To My Devils

To my devils.   Why I resist you?  Perhaps my shortest and most important blog post ever.  Go here.

http://bit.ly/XWnUdd

Lehrer Heal Thyself

Lehrer Heal Thyself

I’m trying to IMAGINE how these two pieces fit together.  A Jonah Lehrer apology, http://www.jonahlehrer.com/2013/02/my-apology/  and a piece on my blog about  Jonah Lehrer and an article of his about creativity in the classroom: http://bit.ly/14VfBSV .

Interesting when Lehrer says about creativity, “The danger, however, is that we’re teaching our kids a very narrow and stultifying model of cognition, in which conscientiousness is privileged above all.”  It makes me think of a recent blog piece by Daniel Coyle, “How to Daydream More Effectively”, where he says, “Here’s the takeaway: daydreaming works best when you focus both on the goal and on the obstacles between you and the goal.” I’m working hard to integrate that lesson into my own life. Even as we create, we have to create within boundaries.  Indeed, the boundaries help us become more creative.  It seems to me that Jonah Lehrer lost some focus on the obstacles between him and his goal.  Even the brightest among us can succumb to the shortcut.

Ironically the word Lehrer in German means teacher.  In my estimation Lehrer’s mistakes have something to teach him and us.  I hope, as he sets his new boundaries, his genius, imagination, creativity and hard work will inspire and teach us again.   

David and the Goliaths

Toward the end of last October my son, William, was rushed to the hospital after experiencing cardiac arrest. After six weeks of hospitalization, during which he was in a coma, it became clear that he would remain in a persistent vegetative state. We made the painful decision to remove him from a respirator, and he died within 24 hours. The cause of his cardiac arrest was a heroin overdose.  Most likely heroin foolishly combined with alcohol or benzodiazepines sufficient enough to cause him to stop breathing and reduce the supply of oxygen to his brain long enough to result in devastating brain damage. 

Recently I came across an article in the New York Post by Madeleine Scinto, Inside the Lucrative World of Ecstasy Smuggling.  The article details the manufacture of MDMA in labs hidden in the woods on the east and west coasts of Canada, MDMA being the main ingredient in Ecstasy.  The product is then smuggled into the U.S., where a single dealer, Ragan, grosses up to $45,000 a month for a few hours of work a day selling in New York City.  Ragan works at the end of the line of a $4 million a year business where the middlemen who transport and distribute the drug in the tri-state area gross between $200,000 and $350,00 a month each.

When William died his mother, sister, and I determined to create a fund in his memory “to educate and inform people about drug abuse and its prevention, to provide ever more enlightened treatment for addicts, to help make treatment options for addicts more readily available, and to remove the stain of shame surrounding this disease.”  Friends have been exceedingly generous, and the fund continues to grow.  As donations continue to come in we are encouraged and deeply touched.  I often receive the report of the newest donation and am moved to tears. 

I read about Ragan and her confederates Nick and Chad and am moved to anger. In the two months that our fund in memory of William has been in existence we’ve raised a little more than half Ragan’s monthly gross.  Make no mistake.  Our family is exceedingly grateful for what has been given in William’s name.  My anger and frustration come from the scale of the fight we’re engaged in.  This article happened to be about Ecstasy.  Add to that heroin, cocaine, methamphetamines, pills, plus whatever I’ve forgotten or remain ignorant about.   William, a Manhattanite, spent some time in rehab this past summer in a facility in eastern Long Island.  Nearly all the people he was with were young adults like him, many from Long Island.  One of his biggest discoveries was that the Long Island addicts were getting their heroin via the same supplier, the same brand, stamped and labeled on each ten-dollar bag. Someone who is surely making more than Ragan, Nick and Chad.    

I have no answers.  David against Goliath doesn’t begin to describe our fight.  More like David against Goliaths.  I do know that we remain committed to using whatever resources we can muster: monetary, human, collective and individual – to fight the disease of addiction. 

