Toastmasters

I joined Toastmasters a few years ago with the hope of improving my public speaking skills. I have always been impressed by people who seem to be able to effortlessly pull this off, regardless of the question or subject matter. And while I believe that we all have it in us to learn the skill, no matter how you slice it, it is pretty universally considered a difficult task: In survey after survey, fear of public speaking regularly clocks in at number one, even ahead of the fear of death.

Because of my steady diet of CSPAN, I’ve been exposed to many rock stars of the craft. Bill Clinton ranks near the top, feeling peoples pain publicly, while feeling up women privately; I am similarly impressed by Newt Gingrich. Both of these leaders somehow have been able to maintain an unimpeachable true rapport with their audiences, regardless of inner turmoil. Or perhaps there is no turmoil – is this the secret?

Toastmasters meetings are typically structured around two major speeches, with the remainder of the time filled with shorter public speaking opportunities (e.g., Table Topics, where you are given a chance to speak off-the-cuff for a minute or two on a provided topic), official evaluations of speeches, and reporting by appointed members on grammar employed and time consumed by participants. The flow is emceed by one of the club members, dubbed the Toastmaster for the night.

At one of the meetings I attended, after the Toastmaster had given his opening remarks, he introduced a couple of “visitors”: people who were interested in improving their speaking skills and wanted to see what these meetings were all about. We all nodded and smiled at them in appreciation of their willingness to take on a challenge more frightening than death.  Then our Toastmaster introduced the first speaker and stepped away from the podium, giving her the floor.

She spoke eloquently on the subject of same-sex marriage; it was from the heart, an impassioned plea about fairness and compassion. It was so well done that I remember it not only for the well-constructed arguments, but also for the way she effortlessly (and without a single “ah” filler word, a technical no-no in Toastmasters) delivered complete paragraphs without a single stumble. I was already sympathetic to her point of view, and her delivery left me completely convinced of my position. As the speech ended, there was a rousing applause, and none louder than mine.

After each one of these speeches, club members put down their thoughts (encouragement, opportunities for improvement, etc.) on slips of paper and later pass them to the speaker so that they might benefit from several independent viewpoints. But I was struggling to provide anything – I was impressed by the speech on so many levels – and ran out of time to complete my evaluation before the next speaker started up. I continued to think about what to say as the next speaker began, which turned out to be a speech about growing up in West Texas.

As he spoke about the dry and barren landscape, my mind was preoccupied with the lush, emotionally-charged imagery of the previous speech. But my short-term memory can only hold a small number of concepts simultaneously, and only if they are important enough at a base level; in this case, the pool was eventually whittled down to “sex” and “Texas”, as if my mind had chosen near-rhymes to fit in my compact (yet imaginative) brain. Seeded by these two words, my thoughts drifted to an old story about sex and a Texan, Lyndon Johnson. Early in his career, he was engaged in a bare-knuckles brawl of a congressional campaign and he told one of his aides to disseminate the story that his opponent had sex with pigs. The aide reputedly responded, “Christ, Lyndon, we can’t call the guy a pigfucker. It isn’t true.” Johnson responded, “Of course it ain’t true, but I want to make the son-of-a-bitch deny it.”

As the second speaker concluded, again I was presented with the chance to put my thoughts down about the first speech, but I thought it would be inappropriate to bring all of this up – I would be hard-pressed to explain in just a few short sentences why it related to her speech. Indeed, any attempt to draw parallels between Lyndon’s impeccable logic and hers on the basis of these two words might seem forced, a post-rationalization of a wandering, fecund mind.  And, since I hadn’t really been paying attention to the second speech, I had nothing to provide there either. I settled on “Great job – I really liked the ending!” for both of them and hoped they wouldn’t compare notes.

Once the speeches were finished, it was only a matter of time before we got to the Table Topics section of the meeting, where we were invited to speak on the subject of Christmas. This, for most people, is challenging because of the fear of spontaneously making a fool of oneself in front of a large group. This is in spite of the fact that we all know how to talk, and when someone asks us a question, we all know how to generate sentences that are at least partly connected to whatever has been said – we do it all the time in everyday conversation. Not everything we say may be Hemingway or Faulkner, but it is usually intelligible and people aren’t typically dropping their jaws in judgment of the stupidity of it.

