Results of Ruminations

Touchstones are important in my life. I find things that interest me, and then I explore them way past levels that are healthy or normal. I talked a bit about my obsessions before--well, this is how I get them. Something comes my way and I start to understand it on deeper levels. Music is a quick example. My buddy, many years ago, tried to get me to listen to Rx Bandits . I didn't really give them a try until after my mission. It was the same sort of synergy between souls as what I get with Gayle. Their music resonates deeply, (almost) always perfectly with how I think of music, what I appreciate in it, why I think it matters. Since they became my new favorite band (replacing Dave Matthews Band as my longest musical love), I have attended almost every concert that they've brought to Salt Lake, enduring their obvious dislike of the venues and attitudes of the crowds. I'm willing to set aside their prickliness because their music is what my soul sounds like. As a result, ...

The phrase "self-improvement" is, in some ways, redundant. Unless you're an android (and, therefore, should be destroyed ), improvement is internal anyway. External factors can make a difference, but the ultimate decision to improve yourself comes from inside. I've been trying to improve areas of my life that I have, for a long time, felt lacked. Writing, for example: Inspired by the soundtrack of Hamilton , I realized I wasn't writing nearly enough. Coupled with the inspiration of my friend, Pat, I decided that I needed to start writing every day, regardless of the topic. Another area: I wanted to try to develop some cooking skills. I asked a friend, who had been through culinary school, for private lessons, which I've been attending sporadically (schedules are hard to align) since the beginning of summer. But putting a concerted effort into improving myself has revealed unexpected problems. First of all, the more areas I try to improve, the more gaps I s...

The book fair was always an exciting time for a bibliophile like me. In typical, forgetful Dowdle fashion, I would never remember to bring money to the elementary school book fairs, but I remember being happy when a bookstore showed up in Northridge library. Once I hit middle school (technically, it was a junior high), I managed to remember cash. I spent a lot of it on a lot of different books, but the one that turned into a major component of my time at Oak Canyon Junior High was the Animorphs' first book, The Invasion.  On it was a very '90s (check out the haircut), very computer generated image of a kid (like me!) who was slowly turning into an iguana (a scene that wasn't, if I remember correctly, even in the book). The animal's head was part of another image that the cover, well, covered. I believe a "buy one, get one half-off" sale was going on, and I saw the book on a display. They also had the second one. I equivocated a little, unsure of what I...

The most famous line in all of Shakespeare (and English letters) is Hamlet's "To be or not to be" speech, found in Act 3 scene 1 of his play. It goes like this: To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office ...

I registered me and my wife to vote yesterday. We should be getting our ballots by mail, thereby obviating any excuses about schedule come election day. Plus, it'll give me the opportunity to do some research on the things that I'm expected to decide upon that I haven't given any attention to yet. Because it is a divisive political season (isn't it always? And don't we always  use the acrimonious behavior of a few as indicative of the unworthiness of those running?), I wanted to note something I'm seeing. This is meant to be condemnatory of poor behavior, but I hope that no one who reads this would consider my thoughts as being disparaging of them personally. Despite attempts of many to the otherwise, one's political party or philosophy can be disagreed with sans acrimony. For the most part, that's what I'm trying to say here. I live in a highly conservative part of the United States, and many of the students (and coworkers) with whom I work are ...

A few years ago, I operated under the delusion that people would be interested in my process of writing one of my novels. Consequently, on this blog, I published a bunch of posts (which you can read, in reverse order, here ) documenting the first draft--and some of the editing--of a mostly-abandoned novel called Writ in Blood . I learned a lot from my time in Coratha (the world in which the novel takes place). One is that my procedure for editing is not particularly effective. I also learned that, as much as I enjoyed writing a "magnum opus" style novel, it's more satisfying to finish many, smaller novels in a similar amount of time. (If I had to guess, I first got the idea for Writ in Blood  sometime in 2009 or 2010; by 2016, I'm still poking at it, off and on, without any full sense of having "finished" it.) Additionally, despite earlier desires  to try to learn to love editing, I still don't particularly appreciate it. Lastly, I learned how to outli...

