Encountering Difference

In eighth grade, I was asked to present to the class a short story that I had written.  The story was about an alien who lived among us, intent on the destruction of our world--some combination of pod people and Marvin the Martian, I think.  Yet the alien, over the course of the story learns that he likes it here on earth, in the middle of the small, sleepy town where I grew up.  And so he decides to settle down, instead of destroying this beautiful place.

I stood in front of my classmates and read this story proudly.  And after I'd stumbled my way through to the end, my classmates had the chance to respond.

"What kind of story was that?" asked the classmate who would be the best man at my wedding some 15 years later.  "Where are all of the details?  What did the alien look like?  Where was he living?  Why did he want to stay here?"  I stood there just listening, shocked, and before I could think of anything to say, my teacher decided to move on to the next story. 

I was angry, indignant, embarrassed.  To me, the answers to these silly questions were self-apparent--even if I didn't write them into the story itself.  It never even occurred to me that my audience wouldn't know the answers to these questions.  Why did I even have to think about audience any way?  When I returned to my seat, I'm sure that I slouched down, crossed my arms and pouted.  I never read that story again.

It wasn't until much later in my life that I realized that this moment was an important lesson in audience awareness.  Because from that moment on, I did think about audience in ways that made me a much more effective writer.  I had more lessons to learn about audience, but from that moment on, I realized that I needed to write as if someone else was reading, even if no one ever would.

This moment was a moment when I was forced to encounter a perspective outside my system of writing knowledge, and I had a choice: dismiss that perspective or change my system of knowlege to fit with this new information about how one should write.  Fortunately, this was a lesson that I took to heart, albeit grudgingly.  From that moment on, I envisioned writing tasks differently than I had done before, and the way that I wrote began to change accordingly.

This experience and others throughout my life have shown me that truly meaningful learning experiences are about more than the "nuts and bolts" of any given subject.  Instead, meaningful learning experiences force use to reexamine entire knowledge systems, in ways that reshape the entire way we approach understanding the subject.  And when these meaningful learning experiences can be created, the "nuts and bolts" seem to take care of themselves.  For this reason, I have shaped my teaching to create meaningful learning experiences--ones that make students rethink the way that they understand writing--by creating a learning context designed to provide students with calculated encounters with difference.

Thus, my pedagogical approaches are designed to disrupt normalcy in students' expectations of the learning process.  They turn the attention away from learning content and toward a reflective practice of examining one's understanding of writing, so that a new perspective can be formed through the critical examination of one's own knowledge systems.

"Difference" plays a critical role in this process.  By difference I mean any experience that is strange or unexpected, anything that does not fit with one's current knowledge system.  This can include any number of ideas, activities, encounters, or experiences.  Under ideal conditions, difference provides us with a reason to reexamine our entire knowlege system in order to accommodate these strange and unexpected experiences.

Note well, though, that encounters with difference are not always pleasant and do not always result in the kind of learning that we hope to create.  At times, we embrace difference, use it to rethink our own systems of knowledge.  At other times, we close down when we encounter difference.  We stick to what we know and dismiss those things that are strange and new.  This occurs when we become more attached to the system of knowledge than we do the act of learning.  Thus, to create effective pedagogical experiences--experiences that students are willing to openly consider without extreme resistance--some level of planning, some calculation, must go into the kind of difference used to effect learning. 

And here is where my role as the teacher enters the picture. As a teacher, I serve as a catalyst to the changes that I hope students are making. By shaping the type and direction of the differences built into a course, I can help to guide the process of critical reflection that leads to meaningful learning.  Yet, I must also avoid designing encounters with difference that will cause students to solidify their knowlege systems against a perceived threat, instead of modifying them to deal with new knowlege.  I do this by forming an understanding of students' knowledge systems as the course progresses.  At times and when it's appropriate, I will introduce new ideas or experiences designed to help students critically examine their knowledge systems.  

Albert Einstein once said that, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."  Learning is the moment when you realize you must try something different.   Just as I was forced to reinterpret my understanding of the writing process in response to the perspective of another, so too must my students adjust their understanding in the face of their classmates' perspectives and use them to reflect on their own understanding of writing.  For this reason, I use class discussion as one way to create difference.  Through class discussions, students themselves put forth different ideas and opinions that will from time-to-time lead to the kind of reflective examination of self associated with meaningful learning experiences.

