Wisdom Wednesday: Richard Wright Edition

Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread. –Richard Wright

Fox’s Game Chapter 5

An Economist Goes Discount Dress Shopping

Alyssa Morell drove slowly behind the young man walking in front of her. His crisp white shirt and black pinstripe pants indicated that he had money. He was too good looking and too confident not to be a player. The care-free way he spoke on his phone indicated He was neither worried about time nor aware of her presence. The lights in his white convertible BMW flashed as he shifted the bags in his hands. It was at this moment he noticed her. He looked into the windshield of her Camry and saw an attractive woman. He smiled and tried to wave, juggling the items in his hands. She smiled but did not wave. She wanted his parking spot, not his phone number.

As a woman in the field of Advanced Analytics, she was used to commanding attention with her confidence and intensity. She was also attractive, which helped, but she was well aware that relying on beauty when trying to gain respect hurt more than helped.

As an undergrad at the University of Maryland, she understood that if she wanted to compete in a field dominated by men that she would have to be as aggressive in the classroom as she was on the soccer field. Her tenacity earned her a scholarship. And she knew that the traits developed on the field were transferrable to her future career. She’d maintained the smooth movements and lithe frame of her sports days. But she knew her looks would only be an advantage if she could demonstrate her intelligence. One way she knew to do this was to infuse her writing and conversations with an apt quote, a relatable anecdote, or little known fact that could illustrate the point she was making.

Morell wanted to reflect technical expertise and polymathic learning. Her beauty and personality disarmed people, her intelligence kept them off balance. For instance, she would quote from King Lear “Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy laws / My services are bound” during a discussion on the Bayesian worldview. She enjoyed even more watching a surprised colleague nod solemnly in hopes of seeming like he was aware of the Shakespearean line.

Her dark brown hair that went just below her shoulders and well-toned frame complimented her business casual fashion sense. Her pencil skirts, high heels, and well-pressed shirts drew the attention of males invested in their libidos. As one colleague said, “It’s not that we think we have a shot with her or even want to. It’s just good to have someone nice to look at.” Many female colleagues viewed her with a begrudging ambivalence. It seemed unfair that a woman could have good looks, social adaptability, and be able to achieve success in a man’s world. She represented that which was good about the 21st century woman. But it was too easy to think, “why her and not me.”

Morell enjoyed shopping because it was economics at its most obvious level. The mall added an extra level of interest because, unlike grocery shopping, you dealt exclusively with luxury items. Yes, shoes and clothes were necessary, but when you went to the mall to get things, you were shopping for more than just necessities. Even when you went for value, it was a value relative to your class standards, not the type of value that the truly poor must consider.

As she walked through Green Hills Mall—the mall centered in the area of Nashville that melded old money and new—she couldn’t help but think about how financial economics was an odd art that blended the certitude of numbers with the unpredictable psychology of humans. For example, she new that she didn’t need a new outfit for this faculty party she was invited to, but she felt compelled to get one. The confidence she would have wearing something she’d just bought was worth paying for. And if that confidence could help make a stronger impression, then what she bought was a valuable investment. But how much worth does that investment have?

After a quick walk through at Express, she decided that if she were buying something special for a specific event, she should invest more. She could get a new outfit there for $30. But she felt she needed to pay more. She walked past Juicy Couture without even glancing towards it because a new outfit would cost $300 on sale. That was too much. She knew she needed something between $30 and $300. The difference, that middle ground, reflected consumer surplus. Her goal was to get as close to $30 as possible while trying to find an outfit that they could have sold for $300. The clothing stores wanted the inverse, to get her as close as possible to $300 for something they could have sold for $30.

This type of cost-value analysis applied to many situations, from dating to drafting a football team. Most of her friends enjoyed the chess match of maximizing profits while minimizing labor. This is what frustrated her about her field of study. So many women found interest in the theoretical aspects of economics, especially when it came to spending money. But men overwhelmingly dominated the field. She knew this stemmed from an antiquated notion that women couldn’t do math. Obviously, some men also shied away from economics for the same reason. But the point was that the building blocks shouldn’t scare you away from the actual building. For instance, learning to read is hard, but once you learn, the work is worth it.

