As American as Baseball, At Last

It was the end of the last game of the entire season. The Alpine Cowboys and the Tucson Saguaros were tied four to four at the bottom of the extra inning. The crowd held its collective breath. It was do or die. The stadium was hushed. The Cowboy's batter, Matteo Avallone, from Mahopac, New York, carried the dreams of the Cowboys and fans from Alpine and several not-so-near towns on his shoulders. 

Two Cowboys were poised at first and second base, more than ready to race home to break the tie. Matteo delivered a hit that shot the ball high into the night sky. When it sailed down at the edge of the field the Saguaro outfielder caught it but it slipped from his glove. The two Cowboys bounded for home plate and the game became a field of celebration. Players raced to hug, tumble beneath their team, chest bump and drink from champagne bottles. Their championship of the league was complete. Their amazing season of 40 plus wins and single digit losses was over. 

The Alpine Cowboy's story is big, but something just as big inside me shifted. I had purposely stayed away from sports and stadiums all my life. What had I been missing all these years? For a while I just let myself roll in the excitement as it swept over us all.  There, beside me in this new world I landed on were good-old-boys swigging bottles of beer like water, a young couple with their months-old baby, young professionals, teens on date-night, elder ranch couples with their children and grandkids. I stood among yet-to-be workers, working folk, retired folk, of all sizes, ethnicities, classes and religions. We stood as one, cheering the Cowboys, soaking in the shared glory of their win against the Arizona Saguaros, well-matched competitors. Over only three nights of learning about the sport and watching the play-off games, I had come to recognize and admire the players on both teams for their spirit and dedication to the sport.

As Susie and I left Kokernot Field, built in the 1947, as a replica of Chicago's Wrigley Field, and we drove in the pitch of the desert between Alpine and Fort Davis, I began my mental reckoning of what the nights of baseball had done to me. 

We had watched both teams move forward in their fight for a league championship. Why was the experience so full of meaning for me? Here was my first clue. While I am new to baseball, my family history has a fat chapter in it about the sport and my father's love of the game. "You can too, Cantu!!" Adolfo would shout from the stands to cheer the Douglas Copper King's best batter in the 1940's and 50's. Baseball was the man's obsession as my siblings tell it. Though Adolfo died when I was only three, the stories of his love of baseball--and especially since I've come to appreciate the game, too-- fill in many of the blanks in my understanding who Adolfo was. 

As a hard laborer at a copper smelter, and as a father who loved his family, Adolfo provided for his wife and children to the best of his ability. As a baseball fan, though, Adolfo was his own man. My sister remembers as if seventy years ago was yesterday: "Don't speak to him while he listens to the game on the radio on away games.   He became desperately sad when the Copper Kings lost. It was worse if the players lost a home game. Don't say a word in the car on the drive home. But! When the Copper Kings won, Dad was over the moon. He would buy us all ice cream cones on the way home! We loved winning nights!" 

Those are some of the few strokes on the broad and mostly blank canvas that is, for me, my Dad. They are lots less than many, but more than some people have. They tell me plenty about Adolfo's spirit, who I recognize at times in my siblings, my self and always in the sparks of energy and enthusiasm for life and joy in my nieces and nephews.

My reckoning with the winning night's impact was not only about Adolfo's passion, but it was also tied to being American and our family's identity. The wave that washed over the crowd was about winning and I was a part of it. That surprised me especially in the West Texas outpost of Alpine. This cheering and celebration was for the team, the region and all it stands for. That included me! 

This made me question the frames of my identity. For all of my life, I somehow allowed others to define me, to hyphenate and make me the other. First as Mexican American, next as a Latina. Proud as I am of those identities, they carry an undisclosed cost. Being named as something other than plain American, being labelled a hyphenated American by some unknown statistician or government budget officer is a burden that has robbed me of precious energy. The irony is that Adolfo Cuellar Jr.'s family had lived and worked in Texas for five generations. His people were here before Texas was a thought, much less a state, yet by the accounting of the Census and for other purposes of those governing, he --and by extension our family-- was not plain and simple --American. 

I drove and thought about the effect of the wave that washed over the celebrating crowd in the stands of Kokernot Field. For me it was transforming. It washed away some of the silt of carrying identities imposed on me before I could question or reject them.  All of this made clear from a baseball game. The tension of being at the brink of losing, then the cheering and celebration of the win, all among strangers who were just like me, it turned for me a new page. 

