What are we doing so that a teacher says “I can’t wait to go to school,” and what are we doing so that a student says “I can’t wait to go to school?”
There. That’s the question that no one asks in education. I can’t stand it when I read something called “The One Question That…” or “The Biggest Problem With…” where you then have to dig into the article to find out exactly what that one thing is. Living in these hypertechnological times has taken away whatever attention span I have. So there it is, that one question. No one asks it. It’s a shame no one does. I’m thinking about this because I’m reading this book “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.” Like a whole of these books about how to change a work culture, it’s basically one idea spread out over several hundred pages. I am enjoying these several hundred pages a whole lot. This is a blog entry, though, so I don’t have several hundred pages. And I seek to provide questions when I say they’re important (as I did at the beginning of this entry). I also seek to outline a big idea if I say that it’s a profound idea from a book I’m reading (that spends 270 pages going over this big idea). Okay, the big idea is this. Way back when we started walking upright, the world had a big external motivator: eat (so as not to starve) and get busy (so that there would be more of us). It helped that eating and getting busy feel physically good. So we did that. That, according to the book’s author, Daniel Pink, was Motivation 1.0. Then we developed civilizations, and there were problems with that whole simple motivation system. Someone could just kill someone else and take their food and significant other. So we developed a more sophisticated system of societal external motivators. In other words: instead of nature saying “do this because it’ll feel good and allow to to thrive, and do these other things so that you don’t die,” society kind of became nature, and said “do this and you’ll be rewarded, and do these other things so that you’ll avoid punishment.” And this worked. This was Motivation 2.0. It’s not working well these days. For a number of reasons (remember, this book is almost 300 pages long, and I’m paring it down to a couple of hundred words), carrots on sticks to reward people and cattle prods to punish people don’t work that well for sophisticated tasks. So how do you motivate people? The answer is: you help them find the inherent, intrinsic reward in doing something. What the book goes into is the interesting fact that there are plenty of times that we do things without any expectation of praise or money, and without the slightest thought about how we may be avoiding a consequence by doing that thing. We all know this feeling, and it’s magical. All of us can remember a time that we did something just because…it was really rewarding to do it. This is not the same as something that just feels good in the most basic way. It’s not as simple as food or sex or drugs. I can give an example from my life. Many years ago, I took a filmmaking class at The New York Film Academy. This was back when people actually made films with, you know, film. Anyway, I had shot my final film, and I needed to edit it. If you haven’t edited a film…it takes forever. My film was maybe five minutes long, and I arrived at in the editing room at about nine in the morning. I stayed there until fivein the morning the following day. In other words, I was there for twenty straight hours. I’ll never forget that. I wasn’t getting any money. There were no primal rewards for what I was doing. I know it’s crude to say this, but there it is: I wasn’t going to get any sex or food from doing this. In other words, there was no external motivator of any kind. But I just kept doing it. Because it was just such a rewarding feeling. “Fun” is too lightweight a word for what it felt like. Yes, it was fun…but it was more than that. It was as if some higher part of me was getting much needed nourishment. We’ve all felt this feeling. We’re in a middle of a task, and we just don’t want to stop doing it. We say “just a minute,” because we’re so wrapped up in it, and suddenly hours have gone by. You guessed it: this is Motivation 3.0. …and it’s really, really tough to find it schools these days. Yes, there are suggestions for teacher rewards, and most of these suggestions stop at the most basic of external rewards. In other words: give teachers merit pay. For students, there are external rewards galore: grades; praise; prizes. As for punishment...boy, is there punishment. Whenever someone says teachers need to be held accountable, you can be sure that this person means that we need more ways to punish teachers for underperforming. So there are more of those these days, and always a call for even more of them. And though people say that students and parents aren’t perhaps being held as accountable as they should (read: punished), the general philosophy behind these criticisms are the same: we need more cattle prods. But once again: we don’t ask what we can do so that these groups can just enjoy what they’re doing more. The response among people when I mention this is puzzling. Many times, people sort of roll their eyes and say “oh, so now we’re supposed to find ways to make teachers happy? What more do you want to give them? We pay them enough already. If they can’t find satisfaction in their jobs, they should quit. Now if you really want to know what we need to do with those teachers…we need to hold them more accountable.” Sigh. It’s even more puzzling when I discuss this with educational administrators. Often they just sort of nod, put what I said out of their mind, and then just keep talking as if I didn’t say anything. Yet there are more and more standardized tests, which are kind of the ultimate cattle prod. To balance this out, we get the same Motivation 2.0 suggestions, like parties for schools that do well on standardized tests, and merit pay for teachers whose students do well on these tests (and consequences when their students don’t). To be fair, I’m reading this book because my principal offered it as a choice for a faculty summer reading initiative. It has been rewarding, and I’m just reading it because…well, because it’s rewarding. If only more of school could be this way, both for students and teachers.
