I Ought To Be A Reporter

I ought to be a reporter. Check this out. So my last blog entry was about Cleveland, right? And I talked a bunch about how we’re a great town because of Cleveland sports. Well, check out the above-the-fold article on the front page of today’s Plain Dealer (the local Cleveland paper, for those of you not from around here).

Maybe it’s just in the air. I’d sue, but c’mon, what Clevelander is not thinking about the same thing right now. Even as I sit here writing, we’re down by three with 4:23 left in the game. Okay, down by 1. This is too much. I can feel a contraction coming on (okay, not really; I think the kid’s just stretching).

When I was on bed rest during my last pregnancy, bed rest that was imposed because I kept having early contractions (tie game, 3:15 to go), I would often play this silly game (up by 1!) on the Merriam Webster website called Fowl Words, where you are shown eight or nine letters (you’d think I’d know by now), each in an “egg”, and you have to make up as many words as possible from the given letters in the time given. You make wagers as to how many words you’ll make, and get more points if you find longer words (and there’s only one word using all the letters). Argh. Down by 2, 36 seconds left. Not looking good for our heroes.

Anyhow, I played the game once after my son was born, and I suddenly realized how relaxing it was to play the game without contractions. Apparently, the tension from the game (and that was just a silly computer game, not game 6 of the NBA playoffs) made me tense up enough to cause contractions. Maybe that’s why instead of totally getting into the game right now, I’m writing. 1.4 seconds left, we’re down by 3, LeBron will take 2 shots at the free-throw line. How is this still close?

I have to confess that for a long time now, I’ve believed that the NBA is fixed. We lost. And I have to say, cynic that I am, that since these games generate a lot of money - in ticket sales, merchandise, concessions, television commercials, what else am I missing here? – of course it would go to seven games. Think drama. Sports are the ultimate drama (I think I saw that on a commercial on TNT). Two antagonists, teams with opposite goals, a fixed amount of time, rules everyone understands. The story is so well known (which is often the case with novels, and perhaps explains why people keep reading novels, too), yet people watch game after game after game to see how it ends. And, of course, the true fan wants to read the whole book, not just skip to the end – the Sports section of the paper – to see how it ends.

So why would I say, even as the Cavs are doing so well, that the NBA is fixed? Well, here’s my theory. Superstars are good for the sport. The big plays, while also generating great clips for the sports reels, make money. Stars get contracts with Nike, Reebok, Gatorade, or other companies that air commercials during games. I previously suspected (haven’t watched many games in quite a while – except the Cavs, so I can’t claim this is still true; or, for that matter, if it ever was) that rules were different for the superstars. I mean, can they really pull off those incredible dunks without traveling?

And then LeBron joined the Cavs. And Usher co-owns it. And I think, finally! Finally, we have superstar-power and will finally stand a chance to make it to the next level. And what do you know, here we are. Now, in game five, we did get called for traveling, and we did miss some easy basic shots, but the drama was there. And we did win it. But when you see basic mistakes, and your team still wins, don’t you kind of wonder if it’s really well earned? I do, anyhow.

My husband, bitterly, had to work during tonight's game to cover for someone who was supposed to work at the game. I tried to make him feel better.

“On the bright side,” I told him, “we’re probably going to lose and you’ll be able to watch game seven.”

Okay, I’ll admit that doesn’t sound like much of a bright side, or like something a true fan would say. But perhaps this conspiracy theory is simply a defense mechanism (like writing during a game) to keep me from getting too emotionally into the game, like I can in a good book that I find myself reading late into the night, much later than I had hoped to go to sleep, just wanting to – having to – get to the end once and for all and see how it turns out instead of just reading a chapter or a quick few pages before going to sleep.

All I know is, even if the NBA is fixed, it’s okay. I’ll play along. Because finally, it seems to be fixed in our favor (if not this year, then some year soon). But then again, maybe that’s what all sports fans think.

