The Road Less Traveled

In his book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell writes about “Connectors,” people who are responsible for spreading “social epidemics” to others.  He has a test in the book that lists 250 surnames taken at random from the Manhattan phone book.  The task is to go down the list and give yourself a point every time you see a surname that is shared by someone you know.  Here is the list:

Algazi, Alvarez, Alpern, Ametrano, Andrews, Aran, Arnstein, Ashford, Bailey Ballout, Bamberger, Baptista, Barr, Barrows, Baskerville, Bassiri, Bell, Bokgese, Brandao, Bravo, Brooke, Brightman, Billy, Blau, Bohen, Bohn, Borsuk, Brendle, Butler, Calle, Cantwell, Carrell, Chinlund, Cirker, Cohen, Collas, Couch, Callegher, Calcaterra, Cook, Carey, Cassell, Chen, Chung, Clarke, Cohn, Carton, Crowley, Curbelo, Dellamanna, Diaz, Dirar, Duncan, Dagostino, Delakas, Dillon, Donaghey, Daly, Dawson, Edery, Ellis, Elliott, Eastman, Easton, Famous, Fermin, Fialco, Finklestein, Farber, Falkin, Feinman, Friedman, Gardner, Gelpi, Glascock, Grandfield, Greenbaum Greenwood, Gruber, Garil, Goff, Gladwell, Greenup, Gannon, Ganshaw, Garcia, Gennis, Gerard, Gericke, Gilbert, Glassman, Glazer, Gomendio, Gonzalez, Greenstein, Guglielmo, Gurman, Haberkorn, Hoskins, Hussein, Hamm, Hardwick, Harrell, Hauptman, Hawkins, Henderson, Hayman, Hibara, Hehmann, Herbst, Hedges, Hogan, Hoffman, Horowitz, Hsu, Huber, Ikiz, Jaroschy, Johann, Jacobs, Jara, Johnson, Kassel, Keegan, Kuroda, Kavanau, Keller, Kevill, Kiew, Kimbrough, Kline, Kossoff, Kotzitzky, Kahn, Kiesler, Kosser, Korte, Leibowitz, Lin, Liu, Lowrance, Lundh, Laux, Leifer, Leung, Levine, Leiw, Lockwood, Logrono, Lohnes, Lowet, Laber, Leonardi, Marten, McLean, Michaels, Miranda, Moy, Marin, Muir, Murphy, Marodon, Matos, Mendoza, Muraki, Neck, Needham, Noboa, Null, O’Flynn, O’Neill, Orlowski, Perkins, Pieper, Pierre, Pons, Pruska, Paulino, Popper, Potter, Purpura, Palma, Perez, Portocarrero, Punwasi, Rader, Rankin, Ray, Reyes, Richardson, Ritter, Roos, Rose, Rosenfeld, Roth, Rutherford, Rustin, Ramos, Regan, Reisman, Renkert, Roberts, Rowan, Rene, Rosario, Rothbart, Saperstein, Schoenbrod, Schwed, Sears, Statosky, Sutphen, Sheehy, Silverton, Silverman, Silverstein, Sklar, Slotkin, Speros, Stollman, Sadowski, Schles, Shapiro, Sigdel, Snow, Spencer, Steinkol, Stewart, Stires, Stopnik, Stonehill, Tayss, Tilney, Temple, Torfield, Townsend, Trimpin, Turchin, Villa, Vasillov, Voda, Waring, Weber, Weinstein, Wang, Wegimont, Weed, Weishaus.  

When I took this test, I scored a 72.  Gladwell says that “the first–and most obvious–criterion is that Connectors know lots of people.”  One of my close high school friends used to joke that I know everyone because whenever we were out, I would see four or five people or more that I knew.  There was a running joke that if I went to a different state, I would still see someone I know.

I never took this joke seriously until a few years ago my wife and I were at King’s Island and I bumped into a lady I used to teach with.  The next summer, I was in line for a ride at Cedar Point and realized I was just a few people behind one of the school counselors at GW. 

Wait… it gets better.  The following year, I traveled to Disney World with my wife and kids.  Keep in mind that Disney has four parks, each of which has hundreds if not thousands of people in attendance.  We were walking through Magic Kingdom when I spotted a student of mine and her father, sitting on a bench.