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Dear People Reading this (all...I don’t know...five of you),
Hello. I don’t know you. Okay, maybe I know a couple of you. You give me “likes” on Facebook. This makes me warm and fuzzy. Thank you for that. I’m writing you because...I want to write more stuff for people, and don’t always seem to be in the mood to write fiction. Let me explain. Okay. First off, I write a lot. I mean, a whole lot. This does not mean that I write well. It merely means that I write a lot. I do this in addition to my job as a middle school librarian. I like being a middle school librarian. We are getting a maker space in the school library soon. I’m excited about that. If you don’t know what a maker space is: it’s this really cool place where kids can, you know, make stuff. Some of it can be crafts, and some of it can be more sophisticated stuff involving circuits and what have you. This allows the library to draw in kids who may not be strictly academic learners, and, through their interest in putting things together and taking them apart, maybe get them into reading about, say, the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. I like this. I like this a lot. I’m looking forward to it. And as I put thoughts together for other new and exciting things I’d like to do with the library--including putting together plans for a renovation that may very well be coming down the pike in the next few years--I write. I often do this for a little bit in the morning while I’m drinking my coffee, and I do it for a little bit during my lunch period, often instead of eating lunch. I write quickly. I also write in small paragraphs. I notice that when I read other people’s stuff online that my eyes tend to glaze over when I see a big paragraph. Because of this, even if there’s a complicated idea that I’m writing about, I tend to express the idea over several paragraphs. I am almost obsessive about these paragraphs being three sentences or less. This has to do, I think, with my seventh grade English teacher, Mrs. Manouvrier, who insisted that paragraphs should be three sentences or less. No doubt she was doing this to avoid getting written assignments that were one long paragraph. It caused a kind of OCD thing in me where I just don’t like paragraphs to be more than three sentences. In fact, I also avoid paragraphs that have anything any more or less than three sentences. Lynn Manouvrier insisted that paragraphs should have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and that each of these three sentences performed one of those tasks. She was also firm in her belief that it was wrong to begin sentences with the word “and.” Sentence fragments were also something she was diligent about avoiding. Because of this, it remains difficult for me to venture outside of these confines. Still, however, I do. Write enough, and you start to see that it’s okay to break rules sometimes. It can give the writing a certain pace that moves it along. And that’s a good thing. Really. Anyway (I begin many paragraphs with the word “anyway;” it is a crutch, I know), having said all this, it’s probably a good idea to get to the point. You have read for a while, and I honestly do have a point here. And I shall now make it. Honest. When I was in a sci-fi writing class a while back, the discussion turned to what makes someone a writer. I incurred the teacher’s wrath by saying that in the same way filmmaker Robert Rodriguez said “turn on the camera, and press the button...there, you’re a filmmaker,” you are a writer if you write. She did not like that at all, saying that “well, if everyone’s a writer, then no one’s a writer.” I kept quiet after that. I’d like to point out that I also found her unpleasant and bitter. That’s just my opinion. Still, I’ll offer one compromise: you are a writer when you write for someone else you don’t know. If you spend countless hours writing journal entries, maybe you’re not a writer the way that other people call themselves writers. And if you just write one letter after another, maybe you’re not a writer either. This is not to say that I personally don’t think you’re a writer. Remember, I’m the one who says that if you write, you write. But I’ll give this teacher this: if you write where strangers read it, you feel much more of a writerish feeling. You just do. (By the way: Lynn Manouvrier also abhorred starting a sentence with “but” or “however;” she believed that it needed to go in the middle of the sentence. I came to see, however, that a sentence could often feel