Those strangers watching the close game were as scared, then as thrilled, as I was. Watching the players give it their all, we were 'in this together,' whether we left Kokernot Stadium with our tails tucked beneath us, or wagging in joy.  

Citizenship alone does not create community. That sense of unity which the baseball game temporarily provided, was enough to show me that my story is still evolving. New information. New ways of thinking.

I know, the differences between the people standing shoulder to shoulder last night are great. There are many distinctions in history and heritage, class, education and politics. There are still the ancient resentments, injuries, hurts and pain, but soaring above these, like the ball that shot from the Cowboy batter's amazing force, the possibilities are now shown to me: There is always a clean page to write, always the next step in the journey. These mean more than differences. The future awaits all of our hands to create it. 

The secret, the sword and the line in the sand of a seven year old

Chicken soup—as we all know, is the remedy for all that ails. Colds, flu, it even helps with COVID-- and, it turns out chicken soup is also the cure for a seven-year old’s afflictions of the soul.  

Chicken soup—or caldo—was a go-to supper at our house on cold winter nights. There at the stove was my Ama, who lovingly made our delicious caldo from chicken, potatoes and cabbage. She only made caldo in the winter and it was a savory, warming special treat. My older brothers and sister, who were in high school, sat beside me at the table. Ama brought fresh tortillas for us from the hot comal.

I was in the second grade, seven years old, and newly arrived at the age of reason, whatever that was supposed to mean. I knew it meant that I could start preparing for Holy Communion. I had started my 'doctrina,' afterschool at church. It was a big deal. Our teacher was Chanita, a skinny, stern old woman whose presence I clearly remember distinctly.  

Usually at the table I was a chatterbox. (Who can imagine that?)  But that night I remember I ate my caldo quietly. There was a reason I was quiet: I had a secret from Ama.  I had had secrets from her before. I took an empanada from the batch she had for her merienda for her group of comadres. She found out. No bueno. Keeping a secret from her was risky business. They said the nuns at school had eyes on the back of their heads, but Ama had the nuns beat. She could practically read my mind. And this new secret of mine-- it was a whole other-level secret. Did Ama know what my secret was? She wasn't acting like it, but you never knew.

I DID know if Ama found out, I would be in the deepest of doo doo.  

Ama was – how shall I put it—not one to suffer fools? That doesn't even come close. Here it is: Ama grew up on a rancho in Mexico helping to raise her eight younger brothers and sisters.  Ama was puro rancho. And for those of you that don’t know what puro rancho might mean in this context, just think of the force of a flying house slipper, a chancla, hitting you like a rock on the back of your head. And, if you were unlucky that day,  the follow-up-chaser of a heavy smack on the top of your skull from a hand accustomed to hard manual labor. Puro rancho meant ka-pow discipline. No 'let’s talk about it'—just puro rancho force-of-the-fist style justice.  

I knew I would be in a world of hurt if Ama were to find out this secret.  Just before supper I had been playing with the neighbor, a boy my same age. We set up my miniature farm set in my brother’s room. I thought Barbie dolls were  boring. I loved my barnyard, even if it was miniature and mostly imaginary. After a few Indan raids, the neighbor boy and I moved onto a new game, playing doctor. In a few minutes, we discovered that was way more fun than farming. 

I sat at the table, my bowl of caldo in front of me and struggled to keep my head from exploding. I couldn't stop thinking about those playing doctor feelings??!!!  There a wild brushfire of feelings in my head --not to mention other body parts. They scared me, but they were amazing--What could I do to keep them going please? please??? Then—because I thought it might help put out the fire—and not because I was still hungry-- I did something that I’d never done before. I asked Ama for more caldo. I thought my feelings about playing doctor and keeping a secret might calm down if I had more soup.  She refilled my bowl, and I took one spoonful after another. And that night I discovered food could comfort me and protect me from my scary feelings! More on that later.   

My catechism classes for Holy Communion were ending and Chanita, our teacher began preparing us for our first confession with the tall bear of our parish priest, Father Postert. Here's how it went. Each of us would enter a small dark cubicle with only enough space to kneel on a hard, wooden board. We would recite a prayer we memorized of confession and tell the priest, who sat separated from us by a wall with a wooden window screen at our face level all our sins—the venial, those were little ones and the cardinal ones, the big ones.   