Gladwell says, “Sprinkled among every walk of life, in other words, are a handful of people with a truly extraordinary knack of making friends and acquaintances. They are Connectors.”  I don’t know if I’m a connector or not, but I do know a lot of people.  Gladwell also points out that most people score around 20 or less.

It isn’t hard to believe that I know a lot of people.  I have worked in fast food, retail, and at the local movie theater.  And as a teacher, I have approximately 125 students and I get to know many of their parents, as well.  So I get the opportunity to get to know 200+ people a year.  And I’m grateful for every one of them.

Try this test out and see how you score.  I was thinking of trying it with a local phone book, but I don’t know if it would be as effective.

Until later– “There’s no turning back now that you opened up to your mind.”

I just found out that one of my favorite television shows, New Amsterdam, is probably going to be canceled. And I think it has very little to do with viewers and ratings and more to do with “creativity problems.”

What exactly does that mean? I imagine this angry television writer throwing a tantrum because he’s out of ideas for the show and is parading around shouting, “No more! No! I won’t do anymore!”

This isn’t the first time a show I’ve fallen in love with has been canceled. Does anyone remember the show Wonderfalls? It was also a FOX show and had one of the most amazing main characters I have ever seen. Her name is Jaye and she is cynical, antisocial, “overeducated and underemployed”, bitter, and best of all a master at avoiding expectations. The premise of the show was a little weird, but the mark of good writing is when the characters within a story change. It’s even funnier when they change against their will. In this case, the cure for Jaye’s cynicism comes in the form of inanimate objects speaking to her and giving her clues that lead to helping her change people’s lives.

Here is one of my favorite quotes from the first episode:

Eric: Life can be sort of peaceful when you stop struggling.

Jaye: It’s a lot like drowning that way.

But, unfortunately, the show went the way of other artistic shows that just aren’t meant for mainstream crowd, I guess. I fell in love with it and was heartbroken when the fourth episode aired and then that was it.

There is a similar show out now that I also love: Eli Stone. I won’t ramble on and on about that one just yet. Let’s hope FOX keeps Amsterdam alive and I finally get to see if John finds true love and becomes mortal (although I like that he’s immortal. It does make him a better cop.) If I just confused you, watch the show. It’ll make more sense then.

Until later– “There’s no turning back now that you opened up to your mind.”

I think it’s really funny that my last post about being an ADHD reader was spotlighted by two ADHD blogs.  I guess it was a pretty impressive work of writing.  I wrote it last night after a very tiring two days.

Wednesday I did yoga for thirty minutes with an instructor who comes in and teaches it to my students.  Then, at 12:20, we left for a nature hike with Mr. Smith, my Science teacher colleague.  That was an awesome hike, down behind the school and up a steep hill until we came up next to the road.  I’m sure our group of thirty or so students looked pretty comical emerging from the woods near the road.

Then, yesterday, I took the students outside at 11:50 to play whiffle ball and played all afternoon until 2:55.  After that, I drove to my writing workshop and did a presentation on using digital video with students.  Finally, I drove to dance class and practiced the dance for my routine four times, after which I flopped onto a tumbling mat and felt every muscle in my legs pulsating.

This next statement might shock you:  When I was sitting in my bed last night, watching CSI, a ticker scrolled across the screen announcing that an 8 year old boy was lost somewhere in Kanawha State Forest.  The ticker was calling for anyone who wanted to volunteer to join the search.  My heart skipped and I jumped up off of the bed.  All of my exhaustion slipped away and I started to pull on my jeans.

“I want to go,” I told my wife.

“My God, he’s only eight,” she said.

“I know.”  Both of us were thinking the same thing.  Eight.  Only one year older than our daughter.  “I want to go.”

“Honey, by the time you got there, they would probably have a hundred people searching.  And how well do you know the woods at Kanawha State Forest?”

I thought about it.  “Not very well.”  So, worried that I might get lost myself, I did not go.  I wanted to, really bad, but honestly they would probably have to call another search party to help me out of the woods, also.

Until later — “There’s no turning back now that you opened up to your mind.”

