What Happens at Retreat

Numerous studies establish that singing in a community chorus is one of the best ways to improve your mental health. Especially if you're gay.

I joined Windy City Gay Chorus twenty-eight years ago. Like Seattle Men’s Chorus and Vancouver Men’s Chorus, Windy City Gay Chorus was founded at the beginning of the 1980s. They’re all part of the first wave of gay choruses, whose organizers were inspired by the pioneering San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus’ successful national concert tour. Today the international LGBT choral movement includes hundreds of choruses, from Beijing to Newfoundland. 

So far, I’ve spent five years in WCGC, fifteen years in SMC, and three years in VMC. For the last three decades, escaping with the chorus to our annual out-of-town Retreat has been one of the highlights of my year.

The only time I’ve ever been to the state of Wisconsin was for Retreat with Windy City Gay Chorus. Each year we stayed off-season in a rustic lake resort. From Friday evening to Sunday afternoon we rehearsed, schmoozed, ate, drank, and pampered each other.

One longstanding tradition of many gay choruses is the ironically named “No Talent Show.” On the Saturday night of retreat, chorines perform for each other. At Windy City, our No Talent Show revealed all kinds of hidden talents – singing, dancing, guitar, harmonica, puppetry, you name it.  

The comparable talent shows at some other choruses’ retreats are a little edgier, with lots of biting commentary directed at their conductors and others. In contrast, Windy City’s Retreat included a little gentle satire, but mostly we used the No Talent Show as a supportive showcase for each other. 

Statistically, Wisconsin is both the gayest and the most loving place I've ever been. 

This is a picture from the No Talent Show at this year’s Seattle Men’s Chorus Retreat, held last Saturday evening. Even though I left SMC a couple of years ago, I still make an appearance at Retreat. Before you’re impressed by my sacrifice, you should realize that for the last seven years, SMC has held its Retreat at the Sheraton hotel in Bellingham. Which is located 2876 feet away from my house.

Seattle Men’s Chorus, together with its fifteen-year-old sister Seattle Women’s Chorus, is the flagship of the LGBT choral movement. It’s one of the most successful arts organizations in the country, with a $3 million-plus annual budget, a dozen fulltime professional staff, and a sterling reputation in the community. Shortly after I left Seattle Men’s Chorus, longtime conductor Dennis Coleman retired. Unlike many nonprofit organizations, SMC successfully handled the transition. The new conductor came from Windy City Gay Chorus.

As you would expect from SMC, this year’s No Talent Show was professionally produced. Many of the acts were amazing. Even after a couple of years away, I still got 80 percent of the jokes. As usual, I was appalled by the brutal digs. But not surprised. Years ago, another Windy City alumnus who moved to Seattle was traumatized at his first Retreat by his brutal treatment in the No Talent Show. (His ears should be ringing from the comments this year.) Fortunately, Canadians are much too nice for a Seattle-style roast. 

When I joined SMC in 2000, the Retreat was at Fort Warden, in Port Townsend. It’s a decommissioned army base that the state now operates as a conference center. (The movie An Officer and a Gentleman was filmed there.) Fort Warden has a charming little USO theater where we mounted the No Talent Show each year. 

Eventually, the economics at Fort Worden became impractical. For a couple of years, SMC held Retreat at a hotel on the Hood Canal, similar to Windy City’s Wisconsin location, before the hotel’s incompetent management drove us out. Since then, Retreat has been in Bellingham at the bland but welcoming Sheraton.   

Last weekend after the No Talent Show, several of my SMC friends were kvetching about the impersonal vibe at the Sheraton. I agreed that I preferred the officer houses at Fort Warden. Then one of the old timers nostalgically pined for the rustic retreat location of his youth. Stumped, he asked “What was the name of that place we used to go for Retreat before Fort Warden?”

I reminded him of the name of the original Retreat site, an old Baptist camp in the woods on Vashon Island. I never went to Retreat at Camp Burton myself. But I feel like I miss it.

Vancouver Men’s Chorus still retreats into the woods. In fact, for almost thirty consecutive years, VMC has held its Retreat at the same environmental education center halfway between Vancouver and Whistler. (If you watched the television show Legion on FX, you’ll recognize our Retreat site as the good guys’ hideout.) We’ll be back again in April.

