The McCollumn - 9/7: "An apology, of sorts"

For a few weeks now, a die-hard contingency of readers has called on me to make recompense for a Aug. 10 column I had written about how I felt our city schools’ employees should send their kids to our city’s public schools.

Some of you called me or e-mailed.

Mrs. Ione Mayfield wrote a wham-bam-boozle of a Letter to the Editor about it (which I found delightful; I’m one of those weirdos who enjoys “hate mail.”)

One of you even went so far as to accost me at my parents’ restaurant as I was working, making orders back on the sandwich table.

All of you let me know you thought I had crossed a line with my statements and that some sort of apology was due.

Well... here goes:

“I apologize for any who were offended by my comments in the Aug. 10 McCollumn, ‘Why Isn’t ‘Dear OHS’ Good Enough for You?’. My comments were not meant to demean other school alternatives, and I am sorry they were interpreted as such.”

Sound like a good enough apology for y’all?

Good.

It’s not one, but I hope it sounded enough like one to mollify you.

What I wrote on Aug. 10 was not a condemnation of private or home schools, but an earnest opinion about my feelings on public school teachers and administrators not supporting the system that employs them.

That was my intent as an author - to point out an issue and encourage a healthy discussion.

However, I should have remembered we live in an era where reader interpretation, not authorial intent, reigns supreme.

That is to say, what you imply from my writing means more than what I meant to infer.

Some of you did some good close textual analysis, unearthing hidden inferences I never intended to make.

You took it upon yourselves to reckon that I was vehemently anti-private schooling.

I am not and never have been against private schools, even if I would personally choose to send my hypothetical children to our local public schools.

For you to say otherwise would mean that you obviously don’t know me or my beliefs, and, quite frankly, you don’t, so please stop spreading this vile calumny.

What you implied was not what I actually wrote, and while I’m somewhat angered that my words have been twisted more than a pretzel, I’m at least gratified by the facts that a) you read the piece and b) it caused you to have an emotional reaction.

For a writer, there is no greater compliment than to have something you’ve written invoke emotions from your readers - happy, sad, blistering angry ... all are valid and welcomed.

The true aim of the Aug. 10 column was not to shame those teachers and administrators, nor was it a “holy war” on private and Christian education.

It was meant to start a discussion, a dialogue in this community, about an issue that myself and others in the community were aware of but had henceforth not been talked about in the public sphere.

I’ve always been of the perhaps naive belief that there is no problem so great that we cannot solve it through rational, well-thought discussion.

While some of you may have thought the remarks needed an apology, there were an equal number who have given me the old “Atta boy” and the occasional “Give ‘em hell” - proving, I suppose, some readers got what I was writing toward.

How we read a text depends largely on our own specific world views.

We all have different life experiences and beliefs that allows each and every reader to approach a text differently.

I would never be so bull-headed as to believe that my reading of a piece was the final word on the matter, and nor should you, dear readers.

It is only when we come together and make a “stone soup” of all of our beliefs and opinions that we can truly view a piece of writing.

In closing, for those of you who wanted a true apology out of me for that column, I am truly sorry ... that you won’t be getting what you asked for.

The best I can give you is the italicized part from earlier in this column, because I’m afraid I’m not sorry - and I probably won’t ever be.

The McCollumn - 8/31: "What has happened to cursive writing?"

Saturdays at the Cottage Cafe have become an impromptu salon for the discussion of various ills and issues within our society. (This is what happens when I’m left alone to work the sandwich table.)

As regular customers come and go, so do the topics of conversation, ranging from the national to local, and mundane to bizarre.

A few weeks’ ago, Steve Adams of Auburn brought to my attention a disturbing detail: cursive was no longer being taught in Auburn’s city schools.

We both quickly declared this policy change to be an error and continued to ruminate on the potential impact such a decision would have.

While the need for good penmanship and proper handwriting has waned here in the digital era, children should still be instructed in the basic practices of writing, of which cursive is a seldom-used, but necessary, tool.

Sadly, hardly anyone takes the time to write cursive-laden letters to family and friends these days, when e-mails and texts are quicker and less likely to leave evidence for future generations. (Do you honestly believe your great-great-grandmother would want you reading her old love letters? Would you want your progeny to read yours?)

