For a while I could not remember some word I was in need of,
and I was bereaved and said: where are you, beloved friend?
—Mary Oliver 1, “After I Fall Down the Stairs at the Golden Temple

As an English teacher, I believe that we read and write to make meaning, not merely to receive it. The quotes below, which headed various pieces I wrote during 2022, helped me to make meaning this year, and this year presented me with significant challenges in making meaning.

Reading back through these short (and not-so-short) excerpts, I recognize unexpected wisdom and connections in many of them which I didn’t see when I first quoted them. Sometimes, fragments of these quotes seemed to seep up out of my unconscious mind for no reason, only to reveal their purposes later. This is the conversation with texts that helps synthesize new meaning.

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This ongoing conversation with texts is essential to a free society. Openness comes from what the courts sometimes call “the marketplace of ideas” and what I would prefer to think of as something wilder and more communal, like a concert of ideas or maybe a town plaza.

Sometimes, the anticipation of discussing a text with a class is the only thing that could compel me to drive in to a job I already quit once.

In my experience, you do not have to “agree” with everything (or anything) in a text in order for it to help you make meaning. Sometimes a text which provokes discomfort or raises questions is more valuable than one that pats you on the head and tells you you’re right. Banning texts with which you disagree is like asking everyone at a party to leave one by one, until you are all alone in a house that doesn’t belong to you. “Protecting” students from discomfort is cutting them off from the opportunity to learn.

I hope we will stand against censorship and stand up for the open exchange of ideas wherever we can. Consider supporting the Freedom to Read SC coalition (which you can follow here and here), attending local school board meetings to support teachers and librarians, and pushing back against attempts to allow small (but often powerful and well-financed) special interests to decide for the rest of us what concepts are permissible, especially when these decisions are simply a thin mask over racism, transphobia, and homophobia.

A dialogue with a text can make people— and perhaps especially children— feel seen, feel less alone, feel informed, feel empowered, feel part of a bigger conversation that is often about them. They make life more meaningful; occasionally they save a life. At times, they have probably saved mine, and they have certainly enriched it.

I would love to read some words that helped you to make meaning this year in the comments below.

On Conspiracy Theories and Disinformation:

“What convinces masses are not facts, and not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system of which they are presumably part. Repetition, somewhat overrated in importance because of the common belief in the masses’ inferior capacity to grasp and remember, is only important because it convinces them of consistency in time” (Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism).

“YESTERDAY, THE LONG AND IMPATIENTLY DAY OF THE ONE VOTE TOOK PLACE. FOR THE 48TH TIME THE BENEFACTOR, WHO HAS PROVEN HIS UNSHAKABLE WISDOM MANY TIMES OVER, WAS UNANIMOUSLY CHOSEN. THE CELEBRATION WAS CLOUDED BY A SLIGHT DISTURBANCE WROUGHT BY THE ENEMIES OF HAPPINESS, WHICH, NATURALLY, DEPRIVES THEM OF THE RIGHT TO BECOME BRICKS IN THE FOUNDATION OF THE ONE STATE, RENEWED YESTERDAY. IT IS CLEAR TO EACH OF US THAT TAKING THEIR VOICES INTO ACCOUNT WOULD BE AS RIDICULOUS AS TAKING THE ACCIDENTAL COUGHTS OF SICK PEOPLE IN A CONCERT AUDIENCE AS PART OF A MAJESTIC, HEROIC SYMPHONY…” (Yevgeny Zamyatin, WE, 1921, translation by Natasha Randall, 2006).

“When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases… one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them” (George Orwell, Politics and the English Language).

“We protect our minds by an elaborate system of abstractions, ambiguities, metaphors and similes from the reality we do not wish to know too clearly; we lie to ourselves, in order that we may still have the excuse of ignorance, the alibi of stupidity and incomprehension, possessing which we can continue with a good conscience to commit and tolerate the most monstrous crime” (Aldous Huxley, “Words and Behavior”).

