[saveagrey]
by James Brush
Year: 2006
In my middle school teaching days, I once taught this fun book called Holes by Louis Sachar. It’s about kids at a camp for “bad boys” who are required to dig holes all day. There seems to be no purpose for the digging except that as Mr. Sir says, it builds character and turns bad boys into good boys. The book is quite good, a sort of Catch-22 for young readers that manages to be both wickedly sarcastic and warmhearted at the same time. Even kids who hate reading will read Holes.
I couldn’t help but think about it the other day when I accompanied some of my students to a local park where they are working on a tree planting project. Most of my students aren’t really “bad kids,” they’re just the round pegs that don’t fit into the square holes of the public school system. They’re smart, curious, friendly, and want nothing more than to succeed and avoid the mistakes they made that landed them where they are. Nevertheless, the first step in planting trees is digging holes.
Initially, they seemed reluctant to really throw themselves into the hole-digging, not for lack of enthusiasm, but out of concern that they would dirty their uniforms and get their boots muddy, which could cause them to fail an inspection and incur the wrath of their drill instructors. We assured them that the drills knew what they were up to and as their holes got deeper (and to avoid being outdone by us teachers), they proceeded to throw themselves into the task. Soon we had a bunch of holes and the kids planted peach and plum trees under the guidance of a master gardener.
For my part, I enjoyed digging the holes (there’s nothing like swinging a pickax to break rock) and to my surprise, so did the kids. One said to me that she liked knowing that her work would help something grow. Another said he liked digging holes because it was tiring and it made him happy to think that a tall tree would someday grow and bear fruit because of something he did.
It was a beautiful day and we all got away from the facility for a few hours to enjoy some time with nature. Fortunately there’s still much planting to do in the coming weeks. I still don’t know if digging holes will turn “bad kids” into “good kids,” but it does give them a chance to feel that they are doing something to make the world a better place. Most of my students need that.
(I also learned from the gardener in charge of the project that the young tree in my backyard will never grow until I make some changes in how it’s staked and mulched.)
I keep hearing about the “controversy” surrounding James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces. I just don’t get it. I first heard about this at the Kathy Griffin show that I posted about last week when she mentioned Frey getting chewed out by Oprah. The next day it was in the paper. What I don’t get is why this should be such a big deal. Many people (not me, I haven’t read it) seem to feel betrayed because they read and liked the book only to find out that it was – gasp! – made up.
Why should this bother anyone? We aren’t talking about historical events, scientific discoveries, how to safely dismantle a bomb, or anything that’s really important. It’s about one guy’s drug problems. Does the book’s veracity really change whether or not a person enjoyed reading it or learned something from it? I suppose for some people it must, but for me it seems sort of irrelevant.
This reminds me a friend who claims that Jesus never existed and never said all the things he is supposed to have said so therefore we should just disregard the Bible altogether. Putting all the obvious problems with disregarding an ancient and influential book like the Bible aside and accepting his claim that there was no Jesus, we’re still left with the fact that somebody somewhere had to write the Gospels and make all that stuff up. It’s quite a feat and still gives one much to think about, whether it’s literally true or not. I wish I had the talent to invent dialog such as Jesus had with his detractors.
I don’t suppose anyone will be L Ron Hubbardizing Frey any time soon, but it seems that a reader’s interaction with a text shouldn’t necessarily depend on whether or not it really happened as stated. This leads to Oprah’s choice to replace Frey’s memoir with another memoir: Night by Elie Wiesel. If it came out tomorrow that Wiesel never experienced the horrors he so eloquently describes and instead spent World War II living in a Manhattan penthouse, he would certainly lose credibility as a witness to the Holocaust, but Night would not be diminished one bit for me, and I would still have my students read it.
I do think Frey should have presented his work as fiction, and the marketeers who have helped him sell it have a right to be mad that their work, the image they so carefully crafted – or dare I say, made up? – is now shot, but I suspect that had he tried to sell it as fiction he would probably still be trying to sell it.
