An Impossible Task

In 1990 after my third year as an elementary school classroom teacher, I attended a 4 week intensive "Invitation Summer Institute" led by Dr. Fran Simone of the WV Writing Project. I eventually became involved in the leadership of that group and in the National Writing Project. Along with 39 others, I was asked to write an essay about my NWP experience to celebrate the 40th summer of holding these summer programs, which started in Berkeley, CA and spread around the country. They published my essay today: http://our.nwp.org/ Here it is:

I (along with 39 others) was asked to contribute 500-1000 words summing up what NWP means to me. I’m not sure I could do it in a book length piece, though maybe I could do it in a haiku:

Young struggling teacher

Lifted by Summer Institute

Retired Director

No, doesn’t come close. Okay, who is my audience? Is it young teachers entering the profession, floundering as I once did? Feeling overwhelmed, small, under a microscope, everyone expecting that college and student teaching has created a professional who knows the answers, but finding that it’s not as easy as it looks, and that these eager or bored or angry or sad or hurting or confused faces cannot be fooled; they know when you are confident and when you are uncertain, and they crave your certainty, your control, they want you to have all the answers, to make it easy for them, and ultimately you learn you’re all in the same boat, learning together, but the lessons are painful and lead to sleepless nights.

What can I tell the young teacher attending a summer institute for the first time—that it’s never completely under control? To have ideals, but not hold yourself to them? To understand that if you’re doing the best you can, that’s good enough? To try to create community? To listen to students, especially the ones who are the most difficult? To give everyone a voice? To write, write, write, and share, share, share? To understand that there will always be far too many demands and expectations, objectives, and content standards, and that schoolwide, districtwide, nationwide goals will come and go and ultimately you should strive to make your classroom a place where learning takes place most of the time? It sounds somewhat defeatist; but it was my Truth. And every student I have met years later has smiled when she asked, Do you remember me? Yes, even the young man last week who was picking up the garbage can from my driveway.

Or am I speaking to the NWP veteran? The Director who has spent a career in the university setting and was asked to take on this extra project and found it taking over his life and career, guiding his research, pushing him toward leadership, management, budgeting, administrative roles he never envisioned. Or am I speaking to the classroom teacher who found a home in her local writing project with like minded teachers who supported each other as writers, who listened to and responded to each other’s stories of divorce, deaths, and illnesses, of births and embarrassing moments, of likes, dislikes, travel stories, fantasy, or poetry. Who got asked and answered, Yes, and found, as I did, it was not like at school where you learned that saying yes could lead you to doing other people’s jobs, to jealousies or politics, to uncomfortable positions making presentations of new strategies or curriculum that someone else decided was best for your school or district or was purchased from a textbook company and you were to follow the script and tell others to be true to the Program. Somehow the writing project was different; the teachers were working together, supporting each other, asking questions, exploring new methods that they truly believed in, and….what is it, what’s so different about this? Oh! They’re listening to ME! They think I have ideas worth listening to! These amazing teachers who have so much to teach me think I have value? I’ve never heard that before! Yes! I will present my classroom demonstration at that workshop; I will help write that grant; I will attend that national meeting. Oh my goodness, here are these amazingly smart people from all over the country, and they all listen to each other, they all work together, they all write, they all ask questions, none of them claims to have all the answers! Yes, I’ll serve on a national committee; are you kidding? You want me, an elementary school teacher to co-direct the Rural Sites Network? Yes, I’ll write an article, participate in a study. Just say yes became my rule of thumb when it came to NWP.

Only when I saw my local writing project in danger did I say no to NWP. No, I can’t right now, I have to lead at the local level. And that was truly the hardest work, at least for me. How can anyone ask busy teachers to do more? And how can an outsider really operate in a university? But those are simply questions, the answers are, in the end simple: It’s never completely under control.  Have ideals, but don’t hold yourself to them. Understand that if you’re doing the best you can, that’s good enough. Try to create community. Listen to the teachers, especially the ones who are the most difficult. Give everyone a voice. Write, write, write, and share, share, share. Understand that there will always be far too many demands and expectations. Oh, I left out one important ingredient…celebrate success! Congratulations on 40 years of changing the lives of teachers through holding Summer Institutes and improving teaching and learning throughout the world, NWP!