In these exchanges, students have a chance to explore ideas within the context of a specific community, showcase the distance and proximity of their ideas from others', and push the boundaries of their knowledge systems in response to the difference they encounter through class activities. 

Creating calculated encounters with difference is a balancing act, one that requires perception and diligence on my part as a teacher.  Yet, when it works, I find that students have meaningful learning experiences, that leave a lasting impression.  I find that when I have done my job, students will say to me during class or in my student evaluations that entering the class they hated writing but now they actually enjoy writing--the ultimate compliment to me.  Other students will write in assigned reflective documents that when they entered the class they didn't think that they would learn anything, "but, boy was I wrong!"  Comments like this indicate that students are rethinking their basic perspective on writing in a way that will be beneficial to their continued growth as a writer and a learner.  And this revision of their knowledge systems has a lasting impression on the way that the student will approach writing tasks in the future.

Developmental Writing Wordles

I'm working on a presentation that looks at the course descriptions for developmental writing courses and course sequences. My hope is to get a sense for how developmental writing is framed by colleges. As part of this, I want to investigate the logic used to create the course sequences and get a sense for what aspects of writing are being "developed" through the courses. Below are three Wordles that provide an overview of developmental writing in Northern Illinois. These descriptions come from the course catalogs published by post-secondary institutions in and around the Chicagoland area.

I'm interested to hear your thoughts. Does anything jump out at you as inaccurate or misrepresentative of how developmental writing is taught or should be taught?

Developmental Writing in Northern Illinois

Developmental Writing at Two-year Colleges in Northern Illinois

Developmental Writing at Four-Year Colleges and Universities in Nothern Illinois

Found this in a journal.  Thought I'd share.

We've come full circle.  Here I sit, anxious about writing.  I hardly ever feel anxiety anymore because I do it so often.  But this is different, I guess.  Different because I'm exercising a different part of my brain, one that has been dormant for a long time.  How will it awake?  Angry?  Timid?  How do I rub out the cobwebs and begin again?

I once advised someone who was having trouble writing to skip the beginning.  I said, instead move along to the middle or the end.  And I find that I don't know how or where to begin this journey, so I need to find a middle point from which to start.

What am I writing?  I don't even know. 

But in the middle of things, I see a fire crackling brightly with no smoke.  Its light holds back a dark and cool night, and people huddle around it, transfixed by the swirling flames.  They turn to me and call for a story.

"Tell us something of home," they say.  Remind us why we are here, miles away in a land none of us know."  I know of no story that will meet their request, but it would be rude not to give them a story.

I clear my throat and tilt back my head to the stars.  They are bright, as is the moon.  And yet the woods around the clearing are dark.  And I'm sure that satyrs and centaurs stalk just out of view, sentinals waiting to see if we will stray and be lost.

The world presses down on me. As I open my mouth to speak, my friends stare not at me but at the fire, as if the story will come from there.  And perhaps it does because I begin with a fire just like this one. 

"Did I ever tell you about my trip up Stormy Mountain?"  I see a knowing smirk on my left.  Blank stares and no responses from the rest.  "I was camping about halfway up Stormy Mountain one night in late summer.  My plan was to head up to the peak and then over to Cougar Mountain before I set out for home.  It's a cool night, mostly because of the elevation, and I'm all alone.  There's nobody for miles.  No cell service.  It's just me.  Me and the bears and the lions and elk.  I remember, I saw a wolf on that trip.  It just stopped and looked at me and plodded on its way."  I pause, but no one speaks.  A pine cone pops and hisses at the bottom of the fire.  A small stream of smoke escapes and slowly dissipates, like a lock of hair sinking into the depths of a deep lake. 

"It's a quiet night with a small fire like this one that has just gone out.  I'm in my tent about to fall asleep when I hear it."  I pause again, and I see the youngest look up at me.  To my left, the smirk quivers and then disappears.  "Hear what," the youngest asks.  "Well, I can't quite explain it," I say.  "Like a wolf but deeper.  Like a lion but longer.  Like a man but wilder.  Gutteral.  It was a howl, up somewhere in the direction of Devil's Backbone.  A long sad howl, like something that would never be happy again.  And I don't need to tell you--out there, alone, in the woods, miles from another living soul--it raised the hair on my neck.  It sent a shiver through me, like I've never experienced before.  I had to resist the urge to just run right down the mountain in the other direction.  I lay there as quiet as I could.  Barely even breathing.  'Well,' I thought to myself, 'at least it's miles away.'  And that thought comforted me for about a half a minute."  Two or three are looking at me now.  The smirk has gone serious, hiding behind a poker face. 