VMC is the oldest, largest, and most successful gay chorus in Canada. Unlike Seattle Men’s Chorus, other than the conductor and accompanist, VMC relies on an all-volunteer model. Lenny has been the board president off and on for longer than many singers have been alive. Our conductor Willi founded the chorus in 1981, and he's still here thirty-seven years later. Like SMC, VMC benefits from its extraordinary stability. When Dennis retired from SMC, Willi became the gay choral movement’s longest serving conductor.

All these factors combine for a fun Retreat, filled with chorus traditions. On Friday night there’s a welcome social and drag contest. Each night we stay up till the wee hours for s’mores and sing-a-longs at the Firepit. Eventually it will be late enough to burst into Willi’s cabin and serenade him with his least favourite song, “Amazing Grace.”

Last year the Squamish conference center’s longtime manager retired. He visited us at rehearsal for a tearful farewell, telling stories about the chorus’ positive impact on himself and his conservative family in Saskatchewan. VMC is like that.

Instead of a No Talent Show, on Saturday night we have “Skits.” Each of the four sections prepares a skit using themes based on our current concert season. The trophy for the winning section looks like the Stanley Cup, and is more coveted. Last year the baritones undeservedly won. 

I’m still not ready to perform in a skit myself. But I did provide a couple of nautical props for the Second Tenor skit, including my son Oliver’s pirate chest. In my rush to depart Squamish, I didn't realize someone had mischievously put an extra prop in the box: a lurid red oversized sex toy. I immediately took it out of the chest. I didn't want to forget it was there when I got home to Bellingham, and accidently put it back in Oliver’s room unopened.

Unfortunately, when I picked up the kids, my daughter Rosalind opened the car door and immediately saw a strange red object in the back of the minivan. She said “Papa, what is this?”

I am seldom rendered completely speechless. As I stammered about not being sure where all the other props from the skit came from (I try to always tell my kids the truth, in an age-appropriate way), Rosalind answered her own question: “It’s a mushroom, isn’t it?” I shrugged. That counts as telling the truth.

Then Rosalind, who is very artistic, said “I would have painted little white dots on it. To be more realistic.”

I met most of my friends in Seattle through the chorus. Like SMC itself, we have our own traditions. For the last six years, at lunch on the Saturday of Retreat we’ve gone out for Mexican food at the same place. Last year we discovered Dos Padres was under new management, and the food was terrible. This year at my parents’ suggestion we went to El Gitano, where the food is excellent and the margarita goblets are the size of beach balls.

Most of our group happen to be rabid sports fans. Other than my father, they’re the only people I watch football with. This year the University of Washington’s game against Stanford preceded the No Talent Show, so I went over to watch. When I left home, the Huskies were up 21-7. By the time I arrived, it was a three-point game. Fortunately, UW won in a nailbiter.

I brought Trader Joe peppermint creams and a bottle of red wine. Shockingly, no one had a corkscrew. Rather than go ask someone to lend us one, John took the bottle and a pair of scissors into the bathroom and closed the door. We heard a loud noise, then John said, “Don’t come in yet.”

Undeterred, Mark peeked in the bathroom, where he saw what appeared to be spattered blood stains. John came out and grimly poured everyone a glass of wine.

I won’t say any more. What happens at Retreat stays at Retreat.

All three chorus Retreats include gratuitous nudity. As with so much else, SMC’s nudity is bigger. For as long as I can remember, a gaggle of exhibitionists and their enablers have organized a show-stopping number with multiple chorus members on display.

After I moved to Bellingham three years ago, I commuted to Seattle to sing one last holiday show. Compared to the Vancouver drive, the trip to Seattle was miserable. I knew there was no way I could keep doing it.

The finale of the No Talent Show at Retreat in Bellingham that November was the traditional exhibition of naked boys singing and dancing. Fortunately, the performers included the one guy in the chorus I’d always wanted to see naked.

I knew I could finally move on.

Someday I will write a more detailed comparison of my experiences with all three of these exceptional choruses. For now, here are some closing observations from almost thirty years of Retreats:

·     As the No Talent Shows and Skits confirm each year, each chorus is blessed with a staggering array of gifts. You could never assemble such a dream team of performers from any sample of the general population. It’s like a Nazi eugenics experiment gone totally right.  