Morell shook those thoughts from her mind in order to focus on the economics at hand. She walked into Ann Taylor Loft not knowing what she was looking for but conscious she’d know it when she found it. She perused the sale items noting they reflected an excess of supply and that companies lowered the prices in order to avoid a complete profit loss. It was the closest a consumer could get to taking advantage of the companies.

Even with a sale Ann Taylor Loft made profits many times the cost of the clothing sold. Morell spotted a black skirt-white blouse out. She recognized it from the spring catalogue and noticed there was no price tag. She shrugged, walked to the changing rooms, and tried it on. Morell liked the color black because of its simplicity. The higher up you go, the less you needed to say. But she knew a powerful woman dresses her pay. A man could wear a Hawaiian shirt to a business meeting. A woman could not.

The girl working the register rang it up as $140. Morell blinked in disbelief, “Excuse me, there must be some sort of mistake. This item’s on sale, right?”

“No ma’am. It’s $140, full price. Now, will you be paying with cash or a card?”

Morell’s eyes narrowed. She examined the girl, a blonde close to her in size but whose frame, Morell figured, was due more from genetics than Division I college sports.

“What size do you wear?” Morell demanded.

“I’m sorry?” the worker said.

“Your size. Are you size 4 like me? About 115 pounds?”

“I…Yes…No…It depends. Why do you even care?”

“You said this outfit was full price. But all the other items I saw in the spring catalogue were in the front of the store on the sales rack. If this skirt and shirt combo were so popular that it were still full price, you would have more than one in this size. Your boss–I’d like his or her name by the way—would have them overstocked like the rest of the outfits in that area of the store.

Large, successful companies are in the business of overestimating demand, not underestimating it. The profit in selling the outfit is so much greater than the cost to make it, it only makes sense to order too much than not enough, especially for a place like. If it were popular enough to re-order, it’d be popular enough to over-order. My guess is that you wanted the outfit for yourself.

Maybe someone returned this earlier today. Anyway, you saw it on the sales rack, which means once you used your employee discount, you would be buying it for less than a quarter for what it was worth. Because of that, your manager–I’m still waiting for you to give me that name by the way—probably didn’t want you reserving it for yourself. If that outfit made it to the end of the day, it was yours. But you had a feeling it wouldn’t. So you decided to hide it and ‘punish’ anyone who bought it by making them pay full price. C’mon. Am I right or am I right?”

The girl stared at Morell as if the professor had just juggled fire.

“L-l-l-ook,” she stammered. “I…uh…am sorry. Let’s not make a big deal of this.”

Her hands shook as she scanned the tag and $70 appeared on the register. The girl typed for a few moments and then $45 appeared. “Wow…ha…bigger sale than you thought, right? Forty-five dollars.”

Morell saw the girl couldn’t be older than 20. And something about her nervousness and disappointment reminded the professor of her struggling undergrads, “Look, you don’t have to do that. I just–”

“I know. I want to. I don’t know who you are. But that was amazing. My name’s Jessie. How’d you do that?”

“I’ve got a PhD in Economics. That’s the study of how everything flows: money, information, ideas, everything. It’s a good field of study. Lots of jobs, lots of opportunities. There’s some math, but nothing you can’t handle if you work at it. You should think about it. We could use more women.”

“I don’t know…School…I don’t really…”

“My name’s Alyssa Morell. Here’s my card. Think about it. If you change your mind, we can talk.”

Jessie nodded slowly as she read it. Morell checked her watch. “Look, Jessie I gotta go. Thanks for the discount. Hopefully, I’ll see you later.”

Morell exited the store and got in her car. She sighed as she realized the irony of wanting to buy an outfit to increase her confidence when it was her confidence that saved her over $100.

Fox’s Game Chapter 4

Dr. McDonough and the Art of Memory

Vanderbilt Library

Dr. Robert McDonough sat in a cramped college library cubicle crouched over microfilm, struggling to make sense of the Greek manuscript under the scope. He winced while shifting his weight, and for the first time, he noticed how sweaty he was.

But all this: the heat, the sweat, the sore bones were a minor distraction. He read on, stopping only to calculate the myriad English translations that could be inferred from the Greek phrasing. He typed quickly into his laptop before returning to the microscope. The ancient writing juxtaposed well with the modern technology.