more “right” if I started it with those words. But only sometimes.) Anyway (there we go again with the starting the sentence with “anyway” thing), having written hundred of thousands of journal words (perhaps millions), I just figured that it was time to get more of my writing out there. Fortunately, in these digital times, it is now possible to do so. Hence these letters to...well, you, whoever you happen to be. You may very well be someone I know. This, I guess, means that this is not really writing the way that it would be writing if you were a complete stranger. Enjoy it anyway. I admit that right now...yes, I’m using you. You’re helping me feel all writerish and stuff. I would have used another word besides “stuff” that would have made this sound more “street,” but do remember that I work in a middle school, and there’s always the chance that one of my students may read this; I have no idea if I’m a role model, but at least I can keep my language clean. I’m trying to get to the point where these many, many words mostly result in fiction. I just have a ton of ideas for things, and I can’t help but think that I may very well be destined to crank stuff out the way John Creasey or Georges Simenon did, where they just wrote book after book, one after another. Certainly, if these words slowly became more and more fictional, that would happen to me. Of course if that is to happen to me, I may want to avoid Georges Simenon’s obsessive need to bed down women (an estimated 10,000 in his lifetime, no exaggeration). I also may want to avoid his hideous family life, which included many, many affairs (surprise), and his daughter committing suicide. Fortunately, I have no children, so I don’t have to worry about the whole daughter suicide thing. Anyway, as writing a great deal of fiction comes into focus (albeit minus the 10,000 women, the affairs, and the daughter’s suicide), I figured the best way to get going on writing more stuff is to write more stuff and just get it out there. Hence this. Hope you enjoyed it. And if you’re one of my students: John Creasey is an English novelist who wrote, honest, more than six hundred novels. Georges Simenon was a Belgian novelist who wrote close to 500 novels, including many, many, many short pieces. He was capable of writing 60 to 80 pages of fiction a day. And yes, the whole thing about Georges Simenon getting seriously busy: maybe not 10,000, as he claimed, but a whole lot. Like, a real, realy, whole lot. Finally: yes, I like one sentence paragraphs. No, they don’t always work, but I took many journalism classes, and one sentence paragraphs work in news stories. It carried over to the rest of my writing. Be careful with one sentence paragraphs, though. Most teachers don’t like them. But of course, I’m not writing this for a teacher. This means that I have some leeway. Oh, shoot, one more thing...avoid beginning a sentence with “like.” Most people frown on it. Still, it can work sometimes, the same way it sometimes works when I write a paragraph that has more than three sentences, and the same way that fragments work in a paragraph sometimes. Like now. Like, right now. But for the most part, when you’re starting out, obey the rules, which helps you learn the right time to break them. I’m going to stop writing now. Dear Derek,
The first thing I want to say is, I honestly understand. You are a school librarian, and you are drawing up plans for how exactly the middle school library you run can better serve the students in the coming year. I also understand that you frequently write. I understand how much you enjoy your job, and how much you enjoy writing. I understand that, therefore, you use your computer frequently. Honestly, I do. Nonetheless, it is vitally important that you remember what is most important in your life. Let me just say again: I have great respect for the way you handle your assorted duties, some of which involve paying for the apartment, paying for food, paying for utilities, paying for the car that takes you back and forth to your place of employment, paying for the assorted personal items you need for your upkeep, and so on. You perform all these tasks admirably. I am genuinely proud of you. At the same time, I remind you that though you eat and sleep in this apartment, I am in charge of it. To be blunt: it is my apartment, not yours. In fact, the world is mine; you just live in it. Having said that, I remind you that of all the duties you perform, the most important is to give me, whenever I may call for it, your complete and undivided attention. That