All Dogs Go to Heaven?

“You think dogs will not be in heaven? I tell you, they will be there long before any of us,” wrote Robert Louis Stevenson in the late nineteenth century.

Apparently, Stevenson, the author of such thrilling adventure novels for all ages as Treasure Island and Kidnapped, was not a jogger. He certainly never encountered the dogs I’ve met on my daily run. Otherwise, he might have given pause to a few of my canine acquaintances.

There’s Chewy, a hyperactive little white terrier who shares none of the same benevolence of his fellow Scot Stevenson. Chewy would be sitting blissfully in his front yard, or sniffing about on the property, when he’d hear my approach. He’d race frenetically to the bottom of the driveway, only to be brought up short by an invisible electronic fence.

One day, he broke through the barrier and chased after me. Fearful of tripping over him or being nipped on an ankle, I stopped. His insistent yapping, and my attempts to mollify him, eventually brought forth his owner, who unconvincingly assured me that Chewy likes to play and would never bite anyone. When the same interruption happened again, I found it less troublesome simply to redirect my course.     

Chewy, though, must have emitted a secret, kindred signal—some kind of ineffable animal magnetism, like a silent alarm whistle—to his doggy neighbor around the corner. Shortly after I had replotted my course, I was greeted by an aggressive spaniel, who stopped playing with his chew toy when he spotted me—a real, live chewable plaything. I never caught the spaniel’s name, but his owner likewise explained that this was the dog’s way of showing that he liked me. Thanks, but I’d like him better if he were on a leash, I thought. The dog has since come running out two more times to frolic with me.

Finally, last week, as I was in the final uphill stage of my course, a mastiff, on a leash and starting out on his own bit of exercise, made an aggressively hostile pass at me. His owner, initially unprepared for the surge, barely kept his hold on the leash as the beast lunged. I had stopped short, irritated by the interruption but thankful for the quick handling by the owner, who refastened his grip and then punched the dog viciously on the top of his head.

I thought to myself at the time, “What kind of memories do dogs have? How will this one process the blow he just received? Will he now associate pain with my presence? Are we forever destined to be incompatible? Should I make another course correction?” It’s hard to run while looking over your shoulder.

Stevenson’s elegiac poem “Requiem,” inscribed on his tomb in Samoa, says as much about the author in death (he died much too young, at age 44) as it does about him in life:

          Under the wide and starry sky,
          Dig the grave and let me lie.
          Glad did I live and gladly die,
          And I laid me down with a will.
          This be the verse you grave for me:
          Here he lies where he longed to be;
          Home is the sailor, home from sea,
          And the hunter home from the hill.

With apologies to Stevenson, whose outlook I admire, in my case when the time comes, substitute “jogger” for “hunter.”

We Interrupt This Lesson...

One thing I learned as a substitute teacher for elementary school children is to be prepared for interruptions—interruptions that start while I’m trying to take attendance before the morning announcements and flag salute and interruptions that continue during lessons, collaborative work, quiet reading time, tests, assemblies, and conferences, and during walks to and from the library, gym, music and art room—at any and all times throughout the day.  

Some interruptions are for attention or because of inattention, others for real or imaginary illnesses and injuries, and still more for no reason whatsoever. I have pledged myself, like Faust, not to linger awhile over any fleeting moments but to keep a straight face, make a judgment call, and continue to keep the life of the classroom moving on to the next pleasure. It’s a juggling act at times, but the trick is to try to keep all the different balls or objects in the air even when a new one is unexpectedly introduced.

The younger children have not yet learned how to filter the information traveling from their minds to their mouths. I have been innocently informed, apropos of nothing, of some alarmingly personal details of life at home: “My dad had to sleep in the car last night because he and mommy were arguing.” “My mom loves wine!” “Daddy got a ticket for speeding.”

Sometimes the interruptions are for attention and because of a perceived injury. At least once a day a kindergartner would approach.

“Mr. K., my finger hurts.”
Let’s have a look.
She shows me an unblemished pinky.
Where does it hurt?
She points to an invisible dot.    
Run it under the cold water. That will make it feel better (which it always does).

