My ears will not stop filling and popping. Life is muted and then confetti!

Today, today, oh glorious day – I think I can muster some thoughts together.  I have had this cold for almost a week, seemingly working its way out. I have been doing three treatments when and where I can, sometimes just extra nebs and not the vest.

So please forgive me as my brain is a little full.

I read this line last night and it was almost a bit of a eureka moment. I don’t think people use the word eureka anymore, but I think it is the right word. Let’s check in my handy dandy Oxford English Dictionary.

Have you ever dove in-depth into an Oxford English Dictionary? It goes back centuries. There is a version of my school’s library. It’s pretty cool.

I sometimes confuse words and so I have to look them up. It is a good practice. It’s truly bad if you fuck that up in a paper.

Yes! Right word.

The Line –

There is nothing more interesting than watching people grow. 

I am obsessed with this. I think I have always been obsessed with this.

I am curious and am interested in my own personal growth.

I love seeing people grow.

I love to see where someone begins – sometimes in the beginning, but sometimes not even in the beginning per se’.

It could be twenty or thirty years in and over the years, five years, and decades – how a person adjusts, configures, and sometimes amends their path. Sometimes in the wrongs in which we aim to get right; sometimes a slight hip check from when we turn a corner. Or we remember – that wall is truly a wall and not a movable piece of furniture. Make note.

Don’t wear those shoes with those pants, or don’t put on nighttime face cream and then take out your contacts.

I love reading memoirs and biographies – and I think this is the core reason why.

How did they grow? How did they come from here and become This.

I love watching history shows and movies – like Finding Your Roots.

This is also the core of any fiction book – you don’t start with a perfect character with names such as Mackenzie or Bianca.

You start with Margo, or Flora, or Eleanor who sit at her (or their) corner office and counts paperclips, and keeps three jars of peanut butter in her drawer at all times.

You want to see what Eleanor does or who she becomes. What happens when she leans back into her chair and the wheels fly out from underneath her? Then Sawyer from two desks down, while sipping his coffee, jumps up and flips his chair. Then there is Steve, don’t forget Steve next door that could care less, because he is known in the office as two-shit Steve.

What happens to all these characters?

I think we are constantly reflecting on growing, learning, and how we learn.

I just read this article on literacy. It talks about how this woman Genna May in 1898 was one of eight of nine children. She spoke no English when she enrolled in a one-room schoolhouse at the age of seven. She completed high school by boarding an “in a town ten miles from her farm.” She started school when Wisconsin at the time only required that young people from the ages of seven to fifteen attend a local grammar school for twelve weeks.

May wrote spelling lessons on slates, and she remembers a home with few books and little paper. She had very little reason to write except to compose an occasional story assigned by the teacher.

After high school in 1917, she enrolled for several months in a private business college in the state capital. She learned to type and do shorthand and win a certificate in penmanship before being placed in an office of a local business that manufactured disinfectants for dairy farms by her college.

Fast forward many years into the 1990s – she writes lists – we often write lists. She writes recipes, balances the checkbook, and sends holiday and greeting cards.

Versus – her great-grandchild born in 1981 attends a middle school with computers where literacy and writing is a must.

Then what is super interesting, and I didn’t know this or think of this – Genna May’s husband, Sam May, when the war called in 1941/1942 when he turned eighteen – it brought “explosive growth in technology and military education” focusing on literacy.

The development of radar, the jet airplane, the first digital computer, and transistor – and the atomic bomb. It created this need for knowledge, skill, and literacy.

Sam took courses at the Army Institute, becoming a certified radio repairman by the time he turned eighteen. He then joined the armed services and eventually became a fourth-echelon radar technician in Europe.

Definition – Echelon: a level or rank in the organization, profession, or society. A part of the military force differentiated by the battle position or function.

This time period marked an intense writing period which learners then turned around and become teachers.

Sam began writing service manuals – who knew? Then, weekly reports back to the factory that described changes in the technology. A constant flux of learning, relearning, and growing.

Eventually, Sam became a “college guy” enrolling under the G.I. Bill in the engineering program at this state university after the war. He became an electronics technician devoting thirty percent of his workday to writing – mostly circuit diagrams, footnotes and captions in reports.

This was a gigantic shift in learning – as any war has done. But, I didn’t really think or concentrate on literacy or the act of writing and the influx it would have to and for people.

A distinguished change in Sam’s life and every serviceman and women.

There is nothing more interesting than watching people grow.

Which leads me to say – I have settled on a writing project that I have a strong interest in on several levels.

The research, the subject matter, the writing, the kind of writing, and sincere, genuine interest of working on this over time.

I am going to give it a go – I will learn something for sure. I believe there will be surprising learning moments, if not many. I hope many.

BTW – my ears have been filling and popping this entire time.

Much love. Much curiosity. Many new ways of learning and growing – as we do, how we do.

Work Cited:

Brandt, Deborah. “Literacy: Writing and Learning to Write in the Twentieth Century.” National Council of Teachers of English. 1995.

Duckworth, Angela. Grit. Simon and Schuster. 2016. New York, NY.