·     The only times I appeared on stage, I portrayed a Mormon missionary or a lawyer. Typecast.

·     I’ve never had sex at Retreat. But I’ve drunkenly made out on the dance floor.

·     Every chorus has the same mantra: “What happens at Retreat stays at Retreat.” 

·     There are a lot of bitchy queens out there.

·     Nevertheless, Retreat is a loving space. Over the years I’ve watched the men of each chorus welcome everyone who felt the call to join – regardless of age, race, disability, gender identity, or sex. Even as we carve out a magical space for “Us,” chorus teaches us there's no need to reject anyone else as a “Them.”  

Six Degrees of Kristin Chenoweth

Singing in Vancouver Men’s Chorus gives me a plausible excuse for driving across the border at least once a week. The chorus rehearses on Wednesday evenings, which also happens to be Show Tune Night at XY. 

XY is a generic gay night club in Vancouver’s Davie Village. It’s across the street from Pumpjack, the pub where members of the chorus socialize after rehearsal each week. Unlike Pumpjack, the acoustics at XY do not involve the kind of omnidirectional cacophony that promptly ejects me from the bar with an anxiety attack. Instead, inspired by New York’s legendary bar Marie's Crisis, XY’s proprietors offer a weekly sing-a-long piano bar. 

The headliner is Kerry O’Donovan. Kerry is a local musician with an extraordinary gift for the unique demands of crowd-wrangling while playing and singing a shifting assortment of standards. Sean Allen, who plays a set each hour during Kerry’s break, is also a gifted performer. (Plus he’s cute and gay.) Show Tune Night is the real reason I go to Vancouver every week.

The audience for Show Tune Night in Canada is a mix of middle-aged fans like myself, of all genders and orientations; a bunch of overconfident drama types from the University of British Columbia and/or local theaters; several chorus divas who don’t even bother making an appearance at Pumpjack any more; and a few drunks who probably were expecting to watch hockey on TV. Everyone loves to sing along, even the drunks. 

It’s fascinating to see who knows the songs from each era. My own tastes and knowledge of the Great American Songbook are pretty comprehensive. Last week the tipsy housewife next to me at the bar was impressed when I could identify every song, and then improvise harmonies for most of them. I explained to her I’ve always loved musicals, but my repertoire has a gap from 2005 to 2011 when young children interfered with theater trips. (I still haven’t seen Next to Normal or Spring Awakening.)

Listening and singing along with the mix of songs each Wednesday reminds me that memory is not linear. Instead, it’s a web of associations.  

Last Wednesday, I heard Kerry play “My New Philosophy” for the first time. The song is from You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, but it wasn’t part of the original production. Instead, another composer (Andrew Lippa) wrote it for the sort-lived Broadway revival thirty years later. The song was sung by Charlie Brown's little sister Sally, who replaced the original Peppermint Patty character in the play. “My New Philosophy” became a powerful showcase for a pint-sized new star, Kristin Chenoweth. She won her first Tony in 1999 for playing Sally. Kristin has gone on to a successful career on television and in movies, but deep down she’s always been a Broadway Diva.

During Kerry’s smoking break, I told him I saw Kristin in the original production of Charlie Brown. It was in November 1998, before the show even made it to Broadway. Anthony Rapp played Charlie Brown, and B.D. Wong was Linus. (Both were already openly gay.) I was working as a gay rights lawyer at the ACLU in Chicago. 

Skokie is a Chicago suburb with a large Jewish community, including many Holocaust survivors. Before moving to Illinois, my only association with “Skokie” was as the shorthand for a famous First Amendment episode. In 1978, the ACLU stood on principle and successfully fought for the rights of a group of Neo-Nazis to march through the streets of Skokie. At the ACLU of Illinois, I later worked with many individuals who were involved in the decision and its consequences for the community. My experiences as a civil rights advocate further reinforced my association of Skokie with “Skokie.”

Chicago has numerous suburbs. The only time I’ve ever been to Skokie myself was to see You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Before opening on Broadway, the show premiered at the Skokie Center for the Performing Arts. 

