shared folder

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1LXsw6sdtaI3sUPwGuicEi6q4MYOml1vQ?usp=sharing

Writing that first sentence

https://nwscholasticpress.org/2012/10/09/write-great-leads-that-will-grab-your-readers-attention-by-knowing-these-9-effective-strategies-2/

Synthesis Essay checklist

https://docs.google.com/a/fhps.net/document/d/131AVqd0KZvd6_fO7cF2yKKqD1Kz4cKPt9UGgNvwP898/edit?usp=sharing

Rhetorical Precis Scoring Criteria

Precis Scoring Criteria                                                                    Student Name_________________________

Each sentence must contain the items indicated below.  However, if the sentence is not grammatically and stylistically sound, no points will be awarded. Tip: When you think you have written a great sentence, read it aloud and check for issues.

Sentence One:

Name of the author (short descriptor of credentials, if available)	2
Publishing details	1
Type and title of the work	2
A rhetorically accurate verb	3
A “that” clause in which the main argument is accurately identified	5

                                                                                                                                                                Total        __________ Sentence Two:

Accurate identification and inclusion of the major rhetorical moves.	5
An explanation of how the author develops and/or supports the main argument.  In other words, not just a list of rhetorical moves, but rather the identification of the move and what it does.	10
A chronologically accurate presentation of the rhetorical moves.	5

Total          ___________

Sentence Three:

The author’s purpose	5
An “in order to” phrase which explains what the author wants the audience to do or feel or think as a result of reading the work.	5

                                                                                                                                                                Total          ___________

Sentence Four:

A description of the intended audience	2
An accurate description of the tone (the relationship the author establishes with his/her audience and his/her feelings about the subject matter).	5

                                                                                                                                                                Total        ___________

Overall Score __________/50

Murder on the Orient Express

http://www.ebookshell.com/Murder%20On%20The%20Orient%20Express%20By%20Agatha%20Christie.pdf

Another rhetorical precis resource

Zoom in to see another sample precis

Loose Sentences AP Lang 2017-18

Loose Sentences

 The night was hot, the world an oven, its temperature rising higher and higher, as I walked lazily through the orchards and plucked an apple from overhead and ate it and watched a comet dancing across the sky. 

I remember one serene evening, all dark and starry, in the spring holiday, when I hesitantly stepped away from the streets of Manhattan Beach and homes of new-money Southern California residents, and picked up a wool blanket, and put a film camera around my neck.

I recall one rainy morning, very grey and navy, in the fall, when I arose from a short slumber, and took off my shoes and opened the door, and walked out into the pouring rain.

I think of Puerto Rico, now grey and muted,once a place of color in architecture and topography and people, and my family comes to mind and brilliance returns.

I remember watching the sunset, holding your soft and semi-sweaty hand, in the spring months when you first told me you loved me, and gave me my favorite bracelet and laid it carefully on my wrist, and ran your fingers through my long hair and watched me watch the sunset.

I reminisce about being in California, and the soothing sound of crashing waves in the morning and the breathtaking sunsets on the beach during a time when no worries flooded my mind.

I think often about plants, flowers of all colors and shapes and types, and how they live, and how they breathe, and how all manner of life can be described  "as a flower," and how they can just as humanly dance and sway and even cry their petals on hot, dry days.

I remember one day, all snowy and chilly, in the winter holidays, when I joined my neighbors outside, and dug tunnels under the snow and ventured inside them with the children, and shared a couple of wonderful moments with them.

The burger was delicious, all juicy and tender, sitting on top of a toasted brioche bun with sesame seeds sprinkled upon it, and swiss cheese and lettuce hanging off the sides, and three thick patties of browned beef to top it off.

I recall one winter night, dark and calm, during the month of December, in our family room, where I sat near the fireplace, secluded in the corner beneath the windows which towered and ate up the entire north wall, while the fire crackled and burned itself out.

I was walking on the streets of Berlin one evening, all damp and glowy, when I came across a festive Turkish cafe just across the street, and strolled to the entrance of the establishment, and ordered a crunchy croissant and a cafe macchiato.