What I remember of my cursive education dates back to 3rd grade and Deborah Lindsey.

I was never proficient at making the letter “z” look convincingly like anything other that a spasmic squiggle, and my r’s are somewhat lacking, but I learned the skill and can now confidently scrawl my script on the backs of checks, legal documents and anything else for which my signature is required.

What of these kids now?

Will they have to sign documents with the ubiquitous “X,” proving that if it was good enough for our illiterate great-grandfathers, it’s good enough for us?

Print-form letters, even in different handwritings, still bear a striking similarity.

Cursive letters tend to be indicative of only the writer’s hand.

No matter how many times we tried to forge our parents’ signatures on less-than-stellar report cards, they never seemed right (The McCollum Research Institute has done numerous studies in that field; just don’t tell Homer or Liz).

Will we soon be forced to transition to a world where just a plain-form name will be enough?

I shudder to think so.

Parents, do the right thing and make sure little Fred or Wilma knows how to at least write their own precious name in cursive.

Show them how to dot the i’s, cross the t’s, and, if you’re feeling daring, the ending signature swoop practiced by signing experts like John Hancock.

If the schools won’t take up the task, then you, the parents, must for the sake of country and common sense.

Unless we want to go back to the 1800s (and I fear some of you might), let’s try and nip this in the bud before it explodes into a full-blown, script epidemic.

Respectfully yours,

The McCollumn - 8/24: "The Commission on the Protection of Alabama's Common Sense"

Last week, our own local elected member of the Alabama House of Representatives, Speaker Mike Hubbard (R-Auburn), announced the creation of a new group to help craft the state GOP’s legislative direction for the upcoming session: the Commission on the Protection of Alabama Values and States Rights.

The commission, made up of various Republican lawmakers and citizens, according to the Tuscaloosa News, “is tasked with listening to ‘typical Alabamians’ to ensure that conservative social issues and 10th Amendment guarantees ‘are given prominent attention.’”

The majority spent the previous legislative session discussing those issues (like illegal immigration and anti-abortion laws), so much so they neglected to pass a state budget.

Now, we are forced to vote on whether we should raid the state’s only major savings account, to the tune of $437 million over three years. If they had taken care of business when they were supposed to, perhaps these other issues would have solved themselves.

While I can’t argue that our state has seen some debate on these issues (with discussion loudly led by Speaker Hubbard and the like), one does wonder if these are truly the issues we need to be focused on at this time.

I don’t think Alabama’s “values” of intolerance toward immigrants, non-Christians, pro-choice women or the poor are due to change any time soon.

And, as for the “states rights” tenet for the commission - one wonders if we’ve suddenly travelled back to the 1860s or if Speaker Hubbard has been possessed by the nullifying spirit of former vice president John C. Calhoun.

Rather than focus on these “values” issues, could we perhaps take a stab at attempting to solve another issue that’s on the front burner for most Alabamians: our lackluster economy.

Figures released by the Alabama Department of Industrial Relations lists the statewide unemployment level at 9 percent. 30 Alabama counties have unemployment rates above 10 percent, including all of Lee County’s neighbors.

Our state’s leaders can and must use every tool in the economic development arsenal to try to bring good jobs to Alabama, and that includes legislative support.

We can offer incentives to companies to relocate their means of production here, boasting a workforce that is ready to start the job from Day One.

We can invest in jobs training and continuing education for Alabama’s work force - insuring that every paying job we bring in will have a highly-qualified and educated candidate waiting to fill that position.

We can encourage partnerships between our high schools and our state’s technical schools, trying to make occupational education a cornerstone of every part of our state’s educational system.

We don’t need a Commission on the Protection of Alabama’s Values and States Rights.

We need a Commission for the Protection of Alabama’s Common Sense - to make sure our legislative leaders focus on our real-life issues, not political specters to score points with their party and political base.

But - I’m not holding my breath here. We do live in Alabama, after all.

Bless our hearts, we have and probably will continue to find the logical way to do something and then go the opposite route.

Sadly, it’s who we are - and, arguably, one of our most dearly held “values.”

Perhaps one day we will, but not if we continue to focus on non-issues and bogeymen created to distract us from reality.