People who know me well know that I am an ADHD reader.  I am usually reading three to four books at a time, and sometimes I will completely forget about a book and start another one.  The funny thing is I could map a list of books that I have started and not finished in order to move on to a different book.  I’ll put (inc.) next to the ones I didn’t finish and you’ll see my point.  This will also tell you a lot about my eclectic taste in books.  I’ll start with last summer:

The Gunslinger—-> Bag of Bones (inc.)—-> On the Road (inc.)—-> To Kill a Mockingbird—-> Crum (inc.)—-> All the Pretty Horses (inc.)—> The Book on Leadership—-> It’s Not About Me (inc.)—-> Empire Falls (inc.)—-> Lonesome Dove (inc.)—-> Breakfast of Champions-—> Cat’s Cradle—-> Sirens of Titan (inc.)—-> The Maltese Falcon (inc.)—-> Trainspotting (inc.)—-> The Kite Runner (inc.)—-> One Hundred Years of Solitude (inc.)—-> The Tipping Point (currently reading).

See what I mean.  Now, in my defense, some of those books are pretty hefty.  Lonesome Dove is somewhere near 1000 pages and Trainspotting is tough to read because it is written using Scottish phonetics.  “Now most people would put this doon tae experience, ye always want what ye cannae have and the things that ye dinnae really gie a toss aboot get handed tae ye oan a plate.”  And I have read Bag of Bones before,but I wanted to read it again.  Once I stumbled on to Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, however, I just abandoned Stephen King’s beautifully written horror romance to go traveling across the country with the Beats.  And when I suddenly remembered I had never read To Kill a Mockingbird, I was appalled and just had to read it right away.  And so on, and so on.

You can also tell from this list what kind of impact Kurt Vonnegut’s work has on me since I did finish all but one of his novels on the list.

In her book The Bell Jar (the first book I read more than once, by the way ) Sylvia Plath’s narrator says,

“If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I’m neurotic as hell.  I’ll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.”

I’m usually flying back and forth between six or seven mutually exclusive things at the same time, and it is usually a stack of books.

I can understand what people who have a shopping addiction are going through. I just bought three new books today, The Dharma Bums, The World is Flat, and Blink. I felt that exciting rush when I cracked open the first one and read the first line. It was The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac. The line was this: “Hopping a freight out of Los Angeles at high noon one day in late September 1955 I got on a gondola and lay down with my duffel bag under my head and my knees crossed and contemplated the clouds as we rolled north to Santa Barbara.” People just don’t write like that anymore. In fact, no one has ever written like Kerouac.

All three of the books I picked up have something in common. They have been said to have changed people’s lives. According to most of the reviews, all three of these books have had an impact on our country in some way.

Jack Kerouac pioneered a movement that changed the face of literature and art forever and opened readers’ eyes to a generation of men who were beaten but not defeated.  The Dharma Bums tells about his venture into Buddhism and self-discovery.  Reviewers of this books have said it changed they way they look at life, at material possessions, at money, and inspired them to pay more attention to what really was important.  I’ve read On the Road and most reviewers say that Dharma Bums is much better.  I can’t wait.

The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century is one of those books I already know is important without even reading a word of it.  WV State Department of Education is pushing for 21st century learning skills and this book is one of the essential texts for understanding how much our world has changed in just the past few years and what we can do to prepare to become 21st century learners.  This book has been out for several years and I already feel like I’ve missed something by not reading it.

Blink is another one that I know is important.  Who can resist the title: Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.  It’s tough for me to explain what this book is about, so I will recruit my amazon.com announcer friend to do it for me.

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Blink is about the first two seconds of looking–the decisive glance that knows in an instant. Gladwell, the best-selling author of The Tipping Point, campaigns for snap judgments and mind reading with a gift for translating research into splendid storytelling. Building his case with scenes from a marriage, heart attack triage, speed dating, choking on the golf course, selling cars, and military maneuvers, he persuades readers to think small and focus on the meaning of “thin slices” of behavior. The key is to rely on our “adaptive unconscious”–a 24/7 mental valet–that provides us with instant and sophisticated information to warn of danger, read a stranger, or react to a new idea. Gladwell includes caveats about leaping to conclusions: marketers can manipulate our first impressions, high arousal moments make us “mind blind,” focusing on the wrong cue leaves us vulnerable to “the Warren Harding Effect” (i.e., voting for a handsome but hapless president). In a provocative chapter that exposes the “dark side of blink,” he illuminates the failure of rapid cognition in the tragic stakeout and murder of Amadou Diallo in the Bronx. He underlines studies about autism, facial reading and cardio uptick to urge training that enhances high-stakes decision-making. In this brilliant, cage-rattling book, one can only wish for a thicker slice of Gladwell’s ideas about what Blink Camp might look like. –Barbara Mackoff –This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Sounds great doesn’t it?  Amazon users only gave it 3 ^1/2 stars, but that;s been true about a lot of books I have read and loved.  His other book, The Tipping Point only received 4 stars and I absolutely love that book.  That’s a lot coming from someone who shunned nonfiction works for years (except for autobiographies and memoirs).