Nevertheless, no matter how much I tell myself this, I remain skeptical, and here’s why: There’s an old (perhaps apocryphal) story that my mom once told me about how, during the eighties as the Japanese were enthusiastically embracing Western traditions, through garbled cross-cultural communication, Santa Claus began showing up mounted on a cross as a decoration. This memory comes and goes, but called on by the Table Topics Master and under the pressure of the expectant crowd, it filled my mind and I imagined myself, after an impeccably-timed delivery of the story, the recipient of well-deserved adulation, like Newt before a packed house of fired-up Republicans after delivering a punch line full of red meat.

The illusion firmly implanted, I leapt from the verbal high dive: “I have listened with great interest to the proceedings about Christmas. It’s a wonderful time, where families come together and celebrate. And sometimes there are places that, new to the holiday, have come up with their own unique spin on things, perhaps driven by confusion about who the major players are. I don’t know if there is any better example of this than the story I once heard about how in Japan they sold ornaments with Santa nailed to the cross!”

A hush fell over the crowd – it seems the pool was empty and my rapport with the audience was eminently impeachable – and I was beginning to feel the vertigo that comes with the loss of the balance mechanism of the inner ear. Apparently what I thought of as so funny was totally bizarre to them, and, in an attempt to clarify that there was humor in this, channeling Forrest Gump, I added, “And that’s all I have to say about that!” and walked back to my seat under a sea of nonplussed stares. Of course, Toastmasters’ etiquette being what it is, even my effort elicited some polite applause.

The rest of the meeting was a blur. The Jokemaster presented the following: “What do you get if you deep fry Santa Claus? Crisp Cringle!”, and he was rewarded with loud guffaws from the audience. The timer read the times for all of us that had participated, and there were nods all around about the lessons to be applied next time. The Ah Counter brought the bad news.

And then everyone passed out slips of paper with their reviews of the speakers, including me. I’d gotten them before and I’d come to learn that these things were generally less about scathing criticism and more about encouragement. Alas, our two visitors knew none of this and went about their evaluation in a workmanlike manner, and, after reading through my stack of “Great job!”-themed slips, two stood out: the first read, “The presenter had a dry mouth, and it was distracting,” and on the second was written, “Did you say that because you are Japanese?” Laughing inside, my bravery was rewarded.

SLC Adventure

Recently I traveled to Salt Lake City for business. It was an unexpected trip, but we had a disgruntled customer that needed to be dealt with fast and we needed two people to clean it up. I went, and a colleague from Northern California joined me on site a little outside of the metro area. As it happened, things went pretty smoothly and we were able to satisfy the customer’s needs such that they were no longer a drain on our employer. Because things went well, we finished early and had a few hours to kill before our planes left, and we decided to take in a bit of the city.

I’d never been to Salt Lake City, but I’d heard lots of interesting things about it. I’d even done some amateur research on the Mormon religion by reading Jon Krakauer’s book “Under the Banner of Heaven”. There were many, many intriguing points brought up, including how Joseph Smith founded the religion and how Utah came to be its epicenter. Polygamy featured prominently in the description, but on location I certainly wasn’t being judgmental: I imagined other proud American monuments like the Larry “wide stance” Craig Memorial Bathroom in the Minneapolis airport, the Eliot “Emperor’s Club VIP” Spitzer Memorial back East, and the Mark Sanford “never been here” signpost on the Appalachian Trail. Heck, back in the 90s we were debating what the definition of “is” is.

We were very interested in seeing the biggest Mormon thing we could find: The Temple. We hunted for parking near downtown, which was tough, but eventually we found it. The city was spotless, with Joseph Smith this and Deseret News that everywhere. Even though through my travels I’ve found this to be true, I’m always impressed by the variation in our country. We have a common culture and language, but then there are things like this place that are unlike anywhere else in the “good old US and A”, as Borat would put it.

