rebeccakuder

Stammering on NPR

This is not a photo of my actual car.

Has anyone else noticed that either NPR is now intentionally hiring broadcasters who stammer, or broadcasters are deliberately mimicking Terry Gross?  Or worse, World Cafe’s David Dye?

I have nothing against Terry Gross, in fact, I love “Fresh Air.”  Back in college, I remember listening to “Fresh Air” (usually on road trips in my 1967 Plymouth Valiant) and the way Terry Gross said, “From WHYY in Philadelphia, I’m Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air” made me believe that not only did she have the best job in the world, but she relished simply saying the words.  I still dream of being on her show some day.  Her stammer has always sounded natural, quirky, and endearing.  And her interviews!  She can make utterly uninteresting topics fascinating.  And clearly, she listens to the people she is interviewing.

I wonder about David Dye.  He stammers, too, but also fawns, and generally, while the music was once interesting (I’m thinking back to the 1990s), these days, I find it incredibly watered down to a bitter, weak tea.  There are exceptions, but usually I am lulled into a stupor by the mediocrity in his musical choices.  (Dangerous when driving.  And probably a reflection on what fits in the uninventive AAA format of radio in 2010.  cc: Elvis Costello.)  What bugs me the most about David Dye, though, is how he doesn’t even seem to be listening to what his interviewers are saying, but instead reading and preparing to ask the next question.  I can’t recall him switching gears, or probing deeper.  There is an art to the interview (as Terry Gross and her fans know) and David Dye seems more interested in flattering his guests than getting into real conversations.  And in style, I have long wondered about him: whether, when he interviews people, he is copying the cadence of Terry Gross, hoping some of her talent will rub off on him by association.

Then there’s Ira Glass.  I rarely get to hear This American Life, but when I do, I’m usually completely engrossed after a few moments.  Ira Glass stammers a bit, but it sounds genuine, usually at times when he’s baffled by some bizarre aspect of humanity.

But for a long while, I’ve noticed others on NPR stammering.  Stammer is cropping up in serious political interviews on All Things Considered.  And even on the weekends, there is an increase in stammering.

Here’s my thesis, based on a plethora of very exacting scientific research (ahem).  Maybe since George W. Bush’s “beer buddy” image of the 2000 Presidential election, NPR, and the rest of the friendly U.S., wants to feel more folksy, more disarming.  It’s human to stammer.  We all do it. (Henry James might be the one exception.  He was a stutterer, and as a child, he became used to drafting sentences in his head before he spoke them.  Ultimately, this, along with wrist problems, led to him dictating his writing to a typist.)

I do wonder if NPR is coaching their people to do this intentionally. “Listen to Terry, listen and learn!  She knows!” Human Resources might say to new hires.

rebeccakuder

The logical vs. the expected

Someone very smart just articulated something I needed to hear.  In the context of writing fiction, specifically, world-building, there’s a need to embrace the logical, but move away from the expected.  For instance, if your novel is placed along a river, in a very dry climate, there would be trees there, or if not trees, an explanation of what happened to them.  Logical, both in nature, and in the context of the world being created.  But when a writer is deciding which of two characters named Anton (“Anton the Elder” and “Anton the Younger”) should quit a carnival due to fickle working conditions, the expected would be the younger leaving.  Youth has more energy and less patience, right?  But why can’t Anton the Elder leave?

So I decided he did leave.  In my world, age has more wisdom and less capacity for bullsh*t.

rebeccakuder

The beginning of empathy?

My daughter, who is two-and-a-half, is developing a habit of hugging books.  When we’re reading a story and someone gets hurt, or might be scared, or sad, she embraces the book for a long moment.  When Madeline gets her appendix taken out, or when Sal loses her tooth (One Morning in Maine) and makes a bitter face “almost like crying,” my daughter leans in to hug.  She does this with her parents, too, when we stub toes or drop things, or are not feeling well.  In trying to raise a child who cares about other people, we’ve talked a lot about considering others’ feelings, reminding her that it hurts the cat when she yanks his tail.

Tonight, I was reading Harold and The Purple Crayon at bedtime.

“He was tired and he felt he ought to be getting to bed.  He hoped he could see his bedroom window from the top of the mountain.  But as he looked down over the other side he slipped–And there wasn’t any other side of the mountain.  He was falling, into thin air.”

Harold is shown upside down, with his purple crayon, simply falling.  My daughter leaned in to hug Harold, and then held and comforted him (the book) for a long time.  She said, “I’m going to hold Hamold” (as she calls Harold).

The wise people who write about child development tend to discount these early displays of empathy, and certainly my child does her share of throwing her dolls to the floor so that they cry, so that she can comfort them.  (I encourage her not to throw them to the floor–“It’s better if they don’t cry in the first place, right?” but that’s not the point.  She needs them to cry so that she can comfort them.)  It is heart-warming to see her hugging a book, especially when the child protagonist is in peril, or pain, but I don’t think my daughter is unusual in this way.

I read an article recently (I wish I could remember where!) about a book that was claiming there is too much fiction in K-12 curriculum, and that children need to learn how to read nonfiction, that it helps them learn about the real world more than fiction does.  Admittedly taken out of context, this notion really bothers me.  Yes, children need to learn to read all kinds of things, and it’s crucial that they learn the nuances and distinctions between fiction and nonfiction.  But how can I say that fiction doesn’t teach children about life in the “real” world?  Even putting “issue” books aside (in my generation, there was Judy Blume) it’s not fair to partition fiction out of what is real in the world.

We learn the world from stories, and through stories.

p.s. There is truth and fiction everywhere.

rebeccakuder

You Are My Sunshine (Who is my sunshine?)

“Sing the deer dear song,” my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter said, early this morning.

She has a cold, and wanted me to sing, “You Are My Sunshine” but with the phrase “dear deer” standing in for “Sunshine.”  (More on our familiar variant, “dear deer,” in a moment.)  No doubt she was seeking comfort in the song I used to sing to her when she was smaller.

The writing of the song “You are my sunshine” is (questionably?) attributed to Oliver Hood.  But according to family legend, my grandmother’s uncle (does that make him my great-great uncle?) Herman C. Becker actually wrote the song.

Great-great uncle Herman was a composer, creating, allegedly, the words and music for “You Are My Sunshine.”  My great-aunt Evelyn recalled making fun of him as he played the song on the piano, because it was so silly.  Herman sent the manuscript  to a music publisher in Chicago (or possibly New York) and never heard anything back.

Until, hearing the song on the radio, my ancestors learned of the supposed rip-off.

Decades later, I sing the song to my child as she’s going to sleep.  My daughter substitutes beloved friends’ names in place of “Sunshine,” or, created in a sillier moment of wordplay, one which Herman C. Becker might have appreciated, referring to the dead deer carcass on the hiking trail across the street (last autumn’s flattening lump of roadkill that we referred to as “deer body” in a first attempt to explain death to the child) she begs me to sing our private lyrics:

“You are my deer dear, my only deer dear, you make me happy, when skies are grey, you’ll never know deer dear, how much I love you, please don’t take my deer dear away.”

I don’t know if she would spell it “deer dear,” reverse it to “dear deer,” or, in simple repetition, choose “deer deer.”

How many generations have been lulled by this song?  And wooed?  To whom does belong?  Is there a point after which the notion of ownership fades?

No one can deny it’s our song.