I can’t sing along to “My New Philosophy” – too many words – but I know all the other songs from the show by heart. And I can recite one of the speaking parts.

My parents moved to Bellingham a few months after I graduated from high school in Brigham City, Utah. However, the only time I ever lived in Bellingham before now was during the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college. Unable to find a temporary McJob in town, I spent my summer vacation doing community theater instead.

Charlie Brown is the ultimate role for any codependent person. The world keeps offering us irresistible footballs to kick, then pulls them away. I can still recite the play’s opening monologue thirty-six years later.  

Rather, I can recite what I remember as Charlie Brown’s opening monologue. I haven’t checked it against the script lately.

My next Kristin Chenoweth memory turns out to be fake.   

For years, my brain filed this memory under “I saw Kristin in a non-singing Biblical role, in that funny play by Paul Rudnick.” 

This week, as part of my fact check for this essay, I went through all my theater programs from past trips to New York. I blame lawyer harmony for my over-flowing collection of old Playbills. Despite being a bunch of unherdable cats, the national LGBT legal advocates have managed to achieve some extraordinary victories. We were always colleagues. In fact, when I was in Chicago, the ACLU, Lambda Legal, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and GLAD brought together all their lawyers from around the country to share ideas and strategize twice a year. Usually these meetings were held in New York. For many years, I regularly gabbed with lawyers, saw great theater, and then drank bad beer while singing along at Marie’s Crisis. By definition, any “dream job” should include regular paid trips to New York.

In 1999, I saw Paul Rudnick’s witty off-Broadway play about the Old Testament, The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told. I remember Jesse Tyler Ferguson, who plays Mitchell in Modern Family, as a naked Adam in the Garden of Eden. (It was Adam and Steve.) And I remember Kristin Chenoweth was in the cast.

Yesterday I pulled out the program for The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told. Jesse Tyler Ferguson was indeed Adam. And the part of Jane was played by … Lea DeLaria.

This was troubling. Lea DeLaria is a loud, short, brunette stout lesbian. Kristin Chenoweth is a loud, short, blonde pixy who dates men. Even a gay man should be able to tell the difference.

Then I came upon the Playbill for Epic Proportions, which I also saw on an ACLU trip to New York in 1999. Kristin Chenoweth played the leading female part, “Louise Goldman.” The program says the play is set in “The Arizona desert,” in “The early 1930s.” I infer from the pictures and cast list that the play involves the making of a Biblical epic film.

I still have zero recollection of the play, including Kristin. Reading the Playbill and even peeking at the synopsis on Wikipedia didn’t refresh anything.

The next time I saw Kristin on Broadway she was singing again. It was her signature role: Glinda in Wicked, opposite Idina Menzel as Elphaba. I saw the original cast, in New York at the Gershwin Theater. They were amazing.

This was my last New York trip before Eleanor was born. I traveled with my Seattle chorus buddy Todd. Our final junket together added numerous other memories to New York’s rich associations: the sexy charm of Avenue Q (which robbed Wicked of the Tony for Best New Musical); waiting outside Lincoln Center after the Sweeny Todd revival so Todd could get Elaine Paige’s signature on his Playbill; and Hugh Jackman’s virtuoso performance as Peter Allen in Boy From Oz. 

Actually, all I remember from Oz was the cast staying out on stage after the curtain call to make their annual charity pitch for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. Hugh took off his shirt and auctioned it off to someone in the audience. Todd was jealous.

Before seeing Kristin on Broadway in Wicked, I sang with her at the Paramount Theater in Seattle in 2001. Well, me and the rest of Seattle Men’s Chorus.

Like many choruses that year, SMC presented a song cycle promoting breast cancer awareness, “Sing for the Cure.” We invited Kristin to sing the solo parts to this piece, which comprised the second act of the concert. 

In the first act, Kristin did her own set as well as singing several songs together with the chorus. Kristin charmed both SMC and the audience throughout her visit. Her stunning “Glitter and Be Gay” was the best I’ve ever heard. But the highlight of the concert was a gorgeous arrangement of “I Could Have Danced All Night,” originally commissioned by the New York Gay Men’s Chorus. The men’s voices weaved together “Begin the Beguine” and other dance melodies as Kristin soared above us with the classic showstopper from My Fair Lady. It was the most sublime single performances I’ve ever been a part of.