As we approached the temple, we could see people that looked like “official representatives” of the church everywhere in suits, ready to accost you if you got too close. Strangely, when I attempted to make eye contact with them, they turned away. It was really hard to figure out. We continued to look around unassisted and read the plaques below statues of several famous people that I hadn’t read about in the book. We took a few pictures holding Nixon’s victory salute behind the heads (in the Japanese way) of what seemed to be the most important statues, but we were quickly running out of things to do.

Suddenly, we saw a tour group of women with two official representatives guiding them around. “This is…”, we heard one of them say. As you know, I have a deep respect of the religious beliefs of others – not a moral relativism, but rather a solid sense of freedom that is consistent with what it is to be an American.  It was in this spirit as a citizen of the world and following the old adage "When in Rome..." that I whispered to my colleague, “Hey, let’s get these women to pretend that they are our wives in a picture. You can have six and I’ll take five. Maybe you can get one of them to slap you – it will be like real life!” My colleague is Chinese and didn’t quite get my suggestion. “You want one of them to be your wife?”, he asked. “No, no,” I responded, “I want the five on the left – you can have the six on the right!”

We had to get things started, so we began to approach, but we could see that the guides began to reduce eye contact, and then turn away completely with their backs facing us. I was uncertain of how to proceed. We hadn’t even proposed anything but they were already rejecting us. Since I’d heard it playing in the parking lot at lunch earlier, I thought of the old NWA rap “Gangsta Gangsta”:

“…So we started lookin’ for the b*#$%es with the big butt
Like her, but she keep cryin’
I got a boyfriend, b*#ch stop lyin’
Dumb a** h%$ker ain’t nuttin’ but a d$ke…”

Although offensive and chauvinistic to an extreme, this seemed completely a propos on many levels – a perfect description of our conundrum. I think you’d agree that we’ve all experienced this sentiment at one time or another: that of the jilted lover. (Obviously this is written from the perspective of a sexist heterosexual man and can feel unfamiliar if you don’t fall into this category; if, for example, you are heterosexual woman, you might alter the rap thus:

“…So we started lookin’ for the men with the large biceps
Like him, but he keep cryin’
I got a boyfriend, I don’t believe you are gay
You are a bad man…”)

Even the Bard himself couldn’t have penned a sonnet that put it so eloquently, and they were none too socially progressive in his day. I was determined not to slide into this mindset. If we were to get the photo with our “wives”, we needed positive thinking.

I reflected on one of my passions: watching CSPAN. A while ago, I’d broken the PBS/NPR all the time habit and branched out into 24/7 unfiltered coverage of our great democracy. But, even I began to find committee hearings a bit dry, only to find nirvana right next door: the deuce (CSPAN2).  On this channel, there is much of the same coverage but occasionally there are dramatic profiles of senators, and I remembered one with Orrin Hatch, Senior Senator from Utah. Dressed in a blue suit and a tight-collared shirt with a tie pin, he spoke at length about his career and they showed footage of the presidential debates he’d participated in where the other candidates had played up their modest beginnings by saying that they were all sons of janitors, and he’d bragged “That’s nothing – I was a janitor!” Actually, with this comment he’d addressed all the candidates but one: Steve Forbes. He’d singled out Steve afterwards by saying he was so rich he couldn’t sit on his wallet, to much laughter.

While I’d enjoyed this interview tremendously, the thing that I now realized was that those tight collars with the tie pin that he always wore could hold the key. Utah is the reddest state in the nation, and it was said that those tight collars made one even more conservative, ergo sexier to our potential “wives”. Continuing to free associate, I made an even deeper personal connection with our founders the pilgrims, who were the only people so uptight that the English kicked them out. I was applying “Method” acting to maximize our chances.

We didn’t have tie pins or even shirts with the right collars, but we hadn’t buttoned our shirts top buttons yet and it might be our ace in the hole. “Quick”, I said, “Before the guides turn around!” “You want me to do what?”, asked my colleague, his eyes wide. “Just button your top button and they’ll be swept off their feet!”, I reassured him. “If you want, I’ll throw in a seventh and only take four for myself.” Seeing that I wouldn’t take no for an answer, he nervously shrugged his shoulders and after making the adjustments we began our approach.