"But after about a half a minute, I hear a response.  This one.  This one was right up at the peak of Stormy, less than a hundred yards away from me.  Loud.  I don't think I've ever heard a yell that loud before.  Like a man's but wilder, wilder and deeper.  That's the best way to say it.  It wasn't an elk.  It wasn't a wolf or a cougar or a coyote or an owl or anything else I'd ever heard before.  The second it started, I was out of my sleeping bag and digging in my pack for shells.  It was still going.  It lasted that long.  I loaded my rifle with shaking fingers.  I just sat and listened.  Then I heard it moving down the mountain, away from me, thankfully.  But even at a hundred yards, I could hear limbs snapping as it moved through the pines, until it finally faded off in the direction of Devil's Backbone.  I didn't sleep a wink that night.  I just lay there, my rifle ready, twitching and shaking at any sound near the camp." 

"That morning, I continued on my way up to the peak.  I kept my rifle loaded, but I didn't see any animals.  When I got to the summit, I looked out in the direction of Devil's Backbone, and I thought I saw something moving against the rock.  By the time I got my scope trained on it, it was gone."

"On my way down, I headed around the north face so that I could cut back east.  I came to this shady spot just below the peak, a place where the trail was still covered in snow for about 50 feet or so.  And there they were.  I just couldn't believe it."  I paused again and stared at the fire.  I threw in a fresh log, and watched the shower of sparks spray into the air.

"What?" asked the youngest.  "What did you see?"

I looked at them all.  "Tracks," I said.  "Tracks for what must have been the biggest creature I'd ever seen.  And they were headed straight towards Devil's Backbone.  Straight at it.  These weren't bear tracks.  They weren't lion tracks.  They were too big and too far apart.  And they looked like.  Well, they looked like."

"Go on and say it," the smirk said.

I plunged in.  "They looked like human feet, except bigger.  Twice my size.  Nearly twice as far apart as my own tracks."

"There you go, boys," said the smirk.  "Bigfoot."  The fire hissed and a log collapsed.  Another shower of sparks dances quietly up and faded in the night sky.  The woods were quiet.  We all sat and stared into the glowing heart.  The iridescent ashes changing from red to orange to white.

"Is that a true story?" asked the youngest, finally.

"That's the honest-to-God truth," I replied. Would I make something like that up?"

The smirk deepened, and another formed across the fire, but the rest looked at me with wonder.  They believed.  One nodded.  The youngest looked at me with a new awe.

"Why are we here?" he asked.

"Because we have to be," I replied. 

They sit, and the air crackles with the heat from the fire.  They know their fates are entangled.  Should one string be cut, the others will fray and break.  But together we are strong.

For when they come together in this way, the world extends from them.  They make it.  Without them, the world would not exist.  Outside the firelight, the forest fades to black and trails off into nothingness.  Beyond the stars we see, there is an infinite darkness.  We make those stars shine bright.  The world beneath our feet goes only as deep as we dig and only as far as we tread.  The story makes it what it is. 

They called for a voice, one that will weave a tale and bind their fates further.  I have done my best.          

Messing with the new Blogger

What's up?  This is a new sort of blog format.  I'm not sure what I think about it.  But perhaps it'll work out.  So this is just a junk post to get used to the new settings and whatnot.  (Hi Nikki!) So how does it work when you insert an image? Now, can I wrap text around this image?  How do I go about doing that? 

These are Cherry Blossums!

Is it going to let me type over here?  It looks that way.

This is Riley!

How about here? I guess so. And so this is very interesting. The question is, what will this all look like when it comes down to it?







Some small problems with converting from the compose to the HTML functions and back again.  Hmm.  But they do have my favorite font now:  Georgia.  Looks like Times is the default font.  I wonder if I can change that.  (Hi Nikki!) 

Font size Large.  And in Georgia.  Georgia Bold 

No Text boxes, though.  But now I can do this to signify that it's a quote.  This is a quote in case you didn't know.

And here's another.  Brad writes:

Hi Nikki! :-P 

Don't write this because that would be stupid.

I think that's probably a good look at the new tools.  Things still feel pretty basic and clunky.  I suppose if I really want to get into it, I'll need to use HTML, but I'm a little reluctant, since I royally screwed up my Moodle page by messing with the HTML.