So go out and but one of these great books.  Let me know what you think if you have already read them.

Things have been going strong for the past few days.  I know I haven’t posted since last week (April Fool’s Day, I think) but it has been a crazy week.

April 26th, I will be participating in my first dance recital, and I am terrified.  That’s a hard thing for me to say since I am usually pretty comfortable on a stage.  But dancing is not my area.  At first, I was told by the instructor that she doesn’t need me to dance so much as just be a good showman and “play my part” during the closing number. 

That closing number is “You Can’t Stop the Beat” from Hairspray.  And my “part…?”  Link.  That’s right… the hunky lady-killer, played by Zac Efron.  I get to dance a little dance (any dance from me is a little dance) with the dancer who is supposed to be Tracy, mouth the words to the song, and that’s it.  Oh, then, I stay on stage and bring on another dancer who is supposed to be Penny while I again mouth the words for Seaweed’s part and dance another little dance.  Then, I’m off stage and that’s it.  But wait… I come on stage again, flip a girl over my back (hopefully without killing her or breaking my back), and then off stage again.

No pressure.  The instructor just told us Saturday that this has to be the best finale anyone has ever seen.  But no pressure.

So that’s pretty much it right now.  I love this experience because it reminds me how stressful it can be to learn something new, to go out of your comfort zone long enough to try something new or help someone else.  This creates quite a bit of empathy with my students in understanding how they feel when I present them with a new idea or teach them a new skill and they have to learn it through practice.

Wish me luck with the recital.  I’ll post on it the night after it is over.

Until later — “There’s no turning back now that you opened up to your mind.”

This morning, as I was driving to work, I saw the most perfect sunrise, the kind where the clouds are painted with brushstrokes of gold before the sun officially comes up.  It was amazing.  And as I drove the Interstate, it took every bit of willpower I had to keep my eyes on the road as the sun began to crawl up from behind the horizon.  It reminded me of the day at Virginia Beach when I woke up early, walked out to the ocean, and watched a group of dolphins cresting the water as the sun rose slowly and patiently.

I love days like this, when so far everything just seems to cooperate, when your eyes and ears are opened to so many different sights and sounds.  My eyes are usually opened (or at least I try to keep them opened) but sometimes the noise and clutter of stress drowns it all out.

But not today.  Something tells me this is going to be a special day.

Boredom has repercussions. I just answered a 33 question personality quiz and these were the results. Hope this code works:

Take Free Global Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

Man, what harsh results. Especially the part about being “overly talkative… at the expense too often of developing your own individual interests…” Am I really that awful? I agree with the whole “overly flexible” and “improvised… at the expense too often of reliability, work ethic, and long term accomplishment.”

Come to think of it, I remember a conversation I had with a college friend that went something like this:

Friend: “You know, the thing I admire most about you is also the thing I hate most.”

Me: “What’s that?”

Friend: “You’ll talk to anybody. It’s like no one is a stranger to you and you know so many people. You’re like a politician or a celebrity or something.”

Me: “Okay? And you hate that… why?”

Friend: “You are under the mistaken assumption that everyone wants to or even needs to talk to you. You force your conversations onto people who may or may not even care what you have to say.”

Me: (pause) “Yeah, but… isn’t that how we became friends?”

Friend: (longer pause) “I said I admired it and hated it.”

So that’s me. “Overly talkative, outgoing, sociable and interacting at the expense too often of developing your own individual interests and internally based identity.” But that is how I have made (and in some cases kept) 90% of my friends.

Until later– “There’s no turning back now that you opened up to your mind.”

 Disclaimer:  If you already hate Shakespeare, this blog may not concern you.

I think I have just stumbled onto the same frustration many people face when reading a Shakespeare play.  No, it’s not the language.  I get that.  Believe it or not, I have been exposed to so much Shakespearean language over the past ten years that I have come to understand it and thus to love it.  But, actually, my frustration does have something to do with the language.  Let me explain.