I recall a somber morning, all gray and white, in the midst of winter when I pulled myself from the warmth of my home, and took a step in the snow, and heard the ambience of the woods, and took in a deep, fulfilling breath.

I remember one cold morning, all white and gray, in the middle of February when I tore myself away from my warm bed, and put on a saggy sweater of some sort, and picked up a heavy backpack, and braced myself for a long, treacherous day of school.

He arrived one winter night, all blue and purple, in the month of December when he hesitantly came back home from fighting, and took off his coat, and put down his gun, and went to bed as if nothing had happened.

I observed one radiant morning, all yellow and orange, in the early months of fall when I gladly decided to go on a run to take in the the beauty of the day's early hours, and to gaze upon the changing colors of the trees, and to breathe in the cool morning breeze.

Character Development

https://docs.google.com/a/fhps.net/document/d/1rH91AfjEOjVLC82HOQrSqlMFfcvtRtcnv6wUuH5wHJY/edit?usp=sharing

All About the Rhetorical Precis

https://drive.google.com/a/fhps.net/file/d/0B0ndMsFKkNibd3hvMndfZXBYZjA/view?usp=sharing

AP Lang Lobster Link

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSctCr7r-OiJM8yDHkScoYg_76pK7spJrUxkIt4iooI_nPW93g/viewform

college application essays

https://blogs.hope.edu/students/admissions/10-tips-for-writing-an-unforgettable-college-essay/?utm_content=buffer7b519&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

All about Membean

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzM4QspmWKgSMlVHaW9vMGJGSlU/view

Order a t-shirt

https://www.customink.com/g/wpf0-00b1-gnt2

Sample Book Trailer

https://sites.google.com/fhps.net/readgoodbooks/home  Click on the different genres to see different types of trailers.

Your book trailer should;

• be approximately 2 minutes in length
• show the cover of the book
• inform viewers of  the title, author, and a brief explanation of what made this book so enjoyable and worth reading.
• maybe include a bit about how you happened to choose this one
• share your enthusiasm for the book
• present you as an articulate, intelligent human being.
• maybe discuss other books that are related to this book.....i.e., "If you liked A Fault in our Stars...you'll like this...."
• expose the viewer to a brief passage from the book and an explanation for its inclusion.

If I think of more, I'll add them here.

Load your book talk video here

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0BwqJKlSiV75pR3RGUlF4eXBIZ1E?usp=sharing

endnotes

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/04/

shared folder English Synthesis

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0ndMsFKkNibZEV5cU9UMlBrTGc

My rhetorical analysis: Chavez

Is it perfect?  Probably not.  Did I write it in 40 minutes?  Yes. Check it out.


https://docs.google.com/a/fhps.net/document/d/16YiZn4cTdSaW-Sk-WgOhJgB5OqJ5lg2bvqEdmsmJxn4/edit?usp=sharing

Anecdotal Leads English 11

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B0ndMsFKkNibaXBYMlp2dnRLam8?usp=sharing

Birmingham Shared Folder

I am asking some students to share their essays to this folder so that you can read them.   Remember that in order to demonstrate success in rhetorical analysis, writers must correctly identify the moves, incorporate pieces of the text into their own sentences, follow chronological organization, and demonstrate a mastery of language in the expression of their ideas.  Accuracy and depth of analysis are important as well.  Not all of the essays you will see here are perfect, but they do some good things.  They can serve as excellent models against which you can compare the quality of your own analysis.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B0ndMsFKkNibY0JFcXZON0NKbEE?usp=sharing

Reading MLK Jr. Contest Winner "I Have A Dream."

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/reading-mlk-in-new-zealand/399323/

try this one

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B0ndMsFKkNibVi1ONU90Q1FKbnM?usp=sharing

"Final Draft:

Dear students, I've finished a draft.  This would be a draft that I could comfortably share with a writing group and ask for feedback on.  Let me know if you have questions.