Most of my blog writing happens in my new office, a bedroom that my wife painted to look like the outside of an English Tudor cottage. My own piece of England. It's now filled with books and sundries. It is a Fortress of Solitude for me, particularly when things are getting too parenting heavy around the house. More than once in the last two months, I've escaped here in order to make myself less likely to yell at my children, say something mean, or decompress when my depression hits me. I almost always lament it when I have to leave, and I will not confess how many times I've fallen asleep in my overstuffed armchair whilst reading (basically always). Within this room and its book-coated shelves reside almost all of my obsessions. The decor, obviously, shows my Anglophile side. Because of my long-standing love affair with books, I even have my video game obsessions represented in novel form. I have my fantasy and science-fiction books crammed into one pocket, my Shak...

As a cis-het white guy, I have the privilege of being able to grouse about a system that favors me while reaping the benefits of the same system. It's a nice little benefit--one that has really only helped me. It wasn't until I was in college that I started to see how much of my life is smoothed over by virtue of my gender, race, and sexual orientation. It really makes my complaints about things that bother me seem petty. One thing, however, that bothers me to no end is sexism manifested in my workplace. I'm not talking about the top-down approach, such as hiring practices or the administration as they make teaching assignments. If there's sexism there, it's so subtle that I can't see it. No, I'm tired of the societal sexism that impacts female teachers. Not only is my wife an educator, but a great many of my coworkers are, too. The problem is pretty obvious: Students and parents treat female teachers as surrogate mothers and, therefore, expect them...

I'm still sick, so I thought I'd make a list of things I want to write about as a quasi table of contents. This isn't anything definitive, but it may help me later when I'm trying to think up a topic. * A bit about I had a fever dream in which Donald Trump quotes terrorized me (I'm not making that up). * Something about dinosaurs. * Writing swear words (since my post about swearing got the most views and conversations about it) * Talk about race * Talk about Zootopia , which is also talking about race * Think about Batman V. Superman and why I don't think it's as big of a train wreck as others likely do. * Another gush piece about Shakespeare. * Something about Milton * Memories of people whom I ought to forgive but, all these years later, still struggle to. * Why I like poetry. * What I do as a teacher that I like. * What I do as a teacher that I don't like. * Another video game post, maybe about why I liked the ending of Mass Effect 3 (a...

I am sick. My boys have been sick for a few days. Now it's my turn, I guess. I would really like to never be sick again, but the big issue for me is that I always feel guilty for not being able to do more. I definitely follow the stereo type that a guy just wants attention and affection whenever he's sick. It has always bothered me that I feel this way, but when you get sick you stop caring. So this is it from my daily blog post. Grousing about being sick. I hate being sick.

A few miles from my house, a mentally ill man forced an evacuation of an elementary school , claiming he had a truck full of explosives. The school evacuated with no casualties or problems and, as of this writing, the perpetrator was in custody. In New York over the weekend, a bomb was set off in Chelsea, leading to a manhunt that has already been resolved . Stabbings in Minnesota . Yet another cop-related shooting, this time in Oklahoma . This is the news of the last twenty-four hours. It can be hard at times like this to declare, unequivocally (also with hyperbole), that this it has never been worse in this country. As a history teacher, it's hard not to want to raise my hand, clear my throat, and say, albeit timidly, "That's not true." The hard part isn't looking into the history books for the evidence. It's feeling as though the data aren't skewed. Anyone can look up the information. In the last two decades alone,  FBI statistics  show a st...

There is an inherent poetry in a café (one that carries the accent over the e ), which is perhaps born more of reputation than merit. There is the gentle murmur of conversations and orders, a murmur not so different from the bustle of any other food service place, but one that feels different because it's weaving through the smells of coffee and breads, tucked between the cellophane-wrapped brews and twine-hugged gift baskets. The seats are all uneven--every one will wobble, almost as if they're custom ordered that way. Often, the wrought-iron tables have imbalanced feet, like a toddler walking after waking, or maybe a too-drunk friend as you designated-driver them from the bar to the car. The names are smug; they're foreign, yet familiar, and you have to practice to not  say "expresso" because then you'll sound like a twit. The prices are smug, too--you walked in here, so you're going to pay $2.95 for ten ounces of orange juice and crushed ice, and you...