As I went through all my old Playbills, I came upon this oddity: the program from Wicked’s notorious pre-Broadway run in San Francisco in Fall 2004. Signed by Kristin Chenoweth. “To Roger.”

This was worse than Lea DeLaria. True, I’ve seen Wicked three other times, and the show itself blurs together (New York original cast; taking my mom for her 70th birthday in Seattle; and taking my daughter for her ninth birthday in Vancouver). But you’d think I’d remember a rare trip to San Francisco. Let alone getting Kristin’s autograph.

Plus I’m not really the autograph-seeking type. I’m too shy. In fact, the only time I’d ever stood outside a stage door waiting for the star to exit was after a matinee of Assassins in May 2004. My friend Todd was so bitter about missing the production he made me promise I’d get Neal Patrick Harris’ autograph for him.

Then I remembered. Later that year, Todd made a special trip to San Francisco just to investigate the Wicked rumors. He must have gotten Kristen to sign a program, then he gave it to me later. But that I don’t remember.

More Showtune Night Stories:

"Missing Marie's Crisis" (5/6/17)

"Get Out and Stay Out" (10/18/17)

"Comfort Animals" (4/24/19)

"I am Third" (5/29/19)

"Spongeworthy" (6/13/19)

"Maybe I Love Showtunes Too Much"  (9/17/19)

"Artificial Emotional Intelligence" (2/25/20)

"Do Gay Androids Dream of Electric Brunch?" (2/26/20)

"A New Brain"  (5/5/20)

Sesquicentennial

Last year was the 150th anniversary of the confederation of Canadian provinces – the country’s “sesquicentennial.” As a member of Vancouver Men’s Chorus, I sang various songs on the occasion and/or pretext of Canada’s birthday. Many of those events began with acknowledgement that we met on the unceded lands of various identified First Peoples. 

Even if they are only words, they are words I cannot imagine hearing in Donald Trump’s America. In fact, when Microsoft Word refused to accept “unceded” as a word, I checked my internal lexicon against the internet. According to the Collins English Dictionary, in British and Canadian English the word means “not ceded or handed over; unyielded,” as in “The reserves are unceded lands, remnants of the Indian realm of old.” 

Americans don’t even have a word for their original sin.

Postscript

Yesterday’s essay, “Lost in a Good Book,” was my 150th post since starting this blog last year – my sesquicentennial. Thanks to everyone for their interest and encouragement.

Lost in a Good Book

One major benefit of my PTSD diagnosis and treatment has been a restored ability to read for pleasure. As I wrote last year in “Reading Again,”

I can’t remember a time before I was a voracious reader. As a child I would sit on the heating vent in the corner of our living room, reading books for hours. I once negotiated with the Tooth Fairy to get the next installment of my favorite Enid Blyton series instead of cash. I have cut myself shaving because I couldn’t put down my book.  

My whole family and extended family are also notorious readers. You will walk into a room and find multiple Leishmans or Phillipses, each sitting silently with his or her book.  

These days visitors to our house once again are likely to find me curled up with a good book. Unfortunately, the only time you’ll see the whole family sitting together reading is after dinner, during mandatory reading time.

No one would describe any of my three adopted children as a reader. This may be evidence of the power of nature over nurture. It could also be the impact of growing up addicted to cellphones and other electronics. Or just generational rebellion.

Fortunately, I’ve observed enough examples of my children taking pleasure in reading that I haven’t given up hope. I try to be flexible about reading time, and I look for opportunities to match each kid with books that speak to them.

I’ve also thought about other people’s confessions that they don’t read, or that they dislike reading. The most common reason is that they see reading as a chore – an unpleasant school-related task. That’s definitely what my kids would say.

Many nonreaders also believe that when they get bogged down in some book they're not allowed to start another until they finish the first one. This is nonsense. I’m usually in the middle of several books myself, switching between them to suit my current mood.

I also ruthlessly abandon books without finishing them. Sometimes I recognize within a few pages that we’re not a good fit. Other times I get distracted by other books or life, and never get back to them. If I still think a book has potential, I’ll give it multiple chances to speak to me. Certain highly recommended books deserve frequent flyer miles for being carried around the country unread. (I’m looking at you, Wolf Hall). Once in a while I’ll return to a book years later and discover we’re finally ready for each other. It’s like friendship or dating. Chemistry is unpredictable.