Confession was a sacrament, just like Holy Communion. It was the last step in preparation for Holy Communion and though I dreaded it, I didn’t need to ask Chanita, our teacher if I could skip it. I knew you couldn’t. You had to do it if you wanted to go to Heaven. Chanita, who was older than the nuns, only wore black. She somehow had lost an arm and I tried hard to not stare at her.  She stood straight as a broom stick, shook her singular fist and instructed us to think long and hard to prepare to confess our sins. Chanita made it clear. This was serious business. About the most serious business this seven year old had ever known. 

Ama picked me up from my last catechism class. She took me shopping for my communion dress and veil for the big day, but my approaching confession kept bothering me.

I wondered what I would do about confession. A lot was riding on this. What was my plan? What was I going to do? Would I confess only my venial sins of stealing empanadas or cursing when I struggled with arithmetic, or would I tell Father Postert about my big cardinal sin of playing doctor with the neighbor boy? 

 It was like a scab on my knee, nagging me with every step. For the next several days, it was all I could think about –including through the nun’s lesson on multiplication and division-- because I had much bigger fish to fry than numbers: Should I tell Father Postert about playing doctor? I had reached the age of reason. Who would know besides me if I kept it to myself? I was choosing between spending eternity in Heaven or in the other place, H-E-Double L-.  

I finally reasoned that I might as well go into the whole holy communion thing being truthful. Or else, why even go through with it?  

I’d like to say that as a budding thinker and feminist-in-the-making that I decided that my playing doctor was no one’s business but mine and that of the neighbor boy. 

The truth is, I saw the decision of whether to tell the priest about playing doctor as my sword drawing a line in the sand, like that modern day martyr at the Battle of the Alamo. 

I wanted to be truthful to Father Postert, the parish priest who looked like a polar bear. He was almost as scary as Ama. I wanted to be truthful, not for his prayers for forgiveness, but for me, for the person drawing the line in the sand with a sword who I wanted to be: A person who told the truth. But wait, the little devil on my shoulder said, what about just keeping quiet? That was a reasonable choice, too. 

It wasn’t an easy call. It took some days and more missed lessons in fractions and denominators. But I knew my priorities. I finally went with telling the priest about our playing doctor. 

Sure, it was a lot scarier than not telling. But who was Father Postert, anyway, in comparison to my Ama? What was he going to do? Give me a few prayers of penance to recite? I prayed all the time anyway. It was a no brainer. 

Plus, I continued to reason, by telling the priest, the sin of playing doctor would be forgiven. It was gone. Through the magic of sacraments and other grown up stuff I barely understood there wasn’t any sin, there wasn't any secret between me and my Ama and everyone could live happily ever after..

So when the time came for my first confession, I stood in line and when it was my turn, I went into the confessional, I kneeled down and squinted past the wooden screen to see Father Postert leaning forward listening with his chin in his hand. I began the prayer, “Bless me Father, for I have sinned” then I choked up a bit as out as my sins filed out of one by one. First came the venial ones about cursing, and my list was long because I spoke both Spanish and English. There was the time I made my sister faint when I planted a spiny hair curler where she was standing barefoot in front of the bathroom mirror. I only wanted to scare her, but when she fainted, I was sure I had sinned. Then came the big cardinal one about my playing doctor. Father Postert sat still through all my confession, and when I was done, he talked about God’s mercy and I went through a forest of new words, until I saw the path forward and that my sins were now forgiven. 

I left the confessional with wobbly legs and went to kneel some more, this time in front of the Virgin Mary’s statue. I got on with my penance of six Hail Mary’s and six Our Fathers. It took a while but it was nothing compared to the load of worry I was able to lay down and walk away from. 

The next Sunday was Easter and I was ready to receive my Holy Communion wearing my new dress, which I stylishly wore with my imaginary sword.

My Ama never found out about my playing doctor, which was the way I wanted it.  As for caldo, I use my Ama’s recipe  to make it every winter. 

Each time, I think of that time long ago when I adroitly avoided an eternity in H-E-Double L. And whether by the grace of God or my own doing, I don’t know, but I enjoy my caldo with a well-deserved, dearly-fought-for clear conscience.  

My history with using food for comfort is something I’m still working on-- but for now-- one confession is enough—It’s plenty.

When our worlds get too small there’s a bigger one we can turn to.

