The Miracle and the Mundane, 39 Years of Sobriety

Dionysus, Greek God of Wine

I had thirty-nine years clean and sober on Sunday. People at AA meetings often talk about the “miracle” of their sobriety. I’m ambivalent about this. Maybe in large part because my sobriety is a product both of a miracle and the mundane. It is the mundane that has kept me on the wagon lo these many years. I refer to AA itself and the principles of its program. Pretty ordinary stuff. Going to meetings. Doing service. Following the program’s twelve steps. Speaking your truth. Not picking up the first drink. In theory staying clean is simple. In fact I’ve never found resisting booze to be much of a problem. The harder part is learning to live sober. You take drugs from a junkie and you’ve got one confused person. Their life has revolved around getting high. In a sense it’s like food. Think about how much time we spend thinking about food. What do we want for dinner tonight? Shall we eat out? Which restaurant? That new place or a familiar one? In the mood for Chinese? How about a pizza? Shall we try a new recipe? Then there’s grocery shopping. There’s usually one big trip to the market every week and — out of necessity — one has to pop into the store another few times. Out of milk. Running low on vegetables. Food is a constant. It’s not only the act of consumption, there can be social settings around dinner. A first date. Having friends over. Thanksgiving. Business lunches. Getting together with an old friend for lunch. Brunch, maybe for father’s day or a birthday. Anniversary dinner. Now imagine taking all that away. Take one pill a day and your nutritional needs are met for the day and you wont feel a single hunger pang. Imagine how much simpler your life would be. Not only are you not having to bother cooking you’re done with washing dishes and grocery shopping. No expensive restaurants to mess with your budget. But think of how empty that would feel. No, that wouldn’t do at all, your life has lost much of its richness, its texture, its rituals.

Okay, you get the picture, now take liquor away from a drunkard. It wasn’t just getting high it was how. It was where. It was with whom. A dreary day at work? That martini at 5:30 is going to be heaven sent. It may lead to a half dozen more — hell, hopefully it will. Wine with dinner. Beer on a hot day (or a cold one for that matter). Beer after a workout (or after sitting around for an hour). A brandy after dinner. Then another. It was also such a treat to talk about drinking. Practicing alcoholics love talking about what they’re going to drink, what they are drinking and what they had been drinking. They even like talking about their hangovers, even while in the throes of one. They’re like purple hearts to a soldier.

An addict’s life may well be built around getting high, and even when it isn’t the centerpiece, it fills in all the spaces around it.

So expecting someone to navigate life without the possibility of getting high is a big ask. That’s the hard part. It’s a new world. True, one with many benefits but a radical change. Imagine making that change when other aspects of your life are on shaky ground. I got sober while starting my teaching career — as a sub. Two weeks after I stopped drinking and using my wife told me that she was pregnant. It turned out to be a difficult pregnancy that had my beloved in the hospital. And I couldn’t drink. And I didn't drink.

This was no miracle. This was going to meetings, getting a sponsor and doing the steps. Not easy but not rocket science either.

I mentioned at the beginning that I was ambivalent about the idea of associating miracles with sobriety. I did not dismiss the possibility of divine intervention. Okay, maybe not divine, but inexplicable. 

When I woke up on September 13,1987 my first thought was that I was an alcoholic. I got out of bed. My wife of two-and-half months was sleeping on the sofa. She had determined that this was enough and she was leaving me or kicking me out. I sat at the edge of the sofa. She woke up. I said, “I have a problem.” She said, “I know.” I had never — not once — considered for a second the notion that I had any sort of problem with drugs or alcohol. After all I hung out with other users, some of THEM had a problem. But me? No, I was having fun. The lightning bolt had struck in my sleep. Two psychiatrists have refused to believe my story, both insisting that I must have had a clue before I went to bed that night. 

Fuck them.

To reiterate, I owe my sobriety to the unexplained and the easily explained. Mostly I owe it to all the other people who I’ve met in AA. Without each other we are not just alone, but helpless. There’s a lesson there.

Don't Pet an Angry Porcupine, The Blogger Offers Advice to You Young Whipper Snappers

Don’t listen to anyone who says: “when you get out into the real world.” The whole world is real, even if you’re in college.

If you’re working someplace where there’s a CEO and a custodian, treat them both the same. Neither is superior or inferior to you. We’re all equal.

Speaking of treating people….Treat people the way you want them to treat you. Simple.

If you’re talking to someone and they start going on about astrology as if it’s a real thing get out of the conversation as soon as you can. You don’t want to waste time with such nonsense.

Vote for candidates who are going to help the disadvantaged. Don’t vote for those who would help the already wealthy or those who sow fear.

It’s great to enjoy sports and become invested in a team, but if a sports result depresses or angers you, you’re doing it wrong. 