Deep Dark Secrets (a story)

I wrote this story a couple years ago...I post it today because I've been just too busy working on my AWARE project to devote time to writing. When I started this blog, Paul Epstein Muse, I thought I'd be posting more of my "creative" writing, stories, or chapters of a book I was working on, than essays or posts that are more reflective, such as the 2 day Diet reports (this week's is posted at the end). I was told by my writing group when I wrote this that it was a bit too heavy handed....what do you think?

Deep Dark Secrets
(c) Paul Epstein 2011

Let’s see, I guess this thing is recording.

Umm, this is Anthony Wallace Casto, Jr., they call me Junior Casto, and I’m down in the Omega #3 under Kenner Mountain on, ummh, November the 17^th, two thousand and ten. There’s been an accident down here and there’s men dead. Two right here in this area didn’t make it to the emergency refuge….uhhn, shoot, I, I r-really do want to live…  I’m recording on this SmartPhone hopin’ the truth will come out someday and them that’s responsible gets what they deserve.

After the explosion, I thought I was already dead. I come to and there wasn’t no sound. It was so quiet, the ringin’ in my ears sounded like wind screamin’ down the holler. I don’t think I was out no more than a few minutes. I didn’t think to look at my watch. It was probably about two hours into the middle shift. I got my breathin’ unit on, took a look around, saw I couldn’t get out and the others in this room was already dead, and come to the refuge shelter. I’m good here for at least a couple days if everything keeps working. Enough food and water for a week or more since it’s made for six men. I figure I got a fifty-fifty chance.

I been down in the mines twenty-six years, and I’ve done about every job there is to do. But I ain’t exactly a coal miner now. I work in the mines, so I’m a miner, but I don’t actually dig the coal, I just work on the machines. I keep things runnin’. What is a miner these days, anyway? An equipment operator.

The explosion didn’t start here. It was probably in one of the other rooms in this section. The continuous miner in this room was down, that’s why I was here. I was inside the fifty-ton monster, workin’ on it. Reckon that’s what saved my life. Anybody that might hear this and not have no idea what a continuous miner is, it’s like a squashed down bulldozer ‘bout twenty feet wide with an arm in the front holdin’ a cutter that looks like a big paint roller with teeth. It cuts into  the coal seam.

If a mountain was a layer cake, the coal’d be the icing ‘tween the layers. The continuous miner crawls through the seam, cuttin’ the coal and shovin’ it back behind at five tons a minute. It’s remote controlled. Like them drones in Afghanistan. They sit in a comfey ole’ chair underground somewhere out west. Like video game players. Nobody shootin’ at ‘em. The continuous miner operator, he’s in the mine twenty or so feet behind his machine, and if he brings the roof down, it’s comin’ down on top of him, too.

A crew comes in behind the continuous miner puttin’ bolts up into the ceiling to keep it from cavin’ in. Another guy dusts with limestone to keep the coal dust from buildin’ up, and another crew has to work on ventilation so’s the methane can’t build up. They was short a couple coal dusters lately, and that’s probably why we had this explosion anyway. Otherwise a little methane might o’ burned off and not gone nowhere. When there’s a lot of coal dust, it blows up big.

It’s the roof bolters who are layin’ back there dead. Willie Ray Tomkins and Punk Wallace. Punk was my second cousin. I told him he ought to find another operation. I told him it wasn’t safe here. But you know how these kids is these days. They don’t believe in nothin’ nobody tells ‘em. They sure as heck don’t listen to experience. Think they know everything. Wonder if it’s got somethin’ to do with them video games they play. They think they can fight and kill anything and everything. Real life ain’t that easy.

Kids ain’t like they was when great-great-grandpappaw Castigliari first come here from Italy to Mingo County, WV when he was sixteen.  He’d already been a miner for three years back in the old country, as the old folks called it. They mined coal by hand back then. They laid on their side in a thirty-inch seam, dug the coal out of the wall with a pick-axe, shoveled it into a cart and pushed it out of the mine theirselves. Nowadays if they ain’t usin’ continuous miner rigs, you’re operating one of them long-wall miners. They’re as big as a few football fields. Roll through the inside of a mountain eatin’ coal and let it cave in behind it. Do the work of a couple thousand miners workin’ by hand.