I’m driving to school.  I’m late.  The traffic is terrible and then someone pulls out in front of me.  At the last minute, I am able to veer into the passing lane to avoid a collision. Expletives crowd the cabin of my car. As I pass the offending driver, I crane my neck over the console in an attempt to make eye contact with the person that I’ve now decided not only lacks driving skills, but also intelligence about anything at all ever on the entire planet. I angrily press on the accelerator revving my engine and bringing the front of my car parallel to that of this thoughtless, no good, so-and-so. No luck.  He won’t turn his head.  “You should not have a license!” I shout towards the passenger window.  It’s rolled up.  No one can hear me. My next move is to speed up enough to pull into his lane, directly in front of him.  Once placed, I tap my breaks. And then, I tap them again. I look in my rear view for hoping to see a reaction on his face. Wait a minute. What is it that I want, exactly, from such a confrontation?  What satisfaction is to be had?  In the moment, it really doesn’t matter.  In the moment, I have let my inner “Hyde” take over.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was written towards the end of the Victorian era, a time of strict morals and a strong sense of propriety. The book explores the animal, infantile instincts and the potential for evil in all of us.  The same instincts that the norms of society perpetually force us to keep repressed for the sake of civilization, and also reputation.

At the end of Stevenson’s novel, good prevails over evil.  Restraint rules and order is restored.   But, the story goes that there was first another version with a different ending, one over which Stevenson’s wife, Fanny, whose name seems ironically apt, expressed disapproval which resulted in Stevenson throwing his only manuscript into the fire.  A fitting gesture for a novel about impulse control.  He rewrote the entire thing from memory reportedly changing the ending.  I wonder about that first ending.  Why did he rewrite it?  To please her?  To conform with what was right and true and good of his day?  I wonder about the statement he had originally intended to make, the one that met with criticism from his wife.  I can almost see her all laced up in her corset sitting rigidly by the fireside in a tall backed chair, her posture perfect, her lips pursed, her stare pointed at her husband who had grown weary of the stringent zeitgeist of his day. A small sliver of my inner Hyde hopes that he had, as rappers Salt-n-Pepa have said, “a chick on the side.”  Which isn’t fair of me because I’ve never met Fanny.  She was probably a wonderful human who was just, like most of us, trying to do the right thing.

My feelings about Fanny stem from the same exasperation that I imagine Stevenson to have had over the Victorians unwillingness to acknowledge the stuff which makes us human.  No matter the manners and gentility portrayed by the Victorians, no matter how much Fanny may have wanted to deny it, the fact remains that people across time and across cultures have the types of urges portrayed in Stevenson’s novel, and oh, the secret and deliciously devilish delight when we think of giving over if even in a small way to the way we’d really like to behave sometimes, doing what we’d really like to do, saying the things we’d really like to say. Let’s be honest, even the best among us have spent time and energy fantasizing, esprit d’escalier, about the things we really wish we had done or said when we’ve been cut off by a thoughtless driver or bullied by a domineering mother-in-law or insulted by an obnoxious co-worker or slighted by a hostile Meijer cashier. What would we say or do were we not bound by our fear of consequence, our desire to please others, our obedience to the social contract? Why we’d give them a “piece of our mind”, that’s what.  Or we’d “show them who’s boss.”  

 But, we know better.  We’ve been conditioned that way, since we were young and some of us more successfully than others, for the greater good. Even when it seems that a bit of bad behavior might be justified or even excused we still blanch at the thought.  Or rather, we blanch at the possible consequences. If we could act out and get away with it, that would be one thing.   We know that it isn’t smart to put our lives and the lives of others in danger on the expressway because of a little road rage. We know that family holidays will be happier if we keep our mouths shut when mother-in-law comments on our housekeeping.  We know that lunch in the break room will be less awkward if we just pretend that annoying co-worker doesn’t exist, and we know that our eggs have a higher likelihood of reaching our homes unbroken if we just smile and nod when that cashier talks about the awful eternity he has left to work his shift. We hold back our impulses.  And we avoid--at the least—uncomfortable confrontations and necessary apologies--at the worst--incarceration, death and chaos pain and suffering for all.