The McCollumn - 8/10: "'And now for something completely different'"

Author’s note: Read Angie Brown’s column before you read this one. The link is here.

Seriously, I’ll wait. 

...

Sometimes, even I tire of me being a pompous blowhard, so this week, I bring you an excellent guest column from my friend Kat James, marking the death of a beloved American icon.

Miss Monroe- 

An American Dream, An American Tragedy

When I was about 8 years old, my parents and I went to visit my older brother for a weekend at his boarding school. It was a fall afternoon, and I will never forget entering into his small cramped dorm room that donned the typical posters of a teenaged prep school boy in the 1980s.

There was Farrah Fawcett, Madonna, Michael Jackson and another lady that I did not know. She wore a white dress that was windblown up around her knees, and she was laughing as she was trying to push her frock back down.

I asked my brother “who is that?”. He replied “Its Marilyn!” in a tone that he could not believe that I was unaware of who she was.

Now, we all know which image that I am talking about- Marilyn Monroe standing over the New York City subway feeling the wind ruffle her dress, which was a scene in “The Seven Year Itch.”

I was captured by her. Who was she? I mean really- who was she?

August 5th marked the 50th anniversary of Monroe’s mysterious death, and what is even more mysterious to me is how she still mesmerizes and captures the American public.

Why? How does she do this so many years later after her demise? After reading about her and seeing most of her films, I have only one conclusion- she is the American dream.

Found at the right place, at the right time by a photographer as a factory worker during World War II, she posed for him which eventually led her to signing with a modeling agency then going to Hollywood.

Monroe’s upbringing was less to be desired. Nee Norma Jeane Mortensen, she was a daughter of a mentally unstable woman and father unknown, tossed from foster home to foster home, reared in poverty, and married for the first time at 18 years old to James Dougherty. (Monroe had an estranged relationship with her mother who was institutionalized due to mental illness and passed in 1984.)

Once she was discovered and after countless hours of hard work and sacrifice, Marilyn Monroe was created and born- blonde, glamorous, desirable, beautiful, famous, successful.

Is that not what the American dream is and what it teaches us to do? To raise yourself up by your boot straps, to create a better position for yourself with success and wealth, and to truly “make it?”

Considering the time that Monroe was discovered and created at the end of the war, her timing was perfect for the Baby Boomer generation was beginning.

Marilyn Monroe became the quintessential American blonde bombshell flown to Korea to entertain the troops and posing countless times for pin- up photos and magazines. Yes, she became our dream girl; she became an icon. She was and is the girl that every man wanted and the woman that every girl wanted to become. Furthermore she reached her professional goal super ceding her looks by becoming “the girl” in film.

As a student of Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio, she gave us the unforgettable characters in “Some Like It Hot,” “How to Marry a Millionaire,” and “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” just to name a few. Billy Wilder’s “Some Like It Hot” is still considered by film historians to be the greatest comedic film to date.

I cannot help but note the artistic irony of the last two films she made- “The Misfits” and “Something’s Gotta Give.” As the end her life began to unravel, Monroe battled her demons of depression, failed marriages, barbiturate abuse, and loss of sense of self and love.

Her dream became a tragedy- and our tragedy- as we all know. We created her- the American Dream girl, which became an American tragedy. After all, F. Scott Fitzgerald did once say “show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.”

We shall never know what really happened the night of her death and what killed her figuratively and literally, we will never understand. Honestly, it does not matter. As Norman Mailer wrote in Marilyn (1973) “In all this discussion of the details of her dying, we have lost the pain of her death. Marilyn is gone.” Yet her memory remains strong, and she still has a spell on us today.

In conclusion I can only ask this:

Miss Monroe, what did you do to us? You captured us with your beauty, your humor, your sadness, and your ability to fulfill the American dream, and you continue to do so. I can only hope that in your last hours you found some of the peace you long sought, and you came to realize that you are loved and will always be loved. For I have loved you ever since I saw your image on my brother’s dorm room wall on an autumn afternoon.

Kathryn James is a psychotherapist in San Francisco and continues to be a Marilyn Monroe enthusiast. 

The McCollumn -8/3: "Why isn't 'Dear OHS' good enough for you?"

