It's All in the Details

I was cleaning out my office at the end of the fall semester and came across a stack of final essays from my Development Writing students from a couple of years ago. We're obligated to keep graded work for at least one year after the end of a term just in case a student wants to come by and pick up work or in case there's a grade appeal and you need to supply additional evidence that the student didn't initially have access to. 

Developmental Writing essays are typically short, so I took a few minutes to read through them again before putting them in the recycling bin. The assignment was a simple one: the student had to evaluate a product or a place or some example of entertainment (a TV show, a movie, a song, etc.). As I told them on the assignment sheet, the key would be the details that they gave to support their assertions about the quality of what they chose to evaluate. Below are some examples of the details that they gave.

• "I have had many great moments there." (None of those great moments were described or mentioned.

• "My overall evaluation of this place is that it is a good park that has many cool features." (None of the park's particular features were listed or included.)

• "X is a medium sized restaurant where there are plenty of tables inside and a couple of tables outside for you to sit and eat. When you go inside they greet you by saying 'Welcome to X.' Once you order your sandwich you can see how they make it. You don’t have to get up and get your sandwich they will bring it to you." (I'm not sure that any of this is particularly unique in restaurants. Aren't these details common to lots of different restaurants?)

• "It’s mostly good." (How can I possibly not know what is meant by this assessment? It just says it all, doesn't it?)

• "There is mostly bad things about X but they are small things." (Those small things are never mentioned, just alluded to here. The writer only stuck to the good things.)

• "It’s mostly good, but there’s bad." (I did tell them that nothing is all good or all bad, and I suggested that they try to look at both the positive and the negative. I guess the student gave me what I asked for.)

• "They also have a numerous amount of drinks such as root beer, strawberry lemonade, ginger ale and peach tea just to name a few, to spice things up for the grown and sexy they have a fully equipped bar with a selection of hundreds of alcoholic beverages to choose from." (I'm dying to know what it means to be both "grown and sexy." I think I've been one or the other at times, but never both at once, so I don't think I can order from the bar in this place.)

One of the traits of developing writers that I most admire is their naivete at how others don't know what's inside their heads. They assume that most people have very similar experiences or backgrounds, so they don't explain what they think should be apparent to everyone else. It's one of the toughest jobs as a writing teacher to convince students that I and other readers don't actually know what they were thinking when they wrote down something, that I really do need more information, more details in order to understand.

It's one of the highlights for me as a teacher when students grow and improve in their use of details and examples, when they fully develop their ideas because they are truly considering that someone else is going to read what they've written. Don't take my sharing of these examples as anything more than my recognition that sometimes I do fail at achieving this goal. 

Random Thoughts on the 2015 Kennedy Center Honors

One of the best awards shows of the year arrived between Christmas and New Year’s Eve this year: the annual Kennedy Center Honors. This is a lifetime achievement award, granted to people who have made longstanding and notable achievements in music of every imaginable genre, television, movies, theater, dance, anything having to do with entertainment. If you’re not familiar with any of a particular year’s honorees, it’s a good idea to acquaint yourself with their accomplishments. This year’s honorees were Rita Moreno, George Lucas, Cicely Tyson, Seiji Ozawa, and Carole King. You should know all of them already. If you don’t, do some homework.

As always during this annual ceremony, I have random thoughts about the recipients, the presenters, the audience, any number of things.

·         I loved that they showed a clip from The Ritz as part of the tribute to Rita Moreno. Moreno starred in both the Broadway and film versions of this comedy set in a gay bathhouse. Her character, Googie Gomez, was allegedly based on outrageous performers like Bette Midler, who first came to fame at the Continental Baths in New York. Moreno won the Tony Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Play in 1975 and used part of her speech to claim that she was the leading lady of the play, which was technically true even if she was more comic relief than central to the narrative. The next year the supporting categories were permanently renamed “Featured Actor/Actress” to reflect more accurately the importance that some characters and performances can have.

·         Moreno is one of the more famous EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony) winners, and the tribute pointed this out by emphasizing each of those wins. There is an asterisk to her EGOT, of course, since she won the Grammy with a whole bunch of other people for the cast show album of The Electric Company. Still, as she herself has been fond of reminding people, she does have them all—and deservedly so.

·         Was it meant to be a joke that for the tribute to George Lucas that Carrie Fisher appeared as a holographic image (as she did in the first Star Wars movie) and that James Earl Jones only provided his voice to the tribute package? Jones never appears in the Star Wars films either; it’s only his voice you hear as Darth Vader. Was that intentional or just the result of difficulties in getting the stars to the ceremony?

·         Does Steven Spielberg not have enough money to have his tuxedo pants tailored? They were way, way too long, and I had trouble concentrating upon what he was saying about his friend George Lucas because I kept trying to determine how many extra yards of fabric were swirling around his lower legs.

·         I had no idea that Cicely Tyson was once married to Miles Davis. That is such an interesting pairing of people. The mind reels at what dinner at the Davis-Tyson house was like.

