Death gets the last word, as always, once again

Here is the lead to an important story today: Colorado House Minority Leader Hugh McKean, a Loveland Republican known for his warm personality and work to try to build legislative consensus at the state Capitol, has died. He turned 55 on Oct. 27.

This is one of those unexpected situations that reminds everyone, should we care to stop and think for a moment, that life is relatively brief and that life offers few guarantees. It also reminds us that political affiliation has little clear impact on it all. 

I didn't know McKean and would certainly have opposed most of what he preferred in terms of policies, but I have read a lot about how he spend at least the past two years trying to not only find some consensus between parties but within his own party.

Evidently, he made some progress through a combination of his arguments but also through his sense of humor. It may help (a bit) that he was running unopposed in next week's election, so he didn't have to bow to extremism to simply retain his position. I read lots of quotes from Republicans and Democrats about the man's sense of humor and willingness to find compromises and generally avoid mud-slinging.

A heart attack was the culprit in his death, another good reminder that the pandemic and whatever the next respiratory disaster comes next are not the only threat to our lives. 

I thought some similar sense of shared humanity might come from the recent attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul. The governor of Virginia, of course, managed to turn this horrific attack into a political applause line, connecting the husband's cracked skull to "sending Nancy back to California." Thoughtless and empty of meaning, but certainly a bit mean.

Trump, of course, had nothing to say, despite the obvious effects on the deranged attacker of the whole Angry White People Party grievances, fomented by Trump. Seriously? Not even a quick message of support for a spouse of a rival? Not even a trace of common humanity?

I know I should not be surprised, but it would take no effort at all to wish the man a speedy recovery, though that evidently could be interpreted as a sign of weakness, and bullies can never show a bit of weakness. 

There have always been bullies and political opportunists, and Americans are not alone in being gullible when it comes to those people taking advantage of them. 

I join many in mourning a death way too young of a guy who was just trying to do his best. My fear is that his "empty" seat, which will be filled by a Republican committee, won't feature someone who matches up to his standards.

McKean's death, by the way, means the top two leadership positions of the Colorado Republican party are now vacant. That vacuum will be filled, whatever the quality of people interested.

Is is odd that my hope at this point is to simply not have another bully in the state legislature?

For journalists, it's always important to be "present"

This morning I presented a couple sessions at a local high school journalism workshop that brought about 300 students and advisers from 12 high schools together for various learning sessions.

One of my sessions asked this: "Why spend so much time prepping to go out and report on a coverage area, when we usually don't discover what the true story will be until we spend time observing and asking questions on the scene?"

I urged students to think about spending less time yakking about possible angles and sources and instead for the reporter to schedule a "first contact" in-person visit to the sport or performance or class or club or activity -- at least 30 minutes -- and then get back with the editor to finetune how the coverage should go.

Then the editor and reporter would work to schedule a longer reporting observation time, and again meet to settle on the final structure of the reporting. If the coverage lends itself to a narrative format, great. If there is no clear narrative thread, there are lots of alternative coverage options (and that was the topic of my second session of the morning). 

Bottom line: I have been thinking lately about what I would do were I to be thrust back into a journalism classroom and I honestly believe I would give up most of the control that comes with using a week of class time to plan and create interview questions and "guess" about what the coverage is really all about. 

Reporters should spend much time observing and much less time predicting. The phrase I kept repeating was based on the power of showing up. "Be there." Don't wait until after the event or meeting to call someone up and interview them. 

A bonus from this approach might be to create more credibility with the larger school community and make it less likely that people will feel like journalists are "swooping in" and highlighting something controversial or embarrassing or sensitive (what often happens in professional journalism).

I am fully aware of how packed many students' schedules are and how difficult it might be to find even 30 spare minutes to simply hang out and ask question about a sports practice or a play rehearsal. But I would argue that this is the homework for the journalism course and that everyone will have a better experience if we are curious and prepared to be surprised.

The goal is to avoid publishing material the public largely knows about, particularly when we publish so infrequently. We need fewer "olds" and more compelling "news."

I have no idea if any of my provocations will result in better reporting and more in-person observation. There is a lot of inertia that fights that sort of change.

But they laughed and some nodded and a few even jotted down a note or two ("wonder who that old guy is up there yakking about how we should report?").

It's kind of invigorating to hang out with smart high school students, even with me being 12 years out of the classroom.

If it isn't in the paper, did it really happen?

Today's predictable news from today's Denver Post website:

There was a fatal crash on I-70 involving a semi that has blocked the interstate for hours. The crash likely was weather-related, as the first major mountain snow storm of the year continues. 

Death is often news, since it's unusual for individuals though totally normal society-wide. The mountains are always a bit dangerous, particularly on I-70 with its heavy traffic and no good alternative to cross the mountains without going way south or north. And drivers appear to never be truly ready to tackle snowy roads, no matter how much warning they get or how long they have lived in the state.

Broncos GM George Paton said in a news conference that he 100 percent backs head coach Nathaniel Hackett, despite the team's crappy record.

Just as politicians stoutly defend their candidates until the bitter end, when suddenly the voters choose -- thank heavens election day is Nov. 8, freeing us from the constant barrage of TV ads -- so team leaders will defend their employees... until they suddenly don't. Hey, we're all in this together, aren't we? 

A number of Denver parents are upset that their neighborhood school has been targeted for closing in the near future, due to declining enrollment in the Denver Public School district. Ten schools are slated to be closed, though the final decision is a few weeks off.

It's not their fault that enrollment is declining quickly in DPS, but parents complaining about losing their nearby school is a situation that happens routinely all across the country. The logos of the closings is inescapable: every building costs money and low enrollment leads to lower staffing. But administration costs tend to remain constant. Heating and cooling and otherwise maintaining buildings with fewer and fewer students is expensive and money is always short for public education. What could be more logical than building new schools to accommodate enrollment growth or closing some schools when there are fewer students?

The pathos here is where the news coverage is. No one wants their kid to have to switch to a new school, perhaps one that is another mile from home, and everyone loves their kid's elementary teacher, no matter how much they rail against national education trends. And how could anyone wish any sort of suffering on those poor children? 

JeffCo schools have about 20,000 extra seats available in that district and they are also looking to close some schools and consolidate their resources. People are pissed, so Denver is hardly alone. 

Technically, the above are news stories, but they more closely resemble confirmation reports on what we all know. All three stories are irresistible for media outlets but only the most isolated could ever exclaim, "Wow! I never saw that coming."

And here's a bonus "news of the future" prediction: We will be inundated with stories about the evils of the change back to standard time from daylight savings time, which happens on Nov. 6. 

People will die!!!!!!!!!!!!

