My guest editorial today in the GRC newspaper...

Group Think

In the stands of a GRC football game, it is all so simple. We are all clad in red, all cheering for a common goal. We celebrate together in victory, console each other in defeat. It is the pure joy of sports: supporting your team no matter what.

This identification with a group satisfies a natural impulse. We congregate around people with similar interests and beliefs. Whether you consider yourself popular or nonconformist, you and your friends likely share similar tastes in clothing, hobbies, and music. This is simply human nature.

However, this impulse endangers us when we forget that we are individuals in those groups, and that those groups do not define us. Unfortunately, many forces in our society desperately want us to forget.

Consider the controversy over the recent education speech by President Obama. A week before the speech, a student asked my thoughts about it and told me she would refuse to watch. Perplexed, I asked why she would not listen and she told me she was a conservative and disagreed strongly with Obama’s liberal policies. She had heard about a boycott campaign promoted by radio personalities.

I told her that while I was certain her 4th block teacher would not force her to watch the speech, my advice was that, regardless of her political affiliation, she should listen to the President’s message. In the end, she would either have her opinion changed in some way, or she would have additional evidence for denouncing Obama’s policies. After all, we gain nothing by only listening to people from our chosen group and ignoring differing voices.

Unfortunately, there are others who gain quite a bit.

Many people and institutions have a vested interest in you forgetting your individuality, swearing allegiance to a group, and behaving in predictable ways. If politicians know that once you register Democrat or Republican you will always vote along party lines, what motivation do they have to address your particular needs? If Aeropostale knows you will purchase anything bearing their logo, why should they improve their products? If a group of friends know you desperately cling to their approval, what will prevent them from acting in ways that are hurtful to you?

The only way to counter this pressure is to follow the advice I gave my student: listen. Certainly listen to people from your group of friends, activities, or political parties. But never be afraid to hear and honestly engage ideas different from your own. If you have not questioned your principles, you don’t have any; you merely have some group’s platform.

Most significantly, listen to yourself. Let neither the insistent shouts nor incessant murmurings of any group drown out the pure, simple voice inside you: your own, true will.

The life cycle of a high school neologism

On my Facebook status, I commented on the speed with which my students can create a new word, or conjure some new meaning for an existing word, and drive it headlong into cliche.

My favorite current example is the word "beast":

Beast (transitive verb):
1. To excel at; to perform exceptionally on

Examples:
1) "I totally beasted Montgomery County's point guard."
2) "Our color guard is going to straight up beast that band competition."
3) "Chill out, Mr. Williams; I am beasting this essay."

By the time I become aware of these coinages, they are already racing toward banality. But in my brief tenure as a teacher/sociological observer I've sketched out the following life cycle:

1. Day 1 - Word spawned - the actual germinal moment is shrouded in mystery. "Beast" may have come from the popularity of the phrase "He is a beast" amongst teenagers. Or someone may have just texted ChaCha with a request for a random word.
2. Day 2 (Before lunch) - One student uses it in discussion and gets odd looks and chuckles from classmates.
   
3. Day 2 (After lunch) - Two or three students per class use it ironically, casting sideways glances, bemused at the moronic nature of the coinage.
4. Day 3 - The coined term constitutes 60% of the words spoken by teenagers in the school.
   
5. Day 4 - Some teacher uses it in class: "Hey, you guys totally beasted that vocabulary quiz." Under desks, inside sleeves, thumbs dart across cell phone keypads. It all happens quickly now.
6. Day 5 - Students only use the word ironically, casting sideways glances, bemused at the lameness of that word.
   

Google Docs

While I love the productivity enabled by Google Docs--my writing available to me wherever I can get access to the internet--it does have its drawbacks. The format is basically like a papyrus scroll; it just keeps pushing the bottom of the page ever downward as you keep typing. As I've learned from times spent on literary magazine websites, its difficult to get a sense of the length of a story by quickly scrolling through it on the screen.

The results for tonight: what I thought was a mid-sized short story draft turned out to be 18 pages double spaced. Need to look at "Print Preview" more often.

Words of encouragement

I'm currently in this cycle where I fall in love with what I'm writing and compose in a fit of passion, only to slowly grow disappointed at the result falling so far short of my desire for the piece.

In this state of disappointment, I'm encouraged by these words by Ira Glass. Since they are directing so much of my energy, I certainly hope they are true.

Analysis of US Soccer win

Soccer is a passion of mine, and I was deliriously happy after the US beat Spain in the Confederations Cup. Since I'm so much in the habit of writing frequently, I started thinking about how I would explain the significance of the win to a non-soccer fan. Having finished it and been largely pleased with it, on a lark I sent it to the local newspaper, The Winchester Sun. One must expect editorial changes, and while I'm not crazy with some of them, I was very pleased they gave some column inches in the paper to share my thoughts.



UPDATE: The link to the July 25th Winchester Sun article, now requires a login, so I'm including the full text here on the page:

One Giant Leap

By Jason McKinley Williams

Very rarely, soccer elbows its way into the consciousness of the typical American sports fan. Usually, the news is either something negative or it involves the personal life of David Beckham. Less common is the story heralding some purportedly significant event in US Soccer history: defeating Brazil in some exhibition game, or the nationalization of teenage sensation Freddy Adu.

The US Soccer team’s 2 – 0 victory over Spain in the Confederations Cup on Wednesday falls into this last category. But, this story is different. It actually is a red letter date for the sport in this country.

The Confederations Cup pits the champions of various continental tournaments against one another, along with the host country and the current World Cup winners. After being placed in a round-robin group with Brazil and world champions Italy, most pundits assumed the US would fail miserably, and the US team dutifully complied with those assumptions once the tournament started. Having been thrashed by those two powerhouses, they entered the last group game needing to defeat Egypt by 3 goals, and hoping that Brazil would defeat Italy by at least 3 goals. A fairly hopeless proposition.

Except, that is exactly what happened.

The reward for that gutsy performance was a date with Spain, widely seen as the best team on the planet and favorites for next year’s World Cup. The Spaniards had not been beaten in 35 straight games (tying a record) and had won 15 straight games (also a record). The ESPN.COM pre-game commentary on the match bluntly revealed the expected result: “Hello and welcome to Spain's thrashing of the US.”

Except, that was not exactly what happened.

The US played aggressive, well organized soccer. The wise strategy against a superior team is to play solid defense, stay compact, and look for chances to score on a fast-break counter attack. The US executed that plan perfectly.

More significantly, they fought with a determination and fervor that was stirring to behold. Visibly exhausted players raced at full speed to interrupt the nonstop Spanish attack. Players flung themselves into the path of shots on goal. At a huge talent disadvantage to the gifted Spaniards, our national team responded with intelligence and heart.

In the end, the US did what England, Germany, Italy, France, and many others had failed to do since Spain’s streak started in the fall of 2006—they convincingly defeated the best team in the world. Not in an exhibition with experimental line-ups, but in a significant international competition facing some of the best players in the world.

Roughly a year ahead of next summer’s World Cup, the result gives clear evidence that the US team is, at blinding speed, making progress toward becoming a legitimate player on the world stage. It is the dream of every long suffering soccer fan, and increasingly, the dream of children racing around parks all over this country.

Today, that dream leaped closer to reality.

"Next Great Writers" Reading

Read a couple of poems on Friday as a finalist in the "2009 Next Great Writers" competition sponsored by the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning in Lexington. As always, the Carnegie Center in Lexington created a great forum for writers to read their work. It was great to hear things from people I knew (James Vincent, Eric Sutherland) and several others I did not. The first place story was by a young man named James Grant and I thought both the story and his reading of it were very fine.