There are some times when I feel the need to remove the mantle of “journalist” from who I am and speak to you all as Private Citizen Cliff.

Journalists are supposed to try to remove all forms of bias and personal feelings from the subjects on which they report. If such a bias exists, a good journalist would ask to be transferred from that beat, avoiding even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Thankfully, I’ve never claimed to be a “good” journalist - in fact, I think I’ve made it abundantly clear that, at best, I’m an English major who writes vaguely journalistic style stories from time to time.

In my capacity as News Editor, one of my beats is the Opelika City School System. From the monthly school board meetings to special events like Young Writers Day or (what we used to call "Jellybean") Field Day, I’m there attempting to cover said events the best way I know how.

However, as I cover these events, I am forced to recognize my own bias with regards to our school system.

I’m a proud 2004 graduate of Opelika High School. I bleed red and black - always have, always will.

The same goes for most of the McCollum family - my sister, my cousins, my uncle and my father are all Opelika graduates. 

We’re a family that has and always will support our local school system - a school system where every child, from the lowest achievers to the brightest of the bright - can receive a quality education with the added benefits of excellent athletics and amazing arts programs.

I know most of you feel the same way, which is why I’ve become confused by some news that has recently come to my attention.

It seems that a number of school system employees have chosen not to “embrace the awesomeness” that the rest of us believe in.

These employees, including some at Central Office, choose to send their children to some local private schools.

While this is completely within their rights as parents to choose what education they want for their child, I’m somewhat taken aback by these actions.

Our local public school system is “awesome” enough for these people to work here (and to cash the paycheck paid for by public tax dollars from you and from me), but not “awesome” enough for you to deign to send your children here?

You may wish to claim the “religious education” argument offered by sending your children to said schools, which (again) is your right, but are you really doing your children a service by doing this? The diversity of thought, opinion and life experiences offered at our local public school better prepares your children for the real world than the homogenized, pasteurized private alternative.

How can this town and its children trust that you believe our schools “invite us to be our best,” when you don’t believe enough to just send your kids into one of the classrooms you help to oversee?

While I tend to be for freedom of choice, maybe our school system needs to adopt some rules changes - specifically that anyone employed by our school system and that lives in our town should be required to send their children to our schools. (Author's note: I was informed after this column was published that such a policy would, in fact, be illegal. Only a slight hurdle, I say. Our city and state governments do a vast number of illegal things almost daily; surely one more won't hurt.)

If this school system is good enough to work for, then you ought to back it up by setting an example for your children that isn’t laced with hypocrisy.

You can’t praise the school system with your mouth while slandering it with your actions. A good many of us are tired of the insincerity.

Our public city schools have educated astronauts, Harvard medical students, Academy Award winners, top ranking military officers and amazing, talented athletes. No local pay-for-play school can boast such a resume.

...

But, as I said, perhaps I’m too biased on this issue. 

I probably won’t accept any reason given as to why rational, thinking people would do such things.

“Dear OHS” is the school for me and countless others.

We just wish you and your families would join us.

The McCollumn - 7/27: "Just shut up and give me my chicken nuggets and waffle fries"

Why has fried chicken become political?

All week, we’ve been bombarded across social and regular media sites about Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy’s recent comments about gay marriage and he and his company’s opposition to said issue.

Since those statements, calls for bans and protests for the Southern chicken chain have come swiftly from the left, with cries of support and undying devotion coming from the right.

Boston mayor Thomas Menino has said he hopes to ban the eatery from opening locations in his city until they change their minds on the issue of marriage equality.

Facebook events for “Same Sex Kiss day at Chick-fil-A” and “One Man, One Woman - Let’s Support Chick-fil-A Day” have popped up, with activists promising to blanket local locations and let their voices be heard.

Even the Muppets have weighed in on this hot-button issue, severing their ties with Chick-fil-A and donating any profits from the company to gay rights causes.

The fine people at Nabisco caused a similar brouhaha a few weeks ago when they released online an image of a rainbow-colored Oreo in support of Gay Pride Week and equal rights efforts. The company experienced similar backlash/praise from various factions in this particular fight, getting over 20,000 comments on Facebook.

While I’ve always believed it’s important to stay informed and have opinions on the major political and social issues of our time, I feel forced to take a step back from this situation and try to view it from a different sort of seeing space.

