I’m typing this with nine fingers. Let’s see how far I get before the anesthetic wears off.

I just returned from Suburban Hospital in Bethesda MD, where kindly Dr. Bieber removed a cyst from under the nail cuticle of my long finger. I had not encountered the term “long finger” previously, but it’s the term of art — it’s on the chart. (The long one, in case you’re wondering, is the one with which Redskins fans offer the Dallas Cowboys salute.)

You’d think he could do such a simple procedure in his office, but no. Medicine is weird, and I’m not talking merely about terminology.

The doctor wrote something on my finger with a Sharpie to make sure he targeted the right digit. They laid me on a gurney, strapped a tourniquet on my left arm (the one where the surgery was taking place) and a blood-pressure cuff on the other arm. They swabbed the business arm with sticky yellow Betadine antiseptic from fingertip to elbow, then fitted an elastic sock over the hand. Then they punched a hole in a big blue tarp, ran my upraised arm through the hole, and tethered the other end of the tarp above my head. This is a sterile tent, they said. Tent indeed. Where, I asked a nurse, are the marshmallows?

Dr. Bieber stuck needles in two spots at the base of the finger, which hurt, but not for long, since they were full of Lidocaine. Then he clamped a teeny tourniquet around my finger. The nurse had said the arm tourniquet was just for backup — he’d probably use the finger tourniquet only. I didn’t see the surgery and I’m glad, but I’d've liked a gander at that baby tourniquet.

By now my finger is as numb as a block of wood. I can feel the doctor doing something to it but can’t tell what because of the tent overhead. The radio is playing a Shania Twain song.

Pull. Scrape. “Isn’t she the one whose husband just ran off?” Dr. Bieber asks. “Yeah,” one of the nurses replies, “and I hear the woman wasn’t half as good-looking as Shania.”

Scrape. Pull. Shania goes away and Journey starts to sing.

Pull. Scrape. A country song comes on. “You like country music?” the doctor asks. “Her sister really likes it,” one of the nurses answers. “She’s from Texas.”

Scrape. Pull. The doctor is putting in the stitches now, to soul music. The two rotator cuffs he did earlier today went fast and he’s ahead of schedule. After he finishes me up, it’s off to the beach for the weekend. A nurse notes there’s rain in the forecast. The doctor makes a noise that might be a laugh, and says he’ll be playing Monopoly with his mother-in-law.

“But first, paperwork,” he says. “I’d rather do paperwork than almost anything.” He picks the phone off the wall, hits a button and begins dictating my case, speaking in medicalese at about 250 words a minute. Every few sentences, he slows down a bit to say: ” … end paragraph.” He hangs up the phone and looks at me. “Did you get all that?” he asks. “Most of it,” I answer. He tells a nurse to put in the last two stitches, we shake hands, and he’s off to the beach. Total elapsed time: Five songs on WASH-FM.

The weirdest moment came after Dr. Bieber took off and the nurses were bandaging me. The finger, still totally numb, felt like it was missing, gone, disappeared — like there was a blank spot in the middle of my hand where I once had a finger. I had a vision of those poor mopes coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, missing much bigger limbs, and wondered whether this is what that felt like.

Now I’m looking down at a bandaged finger half the size of a banana. I’ve typed this far to discover that it’s actually not nine-finger but six-finger typing — touch on the right, hunt-and-peck on the left. There’s no pain yet, three hours after the surgery, but I have Tylenol + codeine in case it comes along. It could be an interesting week ahead for novel-writing.

This is nothing. One of my high-school buddies just had his prostate out. Another is fighting cancer with one hand tied behind his back, because they can’t give him chemo. I made a list the other day of my aging contemporaries. The majority have some heinous crap or other that’ll either kill them or just, if they’re lucky, make their lives miserable. All I have is sleep apnea, a bad back, several orthopedic nuisances, and a finger that could start hurting any minute now. The feeling is just starting to come back.

I’m looking forward to next Tuesday when they take the stitches out. I feel terrible for my friends but a little relieved on my own account. I think I ought to try living a little more fully and being a little more grateful. Who knows? Next time things could be more complicated.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. I invite you to attend “Fall for the Book,” a delightful festival that takes place every year at George Mason University in Fairfax VA, outside Washington DC. This year’s festival takes place Sept. 21-26 on the GMU campus. Headliners include Sue Miller, Ethan Canin, Chinua Achebe, Michael Cunningham, Charles Baxter and … me. I’m participating in a presentation by the Writers Center of Bethesda MD Thursday, Sept. 25, from 1:30 to 3 p.m. It’s in the Provident Bank Tent. Hope you can make it!

The Bobs, as anyone knows who has read my first novel TO LOVE MERCY, was a legendary roller-coaster at the old Riverview Amusement Park on Chicago’s Northwest Side. Riverview, once the “World’s Largest Amusement Park,” was torn down in 1967, leaving not a trace except in the memories of millions of people Of a Certain Age.

What we remember is a wooden roller-coaster of such fierce and fearsome twists, turns and plunges as to yank the guts of the hardiest park-goer. Funny story: My mom and dad always told me to put my glasses in my pocket when riding The Bobs and other rides of its ilk, so I did; but one time I was alone in the two-person car. After being thrown violently from side side, oh, about a dozen times, I got off and fished my shattered glasses out of my pocket.

Since those glorious days of yesteryear, I have ridden a roller-coaster or two. When my son Sam graduated from eighth grade, we took a congratulatory trip with two buddies to New York City and found ourselves at Coney Island on the famous Cyclone. I rode the Cyclone three times (Sam rode it five times) and it is great no doubt … but it ain’t The Bobs. No, The Bobs was and remained the gold standard of roller-coasters until I encountered …

… The Ghostrider.

We were at Knott’s Berry Farm in the Los Angeles area. I was with my grandson, my friend Davida and her two granddaughters. Saving the best for last, we boarded The Ghostrider at the end of a long day.

Folks, this was a roller-coaster to reckon with.