To read the entire Post article, go here:  http://bit.ly/VshXEX

For information on the Where There’s A Will Fund:  http://bit.ly/TbKu2M

  

Where There's A Will

Where There’s a Will

On December 2^nd, 2012, William Head Williams died as the result of an accidental drug overdose, following a lengthy struggle with addiction.  Through The New York Community Trust, William’s family has established the Where There’s a Will Fund to educate and inform people about drug abuse and its prevention, to provide ever more enlightened treatment for addicts, to help make treatment options for addicts more readily available, and to remove the stain of shame surrounding this disease.  Charitable donations may be made to:

Community Funds, Inc.

fbo The Where There’s a Will Fund

The New York Community Trust

909 Third Avenue

New York, NY  10022

 

My Beautiful Boy

I haven't posted here for quite some time.  From henceforth this blog will include not only my thoughts and observations on creativity and education, but also on issues surrounding drug addiction, which claimed the life of my son, William Head Williams.  A number of people have asked to read the eulogy I offered at his memorial service.  Herewith, what I had to say about my beautiful boy:

Thank you all for being here with us in this elegant, landmark church, in honor of our beautiful son and brother. Thank you to Reverend Douglas Ousley for his counsel and generosity.  Time, because there are so many who have done so much for us and most especially for William; and my memory, which will doubtless falter under stress and cause me to omit an important name; time and memory prohibit me from listing by name everyone who has aided and comforted us in this, our greatest time of need. You are in our hearts.   

A eulogy:  to speak well of a person.  Given my years of encouraging young people to speak well, I pray I may now emulate their success. In offering consolation, many of you have mentioned the inadequacy of words to describe the loss, the frustration, the anger, the heartache, and the grief we all share.  I find myself mired in that inadequacy now.  I resort to three words from the most articulate of all named William….Shakespeare:  “Action is eloquence.” 

But for this moment, at the beginning, as it was in the beginning, the word.  Over 35 years ago, with Doug Ousley presiding, Margot and I exchanged a vow to have and to hold each other…”from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health…” Some among you celebrated with us that day.  Part of the beauty of that vow is the strength and grace Margot has shown in confronting challenges put in our path.  Eloquence in action.  That same vow offered us the opportunity to love and to cherish, not just each other, but also the arrival of two remarkable gifts, Elizabeth Hope Williams and William Head Williams.  Evidence that a vow sincerely honored may yield beauty of the highest order.    

A eulogy: to speak well of a person.  That does not mean exaggeration, to extol a person who never was.  William would abhor the hypocrisy inherent in such embellishment.  William will never become Saint William.  He will remain a young man tormented by the self-doubt, fear, frailty, and fragility that confront us all in some measure.  Try though we might, we will never know the measure of William’s shortcomings.  Nor will we ever know the full measure of William.

To the naming:  William Williams.  People often make fun of the name.  “Who named you that?”  “ Who did THAT to you?”  On the telephone it goes like this:  “Last name….Williams….first name….William…..no, first name….William…William Williams?”  And so it goes. There are many variations on this name game.  Trust me, I’m a veteran player. 

In September of 1946, a short two months after I was born, I received a letter from two relatives, Uncle Jim and Cousin Will French.  They wrote in part:

“Dear William:

This is written to help you to some day recognize your distinction as the Fifth William Williams in direct descent from your great-great-grandfather William Williams, born in Groton, N.Y. on February 20, 1816, just 130 years, 4 months and 22 days previous to your arrival; and further, that while the name of the father of this William was Benjamin, his grandfather was another William Williams, born in Taunton, Mass. on November 11, 1749, who was a soldier in the war of the American Revolution of which it is hoped you will learn much in the future.  Going back to your great-great-grandfather William Williams of Groton it will some day be of interest for you to know that as a young man he taught school in Port Republic N.J. “

So when William’s greeting on his cell phone went, “You‘ve reached William Williams the Seventh, please leave a message”, he wasn’t just being a wise guy, he was correct, or at least cleverly correct.  Of the seven of us, our days, but never our names, have been numbered. 