At the end of the day, I’m forced to come to this conclusion - it’s just food.

The views and opinions of a company’s owners and employees on various political issues could be, I suppose, a factor in whether or not they get your business, but I worry we begin our way down a slippery slope if we start to let those opinions vary our purchasing decisions.

If you’re going to ban Chick-fil-A for their “intolerance” or Nabisco for their “permissiveness,” you better go ahead and make a chart with every major American restaurant chain and company and figure out where you can and can’t eat.

If you like the gays, you may have to stop going by Wal-Mart for your groceries and other sundries - the company has long supported “traditional family values.” You may want to avoid Lowe’s, too.

If you’re a militant traditional marriage enthusiast, you’ll have to avoid shopping at JC Penney and Best Buy.

You’ll also get the treat of explaining to your children why we can’t see Pixar’s latest flick “Brave,” because the company has always been known to support gay rights. Ditto any other Disney film, for that matter.

If you limit your purchasing to only the companies whose views align with your own, you may find that your new world will consist of few places you can shop and enjoy.

While you may not love a business’s stance, the idea of banning or shunning said business seems to be unnecessary and more than a bit silly.

To be honest, while I fully support marriage equality efforts personally, I won’t let my stance on the issues affect where and when I shop.

I love Chick-fil-A. You can’t taste the intolerance, try though you might.

Take a step back, breathe and let’s all think before we make rash decisions like this.

We live in a country that’s already too divided and fractured on almost every major issue.

Rigorous, unchecked partisanship is now the norm.

Please, I beg you, don’t add business bans and protest lunches to that insanity.

My poor stomach just can’t take it.

Author's note: If you really want to do something about marriage equality, contact your elected officials and people who can make the legislative decisions that actually affect this issue. A chicken restaurant has little to no ability to craft and pass sweeping legislation.

The McCollumn - 7/20: "Think before you forward - and type"

Left to their own devices, the consonants ‘f,’ ‘w’ and ‘d’ are fairly innocuous.

We find them in words like “foreshadow,” not doing any harm to anyone.

While they have proven to be useful letters in our vernacular, there is one particular usage of them that I will soon be forced to no longer tolerate.

Fw. FW. Fwd. FWD. Or some such variation.

Every time I see such mashups, I can’t reach for the delete button quickly enough.

Flee from such e-mails, dear readers, for these days, few things but untruths and misdirections await you if you click and open.

Those letters should serve as a grave warning. The more times they appear (as in the subject “Fwd: FWD: fw: Fwd: President Obama Hates the Troops), the less seriously you should actually take the “facts” presented within said e-mail.

(For that matter, these messages also tend to have subject lines written by people with no understanding of modern captialization practices. THERE IS NO NEED TO WRITE IN ALL CAPS AT ANY TIME. IT MAKES YOU SOUND AS IF YOU ARE CONSTANTLY YELLING AND MAKES YOU LOOK MORE THAN A BIT FOOLISH. PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, SWEET AND GOOD, STOP THE INSANITY AND STOP THE ALL CAPS.)

What pretends to be fact backed by figures is often scantilly-clad fiction, able to quickly be undressed and shamed by a quick visit to numerous fact-checking websites.

It should, perhaps, serve as commentary that as soon as these “NEWS YOU SHOULD KNOW” e-mails pop up, one of the aforementioned fact checking sites go to work to test its validity.

I don’t wish to offend any of the wonderful friends who like to e-mail me, even if 98.3 percent of it is the “Fwd” sort of mail.

But, would it be too difficult for all of us to perhaps do our own fact-checking the next time we get one of these multi-forwarded messages.

Trust me when I say it isn’t that hard to Google a few lines of the text and find an appropriate site to help ferret out the truth.

And, if the message passes muster, by all means, pass it along and give all your friends the vital information they will surely need for their everyday life.

But, if the “facts” prove to be false, as I’ve often found they do, maybe you shouldn’t “Fwd” this one along.

In fact, it might be a nice thing to message back the person who tagged you with the posting and inform them of the error.

I know if I was spreading slander, I’d want my friends to let me know and stop me from doing it.

Let’s all use just a modicum of discretion and think before we forward.