First off, it ascends higher than any park ride I’ve ever been on, then drops at a near-vertical in a screaming plunge toward death that, of course, ends not in death but a neck-snapping swing back toward the heavens.

We whipped, we snapped, we plummeted. Some of us may have puked. No would have blamed us.

I staggered off this hell-ride and plunked down next to Davida, moaning. Davida, who had chosen not to ride, laughed in what might have been the sound of kindly sympathy, or a snicker, or both. “Are you OK?” she asked.

I shook my head, then stopped because it ached. “That roller-coaster,” I said in a froggy whisper, “is better than The Bobs.”

Davida, who has logged her own time on The Bobs, was impressed. “Wow, no kidding,” she said. “Was it fun?”

I shook my head, carefully. “Not exactly,” I said.

“Are you going to ride again?”

“Once was enough.”

By this time we were both laughing and making jokes about getting old, and surely getting old has a lot to do with why one trip on The Ghostrider was plenty. As I wrote this, a day later, the headache still was with me.

But I find myself marveling that, in the era of upside-down twisty thrill rides, Knott’s Berry Farm has gone to the trouble and expense of designing and building a new roller-coaster made out of that beloved old material, wood; and that the damn thing is so demonstrably, objectively, dastardly and dangerously better than my old beloved Bobs.

We had a wonderful day at the park, my grandson and I, the culmination of a six-day adventure that included riding Amtrak’s Southwest Chief from Chicago to Los Angeles. I’m planning to collect my thoughts and write a follow-up blog about the experience. But the Ghostrider part leaves me a little sad. A treasured memory has been diminished. I feel like I’ve lost something. I guess I have.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. My novel-in-progress TO WALK HUMBLY, the first of two sequels to TO LOVE MERCY, is coming along. I’m in the home stretch.

My recent posting about my 50th high school reunion drew a response I’d like to share.

Barbara Douglas Paulus was graduated from Rich Twp. High School, Park Forest IL, one year ahead of me. She organized her own class’s 50th reunion. Her class was small though and, unfortunately, so was the turnout — so we invited her class to our reunion too. Four of them attended.

Barbara was among those who wanted to come but couldn’t. After I posted my thoughts and feelings (scroll down to “Jealousy and hatred: A high school story”), Barbara responded with the following. I’ve cleaned up the punctuation a little, but otherwise it’s pretty much as she wrote it.

Notes: “Paco” was my name in Spanish class. (I still answer to it. Son Sam calls me “Paco.” So do a few others.) Chicago Heights is the next town over from Park Forest; in the earliest days, “PF” kids had to attend school in Chicago Heights.

Here’s what Barbara wrote. It moved me, and maybe it will move you too.

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Wow! Eye-opening for me. I never thought of you as a nerd, just a very adept person that I shared a brand new school with, and “Paco”, I was in awe of your mind.

I too came from a primarily Jewish neighborhood in Uptown district of Chicago, also with a lot of other backgrounds and success stories mixed in, i.e. …

… Bongiovanni’s of Bongi Trucking (Deep Tunnel, Winston Park and other housing projects), who only had a small taxi business at the time but had the first television set I’d ever seen in 1949 … Jonathon and Betty Hole, who were local actors in Chicago and went out to Hollywood, and who owned a car and dragged me all over with my beloved friend Jennifer, most especially to the Wrigley Building where Jonathon played Hot Shot Charlie on Terry and the Pirates on WBBM … The Friedlanders, who owned our grocery store that lent my Dad money many times, which we repaid, so he could raise his family in our more-than-modest two-room basement apartment, where he and mom slept in an in-a-door bed, and I shared the tiny kitchen quarters with my sister in a single Hollywood bed, and my brother in the 6-year crib, and the baby in a bassinet …

I could go on and on but the point is, when we moved to PF [Park Forest] I really missed the [Chicago] neighborhood. And yes, it was a shock, especially since we were the one of the first residents on Ash Street [in Park Forest], so we went from that cozy [city neighborhood] atmosphere to feeling unattached.

Worse yet, for my Mother at 36 years old, she was the oldest mother, and my Dad was an over-the-road trucker so neither fit the image. Dad was gone 6 days a week so Mom had to turn to PTA and her printed by-line columns in the PF Reporter and the Press [local newspapers] as she was left out of “couple” socializing. Mom was an English major at the University of Chicago before turning to nursing at Cook County Hospital.

However, I watched while our new neighbors’ townhouses were built over mud- and lizard-filled ponds between the newly poured sidewalks, and I absolutely fell in love with Park Forest. I think of our life there as the best of times and so, when I went back to reunions, I went with a heart filled with love and gratitude. I missed the city but learned to love the “country.” When we moved [to Park Forest], not one building — other than the old farmhouse where the Police and Fire Dept were housed on Western Avenue — were in sight.

The hard part for me, personally, was going to Chicago Heights to Jefferson Grammar School and then Washington Jr. High, since [in Chicago] I had walked to school along Sheridan Road and got to come home for lunch. All of a sudden I was on the bus and going to a school where the racial mixture was extreme. I was in a cultural shock as well, but made close friends of all races by 7th grade.

Our Mother didn’t allow us into the city on dates or even shopping. Very rarely was I allowed an after-school activity as my responsibilties were numerous with an absent Dad all week. PF was our world. When I go back to the reunions, I am often astounded at how many of our classmates have never left those small confines. I’m glad I’ve lived around the country (FL, CA twice now!, NV), and even more glad to call PF my “hometown”.

I was always just on the outside of the inner circle of the movers and shakers so, like you, I was shocked when I began attending reunions to learn that I was so well thought of. I never had the right body, the right clothes - my family didn’t own a car. This was a huge hardship on my Mother with groceries to be bought for 5 kids. She pulled them home in a wagon from the Jewel [supermarket] ’til they had delivery, and then she could ride home on the nickel bus that went around town.

I feel badly for the “kids” that don’t attend reunions. As we face the September of our years, those wonderful days of our youth shared in our combined memories bring much joy to my soul, even if I only muse on them once in a while. I tell my two daughters that if I “talk out of my head and heart” in my waning years, not to feel sorry for me; I am reliving my youth and will be relishing every memory.