A eulogy, to speak well of a person.  I’ve too little time to speak of too little time.  Certainly, for much of his time, William was nourished by what we call “The White Diet”.  Yogurt, rice, and pasta; yogurt, rice, and pasta; pasta with butter only.  “What’s for dinner?,” for William meant, what shape was the pasta?  Even now, a quick glance at our cupboard yields spaghetti, medium shells, fusilli, wagon wheels, stelline, medium tubetti, more shells, and rings.  On a family trip to see the World Cup in France in 1998 Margot would carefully instruct waiters to bring the pasta plain, only with butter.  French cooks couldn’t resist a little garnish, perhaps some parsley to enhance the presentation.  William would either pick his way around the parsley contaminated pieces, or we’d send the dish back to be laundered.  A baseball bat given as a Christmas present was engraved “Iron Will”.  Flexibility and William seldom met in a single package. 

One of William’s resolute stances had to do with religion.  He eschewed orthodoxy and authority of any stripe.  On the matter of religion he announced to his family, “I don’t want God at my wedding or my funeral.” Today, we honor that request in the main, albeit here at The Church of the Incarnation.  However, if we’ve disobeyed him ever so slightly, he spent a fair amount of his time disobeying us, ever so slightly.

School upped the ante on disobedience.  Or at the least, resistance.  As those who knew him know, Will did not suffer fools gladly. The older he got, the more he hated school, the more trouble we had getting him there, the more trouble he got into once there.  His list of schools is like the list of pasta in the cupboard.  Varied with lots of twists. William disliked teachers who were in love with their power as opposed to their teaching. There is no short supply of this breed in schools; hence there was no short supply of opposition for him to engage with. School administrators tend to be less subtle about their affection for power.  And, no surprise, less subtlety returned on William’s part.  Once, in sixth grade, a principal called his new student William into his office.  Some other boys had apparently been involved in some prank or malfeasance in the boys’ bathroom.  William, as a bystander, saw it happen.  When pressured for details by the principal, William’s response was, “I know, but I won’t tell you.”  The man was enraged. William stood his ground, not letting the principal intimidate him into ratting someone out. 

His eighth grade year, at the end of the year, at the end of a particularly difficult day, he sat in an orchestra rehearsal. When a teacher chided him for having a button undone on his shirt, he’d had enough. He took the shirt off and when told to leave, did cartwheels out of the room. 

On the other hand, even with minimal schooling, he got a perfect score on one of his college boards, the writing and grammar section.  If he was ever around Margot when she was writing about him on the computer, and saw that she wrote WM as short for William, William would scold her and say, "Mom write the name William out; otherwise you just look LAZY." 

Ultimately the question became not what school was right for William, but whether school was right for William.  Ironically, on the day he died, The New York Times Sunday Styles section ran a cover story on young people who consider college an option, not an obligation.  “…a vanguard, committed to changing the perception of dropping out from a personal failure to a sensible option, at least for a certain breed of risk-embracing mavericks.”  William blazed their trail.  He was in many ways an autodidact. His mother says that sounds pretentious.  Okay, he was self-taught.   He’d spend hours on the computer investigating various enthusiasms. He’d download books on economics.  He subscribed to The Economist. On one car trip Margot slept, I drove, and William listened to a lecture on quantum physics.  By far, his consuming passion was the trading of stocks.  The summer he was seventeen, while peers were struggling with college essays, he wrote an incredibly compelling letter to several trading firms, asking for work, or at the least the opportunity to come in and to learn. In two cases he was invited in for interviews. In each he persuaded successful businessmen to take him on.  One, his first mentor, Rob Falco, joins us today.  By the late fall, as soon as he turned 18, he was trading for real. The boy who couldn’t get out of bed for school, was up and out the door faithfully, returning home late following after hours trading research and review.  Fellow traders nicknamed him “The Filter” for his ability to quickly recognize trading opportunities. He acquired another important mentor, Frank Accardi. He proudly earned his first positive day, his first day in the black; then his first week in the black, than his first month. When he realized his hard work was putting too much money in someone else’s hands, he boldly negotiated better deals for himself and switched firms.  At nineteen, he’d hit his stride.  Trading at home he looked like the commander of some spacecraft, four or five screens flashing away, headphones on talking to other traders, sometimes training newcomers online.