Then, without warning, one of the guides turned and looked at us. We were still a few feet off and hadn’t had a chance to say anything out loud to them but at that moment I knew it was the end of the line. She’d seen our type before, or at least mine: an NPR-listening, latte-swilling, Prius-driving, Godless pinko commie. She said, “Excuse me – this is a private tour”, glared at us for a moment, then turned back to the group and continued educating them. 

Later, after we’d purchased our drinking membership at a bar downtown (I think it was called Joe S.’s) we reflected on what had happened and concluded that if we’d had the right shirts with the tie pin, things would have gone much better. “Remember”, I told my colleague in my best Knute Rockne as we sipped our Polygamy Porter, “there is always next year!”

Food Poisoning

During finals of one semester, the night before an exam I ate some tainted corn and as a result I fell ill with food poisoning. For the initiated, you know what I’m talking about: vomiting until there’s nothing left, and then dry heaves for hours. My roommate at the time gave me the helpful advice to “Just go back to bed and get some sleep,” which was totally impossible due to the fact that I was desperately ill and intensely worried: In another of my courses, one of my classmates had missed an exam because of illness and had brought a doctor’s note to class, only to be told that there would be no exceptions and he would be receiving an F.

Of course, in the morning when it was clear that my situation was dire, my roommate remained no help, proposing the same advice and adding that “grades aren’t everything” (the last I heard of him, he was making twice my salary and working half as much) and it was my neighbor who came to my rescue and took me in his car along with a large pot – his saintliness was tempered by an “automobile cleanliness is next to Godliness” thinking – to the emergency room.

The hospital was in a predominantly African-American part of town, and, because I almost felt like an interloper, while filling out the forms I nearly checked the “Caucasian” box. My neighbor remained with me, holding the pot at the ready, but once they called my name, he bid me adieu and I was led into a sterile white room.

While you might imagine the sterility of a clean, white hospital room to be reassuring, for some reason all I could think was that I was in a mental ward. The sickness had driven me into a state of despair, partially because of my fear of the damage that this would have on my future: If the professor of the class final I had that day was as unforgiving as the other one, my GPA would be forever marred, I would be blocked from attending the graduate school of my choice, and, in my mind, I wouldn’t have the opportunity to enter the “Heaven-on-Earth” known as Engineering.

After what seemed like a very long time, there was a knock on the door and a tall white (Caucasian) doctor strode in wearing a white lab coat. He had a long, aquiline nose with a pair of round metal spectacles perched on the bridge. I feared the worst, but then he said in a voice much louder than I expected, “Well, how are you!”, and I croaked weakly, “Not so good.” With a broad grin he sat on a chair next to the bed I was sitting on and, putting his palms together and slowly rubbing them said, “You didn’t happen to have corn last night, did you?”

“Well, now that you mention it, I did.”

“We’ve had a few cases in here like that this morning. Keep your head up, son. You look fine, but just in case, we’ve got just the thing!”

“Actually, I don’t feel so great. I’m an emotional wreck since…”

“Of course you are,” he broke in chuckling, “but let’s get an IV in your arm, which will likely be nothing more than a placebo, and if it isn’t then you’ll be good as new!”, and with a hearty laugh and a loud slap on my back he turned and left the room. With only the knowledge that I was to expect an IV but with no idea when it would arrive, I leaned back and contemplated the ceiling, worrying in desperation about the future.

Again, after what seemed like a long interlude, the door opened and a slender Hispanic nurse came in and said sweetly, “¿Pobrecito, tienes mal?”

“Uhhh… What?”

The sweetness evaporated and she said, “I asked if you felt bad, but if you’ll only speak English, suit yourself,” and then she jabbed a needle into my arm, hooked up the IV, and was gone. I then realized that my off-white appearance suggested to her that I was also of Hispanic heritage and, disgustingly, ashamed of it. Perhaps she’d seen my hand hesitate over the “Caucasian” box on the forms – had I accidentally grazed it with the tip of my pen? In her mind, I was a faux Anglo – if I were black, one in her position might have accused me of being an Oreo, if I were Asian, she might have branded me a banana, but I was neither … Maybe a jicama?

