I just returned from the Swenson family reunion in Willmar, Minnesota. I know you all want to hear about the relatives, but the most exhilarating thing about it was witnessing a tornado. I took pictures on my cellphone, but I’m just luddite enough that I haven’t figured out how to send them to myself. Lucky for you, gentle reader, there’s a ton of footage on YouTube already. I chose one here that’s both terrifying and brief.

There you have it. I wasn’t quite as close as this video, but my guess is it was about a mile south of our motel. A large crowd of Swensons were yacking in the motel lobby when a wet woman stormed into the lobby seeking shelter from the funnel cloud. I calmly announced that we should all seek shelter in the center hallway, at which point Swensons young and old grabbed their cameras and headed for the parking lot. A good time was had by all.

The ensuing damage tour revealed that damage was spectacular, but limited to things like trees, sheet metal roofs, and a few farm implements. The most interesting damage we saw was the roof of the turkey quonset. The turkeys, largely unscathed, remained looking up in wonder far into the evening.

Maia and Maritha were sufficient schooled in the terrible power of nature and the nature of our own fragile mortality. They also learned to remember their cameras for the next weather event.

I hope to be posting more regularly in the next two months, so I figure I’d wet your appetite. A preview of future entries looks like this:

• A father examines the milestone of a first daughter’s high school graduation
• Fishing on Lake of the Woods
• John Kelly: Man or Myth?
• Sasquach: Man or Myth?
• Yeti: Man or Myth?
• 50 years of my parents marriage celebrated
• Does a newspaper contain news? And is it made of paper?
• Some book reviews

That should keep you coming back.

P.S. I almost forgot. A young girl is reported to have been knocked unconscious during said twister, and upon awakening, claims to have traveled with her dog via twister to the Mall of America, where she purchased sweet shoes and learned that “There’s nothing like credit.” Her family and the hired men rejoice in her recovery.

Check it out.

Here’s a sampling.

• All Along the Watchtower (Dylan)
  

Download audio file (07-all-along-the-watchtower.mp3)

• Spoons (Dalager)
  

Download audio file (09-spoons.mp3)

• White Freightliner (Van Zandt)

Download audio file (16-white-frieightliner.mp3)

Catch us if you can.

• Since I’m visually impaired, the U.S. Military wouldn’t take me.  I was born in Canada, however, giving me dual citizenship, so after high school I was able to join the Royal Canadian Airforce and fulfill my dream of working on a ground crew.
• Since I’m visually impaired, the state of Minnesota was reluctant to give me a driver’s license.  Growing up on a farm near St. Hilaire, Minnesota, however, I drove all the time.  I’m proud to say I only hit a building once.

Which is the truth?

Monday was opening fishing for the stretch of the St. Louis River between the Fond du Lac bridge and dam. The walleyes spawn there, and the DNR likes to protect them until May 19. If you’re a spawning walleye, this is a date that should be noted on your calendar.

Scott, my fishing compatriot and all around guru, likes to fish the “honey hole” from the bank, standing about thigh deep in the dam’s tailrace foam. Here he ties a swell snell knot sporting his late May chop.

We parked at the city park gate, closed for some reason, along with about a half dozen vehicles that had beaten us to it. Hiking up river, the best part was watching Beckett the Swede racing ahead and back, sticking his golden nose into everything. It’s been nearly six months since Pepper died, so I noticed I was coming down with a slight doggie fever. When I mentioned this to Scott, he said,

If you’ve had a golden, you’ll never have another dog, but if you haven’t, keep it that way. They’re the best natured animal on the planet, but they’re prone to every disease on the planet known to man, and some he don’t know. Some are even allergic to their own fur, and no one sheds like a golden.

I don’t know if that will deter me, but it will probably deter my wife.

