US-Slovenia commentary and Preview of US-Algeria

The next in my series of columns on the US World Cup journey for
The Winchester Sun. The Sports Editor of the Danville Advocate-Messenger has also expressed interest in running these columns now.

Unfortunately, there are a couple of editorial typos - one omitting a "so" in my paragraph on Onyewu and a fused sentence resulting from combining two of my sentences in the paragraph beginning "Once again," Not that I'm picky.

Enjoy.

Fit to Be Tied (World Cup Commentary)

I've written a few pieces for our local paper The Winchester Sun giving commentary on US soccer matches while explaining a few aspects of soccer to the folks of Winchester, who do not tend to be soccer fans. This is my latest piece on the recent US-England tie.

That annoying sound you hear...

...is the whining of soccer traditionalists about the vuvuzelas--the plastic horns that you hear as an incessant background noise at the World Cup. Patrice Evra, captain of the French National Team (who between the rancor of strife in the French camp and the noise of prostitutes coming and going should be used to odd noises) has been particularly vocal in leading the charge to ban the South African soundmakers.

A telling perspective in the ESPN article above is John Leicester, an international AP reporter, who says the horns are "killing the atmosphere" and he is reported as complaining that the sound "is drowning out the oohs, aahs and cheers that lend excitement to the matches."

I will be the first to admit that the tinny, warbling noise does not seem a lovely soundtrack for the Beautiful Game. But I think to say it is "killing the atmosphere" suggests there is a singular, consistent atmosphere to international soccer games, when certainly that isn't the case.

The cacophonous chants of British (and many European teams) echo across the stadia. When I've seen the English National team play in the old Wembley and at Soldier Field, the sound was deafening and certainly impacted the players' ability to communicate on the pitch.

The "Samba" music at Brazilian games (and some other Central American and South American nations) results in a consistent musical backdrop that ebbs and flows with the game but which runs throughout the match.

This is the first World Cup played on the African continent. And in the same way that Cameroon infuriated some Europeans in 1990 by having the temerity to play aggressively against them, I think the problem isn't that the Africans are ruining the atmosphere of the games; I think it is that they are not simply embracing and reproducing the conventions of traditional European and South American soccer culture.

Though there is certainly debate on the origins of the horn (since all I can read is English language analysis, it is possible there is less debate than there appears), the vuvuzela is said to be a traditional part of South African culture, and it is undeniably a longstanding part of South African soccer culture. One cannot find a single historical account or piece of match footage including South African teams that does not include the backdrop of the vuvuzelas.

So Patrice Evra and his ilk would seem to want the South African fans to stop what they've been doing for years at soccer matches lest it offend the ears of the traditional powers. If FIFA kowtows to these traditionalists, it sets an awful precedent of trying to squash unique atmospheres and local footballing cultures in order to create a uniform product. Such a decision would fly in the face of the values FIFA claims it supports.

Church Builds a New Facility in its Existing Neighborhood (Film at Eleven)

One of the Fox News lead stories: "Mosque to be built near Ground Zero" (never mind that it is a religious community has been in that neighborhood for 40 years, so the only possible reason to feature this story is to scare people and paint all Muslims as violent).

One of the CNN lead stories: "Church's Faith Healing Under Scrutiny" (never mind that this is some incredibly weird and isolated religious group and by prominently featuring them you smear other Christians as anti-intellectual nut-jobs).

If news has stopped attempting to inform, and it has become a set of deliberately constructed narratives trying to separate and scare us, what hope do we have of coming to an informed decision and solving anything? Do we not care what works as long as our side wins?

Very cynical on this Election Day eve.

"Undergrowth" on Public Republic

My flash fiction piece "Undergrowth" was just published on Public Republic. Check it out.

What Happens in WinVegas (and may not for much longer)

(Apologies. Venting)

A story of mine, which has been politely rejected on some of the finest letterhead in the literary publishing universe, features a scene in which a husband and wife argue about living in a small town. The husband loves the peace and serenity of the small town while the wife--having spent some time living in London--feels smothered in what she sees as a backwater village. Friends reading this might think it recounts a debate between Andrea and me; in fact, it is a debate that I've had with myself many times over since we moved from Lexington eight years ago.

We came to Winchester because it was a map dot geographically centered between Lexington (where I worked at the time) and Stanton (where my wife had just been hired as a Public Defender). A few months before the move, I decided to drive around and get a feel for where we would want to rent a house. We weren't sure about leaving Lexington, so we planned to rent and see how Winchester worked out. I drove out Winchester Road and came upon the intersection of US60 and the Bypass in Winchester, a cluttered, electric line crisscrossed vista of fast food signs and dingy looking businesses.

I managed to overcome my impulse to immediately turn around.

But over the course of several trips, I found that it is always unfair to judge a town by the road designed to bypass it, and discovered a lot of really beautiful and charming neighborhoods in town. We also met many wonderful, creative, interesting people here and after several months, we went ahead and bought our first house. Even after Andrea changed jobs and both of us were working in Lexington, we decided to stay here because we've come to know and love so many friends here in WinVegas. (or Funchester. Or Gun City. Take your pick).

However, people who live in small towns by choice often face weekends like this one, which are exciting and frustrating in equal measure.

With a lot of our friends, we are dedicated to support local events and businesses. We have been to planning and zoning meetings to support the Winchester Travelling Trail and Rails to Trails. We aggressively evangelize locally owned restaurants and art venues. If a national speaker is invited to the Leeds Theater or a local church, we go. We could easily bolt out the 15 minutes to Lexington, but we think Winchester is a beautiful place and it deserves a more vibrant cultural life.