What other nifty things can I do? 

Communication in the First-year Writing Classroom: A Rhetorical and Cognitive Linguistic Study

Bradley Smith
Research Network Forum
March 21, 2012

Abstract:
This study collects and categorizes conceptual metaphors used by first-year writing students and teachers to think and write about the acts of learning to write, communicating using writing, and composing written texts. It shows that FYW students and teachers use many of the same conceptual metaphors but with different frequency and as part of different linguistic frames. Furthermore, it reveals that FYW students and teachers often do not communicate effectively because they use different conceptual metaphors and frames to think about and communicate their thoughts about writing and learning to write. Based on the collected data, I argue that FYW teachers should carefully employ conceptual metaphors and frames consistent with their value systems and that teachers of writing should employ a written-communication-as-conversation frame less frequently, opting instead for a written-communication-as-journey frame.

Introduction:
In the past few years, framing has taken on an integral role in the conversation of teaching college writing. Perhaps the most visible manifestation of this movement is the “Framework for Success in Post-Secondary Writing” created by the Council of Writing Program Administrators, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the National Writing Project. This document works to reframe the concept of college readiness, using the notion that readiness rests on students’ previous experiences and their “habits of mind,” which rightly shifts the conversation away from a frame focused on minds as containers for ideas and toward a frame focused on the mind’s growth over time and its ability to perform certain tasks.

Scholarship in the field of composition and rhetoric has been building to this moment for quite some time. For instance, Lad Tobin’s (1989) CCC’s article “Bridging Gaps: Analyzing our Students’ Metaphors for Composing” argued that a clearer understanding of our students’ metaphors for composing would allow us to better communicate with them. The relationship between framing and conceptual metaphors is too complex to do justice in this short time. Yet it is clear that there is a substantive and overlapping relationship between the two theories of cognition. George Lakoff’s work on morality and politics offers one clear example of this connection.

In addition to Tobin’s research, much work has been done to identify and analyze individual metaphors used in the context of first-year writing. However much critical work still needs to be completed in order to understand the way that conceptual metaphors interact within the context of first-year writing to frame the discourse of learning and writing. This study builds on Tobin’s work and other Composition and Rhetoric scholars (most notably Linda Adler-Kassner and Philip Eubanks) who have investigated conceptual metaphors and framing. In addition, it introduces to the discussion the range and diversity of conceptual metaphors and frames used to think about writing and learning within the context of first-year writing. To achieve these goals the study takes a broad-spectrum look at the conceptual metaphors and frames that first-year writing students and teachers use and analyzes their effects on classroom communication and behavior.

Methods:
In order to identify and analyze conceptual metaphors and frames, I collected meta-cognitive documents from 35 students in two sections of first-year writing. These documents were assigned as part of the course, and in them students were asked to reflect on what they were learning as the course progressed.

To account for the conceptual metaphors that FYW teachers use, I added a second set of data to the corpus. These materials were the transcript of Todd Taylor's "Take 20" and chapters four, five, and six from Richard Haswell’s and Min-Zhan Lu's Comp Tales. The three chapters from Comp Tales are a collection of focused reflections on "The Classroom," "The Writing," and "The Students." This set of data was used because it offered an amount of text similar to the student data collected, the texts were reflective and analytical along the same lines as the student data, and the texts came from a diverse group of first-year writing teachers with diverse experiences and backgrounds. Together, these texts allowed me to look at the conceptual systems that teachers of first-year writing across a spectrum use to think about what it means to learn to write and to communicate using writing.

“Evidence” of a conceptual metaphor and its related frames was seen as a metaphor used to conceptualize the act of writing or the acts of learning to write. Metaphor identification followed the identification methods employed by Lynne Cameron in Metaphors in Educational Discourse and were coded according to 13 different categories. Examples of metaphor identification and the coding categories are listed in the handout.

Results:

This analysis led to the identification of a number of different conceptual metaphors and frames that are simultaneously at work in classroom contexts—too many to discuss in any sort of detail during this presentation; however the handout gives comparisons between general trends in student and teachers’ metaphor use. The main metaphors that we might expect to surface in this study were present:

Conduit Metaphor for communication
Banking Metaphor for learning
Constructivist Metaphor for learning
Container Metaphors for the mind and for written texts
Speaking Metonymy for written communication
Journey metaphors for writing process and for written communication

Yet there were other metaphors that were also amply present in the data but that are also used to conceptualize written communication, writing processes, or learning to write. Most notably:

Artistic Craft metaphor for writing process

This is most notable because this metaphor occurred only in the data collected from teachers. Furthermore, it was the metaphor most often used by teachers to conceptualize the composing process. As such, it offers a clear example of the way that students and teachers differ in their thinking about composing.