Spend as little time as possible talking about people behind their backs particularly if you’re being negative. Also avoid those who like to trash other people.

Learn from your mistakes but don’t dwell on them. 

Don’t simply move on when something bad happens, it’s okay to process it and experience your feelings. Take your time and when you’re ready, then you can move on.

One of the greatest strengths a person can have is the ability to ask for help when needed. It’s not a sign of weakness to seek help, it’s a sign you care about yourself and recognize that none of us can do it alone.

Another strength is the ability to sincerely apologize. Don’t write a note. Don’t say: “sorry if I,” leave that “if” out. Look the person in the eye. We all make mistakes, an adult acknowledges them and makes amends.

Look for the good in people. Try to find reasons to like a person. It’s lazy to find a single fault and write the person off for it.

Don’t spend too much time looking at your phone or computer screen. They are valuable tools but don’t stare at them for the sake of it. Sometimes when you’re standing in line instead of scrolling through your phone try thinking. It’s good for you.

You’ll be a happier person if you’re not doing anything to excess, this includes, drinking, watching TV, working, eating. Moderation is healthy.

Drink plenty of water. Get exercise. Have a regular sleep schedule. Watch the amount of sugar you eat. Eat vegetables, fruit, beans, legumes and nuts.

I strongly recommend being a vegetarian. It’s better for your health. It reduces the number of animals that are slaughtered and it helps reduce the effects of climate change.

Pet a dog or a cat as often as you can. Better yet. Have one in your house, if possible.

Enjoy music, it’s good for you.

Hugging is good for your too. Try to have people in your life to hug regularly.

Laughter is good for you too. Find some comedies or comedians to enjoy. Have a hearty laugh with friends. In fact, find friends who like a good laugh. 

Remember that “a lot” is two words and that there’s no s at the end of the word “anyway.” You don’t want to come off as a rube. Also watch out for redundancies like “past history” “pre-planning” and “more hotter.” While I’m on the subject, don’t say “sounds like a plan” when someone suggests a plan.

Read books. It’s good for you in so many ways. If nothing else, reading a book instead of scrolling through social media helps maintain your attention span. But reading does so much more for your brain and for your heart.

Keep a journal. It’s a great way to release your feelings. It helps your later decision-making and memory and can be fun to look back on, not to mention instructive.

Generally speaking if you’ve got a choice between going out and doing something with friends and staying home and taking it easy, get the hell out of the house. When you’re old you’ll have plenty of time to sit in the house.

Never brag about being busy. Nobody’s impressed. If anything, boast about having carved out free time. Don’t be afraid of relaxing.

Try finding a career that you’re going to love. If all it does is pay the bills then it serves a purpose but it’s not going to give you the psychic income you need.

Do the best you can to resolve disputes within family. You need each other.

Follow current events. At least have a sense of what’s going on in the world. We need as many informed citizens as we can get. Also, vote and study the candidates and issues.

If you suffer from depression or anxiety do not hesitate to ask for help. There are a lot of things you can do for both such as exercise, meditation, yoga, and walking.

Be wary of doctors prescribing medications. Sometimes they’re literal life-savers but some doctors are overly-reliant on getting out the prescription pad. Be particularly aware of possible side effects.

If you feel guilty about something you’re doing or are hiding what you’re doing, maybe give it a rethink.

Don’t be one of those people who tries to do eighty per cent of the talking in any given conversation. Avoid those people who tell you every detail of their lives and don’t in turn ask after you. Conversations are to be shared, not dominated.

Travel. Especially outside of the country.

One of the hardest things to master is acceptance, but you’ve got to be able to accept that some things can’t be done and some things cannot be changed. If anyone tries to tell you that “nothing is impossible” ask them to pick up a bus.

Learn the difference between sharing good news and bragging.

As I used to tell my players when I coached youth sports: play hard, have fun.

Want to Beat the Heat? How About a Nice Cold Movie Setting? Here are Ten Suggestions

Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush (1925)

We’re in the middle of a three-day heat wave here in the Bay Area so naturally I was thinking of how best to cool off and combining that with my love of film. Simple enough really. Just watch a good movie set in freezing climes, preferably with some snow. I’ve compiled ten candidates and am graciously sharing them with you the general public. You’re welcome. (I’ve excluded Christmas movies, as we want to save those for December.)

McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971) Altman. By the end of the movie actors are wading through waist-high snow. Everyone is bundled up and more snow is falling. It’s all the better because the snow was real and the actors didn’t have to act cold. Warren Beatty and Julie Christie are the title characters in Robert Altman’s revisionist western set in the Pacific Northwest. (Does that make it a PacificNorthWestern?)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) Gondry. It’s February in New York. Brrr. A frozen river plays a prominent role in the picture. The beach is visited and a north eastern seaboard beach in Winter is mighty cold. You get chilly just watching. It is one of the most unusual love stories of all time starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet.

