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A 700-Word Homework Assignment of Jottings
According to scholars, Emily Dickinson’s poems – she wrote nearly 1,800, although only 10 were published during her lifetime – often began as notes, scribbled in pencil, on scraps of paper she kept in her dress pocket while gardening or running errands.
She would later cull from these jottings when composing formally in ink on stationary late at night in her bedroom.
While I am no poet and certainly no Dickinson, I also make notes while out and about, perhaps waiting in a “drive-thru” window line. However, instead of pencil and paper, I usually send myself a text on my smart phone.
Later, I combine and expand on them, such as for this 700-word homework assignment of random thoughts.
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In 1948, the In-N-Out in Baldwin Park is believed to have become the nation’s first fast-food restaurant to have a “drive-thru” window featuring an intercom for ordering. However, an even more historic “drive-thru” was created seven decades earlier when a tunnel was cut through a giant sequoia in Calaveras Big Trees State Park.
Sadly, this “Drive-Thru Tree” was felled by a storm last Sunday. Like most everyone who ever visited the famous tree, I was spellbound by the experience – and I would happily see every fast-food “drive-thru” window in California permanently closed in exchange to have the tree standing again.
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Add giant “drive-thru” sequoia: To paraphrase Joyce Kilmer – I think that I shall never see, / Even a Dickinson poem lovely as that tree.
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To keep or discard the Electoral College is a legitimate debate, but the argument that if you take away California then Donald Trump would have won the popular vote is as ridiculous as saying that if LeBron James’ points didn’t count then the Golden State Warriors, not the Cleveland Cavaliers, would have won the NBA championship last season.
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Nobody asked me, but I thought Jean Cowden Moore’s article headlined “Do Kids Need Homework?” in the Star last Sunday was terrific and important.
As a Baby Boomer who can’t remember having homework until high school and even then not very much, and as a parent who saw his two children loaded down with homework in middle school and then buried with it in high school, I vote for no homework until high school, and then sparsely.
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Add homework: Mark Twain said, “Don’t let school interfere with your education.” It seems to me traditional homework does precisely this by making youth dislike school rather than fostering a love for learning.
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Gripe No. 37 on homework: High school teachers are not always on the same page and too often many will assign a boatload of homework on the same night resulting in students being up past midnight – and even later if they play a sport, study music, or have an after-school job.
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Four exceptions for “homework” I would applaud being assigned regularly: community service, reading for pleasure, reading for pleasure and reading for pleasure.
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Although I never had him in school, one of my all-time favorite teachers was Chuck Marshall (my sister-in-law’s father) who seemed to make every conversation both fun and educational. Sadly, he passed away last week and in his honor I would like to share some wisdom from another Chuck – Chuck Thomas, the late, great philosopher who wrote so wonderfully in this space before I tried to fill his shoes:
“If there’s someone whose friendship you treasure, be sure to tell them now – without waiting for a memorial service to say it.”
Ditto for a teacher you treasure.
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Coming full circle again to Emily Dickinson: although “Hope is the Thing with Feathers” is perhaps her best-known poem, I am partial to “If I can stop one Heart from breaking”:
“If I can stop one heart from breaking, / I shall not live in vain;
“If I can ease one life the aching, / Or cool one pain,
“Or help one fainting robin / Unto his nest again,
“I shall not live in vain.”
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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.
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