Course, a lot of guys work on strip mine sites these days. They ain’t coal miners if ya’ ask me. Mountain top removal is just movin’ dirt and rock. They work in daylight. Not much danger there compared to being under a thousand feet of rock.

But still, we wouldn’t have to be dyin’ down here if it wasn’t for them greedy devils upstairs. It’s all about production. You got to get so much coal outta here every hour and if there’s a breakdown then the next shift has to try and make up for lost time. The foreman, he’s like, “Boys, we got to bust ass this shift and we got no time for the b.s. if you know what I mean.” Well the b.s. he’s talkin’ about is all them safety procedures we don’t do half the time. That’s why this is the most dangerous operation in the southern coal fields, and that’s no lie.

It didn’t used to be like this. Not when the union had a lock on things. Oh, there’s still a few union mines workin’ underground operations, but you can’t get on ‘less you got family already inside. Them jobs is like gold. Not that we don’t make good money, too. We do, but money ain’t everything. My daddy and my granddaddy was both union all the way, and they’ve probably done worn out their coffins rollin’ around these last fifteen years since these non-union outfits has taken over and run out the unions.

The union used to keep scabs and non-union outfits out any way they had to. They’d flatten the tires of any miner took a non-union job. If that didn’t run ‘em off, they’d shoot at their radiators. Next time, it’d be the windshield. Not no more. Ben Jenkins, he’s the guy that runs Omega, he’d got around the union by settin’ up little non-union operations that contracted out the work on the cheap. Pretty soon, he just told the union to go to hell, ran his union company outta’ business and opened up a new, non-union company. The State Police went after anybody that tried to stop the scabs, and nobody stood up for the union. Jenkins got the law in his pocket, from the deputy sheriff on up through the state police and into the governor’s office. Then the governor’s people leans on MSHA, the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Them’s the ones supposed to check up on the mine and make sure we’re following all the safety regs. Make sure the emergency shelters is stocked up and the belts is clean, the air’s flowin’ like it should, the equipment is kept up.

It don’t take much to set off an explosion, what with methane seepin’ up out of cracks in the floor and fine coal dust everywhere. If the methane builds up, one little spark can set off a chain reaction when conditions is right. Well, conditions was right today. Two good men dead between me and a cave-in. Don’t know if there’s any more cause I’m totally cut off back here. Just me and two dead men. DEAD! I’m sorry, I can’t…hnnn, hem.

There’s got to be at least six or seven more over in the room where the explosion started. Probably started with a spark from a cutter so the operator, roof bolters, ventilation crew that was workin’ that room, I figure they must be gone just from the blast. How many more depends on how much more roof come down on guys or trapped ‘em somewhere and whether they can get rescue crews down here.

Thing I’m gonna miss worst is my kids, Dreama and Troy. She’s six, and he’s nine. Well, I guess that ain’t right. It’s them’s gonna miss me. Like I missed my dad after that big rock dropped off the ceiling of the Monagan mine and put his lights out. He was only forty-nine. I was nineteen, drivin’ a delivery truck because I’d done vowed and declared I wasn’t never goin’ to work in a mine, but after he died and mom didn’t know how she was going to keep making the mortgage on the house he built out there at the head of the holler, Mama needed me to make enough to make the payments, at the very least. They put me in workin’ right away, the guys in UMWA. They took care of me. They’d say, “look at that Junior Casto—now there’s a miner just like his daddy. You don’t need to hold his hand in the dark, no sirree Bob.” They kept me outta trouble and taught me what I needed to know. Mostly they worked things by the book—they made sure things was safe and everything worked right. And they took care of them that was havin’ trouble. When Jake’s wife got cancer and his mother was too messed up from her meds to take care of his kids, they found ways to cover for him so he’d show up on the books for a whole day even if he only clocked in and dusted one little section. Some of these older guys who were maybe too feeble or gimped up, they’d work it out for them to get a job they could do in a section that wasn’t hardly producing, dustin’ a little bit here and there, do a little maintenance.

It ain’t like that in the non-union mines. They find out you’re sick or you get old and can’t keep up, you’re gone. All about efficiency and production, you see. And if they got a few men out, they put the dusters and ventilators into doin’ somethin’s gonna move the coal out faster. You wouldn’t have that in the union mines. No sir. You had a job to do and they didn’t tell you to do somebody else’s job. If there wasn’t enough workers to mine coal safe in a section, then you’d go over to another section and help them out or you’d just do some maintenance you been puttin’ off for a rainy day, but you didn’t work with no short crews. Sure, your production might be down some, but we was prouder of the number that said how many days we worked without a work accident than how many tons of coal we drug outta here.

Now it’s going back to the way it was. Oh these non-union mines know how to make it look good. They’ll have all kinds of slogans like, “Safety is our First Job!” Or “No Chunk of Coal Worth a Miner’s Life!” They have mandatory safety sessions where we get trained on the new safety equipment and the latest rules and regs. They tell us if you don’t think somethin’s right, just say so and they’ll shut her down. No coal mined until it gets fixed. I dare you to try it though. Tell a foreman it ain’t safe and you ain’t goin’ down and you’ll be lookin’ for a new job next week. 

They tell us MSHA inspectors are our friends, just lookin’ out for us. And then they turn around the next day and give us a heads up when they find out an inspector’s on the way and tell us to go to a different room that day. Or shut down a few rooms and send out a dozen extra dusters before they get here. Because it’s the same ones who’s cookin’ the books. One set of inspection reports for MSHA inspectors and one set for the company managers so they know what the real picture is.

Yeah, that’s supposed to be a big secret, and it is. I’ve asked a few friends here and there if they heard of that and they look at me like I’m crazy. Of course, maybe they’re lookin’ at me like that because they know the truth but know better than to say it out loud. Some of ‘em needs a job that bad. Dexter Mullins said he’s hopin’ to die down here. Really. Because he knows if he dies on the job, the company’s gonna make a big payout to his family. Million bucks, maybe more. Enough to pay off the mortgage, which he got way behind on last time he was laid off, enough for their kids to go to college. Fact is, we all know we got a way better chance of getting’ hurt or sick with black lung than winnin’ the lottery.

Well I reckon I’m gonna shut up. You might be wonderin’ why I ain’t said good-bye to my wife. I’ll tell you why. It’s cause we say goodbye to each other every day before I come to work. We done made all the arrangements a long time ago. We both know it’s just a matter of time. That’s the way it is for the miner. You know there’s a chance you ain’t comin’ home. So I know she loves me she knows I love her and there ain’t nothin’ gonna come between us long as I’m alive. She’ll stay strong for the kids, cause that’s what a miner’s wife does. And everything I’m sayin’ here, she knows it, and she knows that if I don’t come back it’s gonna be up to her to tell what I know. Cause it’s been getting worse every year I been in the mines, and it can’t keep getting’ worse.

More miners been dyin’ it seems every year. They have their investigations and they make new laws about safety equipment that’s needed, but that ain’t the problem. It’s them greedy devils at the top runnin’ these companies and treatin’ us like dogs. No, not dogs, like machines, only they treat machines right ‘cause they know if they don’t get the maintenance they need, the coal’s gonna just sit where it is in this here mountain. No, they treat us like the preacher says they treated the slaves in Egypt. They just worked ‘em to death, and if one fell, another one picked up where he left off. Cause the Pharoah didn’t care nothing about the Jews, they was just work animals to them. And one was just as good as another.

Only they was buildin’ something. They was buildin’ them Pyramids that lasted for thousands of years. And the Egyptians, they was celebrating their leader and sending him off to heaven. That’s what they thought. I guess it ain’t too much different here. Everybody down here loves coal and loves the company. It’s our way of life. In school, you couldn’t say nothin’ against the company or against coal. If someone started talkin’ environment they just got drowned out or beat up. I did it myself, took up for coal. But when you been inside the mines awhile, you start to see things a little different.

You see some of these companies don’t really care nothing about the people who live here. They talk a good game, but they’re just makin’ more and more money so’s their owners can buy another Lexus or another plane and jet off to the other side of the world and have dinner with a politician or a Supreme Court judge who’s going to rule their way in a case to let them screw another worker or a thousand of them, take pensions away from retired miners or their health care, or steal somebody else’s land or pollute the air more or fill our streams with poison or cut down our mountains. They spend more on billboards and TV ads about Clean Coal Keepin’ the Lights On than they spend in Mingo. As far they’re concerned, it’d be better if these little towns died out and we moved so they could mine every square inch of West Virginia. All in the name of jobs while at the same time, every year they buy bigger machines and lay off more miners.