Discussion:

Generally, what we can draw from these data is that there are clearly differences in the ways teachers and students of first-year writing use conceptual metaphors in order to frame the work of learning to write and the processes involved in written communication. This was clear in the frequency with which teachers and students used certain conceptual metaphors. Most surprisingly and most interestingly, though, the data revealed that even when students and teachers were using the same conceptual metaphors, often they employed those metaphors differently, as part of different conceptual frames. For instance, both teachers and students relied to a certain extent on the metaphor that ideas are objects. Yet those objects were characterized differently when used in association with different metaphors for learning. If learning was conceptualized as collecting and storing ideas, then the idea-as-object became an object that could be “stored in” the mind-as-container (e.g. a liquid “soaked up” by the mind). Here learning is framed as the act of passively soaking up ideas and holding onto them for the future, when they will be squeezed out again. But if learning was conceptualized as “ordering” or “connecting” ideas, then the idea-as-object transformed into a metaphor conducive to stacking and connecting (e.g. bricks or blocks). Here learning is framed more actively, according to constructivist principles, where new learning is “built on” previous learning until “higher” education is achieved.

This difference in metaphor use is troubling because it suggests that students and teachers will sometimes conflict on the most basic understanding of what is expected as the work of the course. That is, if students are to be prepared for post-secondary success, not only must they have developed specific habits of mind through positive writing experiences, they must understand that learning to write means developing these habits of mind, rather than “collecting” and “storing” facts about writing.

In addition, the rich collection of potential metaphors and frames suggests that teachers of first-year writing should carefully consider the conceptual metaphors and frames that they will employ while they are teaching. The “Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing” nicely offers a way for teachers to begin thinking about which metaphors and frames will most successfully communicate their values. Yet consciously employing the same metaphors as the document requires paying conscious attention to the metaphoric constructions one uses while teaching, which is indeed a difficult prospect.

Handout:
Data Codes Used for Analysis
Mind Characteristics [MC]: metaphors used to explain the relationship between the mind and what it means to learn to write.
Communicative Processes [CP]: metaphors used to explain the act of communicating an idea to another person or group of people.
Writing [W]: metaphors used to explain the act of representing concepts orthographically or features that these orthographic representations had or should have. This category included two subcategories: Writing Effectively [W(E)] or Writing Ineffectively [W(I)].
Learning [L]: metaphors used to explain the act of learning to write.
Knowledge [K]: metaphors used to explain what it meant to know how to write.
Writing Processes [WP]: metaphors used to explain the actions, activities, or processes involved in writing. I also chose to create subcategories for processes that occurred frequently in the data: Revising [WP(R)], Editing [WP(Ed)], Responding [WP(Resp)], Researching [WP(Rsch)], and Arguing [WP(A)].
Example of Coded Results:
This unit was about how to write a well-written research proposal. In order to write a carefully planned out and good research paper, you must first write a research proposal. The proposal includes [R1&R2 W][1] an introduction stating [R1&R2 CP] what you plan to be writing about and why you think it might be important. Next there is the working bibliography, which states [R1&R2 CP] the different sources you will be using. Finally there is the research description. This will lie out [R1&R2 CP] all of the questions you will be asking, and how you will answer them. It also is where you talk about [R1&R2 CP] why this topic is important, or how you got [R1&R2 MC] the idea to write about it.
Bibliography:
Cameron, Lynne. Metaphor in Educational Discourse. London: Continuum, 2003. Print.

“Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing.” Council of Writing Program Administrators. Council of Writing Program Administrators, National Council of Teachers of English, and National Writing Project. Jan. 2011. Web. 16 March 2012.

Lakoff, George. Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think. 2nd Ed. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2002. Print.

Tobin, Lad. “Bridging Gaps: Analyzing our Students’ Metaphors for Composing.” CCC 40.4 (1989): 444-58. Print.
[1] R1 & R2 refer to the coding of two separate raters. In the example provided, the two raters agreed on all of the metaphors identified and their subsequent codes. While typically, the two raters agreed, occasionally they disagreed over what constituted a metaphor and which code should be applied.