Cleveland: What a City

I’ve recently read and heard about how Katrina victims are still living in trailers, waiting for their city to be rebuilt and their lives to be returned to some semblance of normalcy. 9/11 will long be a part of all New Yorkers’ daily lives, with rescue workers going into the hospitals with respiratory symptoms from everything they inhaled that day. Mines collapse in West Virginia. Earthquakes and forest fires ravage California. Snowstorms coat the Dakotas in April. Floods along the Mississippi, hurricanes on the East Coast, and droughts throughout the Great Plains all make this country a harsh place to live.

Cleveland, however, is relatively sheltered from the harshest treatments that Mother Nature throws at this country. Sure, we have some tornadoes, the occasional minor earthquake shakes our foundation every once in a while (I believe we’ve had two in twenty years), and every year snowstorms smother our city with the weight of its whiteness.

But we can handle it. I can’t think of one time that any natural disaster has led the President of the US to request emergency funding to help us out of a jam. No, we’ve been generally pretty self sufficient in that regard, relying instead on what money we’ve got. Being in the Snow Belt, we budget for snowplows and salt trucks. And while our education system might need a little re-hauling, our public schools aren’t so much worse than those across the US of A.

But when it comes to our reputation, it sucks. People remember Cleveland for the Cuyahoga River fire (which happened back in 1969!), the Drew Carey show (which was shot in LA, although he was from Cleveland), or for where Bill Belichick used to coach before he led the New England Patriots to three Super Bowl victories in four years. Despite being listed (along with Pittsburgh, PA) as the most livable city in the US in 2005 (see the second to last paragraph in this article.

Cleveland: Hurricane Free Throughout Our History
Cleveland: Livable and Landslide Free

Now, these may not be the best marketing slogans, but then, I’m no expert in marketing. I leave the real catchy slogans to those who know what they’re doing (I freely admit I don’t know everything). But here’s the thing. Cleveland’s a great city, and yet people come here because they grew up here, or because their spouse dragged them here. People living here a while grow to love it, and get spoiled by the shorter commutes or the cheaper ticket prices to go to shows, or the sports, or, most often, the people.

Yes, I said the sports. Now, I’m not just saying this because the Cavs are in the playoffs. I admit, having grown up in Cleveland, I’m a little (okay, a lot) biased, but Cleveland is a great sports town. Never having won a championship in any major sport (and I’m sorry to all you soccer fans out there, but even in its heyday back – I believe sometime in the eighties – major league soccer never qualified as a major sport; don’t get me wrong, I went to several games, and loved cheering on the Force as we won, but I also grew up watching my brother play his little league soccer games), we Clevelanders are, I would argue, truer sports fans than anyone else.

Never having achieved the ultimate goal in any sport – as of yet – we still have hope. We still believe our teams have what it takes to be champions. And in the meantime, we relish each victory. Like proud parents, we see the good in the closest loss or even the blowout. If our teams comes so close and loses by just a few points, we hold our heads high, absorbing the loss and telling ourselves – with all honesty – that is was a great game and next time, yeah, next time, we’ll win it. If we lose by a lot, well, we’re rebuilding. It builds character. Did you see that one play? That guy’s reception or block or free throw or dive in the outfield showed great potential; this guy’s gonna be big in a couple of years. Just you wait. Did you see that great catch by the shortstop? Did you notice how the running back juked the defender? That was sweet.

We Cleveland fans notice all aspects of our sports, including the officiating and the environment. We play football outside, in the winter, in our domeless stadium next to the lake. Real football, like it ought to be. Okay, admittedly, I haven’t attended a game there in several years, but, well, you know, someone’s gotta take care of the kids. We know the odds are in our favor when a warm-weather team comes into a slushy, snowy December game. And Cleveland fans will be there, bundled up, physically and mentally suffering, and cheering on our teams, packing the stadiums and Arena, vowing to be there to witness all those defining moments that lead us to that unachievable pinnacle of joy.