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Thanks, Barbara.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. This Saturday, come visit the Local Author Festival hosted by Barnes & Noble at the Rio Center, Gaithersburg MD. I’ll be among Montgomery County MD authors signing books and chatting. The bookstore is in the Washingtonian Center (at “the Rio”), 21 Grand Corner Ave., Gaithersburg, Maryland, Tel: (301) 721-0860.

I thought I was a nerd in high school, but I was mistaken. This is a story of jealousy, hatred, and how I discovered my error.

My high school, Rich Township (now Rich East), is in Park Forest IL, a suburb 35 miles south of downtown Chicago. “PF” was carved out of clay and mud in the late ‘40s to provide affordable housing for returning veterans and their families. The developer was called American Community Builders and that is precisely what they did – created an entire town from scratch, 500 homes at a time.

PF was more too – a magnet for people we’d now call mind workers, as well as those who came to be called organization men. In fact, “The Organization Man,” the famous pop-sociology work of the ‘50s, was a study of PF.

Families streamed to PF from all around the country, not just Chicago, because it was so affordable. It was also, in adspeak, “a great place to raise kids” – which, to prospective homebuyers, means (1) Your kids will have lots of playmates, and (2) the schools are great.

But PF was not necessarily a great place to raise a kid like me nor my sister Judy. We’d relocated from Hyde Park, then a heavily Jewish, intellectually fizzy, racially changing, scary-exciting neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago that is home to the University of Chicago. (Note: Barack Obama lives in Hyde Park. Even though I support Obama, I think he’s definitely going to be dogged by the accusation that he’s a pointy-headed-liberal-who-can’t-park-his-bicycle-straight. I mean, that IS Hyde Park.)

Being uprooted from Hyde Park and plunked down in PF was culture shock. For one thing, out of some 25,000 residents in 1954, not a single household was black. Far worse for me though, the high school was the finest flower of the Eisenhower era, dominated by basketball players and the cheerleaders who loved them – types I’d never encountered in my then-young life.

I wasn’t blond, I wasn’t a WASP, and I was overweight. I couldn’t play basketball, baseball or football (too small, too uncoordinated). Such were the social pressures to conform that I did go out for wrestling and track, but neither lasted more than a week or two. I felt like an outcast.

I drew unto me a group of friends who were also outcasts, or so I reasoned under the Groucho Marx theory: ‘I wouldn’t join a club that would have me as a member.’ I did go out with girls but not very successfully, success being defined as sex sex sex. (Did I mention I was awfully horny? Girls aren’t actually drawn to that, as I was to discover later in life. Much later.) Overcome with jealous rage, I fantasized that I’d go to a reunion one day and discover that the high-school heroes had ended up selling shoes at Kinney’s.

Mercifully, high school ended. I went on to have a great life, in which various successes slowly eroded my feelings of nerdiness. Then, six or seven years ago, I attended my first high school reunion and began to discover what high school had really been like.

People were glad to see me – very glad in some cases. Odder still, I was glad to see them. One guy went on and on about a wonderful piece I’d written in the student newspaper, which he could virtually recite from memory. I remembered neither the piece, nor the guy.

That reunion had been for all the classes from ‘54 through ‘65, not my graduating class. My class, ‘58, recently concluded its 50th Reunion in Las Vegas. And guess what? No one was selling shoes in Kinney’s.

The high school heroes and heroines were present, to be sure. After living golden lives in high school, most seem to have gone on to golden lives as adults. But somehow along the way, they’d turned into human beings too. I had deep, soulful conversations with several. Some had suffered misfortune and were surprisingly candid about these experiences. I had no impulse to gloat.

I’d seen only one or two of these classmates since Graduation Day. But seeing them again after 50 years, I felt rushes of feeling as if I were 18 again.

I shouldn’t have needed reunions to wake up to the reality of my high school experience. Those high-school “outcast” buddies I mentioned above? We’ve stayed in touch over the years and I love them as much as any guys I know. But they say my “outcast” theory is a lot of crap. None of them think of us as outcasts in high school.

The reunion ended in a warm bath of love. More than one participant wants to reunite again. Nineteen (out of some 200) are dead, a few are in wheelchairs or on oxygen, but most of us look pretty good for a bunch of 67- and 68-year-olds. Not just the jocks and the cheerleaders either — the rest of us too.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. I haven’t been posting much lately because I’m hard at work whipping TO WALK HUMBLY into shape. Even though “Humbly,” the sequel to my first novel TO LOVE MERCY, isn’t finished, my literary agent Michele Rubin is ready to start showing it around.

P.P.S. If you’re in the Washington DC area, mark your calendar for Saturday, June 7. I’ll be appearing from 1-3 p.m. at the Small Press Book Fair at Barnes & Noble in the Rio Center, Gaithersburg MD.

A month ago, everyone I knew was elated about the presidential campaign. Now everyone I know just wants it to go away.

Barack has acquired a barnacle called Rev. Wright. Rev. Wright reminds me of Billy Carter (anyone remember Billy?), who climbed out of a beer bottle to become a constant embarrassment to Brother Jimmy, the big difference being that Jimmy already had been elected President, and Barack hasn’t. Poor Barack.

Hillary, a product of Yale Law School, wants us to think she chews Red Man and drives a semi.

And Straight-Talking John has flip-flopped like a beached tuna. By now he has succeeded in renouncing every position he ever held, putting even John Kerry to shame.

It is to barf.

But I come to bury these Caesars, not to praise them. Let’s start with the Democratic Party.

Howard Dean sent an email the other day asking me to take a look at his new straight-talking commercial that nails John McCain for saying we’ll stay in Iraq “100 years.” ‘We’ve got him on tape! Look! Look!’ Howard screamed, jumping up and down and puffing out his cheeks. Instead, I went to YouTube and watched the entire 6+-minute town hall meeting.