“I survived the apocalypse”

-Joe Roberts

On Teaching:

“Let’s begin by saying that we are living through a very dangerous time. Everyone in this room is in one way or another aware of that… So any citizen of this country who figures himself as responsible — and particularly those of you who deal with the minds and hearts of young people — must be prepared to ‘go for broke.’ Or to put it another way, you must understand that in the attempt to correct so many generations of bad faith and cruelty, when it is operating not only in the classroom but in society, you will meet the most fantastic, the most brutal, and the most determined resistance” (James Baldwin, “A Talk to Teachers,” 1963).

“Since I was your age, I knew I wanted to teach. For my entire adult life, teaching has been more than my job: it’s been my identity, my passion, my commitment to my community. It is hard to walk away from that, especially as I still believe that education–a free, quality, public education–is a public good that can transform our society and the lives in it” (Samantha Rainwater, “A letter to my students on my last day of teaching”).

On Data:

“The batting average is a gross simplification of Jeter’s seventeen seasons. It is easy to understand, elegant in its simplicity— and limited in what it can tell us” (Charles Wheelan, Naked Statistics).

Some of the books that helped me to make meaning this year.

On Censorship and History:

“We can no longer afford to take that which was good in the past and simply call it our heritage, to discard the bad and simply think of it as a dead load which by itself time will bury in oblivion” (Hannah Arendt, Preface to The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1950).

“To know the past is to know the present. To know the present is to know yourself” (Ibram X. Kendi, Preface to Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds, 2020).

“TEIRESIAS: I have much to tell you: listen to the prophet, Creon. CREON: I am not aware that I have ever failed to listen” (Sophocles, Antigone, translated by Fitts and Fitzgerald).

“It was a pleasure to burn” (Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451).

On the Music of the Future:

“What unwavering predictability! And how pitiful that whimsical music of the Ancients, delimited by nothing except wild fantasy…” (Yevgeny Zamyatin, WE, 1921, translation by Natasha Randall, 2006).

On Antiracism:

“That is what it truly means to think as an antiracist: to think there is nothing wrong with Black people, to think that racial groups are equal” (Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped From the Beginning).

“I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial ‘outside agitator’ idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds” (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail”).

On Mortality and the Search for Meaning:

“We passed the School, where Children strove/ At Recess – in the Ring” (Emily Dickinson, “Because I could not stop for Death”).

"‘Everyone strives to reach the Law,’ answers the man, ‘so how does it happen that for all these many years no one but myself has ever begged for admittance?’ The doorkeeper recognizes that the man has reached his end, and, to let his failing senses catch the words roars in his ear: ‘No one else but you could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it’” (Franz Kafka, “Before the Law”).

“ESTRAGON: He should be here. VLADIMIR: He didn't say for sure he'd come. ESTRAGON: And if he doesn't come? VLADIMIR: We'll come back to-morrow. ESTRAGON: And then the day after to-morrow. VLADIMIR: And so on” (“Waiting For Godot, Samuel Beckett, 1954).

On Campaign Finance:

“There’s a pattern” (Fugazi, “Five Corporations”).

“It may be the Devil, or it may be the Lord/ But you’re gonna have to serve somebody” (Bob Dylan, “Serve Somebody”).

On Working Conditions, Liberation, and the Need for Collective Organizing:

“I looked at him over my shoulder. ‘I've got out at last,’ said I, ‘in spite of you and Jane? And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!’” (Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”).

“His boss would certainly come round with the doctor from the medical insurance company, accuse his parents of having a lazy son, and accept the doctor’s recommendation not to make any claim as the doctor believed that no one was ever ill but that many were workshy. And what’s more, would he have been entirely wrong in this case? Gregor did in fact, apart from excessive sleepiness after sleeping for so long, feel completely well and even felt much hungrier than usual” (Franz Kafka, “The Metamorphosis”).

“None of those assembled there knew his name or what he did for a living” (Haruki Murakami, “The Seventh Man”).

“Two greyhounds, in running down the same hare, have sometimes the appearance of acting in some sort of concert. Each turns towards his companion, or endeavours to intercept her when his companion turns towards himself. This, however, is not the effect of any contract, but of the accidental concurrence of their passions in the same object at that particular time. Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog… When an animal wants to obtain something either of a man or another animal, it has no other means of persuasion but to gain the favor of those whose service it requires…. Man sometimes uses the same arts with his brethren, and when he has no other means of engaging them to act according to his inclinations, endeavors by every servile and fawning attention to obtain their good will… In civilized society he stands at all times in need of the co-operation and assistance of great multitudes…” (Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776).