Percentages of Metaphors Identified During Analysis Available in the handout or by request.

In the Shadows of Giants

This is where I live, in the middle of the middle west. It’s flat, and that’s an understatement. You can see for miles, except near the small towns that pop up here and there and disrupt the planar vista. I grew up around these empty winter corn fields and have lived with them all my life—except for a three year stint in the state of Washington. It wasn’t until I left that I realized how much you can miss this vast emptiness. It becomes a presence in a way. A presence highlighted by the smell of dirt, grated up by steel rakes like dinosaurs’ claws. I missed the smell of dirt in the fall, mixed with the smell of dying leaves. It’s how I know when autumn has begun and when summer has ended. Pretty soon the ground will be covered with snow. It will whip across the plains with nothing to stop it. This too is part of my Chicago, something that is beyond the city but also an attitude that is in some way part of it. For what would Chicago be without a merciless winter? How different would its people be?

When I lived in Washington, I made a business trip back to the Midwest with some colleagues from Seattle. I took one of them on a tour through Iowa cornfields just like these, down the gravel roads that square off the miles of fields in the middle of the middle of nowhere. All she could say, as we drove along was, “You can see forever! There’s nothing to stop your view.” And you can see forever. It’s what makes the sunrises here so magnificent. In Washington the sun would rise over the mountains, but by the time it cleared the peaks, it was nothing more than a pale yellow ball, strobing through the dusty haze that hung over the high desert. Here, the first rays of all hues—striations of rich red, pale orange, faint yellow, and dusty lavender—proceed the sun, with nothing to stop them, except the clouds. No photograph can quite capture the floral brilliance that I see each day as I make my way to the train station in Elburn and begin the long commute into Chicago.

I’m sitting on the train. It’s raining. Cold. Water streams down across the window at maybe a 45 degree angle. It’s peaceful here, quiet in a way, loud in another. No one talks, but the car has its ambient noise: shuffled feet, a cough; sniffles, the rattle of a turned newspaper page. A computerized voice announces that the next stop will be Ogilvie Transportation Center. And then of course there’s the sound of the train itself, as it rolls toward downtown; you know, the familiar clack-clack of the steel wheels against the rails. The train sways slightly, switching from one track to the next, and here I sit in my accustomed seat, buffered from those around me, taking it all in. I’ve been riding the train into the “player with railroads” for three years, now. The view of the skyline through the window has become so familiar that I hardly pay attention any more. And yet the city is quite beautiful, when you get right down to it. Or maybe sublime is the right word.

On days like these, I’m reminded of a poem that I read as a sophomore in college, one that I absolutely hated:

Now from all Parts the swelling kennels flow, And bear their Trophies with them as they go: Filth of all hues and odours seem to tell What streets they sailed from, by the sight and smell.

When I first read it, I was shocked by the poem’s depiction of rain. To me, rain is beautiful and comforting. I’ve always loved the rain, especially during thunderstorms. But now I see that rain in the city is different from the country rain that I was so used to growing up. The city puts the guts in “gutter.”

Now I see the gritty floor of the train and through the windows, graffiti on the passing freight cars and on the buildings. Someone has sprayed the words “Dirty 30 Train Paintin’ Crew” on a railroad bridge and has followed it up with a gigantic D30 visible on a nearby building. The D30 was painted over Obama’s 2008 campaign symbol, a symbol that came to stand for hope for a small time.

I remember the day after the election, seeing people as they walked past, making their way through the city. Some seemed almost to glow with excitement and happiness. Across the street from Columbia College, where I work, Obama held his post-election rally in Grant Park, a historical celebration with historical implications. How much things have changed since then, a change for each of Obama’s new grey hairs, a change for each wrinkle at the corners of his smile that isn’t quite as easy as it used to be. His impish wit, now sharp with cynicism from a four-year tooth-and-nail battle and two wars and an economy mired in debt.

As I travel in, things get progressively more urban. Fewer fields, then fewer trees until it’s all concrete and aluminum, brick and mortar. And there in the distance you can see the skyline as it emerges against the horizon. Tall against the stark flatness that surrounds it. There is the Sears Tower and its little brother the Hancock Building. And the rest—a jagged parabola that coalesces in downtown, a literal Bell’s curve for human activity. From this angle, the city looks so tall. The buildings look intimidating. But here I am on the train, looking out at the approaching city. Now the United Center is on my right. Halsted Packing House on my left. And the buildings begin to block out the sky.