time is now. This is, after all, not asking much. I am simply requesting that you drop whatever you’re doing, and shower me with said attention. Give me affection as well, and tell me that I am the best cat in the universe. This is not difficult, for that is what I am. I prefer that you say this in a sort of baby talk in which people would be able to blackmail you were they to record your sessions of affection. Perhaps you may wish to say something like “Who’s the little tuxedo cat? Who’s the little guy? Who’s my guy?” It would be humiliating if your students knew that you said that to me, I’m sure. I regret that I enjoy this. You must, therefore, do it. I also insist that you rub the back of my neck and scratch me below my chin. Also the base of my tail. It’s amazing when you do that. It’s like dancing the foxtrot with a band of angelic cheetahs on the rings of Saturn just after scientists have discovered that they're made of catnip. Behind the ears, please. Scratch behind the ears. Right there. Perfect. Having done that, you must now turn on the laser pointer, and move the dot back and forth so that I chase it across the carpet. I have no use for tangible things, such as kitty teasers that have feathers on them. I will not chase these things; I seek the intangible. One day, I will catch and kill light. Anyway, I’m glad we have this straightened out. Yes, you may have a life...but only after you have devoted that life to me whenever I may need you to do so. I am the Emperor of the Apartment...render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s...but above all, give me what is due me. ...and I don’t want anyone accusing me of plagiarism, as if I were a wannabe first lady or something. That was Matthew 22:21 I quoted back there. Just saying. There he was, Rudy Giulliani, at yesterday’s Republican Convention, whipping the crowd into a frothing frenzy. As he said “Islamic Extreme Terrorists,” his face turned red and angular, and when he screamed “We’re coming to get you!” the crowd exploded. This was not the calm mayor who got New York through The World Trade Center attacks on 9/11. This was the id made flesh. And the speeches that came before it were more of the same. Patricia Smith, the mother of the Benghazi victim Sean Smith, said she personally blamed Hillary Clinton for her son’s death. Someone in the crowd yelled, and she responded, in a voice of pinched rage: “That’s right—Hillary for prison. She deserves to be in stripes. Then there was Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, who began his speech by saying “I just want to say Blue Lives Matter,” and then said “but there’s good news in Baltimore, where Brian Rice (one of the officers on trial for the death of Eric Garner) was acquitted.” To chants of “Blue Lives Matter,” Clarke attacked the Black Lives Matter movement, saying, “What we witnessed in Ferguson, and Baltimore, and Baton Rouge was a collapse of the social order…I call it anarchy.” Then there were the raft of speakers who told stories of their children dying at the hands of illegal aliens (never, ever "undocumented"), either from gunshots or drunk driving. And as I listened to these primal screams from the well guarded panic room of the Quicken Loans Arena, I thought about one of my favorite movies, 1984’s “Starman.” The film stars Jeff Bridges (who got a well-deserved Oscar nomination) as an alien who crashes to earth, assumes human form, and has a few days to get to the huge impact crater in Winslow Arizona, where his extraterrestrial buddies will pick him up. Chasing him are a group of scientists who want to study him (read: cut him up like a lab rat). There is also, however, a kindly scientist (played by Charles Martin Smith) who just wants to talk to him and help him get home safely. At one point in the film, Jeff Bridges and Charles Martin Smith have an exchange in which Bridges has a line about humanity that my friend, Jim Cole (a film critic for The Cape Cod Chronicle) and I have quoted about a million times: “Shall I tell you what I find beautiful about you? You are at your very best when things are worst.” And we are. Yes, it is a genuinely frightening world right now. Yet we when we are calm, and reach for those better angels of our nature that Lincoln talked about (back in the days when Republican conventions were, no doubt, quite different in tone), we find a relaxed, graceful strength. This strength connects us to others who may look different, act differently, and have beliefs utterly alien to ours (literally, in the case of this film).