Still, we are human and even though we know better, no one makes the right choice all the time. Every day, we hear the tragic consequences that result from the victory of our inner Hydes, the dark side of ourselves, our alter egos.  Indeed, I have a friend who has given hisa name that is a sort of derivative of his own.  So, if his name was Sean Duffie, his alter is Schwan DuFAY. The important thing about the fact that he has named his is that it indicates an awareness.  And as any member of a twelve step recovery program can tell you, awareness is the first step to change. It got me thinking about my own alter ego and all the missteps she has made in her life.  I like this idea of separating her from myself so that I can take a look at her.   In that spirit, she’ll need a name.  Scarlet.  No last name.  Just Scarlet.  It’s a name that says it all: total disregard for the spilled blood of others. And I am definitely being hyperbolic and speaking figuratively.  She isn’t as bad as all that. But, let’s just say I’ve got my own history of choices that make me cringe when I replay them in my head. They are the ghosts that visit in the night bringing insomnia with them. I mean I haven’t killed anybody, but I have plenty of my own “what was I thinking?” moments. We all have.  Is it possible for any human to be our best selves all the time?  And aren’t these episodes, in a way, necessary?  If learning and growth comes not from, as one of my former teachers Sr. Phyllis Supanchek once told me, the mistakes we make, but what we do with them? Doesn’t the entire harmony of the universe hinge on balance?  Light and dark? Empty and full? Good and evil? Think that over: bad choices as a necessary evil to maintain equilibrium? Well, then okay.  But, I guess then I’m just going to try to be the person who does the least harm.  It feels good to revel in this awareness.  So, then was is terrifying to contemplate are those times when I have been Hyde, but I don’t know it until after the damage has been done.  Times when I don’t remember drinking the potion in the first place.

During the time I was studying to be a teacher, all of my college professors actively sought to raise their students’ anxiety levels about the importance of volunteer work.  They pretty much had us all convinced that if we didn’t spend hours manning the phones at the red cross or immersing ourselves into other teachers’ classrooms there was no hope of ever getting a job. We needed things to put on our resume.  And getting a job was priority number one for me, so I signed up for an opportunity that I felt would not only help me show myself as a caring and devoted educator but would also, at the risk of sounding ghoulish, be entertaining.  But, that isn’t exactly the right word: entertaining.   I signed up to do some tutoring at the Kent County Jail. So, it wasn’t that I was going there to be entertained, but rather to satisfy a natural curiosity about the place. It was as though a tiny Hyde inside me wanted to witness life on the inside. For whose benefit?  I’m not sure. No.  I am.  For my own. For my own benefit.  

 As I pulled into the parking lot, I stared at the circular building lined with several stories of evenly spaced miniscule windows.  Jail cells, must be, I thought.  Someone somewhere must have done some research on inmate cooperation and determined that even a little bit of sunlight makes everything run more smoothly. I thought briefly of the life inside the cells.  In my mind, I saw a bed, a toilet and a person in a striped suit sitting inside quietly doing nothing.  I walked in the front doors and was greeted by several uniformed police officers, one of whom asked me to place my purse on a conveyor belt while the other wove a wand around my person checking for, I assumed, weapons. Having passed both tests they allowed me passage through the first set of many locked doors.