This vision isn't just the pipe dream of a few crackpot, artsy types. Complaining about a lack of restaurants and "things to do" is quite a popular pastime here in town, so highlighting these local activities and eateries is a response to an existing community desire.

So this weekend should have been a chance for Winchester to shine.

Stinky & Coco's--a fantastic and new diner with a very odd name, an owner who's operated restaurants in Chicago, and a very interesting breakfast and lunch menu, was open for dinner. Lexington-based artist Helene Steene had an opening at the Winchester Opera House gallery with music, a wine tasting, and fantastic food. National artist Antsy McClain & The Trailer Park Troubadours was performing at the Leeds and putting on their unique fusion of country, rockabilly and Garrison Keillor-style folksy storytelling. All of that entertainment would put a couple back less than $50.

The result?

Admittedly, we were only there for about 30 minutes, but only a few other people came into the restaurant, missing out on a Triple Berry pie (raspberry, blackberry, strawberry) that was, as the kids say nowadays, redonkulous. The gallery opening was reasonably well attended, but I'm curious how many of the people came from Lexington, because I didn't recognize very many of the other attendees (Winchester is small, people). But then the Leeds show, at $15 a ticket for 3 hours of great music and humor, drew (in my rough estimation) about 60-70 people.

My wife and I and our guest had a fantastic time. But seeing the poor attendance left me crestfallen.

I don't expect us to bring in the Royal Shakespeare Company. I don't expect the Marina Abramovic exhibit to swing into town after it leaves New York. I do, however, still want to expect something. Something beyond regularly taking my money fifteen minutes down the road to Lexington and watching our local arts venues and restaurants slowly falter and lock up their doors.

Some of the problems are failures of marketing. I will certainly be contacting several of these venues to show them how to more effectively use their healthy Facebook groups to drive attendance. But it also depends on the citizens of Winchester. If we want "something to do" then we must demonstrate that booking an event in Winchester means a full crowd and a reasonable profit. We must make supporting these opportunities a matter of principle.

If we don't want to just be a bedroom community for Lexington, we must do better.

Photo above (C) 2010 Jason McKinley Williams

To Persuade, To Inform, To Entertain: What is the purpose of the evening news? (choose two)

The great thing about teaching English is that every moment is a "teachable moment." Awash in language and communication, it takes little effort to find something in the real world to illustrate what you are teaching.

The content Kentucky educators are supposed to teach students is prescribed in something called the Program of Studies (POS). For English, the term "content" is a bit of a misnomer, because the POS does not mandate readings or assignments, but rather a set of reading, speaking, and writing skills that students should master. I maintain a chart with these skills and regularly grade each class (red, yellow, green) on how well the students have mastered a skill.

Recently, I realized we were "yellow" on identifying the purpose of a piece of writing. We've certainly exercised this skill, but since we typically teach only one type of writing in each unit, the students hadn't been simultaneously presented with multiple texts and asked to decide the purpose (inform, persuade, entertain) for each one.

So I put together a mini-unit of activities for the first ten minutes or so of several classes. I had the students read brief passages and then articulate the purpose of the text and what textual clues they'd used to discern it. All well and good, but talking about stand-alone excerpts of text felt a little de-contextualized to me.

So, I was eating lunch, reading the news, and the teachable moment presented itself.

I opened up Fox News and took a screenshot of the main page. Predictably, it was a tale of how the country is being led into Socialist ruin by the Obama administration. There were headlines on the Massa controversy, 6-7 stories about how health care reform is hated by Americans and doomed to fail, mockery of "Climate-Gate" (the recent revelations of redacted research on Global Warming) and a sarcastic story title about the United Nations. "Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria."

So then I went to CBSNews.com. Just as predictably, the website praised the Obama administration's leadership and vision. Jobless rates were down. Foreclosures were down. While assisting Nancy Pelosi on saving America through health care reform, President Obama was increasing exports to other countries. Change had come to fruition; morning had broken in America.

So I showed the students the two screenshots of the US news (taken seconds apart), and asked them to identify the purpose for these pieces of writing. In some classes, a few hands flew up and said that the purpose of news stories was to inform. I agreed, but then I asked them to do what they'd been doing--look at the text and find evidence to support their answer. Shortly afterward, the students started murmuring--then answering out loud--that the writers' purpose was clearly to persuade.

I stressed that I would never tell them what political view to hold, but I wanted them to understand that they needed to be conscious of the bias so they could consider that persuasive intent in assessing the information presented. In the discussion that followed, some classes made it clear that they understood the necessary conclusions: Never trust one source. Look at multiple views and make up your own mind.

I recognize that heavily politicized journalism is neither novel nor specific to US news, but it's sad that the easiest way to find heavily biased writing is to peruse the front pages of websites designed to give us data about our world.

The scariest part is that I don't believe the tin-foil hat wearers who claim we're being manipulated by covert political machines and duped into accepting spin for news; I'm afraid we're getting exactly the news we want. A pre-designed narrative is so much more unified, coherent, and soothing than the discordant, nuanced truth.

The latter requires real thought, compromise, and engagement. The former asks us to simply lie back, close our eyes, and listen to the sounds of the story. We already know how it ends, so it's just fine if we go ahead and fall asleep.