Which is why yesterday was so upsetting. What was on display was not a collection of civilized humans but a pack of wild, chanting dogs who would have torn Jeff Bridges’s character to pieces out of wild, irrational fury. Calm strength had given way to blind fear, a sort of mass de-evolution in which the evolved frontal lobes of thousands of brains dissolved, leaving behind the primitive minds of rats and lizards. It is no coincidence that so many memes have evolved from the wonderfully wise English World War Two phrase “Keep Calm and Carry On.” This is where noble power resides, the ability to be brave when every fiber of being says "be afraid...be very afraid." All that was on display yesterday was not strong calmness but impotent rage, an insistence on being at our worst when things are worst, that allows terrorists to look at each other, smile, and say “we won.” I write in the wake a tragedy. One person after another has something to say or write about it, and I can certainly do the same.
I’m good at offering articulate snap judgement opinions, and may even have the ability to get a visceral reaction from someone. Perhaps I can even inspire them to act on that visceral feeling. This is why I am glad, so glad, that my friend Megan has a Basset hound. I am in the backseat of a car as I write this, using a wi-fi hotspot. Megan’s Basset hound, Samson, is next to me. His ears are swinging back and forth like pendulums. Occasionally he opens his mouth and pants. A thread of drool hits the backseat. Sometimes some of this drool ends up on the leg of my jeans. I reach over and pat his head. I massage the back of his neck, and he leans his head back. This is his way of telling me that he wants me to scratch him underneath his chin. Were I writing this at a table, I would feel his paw tapping against my shin. I would look down, and see him looking at me, his eyes hooded by those brows that dogs use to express emotions. In this case, the emotion would be a mixture of hurt and indignance, mixed with the expectation that I stop everything and get on with the business of massaging his neck and scratching his chin. Samson does not bark much. Yes, when he does bark, he is loud, and being a hound, he is capable of howling in a Baskerville kind of way. Nonetheless, most of the time, he is quiet, sitting or lying down, taking in the world and soliciting nearby people for the occasional treat or, yes, the occasional neck rub and chin scratch. So why is this so important for me right now? For two reasons. The first is that with his constant solicitation for neck rubs and chin scratches, Samson reminds me that if I’m going to write about a politically charged issue, it is best to do so with a relaxed, clear head. And this, in turn, reminds of something even more vital. We are in an age in which anyone can get talk or write, and get their stuff out to a potentially huge audience. Given that, it is so important, so very important, before acting on feelings and thoughts, to remember the importance of reading and listening to the feelings and thoughts of others with that clear, relaxed head. Right now, I have a number of things I could write, and chances are, I’d regret posting them a few minutes later. This means that there is a chance, however remote, that my words could inspire a member of my vast readership (up to double digits at least) to do something that they might regret. I would have difficulty living with myself if I inspired such a thing. This is not to say that I will shy away from writing about things that affect me in a visceral way. All it means is that before I do this, I would prefer to calm down, and maybe get an idea of what thoughts other people--many of them far smarter, wiser, and more intelligent than I am--have on this matter. And there is nothing better to remind myself of this than to give Samson a neck rub or a chin scratch. For this insight into the importance of seeking the better angels of my nature, I owe Samson a deep debt of gratitude. I was in Stop and Shop a couple of days ago, and I heard Thomas Dolby’s “She Blinded me With Science” playing over the speakers. I went home, turned on the TV, and saw a commercial for some sort of something involving the purchase of something I apparently have been dreaming about, with “Sweet Dreams,” by Eurythmics playing in the background. Then, a few days later, while I was waiting for a friend of mine to try on some clothes in a Macy’s fitting room, The Cure’s “Friday I’m in Love” started to play over the store speakers.
