Memories

Daily Prompt: School’s Out Forever

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

I taught freshman composition at two upstate New York colleges in the early 1990s. My last class met for its final session at the conclusion of the fall 1995 semester, almost 19 years ago. From the start of that school term, I knew that it was going to be my last semester teaching or attempting to teach or calling myself a teacher; of course, two of the three classes that had my name on the syllabus that semester were two of the best groups of students I had ever worked with and almost made me regret my decision to retire at age 27. Almost.

The decision never was mine to make; I was not a good teacher, and I am grateful that I learned this on the sooner side of sooner or later. I am, maybe, an entertaining lecturer and an even better student; as a twenty-something freshman composition instructor, I must have been execrable. It’s too bad that I had barely made the faintest start in my pose as a long-suffering anything by the time it was all over.

But to this day, I have dreams in which I am on an unfamiliar college campus, can not find my classroom, and I have to collect papers to grade or I have grades to deliver to ever un-found students. I had one of those dreams last night, not knowing that the WordPress Daily Prompt for August 27 would ask me, “As a kid, were you happy or anxious about going back to school? Now that you’re older, how has your attitude toward the end of the summer evolved?” Even now, I have these dreams at the start of a school year. Last night I found myself on an unfamiliar campus, in a building much like my high school, a very crowded building in which everyone knew where they were going and I did not. Each classroom I entered was full, in session, and no one was pleased to see me.

(I will not bore you with any further attempt to describe my dream(s); it is a landscape I will not be able to depict well enough for you to envision. As you can tell, if I am dreaming anxiety dreams about school, 19 years after leaving school, my dreams are not interesting.)

It is August 27, so school will be back in session soon, and even though I no longer have a connection with the teaching-learning-educating profession and have no kids to purchase notebooks for, my experience as a teacher obviously left something in my psyche.

I loved school. Rather, I loved to say that I loved school. Summer is not my favorite season of the four to pick from. Growing up, I liked air conditioning, the smell of old books, and being left alone. I liked starting books but not finishing them. Thus, I do not know why no guidance counselor ever said the phrase “Library Sciences” to me; perhaps they did not want to be blamed for anything. (Librarians and copy editors are in two of the most honorable professions, for their silent service to the word and to learning. Moms, teachers, firefighters and police and EMTs all deserve daily thank-yous, but the silent service to education and general smarts provided by librarians and editors is worth extolling.)

August was always the lost month. Anything not accomplished by the start of the school year, which for me meant everything not started at the conclusion of summer—like learn to swim or drive or whistle or learn a trade—well, the time was now! It was the month I learned regret; regret that I had not embraced July while it was mine. It was the month that projects got dropped, only to be found again the following spring. (I am certain that my last letter to a pen pal in Hungary when I was 10 was postmarked in August. Same with another pen pal I half-remember in Scotland.)

September came too quickly, unbeckoned, and yet welcome all the same. The end of August was a frantic anxious, and I was perpetually insolent in pushing my assumption that my parents were not buying me a sufficient quantity of notebooks (“TrapperKeepers”) or the right sized index cards. (Even though I would always come to regret my insistence on 4X6 cards.)

When I started teaching, someone coached me in a visualization practice that I wish I had used in high school: upon learning the location of the class(es) I was going to teach, I would go sit in them (read: trespass) and look at my student roster. The first day of school can be as nerve-racking in its newness for teachers as for students, and in this way, my first day never felt like my first day.

I have many friends who are teachers and my admiration for them grows every year as I read their blog posts about the teaching life. I do not think I missed my calling, but I do remain someone for whom the year still starts in September and ends in June, leaving July to be embraced and August hemmed in by impending September.

Daily Prompt: Thank You, Spalding

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The WordPress Daily Prompt for August 26 asks, “What’s the best (or rather, worst) backhanded compliment you’ve ever received? If you can’t think of any—when’s the last time someone paid you a compliment you didn’t actually deserve?”
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Spalding Gray, 1941-2004

Spalding Gray, 1941-2004

It is one of my favorite star-crush stories, the time I met Spalding Gray. Two friends and I started a theater company in the summer of 1990. Perhaps you have not heard about it; it was kind of not-big deal in Poughkeepsie for almost two weeks in a row. Our endeavor yielded one sell-out performance in the open-air back porch of a bar, a bad review, yet one more (mostly unattended) performance, and a bunch of t-shirts. With grad school beckoning we shut it down, and with time and many residences I lost my only t-shirt and even eventually forgot the name of the “company” we had started.

I found our one playbill at my parents’ house recently. We called ourselves “Fading Gentility,” which is a name some group really ought to be using, as it is a great one; our one play (a one-act that was written by one of us not named me) was titled “The Smoking Car.” Ah, well. Our best work was actually our group-written press release announcing our imminent debut production (the owner of our favorite bar had decided to allow us to try and earn our drinks, which lit a fuse under us)—the three of us took turns writing each sentence under the guidance of a copy of the “I Ching,” just so you know—and that press release got us an interview with our city paper’s entertainment maven. Being featured in the Poughkeepsie Journal’s “Enjoy!” section meant we were either going places, had arrived, or they needed space-filler.