As a classics professor at one of America’s elite universities, McDonough was aware that the work in front of him could either justify months of research or could lead to a dead end. There was no way to know other than to formulate a theory and assume it to be true until evidence proved otherwise.

This was the life of a scholar. Long periods spent alone in deep concentration, working on a project that may or may not come to fruition. Too often television made college professors appear as if they wrote incomprehensible symbols on a white board until they brilliantly made some connection between the theoretical world they were a part of and the reality in which they lived. Real scholarship was slower and played less well on camera. Real research did not so easily lend itself to attractive actors with impeccable hairstyles wearing tailor-fitted sports coats.

McDonough was a scholar of the poet Simonides, the inventor of memory. According to legend, Simonides attended a banquet where he was called outside by two young men. Just as he left, the structure collapsed, killing everyone inside. Simonides used his memory to identify all the dead bodies. The techniques he used to remember the names and seating arrangements of the other guests became the foundation of linking and imaging. Though probably untrue, it encapsulated everything McDonough believed about the nature of learning.

A story existed that reflected a larger truth. That story was grounded in reality—Simonides almost surely existed—yet it had elements of myth, the young men were reputed to be gods. And from that myth-based truth, information sprang forth and could be augmented. Mastering this ancient memory system, one could theoretically learn anything. And here’s where the nature of learning became complicated: learning and memorizing are related, but one does not necessarily lead to the other.

Simonides was a poet. This told McDonough that there is a creative element to true learning, that when you really make knowledge part of you by linking it with that which you’ve already learned, you’re not simply storing information so that it can be pushed out at a later date by newer information. You are gathering information and contextualizing it in such a way that it becomes knowledge. Consciously creating a memory is an imaginative process.

And McDonough looked to make sense of this knowledge paradox. He had devoted his professional life to understanding how the Ancients used story and memory to make sense of the world. In his own way, sweating in a hot, wooden, undersized study area he was doing what Simonides did over two millennia ago–he was using myth, memory, and imagination to illuminate something that is both ancient and new, something both in plain sight but not quite seen.

McDonough’s studies took him to a fringe sect of learning. He often found himself reading Medieval tracts on alchemy or witchcraft. This was another paradox of education: too often truth took heretical turns. Sitting in the comfort of the 21st century with over a 1,000 years of enlightenment and scientific exploration providing comfort, it was easy to see how an 8th century druid could find himself chasing ancient secrets that revealed themselves to be nothing but ancient hoaxes. The question he constantly asked himself was how would future generations view my work?

Would they feel an amalgam of pity and frustration when reading my writing? Would they see how he sees now that so many men wasted their best years uncovering secrets that didn’t exist? It’s one thing to be limited to the knowledge of your age because much can still be learned from it. Yet to be limited by your own blindness is another.

McDonough wanted future gatekeepers of knowledge to read his research and not be led down a sterile path of barren knowledge. Of course, he couldn’t predict what future generations would discover.

His ability to observe and remember was developed over time through practice that most anyone could do with a few trips to the local library. One could argue that memory was the first art, that without it we have no history, no sense of being upon the backdrop of time. He loved that he practiced and preserved an art that erodes just a little bit more with each passing generation.

But the confidence of memory leads to other thoughts. McDonough understood that nearly all learning is available to an organized mind. He wondered what ancient secrets that are being forgotten, or worse, already forgotten. The inkling of this thought made him wonder if the occult has treasures that have been obscured by too much comfort and common sense.

As McDonough typed, he noticed that his watch read 4:44. He’d been at the library for 3 hours since lunch and scarcely noticed. He often fell into a deep concentration that thinned out time.

McDonough collapsed on his couch and turned to CNN while he sorted through papers on his coffee table. He reminded himself that every piece of paper on his desk was a decision he hadn’t made

His mind and office were orderly. His home wasn’t. He took pride in knowing that he was not the only intellectual whose exterior messiness was incongruent with his internal efficiency. One of his heroes, Dr. Samuel Johnson, the man credited with the Oxford English Dictionary, was notoriously slovenly. Although McDonough knew he didn’t reach Johnson’s level of eminence, he comforted himself in knowing that he also didn’t reach his level of hygienic negligence.

