effective, organized and lucid: writing present [Incomplete draft]

This post will not appear in the usual unedited (or nearly so) format. Instead, I will write in an orderly fashion, first, about the art of writing as I have learned it; second, about a topic -- not chosen at this moment -- which will illustrate the first section; and third, perhaps a set of verses which will conclude and epitomize this post (hopefully in an entertaining way.)



My understanding of writing and reading go back to the mid-sixties of the 20th century when I was about three years old and began to read street signs and other material to my mother. It is perhaps interesting to note that I did not begin to talk until relatively late, but when I began (according to my mother) it was to speak in complete sentences. Some of my earliest memories include reading books to myself at the age of five or six. The titles of these books were, for example, "I can do anything, almost," "The Golden Book Dictionary," (Illustrated), and of course the tale of The Little Train who Could." Slightly later, around the age of six or seven I began to read science fiction, a broader array of children's, especially boy's books, but also the Beverly Cleary books about ? and her sister, Ramona. By the age of eight, I would check out ten books at a time from the library and read all of them (three at at time) in two weeks. I read Dr. Spock's Baby book two or three times by the age of eight -- so I knew what child raising techniques ought to be applied/were applied to me at the age they were applied. Also Time/Life publications and Reader's Digest were available and fascinated me, along with the World Almanac and of course the Guiness Book of World Records.



I say all this to demonstrate that I was an early and avid reader, of books with rather adult themes, and that my parents very much encouraged me in this, thus influencing heavily the course of my life, not to mention my thought process, my political views, and the course of rebellion and reformation that these led to.



All of this activity happened outside school. But in school, I was just as interested, able and active at least with respect to reading and writing. Now, the time I began school was the late sixties and early seventies, a time of great upheaval around the world. I, however, being on a military base in Southern Arizona, having a conservative NCO for a father and an overprotective mother, missed almost all of this, except in the unavoidable dribs and drabs on the news and such liberalism as popular culture allowed in children's television.



There was also much debate and change in learning to write and read. Phonetic learning was considered radical and dangerously tending to functional illiteracy. Bilingual education was an innovation which many considered threatening, since it tended to legitimize the populations of Mexican and other Spanish-speaking immigrants (and citizens) that were at that time widespread mainly in the Southwest.

The upshot of all this, reader(s), will be that the way I learned to write heavily influenced both my mode of self-expression and also my self-image such that, along with the confusion about reading and writing, there came confusion in my emotions and identity. Each reinforced the other (at some level, obviously.)
Continuation in Next Post

Love,

c*