The attention from the local newspaper and our relentless 20-year-oldness landed us a sell-out performance. But one single one-act play that hardly lasts from twilight to night and no other material at all whatsoever will not lead to many drinks or dinners sold, which is the entire point of theater, so we saw few happy returns from the evening.

That same summer, 1990, Spalding Gray was due to appear down the street from our venue, at Poughkeepsie’s historic Bardavon 1869 Opera House. Here was one more opportunity to attract attention for ourselves. Or to speak with an idol. Or to “network” with a theater legend. Or to stare at an idol. His monologue was the first act of a multi-act fundraiser, so after his performance, he was supposed to continue to be available for audience hobnobbing in the lobby, where a temporary bar was set up (the three of us looked at each other and thought aloud, that’s how they do it—even the theaters sell drinks!). We could not, or dared not, get near him.

After the required 20 minutes or so, Gray and his companion, Renee, left the lobby and headed back into the theater. Sometimes one can tell, even in the moment, when something is about to be a memory of a missed opportunity or a genuine, fully realized, missed opportunity. A friend interrupted our gawping from a distance at the famous writer/performer and pushed us towards the door Gray had just walked through. Into the still dark theater we three plunged. I was the only one of us with a loud enough stage whisper: “Spalding!” For some reason, I was calling him quietly, as if he was a cat that had gone hiding. “Spalding? Spalding!”

Spalding Gray stopped and turned. We were all at the front of the house at this point, by the stage. Someone in a position of authority ought to have been there to chase us away, but no one was. “Hi. We’re big admirers and we just wanted to let you know we started a theater company here in Poughkeepsie recently and you are a big inspiration and we just wanted you to have one of our t-shirts.” That all came out as one word, and the way I remember it, each of the three of us contributed at least a couple of syllables to my nervous blast of a star-struck sentence.

Renee reached out a hand and my friend reached under his sweater to pull out the Fading Gentility t-shirt that he had waddled up and smuggled into the theater. She took it and handed it to Spalding. She asked us about the theater scene in Poughkeepsie, something we knew little about, although we were among the leaders of the theater scene in Poughkeepsie that summer. Thus it was a short chat.

Spalding Gray looked at the front of the shirt, the back, the front again, and spoke as if to himself, “I get a lot of t-shirts. People think I like t-shirts. I like t-shirts.” That was all he said to us, though he said it twice. “I get a lot of t-shirts.” Goodbyes were exchanged and we all shook hands.

Many backhanded compliments are statements of plain fact inserted into a conversation at the place where one thinks a reply is required but no compliment is truly possible. Whatever my friends and I desired or rather fantasized would happen from our moment with Spalding Gray—”I must get to know you three. Report to The Wooster Group next week!”—what we got was more valuable: a dose of beautiful reality. “I like t-shirts.”

Matt Coleman, Some Memories

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

I wish you could have known Matt Coleman. Many did, but not enough. There was not enough time. “Matt’s heart was so big, it surrounded him,” one colleague wrote.

I am grateful that I think this about so many people that I have met, those clauses like “You ought to know,” or “You should have met,” but frustrated that I have not said it out loud often enough.

A person’s end should not be what the world knows of them, and three years ago today, August 11, 2011, my friend Matt Coleman was murdered. If you type “Matt Coleman Mendocino,” or variations that include the names of the small towns in that beautiful county in California, you will see some of the eye-catching news headlines from the time. This is because the murder was a national news story for a month, not because of my friend’s prominence, but because his dead-eyed killer shot and killed one other man, and the manhunt that followed in the redwood forest stretched on for 36 days, ending with the shooting death of the murderer. Three families lost loved ones that terrible month: the family and friends of Matt, the family and friends of Jere Melo, and the family of the murderer. The killer suffered from untreated schizophrenia, as it turned out, but this gun-filled story took one more gun to conclude it.

At least one book has been published about the sad tale, told from the point of view of law enforcement. In it, Sheriff Tom Allman of Mendocino County recounts Matt’s memorial service, and it sounds like the memorial was a fitting tribute to the Coleman I knew: “Boats of flowers were floated down Big River and many positive things were said about the deceased. It struck me as very odd that nobody was angry. … I was so struck by the community’s love for Matt Coleman. He had no enemies. As I left, somebody asked me if I thought the killer was at the funeral. ‘I doubt it,’ was my reply.” (From “Out There In The Woods.”) I am certain that the sheriff learned that day something that I believe: That Matt Coleman’s last conscious thought was an offering of love and empathy.

There was sadness at the memorial, I am sure. Despair or anger, no. Matt was a generous spirit and the most generous gift he offered was that all who met him became more generous, too. I believe I have met that quality only once and I realize now how lucky I am for that one moment in time.