I learned last night from a guest, a young mom with her toddler and husband, staying at our river cabin, that the Medina river’s flow in front of our cabin has stopped. I think the best thing about the cabin is the river that flows just below it. As  I apologized, I was interrupted. The young mom told me they were enjoying their visit, especially one evening when they had fed some deer by hand below the deck of the cabin. 

I hung up the phone and quickly wrote all our upcoming Airbnb guests to let them know the river’s flow had stopped. I thought they should know the water there isn’t safe to enter. Flow means health. Stagnant water can mean danger. 

Years ago, my brother Al and I spent a few mornings enjoying his new JetSki‘s on the lake,  back when there was a lake. 

We flew across the mirror of water at 50 miles an hour, and I thrilled at the wind, thrilled at the sun, thrilled at the water spraying beside me, thrilled at the velocity. 

Sometimes we drove the jet ski’s at much slower speeds to where the river gently emptied into the lake. I maneuvered among boulders, watching for white water, directing the jet ski away to where the water was green and safe for me to move forward. Up we crept till the winding river’s current was too shallow to continue. 

The river was nature’s florid signature in colorful ink  on a contract I had with life and security. It was my heart’s consolation that there was more to the world than my short arms and sights could take hold of. What a relief to know my small world and its wobbling’s were safely contained within something bigger, where rivers flow and cypress trees tower.

In my mind’s eye I I see the river’s current come and go past the rocks on which I sit near my cabin. What I have is the moment. My hot feet refreshed from two hours or so of freshening up the cabin, hauling trash and weed eating the yard. I can neither keep that freshness nor give it away. 

I watch the water come and go. In my mind, it flows and keeps my hope and heart remembering this is how it goes: the water flows toward me, past me, and out beyond me, or my reach. 

It is a part of me, here now, then gone like a breath, a mysterious gift, like my brother, the sun, the trees and rocks. I don’t deserve or not deserve them. I remember them and their gifts flow within and through me to the next moment. 

This morning I read on my phone messages notes from each of the guests I wrote to last night. They thanked me for the information I sent them. Some may cancel their stay at the cabin. Others will come anyway, and take in the trees and stillness, the deer who come on their daily treks, early mornings and late in the dusk. They come to drink in, like the deer, the quiet and calm that reminds them, too, that there’s more out there, bigger and quieter than the wobbling’s of our work-world or our worries. More, much more.

Learn About Technology by Not Using It?

My student got up from her desk and went to stand at the front of the class. She was a young mother of a toddler she said. Her report would be on her experiences during her 100 Hours class project she had started in my class a week earlier. 

The 100 Hours assignment asked students to keep a written journal for a class presentation of their observations during a 100 hour abstinence from using any technology except for college-related purposes. That meant no TV, radio, music apps or social media normally used for entertainment purposes. The results from the assignment were always interesting, but none as much as the young mother's report would be.

When Is A Cell Phone More Than It Appears?

"One Saturday afternoon I was at home and I heard loud pounding on the front door," she told the class. "I ran to open it and saw my grandfather all shaken up. He asked me why I wasn't answering my phone and asked if everything was alright. He came in and I told him I wasn't using the phone for a few days because of this Communications class assignment." 

I held my breath, waiting to hear what her grandfather had to say. Teachers always think their assignments are good for students, but I'd never intended to frighten or worry family members.

The young lady at the front of the class continued, "He sat down on the sofa and we just started visiting. I noticed something was different, but I didn't know what. He talked about his childhood. He told me a story about his last name.  He said he had been adopted by his father when he was a boy, and that his birth name had been different. I asked him, 'Why haven't you ever told me this before now?' and he answered by gesturing with his empty hand to his ear, 'Well, you are always busy with your phone, you know. I didn't ever want to interrupt something important."

Wow. So that Saturday was a turning point in their relationship. Not only did she know more about her grandfather and how differently he interpreted her casual use of her cell phone, that day she found out her phone use might have kept her from ever knowing her grandfather's story. 

She then described another day leaving her house with her toddler without a phone. For the first time since living there she noticed that two doors down lived a child the same age as her daughter. She walked to her neighbor's house and introduced herself and her daughter. The moms got to know each other, now trade babysitting and enjoy each other's company. All because the student left the house and noticed the natural world around her instead of the phone in her palm.

The rest of the class presentations continued in the same vein. I remember one student reporting losing the buzzing sound in his ears after taking time off from technology, another reported sleeping better, and one older brother announced he would spend more face to face time with his younger brother and roommate, after discovering via the assignment that his phone habits caused his sibling to feel lonely.