Winter Light (1963) Bergman. The title tells you a lot. The great Swedish director Ingmar Bergman made most of his movies in the summer (who can blame him?) but this — one of my all-time favorites — is an exception. The weather is as cold and forbidding as the main character — and God’s silence. 

Fanny and Alexande (1982) Bergman. Another Bergman film much of which is set during lovely Summer weather. But the opening scenes take place at Christmas. It’s a particularly picturesque yule. Not quite a Christmas film despite the opening scenes that include sleighs, snow and celebrations.

The Ice Storm (1997) A. Lee. Again here the weather forecast is self-evident. There’s something particularly forbidding about an ice storm. It’s not gentle like snow. It brings cold and danger and here one character is a fatal victim of it. The coldest scenes in the movie are between the married couple played by Kevin Klein and Joan Allen. It’s a brilliant film with chilliness indoors and out.

The Shining (1980) Kubrick. Famously cold especially at the end. Set in the Rockies during the Winter you’re bound to have tons of snow and below zero temperatures. Jack Nicholson stars along with Shelley Duvall in a brilliant performance. 

The Gold Rush (1925) Chaplin. The Alaskan Gold Rush in winter with the Little Tramp. It’s great fun in the snow of which there is A LOT. So much, in fact, that our hero gets snowed into a cabin with a fellow prospector. Hunger sets in and cannibalism is considered. Once out of that jam there’s still plenty of snow — there’s about as much of it as there are laughs.

Fargo (1996) Coens. Despite the title much of the film is set in Minnesota. No matter. Either locale is as cold as all get out in the winter. There are scenes in the snow, one in particular features our heroine, Marge (Frances McDormand). The film that put the Coen Brothers on the cinematic map.

The Ascent (1997) Shepitko. Dear me this is maybe the coldest movie of them all and no one is sitting in front of a fire in a cozy room under a quilt with a hot chocolate. Nope. They’re outdoors and at war. Freezing temperatures and enemy bullets — delightful. It’s Russia during World War II which was famously cold.

Groundhog Day (1993) Ramis. February in Pennsylvania is bound to be cold and here we have characters stuck in a town because of a storm. Of course the premise here is that a man is re-living the same day over and over and over again and it’s a damn cold one. Bill Murray’s best film is one whose title deservedly become part of the lexicon. The weather is cold, the love story heart-warming. 

It was a Helluva Lot of Fun: Reflections on Teaching Students From All Over the World

That was fun. Three weeks ago today I retired after 40 years of teaching. The last sixteen of which I spent at international language schools teaching the English language. 

During my ESL (technically I was an EFL teacher — English as a foreign language, ESL is for people who have moved to the country Itteaching career I had students from over sixty different countries. I had lots and lots and lots from France, Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy. Colombia, Brazil. I had a fair number from Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Spain and Turkey. The most unusual was Canada (French Canadians). I had one each from Luxembourg, Palestine, Mongolia, Bhutan, Uzbekistan and Iceland. Usually my classes were a plurality of French or Chinese or Japanese but once it was Vietnamese. I had three in that class from Vietnam and no more than two from any other country.

I did not have too many from countries such as Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark or the Netherlands because in those countries English is taught in public schools from an early age. Students from those countries tended to be in the advanced or university prep classes which I did not teach. When I did have a student from a Northern European country it was when I was teaching upper intermediates. 

I worked with a lot of teachers who didn’t like French students. I had a  word for these kinds of teachers: bigots. The truth is that the French do not always have the same level of respect for teachers as people from other countries do. Many students from France were arrogant and could be uncooperative. Because they often came in groups they could be quite clannish and you’d often have to deal with them speaking to each other in French in class. 

The number one problem I had as an ESL teacher was students staring at their goddamned phones. The second biggest problem was students speaking their native language and the French were the number one offenders. But I was taught to judge people based on their best qualities and the best of their groups. I had one helluva lot of terrific students from France. I often wondered how my colleagues who complained of the French would have dealt with my earlier job as a public school teacher where — in great part due to socio-economic issues and cultural differences — many of their disciplinary issues would have been with students of color. The obvious conclusion is ….well, I’ll let you put two and two together.

The best classes had a good mix of students and in fact I’d often have a class of, let’s say, fourteen, with ten different countries represented. That was pretty cool.