Again, I was in solitary confinement.  I waited and waited and studied the patterns on the ceiling, and then I waited until I couldn’t stand the room any more. I’d lain there for so long that I was uncertain if I would be wobbly on my feet if I tried to leave. I sat up, and while I felt a little woozy, I was highly motivated to escape what felt increasingly like a padded cell. I swung my feet over the side of the bed and down to the industrial tiles of the floor, gripped the wheeled stand holding the IV bag, and rolled it towards the door.

Opening the door, I peeked out and got a serious glare from my nurse who was seated down the hall filling out some paperwork. “¿Que? Or should I say, what?”, she questioned me with disdain.

“Can I come out to the lobby?”

“Why?”

“Well, I’m feeling claustrophobic and depressed. That room is too much for me. And by the way…”

“¡Basta!”, she broke in, shaking her head and turning back to her paperwork, she said over her shoulder, “You can go into the lobby and watch TV. And try not to tip the stand over – YOU might break it.”

I wanted to clear things up – I wanted to shout “I am not a jicama!” – but the risk seemed too great and my desire to escape my cell was overpowering. Not waiting for her to change her insulted mind, I gripped the stand with both hands and shuffled into the lobby.

 There was a large crowd of people that I assumed were patients and their relatives from the neighborhood chatting on the sofas and chairs but I spied one last opening and sat down. “How ya doin’, lil’ brotha?”, asked an avuncular gentleman in the seat next to me, and he briefly put his arm around my shoulder, and I felt like a member of the extended family. However, I soon slipped back into a funk. I wasn’t well and my concern about my final remained acute. In fact, despite the kindness extended, I felt increasingly despondent, but I hoped a little TV would take my mind off it.

On the TV, the show’s host, a sharply dressed man in spectacles resembling my doctor’s, moved to the center of the stage to much applause. He carried himself with dignity, and as he spoke into the microphone, the applause died and a hush fell over the lobby. “Our next act is really something special – something we’ve never seen on Soul Train before. Please welcome,” and he mentioned a name that I couldn’t hear as one of my fellow lobby-mates, as if in a revival meeting, shouted, “Hallelujah!”, and the room broke into spontaneous applause and statements of approval.

While this wasn’t my favorite genre, I considered myself open minded and I looked forward to this opportunity to expand my horizons: even if it was difficult, the cultural immersion would take my mind off of the situation. But as I watched the many happy people smiling and dancing and singing along, I couldn’t have felt more unmoored, as if I were observing this as a homesick alien from outer space with any remaining joy sucked out of me and into them. I may as well have been trying to cheer myself up by trying to appreciate the following “mullet haiku” that has bewitched me for years:

Sweat stained tank top

Hair smells like gas

Somehow I get laid

And my inner alien was having none of it: “This is rock bottom,” I told myself, adding, “Just be patient – the next one cannot be worse.”  

Just when I thought it would never end, it finally did. And the audience’s response was over the top – loud hootin’ and hollerin’, and inside my mind I was full of hope for the coming salvation of the next song. Although my academic fate still hung in the balance, I’d made it through the tainted corn, my no-help roommate, the unsympathetic doctor, the insulted nurse, and now this, so I felt like I was due.

The presenter again took center stage and spoke: “I’ve been doing this show for many, many years. And in all that time, I can tell you this with total honesty: That was the finest performance to grace this stage – EVER.”

And then it was clear that I’d just reached the edge of the precipice.