New Research On Teens and Technology

The 100 Hours assignment I used to give to my college students came to mind when I read The Child Mind Institute's report on recent research about teens and social media, How Using Social Media Affects Teenagers. 

The report includes tips for parents who want to minimize the risks associated with technology. The good news is a lot can be done. Parents are the key. They model behaviors to their children from A-Z 24/7!!

Changing habits, especially those that creep up on you without your noticing is not easy, but the payoff, as I saw during semester after semester of the 100 Hours project, is definitely worth it. 

How to start:

Decide if a change in your tech use habits is needed. Observe yourself and your family for a few days around technology. Notice if things change when you remove the cell phone from your kitchen, living room, bedroom or office meeting. 

Do you notice communication if improved? See where less tech at certain times and places can take you. 

What options exist short of pulling the wifi connection out of the wall? (My wife's father was a chemistry professor. Each summer he pulled a tube out of the TV set and told his four kids the TV set was broken. The kids created their own entertainment and experiences instead of being shut in watching TV. Is there something to this "trick"?) 

You have options for changing your family's relationship with technology.

  

Start small and over time decide if you want to expand. Call a family meeting and ask for feedback on your questions about how technology affects how we live. 

Start by observing yourself and your own relationship to smart phones. Try a mini version of the 100 Hours assignment (Full Version Link For The Truly Brave)

Pick a time during your commute or a room in your home and decide to not use the phone there as much as possible. Try putting your phone out of reach, hearing or sight. Decide if you want to let others in on what you're doing or keep it to yourself? (As a life long habit changer, I recommend keeping silent about your inquiry for the first few days.)

How does it feel to not have your phone beside you? Do you notice any differences?

How do conversations change when in the middle of talking with someone they glance at or use their phone to text or answer a call? How does this make you feel?

Have you ever wondered how someone else feels when you are distracted by technology during a conversation?

Collect ideas from the whole family and then discuss ways your family can approach change. Change is hard, but some habits, especially those hastily-made, unexamined ones need to be examined!

Use technology with intention and purpose instead of out of habit or boredom. You can improve  your time during family meals, car-time, sleep patterns, and strengthen your family connections.   

 

It’s About Time

 Dissatisfaction and unease had crept into my day-to-day. Everything else being equal, I could only guess the culprit was my online time had become less of a conscious choice than an unconscious habit. 

I awoke to my Facebook feed, and actively consulted and contributed to it throughout the day until I fell asleep. 

At first it was exciting,  but some years after I began, I noticed something was off. While I loved being more in touch with relatives and with friends and coworkers from past jobs, schools and locales, there was a growing unease I sensed in my spirit. Was it fear of missing out? Was it a bit of jealousy? Was it being slightly bored? 

Finally, I landed on the answer. It came down to time. My training as a broadcast news producer for radio and TV newscasts and documentaries helped me identify what was going on that felt so off. 

Hours and minutes are the currency of a news or video producer. A producer uses time segments to plan a television newscast or a documentary project. We use a “wheel“ of 30 or 60 minutes to plan and execute a news program. 

My mental wheel while on Facebook was full of holes. I sensed a problem, but I didn’t know that I could do something about it. 

My feed on Facebook was full of material I would never allow in a newscast or consider newsworthy, joyful or interesting enough for me anyway. 

Finally, it hit me. Because of my experience handling time as a material in my work, I knew what to do: I had to cut. 

Just as news producers had to cut sections out of reports or parts of a program, I had to edit my own use of time. I had to decide what to remove, and what should remain of my Facebook time and experience. 

Changing my media habits was a decision I made to improve my daily life. 

In the past I had quit biting my nails to improve the appearance of my hands. I had quit smoking tobacco when I realized my health was affected. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I quit alcohol because I learned the sugar in alcohol didn’t help my efforts to become healthier. I decided if I wanted to improve my media use, I needed to quit Facebook. 

Here’s what happened when FB and I called it quits. I immediately noticed I seemed to have more time for other more joyful tasks and activities, such as cooking, reading, exercising, or being with friends in person instead of online.

Five or so years into my no-Facebook life, I have finished a novel, landscaped my front and backyard, produced videos, been in a friend’s play, had a Readers Theatre performance of my own play,  and with a friend,  co-founded a zoom writing group that has fed my creative life beautifully. 

It may not be for everyone to quit Facebook cold turkey or even to quit all together. But my other experiences quitting taught me that all or nothing usually works for me. 