Yeah, I’m probably gonna die…uhnn, ahem, shoot…Preacher…he says I’ll go to heaven. I ain’t been perfect, but I been saved. I’ve got drunk plenty and done things I ain’t proud of. I ain’t always been a great husband, but I’ve done what a man needs to do for his family. Anyhow, I’ve spent most of my life down here in hell, so the preacher says I got a right to spend eternity in heaven. Hope he’s right.

My 2-Day Diet Progress Week 31, June 9, 2014 

Beginning weight 11/3/13: 209 lbs.

Height 5'8" Age: 62

Goal weight: 165 lbs.

Total loss goal: 44 lbs.

Beginning waist size: 43 in.

Current waist size: 37.5 in.

Weight end of this week:  175 lbs.

Gain/Loss this week:  -2 lb.

Total Gain/Loss:  -34 lbs.

Death Trumps All

*2 Day Diet Progress at end of post

Death trumps all. With many topics in mind as I sit down to write today, the funeral I attended yesterday has to come first. For seventeen years, from 1975-1992, I lived on 17 acres in Roane County, WV, between two Moores: Daryl and Nina (pronounced nine' ah -- she was her mother's ninth child, and I suppose she'd run out of names) Moore and Frazier and Bernice (pronounced Ber’ nis ). I built a house there, and it’s where, with my ex-wife, Pat, we raised our daughter, Hannah (thirty-seven this week), who now lives in Albuquerque, NM. Daryl was Frazier’s uncle, and when I first moved there, they were friends who helped each other out, plowing a garden with a pony, getting a chain to pull a stuck vehicle out of the ditch on the steep, muddy road we shared with two hairpin switchbacks (that’s redundant, but maybe everyone will understand one or the other).

Frazier worked for Pennzoil in the local oil and gas fields and Daryl drove a water truck delivering water to schools (hmm, correlation? I don’t think so; just a lack of a water system and dependence on wells) Sometime in the eighties Pennzoil went on strike and Daryl’s son-in-law took a temporary job as what was euphemistically called a “replacement worker”, known among union guys as a scab. Frazier held Daryl responsible for his son-in-law’s choice, and they never spoke again, that is, Frazier never spoke to Daryl, and he also did some unkind things I won’t go into. Not quite a feud, but definitely a falling out. Daryl was a very laid back country boy at heart, he loved to farm and he had, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful, well kept, “head of the holler” properties you’ll ever see. He died a few years ago of complications from diabetes, and Nina, now 84, still lives in the house alone, her daughter and son-in-law who live on the paved road at the top of the property her only lifeline. She never learned to drive.

Frazier, who had moved to South Carolina to be near children and grandchildren, died in a car accident last week at the age of seventy-six. His children brought him back to West Virginia to be buried on the homeplace, just down the holler from my (former) property. I’d watched the kids grow up, and two of three of them are parents now. Ginny (Virginia), told me that Frazier used to stay up late into the night sitting on their porch to listen to the fiddle music drifting down the creek from my house.

Ginny asked me to sing Country Roads (aka Almost Heaven, West Virginia) at the gravesite ceremony. He was to be buried across the small creek from his house in an area he had used as a garden that would now become a family cemetery. Kenny asked me to sing Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven.” I spent the last few days learning and practicing it.

The funeral itself was in a little country church, one room and some picnic tables outside. A woman who sounded a lot like Hazel Dickens sang a couple hymns, including Will the Circle Be Broken. A soft spoken man Ginny had asked to lead the bulk of the service talked about Frazier, read some handwritten tributes in a hesitant and stumbling way, and spoke confidently about the need for all of the forty or so people, local folks who have no doubt been hearing this message all their lives, to understand that death is only temporary if they just give themselves over to Jesus to be saved. The regular preacher took up that message a little later in the Evangelistic preaching style full of praise Gods, dear Lords, shortness of breath and exclamatory explosive Hut’s and such. It was somewhat hypnotic, but thank goodness he did not actually do an alter call and ask people to join him, and no one offered to.