Honestly, though, I don’t know what we’d do if we won. The closest we came was when the OSU Buckeyes won the 2002 national championship in college football. My husband went to OSU for eight years, so it was definitely a huge victory for us. I say it’s close because it’s not really a Cleveland team. Many Clevelanders are actually Michigan fans (grrrr), and it’s not quite the same. But my point here is that after we won, for a long time, we were still waiting for the bad news. We are so used to that last second reversal of fortune, of balls going through the second baseman’s legs and letting a late inning run score, or a last second kick just making it through the corner of the uprights. The Drive, the Fumble, Red Right Eighty-Eight: these are words that long time Browns fans know and will never forget, memories just as strong as their first kiss, their wedding day, the birth of their children. They most likely remember where they were when they witnessed these events, and they remember the tears of disappointment hastily covered up as “something in their eyes.”

Perseverance is a trait common among Cleveland sports fans. Those who turn their back on any church still show how strong faith can be, continuing to believe, despite a complete lack of proof, that we can be victorious, that we will get to the promised land. The draft is such a huge event here (I honestly don’t know what it’s like in other cities); the papers list the prospects, and my husband, who had to be out of town for a few days before the draft, had me save the sports pages while he was gone so he could be prepared for Draft Day. I don’t get it; it’s more boring than golf, and it’s literally a show where nothing happens for a really, really, really, really, really, really long time. I understand, conceptually, that the draft is important, and that the future direction of many teams is decided during the course of the weekend, but I don’t understand it as a televised event. It’s negotiating, and meetings, and a lot of behind the scenes decision-making that makes for extremely dull viewing, and yet people watch. It reminds me of an old Monty Python skit where people come to a stadium to watch a guy write a novel.
In it, a guy walks up to his desk and the commentators provide statistics about how many novels of his began with the word “The”, versus “A”, or other articles. I can imagine you yawning already. But I see it as strangely appropriate whenever I think about watching the NFL Draft.

But anyhow, I digress. In Cleveland, we like our sports teams so much, we watch the draft (okay, I don’t, but many do). We are a city full of humble, appreciative, faithful fans. Now that’s character. Cleveland is a great place to raise your kids if you want them to learn that winning isn’t everything. And though many may move away at different times in their lives, no matter where you go or how long you’re gone, a part of you knows that you’re still a Clevelander at heart.

What Will Kaavya Do?

So a Maven friend of mine pointed out that Harvard really has no grounds to expel Kaavya Viswanathan, that legally, since her plagiarism was not dealing with class work, they can’t just expel her. Sure, there is a student’s code of ethics, and it is expected that students should conduct themselves with integrity. But Harvard can’t really do anything. I suppose they could review any papers she may have written for her classes for plagiarism, and they would be entitled to do that, as far as I’m concerned, to find grounds to expel her, but since she left, what’s the point?

So I apologize. I retract my previous soapbox stand as having overstepped the reasonable. I was wrong. I still stand by what I said in the rest of the post, but I will back down on the Harvard issue.

So why did I get so defensive? Why did I get so carried away (other than because I have a tendency to do so every once in a while)? Perhaps it is because I am a writer. Perhaps because I’m an Indian woman writer, and I fear that Kaavya has ruined it for us minority women writer, I feel that this matter needs to be dealt with strongly, so it’s clear that it’s an isolated incidence and that it won’t happen again because the cost is too high.

So what is the cost? What will happen to Ms. Viswanathan? Let’s assume she does go back to college – somewhere – and does, as planned, become an investment banker. How will that work for her? On the one hand, does this incident tarnish her reputation enough that she would not be trustworthy and would find it difficult to find a job? Or is it unlikely that the circles overlap, so those in the investment banking world wouldn’t even know – a few years down the line – that any of this ever happened (if they know now)? I suppose any potential employer could google Ms. Viswanathan and discover the truth, but even then, would they find it relevant? I say yes, it speaks of her character.