·         I was 11 years old when The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman was first on TV, and I remember it well, especially the scene involving the Whites Only water fountain. It was a transformative experience watching Tyson in that role, the first of many performances of hers that I have admired.

·         CeCe Winans will take you to church even if you’re not particularly fond of churchgoing. Her performance of “Blessed Assurance” with the choir from the Cicely Tyson Community School for Performing and Fine Arts brought tears to the eyes of many people in the audience—including Usher. Tyson herself was singing along with a great deal of joy. She’s such an amazing presence and still acting at age 90!

·         Apparently, the Eagles were also chosen to be honored this year, but they had to postpone their appearance until 2016 due to Glenn Frey being ill. One of the biggest laughs of the night was when host Stephen Colbert said that waiting a year would allow the band to “accept the honor the way they made their music—together…and shirtless.” I’m looking forward to next year’s ceremony already although I’m not certain any of the members need to go shirtless.

·         I vow each year after watching the tribute to a classical music performer that I will learn more about this genre. This year the honoree was conductor Seiji Ozawa, and he was feted by such greats as Itzak Perlman, John Williams, and Yo-Yo Ma. I still don’t know very much about classical music, though, and I’m not sure I should keep making a promise that I’m very unlikely to keep.

·         The highlight of the evening was undoubtedly to the tribute to singer-songrwriter Carole King, much of it framed by the cast of Beautiful, the Broadway show based on King’s life. What impressed me most was the genuine sense of excitement and surprise King showed each time another famous performer showed up to sing one of her famous songs: James Taylor, Sara Bareilles, Aretha Franklin. It’s quite a canon of musical gems.

·         Speaking of Franklin, as you would expect, she shut down the whole evening with her rendition of “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.” She took command of the stage from the moment she walked out wearing a huge fur coat and carrying her purse. I don’t know why she needed to keep her purse with her, but she plopped it on top of the piano and began playing and singing. She was already enchanting the audience when she stood up, walked to center stage, and took off that fur, dropping it to the stage so that she could reach notes even higher than before. By that point, everyone was standing and cheering. Aretha could take CeCe Winans to church.

One of the most interesting things about the Kennedy Center Honors show is that the recipients don’t speak or perform during the evening; they just get to sit and relax and enjoy others paying homage to them and to their accomplishments. They are spectators just the way that we at home are. I don’t think I could enjoy the event as much as Carole King obviously did or have the same exuberance as Cicely Tyson, but it’s a special couple of hours each year that I don’t miss.

Death by Smoothie

The Boyfriend tried to kill me with a smoothie a few weeks ago.

I had been doing laundry downstairs in our apartment complex, my usual weekly ritual on Friday afternoon. I had come back upstairs to our apartment after transferring all of the clothes from the washers to the dryers because I was thirsty. There’s no ventilation in the basement laundry room other than a fan installed in a half-opened “window,” so it’s very easy to get hot and thirsty while down there for any extended length of time.

The Boyfriend, seeing that I was parched, offered to pour me a smoothie while I put away the laundry detergent. He’d gotten a dozen or so bottles at the grocery store because he had a coupon or a discount or both or something. I drank the smoothie, something like “Amazing Mango” or whatever, and went back to the basement.

By the time the clothes had finished the cycle in the dryer, I was in pain. I was feeling a tightness in my chest and a sort of rippling sensation up and down my breastbone. I immediately realized that I was suffering from G.E.R.D. (gastro-esophageal reflux disease). I’d been diagnosed with it over Memorial Day weekend, and I’d read all of the literature on it that the doctors gave me at Kaiser and even Googled a bunch of information on my own. I thought I knew most of the foods that triggered severe reactions and had avoided them as much as possible. Mango juice was not on the list.

When I brought the finished (folded) clothes upstairs, I took a couple or three calcium tablets and hunted through the refrigerator for the smoothie. I started scanning the ingredients and found the culprit. The alleged mango smoothie contained the juice of more than four oranges! Citrus juice (or, more likely, citric acid) is one of the biggest causes of G.E.R.D., and I had removed it almost completely from my diet. Or, at least, I thought I had. I gave up a lot for this stupid disease. I had cut down on chocolate (a very tough sacrifice), I had stopped drinking carbonated soda, and I had even started drinking less alcohol—all triggers. And then The Boyfriend gave me a mango smoothie on Laundry Day.

To be fair, I’m pretty sure that he didn’t intend to kill me. There’s no insurance money for him to gain, nothing like the plot of Double Indemnity or anything so sinister. He didn’t know that the smoothie manufacturer used orange juice as a major ingredient in what was purported to be a mango smoothie. I’ve started to read labels a lot more carefully, and I’ve found that lots of foods you’d never suspect actually contain citric acid.

I’m certainly never going to take a swig of another smoothie without knowing what it contains and no matter who hands it to me.