The buzzing of his cell phone interrupted his thinking. He scrolled to his email app and saw it he’d received a message from Benjamin Hoek. “I just saw him today,” he thought.

Dr. McDonough:

You are cordially invited to a get together this upcoming Tuesday evening. I must warn you that this is not just for social reasons but for work as well. Don’t get me wrong: a Cajun-themed dinner will be served followed by a variety of desserts. But the purpose of the meeting is to discuss a new research committee upon which I hope you will consider serving. I shall provide greater detail on the responsibilities (and incentives) on the 18^th. I sincerely hope you will consider.

Sincerely,

Dr. Benjamin Hoek
Full Professor, School of Journalism
Vanderbilt University

McDonough hated sacrificing his Tuesday nights because that’s when he met with a group of friends for role playing games and logic puzzles. Like parents who hire a babysitter so they can leave the house, his friends gave him the opportunity to be more than just a scholar and teacher.

He considered inventing some excuse. But snubbing a superior in a social situation could result in a denied favor later on. McDonough’s motivations for attending went beyond office politics. Though his living room didn’t reflect it, he viewed himself as a professional who adhered to the etiquette and expectations of his career field.

As he typed his response, he wondered allowed, “who else was asked to be on this committee?”

He knew his book Mentalists and Magicians: A Brief History of Memory Tricks and Mental Games put him in the upper tier of the campus faculty pecking order. He didn’t care enough to call around. Instead, he focused on what was the Dean meant by “Cajun-themed dinner.” As a Louisiana kid who grew up on crawfish and gator, he’d learned to lower his standards whenever he heard that word used outside of his home state.

Fox’s Game: Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Email From an Old Friend

May 15^th

West End Apartments,

Hillsboro Rd

 

Tiffany woke up and glanced sleepily at her tear-stained pillow and shut her eyes. She somehow felt numb and angry. Her iPhone began playing a fast-paced Tink Tinks song, which she skipped, preferring a slow moving Civil Wars ballad.

She lurched half awake to the kitchen and started the Keurig. She cleared away her roommate’s dirty plates off the coffee table and set her laptop in their place. She began her day the way she began most days: devouring the news. She watched the local news on tv while reading about world and national events online. She would begin by scanning Huffington Post then Politico and finally NPR, clicking on and reading articles whose titles seemed interesting, except this time, she couldn’t do it. Less than a minute passed before she shut off the tv and closed her computer. Nashville was teeming with reporters from all over the world, and she was stuck at home unable to do anything but watch others do well what she could do better. She fought the tears that built up, but on this day, they were like everything else that was beyond her control.

Vanderbilt University

Dr. Benjamin Hoek sat in his office at Vanderbilt’s Business College reading as much as he could about the shooting that occurred less than five miles from where he sat. As a well-traveled journalist, he knew every news story had an information ceiling. If he read enough articles and watched enough television, he would know as much as was possible to know short of having an inside source. He believed he’d reached that point.

He called a few of his friends from the local media, but they had yet to return his messages. After working as chief editor at The Tennessean, he also knew that any Metro police officer who had real information would be too busy to talk. He had no reason to contact anyone other than to satisfy his own curiosity. And that wasn’t a good enough reason for him to interrupt someone from doing her job. In his decade as a college professor, he rarely missed the grind of journalist life. He could still write and travel, but he didn’t have to worry about the deadlines, conflict, and general headaches that came from having to produce a new news story. Today was an exception. He felt like a former athlete whose competitive juices coursed through his veins on game day but who could only sit and watch since the sport had passed him by.

Nowadays, the columnist-turned scholar received his journalistic excitement vicariously through his students—smart, idealistic, hopefuls ready to change the world with their words. He loved watching them with their iPads and Twitter pages. Their everyday tools would have been sci-fi inventions when he was their age. Yet the basics of good journalism had not changed. The best of his students could have covered Vietnam with him in the ‘60s using only a notepad and a pencil. And the worst will have left journalism in less than five years no matter what technology they had access to.