I am torn, as the alternative title to this blog suggests, by my love of Shakespeare’s language and the almost ridiculous situations in which he places his characters.  I’ve started reading “The Two Gentlemen of Verona.”  An old college professor of mine would ask one of the most intelligent questions I have ever heard:  Why?

Anyone who knows me well is aware that my taste in literature changes faster than the weather.  It is the reason why I take forever to finish a novel, because my ADHD will kick in, I’ll become interested in something else, and I’ll start reading that instead.

So my recent “reinterest” in Shakespeare lead me to reading one play I had not been exposed to, hence “The Two Gentlemen of Verona.”  It begins well, two best friends Proteus and Valentine, arguing over love.  Proteus is smitten by young Julia, and Valentine ridicules him and love:  “Love is your master, for he masters you, and he that is yoked by a fool methinks should not be chronicled for wise.”

Then some other stuff happens, Valentine goes off to work for a duke, Proteus stays behind because he loves Julia too much.  But… gasp… Proteus’ father makes him go to work for the duke, as well.  So, before he leaves, he exchanges vows (and rings) with Julia, swears his undying love and wishing a curse upon every second he does not think about her:  “And when that hour o’erslips me in the day wherein I sigh not, Julia, for thy sake, the next ensuing hour some foul mischance torment me for my love’s forgetfulness.”

The fun stuff starts (note sarcasm) when Proteus arrives at the duke’s “royal court” and learns that his friend Valentine has recently fallen in love with the fair Sylvia.  And guess what…? Proteus falls in love with her, as well, at first sight.  So, right after his meeting her, he begins to devise a plot to forget about Julia, have Valentine banished from the duke’s court, and live happily ever after with Sylvia.  Therefore proving that even in the romantic world of Shakespeare, men are pigs, yes we are, destined to a life of infidelity and woe.

Come on.  I really want to love this play, I truly do.  It has some of the most eloquently written lines I have read in any Shakespeare play.  “What light is light, if Silvia be not seen?  What joy is joy, if Silvia be not by?  Unless it be to think that she is by and feed upon the shadow of perfection except I be by Silvia in the night, there is no music in the nightingale; unless I look on Silvia in the day, there is no day for me to look upon; she is my essence, and I leave to be, if I be not by her fair influence foster’d, illumined, cherish’d, kept alive.”  But man, what a horrible situation he has these characters in.

I have not finished the play (but, oh, I will) but apparently it gets worse.  I’ve heard that Proteus tries to force his love upon Sylvia (yes, that means what you think it means) and Valentine catches him.  It gets better.  Proteus apologizes, and Valentine decides to give Sylvia to him as a token of their renewed friendship.

Wow.

So where is the juxtaposition?  I love Shakespeare so much that I am going to subject myself to the torture of such a horrible situation in order to venture into a world of his I have not yet experienced.  How can you not resist such lines as “Is she kind as she is fair?  For beauty lives with kindness.  Love doth to her eyes repair, to help him of his blindness, and, being helped, inhabits there.”  That’s powerful stuff.  I hate Shakespeare, yet I love him, yet I hate him.  I’m so confused.

Just wish me luck.  I’m off to read Act 3.

Until later– “There’s no turning back not that you open up to your mind.”

I just stumbled onto something that makes me proud.  As of about thirty minutes ago, Google’s #1 search trend was a French phrase, “faut souffrir pour etre belle,” which translates to something like “You have to suffer to be beautiful.”

Why am I proud of this?  It proves that the quest for knowledge among Internet junkies is not limited to “Grand Theft Auto IV” or “Nickelodeon Kid’s Choice Awards Results.”

Where did I get the crazy idea to check the Google search trends?  Most of my television time during Spring Break has been spent watching a channel called Current.  It is made up mostly of pods, short videos that are between 3-7 minutes long, perfect for ADHD viewers like me.  That’s not the best part.  Most of the pods are Viewer Created Content.  Their web site, current.com, presents assignments that their viewers/visitors can use as ideas for pods and then send them in.  The best are voted on by viewers/visitors and then hopefully chosen by current to be aired on the channel.  That’s still not the best part.  They pay.

I think I’m actually going to try this.  There are a few of the assignments that I think I could do, with my little Flip and my high tech Windows Movie Maker.  Seriously, though, I think things are looking up.  Most of the pods are about world issues and current events.

Hope things are looking up for you, also.