I’ve discussed this matter at length with my sister-in-law (well, technically, my husband’s sister-in-law, so would that make her my sister-in-law-in-law?), and one question she raised is whether she did this on purpose, and whether she wanted to be caught. Could the pressure of all the expectations placed upon this potential child prodigy (I know, she’s nineteen, but in the publishing world, that’s pretty young) have driven her to this? Her parents spends upwards of $20,000 to help her get into Harvard. She gets there, and Harvard is a very competitive place. She manages to get a $500,000 two-book deal, and proceeds to write a novel in the Harvard library between classes, homework, exams, and, presumably, establishing a social life in her first year of college. She’s living on her own for the first time, and is finding her own way, listening the voice inside her head instead of those of her parents. That’s a stressful situation even without the pressures of publication.

So it seems I’m showing a bit of sympathy here. While I’m at it, here’s a theory. She spent the first twelve years of her life living in India, right? Well, over there, at least in the early years, most learning is done through rote memorization. So, it’s quite reasonable to conclude that Ms. Viswanathan got quite good at memorizing. So, really, while it may seem unlikely to those of us who went through an entirely American system of education to accept that Ms. Viswanathan may have actually memorized complete passages of these novels without realizing it, given her early education background, it is entirely plausible that her copying was not intentional, but rather completely unconscious.

But plagiarism is wrong. If she at any point even had some inkling that the lines she was writing sounded vaguely familiar, she should have checked back to what it seemed to remind her of – taking the time away from writing her novel – to make sure she wasn’t plagiarizing. Certainly, in some writing course at Harvard (if not all of them), plagiarism was discussed, including the fact that just changing a couple of words here or there is not good enough.

Writing is seen as such a chore for many people. My husband chose his classes to minimize the number of papers he’d have to write during college. Interpreting papers seems to be so subjective, as opposed to science or math exams where there’s a definite right answer. (I suppose this would be the academic equivalent of gymnastics or figure skating, where there are points for "style"). And so, plagiarism doesn’t necessarily seem like as big a deal as, say, copying someone’s answers on an exam. But why is it any different? Is it really a lesser sin?

Writing well is difficult, and yet good writing is not valued. Reading novels is considered something you do to pass time, something akin to watching television. Textbooks, where you learn something, can be written like crap, and are often regarded as less good if they are too “reader-friendly.” The writer is then regarded as too “fluff”. True technical writing should not be written for the layman. How else do you explain many users manuals? But why can’t writing be educational and easy to read? I’ve recently started reading non-fiction, and held off for a long time because I need to be able to stay awake long enough to learn something. But then, maybe I just didn’t know where to find good non-fiction.

I guess the point I’m trying to make here is that I take this whole Kaavya Viswanathan issue seriously (and I apologize to those of you who are sick of my coverage of the topic in this blog). Writing was something I was encouraged to do, but not as a career. To make real money, I should have a job in a field that provides a much more reliable source of income. So the bias against “softer” fields like writing (as opposed to science) is still very real to me, and even as I sit here defending writing and literature as necessary components of life, I know that when I return to work, I will look for job in Computer Science. If I can’t fight this bias in myself, how can I expect to fight it in anyone else?

We teach our kids to read and write, and then somewhere down the line, we tell them not to waste their time reading stories because they should either be working on school work or participating in sports. How do we find the time for books, for exercising the imagination, for keeping the creative mind finely tuned so that our kids can think outside the box and not always strive to simply work in a cubicle?

Ah, Spring

Ah, chalk, a gate, and a window: three tools for a peaceful five minutes of parenting. The boys don’t want to come in, I want to sit down for a few minutes, and my elder son finds the perfect solution. From the shelf in the garage he pulls out the carton of Sidewalk Chalk, pulls it out, and starts drawing. His brother joins in, so I walk to the gate, close it, and head inside. Not a sound is to be heard, the beautiful silence of kids coloring. Of course, silence makes me nervous and I look outside every 30 seconds or so. But all is well, and I relax.