This morning, I sat down with a blank pad of paper on my desk and a handful of note cards. I have been picking at a story idea since July, so it's about time I figured out what happens in this story. I had some ideas, but it was time to make the decisions so that the book could take shape. I outlined the motivations of the three main characters, forging how the two supporting characters interacted with the protagonist. Then I wrote the outline, one scene at a time, one card at a time. I was done in two hours. Of course, the real writing will take a few months to nail down. I can usually write a chapter in about an hour, maybe 90 minutes. But I tend to only have time to write once a week, so it'll take 30 weeks to write the whole thing. Fortunately, I will be teaching a class next semester that will allow me three or four writing days a week. With that much writing time, I will be able to finish the book, as outlined, by the end of March. I can hardly wait to write the next...

Apparently, one of the aphorisms of real estate is "Location, location, location." It's said as a truism, so I'm guessing it has all sorts of exceptions that those in the business could point out to me, but as I'm willing to recite it at face value, we'll go with the basic idea--except for writing. One of the things that makes for a larger, more lasting impression in some  fiction is where it takes place.* Here's a quick and dirty list, right off the top of my head: Spider-Man doesn't work in the rural south (he needs skyscrapers); Aquaman free of the ocean loses some of his prestige; Luke Skywalker sans the Death Star isn't much of a Luke; The Lord of the Rings  in a place other than Middle Earth fails on a lot of levels; the gladiatorial fighting of Panem makes less sense in almost any other setting. But there's something to be said for writing where the location is so fully realized and integral to the story that it feels like it's a...

I have loved superheroes since I was little. I have a memory of finding a length of yarn at my grandma's house and begging my mom to tie it around my wrist so that I could have a spider web shooting out of it. If I recall correctly, I was bothered that she put it in a cute little bow, and the length left over wasn't as long as I had hoped, but I do know that I ran around, pretending to attach the excess yarn to the walls and swinging through my grandmother's home. In the sixth grade, my world completely changed and Spider-Man , the cartoon show, debuted. And, just like that, I was hooked. (I would say "I was caught in the web from then on," but that would be cliched and too much of a dad pun, so I'll leave it at "hooked".) The vast majority of my childhood--including up through my early college days--found me reading Spider-Man novels* (I still have them, and they fill up an entire bookshelf on their own) or writing and drawing my own Spider-Man ...

My class is designed around a modified Socratic method--more open-ended questions than that ancient Sage would use--and it's days like today that both make me happy to do what I do, and worried that I may have pushed too far. Parents, I think, use a particular definition of "pushing" or "challenging" their student that isn't immediately transferable to me. Does that mean I ask questions that we're afraid to answer? Questions that can't easily be answered? Questions that don't have an answer? Questions that reconfirm what the students know? Questions that open up new possibilities? Questions that challenge the status quo? Questions that are followed up by additional questions that undo whatever answer they've given? Frankly, I try to craft questions of all those types, and I certainly prefer to leave a lot of the answers up to them to decide. This puts me at odds with some parents (and some aspects of school oversight), as I implicitly tru...

Lately, I've noticed myself becoming crasser. My entire life, I avoided using stronger epithets than crap  or, when I was knee-deep in mission slang, I would throw around shiz  because it was scriptural and that was a thing we did. But I never said "real" swear words through my first thirty-two years of solar orbit. As of late, however, I've noticed my frustrations boiling over in the form of frothy word vomit that's muttered under my breath. I don't even swear loudly enough for it to be cathartic, which certainly raises the question of whether or not it's worth doing. But the point of today's writing isn't to chat about the fundamental absurdity of swearing--despite the fact it has an august and robust history --and instead thinking about why it bothers me that I'm swearing more. Or, rather, to poke at the concept of why I've started swearing in the first place. It comes from, I believe, a couple of things. One is certainly a greater u...

I tackled a new class this year: Shakespeare (Fine Arts credit edition). In it, we use the time to prep for the Utah Shakespeare high school competition held in October down in Cedar City. It has been somewhat frustrating and really eye-opening as I've tried to help the drama teacher put the class together and get ourselves working as hard as we can on the competition pieces. This is far away from my experiences. In the past, I've taken up an assistant director/dramaturge/critic for the school's festival participation. Gayle and I would watch individual pieces, give feedback, help add additional polish, and provide the support the kids needed to do their best in the performances. Usually, we were pretty helpful. Now I'm in the driver's seat. Well, kind of. My coteacher is technically in charge, but since the competition is split between the ensemble and the MDTs (as we call them--the monologues and duo/trio scenes), I've found myself taking on additional t...