Another disappointing college writing assignment

I just finished grading a set of cover letters written by students in my Composing Arguments course. A cover letter should be an argument that tries to convince a reader to bring the writer in for an in-person interview, and is a great place to begin sharing personal stories. 

I have been emphasizing all semester the importance of supporting our claims. I have had exercises that literally forced students to add a clause beginning with "for example" to a sentence. I have marked down essay after essay that continues to settle for claims without any evidence. 

To my chagrin, nothing I have done is making much of a difference with the vast majority of my students. They continue to write lists of unsupported claims: "I am passionate about x." "I have years of experience working in complex teams." "I have excellent time management skills."

Well, maybe. But doesn't every job applicant CLAIM these sorts of attributes? What a reader wants is evidence that takes us beyond the expected claims and moves us into beginning to understand a writer's story. 

I am constantly writing comments like "Try to show yourself in action to support your claim." I have lots count of how many times I have made some version of this. It boils down to "show, don't tell," which has been around so long that it may have become invisible. 

But it's still the key to success for writers. 

I understand that online courses can create all sorts of communication issues between professor and student, but I hoped that explicitly stating the need for supporting claims from day one, followed by assignments and quizzes and personal comments on weekly work might eventually break through the lazy defaults students bring with them.

Perhaps the failure of most students in my classes to incorporate "show, don't tell" into their writing assignments is connected to their pandemic PTSD. If so, I have wasted so much time offering advice through comments. 

I suspect, though, that this is mostly a function of not reading the assignment prompts carefully and not spending much time on writing more than one draft.

One way a teacher might work on the crappy initial drafts that are uploaded would be to require students to submit a second (or maybe a third) draft. Those would come after I have a chance to insert comments on their assignment. That seems so darn logical, and I did use this process for decades with students at the high school level. 

But my experiences eventually led me to the conclusion that spending loads of time on any one assignments ended up getting us nowhere. An important exception was my work with writers in journalism, where we might end up with five drafts before the piece was ready for publication.

The strategy I settled on for this particular online class was to assign dozens of shorter pieces of writing over the course of the semester, allowing me to focus on certain areas each time and providing students many opportunities to engage with creating effective arguments. My reasoning was that over the course of an entire term, the repetition and the regularity of multiple writing assignments would increase fluidity and reduce anxiety.

I probably was wrong. Something is not connecting. Something will need to change.

Is it time to stop coddling college students?

One of my online writing classes had an assignment last week that asked them to choose a grammar/mechanical issue they had had trouble with in their own work, and to produce a two-sided brochure with advice for others having the same problems. Part of the assignment was to watch a LinkedIn Learning course on Canva, a free graphic design program.

The students basically handled the Canva challenge, though a good portion did not/could not visualize that the page they were working on had TWO sides. That led to some students jamming too much into too little space. 

But the disturbing part was the number of errors I encountered as I assessed their work. The best (worst) was the brochure claiming to help overcome spelling errors, It featured "recieving" in the text. Ugh. I was embarrassed for that student and it is likely the student was equally embarrassed when she looked at my comments. 

Another student typed "sentance" eight times in the one brochure. That means I have at least one student who honestly has no idea how to spell "sentence" and also doesn't make use of spell check. That student will be entering the job market next year.

I have mentioned in an earlier post that this semester has been the most trying for me in the past decade due to the fragility of so many college students, and the inattention to detail and basic inability to create a clear position and defense for that position.

A different recent assignment asked students to write a proposal to a company CEO or equivalent to hire the writer to produce a white paper of some sort that would address a specific problem in the company. They had done some previous assignments that built up to this, and the goal is that the students will create that white paper as the final project for the course (about six weeks off). 

I had to write this several times about a highlighted phrase or word that made no sense or was just misspelled: THIS is the point where the CEO would consign your proposal to the shredder. BTW, this wasn't because there was one stray typo (though that would be bad enough), but after a half-dozen or more.

I worry that my bluntness may be the final straw for the more fragile in the class, but there really is a point where honesty is essential and we are now at Week 9. If not now, when?

Most weeks one course has a short discussion post due on Wednesday, and then students are asked to comment on at least two of their classmates' posts by Sunday night. I know. What an ask! They do have to log in, gulp, twice, in a week, once to submit the original post and once to write a few sentences in response in the discussion thread. 

Amazingly, only about half of the students bother to check back in and make those two (the horror!) comments. I try to model more expansive behavior, making it a point to comment on every initial post, often expanding on some writing issue or document design challenge. 

I deduct 20 percent of the potential points for the discussion when students only post that initial offering. I include a comment that details exactly why they are not earning 20/20, and urge them to not miss those points in the future. Perhaps they honestly don't care. Perhaps they simply cannot organize their lives to accommodate ten minutes between Thursday and Sunday to check in, browse some posts, and respond. Perhaps they are so frazzled that they don't even notice the missing points or my comments.

At the heart of all my writing courses is the importance of writing for your audience and not expecting your reader to "want to read" your writing. No one wants to read our writing, particularly in the case of professional situations, where everyone is busy and has work to do. 

I try to emphasize that the very first bar to hit, so to speak, is that we have spelled the words correctly. A step up is to avoid confusing readers with fragments and run-ons. I acknowledge that creating a strong claim and providing support for that is a bit tougher challenge. Do all three of those things and success is in their future.

I have taught online exclusively for nearly eight years and I have never seen anything like the struggles I see right now. The pandemic may be "over," or at least the world is out of sheer panic mode, but the American college student is suffering some sort of PTSD.

I hope some "tough love" right now will right the ship for some of my students. But what if that doesn't produce any changes?

Another survey that just confirms what we already know

I see that results from this past spring's National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, show that math scores fell precipitously for the 4th and 8th graders tested, and reading scores also suffered. 

Can there be a single person who can claim surprise? 

Did anyone really believe that spending nearly a year and half with online learning, not to mention the constant strain of the pandemic and all the death and worry and misunderstandings and outright lies would not cause those "all-important" standardized test scores would NOT drop?

This is not news, but mere confirmation of what anyone could predict. It is similar to: "The weather report said a hard freeze would arrive, and then it did... and plants died." 

Any news involved in this report and the sudden coverage of it would have to be to find some schools or communities where scores ROSE, despite the pandemic. Better yet: how about all those private school kids who didn't stay online after May of 2020? How did those kids do?

Of course, private schools tend to NOT participate in any of those standardized tests so it would be impossible to find an apples and apples comparison. I do wonder if there are any mental health stats comparing private and public school students... or maybe that would just end up being more about class and money than about how schools helped or hindered.

We have a grandson whose Language Arts teacher sent home a "failing" notice to his parents, based on... wait for it... two quizzes, of five points each. I get it. He got 3/5 and then 2/5 and that is definitely not passing, should that be the pattern for the entire term. 

