My favorite memory of reading as a child involves snuggling beneath a mound of homemade patchwork quilts, nestled against cool, crisp sheets, while my grandmother read Monster Night at Grandma’s House to me. I was already afraid of the potential demons that lurked in my closet, especially in the dark night after the house settled into sleep, so I felt more comfortable knowing that someone else—Toby, the little boy who was the main character in the book—was also afraid of nighttime monsters.

Reading, even then, had its real-world applicability. It apparently taught me to empathize before I knew the definition of empathy. My father used to relish in relaying the story to others of me reading from one of Bill Keane’s Family Circus comic strip compilation books and crying. At two or three years of age, I shed tears because the older kids refused to allow P.J., the youngest of the clan, to play baseball with them. I couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t let him join them.

My parents had read to me from the time I was very young. Reading, to me, pre-dates memory. I can’t recall a time I couldn’t read. I devoured books, memorized them, read them, and re-read them until their pages were tattered.

I was lucky in some ways. A sickly child, plagued by minor illnesses every few weeks, it seemed, I spent much time in bed with nothing to do but sleep or read. If I were very ill, I preferred sleep. When my condition made a turn for the better, I would vociferate my request for Mom, Dad, or Granny to come and read to me. They were always obliging. They left other tasks and diligently sat bedside to indulge me in my craving for narrative. I remember time after time my grandmother complaining of her eyes hurting from reading so much; nevertheless, she kept reading. Looking back, I must have had one of the best childhoods anyone could imagine.

At elementary school, my love for reading was fostered by some dedicated and passionate teachers who cherished the written word. One of the most memorable was a fifth grade teacher, Ms. Helen Summers, at Ramer School. The memory of her reading to us is so vivid even now, over 25 years later, that if I close my eyes, I can still imagine sitting in those small plastic classroom chairs listening eagerly as she read from Wilson Rawls’ Where the Red Fern Grows, E.B. White’s The Trumpet of the Swan, or Jean Craighead George’s My Side of the Mountain. Her voice undulated with emotion and intensity as she made those stories come alive.

Certain times of year, I could purchase my own books when the Scholastic Book Fair made its visit to our school. I could hardly wait for that day to roll around, for my classmates to form an orderly line, and march to the library where the books were stacked neatly in cardboard display cases on library tables. I had pondered with great precision the books I might purchase when that moment finally arrived. I had circled and marked out and re-marked my potential purchases, trying to stay within the budget I knew my parents would set for me. Walking into that library and breathing the aroma of those pages, all those new book fibers, was almost more than a body could stand.

My initiation into the literate world not long after carried over into my desire to create my own tales. I recall sitting for hours pondering over Sears catalogs, devising stories about the clothing models contained therein. Sometimes I would wax even more creative, procure scissors and glue and poster board, and proceed to cut the models out and make my own story board in which to display my unique narrative.

It comes, therefore, as no surprise, that ultimately I chose the teaching of English as my vocation. I still love the element of story. I love language. In fact, I savor language—English or otherwise—whether it be sacred or profane, cacophonous or euphonious, narrow and skeletal, or latitudinous and vast.

In the university composition course I teach, last week I assigned my students the task of composing their own literacy narratives, the stories of how they, too, grew to become literate. I encouraged them to engage the reader through incorporation of the senses and compelling detail. I look forward to reading their tales of immersion into story and language. I wish to impart to them and to endow to them at least half, if not more, of the love of language I have harbored since childhood.

My grandmother, Mary Moore Jones, and me at age 3 1/2 (May 28, 1977)

The first time I got a glimpse of New York City, I was flying into the airport at Newark, New Jersey, on my way to board a connecting flight to Milan for an 8-day tour of Italy. If I had not been excited about getting to Europe, I might have paid better attention and would have easily seen the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. It was July 2001, months before the unforgettable terrorist acts of 9-11.

 I will, like so many others, never forget the morning of September 11, 2001. I was en route at 9:40 a.m. to teach my English composition class at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. I was listening to a local radio station when I heard the news about a plane crash as I exited I-40 near campus. By the time I reached my parking lot, I understood that a plane had hit the NYC World Trade Center. I assumed it was a small plane that had perhaps grazed the structure. I taught my classes and then spent the rest of the day working in the Writing Center. When we weren't tutoring students who needed help writing papers, we watched the TV footage.

 I must be honest, even at the risk of sounding callous. At the time, I felt no special affinity toward those involved in 9-11. Yes, I knew it was heartbreaking for those who had lost family and friends. Yes, I couldn’t imagine how frightening it would have been to have been trapped on an upper floor of either of the Twin Towers that morning. However, we are accustomed to viewing so much violence and tragedy daily on the news that I felt desensitized. I think that desensitization was also partly due to having been a lifelong resident of the South with no direct connection to a northeastern city.

I initially visited New York City in the fall of 2009. I have to admit that stepping into the neon-lit, concrete-filled jungle for the first time required some acclimation. First, pavement is ubiquitous in the city—with the exception of the grassy oasis known as Central Park that runs vertically through Manhattan. Furthermore, learning to maneuver the sidewalks of NYC is akin to learning a new percussion rhythm, a rather frenetic sort of jazz riff.

New Yorkers move in herds, in sync, very rapidly along the city streets. Once you learn that pace, however, you’ll do fine getting around. Yet, again, frenetic is the key word. Linger a second too long boarding the subway, for example, and you’ll discover why. Everything in New York has a rhythm, and you must learn to move to that rhythm, with that rhythm, or you’ll be left behind.

After I became accustomed to the pace, it was an instant love affair with the city.