Before the "Summer of Love": DrLaura's "Bridegroom-to-be's adventures"

They’d been on trips through this dorm before, but he didn’t have a clear recollection of the RA from the previous time. After that trouble with her in the foyer he had been a little on edge but since he was with a couple of other like-minded wholesome, virtuous citizens he felt they had strength in numbers. As they walked down the hall he was impressed by how much thought had gone into the patterns in the carpet: The detail was intricate and had many tiny dots that seemed to rotate in his peripheral vision but when he went to focus on the spot that had been moving everything seemed to stop…

His concentration was broken when suddenly he heard someone say, “Hey man! What are you doing here?” It was a friend of his that lived in this dorm that he’d met during orientation and they’d subsequently had more interesting conversations than he would have with his classmates, and it formed a bond between them. The friend was a Good Guy, but he wasn’t Like Them: He was in ROTC and sported a flat-top, and when it came to social issues and following convention he was a bedrock conservative – his dad had been in the Air Force and he was a traditionalist. Of course, this tradition also included imbibing massive quantities of alcohol.  

“Hi!”, said the morally-impeccable guest. “It’s great to see you! We’re just visiting. These are exquisite carpets – have you ever thought about how they chose them? I could spend hours in this hall looking at the patterns.”

“Yeah, that’s great,” said the less-perfect-but-still-good host. “I’ve been watching some martial arts, dude – they are bad-ass! My dad used to tell me about these guys in the military and they’d get in these big fights and everyone would be chanting. Blood everywhere!”

“Wow,” cleverly observed our main character. “Intense… I can visualize the carnage… Blood everywhere… A slaughterhouse… Or maybe like chickens with their heads cut off. Which reminds me, last time I was at the Smithsonian I remember seeing a concept for a guided bomb from World War II with a chicken in it. They made it so that the target looked like bird seed and it would peck at the controls to keep thing aimed properly. I’ve always wondered how they trained the chickens to do this without developing vertigo. Do you ever talk about that during ROTC get-togethers?”

His ROTC companion had stopped listening and was immersed in his own deep thoughts, and so he imagined what these erudite discussions at the ROTC gatherings were like. But then suddenly his friend said, “I’ve been drinking too,” and before the halo-bearing main character had a chance to clear things up, his ROTC friend ran over to a glass case that had a fire extinguisher and a sign over it saying “break in case of emergency” and punched it. Glass flew everywhere and he turned with wild eyes and said to his celebrated guest, “I kicked its ass!”

Artist's Rendition of the Proceedings

Blood rushed into the praiseworthy visitor’s head as he experienced a moment of extreme clarity, and with flawless judgment he said, “We have to get out of here! Let’s go – act sober,” and, as if he were a guardian angel tasked with preserving his friend’s ROTC scholarship, he hustled his wounded charge away to the cadet’s room, with the hubbub steadily growing behind them as other students and the RA appeared on the scene.

As they neared the wayward conservative’s room, the selfless protagonist looked up and saw another friend of his: A very pretty blonde, he had started to develop a bit of a crush on her but had never had an opportunity pursue it. Now, mentally preoccupied and with an injured ROTC drunk in tow, he was in no condition to do anything about it, so he chivalrously said, “Great to see you! I’ll be back after I conquer these rivers of blood!”, leaving her with a puzzled look on her face and golden tracers streaming from her head. In an effort to clear things up, he called over his shoulder, “Imagine that I have wings!”, and, like the gladiator Maximus before him, his bravery and essential right-ness was apparent.

Amazingly, after washing off his hand, the helpless aspiring officer had only sustained minor cuts, although upon closer inspection they all looked to our hero like peck-marks. Perhaps the pain had sobered the traditionalist up a bit since he gave his savior a sheepish look and said, “Was that over the top?” Our saint’s mind was on to other things and he must have been verbalizing his internal narrative as the military man queried, “What sheep are you talking about? And did you just ask me something about chickens in ROTC?”

Just then our role model’s fellow travelers arrived on the scene and the first said, “What a lot of commotion! It feels exhilarating! I feel like I could run a marathon!”, and the second agreed, “Yes! A steeplechase with fire-tipped arrows raining down!”

By now, the exemplar-of-rectitude had forgotten all about his crush, and seeing that his work in the infirmary was done, they took their leave. One of his friends remembered from one of their earlier trips through this dorm that there was a girl nearby that had glow-in-the-dark nail polish. “Let’s go find her - she has a hookah too!”, the friend said, and there was hearty agreement all around that this other enticement was only for looking at.