But it's a good seven weeks into the fall semester (he started after Labor Day), and the teacher has gathered a grand total of TEN points to base this grade upon? Come on! That sounds like educational malpractice, quite honestly. 

I know teaching is a tough job, but also hope those brave souls who take on the challenge have some hazy understanding that teaching is a life-style choice. It's never going to be a 8-4 gig, not to do it right. I don't know that particular English teacher's situation, of course, but I certainly know my grandson's situation. You would think even the least-engaged teacher might find the time for a few more assessments before frightening pre-teens and their parents.

Here's an irony that I have come to appreciate the more I teach college students: if a kid can survive the minefields of middle school and high school, and get to the college level, grade problems can quickly disappear. My experience is that students tend to earn A's and B's or they just fail/drop at the college level. 

I had a frantic college student email me multiple times last week about how "afraid" she was that she would fail. She has a 77 percent score at midterm, which is not setting the world on fire, but far from failing. I wrote her back saying I have never failed a single student who turned in all their assignments and made any effort to write clearly. That is true from high school through college seniors. 

I don't know if this lowered her anxiety levels, but I also know this: were I grading based on control of her language and clarity of her arguments, she WOULD be failing. But college teachers all know that failing students will not endear you to the department or the university, and that we are already down nearly 2 million college students from 2021, and that it's all about money. After all, it's America.

One college I teach for has a policy that only 10 percent of a student's grade in a writing class can come from mechanics, grammar, etc. I don't make the policies, but I understand the quest for some sort of grace for kids who were not prepared very well and whose family didn't provide the level of support needed to succeed as thinkers and writers. Still, I can't help but point out from time to time that they will have to live with their lack of skill as writers and readers and thinkers as they enter the workforce. But enough of my whining.

At some point, teachers need to provide lots of data points if they want to identify trends. A five-point quiz per month is not going to do it. There's not much to grade, however, which helps some less-engaged educators rush out of the building five minutes after the children. 

I know. I sensed it as I was writing the above graf. I am criticizing an entire profession (and certainly one particular teacher) based on an isolated case. 

Standardized tests describe averages and masses of results. And the math of earning half the possible points is quite clear. What is not clear is why just a few data points should make the difference in anyone's life.

Here's the thing about kids: they are ALL an isolated case.

 

Nostalgic for smart leadership

I miss Barack Obama as president for so many reasons, but it was only today that a couple posts I cam across helped me realize the main thing that I miss: at his core, he is a writer.

A writer has to be a thinker and a good writer needs to care not just about language but about the content. A good writer knows that there is power for good and evil in the words and in the evidence shared in the writing.

I want to add that I miss the man's sheer intelligence (and he still has it, though he doesn't have the platform to share it like he once did), but Americans aren't fans of "smart people." We like the Common Man. Joe Biden is a common man. Donald Trump masquerades as a common man. Many senators and representatives spend a lot of time hiding their Ivy League educations from voters and invest even more time pretending that they share experiences with most voters. 

In reality, they are almost all part of the elite and few do their own grocery shopping or pump their own gas. A majority seem to be educated but not very smart (my take).

A former Obama speechwriter was struggling with the text for a speech at a memorial for Martin Luther King, Jr., and asked the president for some help. That advice: “Read James Baldwin when you’re stuck. Listen to John Coltrane when you’re not.”

At first glance, the speechwriter thought this was not helpful. But he thought some more and saw the point. Baldwin is angry and pointed and dense. Coltrane is free-flowing and intuitive. It was a mystical metaphor that demanded the listener do most of the work, but the very thought that Obama could offer this advice off the cuff is what I miss.

Some further conversation brought this from Obama: “It’s the notes you don’t play,” he said, sitting back in his chair. “It’s the silences. That’s what made him [Coltrane] so good. Silences can say more than noise can. I need a speech with some pauses, and some quiet moments, because they say something too. You feel me?”

I know there are evil smart people. I know that there are all sorts of wisdom, all sorts of "smarts."

But I prefer to be led by smart people.

Come back, Mr. Obama. A nation turns to you.

Facts don't matter if people don't see them

I know the pandemic is now receding from daily life, with a nice, steady 300 deaths a day from Covid but mostly among the elderly and those with other conditions that made things worse. The panic is over, until the next variation arrives that kick starts the whole thing once more.

I saw a stat that amazed me the other day: only about 5 percent of all Americans eligible for the latest booster (the third, for Pfizer users, and fifth overall covid shot) have been vaccinated and fully boosted. Nearly 20 percent of the elderly haven't even had those first shots of the vaccine. RIP is about all we can offer those who enlisted in the "I'll leave it in God's hands" club. 

I would guess that God, were he to chime in, might note that the vaccine was His will in action, but we couldn't be bothered. After all, there are more deceptive political ads to enjoy and Angry White People must have superior bodies and protections from all of life's dangers. Ha.

Black Americans died much more often percentage-wise for most of the pandemic, but now whites have taken the lead. That might be partially due to the most vulnerable Blacks already having been lost, but a huge chunk of a group that claims to love freedom and anyone who will own the libs is now a juicy target for a virus that couldn't care less about politics or ethnicity.

Thousands have died needlessly and many thousands more will join them in the next year or so. So it goes. Everyone dies, so the mere fact of death or even the increased numbers aren't that shocking or even tragic over the long term. Evolution is at work, inexorably.

Die-hard (well, not THAT hard) FOX News viewers will not see the new stats that show whites dying in larger percentages than Blacks. That fact, after all, would puncture all sorts of myths about racial superiority. 

I read today that the CEO of FOX News has been quite clear that the network's strategy is to keep stories that might alarm or doubt among viewers off the airwaves they control. This "news" platform has an official stance that includes shielding viewers from information that might challenge their assumptions and make them uncomfortable.

FOX is filled with all sorts of hateful opinions and slanted attacks, of course, but the audience enjoys being supported in its hate and fear and loathing. It's a form of entertainment and keeping the masses entertained is the key to success in America.

I suspect that if Murdoch and Putin and Trump were to disappear from the planet today, tomorrow would soon look much brighter. We are at the mercy of the autocrats.

They don't award 'style points' in football, but maybe they should

You know my headline for yesterday's post, about winning being the "only thing"? Turns out that is true for professional sports, and even semi-pro sports (college football). 

Wouldn't you know that this fall has featured three teams I follow quite closely -- the Colorado Rockies, the Denver Broncos, and the Iowa Hawkeyes -- and each has had trouble with winning. I am certain that with the Broncos and the Hawkeyes, just a few plays going the other way, just a few changed decisions by coaches or quarterbacks, and both those teams might have much better win-loss records. And winning would cover up other issues with those teams.

For the Rockies, there are no good arguments that they were "that close" to a winning record or making the playoffs. They were just not very good and there is little hope for that to change any time soon.