Occasionally, unforeseen circumstances interrupt the students’ ability to perform. One day, filling in for a teacher on sick leave, I was checking the second graders’ work for the week: homework, handwriting pages, math and spelling sheets, and so on. One little boy’s portfolio had fewer pages than those of his classmates.

Where is the rest of the work, Raymond? I asked.
“Oh, I was absent for two days,” he said.
I see. Were you sick?
“No, I had diarrhea.”

Gibberish and Journalism

The essay “Politics and the English Language”  (https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm) is as relevant today as it was when George Orwell wrote it in 1946. Within the theme of the essay about the deleterious effects of ugly and slovenly language and thoughts, Orwell offered a prescription that should be administered to professional language manglers until they are cured of what he labeled “doublespeak,” his term for language that deliberately distorts or obfuscates meaning.

In the essay are his rules for writers:
1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

“These rules sound elementary,” Orwell wrote, “and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable.”

Alas, there are journalists who have grown used to writing and speaking in a style now as fashionable as it is incomprehensible, oblivious as they are to the difference between clarity and the latest jargon, gibberish, or doublespeak that is in vogue.

Gibberish

A sideline reporter last season referred to the “enormity” of basketball at Kentucky. Was she really alluding to its extreme wickedness, which is the literal meaning of the word? Batiatus (Peter Ustinov), the unctuous slave trader in the film Spartacus, inadvertently got it right when he addressed the politically devious Roman general Crassus (Laurence Olivier) as “your enormity.” A New York Yankees broadcaster uses the redundant “and also...as well” in one sentence, giving new meaning to the phrase “triple double.”

“Modern English, especially written English,” wrote Orwell, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation.” Exactly. Case in point: At one time, “low-hanging fruit” was an original metaphor to describe easy picking. It stopped being original the moment it was first copied. Shortly thereafter, it became a cliché.

Need other examples? Going forward. Moving the needle. Pushing the envelope. Under the radar. At the end of the day. Bottom line. On the same page. Iconic, systemic, organic, granular, viral. If these words and phrases are part of your vocabulary, or if you find examples of your work in this encyclopedia of clichés (http://www.squidoo.com/businesscliches#module3436417), put down your pen and step away from the laptop.

If only Orwell were still alive to save us from stories about “How Journalists Can Measure Engagement” (http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/digital-strategies/209695/how-journalists-can-measure-engagement/).

Unreadable Journalism
“The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read,” said Oscar Wilde. That was written over 100 years ago but may as well have been yesterday. On a similar note, Mark Twain wrote, “Those who do not read good books have no advantage over those who cannot read.” The trouble is, bad writers never read good writers. If they did, they'd recognize how inadequate their own prose is. In a speech to Associated Press sports editors last June, Frank Deford addressed his concerns about the decline of good sportswriting and of the class of “optionally illiterate” created by new media who have “chosen not to read or write.”

Where are the editors and broadcast executives to save us from the banality? Many are unqualified or ill-equipped for the job; others, no doubt, are like mahouts trying to coax a rogue elephant across the street on a green light. It’s hard to try to convince the recalcitrant writers to act in their own, and the readers’, best interests.

“Media is a word that has come to mean bad journalism,” wrote Graham Greene a generation ago. And that was before there were media watchdogs, surely the most expendable staff position on any newspaper. Do we really need media coverage of the media coverage? It’s the bland leading the bland. Is there anyone more fatuous than a newspaper media columnist, nitpicking a broadcast, who cannot write? More lapdogs than watchdogs, they save their venom for obvious or politically safe targets and curry favor with others more influential.

Jargon
Jargon is what dull writers employ to couch their own insecurities, to try to give the impression that their subject matter is decipherable only to a select few of them who truly understand the arcane vocabulary. Did you know that people no longer watch TV? Instead, we are told that eyeballs (that is, viewers) now consume media. Of course, much of what they consume these days in media causes indigestion.

Oh, and no one proposes a new idea; rather, ideations are the result of thought leaders’ thought processes and mindsets that are rolled out of their thought silos and then ramped up across multiple platforms. If only we could roll these thought leaders into the same silo that Harrison Ford put to good use at the climax of the film Witness.

I have spent the last three years teaching in elementary schools. The compensation for and satisfaction in working with the youngsters on their literacy development are great, or as Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney noted, “The excitement of something coming out right is its own reward.” One thing about children’s language development: It never includes jargon. That comes much later, when innocence yields to pretentiousness.