The river was pretty busy with a flotilla of Lunds when we arrived, which surprised me, since I hadn’t told a soul about this trip or the secret date. Word apparently gets out. On the advice of my brother Nate, I started with a floating jig and minnow tethered to the bottom by a quarter ounce weight. The idea behind this sort of river fishing is that it allows one to take a nap while resting ones rod on a nice Y branch. This turned out to be a very pleasant method, and as luck would have it, not a single fish disturbed my slumber. Scott, up stream from me and no napper, finally pulled in an 18″ walleye, and woke me to clue me in to where it was at. We started jigging the upper end of the honey hole and it wasn’t too long before I had my walleye. She was under the 16″ length restriction, so I let her swim away, but it was nice to meet her, even if I didn’t eat her.

After spending most of the morning and part of the afternoon in this fashion, we packed up, ate some egg salad sandwiches, chased Beckett into the van, and headed up to where the rest of the world was doing its normal business of pushing virtual paper and making widgets.

None of us missed that.

Regardless, it’s a great book about educating what Rose calls the educational underclass - those that end up in community college or community education programs to whom the mysteries of the ivory tower remain tantalizing, but out of reach. For the most part, these are the students we teach at Lake Superior College.

The first half of the book charts his own education growing up on Vermont Ave. in LA. I think Monopoly got Vermont about right, based on Rose’s portrait (probably worth not one cent more than the $100 asking price). It wasn’t the toughest part of LA, but it was definitely no easy place to grow up. By high school, he’d been labeled “Voc Ed” and was mired in lethargic disinterest until, almost by accident, one of his teachers lit an intellectual spark. His last two years of high school marked an awakening, guided by his English teacher Jack McFarland, which eventually led him to Loyola University, where he nearly flunked out but for the intervention of a couple other teachers there. Finally, he ends up in grad school at UCLA, where he finally becomes disinterested/disillusioned pursuing a PhD in favor of getting involved in literacy.

He joins something called The Teacher Corps in the late ’60s working with disadvantaged South LA elementary students, works for several years with Vietnam Vets in a rehabilitation program, directs a Tutor Center at UCLA, and continues to work with programs that, one way or another, help disadvantaged students gain access to higher education through literacy.

Here’s a smattering of Rosey (though not always rosy) insights:

• Describing remedial literacy curriculum based on “subskills” and achievement tests, he writes, “There ended up being little room in such a curriculum - unless the inventive teacher created it - to explore the real stuff of literacy: conveying something meaningful, communicating information, creating narratives, shaping what we see and feel and believe into written language, listening to and reading stories, playing with the sounds of words.” (109)
• On how we writing teachers interpret error, he writes, “As writers move further away from familiar ways of expressing themselves, the strains on their cognitive and linguistic resources increase, and the number of mechanical and grammatical errors they make shoots up. Before we shake our heads at these errors, we should also consider the possibility that many such linguistic bungles are signs of growth… Error takes place where education begins.” (188-9)
• On how college teachers are trained, he writes, “People emerge from graduate study, then, as political scientists or astronomers or botanists - but not necessarily as educators…it is pretty unlikely that they have been encouraged to think about, say, the cognitive difficulties young people have as they learn how to conduct inquiry in physics or anthropology or linguistics…” (196)
• Finally, “Through all my experiences with people struggling to learn, the one things that strikes me most is the ease with which we misperceive failed performance and the degree to which this misperception both reflects and reinforces the social order.” (205)

Rose ends by talking about what literacy - education and higher ed in general - could be, suggesting “that education is one culture embracing another.” (225) Anyone want a hug?

Seriously, what Rose reminds me ultimately is how human any teaching, but particularly the teaching of writing, is.

While this is certainly not good news, what really slapped me across the face is what happened later with the dentist, where the gaps in Maritha’s education and experience stood out more than her gap-toothed smile. With her eighteenth birthday coming in four months, Sherry and I are seeking continued guardianship, which I’ve had conflicting feelings about.

She and I went in to Dr. Mart together, and he started asking her questions about what happened.

“When did this happen?” he asked.

She gave a confused look, and looked to me for support. I supplied that it had happened a little after noon.

“Did you fall in gym class?”

“No,” she answered, “I got hit by a window.”

“Wasn’t it a door?” I added tentatively.

“No. A window,” she insisted, giving me that you moron, dad look. We agreed that it was a glass door, which is mostly window.

And so the interview continued.