But here's the thing about those two football teams: they are not only losing too often but they are boring. Defense wins titles (and the Broncos rode a fine defense to a Super Bowl title only six years ago), but much of the joy of watching sports lies in the drama and the excitement of scoring points, or being a constant threat to score points. Americans have trouble with soccer due to the infrequent scoring, though there are lots of other joys to be found and the country is getting better at recognizing that.

But it turns out that the "winning is the only thing" cliché may be overly simplistic. Most cliche's are. 

Right now I would be OK with just some occasional excitement from those football teams. I honestly don't see exactly how anything will be changing for either team in the next few months, and that is more depressing than any win-loss record. 

Worse is the fact that there are all sorts of other pro and college teams that boast exciting offenses and maintain enough defense to keep things interesting. Yes, teams can have both.

Now, if you told me that a year from now things may feel very different, with Russell Wilson and the Broncos and whoever is coaching them getting on a roll, with high-scoring offense and stingy defense, I wouldn't be shocked. Stuff like that happens in sports. Changes can be made. Momentum is real. 

Same with Iowa. The coach probably won't change -- he's an institution -- but perhaps a hot shot QB could come to campus and perhaps some new offensive schemes could be created and taught during the off-season.

But right now, my practice is to record the games and wait to watch... or simply hit DELETE, as I did with the last Broncos game, not even bothering. I may end up watching some or all of the Iowa game this Saturday as they play at Ohio State, but that is more closely related to the urge to gawk at a traffic accident than in hopes of the "good guys" overcoming the #2-ranked Buckeyes.

Ironically, I regularly watched at least parts of Rockies games this summer. Each game contains the possibility of surprise, and even the lowly Rockies could defeat the Dodgers or Yankees or whomever is in the post-season from time to time. With 162 games, no one contest makes or breaks the season. 

Football is much more tense, with each loss causing angst and the possibility of a "lost season."

Until the Broncos turn things around, my go-to TV viewing on Sundays is NFL RedZone. It's all highlights, all action, all drama, and all scoring. Bonus: I don't care much about the outcomes of most of the games the station flits among, so I can just enjoy the athleticism, the in-game drama, and the passions on the field.

I create my own rotation of college games on Saturdays by flipping from network to network, trying to avoid the endless commercials and searching for a team on a roll.

But deep inside I still yearn for the Broncos and Hawks to win this weekend, however ugly the games may be. 

When winning is the thing... the only thing

There is a tendency for most of the population to adopt a sort of "plague on both their houses" at this point in a political season. After all, our legislative leaders are imperfect (as are we all). Our Supreme Court is overtly political (and that may cheer you or appall you). Our state races are filled with candidates who are actively arguing that all elections are flawed (even as they graciously accept the results when they come out their way). 

Politics is a dirty business, and likely always has been.

But there are some politicians and other leaders who have distinguished themselves through their blatant and often gleeful hypocrisy. I copied four grafs from an Atlantic commentary by Peter Wehner, who was once a stalwart Republican, that highlight two of the more egregious offenders, but that began with a more general commentary on trends among a group of Americans who would eagerly claim the title of "most religious" in the country.

Consider just the case of white evangelical Protestants. In October 2016—not long after the notorious Access Hollywood tape was released—more than seven in 10 said an elected official can behave ethically even if they have committed transgressions in their personal life. Five years earlier, only 30 percent of white evangelical Protestants had said the same. No other group shifted their position more dramatically.

From a writing standpoint, this graf may be challenging to immediately comprehend. It takes some careful reading to discern the main point: white evangelical Protestants have gone from 30 percent saying that elected officials can behave ethically despite their personal transgressions, to 70 percent claiming that.

I get it. Christianity is all about forgiveness. It is certainly possible to imagine flawed politicians overcoming their past choices. Some may actually do so. But it wasn't long ago that those super-religious souls considered a person's entire biography when assessing him or her, and they were quite tough on "sinners." The writer then moves from the general stat to a specific example of how quickly some have changed their views.

That was just one way they shifted their theology to align with Trump. Another example: In 2016, Albert Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote, “If I were to support, much less endorse, Donald Trump for president, I would actually have to go back and apologize to former President Bill Clinton.” (Mohler had declared Clinton morally unfit to serve in office.) In 2020, Mohler stated that he would vote for Trump.

Bill Clinton is still waiting for his apology.

I am a fan of that one-sentence graf that serves as the "punch line" for the anecdote. This tactic can be overused, but it's a good idea to encourage student writers to at least know that this dramatic choice is part of the reporter's toolbox.

Of course, politics and religion don't mix easily, and I would guess most right wing radicals, and many run-of-the-mill angry white people, would nod in agreement with one more paragraph:

The right-wing media personality Dana Loesch, when commenting on the allegations that Walker had paid for his girlfriend’s abortion, expressed the view of many on the right when she said, “Does this change anything? … Not a damn thing. How many times have I said four very important words? These four words: Winning. Is. A. Virtue … I don’t know if he did it or not. I don’t even care.”

Think about that. Loesch's completely transactional approach means that, in theory, we don't need humans in the House or Senate at all. Why don't we just go with an online platform that totals our votes and spits out decisions? Why worry about what sort of person is in charge of our foreign policy, or about our social safety nets, or about the rights of "fill in the blank" oppressed group? 

I'm not sure I can say I am feeling all that different about the quality of the candidates right now myself. My overall goal is for Democrats to build a large enough majority to overrule the Angry White People Party. 

I wish I were without sin... but I am not constantly throwing stones at my neighbors. 

Wait. The war is still going on?

I was thinking lately about how difficult it must be to be a Ukrainian citizen, much less a soldier. The war has lasted over eight months and not much has been accomplished beyond billions in damage and uncounted losses of life.

What happens when everyday life must include the threat of random and sudden death from the skies, from missiles or "suicide drones," or whatever? Do we just shrug it off, much like we shrug off the real but unlikely threat of death when we drive to the supermarket? Or do we feel a constant, low-level sense of dread, and an inability to imagine things ever getting much better? 

My own state of mind is stuck in a "what is wrong with people? and "what is wrong with the nation where I live?" It's not a fear of death from above and not even close. But my guess is that many share my sense of discomfort and unease.

The 2020 election in America felt a bit like the opening month of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with less lethal stakes. People got fired up. Voters shook themselves from their depression and fear and confusion and provided a clear victory for Biden (mostly a rejection of a demagogue) and for just enough legislators to give tenuous power to Democrats for a couple years. Plenty of others chose the spokesman for Angry White People, which means there are lots of angry white people, and that is a fact that many progressives can't seem to accept.

The Russians underestimated the Ukrainians. Democrats may underestimate Republican rage and hopelessness. 