I saw a McCain who was giving a rather reasoned disquisition on how the U.S. always maintains troops for decades in places where it has fought, like Korea and Bosnia, and say Iraq would be no different. He did say “100 years” (bet HE’s sorry), but he also added a big “if,” which is that we’d be likely to stay in Iraq only as long as U.S. troops weren’t being killed.

So much for honesty on the part of the Democratic Party. Now let’s talk about one of its candidates, Poor Barack.

Poor Barack’s message of hope is being drowned by the guy he once (rather recently) compared to a beloved but crazy old uncle. (All right, Poor Barack didn’t use the word “crazy,” but we got the point.) Rev. Wright is crazy all right — crazy about himself. I was ready to feel some sympathy for a guy whose lifetime reputation gets trashed in about 90 minutes of presidential campaigning, but Rev. Wright has worn out his welcome. In this coming-out tour of his, it’s been all about The Rev.

Before he appeared at the Press Club, I wasn’t convinced Wright was a bad guy. After all, I recently wrote that he was merely expounding liberation theology, and that us whites ought not to be so naive because this stuff has been around a long time. Again though I went to YouTube, this time to view 6+ unedited minutes of one of Wright’s most inflammatory sermons.

I’m big on context and fairness, and I can truly say that in those 6+ minutes of context, Wright discredited himself. He told about a half a dozen lies and at least as many half-truths. He also displayed a most un-Christian demeanor, using the very kind of invective he accuses his enemies of using. Then he went before the Press Club audience and basically took Poor Barack down, saying our boy must say what he says because he’s just a politician. Ouch, Rev.

This couldn’t be worse for Poor Barack. Follow me here. Barack is trying to be the un-Jesse Jackson, the candidate who will transcend race and get us beyond the legacy of the Civil War that still cripples us Americans, black and white alike. But Barack attended The Rev’s church while The Rev was The Rev there, and Barack did so for years. The Rev conducted Barack’s marriage and baptized his kids. Barack says he never heard The Rev on one of his racist stemwinders but, after watching the YouTube video, I’m finding that harder to swallow.

If Barack is telling the truth, then he’s either naive or stupid — and we know he is neither of those things. And if Barack is lying, well … he’s lying — about pretty serious stuff — and looking more like what The Rev says he is: just another politician.

(Full disclosure: I really like Poor Barack. I think his call to cast off our 150-year-old racial millstone is just what America needs, and I’ve said so numerous times in numerous ways, in this space and elsewhere. I don’t think he really is “just another politician.” But if he starts looking like one to enough voters, it doesn’t matter what he “really” is.)

Another guy I really like — or anyway used to like — is Straight-Talking John. I am a sucker for straight talk, for one thing, and this guy sure has delivered it — for example, getting up in front of nativist audiences and talking about opening doors to Mexican immigrants, for God’s sake. He had a devil-may-care insouciance; he almost seemed to embrace self-immolation. For perverse observers of the political scene like myself, that’s very attractive. Sure, as a registered Democrat and proud liberal, I disliked many many of S-T John’s positions, but I thought he had the character and temperament to make a fine president. (Something I also thought, and still think, that Obama has. We’ll get to Hillary in a moment.)

But now John, who once blasted broad-scale tax-cutting as irresponsible, wants to extend the Bush tax cuts into forever. Now fiscally conservative John is now calling for a gas tax holiday this summer. (Great idea, John — that ought to dampen consumption nicely and drive crude prices back below $20 by, oh, Aug. 20, max.) John has a health plan that isn’t a plan at all, and the temerity to go into Appalachia and the Ninth Ward and tell those sad sacks that he doesn’t really think the federal government is the right body to do anything for them. (Unless you count the gas-tax holiday.) John! John! Straight-Talking John! We miss you, man!

Finally, there’s Hillary. I mean honestly, what’s to like? And voters really don’t like her. She wins Pennsylvania and her negative poll ratings go UP. How does she do that? Actually, I think I know. She lies about sniper fire in Bosnia to make herself look tough; she says illegal aliens (a) should (b) shouldn’t be given driver’s licenses; she claims the votes of two states (Michigan and Florida) that didn’t conduct legitimate primaries; she flip-flops on NAFTA, which could not have happened without the Clinton Administration’s massive support. Why, she even sides on a gas tax holiday with John the Economic Genius.

And then there’s Bill the Ineffable. Bill’s out there undercutting Poor Barack with the seamiest sort of racial manipulation, then pretending butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. These people want us to hand them the Red Phone for four, make that eight, years? It is, as I said, to barf.

It’s working, sorta. They’re tearing down Poor Barack (although failing to build up Big Bad Hil), and her argument gains traction that she deserves the nomination because she wins in the big Democratic states. Meantime John the Forked-Tongued seems to be trying to piss away this windfall, this gift the Democrats are trying to give him, by climbing into bed with W., the most hated president since … lemme see … Andrew Johnson?

And finally … this all may pass. Really, it may. Poor Barack still has the popular majority of primary votes in his pocket. He still occasionally remembers to remind us that all this back-and-forth is B.S., and to keep our eye on the ball — the economy and the war and health care. He probably wins the nomination; I make it 6:5 (any takers?). Hillary probably bites her lip and campaigns for Barack. Bill too, maybe. Then in the actual campaign, maybe John tries to Swift-Boat Barack and maybe it works. (It should be easy. Between Bill and Rev. Wright, the manual already is written.) Or maybe John nominates Cheney for vice president and starts wearing George Bush’s old clothes, and it doesn’t. Except for the Cheney part, John’s almost there already.

I don’t know. After the Democratic convention, my crystal ball grows cloudy. All I do know is, I wish I could stop paying attention. Too bad I can’t.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. This coming weekend, you can support our great Montgomery County MD library system at absolutely no cost, by buying ANYTHING (except memberships and gift cards) at ANY Barnes & Noble, ANYwhere in the world. Really — any THING any WHERE, not just in Montgomery County. Just give the cashier the following “Bookfair ID”: 238774. Write down that Bookfair ID number now. Then hie thee to the nearest Barnes & Noble this Friday-Saturday-Sunday and shop shop shop, hear?

The kids had finally succeeded in pissing me off.