He glanced at his watch and headed to class when his office phone rang. He hesitated. He hated being late to class. Timing is more important in some careers than others, but in media, it’s as important as any. He wanted to set the example. But he also taught that every rule has its exceptions. And today he’d be invoking the time honored college rule that the professor can’t be late; class didn’t start until the teacher arrived.

“Hello?”

“Dr. Hoek?”

“Umm…Yes?”

“Tiffany Saunders. Remember me?”

“Ah! Tiffany! How are you, ma’am?”

“Uh…not so good. Do you have a moment?”

He glanced at his watch again. He knew what that type of question meant. He placed the receiver on his shoulder and thought. All Tiffany heard was three seconds of quiet. But those three seconds will tell you all you need to know about teaching.

Hoek turned his head towards the door. “Debbie, I need you to cancel my class for the day. Tell them I will post a write up online of what we were going to discuss in class. And remind them to read that as well as the next chapter in the textbook.”

“What’s wrong? Are you okay?” Hoek asked.

“Yes, I…I think I’m going to get fired. I just don’t know what to do.”

“Just relax and tell me what happened.”

Dr. Hoek listened quietly.

“I’m not sure what advice to give, but while I think on that, let me offer some words of comfort: you’re gonna be fine. If they really wanted to fire you, they would’ve done it. Like most things in life, it’s a test. They don’t know they’re testing you, but they are. If you respond well, you’ll be fine.”

“What do you mean by respond well?”

“Find something no one else has found. If not, admit you were wrong and offer another story that’s different from but related to this Harvel situation, something that reminds them of it.”

“Like a peace offering?”

“Tiffany, you have a way of phrasing things that I do not. Yes, like a peace offering. That way, you show them you’ve been working hard and even though you don’t have what they were looking for, you have something to show for it.”

“I think I can do that.”

“Of course you can. And if you can’t…well plenty of fine journalist have been fired. You’ll be neither the first nor the last.”

“Thank you,” she said. “When do you think I should stop working on the primary story and begin doing the peace offering?”

“That, Ms. Saunders, I can’t tell you.”

She could hear the smile in his voice, and it made her smile. “Okay Dr. Hoek, I’ll get to work. Thanks for everything.”

“Just pay it forward to someone else.”

Dr. Hoek hung up the phone. He knew these situations were often dead ends. The more media pursuing a story, the less likely one would break through with an original angle. It required investigative reporting that would take more than the two weeks allotted her. Hoek knew that Tiffany understood this; the key would be how she would go about solving a seemingly unsolvable problem. The experience she’d gain from this would come from the way she went about finding the answer—not the answer itself.

Tiffany re-opened her laptop and went to her notes. She double-checked the sources she’d used to write her original production piece. She found nothing that would led her to alter her original approach. She then spent the next two hours online reading anything she could find on the story. She turned on her tv, but it was the same as what she’d just read. Given the repetitiveness of the CNN crawl and the unoriginal words of the pundits, she began to doubt the usefulness of her career. Maybe she’d be more effective in a field less inundated with information. It’s like if you weren’t there to break the story, you’re relegated to regurgitating the words of those who broke the story.

She occasionally wrote a featured blog for Channel 4’s website, but that was only when a contrarian thought struck her. Most of the time, she focused on making the shows she produced run so smoothly that she could navigate the studio blindfolded and know where everyone would be and when.

She enjoyed writing, but her words were used to sell already known information, not make something new. She walked to her bookshelf, hoping the wood of the shelf held knowledge inside the wood of the pages. She kept Strunk and White’s Elements of Style for technical writing advice. But what about creative? She decided to start with Stephen King’s On Writing.

She read about how when completing The Stand King overcame the one and only time he had writer’s block by simply going for a walk, she saw the implications of his words. It wasn’t about the walk, it was about getting away from his routine so that his mind could get out of whatever track it’d been trapped in. But how could she do this? She had to laugh at the irony of brainstorming about how she should brainstorm.

Tiffany often went for runs to reset her mind, but this was something different. The idea of calling Dr. Hoek again wasn’t a real possibility. The man had things to do. And besides, one of her strengths was her ability to work independently. She couldn’t simply go back to him, at least not yet.