Because it's September 11--the fifteenth anniversary--it feels as if I ought to talk about my memories of the attack, how it affected pre-mission me (I was worried I'd be sent to fight instead of serving an LDS mission), or the palpable terror, confusion, solidarity, and rage that almost everyone seemed to share. And maybe I should...but not today. Instead, this is going to be political--and that's part of my point. If you aren't interested in reading my thoughts on the Republican party or the way our economic system works, maybe you should skip the post. Because today I'm talking about something that has bothered me for a while, but I've never said anything about it. A friend of mine retweeted this from my representative. Now, Congresswoman Love is my representative, but I didn't vote for her. Two reasons: 1) I wasn't in her district the last time she ran for reelection; and 2) she is a Republican. I don't affiliate with any party, but I do p...

I was originally going to write about the irony that, despite the fact that I've figured a way to carve out enough time to update my blog, I haven't worked consistently on any of my book projects lately. Instead, I read an email. One of my former students--who had left for his LDS mission to Tallahassee a couple weeks ago--is returning home because of, if I'm reading the email correctly, serious thoughts about suicide. As I mentioned before , suicide is thematic in a lot of the world's literature.* In my course, we'll be talking about Inferno  (as mentioned), Hamlet  (he contemplates suicide--Ophelia may or may not have killed herself), Les Miserables  (Javert), Things Fall Apart  (Okonkwo), All Quiet on the Western Front  (Paul...maybe), and Maus  (Anja Spiegelman). It haunts us, it worries us, and the way we think about it has changed over the years. It doesn't go away, however, no matter how much we talk about it--or ignore it or stigmatize it or dis...

While I was at my writing retreat this last June, I happened upon two cartoon series that I hadn't seen before. (This isn't that surprising, since I don't watch a lot of TV programming, preferring, as many millennials do, to stream the content I want on demand.) One was The Amazing World of Gumball  and the other was Teen Titans GO! It's hard to say which strikes me as the preferred one--they have differing styles, different approaches, and different animation philosophies. Nevertheless, their scattershot, random, fast-paced humor is completely on my wavelength. Recently, I picked up four DVDs worth of Teen Titans GO!  I am trying to be parsimonious with them, but it's hard not to binge watch everything. While I've seen some of the episodes before, watching them again is almost as enjoyable as the first one. I've found myself adopting some of their style of humor into my teaching, and I'm pretty sure some of my future cartooning will be influenced by t...

Every year, I ask students to write a letter (that they won't send) to President Obama about how to be an effective leader. This is used as a lead in to discussing The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli. In the prompt, I ask them to avoid personal attacks or political arguments, instead trying to focus on what leadership is. They rarely do it right. That's okay. It's difficult to know how to talk in concrete abstract terms (which is, in my mind, all leadership "trainings" are), and it can be extra difficult when the topic is polarizing, knee-jerking, and more complicated than others. My favorite responses are always kids who aren't politically interested/active, because they tend to answer the question more fully. They don't have political axes to grind, so they say things like, "Keep your promises" and "Keep us safe." Not the most useful of advice, perhaps, but they're 15 and that feels about right. It is always interesting to see...

One could argue that this post's title is a little sacrilegious--at least, if you're a Mormon who's read Believing Christ . I'm not necessarily invoking this piece of LDS ephemera, though that could certainly fit. Robinson's book has an excellent parable that I think about quite frequently, and there are pieces of Shakespeare that I, likewise, reflect on quite often. I think what's interesting about the title of Robinson's book is it's not Believing In Christ , but believing Him. That difference seems deliberate and worthwhile. What does it mean to believe Shakespeare, though? There's no salvation in his words, though Harold Bloom argues that Shakespeare is "secular scripture", read or quoted as much as the Bible--at least, in the Western world. Indeed, despite the (admittedly opaque) allusion, I'm not really trying to draw any parallel between Christ and Shakespeare. I confess to being a Bardolator, but it's not a full-blown case...