Flush with success, William announced he was going to travel.  Singapore, Thailand, Italy, England….Amsterdam. Then home and insistently off to live on his own.  Boy/man of many talents and passions: trading, hockey goalie, martial artist, mathematics, politics, philosophy, soccer, writing, entrepreneurship, …ladies man.

And then, gradually, trading waned.  Drugs intruded rudely and William went from day trader to trading his days.  It is customary to speak of drug withdrawal as part of one’s recovery.  I think of it differently, withdrawal as the inexorable advance of the disease.  Excessive time spent sleeping with no regard for the natural rhythms of day and night, lack of interest or motivation for former passions, less and less time and contact with friends, lack of concern about personal hygiene, deception to oneself and to others in service of a habit, avoiding engagement with family, outright hostility when confronted.  A retreat from outstretched hands.

I would exchange Withdrawal as we now use it for the term Reentry.  A physically, emotionally, spiritually painful engagement with the world as it is.  A painful engagement with one’s true self.  A process that allows others back into one’s life, truth as a tool, and the recognition that the task cannot be accomplished alone.  William tried.  Part of William’s Reentry included this reflection on “Good Things about Myself” written in a rehab setting.                         

I am handsome/good looking.

                                    I can have a future/my life is ahead of me.

                                    I am a problem solver.

                                    I am gaining back the weight I lost from abusing drugs.

The process of recovery is long and hard.  William’s reentry was partial, denied by heroin’s Siren call.

We have been robbed by a disease called Addiction and its criminal accomplice Heroin. Robbed of playing catch on the lawn, bocce ball, dark humor, cigarettes on the stoop, building with Legos, fierce and courageous loyalty to friends, right on the money analysis of people, situations and numbers, snow forts, a flash of the pads for a save, and the sweetness, strength, inspiration, and love of William.  

So now, more than thirty-five years since we first made a vow in front of Doug Ousley, Elizabeth joins Margot and me in this pledge to William in front of you all:  We promise to do everything in our power to educate and inform people about drug abuse and its prevention, to provide ever more enlightened treatment for addicts, to help make treatment options for addicts more readily available, and to remove the stain of shame surrounding this disease.  We ask you all, as witnesses, to give us the same kind of strength and support you have so lovingly offered over the last several weeks, as we strive to honor our word.  Action is eloquence.

Where There’s a Will

Through The New York Community Trust, William’s family has established The Where There’s a Will Fund to educate and inform people about drug abuse and its prevention, to provide ever more enlightened treatment for addicts, to help make treatment options for addicts more readily available, and to remove the stain of shame surrounding this disease.  Charitable donations may be made to:

Community Funds, Inc.

fbo The Where There’s a Will Fund

The New York Community Trust

909 Third Avenue

New York, NY  10022

    

  

Summer Reading

I recently received the following e-mail from a former teaching colleague of mine.  “While hanging out at the pool, I have been doing my summer reading requirement and have actually been profoundly moved by the book I am reading and immediately thought of you and wondered if you have read it as well. It is A New Culture of Learning, Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change by Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown. It is all about the notion of play as the new way kids learn in the digital world. It is amazingly concise, organized and has tremendous clarity about the importance of play as the best way to learn and how it is happening - cannot be avoided; we will be left behind if we don't embrace it. You probably know all about it but I thought I would mention it in case you had not come across it yet. Plenty of good references within the book to other sources and writers on related topics as well.”

It so happened I’d been reading the book myself and also found it compelling. Though not, strictly speaking, a book about school reform, I think my friend is correct in assessing we will be left behind if we don’t embrace the importance of play in learning. 

I find it ironic that a book about the importance of play is required faculty reading.  To be fair, this book was an option among several titles faculty were asked to choose from. I can understand a need for some common ground for opening of school year faculty discussions.  Still, there is a sense in the assigning that things will fall off the rails, wind up going nowhere, unless someone at or near the top of a hierarchy determines what will be read, maintains some control. It is the element of control that bothers me.  It is as if whoever assigned the book never read the book, or never really quite got it. 