“BOATSWAIN: What cares these roarers for the name of king? To cabin: silence! trouble us not. GONZALO: Good, yet remember whom thou hast aboard. BOATSWAIN: None that I more love than myself” (William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act I, Scene I).

“From these repeated explanations Gregor learned, to his pleasure, that despite all their misfortunes there was still some money available from the old days. It was not a lot, but it had not been touched in the meantime and some interest had accumulated. Besides that, they had not been using up all the money that Gregor had been bringing home every month, keeping only a little for himself, so that that, too, had been accumulating. Behind the door, Gregor nodded with enthusiasm in his pleasure at this unexpected thrift and caution. He could actually have used this surplus money to reduce his father’s debt to his boss, and the day when he could have freed himself from that job would have come much closer, but now it was certainly better the way his father had done things.

“This money, however, was certainly not enough to enable the family to live off the interest; it was enough to maintain them for, perhaps, one or two years, no more. That’s to say, it was money that should not really be touched but set aside for emergencies; money to live on had to be earned” (Franz Kafka, “The Metamorphosis” (translated by David Willie).

On Humanity:

“My memory of it is clearly-carved: a bright spherical hall, hundreds of round little-boy heads, and Pliapa, our mathematics teacher. We called him Pliapa— he was rather vintage and disheveled, and when the monitor inserted his plug from behind, the loudspeaker started up ‘Plya-plya-plya-tshhhhh,’ and then the lesson began” (Yevgeny Zamyatin, WE, 1921, translation by Natasha Randall, 2006).

“Do you understand now what happened to us?” “I’m aware of what happened. It’s… alien to me. Frighteningly alien.” “Yes. I sort of feel that way myself, even though they’re my people” (Octavia Butler, Dawn).

On Choice:

“Those two in paradise stood before a choice: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness; a third choice wasn’t given. They, the blockheads, they chose freedom— and then what? And then, for centuries, they longed for fetters”(Yevgeny Zamyatin, WE, 1921, translation by Natasha Randall, 2006).

“We are aliens. But what are you going to do about it? It’s a two-party system. You have to vote for one of us” (Kodos, The Simpsons, “Treehouse of Horror VII”).

On Perspective:

“From a distance the world looks blue and green/ And the snowcapped mountains white” (“From a Distance,” performed by Nanci Griffith; lyrics by Julie Gold).

“I would like to learn, or remember, how to live. I come to Hollins not so much to learn how to live as, frankly, to forget about it” (Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek).

On Apparent Futility and Existential Dread:

“You stayed up all night, trying to beat up the moon” (Weyes Blood, “Grapevine”).

“I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool” (George Orwell, “Shooting an Elephant”).

“As for this myth, one sees merely the whole effort of a body straining to raise the huge stone, to roll it, and push it up a slope a hundred times over; one sees the face screwed up, the cheek tight against the stone, the shoulder bracing the clay-covered mass, the foot wedging it, the fresh start with arms outstretched, the wholly human security of two earth-clotted hands. At the very end of his long effort measured by skyless space and time without depth, the purpose is achieved. Then Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward the lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit. He goes back down to the plain” (Albert Camus, “The Myth of Sisyphus”).

On Hope and Meaning:

“I looked at the growing rich/ poor gap, at throwaway labor, at our willingness to build and fill prisons, our reluctance to build and repair schools and libraries, and at our assault on the environment. In particular, I looked at global warming and the ways in which it’s likely to change things for us..: And our only way of cleaning up, adapting, and compensating for all this in Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents is to use our brains and hands— the same tools we used to get ourselves into so much trouble” (Octavia Butler, 1999 “Reading Group Guide” for Parable of the Sower.)

“I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes” (Henry David Thoreau, Walden).

“You can never hold back Spring” (Tom Waits).

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From the book A Thousand Mornings. My wife, who is a painter, bought this book and it gave her the titles for several paintings. You can check out some of that art here.

Other Duties (as assigned)

Epigraphs All the Way Down (2022)