Power Through Chaos

On September 11, 2001, terrorists from Al Queda attacked the United States on our home soil. By targeting the World Trade Center in particular, they succeeded in causing mass terror and chaos. The people in the streets of New York “ran and fell, confused and ungainly,” from the site of the tragedy, “debris falling around them.” They stared at the horrific scene that “was not a street anymore, but a world... of falling ash and near night.” The goal of a terrorist is to cause mass confusion and chaos in order to bring attention and power to a cause.  On ­9-11, this group did succeed in this mission. The buildings attacked contained thousands of people from multiple nationalities and were symbols of the political and financial power of the Western world.  The panic and chaos on that day did, for a moment, bring our country to our knees.

A Scene of Chaos

On September 11, 2001, terrorists from Al Queda attacked the United States on our home soil. By targeting the World Trade Center in particular, they succeeded in causing mass terror and chaos. The people in the streets of New York “ran and fell, confused and ungainly,” from the site of the tragedy, “debris falling around them.” They stared at the horrific scene that “was not a street anymore, but a world... of falling ash and near night.” The goal of a terrorist is to cause mass confusion and chaos in order to bring attention and power to a cause.  On ­9-11, this group did succeed in this mission. The buildings attacked contained thousands of people from multiple nationalities and were symbols of the political and financial power of the Western world.  The panic and chaos on that day did, for a moment, bring our country to our knees.

The American Dream

Think about the views expressed today as we explored Forbes.com's collection. Who did you find yourself most closely identifying with? Which view of the American Dream spoke most clearly to you? Why?

“A Legacy of Paper Cuts and Reading Glasses”

My mother swears that I came out of the womb reading.  I can just picture myself as a tiny newborn with a newspaper and reading glasses!  Even though I know this can’t be true, I have no idea how I actually learned.  One day I just read, and from that day forward, I was hooked.  Of course, in my family of self-proclaimed bookworms, who could have expected anything less? 

 Like any pregnant English professor and bookaholic, my mother began reading to me well before I was actually born.  Even though I’m sure this was more for her benefit than mine, I like to think that something may have rubbed off on me.  After birth, the evening reading ritual truly began.  Every night, I curled in my mother’s lap and was treated to a magical story that unfolded on the brightly colored pages of a book.  As I grew into a precocious toddler, I began to request my favorites.  I am sure Mom memorized every word that Dr. Seuss ever put on a page!  One night, when I was about three years old, I simply began reading along.  My mother swears to me that it was not a book we read often, which negates the theory that I simply had the story memorized.  Between phonics-inspired educational toys and the constant exposure to written language, I seemed to just pick it up.

When it came to reading, I stayed several grade levels ahead of the majority of my peers throughout school.  Boredom prevented any real reading instruction in elementary school that I remember.  My memories of reading during that stage of my life still centered on my mother.  Our nightly reading rituals did not stop because I simply started school.  I crawled into bed with her and, one chapter at a time, read classics such as Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, Black Beauty, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  We took turns reading, and every chapter ended with a talk about our thoughts, feelings, and predictions about the story.  I imagine this was training for a future English teacher. 

When reading on my own, I discovered the true abandonment of the conscience mind that a book can produce.  I poured through series after series, such as Sweet Valley Twins, Nancy Drew, and Sweet Valley High.  I will never forget the Christmas that my aunt, the librarian, bought me a boxed set of the series, The Chronicles of Narnia.  After falling in love with Aslan, the lion, in the most popular of the series, I devoured the entire set of Lewis’s novels.  As a child, I often chose books instead of television.  Only through reading could I truly escape into a fantasy world.  This was the world I reenacted when pretending to be one of my beloved characters.  An only child, I spent countless hours playing out my own scenes in the make-believe worlds I read about.

In middle school, I discovered the forbidden world of adult romance novels.  Because my mother’s dissertation and many of her lectures and publications focused on romance writers such as LaVyrle Spencer and Jude Deveraux, our house was teeming with the kind of novels that depicted young couples in passionate embraces.  It was inevitable that I would one day decide that these looked more interesting than my juvenile fiction.  The lasting results of this leap into adulthood include unrealistic expectations of romance and a deep love-affair with the genre.  I am always in the middle of a historical romance novel.  Every time I read the final page of one, I feel an immediate sense of withdrawal.  I often practically push my husband out the door to the nearest store to pick out my next guilty pleasure. 

 Without a male role-model or an example of a healthy romantic relationship, these novels became my teachers.  I spent my early teenage years fully expecting my true love to sweep me off my feet like the swarthy pirate captain that kidnapped the beautiful, spirited maiden that he could not stop thinking about.  Thankfully, I did not remain a complete blithering idiot.  My ideas of feminine strength and independence clashed with the treatment of women in some of the older “bodice rippers” that depicted forceful, almost brutal, heroes that completely overpowered their heroines.  One story made me so angry that I remember stomping into my mother’s room one night, berating her for having a novel like this offensive trash under our roof.  Having no idea that I had been reading these in the first place, she found herself at a complete loss for words.  After the uncomfortable conversation that ensued, I kept the rest of my opinions to myself until she became acclimated to my interest in this literary genre. 

 I did eventually develop a taste for more sophisticated literary works.  A love for poetry has been as ingrained into my being as a love of literature itself.  My mother, my aunt, and my older cousin consider literature and politics to be completely normal topics of dinner conversation.  It took the stunned silences of several boyfriends to teach me that not all families had the same interests.  My cousin loved to quote poetry at the dinner table.  I was entranced by the beauty and power of the words.  When he quoted a poet, I vowed to read all I could by this poet and, eventually, out-quote him at a future dinner.  In this manner, I became a true fan of Dickinson, Poe, Frost, Byron, Keats, Shakespeare, and many other masters of poetic language.  

With such a literary family, it would have been difficult not to develop a true love for reading.  I bring a bag of books I have finished to every family gathering, knowing that I will come home with a new bag of books carefully selected from those filling the studies and closets of my family members.  My mother used to predict that I would one day follow in her footsteps, bringing my love of literature to a classroom of impressionable students.   I steadfastly refused.  “I will be a veterinarian, not a teacher!” I used to proclaim.  I became a special education teacher instead.  She smiled to herself when I decided to focus on English instruction, but she positively crowed with smug delight when I informed her that I wanted to get my master’s degree in English.  I can only imagine her glee if I confided my secret ambition.  One day I may write the novel that she has always dreamed of.