So I’m taking things gently with my kids and reading. I don’t want them to turn into one of those adults – a shocking percentage of the population – who never read, because they still can’t make themselves finish that last book they started in high school.

In the 1970s, psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi became fascinated as he observed artists who got lost in their work. He coined the term “flow,” which refers to a mental state of “complete immersion in an activity.”

Csíkszentmihályi describes flow as "being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost."

Csíkszentmihályi and his colleagues have identified ten indications you are in a flow state. One in particular leapt out at me:  

Timelessness; a distorted sense of time; feeling so focused on the present that you lose track of time passing.

Sounds a lot like reading to me.

As I’ve previously discussed in various blog posts, Nobel prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman offers a useful model of how our brains rely on two contrasting mental processors, which I've referred to as Thing 1 and Thing 2. The first system is fast and automatic, constantly multi-tasking as it retrieves memories and generates intuitions. In contrast, the second system allocates our brains’ limited conscious attention to effortful mental tasks. Thing 2 would prefer to lazily coast along with the information and assumptions it receives from Thing 1.

Humans’ big brains suck up much more energy than the rest of our organs. In particular, it turns out we have a very limited supply of fuel available for Thing 2’s two most important tasks:  deliberate thought and self control.

According to Kahnemen, the intensely productive flow state is possible because “Flow neatly separates the two forms of attention: concentration on the task and the deliberate control of attention.” What sets flow apart from other mental activities is that our brain doesn't need to waste any of its precious fuel on keeping itself on task:

Riding a motorcycle at 150 miles an hour and playing a competitive game of chess are certainly very effortful. In a state of flow, however, maintaining focused attention on these very absorbing activities requires no exertion of self-control, thereby freeing resources to be directed to the task at hand.

Because I love to read, I seldom have to apply any self-discipline to the task. Instead, I quickly achieve a pleasurable flow state, and lose track of time.

In contrast, during reading time my children will repeatedly ask how much time we have left. From my point of view, rudely forced out of flow, it seems like I just answered the same question seconds ago. For them, five minutes of reading seems interminable.

Reading is a relatively new human phenomenon. As I observed last month in “Pandemonium,”

Over the eons, each of the components of our uniquely powerful brains evolved together, and made us distinctively human. These include our capacities for consciousness and language, as well as our deep mental programming for traits like tribalism, altruism, music, and religion. 

In contrast with our pre-wired brain functions, reading is practically brand new – only about 5,000 years old. The invisible hand of natural selection hasn’t had time to tweak the human genome in the few hundred years since literacy became widespread. Instead, our brains have repurposed innate neural structures to accomplish the strange modern task of reading words on a page.

Reading takes your whole brain. Sometimes that’s still not enough.

This month my mother decided she was finally ready for a new phone. She is not a gadget person. But she’d grown frustrated with the frequent “limited memory available” messages. The folks at the AT&T store were impressed to find someone still using an operational iPhone 5c. (I didn't tell them we were planning to erase all her photos, and give the old iPhone to my dad as an upgrade from his flip phone.)

Reading is like running new software on old hardware. It uses up virtually all the processing capacity of the human brain, leaving nothing left for self-discipline. So don’t trying forcing yourself to read. It probably won’t work anyway. Instead, go find the right book for right now.

Here’s the updated list of books I’ve finished reading so far in 2018:

Bruce Handy, Wild Things: the Joy of Reading Children’s Literature as an Adult

William Goldman, Which Lie Did I Tell?