It was the fourth day of my five-day stint as Writer in Residence at Thurgood Marshall Middle School on Chicago’s Northwest Side. Each of my four classes had been wonderful except this one — yet just the day before, these kids had turned wonderful too.

Now on Day 4, though, they were worse than ever — talking to each other, not paying attention. One girl in particular liked to throw me off with a running commentary under her breath; yet I could tell she was excited and motivated. I figured she’d been class clown so long she couldn’t stop now even if she wanted to. But on Day 3 she’d proven me wrong by becoming my most enthusiastic participant … and proven me right about being excited.

Now it’s Day 4 though and Day 3 might as well not have happened. They’re chattering away. I try to discuss the assigned story and they haven’t read it. Oops, there goes 20 minutes and what to do now? “Could we write our final paper instead?” someone asks. I grab as if for a life preserver. “OK, write for 10 minutes.” What do they do? Chatterchatterchatter.

I’ve been had. I’m pissed and I’m afraid I show it. “I’ve been trying to treat you like adults,” I say. “I think that’s a new experience. All your lives you’ve been graded and corrected and told what to do, and now here’s someone trying to treat you like a colleague, a fellow writer. I have no power over you: I can’t give you a grade, I can’t send you to the principal. But if I’m not mistaken, you asked to be in this class. You want to learn what I’m trying to teach. Well, you are only going to get out of this class what you put into it. You can only learn how to analyze the story if you read the story. You can only learn to write by writing.”

They’re quiet during my tirade. Then I ask them to start writing and they pull out their pads and pens, bend their little heads and write in silence for 10 minutes. Wow, I think. So this is what it’s like to be a teacher.

Actually, my inner teacher has been coming out a little more each day. I slow down, explain more, spell out, define words I’d been sure (on Day 1) they’d understand. Around Day 2.5 I begin getting very directive: Get out your pads, put your pads away, start writing, stop writing, stand up, sit down. I’d been warned that kids won’t want to speak, won’t want to volunteer, and I quickly discover how true that is. But …

… around Day 2 or 3, one girl asks to read what she’s written to the class. Then another. Then a third. I have the presence of mind not to utter a word of critique: Instead I lead a round of applause for each reader.

… I’ve prepared about 60 “hooks” — first lines of potential stories. Example: “Sunny said he had to return the U-Haul by six o’clock or pay for another day so there we sat, staring at everything we owned piled up in the middle of the floor …” I cut these up and put the slips into my white straw hat. Every day I pass the Magic Hat and have the kids spend five minutes completing the story. I make the rules tougher each day, and on Day 4 I announce they’ll write for twice as long — 10 minutes, not 5. Afterward, almost all say longer is better. More time to think, more time to get into our stories, they say. So on Day 5, I have them write for 20 minutes … and, glory be, they like that best of all.

… At the end, one of the girls has written 7+ chapters of a novel. Another girl, who asked for critique on Day 3, hands me a complete rewrite on Day 5 that is a far stronger piece.

This was a tough week. On my 30-minute break between Class #2 and Class #3 the first day, I just sat and stared into space, too pooped even to read the newspaper. After Class #4, my armpits were soaked.

The classes were a mix — some kids already writers, some writer wannabes, some with learning disabilities, a few in bilingual education. Something like 90% were Latinos, and 92% were classified as in poverty.

I didn’t learn that 92% statistic until I’d been teaching a day or so, and when I heard it I was stunned. As far as I was concerned, these kids are great — interested, motivated, excited, more than a few with that light shining in their eyes. One or two troublemakers, sure, and several with apparent language or learning problems; but when it came time to write, those heads were bent over their pads too, writing in silent concentration.

I started out my week with only one real goal: To silence their inner critic, to drive a stake through the heart of the little demon who sits on every writer’s shoulder and whispers, “You suck.” I told the kids that rules matter, spelling matters, grammar matters, and they’d go to English class and learn and get graded on that stuff, but that in my class that stuff didn’t matter — just write. I told them all first drafts are crappy and it’s OK, that’s why God made second drafts. I read them Anne Lamott and Elmore Leonard and a lot more besides, all to get them to that point on Day 5 where they’d write for 20 minutes and not want to stop.

And now it’s over. The second school had a last-minute conflict and canceled my gig with apologies. Frankly, I’m not losing sleep over it. The Chicago weather has been beastly, I have to get up at 5:15, I miss my wife and family, and, frankly, Week Two would be drudgery as much as discovery.

I am left wondering how professional teachers do what they do — “on” five days a week, doing five or six “shows” a day, toughest audiences anywhere, one false move and you’re a goner. Not only that — you have to improvise, respond to what the kids give you, be ready to turn on a dime. As my “handler” Dan August put it, it’s like playing jazz. Angelina Jolie probably works one-fiftieth as hard and as much, and doesn’t worry about live audiences.

Meantime, teachers probably earn about the same as Angelina’s gardener. Most teachers surely have the brains, skills and stage presence to earn more, yet they put in 40-year careers, slogging away each day in the face of cutbacks, parental indifference, crappy facilities, budget cuts and now No Child, hoping to see that light in a few eyes. I doff the Magic Hat to them.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. Good news: My novel TO LOVE MERCY has been honored by selection for the Open Book Program of the Institute for Positive Living — one of only three books selected each year. The Institute, a nonprofit group dedicated to instilling a love of reading in underprivileged kids, was to buy books for 250 kids and fly me back to Chicago to address them but …

P.P.S. Bad news: They serve kids down to 3rd grade, and TO LOVE MERCY is not appropriate for that age group. With embarrassment and regret, they backed out. But they love the novel and have offered a …

P.P.P.S. Consolation prize: Someone in their organization — a board member maybe — works for Oprah. They’re going to try getting a book to The Big O via that individual. Boy, do I hope they succeed.

I have white friends, people who ought to know better, who are shocked, shocked that a minister of the cloth would say the things Rev. Jeremiah Wright has said.