At the station, I smell, as I do most days, the sickly-sweet chocolate from Blommer’s Chocolate factory. Its rich scent is overpowering, and just after breakfast, not that appetizing. It mingles with the funk of sewer gas and diesel exhaust and clings to your nostrils. Last year the Chicago Tribune did a study at Ogilvie and came to the conclusion that passengers on the trains and entering the station were exposed to high levels of diesel soot. You can see it thickly billowing out of the engines in black sinking puffs, and I can almost taste it as I make my way to the exit amidst the crowded herd, queuing up to pass through the sets of revolving doors into the station. And then you’re in Ogilvie, walking past Garrett’s. Popcorn is popping. And it’s an entirely different smell. This is the beginning of my day. The city has inhaled me and will spew me back out at 5:00, spent a little, as it does with all of my fellow commuters.

Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning. Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities —Carl Sandburg

The city throbs as it takes us all in, packed together on our walk to work, crammed into busses, stuffed into subway cars. Here we all are trudging through the city, breathing life into it and renewing it a little. Down at street level, I’m walking in the shadows of giants. The buildings loom over me, blocking out the light. When I think of Chicago compared to the other cities I’ve been to, this is the big difference. The buildings are so close together and so tall. Other downtowns don’t quite block the light in the same way. St. Louis and Portland—Dallas/Ft. Worth, even—are sprawling cities—with tall buildings, certainly—but buildings that are spread out, allowing light to filter down to the street. For this reason the streets in Chicago can feel closed in, claustrophobic at times, until you get out by the lake and the park, where the morning sunlight kisses your cheek.

There’s a spot on Wells and, say, Adams, where you’re walking under the El, and the street opens up into a small plaza. It feels like a secret garden. You have the trellis of the El going over and trees on one side—green in the summer but gray and skeletal now. The plaza has benches of granite where people can sit, with some small fountains in between. I like this spot because it’s open. It’s a place where nature has kept the encroachment of the city at bay, a citadel against rust and rubble. Here, Chicago feels less claustrophobic, and a weight seems to lift as I walk through on my way to work. The corner is beautiful, I think, in a way that is classically artistic, with brief vistas and contemporary ruins. Here, the city and nature converge: an AT&T store across the street; skinny elms and hostas through a winding path; a Dunkin Doughnuts too, I think; then finally the El overhead on one side and open above the trees. Green against a taupe and stone-white building. This was one of my favorite places, when I first started working downtown, and I would go out of my way to walk through that little block whenever the chance allowed.

Most mornings, despite the close buildings that block out the sun, I see people with sunglasses, walking through the shadows. I’ve tried it, but I find myself stumbling along in the dark. It’s then that I realized that these aren’t sunglasses, which are meant to shade the eyes from harmful UV Rays. Instead they’re people glasses, designed to shade the eyes from the unwanted intrusion of a casual glance. I know this because I know how comforting it is be behind my own, a pair of mirrored aviator shades. I know this because I have physically seen people flinch, when I meet their gaze on the street. As big as life, there it is, when I’d look directly at someone—an extended blink, a change in the angle of the head. And so people wear people glasses, a different type of shade, one of their own choosing.

*****

The lady at Starbucks who takes my order every day recognizes me. Orders my drink when I get there in the morning, and it strikes me that there are probably others out there who recognize me that I don’t recognize. People I walk past daily whose faces blur together with the crowd. There are a few people who I recognize, but that I have no idea if they would recognize me: Mr. Leather Jacket from the train, Tall guy and his wife, etc. I see them daily, recognize them but have no idea who they are.

It’s raining again today on my walk to work, a quiet, constant drip that pops against my green umbrella. I’m huddled under it, eyes searching for puddles, navigating toward awnings and vestibules as I pick my route. Despite my efforts, water still soaks up through my shoes, and I’m drenched below the knees. Even though I have an umbrella, I’m still getting the occasional drop that runs down my neck. And yet, it’s pleasant somehow to be walking in the rain. Things seem muted. The streets are less crowded, and really all that worries me is being drenched at work. The rain is a bit of a baptism for the city, I think, a fresh beginning, a cleansing. It makes things more human somehow. A man in front of me drops his lunch. An orange rolls past his foot. I consider helping him pick it up, but he’s got it before I reach him. My Chicago consists of these little moments—the almost interactions with others that make up so much of my day. Public anonymity. I think that’s the best way to think about it. Here’s a place where we spend so much time around other people. How much time do we really spend interacting, though? And why do we avoid it? Well, I avoid it because it’s so difficult to choose who you want to interact with. So best avoid everyone. Because the people you wouldn’t mind saying hi to and striking up a conversation with aren’t the same people who actually do try to strike up a conversation with you.