Ukrainians summoned incredible strength and a sense of community and national pride that helped them withstand the initial Russian attacks and even counterattack. I assume many Ukrainians were running on adrenaline and fear and pain and an overall feeling of "this is life or death." But eventually the adrenaline is just not enough. At some point, the body must return to "normal."

Our elections may not have produced such an existential choice (life or death), or maybe I am underestimating the depth of feeling for many voters. Even with a record number of Americans voting (nearly 155 million), there were nearly 240 million Americans who COULD have voted in the 2020 election. 

That's quite a missing share of potential voters if we are truly in a life or death battle. Those "missing" 85 million voters, more than either the share who voted for Biden or for Trump, are the voters that mystify me the most. Maybe they would divide in the same percentages as those who actually bothered. We will never know.

I hope Ukrainians' attention spans are not as fleeting as those of Americans, but worry that our culture is increasingly impatient. How long can a modern war go on? How long can a nation continue to bury its dead and tend its wounded without a clear resolution of the war in sight? 

How long can a nation tolerate irrational hate toward its own citizens? How long can people demonize others without even knowing them? 

How much time are we to allot for change to occur? 

Checking out some recent impressive sentences

To get me away from bemoaning the state of democracy in America and the sheer amount of awful behavior among our fellow citizens, how about some "For the Love of Sentences" selections from Frank Bruni's weekly newsletter?

In The Sydney Morning Herald, David Free noted how many news publications have “started warning us how many minutes” it will take to get through a given article. “The implication is clear: Reading is a luxury we can barely afford,” he wrote. “The sooner a writer gets out of our hair, the better. But if we don’t want writers in our hair, they’ll never get into our heads.”

The above was part of an argument in favor of reading longer books, but it did remind me that the average reading speed for Americans is about 200 words per minute. I'm not sure I see the need to alert readers to how many minutes they should allot to any particular story but it can certainly help student journalists make decisions about how much space to give any particular coverage. The key question: how long can we expect our readers to stick with our coverage? Is this a 30-second story? Is this a four-minute piece? Then designers can start allocating available space.

In The Philadelphia Inquirer, David Murphy wrote: “Playoff baseball is like watching a loved one defuse a bomb. It is not something that you enjoy. It is something that you endure. Every pitch is a tick on a timer that is counting down to some unknown number, every swing a snip at a tangle of multicolored wires, any one of which is liable to make the season explode.”

I was thinking this is true for baseball, but it touched on how I feel lately about watching Iowa football or the Broncos. There hasn't been much enjoyment lately in watching either team, though there are certainly thrills and drama. Baseball playoffs may be worse because of the 162-game build up to the fleeting chance for glory, but am I really looking forward to watching the Broncos Monday night at the Chargers? 

In The Boston Globe, Renée Graham quipped: “Herschel Walker could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and perform an abortion, and he wouldn’t lose any Republican voters.” 

The above is a play on the famous Trump boast, and it relies on the reader immediately grasping the allusion and seeing that both Trump and this take feature hyperbole that may actually turn out to not be much of an exaggeration. 

In New York magazine, Rebecca Traister added to the aptly oversize body of great descriptions of John Fetterman’s physique by writing that he “appeared to be built of all the XXL parts at the Guy Factory.” 

Fetterman is running for senate in Pennsylvania and he is a big fella, almost always wearing shorts and sweatshirts and generally seeming to be quite a character... but a likeable one, at least for many "non-elite."

In The Washington Post, Sean Wilentz marveled at Donald Trump’s peculiar tenacity: “Zombielike, he swaggers and struts and cons on the world’s largest stage, much as he did when gossip columnists fawned over him as The Donald; and he will continue his night of the living dead, with menacing success, until someone finally drives a metaphorical stake through his metaphorical heart.” 

This last one deserves a bit more analysis, mostly due to the mixing of spooky metaphors. The "living dead" are zombies, I presume, and they are not killed with stakes through the heart. That is the preferred way to dispatch vampires. On the other hand, most of us can at least sense the gist of the observation. Still, we might push students to come up with a better final phrase, like "...until someone shoots a metaphorical bullet into his metaphorical brain." Or should we shy away from gun violence references completely in favor of wooden stakes impaling bodies?

As usual, the ruling class always wins

After watching every Jan. 6 Committee hearing, one thing is clear: Donald Trump is a traitor to the country -- though one of the clumsiest and most grotesque in history -- and the entire Republican Party must answer for his actions, his refusal to follow societal norms, and his contempt for Americans.

Traitors in history were often executed, with the reasoning being that there are few crimes against a nation that can rival this one. I am not advocating for execution of Trump. I just want him shamed and removed from the national stage. I know that merely issuing a subpoena for him to testify to the House committee will likely produce more violence among the more unhinged in the Angry White People Party, and that the chances are vanishingly small that Trump will ever appear in a committee hearing or even a court of law.

Let's face it: when you consider the obscenely rich there are few examples of those oligarchs facing justice beyond fines and public shaming. And those last two don't happen often, either. The world is run by the wealthy and it doesn't matter much the type of government the wealthy will tolerate. 

The poor and ignorant will continue to be used by the wealthy of all political positions, and that will continue to frustrate me and cause some despair. But it's always been that way and is not going to change without some sort of economic revolution that produces much more equity among people throughout the world. In other words, Star Trek stuff, including replicators and the end of wealth by acquisition and exclusion of others. I'm not holding my breath.

Mass media has failed in attempting to maintain some semblance of "reliance on facts," and perhaps the realization by so many bad actors that there are absolutely no downsides to cheating, lying, and stealing makes that failure inevitable. 

We don't know how to deal with the flood of hypocrisy, the blatant deep fakes and shallow lies. 

And yet... I look forward to the coming midterm elections and the opportunities for Americans to use their votes to support their views, their prejudices, and their hopes. Some will vote against their own interests out of a sense of outrage or despair. The elections will not budge the wealthy class that runs us all, but it's nice to have even the illusion of popular power.

I read a provocative story today that pointed out that the anti-abortion movement is anti-democratic at its heart. Those who consider abortion the ultimate test of humanity will never accept a popular vote. After all, for them this is a morality test and human devices like voting and majority rule have nothing to do with being "right." 

For such zealots, democracy is irrelevant. They just demand winning, and total annihilation of their opponents.

I realize that this post is a bit unhinged and overly angry, but it's tough not to be constantly angry for a modern American who pays any attention to current events.

I will try to focus on sentence construction tomorrow.

Far be it from me to criticize high school English teachers...

High school journalism teachers universally advocate for the practices, objectives, and skills of journalism being the most effective way to teach thinking and writing... and their colleagues in the English departments of America universally ignore the point.