Rev. Wright, in case you’ve been sleeping under a rock, is the retired pastor of Barack Obama’s church in Chicago. He has been caught on YouTube saying highly critical things about the U.S. government and its alleged mistreatment of African-Americans over the years. Probably the most incendiary quote was this one, from Wikipedia:

“‘The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color’, referring to AIDS origins theories, and ‘The government gives them the drugs [referring to the Iran-Contra Affair], builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing “God Bless America.” No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people…God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.’”

I have to ask those white friends of mine and others like them: How could you not know this was going on? How could you be unaware that many black Americans believe HIV is a government plot against them? That their government has been foisting addictive street drugs on them with malice aforethought? That they’ve been treated by that same government as less than human since, oh, slavery?

[I said “many.” Certainly not all black Americans believe such stuff. But as Senator Obama said in his big speech on race a few days ago, a “legacy of defeat” still flourishes in many corners of black America — mostly within the underclass, but also in the upper strata — that leads some African-Americans to believe the worst, including even paranoia about HIV plots. In light of syphilis experiments on uneducated, unsuspecting black men at Tuskegee, maybe such paranoia, though ridiculous, becomes understandable.]

I am not here to defend Rev. Wright, but to ask again: Why the heck are we whites so surprised? Aren’t we listening?

Guess not.

A lot of us whites seem to think race isn’t much of a problem these days, and things certainly have changed for the better. We see black faces in the White House (Rice, Powell), on the screen (Rock, Berry), on the courts (Magic) and the links (Tiger), even in some boardrooms (Richard Parsons of AOL, Bob Johnson of BET). We see black faces in our workplaces too and some are doing well; some have become our friends, or anyway workplace buddies. And now one African-American has a good shot at becoming President. But as that individual correctly stated in his speech:

“For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table.”

And, I would add, in the pulpit. My white friend Richard says, “I cannot imagine any Catholic priest saying, in public, ‘God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human.’” But actually the Catholic priests of the liberation theology movement have made many similar denunciations of repressive governments in Latin America and the Caribbean.

So did our secular saint, Dr. Martin Luther King. Dr. King is currently being held up as the anti-Jeremiah Wright, but here’s what he said in a 1968 sermon at his Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta [quoted by E.J. Dionne in today’s Washington Post]:

“God didn’t call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war. . . . And we are criminals in that war. We’ve committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I’m going to continue to say it. And we won’t stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation. But God has a way of even putting nations in their place.”

So what is it with us whites? How can we so quickly forget Dr. King’s truly radical critique of America, and the even more radical critique of Malcolm X who many of us now profess to revere? Folks, I even listen to Louis Farrakhan. I detest him as an anti-Semite and worse, but I know he speaks for a segment of black American society, so I pay attention when he speaks and try to understand where he’s coming from.

I try to listen to the conversations of ordinary black Americans too, and participate in them when I can. It isn’t so hard, even if you don’t have black friends. Here in the Washington area, just tune in to the call-in shows on WPFW-FM, 89.3. In Chicago, where I’ve been spending a lot of time lately, tune in WVON-AM, 1690. Heck, on a good day you can even get a semi-earfull on C-SPAN.

Since slavery ended 143 years ago, our society has been stuck on this question of race. We can’t get past it because we won’t talk about it — not in an honest, open and forthright way, anyhow. We’re all of us, white and black, walking on eggs, afraid we’ll come to blows (or worse) if we say what we really think. And not only do we fail to talk; we also fail to listen, to creep out of our comfort zone and try to hear what the other guy is saying, even if it makes us squirm.

But change might be at hand at last. This presidential race has handed us a golden opportunity. Mr. Obama, responding to political pressure, has shown the leadership to take the question seriously. He is inviting us all, white and black, to start saying what’s on our minds, and thereby perhaps start to push the 800-pound gorilla out of our living rooms forever. I for one hope we accept the challenge.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. I’ll be in the Chicago area from March 28 through April 12. I am “Writer in Residence” at Thurgood Marshall Middle School (3/28-4/5) and Albany Park Multicultural Academy (4/6-12), teaching 7th and 8th graders to write narrative. How cool is that?

My friend Margie Weiner died of cancer Tuesday, not yet 60 years old.

Margie was a kid when I first met her, working for — sometimes against — the ineffable David Swit. David, although my dear friend (and ski buddy), was (in)famous for bullying his staff — except for two: Karen Harrington and Margie. Both these redoubtable women told David where to stick it on a daily basis, but it wasn’t only that: Without Karen, everyone would have walked off the job; without Margie, the money would have stopped pouring in.

Margie went on to become marketing director of many more companies in what used to be the newsletter business (now we call ourselves the “specialized information industry”). Then Margie started running companies — Food Chemical News, American Lawyer. She was smart, sharp, fast on her feet; a little bitty thing, but tough enough when she had to be. One of her eulogizers used the word “capable” to sum her up professionally, and that she surely was.

She was impatient with incompetence but encouraging where she saw promise. She’d knock herself out for you — not for payback but because you were her friend. She was funny, she was chummy, she made you feel good. It’s not surprising she had hundreds of friends, not surprising that she became president of our trade association (then called the Newsletter & Electronic Publishers Assn. [NEPA], now the Specialized Information Publishers Assn. [SIPA]).

Margie and Larry fell in love when they were kids and were still in love Tuesday when she died. When I saw them several months ago, Larry was on compassionate leave from his job but facing having to return to work Jan. 1. As I watched him take care of her I thought, ‘This guy isn’t going back to work as long as this woman is breathing,’ and he didn’t.

Margie and Larry have two kids, Sam and Alexis. Sam spoke at length this morning, happy and funny as he recalled his happy, funny mom the way she’d like to be remembered. He lost it a bit at the end, but who wouldn’t? Alexis, through her grief, could speak only briefly.

Sam and his wife are expecting their first child in a few weeks. Margie had wanted to live to see this first grandchild. She’d wanted to visit Israel this spring too. When I saw her, frail and head-scarved but just as funny and upbeat as ever, I was pretty sure she’d accomplish both things. But she didn’t.