What troubles me is how simultaneously simple and complicated the world is. Talking to the dentist, the doctor, the teacher, the mail carrier, the boy who wants to kiss you, the man who wants you to get in his car - at age seventeen, we hope our daughters can navigate these simple complexities.

Maritha started out with us at age nine. She’d attended school in the Marshall Islands only occasionally and she had a hearing impairment. She probably also suffers from some degree of FAS, though this can’t be completely confirmed without documentation of her gestation. She so wants to be eighteen, to have a driver’s license, a job, and to go shopping whenever she wants.

We’re hoping someday she can be there, but yesterday it hit me again how far she has to go.

There’s nothing about listening to Beethoven that’s usual for Sherry. It’s not that she doesn’t enjoy it; she does, but the old deaf white guy doesn’t get much play in our house. He’s currently drowned out by Death Cab for Cutie, the Grease soundtrack, and olde tyme strains from The Guy’s All Star Shoe Band - eclectic pop/Americana that will change by next week. The symphony in general is something that doesn’t rise to the top of our priority lists in the din of trying to raise three teenage daughters and stay sane in 21st Century middle America.

However, Beethoven recently provided a rare moment for Sherry and me in the middle of our basement stairway as she told me, fresh from an encounter with wonder, about the man and the rose.

When Sherry’s friend Peg called and asked her to see the local symphony’s current concert, ending with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, she accepted because it was a chance for Moms’ Night Out, which she sorely needed. It had been another week of getting elder daughter through job issues, a research paper, a major college decision, and off to D.C. for five days; of laying down the law with middle daughter about homework and responsibility; of driving younger daughter to music lessons and youth group meetings; and of keeping her chin up in spite of her husband’s unhelpful irony.

Moms are also distracted by things like a looming kitchen apocalypse. This night, it was the culinary explosion that occurred when middle daughter and her two friends decided to make fettuccine alfredo and cheesy bread for supper in our kitchen. Half way through the actual meal (which was surprisingly good) she suddenly gasped, “Argh! I was supposed to pick up Peg for the symphony ten minutes ago!�

A quick change and hair check (no pasta - all clear), and she was out the door, picking up Peg, and skating into the concert hall with a few moments to spare.

Locating their seats, they found the end seat occupied by a well dressed, older gentleman. In the empty seat next to him lay a single rose.

They minced delicately past him.

“Excuse me,� said Peg.

“No problem,� said the man.

“Excuse me,� said Sherry.

“No problem at all.�

All the while, the presence of that rose loomed, mysterious and poignant. In the chatter before the conductor took the stage, they speculated.

“Blind date?� said Sherry.

“Internet date,� Peg finally announced.

Sherry agreed, and as the concert began, she stole glances at the man, hoping for his sake that his date would soon arrive. He sat quietly, but didn’t appear to be anxious. He wasn’t looking over his shoulder, anyway. Still, Sherry was feeling his pain. Her hope waned through a violin and viola concerto, and by intermission, the man was clearly stood up.

“What a bummer for him,� said Peg.

“I wonder if he’ll leave now,� Sherry whispered as they stood, stretching their legs and backs in preparation for the Beethoven.

He didn’t leave. When they returned from their intermission duties, they repeated the elegant “excuse me� dance. Then, through the opening strains of Symphony No. 7, he began to perk up. And by the second movement, he was openly enjoying himself.

When the last strains of the timpani disappeared and the applause settled, Sherry and Peg stood to put on their coats and began to edge their way to the aisle. The man, standing facing them, was holding the rose to his chest.

“She loved Beethoven,� he said to no one in particular, smiled to himself, and walked up the aisle.

Deans begins by setting the whole concept of service-learning in the contexts of John Dewey and Paulo Freire. He then fleshes this out into his service learning paradigm:

• writing for the community
• writing about the community
• writing with the community

He develops each of the above with a case study.

Writing for the community is shown through the example of an upper level WAC sport management class at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Students there work with community non-profits, developing actual written usable projects, like a First Aide manual for adolescent swimming instrucors at a local YMCA. This practice is probably best suited for four year institutions where experienced writers can more confidently apply their skills to real world situations.