They headed off down the hall and were passing one of the laundry rooms when one of the less-spoken-about companions said, “Hey, check out the dryers!” They looked normal enough, but then the fearless leader noticed what looked like karate belts unraveled on top of the dryers. He had assumed that the martial arts were on TV, but maybe his ROTC friend had actually seen this stuff live – the traditionalist had been pretty animated and he’d just been drinking, so the paragon-of-virtue was certain that the officer-in-training wasn’t seeing things… Alas, his train of thought was broken by one of his other minor-yet-worthwhile-mentioning traveling companions who exclaimed, “Dude, they’ve got snakes on the dryers in here!”

Suddenly, the RA that had showed up at the scene of the crimes (both in the foyer earlier and more recently at the fire extinguisher) had magically appeared before them and said, “Hey, do you guys know anything about the broken glass? And how about all this discarded packing tape on the dryers?” “Nope”, “Nope”, said the leader’s friends and then the leader unwisely said “No, but these are some great carpets!”

“What?” , she said, and then her eyes narrowed and said, “OK, come clean. You’ve all obviously been drinking.”

Suddenly the human-embodiment-of-moral-perfection felt a surge of indignance. “What are you talking about!”, he shouted at the top of his lungs in a most compelling way. “I haven’t had a drop of alcohol! You can give me a breathalyzer – RIGHT NOW!” “Yeah!”, “Totally!”, said his friends.

She was taken aback and stammered, “Uh, uh, okay, I have to ask, you know…”

“Well just remember, it doesn’t pay to judge a book by its cover!”, the exemplary leader said sternly, and turned and strode away with purpose. Fortunately, his lieutenants followed suit, and as they rounded the corner at the end of the hall, he stole a backward glance and saw that she was gone. One of his friends said, “We really showed her!”, and he said “Yeah!”, and the third member said, “Yeah! All that emotionally healthy vigorous laughter and imagined lightning bolts were hours ago! And beer doesn’t count, right?”

And they all lived happily ever after. The end.

Arkansas-themed film

I have completed a film inspired by my travels to Arkansas. It is in the Ken Burns style (of "Civil War" fame), full of historical footage, but this work includes full-motion video and should be viewable even from your mobile.

Please let me know what you think!

Movie link:

Guest post from DrLaura: "Summer of Love"

Jack and I had grown up together, but we didn’t become close until our first summer back from college. We were both a little shy, yet he was a perfect gentleman, the kind that every girl dreams of: He would bring me flowers, he was interested in my feelings, and he always made me feel like there was no one else in the world, and my insecurities would melt away. We would go on long walks and just talk about the beauty of the flowers in bloom and the wonderful community that we’d grown up with – one full of morally grounded friends, trained in the Church’s scriptures.

One sunny day, he asked me to join him on a picnic. It was warm and you could hear the wind rustling the leaves in the trees ever so gently. He took hold of my hand and said, “I have something special to show you – come with me!”, and he gazed romantically into my eyes.

I held his gaze for a long time, but I knew in my heart it wasn’t right – we were but children, unmarried and not ready for anything more. I knew this from our spiritual training learned over those many years of Sunday School. And he knew it too – he was pure of heart but weak of spirit, and I would have to be strong for both of us. I let his hand go, and his face fell.

But I could feel my emotions begin to overtake me too, and, as an older and wiser woman, I now know that I was feeling the first hints of a deep romantic love. I felt almost a spectator viewing the proceedings third hand as I heard myself ask, “What is it?”, and the happiness returned to his face as he again grasped my hand and pulled me toward old Miller’s hill. “You’ll see,” he said with a smile.

As we neared the top, the wind was building, but I was so full of happiness that I was deaf to anything but the sound of my heart and could only feel the warmth of Jack’s hand. When at last we stopped and as I looked deep into his eyes, I felt a passion burning in my breast – so much so that I barely noticed the darkening skies or the far-off rumble of thunder.