Robert Wright, The Moral Animal

Isaac Asimov, Foundation

Angelika Huston, Watch Me

Andre Aciman, Call Me By Your Name

Joe Hagen, Sticky Fingers

Stanislas Dehaene, Reading in the Brain

Sherman Alexie, You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

David Sedaris, Theft By Finding

Mary Karr, Lit

Kurt Andersen, Fantasyland

Mark Ausiello, Spoiler Alert: the Hero Dies

Tina Brown, The Vanity Fair Diaries

Marie Phillips, The Table of Less Valued Knights

Robert Nye, The Late Mr. Shakespeare

Julie Schumacher, Dear Committee Members

Roger Ebert, Two Weeks in the Midday Sun: A Cannes Notebook

Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man

Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan

Michelle Dean, Sharp

Robert Sapolsky, Behave: the Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Sheryl Sandberg, Option B

Alan Hollinghurst, The Sparsholt Affair

Michael Chabon, Pops

Stephen McCauley, My Ex-Life

Stephen Goldblatt, Tyrant

Anjelika Huston, A Story Lately Told

Ethan Nichtern, The Dharma of Princess Bride

Michael Pollan, How to Change Your Mind

Atul Gawande, Being Mortal

Andrew Greer, Less

Michael Pollan, Omnivore’s Dilemma

Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire

Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

Ken Jennings, Planet Funny

Robert Lacey, The Crown

Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

Michael Gazzaniga, Who’s In Charge?

Dan Harris, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics

Robert Heinlein, Double Star

Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Ursula K. Le Guin, Tales from Earthsea

Anne McCaffery, Dragonsinger

Ursula K. Le Guin, No Time to Spare

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Other Wind

Ursula K. Le Guin, Words are my Matter

Christopher Buckley, The Relic Master

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind

Julie Schumacher, The Shakespeare Requirement

Nicholas Frankel, Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years

Ursula K. Le Guin, Cheek by Jowl

Ursula K. Le Guin, Tehanu

P.G. Wodehouse, Joy in the Morning

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan

P.G. Wodehouse, Very Good, Jeeves

P.G. Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves

Negotiating With Terrorists

As a codependent person, I can be excessively solicitous of other folks’ wants and needs. 

I’m also a loving parent. It doubly pains me to deny my three children anything they desire. Despite the various professional and personal disasters that surround me, I’m always trying to get to yes. Indeed, other than my biased and ungrateful dependents themselves, most observers would accuse Papa of indulging even the most outrageous demands, regardless of whether they involve ice cream, bedtimes, videogames, the mall, cellular data, or trips to Canada.

Nevertheless, even I have my limits.

One notorious family story took place outside Denver a few years ago. The community where Pops and Gram lived, and where my Uncle Dennis and Aunt April now live, has the perfect outdoor pool for hosting a sunny family reunion. Everyone was looking forward to splashing around. 

Unfortunately, after receiving numerous opportunities to complete some now-forgotten task, one of my daughters missed out on the day’s swim. As everyone else walked out the door, she was heard to wail, “But Papa, you always give us another second chance!”

This year the Bellingham School District provided a laptop computer to every Eighth Grade student. My daughters now complete most of their assignments online.

The school district also gives each parent a password to log in and track their students’ progress. In the three years since we moved from Seattle, each girl’s “Missing Work” inventory has been the subject of multiple parent, teacher, and family conferences. All to no avail.

No more second chances.

The girls have a Thursday deadline to reduce their “Missing Work” list to zero before losing access to electronics. As I wrote to each of their affected teachers, copying each girl,

This week we're making a concerted effort to bring things up to date. I've challenged ______ to eliminate her Skyward backlog by the end of school Thursday (or face dire consequences, i.e. loss of cellphone and electronics privileges). That means she either needs to finish the work, or arrange for an email from you explaining why that is no longer an option, and identifying any alternative task for her to complete this week.

I know what all you soft-hearted liberals are thinking. Nope, this time it’s is a firm, nonnegotiable deadline. 

We are raising a generation addicted to iPhones since birth. This raises the stakes for parenting. In the old days, kids cared enough about their car, phone, prom, or other privileges to motivate school work. Now the only threat any child takes seriously is the Ultimate Power to Unplug. 

I’m confident no mountain of Missing Work will come between a girl and her precious. Eventually. However, there may be a painful period of adjustment. In the meantime, I recognize it’s cruel to deprive addicts of their fix cold turkey. The Geneva Convention probably requires a daily minimum amount of online access.

So assuming one or more wailing maidens will be spending the weekend without the internet, what’s a reasonable accommodation? Ten minutes twice a day to check messages? Twenty minutes of Minecraft? Is an interactive game more valuable than mindlessly watching YouTube? Email me your ideas.

But no spoilers.