I really liked Japanese students but you wouldn’t want them to comprise half your class. Once our school had a special group from Japan and I had all nine of them comprise an entire class. Tumbleweeds. Any questions? I’d asked. None. Once I prepared them for a vocabulary test going over each word carefully. No questions. They insisted that they understood. The next day they collectively did terribly on the test and no individual got better than seven of ten. I read them the riot act and did entire activities centered around asking questions. They also retook the test after I grilled them on each word and practically forced them ask me for clarification. They did brilliantly. You take four Japanese students and sprinkle them in a class with Europeans and South Americans and they’ll be great. Japanese students were diligent, hard-working and polite. But they were reluctant to ask questions. This was — to a lesser degree — a problem among ESL students in general. There was a great reluctance to say: “I don’t understand.” I had cases of students who wrote on their departing evaluations of me that I didn’t explain grammar well enough. I always, always thoroughly reviewed grammar points and practically begged for questions. Their failure to ask for clarification was their goddamned fault. 

Who were the best students? Germans. They had all the wonderful qualities of Japanese students, plus they asked questions and were always eager participants in class discussions. I was told that in Germany today it is a point of pride to be a good student. 

There was no nationality that I didn’t like to have in class. However I should add that Saudis could be…let’s say a challenge. They were prone to cheating which is a really silly thing to do when you’re trying to learn or improve on a language. I once saw a Saudi student cheating on a practice test. No kidding. The Saudis we got were always rolling in dough. They expected special favors. I’d constantly be asked to excuse an absence because…you know, nod, wink. At the same time they were among the nicest people in any classroom and if a Saudi student saw you on line in a cafe your coffee was paid for. 

Chinese were all over the map. Lots of them were quiet and shy, much like the stereotype of the Asian student. Others were loud, brash and maybe great company, maybe obnoxious. Some were pixilated. I think the great diversity of types reflects how massive the country is.

I liked Vietnamese, Thai and Laotian students a lot. They were particularly gracious and charming.

Some of my funniest and most fun students were from Italy. Italians seem to really enjoy life.

I got to where I learned accents. I could tell where many students were from before they told me. I was able to recognize the difference between South Americans and Spanish, between French and Belgians — usually. The people you could never pick out based on accent, appearance or anything else were the Swiss. You had Swiss German, Swiss French and Swiss Italians. Their names didn’t help either.

The weirdest accents were the Brazilians, which made them easy to pick out. I had a lot of great students from Brazil and a few who were arrogant. Older South American men could be chauvinistic and try to dominate conversations. But they could also be terrific students and a lot of fun in class. 

Compared to your average citizen of the U.S. I found our students to be what we’d call over here, liberals. I only ever met two who expressed any admiration for Trumpy and most were quite open about their fear and/or hatred for the man. As best I could tell most of my students were progressive on social issues, whether it be climate change, LGBTQ rights, health care. However they weren’t always so liberal about immigrants coming to their countries. The only trouble I had was a few instances when Saudi students expressed disdain for homosexuals. When I was teaching the word phobia and mentioned different kinds of phobias one Saudi student said proudly: “this is me, homophobia.” I explained that this was not considered something to boast about and such opinions are best not expressed in classrooms.

Speaking of trouble, I had next to none. Especially if you put aside cell  phones abuse and students speaking their native languages. Those two issues represented about ninety-five percent of the trouble I ever had with students. Students would occasionally chat while I was talking but it never took much more than a clearing of the throat to get them to stop. I had one student once who refused to spit out his gum. He stormed out of the class rather than get rid of it. Another student followed him out and calmed him down. Clearly the young man had something else going on in his life. Anyway he never got out gum again.

About a month ago — just weeks before retiring — I had a student get all hot and bothered because I asked him not to use Google Translate for a vocabulary term that I was at the very moment explaining. He got quite angry at me, accused me of being “aggressive” and stormed out of class. He went to the school director to complain about me. This was clearly a case of the student in question being a complete and total jerk. Such people made up less than one percent of all students I taught.

Most of my students were between seventeen and twenty-five years old. However I had plenty of students in their later twenties, thirties, some in their forties and even older. A lot of them were university students taking a semester off or delaying starting school. Many had graduated and were getting ready for graduate school. Of course students were working to improve their English for their studies and/or for their future careers. A lot of students were already working and needed to improve their English for their work. Many students wanted to improve their English for travel, English being the lingua franca in most of the world. 

I had doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, professors, lots and lots of people in one form of business or another. I had students who ran companies. I had one newscaster. I had a few models. (I had two fashion models who resembled mannequins and one sportswear model from Switzerland who was vivacious and lovely.) I had an actor and a Belgian footballer recovering from a serious knee injury. I had a violinist in the Vienna Symphony. She was born and raised in Austria but was of Japanese parents. I had shop owners, ski instructors, med students, taxi drivers, I had Saudi Arabia’s minister of finance. I had bankers, accountants, chefs, chemists, software designers and nurses. 

My favorite students were the aforementioned Japanese and Germans as well as South Koreans and Spanish women and Italian men.

I loved being warmly greeted by students in the morning. I also appreciated that they thanked me constantly and gave me nice goodbyes and have a nice weekends. 

Teaching students from all over the world was a life-affirming experience and it was a privilege and an joy.