And then he bent down and, emptying the pail that he’d used as a picnic basket, spread out the blanket on the ground. I turned away, afraid of him seeing the rising emotion on my face. And as I turned I felt a drop of rain and heard the “plink, plink” of droplets hitting the bottom of the pail. Jack placed a hand on my shoulder and as I turned back towards him I felt uncontrollably drawn to him. “Jill, I…” he began.

And as he grasped my blouse there was a flash of lightning followed by a boom of thunder, and we began to fall as he tore off my

(continued on page 54)

Block Party

Once a year, the city allows people to stop auto traffic on their streets for a few hours in the evening so the neighborhood can enjoy a “block party”. In our neighborhood, everyone brings food and catches up with people you live near but see less than you’d imagine. It brings a feeling of community.

Inevitably there are people who violate the no-automobile rules. On one occasion, it was nearing the end of a perfect Seattle summer evening (warm, clear skies, and no rain), and all of the kids had gone to bed. Just a few adults remained, picking up the last of the chairs and folding tables. Dusk had fallen but the “Street Closed” signs remained in place at the ends of the block.

Headlights swept across the street as a car turned the corner at the end of the block. Normally, the driver sees the barricade (the sign) and turns around. This time, the car slowly drove around one side of it and approached us.

It was a large American car, circa 1973, and looked every bit its age. The paint was sun damaged, and a long crack ran across the windshield. As the car got closer, you could see that the car had no hubcaps and that much of the rubber gasketing around the windows had disintegrated. You could also see inside a small orange glow framed by the head of what appeared to be a hard-living woman in her sixties. She was smoking with the windows up.

As she approached the remaining adults, one of my neighbors who was putting away a card table scurried to the center of the street, blocking the car’s path and holding up his hand. He set the table on edge in front of him.

“Stop right there”, he said. “Didn’t you see the sign at the end of the street?”

The car slowed but continued to advance towards him. The driver began to slowly crank her window down and smoke poured out. However, she said nothing.

This neighbor has a tendency to get keyed up if he senses a rule is about to be violated, and this was no exception. He was itchin’ for a scrap, and it looked like he was about to get it.

“Don’t you know that you are breaking the law?”, he said, a little louder now, with a slight quaver in his voice (brought on not by fear but the adrenaline surge of getting to do one of his favorite things). By this time, the driver had rolled her window all the way down and cleared most of the smoke from the car interior. She wore a pair of fifties-style glasses with rhinestones and a reading-glasses chain to hang them around her generous neck.  She was within a foot of the table when she brought the car to a complete halt.

For what felt like an eternity, everything stopped, with the only sound the gentle rumble of the old car’s engine idling. The tension had risen and you almost see the hair on the back of my neighbor’s neck stand. Then, without warning, she spoke:

“Get out of the way!”, she rasped. “This is a street, you moron!”

For a moment, my neighbor was speechless – didn’t he already cover this in his opening remarks? Couldn’t she at least read his lips through the smoke and the cracked windshield as he explained that it was she, not he, who was in the wrong? He had the sign, he had the law, and he had the implicit approval of the remaining adults, not to mention law-abiding citizens everywhere.

“Did you not see the sign? Are you illiterate? Ignorance is no excuse for the law!” His voice was rising now, and the ruckus was causing lights to come on in previously dark homes. People appeared on their front porches to observe the spectacle.

“This is stupid!”, she yelled, and revved the engine. She then rolled, inch by inch, towards the table. The air now was so thick with tension that you could cut it with a knife, and when she finally touched the table the sound was so quiet so as to be anticlimactic.

“I’ve been hit!”, shouted my neighbor. Unimpressed, she replied in a gravelly voice, “You’re pathetic. Don’t you have something better to do?” She took a deep drag on her filterless mentholated cigarette and smoke billowed out her window.

My neighbor limped to the curb with his card table yelling, “I’m calling 911! You can’t just come over from Ballard and start breaking laws in Magnolia! This is an outrage! I have your license plate number and I will have you arrested for hit and run!”

Although he was slightly premature in his charge, she’d had enough, and (sort of following his suggestion) was on the move. She slowly proceeded to the other end of the block, and as she rounded the corner and turned down the hill, she shook her fist out the window.