For you, other approaches to moderating media use, including setting time limits or for business-related purposes may work equally well. 

For now, I will continue to measure my media use habits by what the no-Facebook experience has taught me: Real life, face-to-face (even on zoom ) experiences with the myriad degrees of information of eye twinkling, stirring shoe soles and nuances that feed the moment’s richness are worlds apart from digital flatness and limits. Being with another person brings me the sense of joy, learning and connection that I find most rewarding.

When you think of your day-to-day media use experience, what parts are most enjoyable and which simply gobble up your valuable time without giving you joy? 

For yourself,  or as a parent and caregiver to children, tweaking, or editing your media use may be worth exploring and experimenting with. 

For one, you may gain more time in your day. More importantly, however, you can model for your family helpful ways to become active rather than passive media consumers by teaching them to direct and drive their media use instead of having it direct and drive them.

My hours on and off media and why it matters

Numbers too large for me to calculate. 

Like so many American children of the 1960’s and 70’s, I practically lived sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the television set.  There must be serious chunks of my brain so steeped in the fiction of the stories and ideas I consumed that they are as much a part of me as my DNA.  

TV was a window to the world. Like so many kids, at my home there weren’t many other affordable past-times such as sports leagues, music or art lessons. There were few parks or public pools, and no museums to hang out in my small town. My older brothers and sister, however, did not grow up with a TV in the house. My family was a bridge between the eras before and after TV's explosive growth.

I grew up and began my life-long study of communication. After college, I worked in commercial and public radio and television.  Ultimately, I obtained advanced degrees so I could teach communication at the college level.  I spent thousands of hours with hundreds of college students over the past 35 plus years, fifteen before the Internet, and the remainder after its arrival. We explored the evolution and business of mass media industries, their impact on society. We studied the emerging Internet-based communication platforms that now form the fabric of so much of our current social, educational and work lives. 

Before and After Smart Phones

Like my generation of test pilot TV viewers, my college students were also test pilots, who lived in the world pre and post the arrival of the Internet and social media platforms. When I compared students engagement in my classes before and after the introduction of the smart phone and social media I noticed a marked decline. 

The distraction of their cell phones on the desk was like an itch they couldn’t help but scratch. The immediate attraction of a new text message from home or from a friend, or a notification from Facebook or Twitter was too compelling to set aside during note-taking for lectures or lesson activities. 

Their focus was lost for a few minutes each time their phone distracted them with alerts or to be glanced at for updates of any kind. After the smart phone interruption was attended to, the student then mentally returned to the course material. There were now gaps in their learning. Time was lost in the ramping up required to catch up. Multiply this by several times each class period by the majority of students.  The loss in learning was the same as if  a student arrived a few minutes late or left early each class period.  A few minutes may not have mattered, but in the aggregate would come to matter quite a lot. I saw the distractions of a smart phone were a disadvantage that out-weighed its advantages.

 

What Tech Hath Wrought

As exciting as technology has been for me professionally (I am retired from teaching and now I write, shoot and edit videos), there are downsides to what tech has brought us. Like that of my students, I notice my ability to focus is a constant struggle. 

Where was I? Yes. That bad. On the surface, I look steady, reliable and attentive. That’s the front yard. Come see the burning dumpster in the back yard, where half dressed projects prance around teasingly, wagging hands and fingers from their ears, wearing socks that don’t match.

I tried hard to focus and stay on task. I wrote daily to-do lists, practiced mindfulness and meditation, and I read and re-read hundreds of self-help books. Yet, the seductive siren call of the screen beckoned. I stopped to read texts, checked to see if there was a new text or email. I stopped and started my work several times every few minutes. I scanned social media, podcasts, and news sites. Just as for my students, time slipped stealthily away for in-real-life pursuits like face-to-face dinners, face-to-face walks with friends, getting to know more people and learn new things. 

As my hours on social media increased so did my dissatisfaction.  At the end of the day, I felt tired of constantly stopping and starting, setting and resetting my focus. I saw the hours slip away from the day and many of my goals recede further in the distance.

Screens accompany us everywhere we go. They help us get where we drive to, and act as our adjunct brains for learning, work and entertainment. Smartphones have become so familiar we often consider them a natural part of our life and home. But our phones and the platforms they contain are not natural. They are an industry. They offer us entertainment and access to information. They then sell our personal information and preferences to others for their advertising and profit.  It is convenient to the industry that we keep thinking of smartphones as tools we employ, rather than see ourselves as employed (and exploited) by these tools. 