The whole thing reminded me of a scene in the film “Broadcast News,” where Albert Brooks, playing a news writer, tells news producer Holly Hunter about why the new anchorman, William Hurt (who is basically a pretty face with no brain) is the Devil. Satan will not be monstrous looking, Brooks says. He will be good looking and charming, and instead of destroying you all at once, he will convince you to settle for less and less, just a little bit at a time, until you look back and realize that you’ve completely sacrificed your ideals. I know...it was just a couple of songs, and I must accept that, at 50, I’m part of a prime consumer target audience. People want me to buy things, and, while buying things, they want me to think back to my teen years, when MTV meant not reality shows, but an astronaut planting a day glow flag with the network’s logo on the moon, and actual music videos played all day long. Again, I know...hey, if making me think of my teen years means that I buy things and keep the economy moving, then it’s all good, right? At the same time, I couldn’t help but feel like Benjamin the donkey in “Animal Farm,” when he tells the horse Clover that all of the idealistic commandments of the farm have dwindled down to “All Animals Are Equal...But Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others.” I’m having a lot of moments like this, where some small thing will make me realize that there have been many, many changes, all of them so incremental that you don’t notice them until you pull back and realize that many incremental changes add up to major changes. Sometimes this is a good thing--such as those times I suddenly realize that my students have grown and matured in life affirming ways--but many other times, it makes me cringe. I think about how, when I became a librarian, it was a sacred tenet of my profession that whatever people checked out was their business, and that libraries simply didn’t violate that person’s right to privacy, at least not without a fight. I think about how, when I was younger, there were many local television stations, each with their local flavor, and how all of the syndicated stations now just seem like satellites of vast corporate entities. I think about how there were many, many more local businesses. And I think about the music I used to hear in department stores and commercials. Department store music used to mean something called MUZAK. This often consisted of kitschy versions of popular music, and there were, in fact, tons of radio stations that used to play this stuff. My dad loved it, and whenever he took me to the office as a kid, I was in for forty five minutes of rich, orchestral string versions of Beatles classics. More than the radio, however, you heard this stuff wherever you shopped. Often, it wasn’t even any particular pop song. It was original music that created a kind of numbing, soothing background to the serious business of being an American consumer. It was such a component of shopping, in fact, that it often made its way into movies as a ripe target for satire. Mention the original 1978 “Dawn of the Dead” in the same sentence that you mention MUZAK, and any horror movie fan will start singing: duh-dun-dun-DUN, duh-dun-dun-DUN, duh-dun-dun-DUH-duh-duh-duh-dun-dun-DUN. And when I turned on the TV as a kid, commercials had original music. These were things called “jingles,” and if you grew up when I grew up, you learned them by heart. If you’re much younger and reading this, none of the following will mean anything, but for folks my age, it will cause a flood of memories sufficient to trigger a stroke: hold the pickle; Coke is it; feeling 7 Up; you deserve a break today; gooey gooey rich and chewy inside; I wish I were an Oscar Meyer weiner; I am stuck on Band Aid brand ‘cause Band Aid’s stuck on me; the Meow Mix song; Schaeffer is the one beer to have when you’re having more than one; when it’s time to relax, one beer stands clear, beer after beer; Me and my RC, me and my RC...what’s good enough, for other folks, ain’t good enough for me; wouldn’t you like to be a Pepper too; the incredible edible egg; if it doesn’t say O, Oreo, than it isn’t an Oreo; hold the pickle, hold the lettuce, special orders don’t upset us; Hershey is the great American chocolate bar; and so on, and so on. The thing about these two things--department store music and TV commercials--is that they left contemporary music alone. Yes, MUZAK occasionally did watered down versions of some notable piece of music, and yes, there were those occasional commercials that featured a well-known song (The Doors accepted $75,000 for Buick to use “Light My Fire” in a commercial). Still though, the rule was that department stores and grocery stores were the province of MUZAK, and commercials were the province of jingles...and they never, ever used the original piece of music. That all started to change in the 80s, when legendary artists began to sell out left and right. There was the misery of a Michelob beer commercial featuring Eric Clapton knocking