Looking for Truth in Onaway

  Last night, I attended my first board meeting in person since January. (The whole broken leg thing has been a real downer.) I’ve been watching them on FB (thanks, Stacy), but it was good to be there and be able to hear and see better. It was great to see the board functioning as it’s supposed to. The event was a workshop to examine ways to update the school, a process that has been planned for some time now. A citizen committee has looked into the possibilities. Community members were canvassed as to which updates they thought were most important. A firm was hired to look the campus over and make recommendations. Now the board is hearing from those entities, and they will decide what we must have, what we should have, and (maybe) what we’d like to have. The recommendations will be made public soon, so the taxpayers are informed. It’s the way school business goes. Always has. What was great to me was seeing our board members interacting with each other in a civil manner. They

  I used to start every year of 10 th grade English with a unit on advertising, as a way to teach kids to think about persuasion. While we’re all aware of ads, we often don’t stop to think about how they convince us to buy a product. What we looked at back then could be useful now, in this time of confusion about what is true and what isn’t. When someone makes an argument, for a cause or an idea, ask yourself: 1.        What is being “sold”? In advertising, that’s easy, but in other areas, it’s more difficult to see what you’re being offered. Solutions to a problem? A person or platform to vote for/support? Just as you have to decide whether you really need butt deodorant, you also should think about what politicians, from national to local, are trying to sell you. Right now, in many cases, it’s fear: fear of the unknown, fear of the future, fear of those who are different. 2.      Who is making the claim? Knowing a person’s goals and motivation helps us understand why they sa

    Many people react to comments they don’t like by screaming, “No! You’re wrong!” This is often followed by name-calling (see yesterday’s entry) and accusations. It’s easier to reject someone’s argument if you convince yourself that person is evil. Or stupid. Or whatever it takes. My practice is to give myself a cooling-off period when possible. I can’t tell you how many times in my life I’ve dashed off a written response to someone--a letter, a FB post, an email, and then let it “sit” for a while. I usually delete it the next day. Anger doesn’t beat truth, no matter how much I’d like it to. I recall writing an incensed letter to one of my book editors once, telling her she’d overstepped her role and that it was my book and I’d write it the way I wanted to. The next day, when I thought it through and looked at the manuscript again, I saw that she was only telling me what readers were seeing. I actually had to go out to the mailbox, retrieve the letter, and tear it up. (I