I’ve sat through some of those return-to school-meetings where everyone has had to read and then sits in small groups to discuss the assigned material. The grousing, lack of engagement, and resistance, are palpable.  Of course, in a few days, those same teachers will turn to assigning their students reading. And a few days after that begin to fret over students’ lack of engagement.  Does anyone make the connection?

What if the administrator who assigned the reading had instead simply posed a question or two?  Set a problem for colleagues to wrestle with. Something like, “What is the role of play in learning at our school?  What might it be?  What should it be?”  Then invited faculty to read, discuss, research, ponder, and play, with the question.  Perhaps have the school’s tech people set up an online forum where people could compare notes, mention books and articles they’ve read, YouTube videos (There are some good ones on the topic, including this one by John Seely Brown: http://bit.ly/Vvyed), questions they’ve been asked at a wedding reception, play they’ve engaged in, anything. Create the possibility of a networked discussion throughout the summer (thus avoiding summer learning lag for teachers) that could continue through and beyond the opening of school.  Allow people to contribute anonymously if they so chose.  Such networked collaboration might even lead to the question, “What do we do about the role of play in our school? “  That question invites the possibility of growth and change.   Unless, of course, growth and change wasn’t part of the agenda to begin with.  Unless, no one wants to hear too much of what teachers think about how the school might operate.  Then, assigning a book makes perfect sense.

"The child stayed with the man."

I have been reading and rereading James Gleick’s elegant book, The Information.  It is the story of the development of information technologies as they have advanced over the course of history, from early alphabets through telegraph, telephone, radio and on up to the digital Information Age we live in now.

Until reading the book I was unaware of Claude Shannon, best know as “the father of information theory.”  It takes a book the scope of Gleick’s to properly describe and credit Shannon: electrical engineer, mathematician, cryptographer, author of a master’s thesis Howard Gardener called “possibly the most important, and also the most famous, master’s thesis of the century.”  The range and wealth of Shannon’s work is astounding. 

One thing I find especially noteworthy about this brilliant man is his sense of play.  He was a lifelong tinkerer.  His interests were as varied as juggling, chess, and unicycling.  He invented all sorts of devices for fun: a robot mouse that could learn to solve a maze, a motorized pogo stick, an early computer chess program, a device to solve Rubik’s cube. 

An interesting YouTube video on Shannon can b found here:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2Whj_nL-x8

Gleick writes about him:  “A curious child in a country town in the 1920’s might naturally from an interest in the sending of messages along wires, as Claude Shannon did in Gaylord, Michigan.  He saw wires every day, fencing the pastures – double strands of steel, twisted and barbed, stretched from post to post.  He scrounged what parts he could and jerry-rigged his own bard-wire telegraph, tapping messages to another boy a half mile away.  He used the code devised by Samuel F. B. Morse.  That suited him. He liked the very idea of codes – not just secret codes but codes in the more general sense words or symbols standing in for other words or symbols.  He was an inventive an playful spirit.  The child stayed with the man.  All his life, he played games and invented games.  He was a gadgeteer.  The grown-up Shannon juggled and devised theories about juggling.  When researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or Bell Laboratories had to leap aside to let a unicycle pass, that was Shannon.  He had more than his share of playfulness…”

“The child stayed with the man.”  My concern is that in and out of school the child and the man get separated.  We don’t give the child enough time to play, time to exercise the imagination.  Nor do we encourage the practice of play in adults.  We don’t reinforce the value of play.  As Sir Ken Robinson says, “We don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it.  We get educated out of it.”  Claude Shannon was a special intellect, to be sure.  But he grew up in conditions that fertilized that intellect with play.  My concern is that conditions of the sort that nurtured Shannon are increasingly rare for today’s children.  Where and how do our children get to exercise their imagination? Hands on experience with imagination.  We must never forget the value of play.