Or could she? What if she called because she was wondering how best to take a different approach to the problem? Maybe he could put her in touch with a writing professor who could provide her a different narrative angle. It was worth trying.

She decided to email instead:

Dr. Hoek,

Sorry to bother you again. But what do you think of this: I get with a literary professor and attack the story from a non-journalistic perspective while, of course, following journalism law and etiquette. Maybe I can tell the same story in a different way. A new perspective can be the same as new information, right?

Just curious,

Tiffany

With the uncharacteristic free time from his canceled class, Hoek decided to grab a leisurely lunch down the street at Nöshville, his favorite deli where he could enjoy what he boasted was the best sandwich in the city: the open-faced brisket with gravy. The New York style deli had much in common with the Midtown section of town where it was located. Midtown Nashville is the section between Broadway and Music Row where local Nashvillians go for an evening out. Like much of the music industry that drives its parent city, Nöshville has out-of-town roots but is a fixture in the Music City.

On a given day, one could find music execs networking at a table beside Vandy students discussing feminist theory while young adults ate heartily in anticipation of a long night of drinking. The eclectic mix belied the homogenous country stereotype associated with Nashville, or any city known primarily for one thing.

While standing in line, Ben noticed Dr. Robert McDonough, professor of the classics. The two exchanged a friendly nod because they’d seen one another around campus. But they weren’t friends. In fact, Ben only remembered his name because when he saw Robert’s name and picture on the faculty website, he couldn’t help but think that the man looked like a Robert. Though they’d never spoken, their reputations garnered mutual respect. One student even remarked that Robert reminded her of a younger, taller, hairier version of Hoek. He assumed it was a compliment, but you could never be sure with students.

He returned to his office and was surprised to find a message from Tiffany so soon after speaking with her. He clicked on it and unwrapped his sandwich while reading.

He finished his sandwich, rubbed his hands with sanitizer, and responded:

Tiffany,

I think a different direction sounds great. But what’s your end game? Are you changing angles with the Harvel story, or are you going with the “peace offering?” If you’re looking for someone to give you writing ideas like some sort of talisman, you could be heading in the wrong direction. But if you’re looking for a new way to see the story, then I think you’re walking down the right path. I have someone I could contact, although I don’t know him too well. But you want to make sure that you have a clear direction first.

Sincerely,

Dr. Benjamin Hoek

He pressed send and listened to a podcast about the 50^th Anniversary of the Kennedy Assassination. Ben thought about that day in school. Some of his teachers were crying, some were actually smiling. He remembered how distrusted and even hated Kennedy was during his life. Now it seemed as if he were universally beloved. Surely, some of those who were glad he was dead are still alive?

He thought of how Kennedy’s assassination changed the way Americans viewed conspiracies in general and government trust specifically. Ben believed that the seeds of Woodward and Bernstein’s Watergate investigation on Nixon could not have been possible without the incessant coverage of Kennedy’s death. It seemed as if the more time that passed, the more layered the narrative, making the information of the actual events less clear.

Ben couldn’t help but think about how we know the Zapruder Film was edited before getting released to the public. Ben chuckled at the thought of something like that happening today. Camera phones and websites have made controlling something like Babineaux’s death virtually impossible. Any 2013 official version would have even less teeth than any “official” Kennedy Report. He rethought his advice to Tiffany. Perhaps a clear direction wasn’t the best direction. If you’re a conspiracy theorist, you’re going to see a conspiracy. If you’re rightwing you’ll see it as an attack on American safety, if you’re leftwing you’ll see it as an attack on progressive America. Either way, you will see what you want and report from there.

Perhaps what Tiffany needed was help developing a narrative direction. But she would need a non-conventional way of seeing the ordinary.

She needed someone to help her understand it in a new way. But to do that effectively in this blogosphere world, she would need more than “someone.” She’d need multiple someones so that she could create a pastiche of viewpoints threaded together by a consistent narrative.

Haiku Thursday: National Poetry Day

Fun coincidence:
#nationalpoetryday
meets #haikuthursday

#haikuthursday #nationalpoetryday

Haiku Thursday: “White-Out”

Ashley, you can’t just

white-out the test questions you

don’t want to answer…

#haikuthursday #examweek #test #britishliterature #britlit