I see Flirty McGreenPeace again, for instance. She’s standing at the street corner in a bright green construction vest, with reflective strips on it. She’s flipping her hair and flashing a smile at some random guy who she hopes will sign up to donate money. This is one of those people whose interaction I want to avoid because she wants something from whomever she engages. A flashy smile and a gimmicky line—a pickup line almost—to get you to spend some time listening to what’s essentially a sales pitch. She’s hitting on the guy so hard that it’s like watching a slow-motion pee-pee dance. First one leg goes up then the other. Head tilted this way then that. This I don’t need. So eyes down, glance averted. Cross the street, maybe. Avoid that corner in the future, just so I don’t have to put up with it day in and day out. But this type of contact is the most common on my walk to and from work. Like the guy who stops you with some story about how he’s stuck in Chicago and needs bus fare (or train fare depending on where he stops you) to get back to Milwaukee. After the second time he asked me, I don’t even look up any more when he tries to get my attention. And then there’s the police report I saw where some Columbia College student fell for a con. Some couple gave him a check for $500 in exchange for $100 because, “We really need the money and we don’t have a bank account and we’re in a hurry so we’ll just trade you.” The check was a forgery, of course. Thus the ubiquitous fuck off looks and the people shades on the jaded commuters, because if you don’t know the person already, then there’s a chance that they want something from you. Despite all of this, the need to connect with others still draws on you. This too is Chicago.

The lady at Starbucks is named Sandra, I’ve learned. And she now knows my name too. The other day, we ran into each other on the street. We just said hi, but I think with a casual acquaintance like this, it’s a big deal to even acknowledge one another in such a city. It was by the Sears Tower, the cold wind shear beating against me on my walk back to the train station. Snow was just beginning to fall in pinpoint-sized flakes, appearing seemingly for the first time only 10 feet above me. Beyond that, the black building jutted up into the gray sky—rending the clouds, anchoring the firmament, literally towering over me. Head bowed, I got that feeling you get when someone is looking at you. I looked up to see a smile—a rare sight, to be sure—and a face I recognized. A smile of recognition and a quick hello was enough to cement our friendship, I think.

Now we talk a bit, when I see her at Starbucks. Smalltalk stuff, mostly. Daily pleasantries about weekends and holiday plans. But it’s enough to leave me with a smile that lasts through the revolving door out onto State Street. From there, the twinkling holiday lights and the Christmas Carols are enough to keep my mood cheery for the last four blocks to work.

On Field Dyanmics

Right now, I’m reading a book called, The Age of Entanglement by Louisa Gilder, which discusses the evolution of quantum theory during the 20th century. If you’re at all interested in physics, I’d recommend it. But what makes it relevant to this discussion is the picture it paints of the evolution of ideas within the field of quantum mechanics. This book reveals that, during this time, there was very little seminal knowledge that major physicists would agree on. In fact, to me, the most fascinating parts of the book deal with the way that Einstein and Bohr disagreed and argued about some of the most fundamental aspects of quantum mechanics for their entire careers. They spent decades arguing about things like whether matter was comprised of particles or waves or whether you could definitively measure the speed and position of quanta simultaneously.

What really tied the field together during the 20th century seems instead to be a shared purpose, a set of questions that all of these really smart people investigated and debated rigorously—questions like, what are the most fundamental aspects of the natural world and how do they come together to create the reality that we are familiar with.

I think the same thing is true of the field of Composition and Rhetoric. (If you're wondering why I'm writing this, you might take a look at recent WPA-L posts.) We have some shared purposes, a shared set of questions: How do experienced writers approach the complex tasks involved in composing? How does one communicate effectively using writing? How best can writing be taught to novice writers? Etc. The answers to the questions are constantly evolving as older ideas are challenged or synthesized to create better answers and as newer ideas become popular within the context of heated debates and arguments like this one.

I have more to say about this--especially about the connection between these ideas and G&B's TS/IS--but it's still sort of foggy, thus the semi-public airing of my opinion. More to come, maybe.