Dante designated sycophants for eternal damnation. If he were alive today he’d have to add a separate circle in hell for clods who speak fluent jargon. Something is forever being kicked to the curb while someone is always being thrown under a bus. Milton could return and retitle his masterpiece “Paradigms Lost.”

Basic English
But it’s not simply jargon that jars. It’s basic English. We learned in grammar school that the object of the preposition takes an objective pronoun. I stopped counting the instances of reporters saying “between he and I” or “with she and you.” Many of those same professionals do not know the difference between “its” and “it’s” or between possessives and plurals. They assign apostrophes to simple plural words. Even my local tailor has been corrupted by this. The sign in his shop window reads “Tuxedo’s for Rent.” That tux must be one size that fits all.

More abuses: “Disinterested” does not mean “not interested,” “presently” does not mean “now,” and “fortuitous” does not mean “fortunate.” “Intrical” and “physicality” are not words. “Pushback” and “takeaway” are nonsensical. “Decimated by injuries” does not mean “hit hard.”

Fact checking! Who’s got the time for that? And who needs a dictionary when you have spell check?

“Laziness has become the chief characteristic of journalism, displacing incompetence,” wrote Kingsley Amis. For lazy journalists, “incredible” is the most overworked adjective, used indiscriminately to describe the most mundane people, things, and feats. “‘Incredible’ and ‘incredibly’...like Chernobyl, should be out of service for decades to come,” wrote Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd in their book Good Prose.

And don’t bother to read another word of any writer who describes being “blown away” by something. That says all you need to know about his imagination.

“Myriad” is not a noun. “Task” is not a verb; neither is “impact” or “gift” or “medal.” One time, after I had interviewed a reclusive personality, I was asked how I “got the get.” The New York Times wrote about “Those Irritating Verbs-as-Nouns”  (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/30/those-irritating-verbs-as-nouns/?smid=tw-share).

Journalism vs. Public Relations
“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed,” wrote Orwell. “Everything else is public relations.” He never had to deal with sports beat reporters. Remember when they had backbone and did not nod and swallow whole and then regurgitate the platitudes fed to them by managers, coaches, and GMs?

Now, we have beat reporters who cannot think or write and who are too timid or too stupid to ask meaningful questions. I am embarrassed for real reporters when I hear the moronic questions asked by sycophants (with media credentials) at postgame press conferences: “How big was that win?” “How important was this game?” “How [fill in one of these words] surprised/impressed/excited/happy/disappointed/anxious are you?” Who is writing their script—the clubs’ P.R. directors?

Bryce Harper of the Washington Nationals had it right when he came face-to-face with an inane reporter.“That’s a clown question, bro,” he said in response to some witlessness. Maybe his statement could be written on a placard that drops from every sports team’s clubhouse—a la the secret-word duck from Grouch Marx’s old You Bet Your Life TV show—any time a mindless question is put to an athlete.

“The point is that the process is reversible,” wrote Orwell. “[The bad habits] can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. The fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.”

Kindergarten

Given the choice during this past school year between teaching (as a substitute) kindergarten or high school, I opted for kindergarten every time. I’ll take the youthful enthusiasm and innate curiosity of five year olds over the grim indifference and monosyllabic inarticulateness of so many teenagers. And with five kindergarten classes in the district, there were numerous opportunities to work with the children.

As an editor, I thought my 35 years’ experience with childish behavior—albeit never with 20 or more writers and artists at the same time all day—would serve me well with kindergartners. At times this year, though, I felt more like a shepherd than an instructor, trying to maintain at least a sense of order and collaboration within the group while staying alert to any individuals tending to wander off (physically and emotionally). 

I am blessed to have what is a tiny role in an elementary school among so many intelligent, compassionate, and dedicated teachers and staff members. Kindergarten teachers, however, are a special breed, with deep reserves of patience and cool. For most of the children, kindergarten represents their first full day of structure. And it is a very long day for them, especially at the start of the fall semester.