I don’t think Frazier was that much of a churchgoer, and I don’t think his kids are either. He struck me as the type who might stand in the back of the room with some of his buddies. If Tears in Heaven as a choice is any indication of belief, it reflects a bit less certainty, “Would you know my name if I saw you in Heaven?” And the youngest, around thirty, spent some time in front of the open casket speaking to his father, begging him tearfully to open his eyes, “just open your eyes, just come back to us, it’s easy,” and assuring him when he didn’t respond that he would see him again someday, and reassuring himself that even though they disagreed about a lot of things, that they always talked later and forgave each other.

I also took the opportunity on that beautiful cool spring day to sit on the porch with Nina, who, perhaps reflecting on Frazier’s passing, showed me a quilt she was working on. She has always made quilts. She does the embroidery by hand, but the actual quilting on a machine; I’m not sure if among aficionados that counts as hand-made. She told me a story about a grandson who had asked for a quilt to put in Daryl’s casket, and when he’d come down from the upstairs room where she keeps them with one he said Daryl had always claimed as his own, she decided she ought to have one for her own casket. As I left her, I said, “Don’t be in a hurry to finish that quilt.”

I love the tilt of Daryl's cap. They were married in 1947.

Nina's making this for her casket....

From Mingo County, WV: Superhero With Autism

PLEASE GO TO UPDATED VERSION OF THIS POST HERE

*2 Day Diet Progress at end

Friday, May 9 was West Virginia Young Writers Day, as Director of the Central WV Writing Project (CWVWP), I was in charge of the WV Young Writers Contest and the celebration day. The Governor had signed a proclamation proclaiming Young Writers Day statewide (I had sent his office the ‘whereas’ section of the proclamation). It was read from the stage of the University of Charleston (WV), a small institution on the bank of the Kanawha River opposite the WV State Capitol, by Madame Secretary of Education and the Arts Kay Goodwin, followed by a few remarks from the Superintendent of Schools for the state of WV, Dr. James B. Phares. After a morning keynote speech and a couple songs by the editor of Goldenseal Magazine and award winning songwriter, John Lilly, who talked about his writing life and the need to write honestly, the students attended workshops with regional authors of children's literature Belinda Anderson, Marie Godby, and Cheryl Ware. The high school seniors had a writing workshop with Lilly, the teachers with writer and publisher Cat Pleska, and the families an activity with Dr. Elizabeth Campbell of Marshall University South Charleston campus, where CWVWP is housed.

After lunch, nearly 200 students from grades 1-12 who were winners in their divisions at the county level made a grand procession into the theater to the applause of about 450 family members and teachers. The six first place winners, five girls and a third grade boy, came to the stage and sat in chairs behind the lectern. They would read their stories aloud and receive medals and cash awards before all two hundred of the county winner were called to the stage to receive certificates and shake my hand as we smiled for the cameras. 

I looked over the crowd and began speaking, "Isn’t it wonderful to see these young writers receive applause for the achievement of communicating their ideas in writing. The stereotypical writer toils in isolation, struggling silently and often fearing rejection from fickle readers, publishers who are concerned about making money, and demanding critics, yet writing does not have to be that way. Reading and writing take us outside ourselves to other times and places, take us inside ourselves to ponder life’s meaning; they can help us understand the world and ourselves. I don’t know how these students were encouraged to write their stories and essays, but in a few moments you are going to hear a tale of a magical house,  a humorous yarn about secret agent squirrels, a beautifully descriptive and poignant piece about a West Virginian’s sorrowful goodbye to her mountain home, an experience many West Virginian’s have shared. You will be taken back in time to one of humanities’ worst periods, during the 2^nd World War, and into the tortured mind of a Jewish man, a father, suffering persecution during the Holocaust. The winner of the 11^th -12^th grade division will read her essay that attempts, no succeeds, in explaining something fundamental about the purpose of life, despite the acknowledgement that we inevitably grow old and die, if we live long enough. 

"Perhaps the most remarkable of all the pieces you will hear today is one written by a very special young man from Mingo County, Sawyer Hinton. Sawyer is autistic, and I am breaking no confidence in telling you that, because Sawyer takes you inside his mind in his writing, a place where he spends much of his time, and after reading Sawyer’s description of what it is like to live with autism, I had a new understanding and appreciation of this condition, and you will too.