Turning An Ocean Liner

The essays and activities in this book are a result of my efforts to do something constructive about my backyard dumpster fire. I want to transform my dissatisfaction with social media and its impact on the quality of our communication. This e-book is a contribution from a teacher in the frontlines of college teaching, whose boots are worn and muddy. 

My goal is to have us rethink our contract with social media. From my classroom experience, I offer ideas and options to parents of children and teens to help them harness the tools in our purses and pockets.  We can set up guardrails of our own design into place and practice, long before regulatory bodies can climb across lobbyists whose job it is to keep us blissfully unaware of smart phones' adverse effects. 

The time has come for my college classroom to spread its message of empowerment and potential into homes and school campuses everywhere.

It is important for us to study how our tech tools, like all tools, can hurt us and our kids, when they are used without preparation or carelessly. Years from now, we may think of our culture's rapid embrace of smartphones as unfortunate, just as we now think about to the dangerous era of dynamite's early days, or when physicians and surgeons were uninformed about germs and refused to clean their hands before operating on a person. So many avoidable deaths. 

Rethinking our relationship to something as familiar as our technology is easier said than done. For me it's been like turning an ocean liner. It takes focus, time and energy.

 The good news is we are not alone on our journey. More importantly, the prize for our efforts is regaining for ourselves and our loved ones the priceless time and experiences that might otherwise have gone unnoticed in moments of distraction.

Are You New To Media Literacy?

Are You New To Media Literacy?

Ugh. Like many new things, media literacy may be hard at first. It was for me. I had to get used to a new way of thinking about my dear old friends, movies, TV, music and books. I was so used to the idea that these shows, movies and books appeared magically from some other world, like fairies or chariots in the sky from religious scriptures.

Demystifying media was uncomfortable at first, like turning the bright lights on in a dim theater. Dorothy pulling back the curtain on old Oz.  

Here are the tools. Are you ready to get started?

Media Literacy Five Questions

If technology tools like social media are your jam, and you want to take your skills to the next level, media literacy will separate the chimps from the King Kongs. The questions and concepts of media literacy are accessible to most if not all students from middle school and beyond. 

Uncovering layers of meaning in a media message by asking the five media literacy questions can be as exciting as finding buried treasure. As a thinker and a creative artist, media literacy can become second nature to you, and a valuable part of your wheelhouse. It happens with practice and over time. 

Media Literacy Concepts
Try this. Pick any random image or any media message from an online source or from a magazine or book. 
Next, look at the image or media message through the lens of media literacy concepts.
Finally, reflect on what in your opinion works best in the image or media message and why. What made the message effective or not?

We love media. For many, it's the friend who is always there for you. Even if we enjoy the comfort that our old friends provide, it is still important to ask critical questions. Because media is not magic, it is a mega million dollar industry. Being media literate means more than having skills to access, analyze, evaluate and create media messages. Media literacy helps us to see media as a business that trades in our attention to make money.  
Knowing who paid for the message, what its purpose is, what techniques were used to catch our attention, how others might see the message differently, and what lifestyles, values and points of view were included and which were excluded help us to see the message from new perspectives. 

 
The Pay Off Is Worth The Work
In my work with college freshmen, I've found that for most students, becoming media literate requires time and willingness to experiment and play with media literacy questions and concepts. We ask deeper questions as we learn about more about media, its business models, history, and powerful impact it has on our lives. The movie lover directs their first feature length project. The doodler of classroom notebooks completes their first graphic novel. The music buff writes her first song and performs it at a talent show. The dancer becomes the choreographer of a stage production. A pastime turns into a passion, a casual interest into a committed creative journey.

The shift happens over time with playful experimenting. The fairies and chariots in the clouds give way to understanding media and its potential for truth telling or truth shaping. 
This is ultimately the most important gift media literacy offers: Use the questions and concepts to identify and prevent persuasive and powerful messages that don't have our best interests in mind. 
Is that worth the time, effort and adjustments of learning a few key questions and concepts? Absolutely. 
Media literacy and its gifts has been one of my life's most rewarding insights. I've been a lifetime student of media literacy and apply the questions and concepts to  my own video and writing projects. I think it's also influenced me to rein in my social media consumption and spend less time doom scrolling or comparing myself to others.