 

Not once did I ever witness a kindergarten teacher lose her composure, even under the most trying circumstances. And not a day went by that I was not asked by another kindergarten teacher or aide if I needed anything: assistance, a break, advice, etc. There were times when one of them walked past the open door to my class and laughed. It must have been the shell-shocked expression on my face.

Every day that I subbed in kindergarten brought wonderful and unpredictable surprises from the children. For example:

• While I was bending low to explain something to the bespectacled Anthony, he suddenly looked me in the eye and said, “I think you must like me.” How would that not melt the coldest heart!

• One morning, apropos of nothing, Giovanni started crying. “I miss my mom and dad,” he told me. Shortly after I had calmed him down, he announced, “Mr. K, look—I’m not crying anymore.” For the rest of the day he periodically alternated those two pronouncements.
• “Being bullied is like getting an injury, only your body doesn’t hurt,” said future philosopher William.
• The same William, when asked in June what was the most important thing he learned in kindergarten, told me, “Girls don’t like boys who use potty words.”
• Nathan interrupted a lesson to ask me, “Mr. K, what was your name when you were a kid?” When I told him “Jerry,” he said, “Then why did you change it to Mr. K.?” 
• I asked Nathan, whom I called “Nate the Great,” if anyone else referred to him by that nickname. “Mommy,” he said.

Other unanticipated questions and unsolicited opinions:
• “Do you know how to say ‘ten’ in Japanese?”
• “How old are you?”
• “One time, I got a stye.”
• “You rock!”
• “Whenever I look at a bright, shiny light I get a headache.”
• “What’s your elf’s name?”
• “It’s sad when people die, right? Well, everybody dies—even me”
• “My baby sister is zero [years old].”
• “Blue and red are my brother’s favorite colors.”
• “You know what’s super weird? My grandma gave my mom and dad chocolate candy coal [for Christmas].”
• “I can clap my hands behind my back.”
• “Can I go to the nurse, because I stabbed myself.”
• “It’s not lying; it’s changing your mind.”
• “My dad bites his nails.”
• “Why do you have a ring on your finger?”
• “Who are you married to?”
• “Where’s Mrs. K?”

As the children counted down the remaining days on the June calendar, I had one thought: I wish the school year was not coming to an end.

 

That’s easy for me to say. I never have to create lesson plans; I merely attempt to implement those left for me by the real teacher. I am not accountable to any state board for the progress (or perceived lack thereof) of the students. Nor do I meet with the parents, principal, superintendent, or director of curriculum. But the rewards are great.

The Things That Editors Remember

The recent release of this summer’s Mostly Mozart Festival schedule reminded me of my late friend and former boss at New York magazine, Alan Rich. Mozart, you see, was Alan’s favorite composer. Every January, for many years, Alan would write his annual Mozart birthday article in New York. I miss that feature.

I also fondly remember New York magazine executive editor Shelley Zelaznick from my own too-brief four-year (1975-79) tour as assistant arts editor. It was New York’s loss when Shelley resigned in 1977 after the magazine’s visionary founder and editor in chief Clay Felker lost the property in a hostile takeover by Rupert Murdoch. Shelley was smart, tough, and gentlemanly. I admired him very much. Even on the hottest days he always seemed cool and regal.

Alan, the arts editor and music critic, had great respect for Shelley, whose company he enjoyed dating back to their days together as comrades at the Herald Tribune, from whose Sunday magazine New York had sprung. There was a time in the late 1970s when Alan briefly added theater critic to his duties (and John Simon switched over to film).

 

In reviewing a play (I can't remember the title), Alan referred to an actress as “a female [very prominent and distinguished British actress].” It was a self-consciously silly throway line that I, with first read on the review, would dutifully if reluctantly have to throw away.

“Alan, you can't write that,” I told him.

I clearly recall Alan's impish grin. “Show it to Shelley. See what he says,” Alan said. He was reluctant to give up quietly a line that he enjoyed so much.

So I walked up to the front of the office and gave the copy to Shelley, who dropped what he was doing and read it immediately. He then came back to discuss it with Alan, trying to suppress a smile while affecting a headmaster’s admonition for a brilliant but mischievous student.  

 

The reading had the desired effect. Alan knew the phrase had no chance of making it into print, but he wanted to show Shelley what an amusing line it was and to make him laugh. And then it was O.K. to delete the sentence.