Writing about the community is shown through the example of first year composition students at Bentley College near Boston. Here, students are partnered with community groups in non-writing service situations like tutoring in an urban elementary school after school program. Students are asked to use their service experiences later in the analysis of a social issue, writing an essay that would also include more traditional research. This comes closest to the type of SL I’ve attempted in my composition classes (minus the traditional research element).

Writing with the community is really what I aspire to, though it’s a daunting undertaking. Deans’ case study is Linda Flower’s Community Literacy Center (CLC) partnership with the English Department at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Founded in 1991, the CLC is located in urban North Pittsburgh. There, undergraduate and graduate student mentors work with urban youth specifically to affect grassroots change. This social activism often takes the form of writing in the CLC’s own publications, and also in other community forums (like newspapers). In Deans’ case study, he shows how CLC students and mentors worked together to address a city curfew issue.

A partnership like the CMU/CLC partnership is much larger than any one instructor/one class situation. Clearly it would require institutional commitment and money. However, I noticed a new Minnesota Campus Compact grant that might fund the beginnings of such a partnership between LSC and local Duluth institutions like Life House, CHUM, Daminao Center, or the Union Gospel Mission. A new 2000 level writing course would probably need to be developed to facilitate the project. It’s something I’m exploring, anyway.

Deans ends the book with several appendices with practical documents from the various case studies, and annotated lists of service learning projects being done at various institutions nation-wide.

Deans also has a student text, Writing and Community Action: A Service-Learning Rhetoric with Readings, that I’ve asked Pearson for a copy of. It might be something I can use with a Comp II class next year.

It turns out I was saved from a tragic fate by a Golden Mongoose…wait, I’m ahead of myself. Turns out that Penguin Book rep Terese Neumann made the same mistake (much to the mirth of two retired Pennsylvania gamblers, for whom our wrong shuttle was right), and she proposed we share a cab to the right hotel. Upon reaching the correct hotel, to our horror we discovered that the driver was a man with no face…err, I’m ahead again. Upon reaching the hotel, aforementioned Penguin discovered she was cash poor, so I bailed her out with assurances that she’d make good when I visited her exhibit in the CCCC exhibit hall. She was true to her word.

Sorry for the long story, but later while I was handing the money she owed me back to her in exchange for books, she gave me a deal on Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz’s second offering, telling me I had to read it FIRST, and I had to let her know what I thought. “I think it’s going to win the National Book Award,” she said.

Well, Terese. Here it is.

I don’t know anything about National Book Award criteria, but Oscar Wao was fascinating, challenging, and well worth reading in spite of what I’ll call some inconsistencies.

Oscar de Leon (Wao is a nickname he earns) is a pathetic Dominican American whose brief and wondrous life is chronicled in these pages. What fascinated me wasn’t Oscar so much, but the rich portrait Diaz draws of Dominican life and history over the last 75 years, the scifi/fantasy references (particularly Tolkein) that permeate every page, and the footnotes. Footnotes have never been this much fun.

I’ll admit that I’m a Dominican historical neophyte, and that Trujillo (Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina [aka El Jefe, Fuckface, or Sauron]) was not someone with whose horrific crimes I was familiar. I can’t say that any more. Through the middle part of the last century, the Dominican people have suffered as much as any people on this planet.

For me, the richest parts of the novel are the histories of Oscar’s mother, Beli, and grandfather, Abelard, whose tragic stories intersect with El Jefe’s in ways that would certainly place him among the worst dictators of all time. Though it’s fiction, from what outside reading I’ve done, I’m certain that Diaz does not exaggerate.

As for Oscar himself, I wasn’t sure I really cared much about him (only about 1/3 of the book is about him). What I found inconsistent were the spare narratives of Oscar’s early life narrated by our Watcher, Yunior, up against the richness of the stories of Beli and Abelard. In theory, Yunior narrates the whole book, but there’s just something missing from his Oscar narratives compared to the others until Oscar returns to the DR himself, and suddenly becomes a compelling character.

Oscar’s transformation is worth waiting for, though, especially since we get one last look at the Golden Mongoose and the man with no face.