It is place for which I had already formed a taste stemming from myriad pop culture references. I recall enjoying The Cosby Show in the ‘80s and ‘90s not simply for the humor of Cosby’s eponymous sitcom, but for the show’s representation of metropolitan culture, including the Brooklyn brownstones, of New York. It was a city filled with jazz and art, replete with venues offering a culture in which one could absolutely become absorbed, without any nocturnal or seasonal termination. Any given episode might have the Cosby clan venturing to a venue to witness a performance by any number of jazz greats, including Ella Fitzgerald or Lena Horne. And it was difficult to ignore the spate of visual art, most notably contemporary African American art, which provided a scenic backdrop for the show. Cosby piqued my latent interest in jazz, art, and a city such as this one.

However, from the time I was a young child, every bit of metropolitan culture I witnessed on television, from PBS children’s programming to the aforementioned sitcom, had stoked my desire to visit a place such as New York City, with its accessibility and broad spectrum of offerings.

Watching the recent programming intended to commemorate the September 11^th attacks evoked a range of feeling in me. Exposure to images of the city stirred a craving for return. Seeing the images of the Twin Towers embroiled in smoke again and eventually succumbing to collapse—in a city I have visited twice since the event—made me imagine more concretely what it might have been like had I been there that horrible day, or if I had had a loved one caught in that hopeless tragedy.

I have not visited Ground Zero, nor do I have any immediate plan or desire to do so. For me, it is not important to return to the scene of a tragedy in order to commemorate it. Re-watching those events of that day helped me to re-acknowledge the tenuous nature of existence and to recall the price paid by those who sacrificed much for the sake of others.

After watching the 9-11 commemoration, however, I was inspired to consider a June visit next year to a city I love to attend an annual jazz festival held in Greenwich Village. My pulse quickened with a simple Internet search for travel deals. I can’t stay away too long from a place for which I harbor such a great affinity, one that continues to draw me back with its irresistible charms and makes me feel as if I am pining for a lost lover when I cannot be there. It is a city that offers one of the best representations of what America was meant to be in both its diversity and its oneness—a place aptly termed by David Letterman, as well as numerous others, as “the greatest city in the world.” It is a city full of culture, variety, hope, and rebirth.

 

For the past 40 years, over 40,000 rising high school seniors across America have had the opportunity to participate in the annual Electric Cooperative Youth Tour of Washington, D.C. Students compete for the opportunity by writing a creative piece that incorporates the history or future of cooperative power in their short stories.

This year I was fortunate enough to be selected as the teacher to accompany four students and two electric cooperative employees representing my county. I had never visited our nation’s capital before, so I was excited from the time I found out in the fall of 2010 that I would be going.

On Friday, June 6 at 6:30 in the morning, a bus full of eager but sleepy students, cooperative employees, and teachers departed Nashville, headed for Staunton, Virginia. The first two days would be the longest part of the trip. The coordinators of the trip, spearheaded by our fearless leader Joe Jackson, Tennessee Electric Cooperative Association Director of Youth and Member Relations, had arranged for some introductory activities along the way so that participants from across Tennessee could get to know each other better.

Saturday morning, we visited Monticello, home to our third president, considered at the time as “America’s greatest thinker.” Thomas Jefferson is one of my favorite presidents, particularly because of his cerebral qualities—as noted, his ideas concerning separation of church and state, and his overall complexity. He was a walking paradox, a man who wrote in the Declaration that “all men are created equal,” yet one who held slaves, even sired children by them, and struggled with the slavery question. Jefferson’s home, an Italian Renaissance beauty with its octagonal dome, is just as complex and interesting as the innovative maverick that designed it and lived there.

Saturday afternoon our group arrived in Alexandria, Virginia. After briefly settling into the hotel, we headed to the Capitol for a group photo and then on to some of the nation’s memorials, including the Presidential memorials for Jefferson and Lincoln, and the war memorials for Vietnam and Korea.

We soon learned that every day was packed to the hilt with activities, which was fortunate because a person could spend a month in Washington, D.C., exploring the city’s treasures and still not see everything there is to see.

The myriad highlights included a visit to Arlington Cemetery, where we saw the somber changing of the guard and two wreath-layings accompanied by a poignant pomp and circumstance; a comedic murder mystery at the Kennedy Center; a triple-decker boat cruise on the Potomac; a visit to the sobering Holocaust Museum; the Smithsonian—or the Smithsonians, I should say, as there are several separate museums in the group; and, near the end of the trip, President George Washington’s former home, Mt. Vernon.

Our last day in D.C., we visited the Capitol, where we met with our representatives and senators. It was exciting to stand on the Capitol steps and have our photographs taken with our nation’s lawmakers. I also had the opportunity to visit the office of my Congressman, Steve Cohen, who represents Tennessee’s ninth district in the U.S. House of Representatives and chat with him briefly.

Overall, the week was much more than I expected it to be. Even though I was exhausted from constant activity and lack of sleep, I was, like many of the students, not ready to return home. I had made new friends, and I felt as if I had tasted only a smattering of what D.C. had to offer.

Looking back, I cannot stress how important an educational opportunity this trip is to young people in our state and nation. If one pays attention, there is a chance to learn almost as much in one week as might be learned in an entire semester from a textbook in the classroom environment.

And, of course, the emotional impact of experiencing our nation’s history firsthand is something that cannot be obtained any other way. This year, this 4^th of July, as we celebrate the 235^th anniversary of our nation’s birth, I have a new perspective and new knowledge. It is an experience that I wish every American citizen could have at least one time in his or her life.