Margie and Larry were Jewish and observant. I’m Jewish and not observant but, as anyone who’s read my novel TO LOVE MERCY knows, I’m sure interested in religion. One of the things I’ve thought a lot about in recent years is God, or more specifically, the idea of God.

I used to think there was no God; then I realized that what I REALLY thought is that there is no personal God. That is, God isn’t paying attention: He or She (or It) doesn’t know what I’m doing, nor anyone, nor cares. No rewards for good behavior, no punishment for bad, no answered prayers, no eternity of harp-playing above the clouds, no end to man’s inhumanity to man. For most of us, once those things are gone, God’s gone, but that’s OK with me. Of course He/She/It exists, if you say so. Now can we stop arguing about it?

But every now and then I feel the touch of magic in my life and I think I see the hand of God. My kids, both adopted, but so much in tune with me that they must be my True Son and Daughter, the kids God meant me to have. My wife Carol, who loves me when I least deserve it and whose patience and understanding are without end. How can such luck exist but for a caring God? wonder I. Maybe such God-thoughts are just my Sunday-School training, implanted at such an early age that I’ll never rationalize my way out of it. But then I think, So what if they are? Haven’t I reached an age where it’s OK to be inconsistent if I want?

Margie was buried this sunny bright March morning in a pine box, its sole ornament a Star of David. The body returns to the dust but the soul finds its way to be rejoined with God, the rabbi said, and as I stood looking on with hundreds of Margie’s friends, that seemed right enough to me. There may not be room for a kazillion harp-players anywhere — not even Heaven — but there certainly ought to be room in an infinite and eternal God’s heart for Margie’s soul, and mine and yours and everyone else’s too.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. Margie’s family is establishing a scholarship for marketing students. You can help it along with a tax-deductible donation to the Specialized Information Publishers Foundation, http://www.sipaonline.com/Foundation/SIPF_mission.htm

P.P.S. My friend David Swit, mentioned above, himself died several years ago of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a hardening of the lung tissues without apparent cause for which the only cure is a lung transplant. David died young too, just a few years into his 60s. David could drive you nuts (especially if you worked for him) but he had kick-ass news instincts and his generosity, kindness and good fellowship to others was legendary. Like Margie, he also was a president of NEPA. David was more serious about having fun than almost anyone I’ve ever known. His watchword was: “Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first.” Fortunately for David and the rest of us, he did.

P.P.P.S. TO WALK HUMBLY, sequel to TO LOVE MERCY, is half-plus-three-chapters-written. Going way slower than I’d like, but I think some of it is pretty good. No way I’m going to meet my April 1 completion deadline, but at least I know where I’m heading.

We all know the habit of reading for pleasure is dying. But a chilling article in the current issue of The New Yorker (”Twilight of the Books, www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2007/12/24/071224crat_atlarge_crain/) envisions the day when reading for pleasure may become merely “an increasingly arcane hobby.”

For many in America, I believe that day already has arrived. The question then becomes, Why does it matter? Why, when we have great choices available to us at little or no cost on TV, in the movies, on the Web and elsewhere, does it matter that we no longer rely on the printed word to stimulate our thoughts and imaginations?

For one thing, it matters because reading IS a unique, and uniquely stimulating, activity. Watching TV or a movie is principally passive, whereas reading is principally an activity of involvement. The action on the screen washes over you. But there is no “action” on the page; YOU must create the pictures, the sounds, the scents, the ambience. The author gives you the blocks; it’s up to you to build the building.

Right now I am in the middle of Bruce Wagner’s scarifying novel I’M LOSING YOU, Book I of his “Cellphone Trilogy.” It’s a great example of what I’m talking about. It is hands down the best thing ever written about Hollywood; but, even though it is about the movies, no movie could ever capture its subtleties. The novel is written in at least a dozen voices, through at least a dozen points of view, and every one of these narrators is unreliable. We the readers know more about them than they know about themselves, because of the skills of this uncommonly gifted author, who says so much but leaves so much more unsaid. Wagner is a screenwriter himself, but it doesn’t surprise me that he chose the novel form to tell this story.

I am also reading THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON MUSIC by Daniel J. Levitin, a perfectly fascinating primer on neuroscience written with great panache by a guy who was in a rock band before he got his Ph.D. This book could indeed be made into a great series on PBS or the Discovery Channel, but you’d be watching a long long time before such a series could relay all the fascinating knowledge Levitin gracefully packs into 320 pages.

For another thing, failing to read for pleasure may be costing us some of our abilities to think. The New Yorker article makes this point in a variety of ways, among them the following. Quoting from a recent National Endowment for the Arts report, “To Read or Not to Read,” it says (striking terror into the hearts of parents everywhere): “Poor reading skills correlate heavily with lack of employment, lower wages, and fewer opportunities for advancement.”

And here’s another cost we risk, which I ran across while researching my recent presentation on getting boys to read: Fiction coaxes us to place ourselves in the shoes of characters we won’t encounter in life, thereby building our capacities for empathy and understanding — which, whether you’re caring for an injured person or negotiating a business deal, can be real useful in real life.

There’s a lot of fascinating neuroscience in the New Yorker article too, and some equally fascinating cultural anthropology. It compares our thinking styles with those of preliterate “oral” cultures to show how reading molds our worldviews and shapes what we are pleased to call “intelligence.” In one study it cites, illiterate peasants were unable or unwilling to make logical inferences about hypothetical situations. “Asked by [the researcher’s] staff about polar bears, a peasant grew testy: ‘What the cock knows how to do, he does. What I know, I say, and nothing beyond that!’” It continues:

“[Another researcher] synthesized existing research into a vivid picture of the oral mind-set. Whereas literates can rotate concepts in their minds abstractly, orals embed their thoughts in stories. According to [the researcher], the best way to preserve ideas int he absence of writing is to ‘think memorable thoughts,’ whose zing insures their transmission. [Shades of writing a “grabber” novel opening!] In an oral culture, cliche and stereotype are valued, as accumulations of wisdom, and analysis is frowned upon, for putting those accumulations at risk. There’s no such concept as plagiarism, and redundancy is an asset that helps an audience follow a complex argument.”

