wonder if anyone grasps just how large a bullet we dodged, this morning?

So: the moral of the story, if there really should be one? Don’t skip church on a Sunday. You never know what’s going to happen – or what’s just barely not going to happen.

Words Create Realities, Part 2: The Frustrated Educator

This past week I was forwarded a link to an Associated Press news story that appeared on MSNBC.com, and of course it caught my attention. I’m a teacher, therefore I’m interested in any headline that reads, “Teacher strikes nerve with ‘lazy whiners’ blog”.

Here’s the link, if you’d like to read this for yourself.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41618492/ns/us_news-life/?gt1=43001

The upshot: Pennsylvania high school English teacher Natalie Munroe published, on her blog, what amounted to a diatribe about current high school English-class students not being, um, shall we say, overly committed to their education. It wasn’t subtle; for an English teacher, it wasn’t especially well-written.

 

My reactions came in this order:

[1] Did she have to publish this RIGHT NOW? Teachers’ unions are under fire in Wisconsin and other places; and in any case, educators are regularly pressed to defend every last thing they do. They’re the second most regulated profession (in terms of professional development and licensing, etc.) in America, behind only medical doctors. No need to create more opportunities for people to dump on the teachers.

[2] Did she consider your audience? Did she know that former students would be reading her work? Did she consider that someone might know very well about whom she was writing – her current students! – and might possibly pass the word on to them? Could make it just that much harder to command their respect in class, couldn’t it.

[3] When she signed up for a blog, was she under the misapprehension that only she would be reading it, so therefore it could be just like a private, secret diary? Well, no. In this case, Ms. Munroe started the blog “for friends and family.” Does she know how the modern Internet works?

[5] Did she consider that perhaps as educators, whether or not we’re under fire or whatever, we have extra responsibility to express ourselves without undue use of profanity? To keep it clean, where possible?

When I signed up for the chance to Make A Blog!, I pretty soon realized that it wasn’t just going to be my Facebook friends reading this. My Facebook friends, and those who aren’t on Facebook (there are some) know me, know what I mean by certain kinds of “verbal shorthand”, and have a pretty good idea of when I’m serious and when I’m just pokin’ fun. But as for the whole world of readers upon the Internet? I can’t be as certain about all that. So after the furious blast of writing (or the blast of furious writing), there’s a whole lot of editing, thinking and restraint that goes into publishing something, because quite honestly, if I want to get flamed, I want it to be for a durn good reason.

And this may not have been it.

 

OR . . . maybe this was it, in fact. There is in fact a time and place to get in someone’s face and point a finger at their nose and say, “listen up, buster.” I can’t takes no more, and all that.

I fight hard to remember what school was like when I was a student, and whether there were students whom I could describe as “rude, disengaged, lazy whiners”, “unmotivated”, “out of control”, who “curse, discuss drugs, talk back, argue for grades, complain about everything, fancy themselves entitled to whatever they desire, and are just generally annoying.”

If I think about it long enough, yeah, I can remember all of that. It’s not new. “What’s the matter with kids today?” Nothing that wasn’t, before. Today’s entertainment industry tends to amplify such behaviors, if not actively promote them, but I can think of specific individuals with whom I went to school who fit those descriptions to a T – in the late 1970s. (I hate it that this counts as “long ago”, but that’s a topic for another post entirely.)

And even at the time, I would have happily called them out. I remember sitting in a Social Studies class, feeling really awful for the teacher who was earnestly trying to deal with the yahoos sitting in the back row, and thinking toward those kids, “You’re ruining my class!!”

Every teacher has students like this. And every teacher, throughout history, has had them. I can imagine Socrates wondering, “do I have to DRINK the hemlock to get their attention?”

In my years of teaching, statistically, it would have been unlikely for every single one of my students to have been a completely motivated, enthusiastic, articulate soul every day, all the time. There are days when I suspect that by teaching music, I give myself a better chance to work with the relatively more-motivated kids in the world than if I were teaching one of those completely important MCAS-test subjects. Y’know, math and English and such. I’ve often said, “there’s no guarantee that 100% of math students are desperate to get in the door of the classroom and Do Some Math!” and that’s no knock on math teachers. I just feel pretty lucky when I get in front of an ensemble that just likes doing what they’re doing. It does make a teaching day better, I’ll admit.

The toughest afternoons for teachers come after a day that seems full of students who are rude, or worse, full of students we can’t seem to get a rise out of, no matter what we do.

But again, this comes back to “Words Create Realities”. Just as much as I suggest to my middle-school charges that a really important thing to develop is an internal “should I say it?” filter, I try to apply that filter to myself. And when someone out there doesn’t apply it, I default to “oh, Lord, did you have to do that?”

On the other hand! This teacher in Pennsylvania might be right. We can point to lots more “duties” that teachers have nowadays that used to rightly be taken care of by parents … e.g., parenting! … and lots more challenges. We can affix responsibility to a lot of people.

But even while we’re inspired to express thoughts which might very well be perfectly valid and correct, we’ve got to remember: as teachers, we’re always on stage. Even while standing in line at the supermarket not far from where we teach, talking to no one but ourselves, we’re always being listened to, and evaluated, and judged. Fairly or unfairly, it’s still true. So we owe it to ourselves and our colleagues to think hard before we write.

All of our colleagues will be seen in the light that we cast onto them. We ought to make sure that our public expressions generate more light than heat.

 

Postscript: One of Ms. Munroe’s former students is quoted in the article: “As far as motivated high school students, she’s completely correct. High school kids don’t want to do anything. … It’s a teacher’s job, however, to give students the motivation to learn.”

I more than partly disagree with the young man. Teachers have to bring their “A” game all the time, and when they don’t, even the slightly perceptive students know that they aren’t. But teaching is a two-way street. Teachers bring their enthusiasm for and knowledge of a subject, but responsibility does fall on students to dredge up at least a little effort; otherwise, they deserve the “F” they get. It has been suggested that the analogous phrase “I sold them the car; they just didn’t buy it” describes a teacher excuse for why learning didn’t take place. But are the students active thinkers, or are they just placeholders?