back a few with his band while “After Midnight” played over it. Then there was the depressing spectacle of musicians hawking Honda Scooters, the saddest of these featuring Lou Reed, with “Walk on the Wild Side” playing in the background, looking at the camera and saying “Hey...don’t settle for walkin’.” Now it’s slipped even further. When Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” accompanied a commercial for a cruise line company, it just felt as if Satan won yet another small victory in his quest to destroy all the rebellious, life affirming power that music has. There are even times where publicity for an artist mentions a commercial that features a song by that artist. In fact, that’s been going on a while; when I was in a used CD store (there are still a few kicking around), the cover for a Nick Drake CD had a label that said “featuring ‘Pink Moon,’ as heard in the new Volkswagen Cabrio commercial.” And then there are department stores and supermarkets, where all this music I grew up with (and plenty of music that is current) has now become the new MUZAK. When I was growing up, we used to call that cheesy music “elevator music.” Now, the music of my childhood--and the childhood of today’s children--is often the very music you hear in elevators. What makes it perhaps the most upsetting for me is the realization that this has, of course, been the norm for a long time. I just didn’t notice the way it creeped up. A frog doesn’t notice when the water in the pot is getting warmer, and it boils to death. Look, I know the music is the music. I know that I can listen to it at home or with friends, and enjoy it as much as I ever have. At the same time, though, whenever I hear a song in a commercial or hear one at the mall (or the supermarket, or the elevator), part of me dies. This music used to inspire me to rebel against the oppressive drive to conform to a consumer culture. Now, it seems, it’s all about getting me to buy something. One of the things I like about New England is that it has a lot of local traditional things that you just don’t get on Long Island. Perhaps this has something to do with the way that these two places view heritage and tradition. New England honors Thoreau by preserving Walden Pond; Long Island has The Walt Whitman Mall. In this vein, New England towns inevitably have some sort of awesome annual celebration, sometimes more than one. Often this celebration involves a parade. Sometimes this celebration involves food and drink as well, which makes it even better. In The Willows part of Salem, Massachusetts, they celebrate July 4th with a parade that should make Middle Atlantic folk feel truly deprived. It is called The Horribles Parade, and it is, in fact, a tradition that takes place in other New England towns such as Beverly Farms. The solemn occasion of the nation’s birthday is a good opportunity to stress the importance of not taking things seriously, and The Salem Willows Horribles Parade does a superb job at this. The rules go something like this: there is a parade, and there are floats and groups based on current events from the previous year. In addition to these groups, there are straight out adorable children's groups, such as these folks dressed up as nursery rhyme characters (in this case, Little Bo Peep and her sheep, and the mouse from Hickory Dickory Dock, with his dad playing the clock): The adorable kids, however, are kind of the appetizers for the main course: a competition to see who can create the most offensive (or at least amusing) float. The creators of this float win a trophy for “Most Horrible,” and display this trophy with pride, as they indeed should. Yes, in past, in the year that the theme was “the year of worst moms,” there was indeed a float that featured someone dressed as Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s mom cooking up a bomb in a cauldron. Yes, there was, another year, a float with a woman dressed as Bill Clinton, and a man dressed as Monica Lewinsky (and yes, of course, of course, of course, he was wearing a hideously stained dress). Yes, of course there was, in the year of Twittergate, a Weinermobile with an escort of people in cell phone costumes. And this year, of course, of course, of course, we had Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in bed together: ...accompanied by Bernie, of course, with Caitlin Jenner in tow. ....with a sort of honor guard forming a wall to keep those foreigners out (and yes, they were carrying cheese graters; horrible puns are encouraged as well). There really is not much to say when pictures say so much, but it is worth mentioning that this is what makes me proud to be an American. The true sign of any totalitarian state is an utter failure to laugh at itself (yes, even after something as tragic as The Boston Marathon Bombing...as a matter of fact, especially then). The Horribles parade is a reminder that we still can do this, and as long as we still can, the terrorists have not won.
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