UPDATE 2-3-06: This discussion is also going on at Dem Soldier’s blog where you can see some truly beautiful photography as well. I was commenting there as I was working up this post, so links seem appropriate if a bit belated.
I learned today that the cool little coffee shop on Round Rock’s main drag is no more. Saradora’s has closed up shop. Based on the article in the paper, it sounds as if there weren’t enough people in Round Rock who were interested in drinking coffee in an eclectic local hangout. That isn’t surprising. The many chains on I-35 leave very little in Round Rock that’s independent. Except BBQ, of course.
Admittedly, I was not a regular at Saradora’s since there are cool little coffee joints much closer to home, but I liked knowing it was there, and when I lived closer I sometimes went. It always seemed like a mark of progress for Round Rock to have an indy coffee shop considering that there was really nothing but fast food there in 1988 when my New England eyes first beheld Austin’s northern neighbor.
Location might have been a factor. It’s a few miles from the interstate in Round Rock’s historic downtown near where Sam Bass was gunned down in 1878. The downtown area is a scant few blocks long and while charming and well-maintained, there isn’t much there. I guess people mainly went to Saradora’s if they were going to Saradora’s as opposed to stopping off on the way to or from somewhere else.
I realize that I hadn’t been there for quite some time, but the last time I was there, I did memorialize the event. A few years ago, when I discovered BookCrossing, I left a copy of my book with a bookcrossing ID number inside at Saradora’s to see where it would go. It’s in Houston now, in the possession of attackedbynones who seemed to enjoy it.
This morning, I went outside to get the paper, which wasn’t there, but I noticed that something amazing had happened. It seems that last night free water fell from the sky. This is exciting since we haven’t had substantial rainfall in over a year. The lack of rain and our non-winter winter have conspired to create a dangerously dry situation here. It’s supposed to rain throughout the day today, but I don’t know if that will be enough to end the arson/burn ban that I mentioned last week. Speaking of that post, it was listed at Austinist as one of the Best of the Austin Blogs: Week of January 16, so thanks to them for that honor.
And since we’re on last week’s posts, I’ll mention the “winner” of my secret contest. I had used Talking Heads titles for my posts last week (This Must Be the Place, Burning Down the House, Don’t Worry About the Government, Drugs, Animals) and decided that I would do so until someone noticed. The honor goes to Austin blogger Kramer Wetzel of Astrofish/Xenon, whose blog is most definitely worth a read. I probably could have gone on for a few more weeks with the ‘Heads titles, but I’m glad I got to stop because I could tell that I was trying to find topics that would fit within the titles. I also think it was kind of a cop-out to use Fear of Music titles such as “Drugs” and “Animals” since they don’t really stand out as TH titles.
So on this rainy day Saturday, I think it’ll have to be a day of Outlaw Golf on the PS2.
Last night, we saw Kathy Griffin’s sold-out show at The Paramount. It’s been quite a while since I’ve gone to see a stand-up comedy show, and I’d forgotten how fun it is to spend an evening laughing.
I’ve caught bits and pieces of her routine on TV and seen part of My Life on the D-List, and I’ve always liked her. She has a wonderfully breathless I’ve-just-got-to-tell-you-this kind of delivery that draws the crowd into her show by creating the impression of a friend sharing wild secrets and gossip. Her act focuses on ripping certain celebrities whom she often then meets leading to situations in which she has to deal with having put her foot into her mouth. I don’t watch much TV so I sometimes didn’t know who she was talking about (Clay Aiken? Lindsay Lohan?) but the jokes still worked and her delivery – sometimes self-deprecating, sometimes ridiculously assertive – is great fun. It’s not all celeb-bashing, though. There’s plenty of good pissed-off liberal political commentary and family stories that are completely over-the-top.
My favorite aspect of the show was her willingness to share the kind of embarrasing moments that we’d all just as soon forget. Her stories are wild and – true or not doesn’t matter – had me laughing the next morning while making breakfast.
Overall a great show, probably one of the funniest I’ve seen.