Matt was a land steward, a passionate environmentalist who worked for the last six years of his life as coordinator of volunteers for the Mendocino Land Trust, which meant that he knew the forest, knew the ocean, and knew the land between. There are many stories about his 24-hour-a-day dedication to the land and waters, about him stopping whatever he was doing when he would spot an invasive plant species and remove it.

Invasive species or not, Matt was always at his best as a student, learning what brought the species of plant or fish into the part of the world that he was a part of, understanding the natural history, teaching others about humbly understanding. Look at him in this video, shot by Aron Campisano a few years ago as part of a film he is making about invasive species:

Matt loved to teach, he loved to coach, he loved to do; he loved being.

Before Mendocino, there was New Paltz. In my 1990s in New Paltz, New York, Matt Coleman and others (John, Sean, Mat, others like Gerry and Dan) were the big brothers I never had and taught me a lot about being a writer, an actor, and about being a man.

Matt grin

Coleman, mid-grin. This is the look I saw when he threw me over his shoulder.

One day, a few of us were walking as a group up Main Street in New Paltz, and Matt, a bear of a man, slowed his stride—he always walked very quickly and purposefully—and I slowed with him, probably to continue belaboring whatever point I was belaboring. He grabbed me and tossed me over his shoulder like a duffel bag, a bag of me, and took off running. To our eternal comedy credit, we did not break off whatever conversation we were engaged in. The others followed, laughing. I was the one out of breath when he let me down at the top of the hill that is Main Street in New Paltz.

Matt had an extensive collection of books but not in his possession. Upon finishing a book, he gave it away or left it somewhere. More correctly, Matt had an extensive collection of books in his memory banks and he could grab a quote at will. His reading was extensive, legendary among friends, and he never showed it off. He was a journalist and loved great writers like John McPhee, Edward Abbey. If he was a fan of someone, his enthusiasm was total, unembarrassed, and loud. I am certain Elvis Costello heard Matt from inside the Beacon Theater one night while we were waiting to be let in.

He had one of the greatest screams I have ever heard.

coleman roar

Coleman, mid-roar.

While preparing this post, I returned to Gifford Pinchot’s “Eleven Maxims to Guide Foresters.” Pinchot was the first head of the U.S. Forest Service and a two-time governor of Pennsylvania, and his mansion, Grey Towers in Milford, Pennsylvania, is now a historic site. Matt and I visited it once because I lived near it at the time and yet, strange to Matt, had not been to it. I enjoyed the house and its history, and Matt patrolled the grounds; Grey Towers is like a zoo for plant species and Matt impressed the rangers with his practical knowledge. (This is why I thought of Pinchot in connection with Matt.)

Pinchot’s Eleven Maxims are:

1. A public official is there to serve the public and not to run them.

2. Public support of acts affecting public rights is absolutely required.

3. It is more trouble to consult the public than to ignore them, but that is what you are hired for.

4. Find out in advance what the public will stand for. If it is right and they won’t stand for it, postpone action and educate them.

5. Use the press first, last, and all the time if you want to reach the public. Get rid of the attitude of personal arrogance or pride of attainment or superior knowledge.

6. Don’t try any sly or foxy politics, because a forester is not a politician.

7. Learn tact simply by being absolutely honest and sincere, and by learning to recognize the point of view of the other man and meet him with arguments he will understand.

8. Don’t be afraid to give credit to someone else when it belongs to you; not to do so is the sure mask of a weak man. But to do so is the hardest lesson to learn.

9. Encourage others to do things; you may accomplish many things through others that you can’t get done on your single initiative.

10. Don’t be a knocker; use persuasion rather than force, when possible. Plenty of knockers are to be found; your job is to promote unity.

11. Don’t make enemies unnecessarily and for trivial reasons. If you are any good, you will make plenty of them on matters of straight honesty and public policy, and you need all the support you can get.

Matt is inscribed in many of these lines. “Don’t be afraid to give credit … use persuasion rather than force … .” Matt probably quoted these to me at the time, but I did not know. Later that day, we drove north of the Catskill Mountains and a bald eagle swooped at my car. “Dude! Did you see what that was?! How great was that!” It remains my one bald eagle sighting to this day. His voice is pinned to the memory. And many others.

He was “Clawman Treefeller” in our group of friends; he was Coleman; he was a verb (any missing lighter had been “Coleman’ed”); he was Matt.

Matt’s generous spirit, immense playfulness, and epic inquisitiveness brought him from Brooklyn to the woods of Northern California. His humble nature led him not to chase fame or glory but to a life restoring the lands near Mendocino, pathway by pathway. It is that beautiful brief life and that ever-giving, often hilarious spirit that some of us on two coasts celebrate today, August 11, simply because our path crossed his.

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The Community Foundation of Mendocino County established an endowment fund in 2013, the Matthew Coleman Fund for Environmental Education and Conservation. An “endowment fund” is one in which the funds that are donated are not only applied to the cause but are also invested to earn interest and keep the fund alive. Here is a brief video: