The Eye Roll

The scenario: A professional development session on bias

The key information provided: Be aware of the "third person effect" where people tend to perceive that mass media messages have a greater effect on others than on themselves, based on personal biases.

The exercise: Contribute descriptors that come to mind when picturing a "North American, multi-million dollar lottery winner" considering residence, race, gender, socio-economic status, and education.

The outcome: The results of our group matched those of all the other schools already surveyed; the prevalent answers that the 100 or so of us provided mirrored those of the 4,000 people before us. 

The upshot: A common assumption* exists about this particular case, and one might infer, about others, as well.

The white male: Raises his hand and when called on announces, "I didn't answer that way. I put I don't know for every question."

*a rural, white male, lower middle class, high school education.

Told You So

 To kick off the argument writing unit, the question of the day was Do you like to argue and debate or would you rather walk away from a disagreement?

Predictably, the split was pretty even in my first two sections, with several of the young writers making the point that context and content were important. 

When my last block of the day roared in, as they often do, bickering and talking smack, I looked appraisingly at the group. Then I gave the directions and went to my desk to send the attendance. 

When it was time to share everyone's thoughts, I called for the class's attention. "I haven't looked at your answers," I told them, "but I have a pretty good idea that we have a bunch of arguers in here!"

"I think you're wrong!" somebody called out.

"There's one," I laughed.

And in the end? It was 19-3 in favor of a good debate, or standing up for themselves, or making sure other people knew when they were wrong, or winning, or just being right as usual.

Fiasco

I knew nothing good could be happening inside when I saw a colleague in tears coming out of the door where I had just dropped Heidi. 

In an effort to address the outcry that followed the decision to make all employees switch insurance plans, the central office of our school system offered the opportunity for staff to meet with representatives from the new company and have their transition questions answered. The event was scheduled today, during our professional learning time from 8-5 at one of the high schools. 

In another colossal failure of planning, however, there were only three representatives from the company present, who could get through about 18 people an hour. Mind you, this change affected nearly 6,000 people, and over half of them are in a position where they must find an entirely new medical team and navigate different coverage for prescription and medical devices. Not surprisingly, they have questions.

Nearly 1,000 people showed up, and an hour into the session, wait times were estimated to be 3-4 hours, with at least 75% of those attending unlikely to see anyone at all. Compounding the situation is the fact that none of us can contact the new company ourselves until our start of coverage date, January 1, 2024.

Members of the HR team were overheard to express their dismay, not at the obvious poor planning, but at how ridiculous it was that so many people had questions. "Didn't they read their email?" sniped one.

As for Heidi, she waited in line to sign her name documenting her attendance. At 11:30 am she was given the number 7A, uncertain as to where it fell in a numerical sequence where they were just calling numbers 70-80 to come up and meet the representatives, and other employees she knew had numbers in the 500s. Then she gave up and we went home.

It's Official

I saw the first Christmas commercial of the season last night. Even though it was for spending the holidays at Disney and it aired on the Hallmark Channel?

It still counts.

Happy Holidays, y'all!

Borderline

"Excuse me!" a woman hailed me from the other side of the chainlink fence that surrounds our community garden. Our plot is on the perimeter, and so the sidewalk and street are right there. Most of the time passing pedestrians ignore me as I work in the garden, although I do get an occasional greeting or wave, but as the season progresses and the herbs and flowers grow up along the fenceline there is a bit more privacy. But yesterday, I had just finished clipping the dry stalks of some sunflowers and zinnias, and there was a clear view of me and my garden.

"Yes?" I replied politely, standing up from where I had been gleaning the last of the sun gold cherry tomatoes.

"How does this place work?" she asked. "Do any of you ever sell your vegetables?"

I explained that it was a community garden where we grew produce for our own use. "We do donate extra to the food pantry," I finished.

"But no one sells anything?" she repeated.

I shook my head apologetically.

"But those tomatoes! That basil!" she pointed at the plot next to mine.

"She has some beautiful stuff," I agreed.

"What about you? What do you have growing?" She looked over my shoulder.

"All I have left are some hot peppers and the tail end of the tomatoes," I said.

"We love hot peppers!" she told me. "We eat those more than anything else!"

I laughed at her brazen hint and shrugged. "Well I've got extra," I assured her and went to the potting bench for a bag. 

I picked a half dozen heirloom paprika peppers and was on my way to hand them over when she called, "What about a few tomatoes?"

I nodded and pointed to the gate where I could hand her the bag.

"Thank you so much!" she said sincerely.