"As I said, I don’t know how these students came to be such fine writers, how all of you who won your school and county contests were encouraged to become writers. But I hope that it was a joyful experience, not a lonely one. Great teachers of writing are able to create a community of writers in their classrooms, communities that will encourage all students to express themselves honestly and creatively, no matter their skill level, no matter their intelligence, no matter their abilities or their struggles, and in that community everyone will feel valued and encouraged and will be willing to do the hard work of writing, rewriting, revising, and polishing their work until it shines. And that great teacher will then make sure the work is read by others and listened to, because the act of writing is an act of communication, and the great teacher will make sure that every student hears the applause they deserve, as you heard the applause today. And now, before we hear from our first place winners, how about if we give a round of applause to all the teachers and families who encouraged our young writers….Thank you." 

The winner of the grades 1-2 division was cute and did very well reading her  fantasy about a magic house. And then Sawyer Hinton, the third grade statewide winner of the grade 3-4 contest, from Mingo County, one of the poorest counties in the nation, got up to read his award winning piece. I announced, “The1st place winner in grades 3-4 division is Sawyer Hinton, 3rd grade. He goes to Lenore PreK-8 in Mingo County. The title of his essay is “Superhero Without a Cape.” His teacher is Peggy Hannah. Sawyer approached the microphone and read,

“Did you know that not all superheroes wear a cape?  I have a superpower that makes me very special.  I am completely different from every other 8 year old that I know.  The thing that I call my super power is what most people call Autism. I know that it is normally seen as a disability. But I look at it in a different light. I would much rather call it a special ability. Autism allows me to process everything in the world around me differently than the average child. My family has helped me cope with my diagnosis. So hopefully after reading my story, you will discover that there are superheroes all around you. They just don’t wear capes.  

I have been called some really ugly names for being different. But being peculiar is just who I am.  I want to explain how you could always turn a disability into a superpower by just looking at things in a different way. Take my obsessiveness of order routine for example.  Most people consider that a disability.  I, on the other hand, just think that I am more organized than everyone else.  Now doesn’t that sound more positive by just changing the words? I prefer to be alone most of the time. But I really have more time to think, read and dream.  I come around people in my own time and at my own pace. Is that not how most people get to know one another? I just take a little longer. My brain is larger than normal. Seems to me that is a positive trait. I have room to learn more.  One of the stigmas placed on people like me is that we are mentally retarded. That could not be farther from the truth. I am a genius when it comes to certain things. Putting what I know on the outside is what I struggle with. However, the ability to retain information by just hearing or reading it once is definitely a perk.  So, has it become more apparent that I am super special?  I cannot bear the thought of certain textures, smells, tastes and things that have to do with sensory perception. Guess I am just set in my ways. But isn’t every single person that way? I am a little extreme but still not disabled.

I have not mentioned all the quirky things that I do. But what superhero reveals all his secrets?  I just hope that I can make a difference to someone else like me.  I urge you to take the time to look at the things that make you different and embrace them. Never accept something as a disability, look at it as a special superpower that makes you unique! Hopefully now you can see the superheroes living all around you."

The audience erupted in strong applause, which built and built. People began to stand and the applause continued. I stood behind the lectern and watched as the whole audience began to rise to their feet. Tears come to my eyes as I recount this moment, probably the most powerful moment of my teaching career. This is what it's all about, I thought. This is what it's all about. 

I've been e-mailing the parents and learned they took video. I hope to have it soon. I warned the father that putting this out on the web might change their lives, that, it's possible that if the story got big, for awhile he and his wife might become parents similar to those who travel around with a child who is a sports star, an actor or beauty contestant, and the father wrote this,  "It was an amazing experience! Thank you all for acknowledging how difficult it was to share something so personal. Writing and sharing it was hard but it was also an avenue of escape and release for him. He said even if he helps one child like him then it was worth it."

My 2-Day Diet Progress Week 27, May 11, 2014 

Beginning weight 11/3/13: 209 lbs.

Height 5'8" Age: 62

Goal weight: 165 lbs.

Total loss goal: 44 lbs.

Beginning waist size: 43 in.

Current waist size: 38 in.

Weight end of this week:  179 lbs.

Gain/Loss this week:  +1 lbs.

Total Gain/Loss:  -30 lbs.