Now, five minutes later, my email is checked, and the driveway is decorated with my son’s name in blue, three umbrellas and a person in pink, and lots of scribbles in yellow, blue, grey, white, pink, and purple. The basketball is out, and my four year old needs to change his pants before we leave for the restaurant, but how wonderful it is that finally, outdoor time is possible in Cleveland. Warm, without rain.

Ten minutes, now I’m pushing my luck. When should I go out and summon them in? When do we start picking up the chalk? Can I bring back this peace later, after lunch, or is this a one-time deal? Later, inside, it’ll be different. Outside, it seems the screams dissipate almost immediately, as the world full of new toys – look at that stick; ooh, a basketball; is that mud? – draws their attention from their disagreements.

The winter doldrums have ended, bringing on the promise of a wonderful Spring where the whole world is opened up to us.

Darn, they came inside. Time’s up.

Ivy League Morality

So despite the fact that sophomore Kaavya Viswanathan admitted to plagiarism in writing her book “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got A Life”, Harvard has taken no disciplinary action against her as yet. Apparently, since it didn’t involve her academic life, they have no cause to expel her cheating butt. And the fact that she’s leaving Harvard seems to be saving them the trouble of having to do anything.

In other news, the government of Peru is seeking to sue Yale University to return relics that were discovered by a Yale history professor in expeditions in 1911 and later that led to the discovery of Machu Picchu. There was a letter that even stated that the items should be returned to Peru after 18 months, and yet, not everything was returned. Yale contends that the items in question were from the earliest, 1911, expedition, and so it’s rightfully theirs.

“Yale offered to divide the items up and help Peru install its share in a museum near the site. Peruvian officials would not agree to any joint projects until Yale acknowledged that all of the objects belong to the Peruvian people. Yale refused.”

Fuzzy logic at best, if you ask me. I know there’s a fine line, and we often have to find the perfect balance. What – exactly – is cheating? Is it acceptable to borrow someone else’s notes? Because that doesn’t necessarily gauge how well you learned in class. Is having an explicit dream about someone other than your partner considered cheating? What if you think about the dream during the day? Or is it just if you act upon thoughts. Is it wrong to lie? What if the truth would hurt, or you really just aren’t in the mood to chat on the phone but don’t want to be rude? Is putting the kids to bed earlier than their official bedtime wrong? What if they’re tired? And normally they don’t go to bed by their “official bedtime” anyhow?

On a personal level, sure, making the right choices day in and day out is difficult. But knowing that my kids are watching me and learning from me makes me choose carefully (though not always correctly – for example, yelling was not the right way to go this evening, since I then caught my elder son yelling at his brother with a tone that was eerily familiar). And the on-the-spot moral decisions people face seem more difficult than any decisions that a larger organization would have to make. There are by-laws and other documents guiding decision-makers at large institutions to do the right thing. And long ago, we have stopped expecting anything but a focus on the bottom line from the executives in corporate America.

Seriously, all this news about oil companies posting great profits – it’s not news. There’s really no surprise. The fact that the entire administration is involved with the oil industry, and that higher gas prices have spiked during the past six years should come as a surprise to nobody. What surprises me is that people are shocked and outraged by the "new" information. Fine, Condoleeza Rice has an oil tanker named after her. Big deal. If she makes a bid for the White House, I’m sure she’ll ask that the name be changed. George W. Bush is close to oil tycoons. Yeah? So? He’s never really hidden that fact, has he? His agenda has been as obvious as his clueless expression from day one.

But from our top-notch universities, we expect more. That’s where our future leaders are learning their values when many of them live away from the watchful eyes of their parents for the first time. College is when many children learn to think for themselves, find their own sense of right and wrong, and become adults.

Harvard, expel Ms. Viswanathan, even if she has already left. There’s now talk that she also plagiarized from a second book in writing her novel (and I use the word “her” loosely).

Yale, give Peru back the artifacts. Thank you for the discovery, thank you for putting Machu Picchu on the map. I’m sure you’ll be duly recognized at the museum at Machu Picchu. But just give it all back.

But then again, where did George W. Bush go to college?