"You're welcome," I answered, and walked back to my garden shaking my head.

RIP Name Drop

For a couple of years, The New Yorker Magazine had an online puzzle that I kind of loved. Name Drop was published every weekday and readers had 100 seconds and six clues to identify a mystery person, someone from the arts, history, or politics. The fewer clues it took to guess the person, the more points awarded, and there was also a witty bit of praise (Congratulations, George and Amal would be impressed!) or reproach (Just think if today were opposite day, you’d have the highest possible score.), depending on one’s results. 

Here’s an example: 

Clue 6: My album “Van Lear Rose” (2204), which I released at the age of seventy-two, was produced by the White Stripe’s Jack White, who was forty-four years my junior.  

Clue 5: In a feminist anthem that was reportedly banned by dozens of radio stations in the seventies, I sing, “This old maternity dress I’ve got is going in the garbage/ The clothes I’m wearing from now on won’t take up so much yardage.”  

Clue 4: I was close friends with Patsy Cline before her untimely death; I named one of my daughters after her, and, in 1977, I released the tribute album “I Remember Patsy.”  

Clue 3: My sister, Crystal Gayle and I performed a duet medley with the Boston Pops Orchestra in 1989, which included portions of my songs “We’ve Come a Long Way, Baby” and “You Ain’t Woman Enough (to Take My Man).  

Clue 2: Sissy Spacek won an Oscar for playing me in a 1980 bio-pic which shares its name with a 1970 hit in which I sing about my humble upbringing in Kentucky, in “a cabin on a hill in Butcher Holler.”  

Clue 1: I was a country singer whose hits included “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (with Lovin’ on Your Mind),” “The Pill,” and my signature song, “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” 

Not to brag, or maybe to brag a little bit, but I nailed that one on question 6, to which the game replied, “Congratulations you are officially the smartest person who ever lived.” 

In addition to the challenge of the trivia quiz, not surprisingly, I often learned new things about these folks, and sometimes I even learned about people I was not familiar with. The game also revealed my cultural and generational bias; more often than not the subjects I could not identify were people of color, especially young people of color. Even so, it felt good to own up to that shortcoming and work in the smallest of ways to overcome it. 

Clue 6: The street formerly known as Congress Parkway, which runs from the Jane M. Byrne Interchange to Grant Park was renamed for me in 2019.  

Clue 5: After taking over as the editor of the Free Speech and Headlight, I wrote about the murder of my friend, Thomas Moss, a co-owner of the People’s Grocery.  

Clue 4: I often published under the pen name “Iola” and I’m best known by my maiden name, although I married the attorney Ferdinand Barnett, in 1895.  

Clue 3: The journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, whose display name on Twitter references me, co-founded a center that’s named after me at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.  

Clue 2: In 202, I was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for my reporting on lynchings across the U.S., in such publications as “The Red Record” and “Southern Horrors.”  

Clue 1: I was a journalist and activist who led the Alpha Suffrage Club, a pioneering Black women’s organization in Chicago, and I participated in the founding of the N.A.A.C.P. 

The answer? Ida B. Wells, which I could not get either the first time or, shamefully, the next time (today) I took the quiz, considering how important her work and how accomplished she was. 

Suffice it to say, that Name Drop was a fun and edifying part of my day, and so you can imagine my distress, a few weeks ago when I noticed that every time I tapped the link for the new daily quiz I was met with an old puzzle, which I knew because I recognized the clues. It took days of searching before I finally found The New Yorker’s announcement that the last new game had been published on September 8. They had ceased publication without warning or explanation, replacing it with a random generator of old quizzes. 

When confronted with this sad news, I confess to feeling a tiny void in my life, one that I have not been able to fill quite yet. I miss that little dose of biography that gave me the chance to engage with a notable individual and, humbly (sometimes), be inspired.

Terrors of the 21st Century

For the warm-up today, I asked the students what scares them, and I was a little surprised at how delighted most of them were to answer. Unlike other questions, very few said "Nothing" or even "I don't know". There were 27 different responses from 60 or so kids, and whenever anyone walked into the room and looked at the tally on the whiteboard the reaction was the same: Oh! Is this what scares us?

In addition to ghosts and zombies and spiders and snakes, the list included teachers and tests (which was relevant today in class!) and bad grades (which sadly, was also somewhat relevant today after class). There were also answers that kids have given for generations, like creepy people, small spaces, the deep ocean, spooky noises, broken bones, and death, but my favorite answer was the kid who simply posted Bad wifi, because when we read it? 

Everyone shuddered.