In a recent post, a community college professor argues persuasively that reporting and publishing for a larger public (larger than the teacher, anyway) is something that community colleges should be doing more of. I shared this story with Colorado journalism teacher colleagues last week, claiming that what is true for community college is also certainly true for high school.

I have had a few responses, with a couple of advisers saying they would be sharing the article with their English department peers. But no one seriously believes that much will change, and that is one of the tragedies of American education. We actually know practices and resources that work better and we willfully ignore them.

What do we ignore them for? Well, how about those squishy poetry units? How about those pet projects on "Of Mice and Men" that lead to posters as the final artifact "proving" student understanding and skill? What about continuing to ask students to write incredibly long paragraphs (and just ONE paragraph, or else) that are supposed to delve deeply into motif or theme or character development or connections to contemporary events? 

No wonder my college writers default to one giant paragraph so often. They have been punished for using shorter, more focused paragraphs and now some guy is asking them to upset that established pattern? How dare he (I)?

The creation of paragraphs is somewhat obscure, though many scholars mention the revolution of movable type leading to columns of densely set text necessitating adding some white space now and then to give readers a chance to "rest" or at least refocus their eyes.

In 1866, a Scottish professor named Alexander Bain wrote a book that laid out the still-common "rules" for paragraphs, including his idea that a paragraph should be thought of as an essay in miniature, containing one subject developed and supported over its course.

That led to English teachers over the past 150 years plus forcing students to write "topic sentences," and supporting paragraphs that are essentially complete essays. The heck with thinking about readers and about how actual books and magazines almost never consist of a series of paragraphs with each containing a topic sentence, expansion on the claim or topic, and a transition to the next graf. (I like the journalistic jargon of "graf," BTW -- a shorthand that reflects the need for shorter grafs).

When newspapers began using long vertical columns of text, those shorter grafs became the default of journalists. People don't want to read with their finger underlying each line as we descend the page. What is needed is some sort of quick way to insert a bit of white space that help guide a reader through the prose.

I often urge my college students to consider using shorter grafs mostly to help themselves (who cares about readers?) by forcing them to "see" where their claims are not supported by facts. Once you clearly see a graf like this: "Billy's insights into current trends in technology are eye-opening and provocative," followed by, well, nothing, you can begin to dig into what is missing. 

What ARE Billy's insights? How are they so provocative? What examples can we share from the text? Why would a reader come to agree with your assessment of Billy's essay?

When students choose interminably long gray paragraphs, the logic and the impact can be lost in the fog.

Online writing benefits particularly from shorter block grafs, but few high school English teachers seem to care about that. And few will spend more than a moment considering the arguments from our community college professor. 

After all, there are important 18th century poems that can inspire the next generation of poets.

Letting bygones be bygones is a tough sell

It is difficult to see how Russia can reenter the larger world of politics and commerce after a long war of aggression against Ukraine which includes indiscriminate bombing of civilians. 

I can't imagine Ukrainians finding forgiveness for a country that invaded and destroyed simply because they chose to do so. Thousands of dead civilians and billions in damages buildings and roads and so many young men dead... just to defend their country.

I can't imagine Europeans more generally allowing relations with their giant neighbor to return to anything close to normal. They can all see what could be their fate, should the Putin cult continue its trail of tears.

And yet... the world has a way of finding paths toward normalcy, even after the most heinous acts, including war. Look at Europe itself and how Germany has been able to return to civilization's good graces. Same with Japan.  

Right now it's hard to find much forgiveness in my heart for the hypocritical and power-hungry Angry White People Party, but somehow the country slowly and fitfully knit itself back together after the Civil War.

So never say never.

The passage of time and the reality of our ultimate need to simply get along with one another on our little planet combine to overcome almost anything, I guess.

I used to think Richard Nixon was the ultimate example of a power-mad politicians, but Trump leaves Tricky Dick in the dust. Nixon was closer to a modern Democrat than to an election denier and Christian Nationalist. 

Now we have a major political party that has no agenda beyond grievance and power and denying any changes in our social structure.

In 50 years, will the whole White Nationalist movement seem almost silly and certainly a transitional stage in our national saga?

Never say never.

When religion throws its weight around, we all lose

Today's evidence that the American health care system is broken, or at least badly damaged, is that one of every seven hospital beds in this country are in Catholic hospitals. Nothing against Catholic hospitals, and I assume the continual increase of their share of the hospital market is complex and assume they have provided myriad instances of care, but here's one simple fact: access to reproductive health services is reduced by policies prohibiting abortion.

Historians can provide the details and the personalities, but the failure of the nation to provide readily available health care for its citizens other than through private entities is a continuing problem. Right now, our already tight number of hospital beds is reduced by 14 percent when it comes to reproductive services around abortion.

As a former altar boy, I am quite familiar with a range of Catholic experiences and beliefs and (full disclosure) am not a supporter of the Catholic Church generally. I am among the many who are ashamed of the patriarchal, abusive practices of some church leaders. But I readily acknowledge the incredible acts of charity and selflessness than many believers have shared with people all over the world, and was even born in a Catholic hospital in Iowa City. 

One would think that health care would not be connected with organized religion. There are no deep theological debates over treating lung cancer or mending a broken bone. There are best practices and that should be that.

In many ways, the very idea that a hospital would be considered a Catholic institution seems nuts. Imagine the idea carried to a (maybe?) silly conclusion: Methodist hospitals in two "flavors," one accepting LBGTQI+ patients and one that turns them away; Jewish hospitals in several flavors, from Orthodox to Reformed; Atheist hospitals for those opting out of organized religion, perhaps with a few wards for Agnostics ("are you sure you are even sick?").

I hope it's not anti-Catholic to point out that applying the hazy label of "Catholic" on a building that aims to heal the sick but to allow the imposition of certain restrictions about practices on which reasonable people disagree seems like a problem.

I would apply the same observation about the U.S. Supreme Court, where 7 of the 9 justices are Catholic (or Catholic-adjacent in the case of Gorsuch). The fact that all 6 right wing radicals on the court are of one basic religion should be quite concerning in a nation founded on the freedom FROM religion, as well as the freedom to practice religion. 

Catholics are as likely to be fine people as any other group -- heck, I have many friends who claim to be practicing Catholics -- but how did we get to the point where a religious choice matters in the public arena? 

There are plenty of Americans who don't really believe in the concept of democracy, unless only people from their religion or state or location or political party get to participate in the democracy. There is real irony in Southern Baptists loudly praising conservative Catholic jurists as long as they agree on abortion and the general subordination of women. But I continue to hope that there are more Americans who see the dangers of autocratic theocracy.

Once religions attain political power -- and between hospitals and the Supreme Court, that has clearly happened -- the oppression begins. 

Organized religion generally, and Catholics specifically, need to take a step back and reexamine their reason to exist. Most people don't attend church services.