Not only novels will go bye-bye, but newspapers too (gone already, eh?), with their ability to present argument and counter-argument and go beneath the surface in a way broadcast news cannot do. Indeed, the New Yorker author, Caleb Crain, seems to think all is lost. “No effort of will is likely to make reading popular again,” he wrings his hands. “Children may be browbeaten, but adults resist interference with their pleasures.”

Hey, I do this stuff too. I listen to recorded books in the car all the time. I’m listening to Tom Perrotta’s LITTLE CHILDREN right now, and it’s first rate in the way a fine novel ought to be — you savor the prose and fill in the blanks, much as you’d do if you were reading instead of auditing. Because of that need to fill in the blanks, it seems to me that listening to books is a lot more like reading them than watching movies is.

I know this is a pretty heavy topic for Christmas Eve so I’ll lighten up. Have wonderful holidays, everyone. There’ll be enough time in the New Year to be afraid, very afraid.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. Remember about me being asked to be “Writer in Residence” at Thurgood Marshall Middle School in Chicago? Make that two schools. Thurgood Marshall has talked me up to the nearby Albany Park Multicultural Academy. For two weeks in early spring, I’ll be teaching seventh and eighth graders how to write narrative. Apropos of the above topic, if I were to save a soul or two I’d be a happy guy.

P.P.S. Apropos of none of the above (except the movies), the boffo boxoffice hit of the moment is “I Am Legend.” If you want to see a truly awful movie — implausible from the first scene on, maudlin, badly acted, badly directed, muddled story, bad ending, zero out of a possible five stars, what in the world can I think of to say worse about it? — this is that movie. Bah humbug!

I’m not planning to vote for Mitt Romney. He’s smart, competent and has a great jawline, but he is a shameful flip-flopper, a man so eager to get elected that he is ready to abandon whatever principles he may have had.

My opposition has nothing to do with his religion though and, if you oppose Romney, I hope your opposition is not on religious grounds either.

In fact, I’d like to stick up for Romney’s religion, or anyway its secular aspects.

Romney is a Mormon. Mormonism – more properly known as the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints, or LDS – is a purebred American religion that emerged during the 1830s when a young man in upstate New York, Joseph Smith, claimed to have discovered buried golden tablets inscribed with new religious instructions from heaven. Smith’s followers ultimately migrated to Utah. There, they created their heaven on earth centered in Salt Lake City, and there it remains, though plenty of Mormons reside elsewhere too.

I met my first Mormon in high school, a kid named David Bedwell. He was not unusual in any discernible way. I don’t even know how or why I knew he was a Mormon. I assumed Mormons were Christians like everyone else (except us Jews).

Then I started going out West to ski and met lots more Mormons. Seventy per cent of Utahns are Mormons, and Utahns are nice. Unusually nice – polite, solicitous, well-mannered beyond what you’d expect in, say, New York City. (No, let’s be realistic and compare Utahns to, say, Chicagoans. Nicer than most Chicagoans. WAY nicer than most New Yorkers.)

Mormons are more than nice; they are unusually successful in American society. They are relatively affluent (Utah median income is $45,726 vs. $41,994 nationwide); relatively generous (22% of Mormons give $5,000 a year or more to church-related causes, vs. 9% of Southern Baptists and 2% of Catholics, according to J. Quin Monson of BYU and David Campbell of Notre Dame, quoted in the Boston Phoenix); and relatively self-sacrificing. At any moment there are about 50,000 young Mormons giving a year or so of their lives as missionaries – proselytizing, to be sure, but also doing good and helping others. The LDS Church strongly urges its youth to be missionaries; Mitt Romney served as a Mormon missionary for 2½ years.

And Mormons have stable families. While many Mormons divorce at rates comparable to other Americans, Mormons who commit to one another in the demanding “temple marriage” show only a 6% divorce rate. (Source: BYU Prof. Daniel K. Judd, quoted in the Los Angeles Times.)

Mormon family stability traces back to some unusual Mormon “family values.” From the BBC website:

“Mormon families differ from other families in that they can continue to exist as families after earthly death; and they live with the expectation that they will live again with their ancestors and their eventual descendants. Mormon parents regard it as their duty … to have children in order to create physical bodies for spirits to come to earth in order to fullfil God’s plan.”

I can think of two other religious groups that have been extraordinarily successful in their respective societies despite being tiny minorities (1.8% to 1.9% of the population), and in the face of religious persecution that sometimes rises to the level of violence: Jews in America, and Sikhs in India. The basic beliefs of Mormons, Jews and Sikhs may have little in common, but all three groups share a commitment to the centrality of family life.

(Sikhs occupy a niche in Hindu-dominated Indian society strikingly analogous to that of Jews in America. Carol and I know a lot of Sikhs, and we spent a month in India as the guest of Sikhs. It’s a long story, don’t ask.)

When it comes down to it, I don’t care what religious beliefs my President holds as long as he or she is doing a job for me. On that score, Mitt and I seem to diverge. Facing the same kind of voter hostility because of his Mormonism that John F. Kennedy faced in 1960 on account of his Roman Catholicism, Romney just delivered a major speech about faith in public life. He felt compelled to reassure voters he believes “that Jesus Christ is the son of God and the savior of mankind.” While he called for religious tolerance in public life, Romney also said “nativity scenes and menorahs should be welcome in our public places,” and added: “Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom.”

Romney may welcome more demonstrations of religiosity in public life but lately I’ve had a bellyful of it. I deplore the litmus tests candidates feel compelled to take these days as they try to out-pander one another for the votes of the faithful. I’m with JFK who in his 1960 speech said: “I believe in a president whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation, or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.”

Yeah, Mitt, I knew John Kennedy and, believe me, you are no John Kennedy. And by the way, where did you pick up that ridiculous nickname?

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. Congratulations to my baby sister Judith Susan Joseph Thompson Assisi, affectionately known as Hey You, on her release from thralldom. Welcome to the free world, Toots. Now get to work on your tennis game.