They may be on to something.

Author's Note: This is blog post #400, which is an artificial milestone, but a good reminder that daily writing eventually accumulates... though the sum total may not amount to much. 

Paying attention to reasonable fears

From an analysis by Aaron Blake (a pundit) from the Washington Post:

Generally, the right venue to warn that we face the biggest threat of Armageddon in 60 years wouldn’t seem to be a political fundraiser. But for whatever reason, that’s where President Biden on Thursday night decided to offer some of the scariest comments uttered by a U.S. president in decades.

Speaking at a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee event, Biden said that for the “first time since the Cuban missile crisis we have a direct threat of the use of the nuclear weapon if in fact things continue down the path they are going.”

Biden has certainly shown himself capable of speaking unintentionally — or “getting over his skis,” to borrow a phrase — but he said a version of this warning not once, not twice, but three times.

“We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis,” he reiterated at another point.

The analysis basically just supposes that the difference between past nuclear standoffs and this one is that Russia has backed itself into a corner and an unhinged autocrat may think there is nothing to lose... and when people don't see any way out, all bets are off.

I am glad to see the level of concern raised a bit here, though the prospect of any sort of nuclear use in Ukraine or elsewhere is so frightening that I have to push contemplating it out of my mind.

I may be naïve, but I still cling to the idea that leaders of great nations still have rational reasons for what they do, even if those reasons are flawed or lead to bad outcomes. I am from a generation that blithely practiced for atomic bombs dropping over Iowa by sitting quietly under my first grade desk at Roosevelt Elementary for 15 minutes.

Hmmm.... not all that different from modern day students huddling in a corner away from the classroom door during active shooter drills. 

The big difference, maybe, is that no nukes were detonated over Iowa City, while schools are regularly places where young men gun down children.

From a teaching standpoint, the Post article would prompt me to quickly revisit what "Armageddon" means, and that would mean a side trip to the Bible. Another reminder that some basic familiarity with Bible stories is necessary to understand allusions. I worry that public schools, at least, will avoid any use of the Bible out of fear of offending, well, someone.

The Cuban missile crisis occurred 60 years ago, so that would have to be summarized for modern students (and their parents?). 

I would also spend a bit of time on the significance of something being repeated three times. In rhetoric, when a word is mentioned three times, it is a triad. If that word is repeated exactly, even with a slight change in emphasis in enunciation, it is known as a reduplication.

Student don't really need to know the esoteric terms of rhetoric, of course. All they really need to recognize is the power of three: Three mentions. Three examples. Three sources. Three points required to define a line. Three rhetorical appeals (thanks, Aristotle).

Or maybe the best choice is to not use that commentary in a classroom, and possibly alarm young people with worries about Armageddon. 

Ignorance is bliss, after all.

The crisis in America is over how to feel good about our lives

An interesting story in the New York Times presented this basic claim: American political views and attitudes about life generally are now defined mostly by level of education. Not completely, but dramatically.

Education level has always been a "separator issue," I suppose, particularly when higher education was confined mostly to elite white males. The economy and public life is dependent upon educated people, but now that women outnumber men in educational achievement while non-college, rural males find productive work harder to come by, the divide seems worse than ever.

And it is poisoning our political debates, killing our rural neighbors, and prompting all sorts of desperation, including deaths of desperation, from suicide to drug overdoses. 

The article also noted that in the past decade or so political affiliation and higher death rates coincide, with red state death rates rising much higher for both men and women compared to blue states. 

Red states are increasingly producing a smaller percentage of the nation's productivity and revenue and demanding more and more government support. Just imagine how the nation's senior citizens might react to the elimination of social safety net programs. We value our freedoms, all right, but certainly not freedom FROM government support. Just ask Floridians.

The article also included stats from surveys about how various demographics feel about the future. This was illuminating: non-urban white males are much less optimistic about the country's future than Blacks and Hispanics. It turns out that most non-college whites are actually doing OK financially but their fear and anger comes from enjoying less power, less influence, and less notice. They have a vague feeling that they are not as valuable as they once were.

Blacks, on the other hand, have suffered for so long and been forced to learn so many coping skills to survive that their confidence in the future is quite high. "Been down so long, it looks like up to me" applies here.

Black Americans still value education and believe in more education being a key to bettering their lives. Many poor whites are denigrating higher education and opting to cling to their grievances.

What can be done? Short of mandating a college education -- which seems unlikely for so many reasons -- the only solution I can see is to rebuild manufacturing and local industry. Many of those jobs, which used to provide not only financial security but a sense of pride in work, were outsourced to other countries with incredibly low labor costs. 

That led to a large percentage of our goods being produced abroad, which makes for cheap t-shirts and computers, but didn't bring financial benefits to many areas of the country. How can we help our rural and non-college educated fellow citizens? Give them valuable work to do.

Easy to say, I suppose, and there would certainly be some increased costs involved. Even the poorest Americans live relatively good lives compared to a majority of the rest of the planet. And not every poor, aggrieved white person will find a great position. But it wouldn't take that many to start the shift and calm the outrage.

And paying a bit more for clothing, electronics, heavy equipment, and more... how large a burden would that be? Do I really need another cheap t-shirt or pair of pants? Do I really need a smart phone upgrade every two years? 

Of course, the owner class is not going to simply build new factories in small town Iowa next year, unless there are incentives. There were "perverse incentives" (harmful to the nation) in outsourcing jobs and reducing costs/increasing profits. I can imagine government creating incentives that work in the other direction.

I am not expert enough to be able to formulate a plan or proposed legislation, but I suspect there are plenty of people with those skills and vision.

It just makes sense to me that people need valuable and sustaining work to feel good about life. Right now, too many Americans don't feel good about their present or their future. 

A standing ovation for hypocrisy and cruelty

When politics replaces religion as a key to peoples' lives, trouble is inevitable.

How else can Georgia Republicans giving Herschel Walker a standing ovation the day after the latest revelations about him? I know, technically they are simply accusations, but those accusations about his paying for a girlfriend's abortion are backed up by paperwork. And one of the man's sons has had enough and is quite scathing about his father's tendency to lie and be unfaithful

In many ways, this is not different from the Angry White People continuing to support Trump, despite the sheer volume of accusations, clear misdeeds, lack of caring about the very people who vote for him, and more.

Once you embrace winning at all costs and turning away from demanding any sort of moral or ethical accountability by your candidates, I guess "standing against the libs" becomes a core religious belief. 

Most Americans don't go to church services at all, or only occasionally, but why bother when they can turn to the Church of Fox News and receive the spiritual sustenance they desire? Or, for that matter, some may turn to the Church of MSNBC. And don't forget the Church of the NFL.

There is a lot of punditry lately exploring why young men are so disconnected from society, from women, and from gainful employment. Young men are a danger across the planet, particularly when they are not engaged in some sort of meaningful work or simply attempting to support their families. Young men have a lot of energy and that energy needs some sort of outlet.

Perhaps the most insidious effect from the Trump presidency and continued presence in our lives is that organized religion -- not always a helpful institution anyway, so rather vulnerable -- has failed spectacularly to uphold any core beliefs and has become irrelevant to our lives. People are abandoning religious institutions in droves as they look for some institution that addresses their immediate concerns.

That is why Florida is eager for help from the hated federal government. The sheer level of pain and disaster has temporarily overcome the quasi-religion of politics. 

The "time out" won't last long.

Politics and the high priests of both parties -- mostly ancient mariners clinging to myths and outdated power -- find plenty of willing believers. They have decided that we are in a fight to the death over... something. Even being in close proximity with someone of the opposing political party is problematic.

I assume this was how life was through much of human history, with otherwise rational humans being quite willing to slaughter Jews, for instance, since they "were the enemy." I read that Putin went a bit nutty in his latest speech, accusing the West of Satanism. Look, if we are battling the ultimate evil, are there any limits on what we are willing to do?

Religion produces zealots, who often kill and maim the innocent, but all for the larger cause. 

How are modern politics any different? The zealots get all the oxygen in our patchwork media landscape and we are all called to declare for one set of zealots or another.

Nothing will change until enough people resist the call to join the latest cult.

Sorting through and ranking our issues is not easy

I have to admit to having problems in the past few years in sorting out the true emergency issues to fret about from the storm of outrageous issues that make me crazy but that deserve to sit on a lower level of my mental pyramid of problems.

Trump is a moron, and almost everyone can agree on that. He stole/mishandled documents and that was both stupid and a clear crime. But the more we all focus on something that is stupid, the less bandwidth we have remaining to focus on Trump's Jan. 6 plot and the continuing efforts to replace a representative democracy with an autocracy.

That second one is the truly apocalyptic emergency that I can't lose sight of.

The threat of nuclear weapons being used against Ukraine (or other European countries) should be my number one worry right now -- not that I can do much about it. It's not that there is no coverage of this continuing threat but there is a tendency among the normal to rationalize behaviors of the abnormal.

Putin, like Trump, is among the abnormal, but the rational majority can't conceive of how far those two autocrats are willing to go, so I read lots of "think pieces" predicting that Putin won't use those tactical nukes because the long-term negatives outweigh the immediate positives for him.

OK, but that is an analysis based on all sides behaving rationally. What if it turns out that Putin, like Trump, is a bit crazy? Does logic still apply?

Today we read that Senate candidate Herschel Walker paid for a woman's abortion, making him the latest hypocritical politician caught doing exactly what he or she rails against. Rational analysts predict that THIS will be last straw, and Walker's bizarre candidacy will be punished with defeat.

But the Angry White People Party is likely to stick with this obviously brain-damaged Black man, refusing to admit that they made a mistake. The idea that our elected leaders should be competent and reasonable is so last century, I guess.

Many of our neighbors are fine with voting for degenerates and the obviously unprepared as long as they do not have the hated "D" behind their name on the ballot.

At a small gathering yesterday, a friend stated that some people have left our little Methodist church because they feared being surrounded by Democrats... and we all know that even being in proximity to the evil ones can rub off on us.

I wanted to scoff at that notion, but in a world where there are so many indignities and so much tribalism and so little attention to factual reporting, can I really be surprised?

Sermons can be classical arguments... or sleep aids

I am not a very religious guy, though I do sing in the chancel choir most Sundays. I enjoy the community and the shared experience of producing something resembling music each week, even though I know almost nothing about music's foundations and most elementary building blocks of musical theory.

Sitting in the choir loft gives me a great view of the ever-dwindling and ever-graying congregation (I am well past gray and into lack of color completely, other than white). The congregation has a clear view of me, as well, which makes dozing off during sermons potentially embarrassing. 

So, I try to pay attention, though my coping mechanism is often to imagine the sermon translated into a classroom lesson. Sometimes I run lyrics in my head, silently rehearsing for a future show. I have also become quite proficient at looking straight ahead, eyes open with a serious expression, as if I am contemplating some looming charitable act or perhaps my own mortality. 

I am a decent judge of a well-crafted sermon, which really is an argument being made by a preacher with (we hope) a clear call to action. That call to action (CTA) boils down to "do good and avoid evil," I suppose, but defining good and evil can be tricky. 

There are certain shared strategies that preachers use. The first is to start with Scripture and then spend some time breaking it down and interpreting the advice/wisdom/challenge. Ministers study the Bible quite rigorously, of course, so this is quite comfortable for them, and many in the congregation may know the text of the Bible nearly as well as the minister. That makes for a solid go-to. Focusing tightly on a Bible passage rarely gets criticized, even if that passage is as clear as mud.

A second strategy is to find, observe, or simply "steal" a good story that can act as a sort of parable, providing the preacher with an anecdote or folksy wisdom piece or amusing memory that brings the audience along and sets an engaging tone.

A third strategy is to share a personal "confession," or more often just a personal memoir that applies to the day's theme. These may be absolutely true or (more often, would be my guess) may be borrowed from other sources. Certainly, they tend to be sculpted carefully to leave out distractions and confusion. They are definitely related to parables, which are simply short narratives designed to teach a lesson. No one claims those parables, even from Jesus, were true stories.

And a fourth strategy, and my least favorite, is simply to repeat some basic claim, over and over, using different phrasing, perhaps, but never really sharing any clear evidence with the audience. That has been my problem with a number of recent sermons. The message boils down to love God and one another, and that is fine as far as it goes. It certainly has the virtue of being concise, though how to interpret "love" is a bit vague. 

Many sermons combine all of the above, possibly including very little of that fourth strategy. 

Preachers make use of combinations of personal anecdotes, observations, quotations from famous scholars or even popular culture, parables, invented situations, and researched history to try to engage us. Those seem like good tools. 

What I am missing lately in sermons is provocation. When the message boils down to "just keep loving and trusting God and all things will turn out fine..." well, that is NOT provocative and also incredibly passive. 

"Provoke" comes from two Latin roots: "voce" (to speak or breathe) and "pro" (to create or to bring forth). To provoke is to intentionally push for some sort of reaction, and teachers do this all the time -- sometimes just to check to see if anyone is still awake in class.

When church services fall into patterns and the same basic wisdom is dispensed, it is easy to feel comfortable. But what I appreciate most in arguments is to be pushed out of my comfort zone, to feel a bit off-kilter, to see things in a new light.

Preachers, presidents, governors, teachers... we all need to continually work on our rhetoric and find ways to surprise our audiences.