To get to the women’s unit, we had to pass by the men’s first.  All that separated me and the incarcerated was a set of metal bars.  Feeling a little like Clarice Starling, I ignored their ungentlemanly comments—Fanny would have been appalled-- and kept my gaze fixed on the back of my uniformed escort.  After much scanning of cards to unlock and open doors, there was also much slamming and locking of doors.  After a brief elevator ride, we were finally at the women’s area where I was to meet the group of women with whom I’d be working.  It was not at all as I had imagined.  There were no striped suits and there was no quiet. They were seated around a table with sheets of paper and only the smallest stubs of pencils (can’t give them anything they can turn into a weapon).  I should mention that I was not alone on this journey.  I was accompanied by a Social Worker whose job it was to spend time every day with people who had let their inner Hydes prevail for whatever reason.  She spent every day trying to striving to instill in inmates a sense of awareness I’ve mentioned so that they might make different choices and silence the beast within.  Thankfully, she led the meeting.  But before she got started, I sat in my chair trying to seem unafraid aware that I was fooling no one.  Tying to assume a posture of “I’ve been here before” and “This is no big deal” when clearly it was. I listened to the women talking to each other while trying to pretend that I wasn’t.   I am, of course, omitting the expletives peppered in less for emphasis and just as part of the normal sentence structure.  They bantered back and forth loudly, laughing sometimes shouting, just as any group of women might anywhere else, at the workplace, lunch at the mall, at the gym, only the dialogue had with an edge and the content of their conversations sometimes included things like hearing dates or lawyer problems or issues with visitation, who was and was not coming to see whom and how exactly that made them feel and what they were going to do to them once they got out.  It seemed I was invisible as they threw around the details of their lives for anyone to hear The only real piece of conversation I remember from that visit so long ago came from a woman who looked to be about sixty.  She was thin and sat with wide blue eyes, her hands folded into her lap, her brown bob hanging limply on the sides of her face.  I was not invisible to her because after sizing me up, she leaned in towards me as if I were her secret ally and said just this, “They said I strangled him, that I had my hands around his throat.  I don’t remember doing that.” And then she leaned back into her seat and looked around at the talking women, listening or not, I’m not sure.

Her words have always stayed with me.  I mean, I didn’t know whether to believe her or not.  She was in jail, after all. But if she were lying, her performance was pretty convincing. Maybe she was going for a temporary insanity defense.  But I think the reason I remember it so clearly is because it might be true.  And if it is, what does that mean for the rest of us?  Is it possible to lack awareness and go on Hyde auto-pilot?  Does the Hyde inside ourselves have the potential to take over? To do something so heinous, so contrary to our natures?  Because if so, I’d like to permanently rent a room and lock myself inside.  How much control does that inner Hyde have?  I mean, I make choices.  I don’t always yell at other drivers on the road. Sometimes, when someone cuts me off, I just brake appropriately, and give them their space. Other times, my language sounds just like that of the women I met in the jail that day and I have to apologize to my passengers. So, what the difference?  What is it that makes me act one way or another?  When do I act like me and when does Scarlet assume control? And what leads a person to the  point of putting their hands around someone’s throat….or slamming into someone else’s car and then getting out and drawing a gun.  What is it that separates those of us who are “on the outside” walking around drinking Starbucks and buying TVs from the folks with the stubby pencils behind the bars?

Sometimes, of course, it’s about mental illness.  And clearly, in our jails are many people who are in the wrong place.  The criminalization of the mentally ill is a much debated topic and everyday people who suffer from addictions and schizophrenia and borderline personality disorders are imprisoned when what they really need is help, chemical or otherwise, to heal the monster or at least shove it into a metaphorical closet for a time. 

And I’m really not talking about pure evil either.  It exists.  Not just in novels.  It existed in the Victorian era, in all of the eras before and after. It exists now.  Just listen to the news.  There is no question that a young man who decides to walk into a school and shoot a bunch of first graders is evil.  The same can be said about a man who kills millions of a particular race in the name of ethnic cleansing.  There’s nothing more to say about a woman who kills her own children so that she might spend her life with a man who would rather remain childless.  Evil.  I have a son who, like many other kids in his generation, has spent hours playing video games.  The big “what if” for parents of these kids always is about the terrible possibility of the disappearance of the boundaries between the game and He came down the stairs and we were watching the news coverage of a recent violent tragedy.  He stopped halfway down, looked at the TV and said, “Why are you watching that?  It’s horrible.”  I was relieved, and I didn’t worry about him from that time on. He knew the difference.  He knew evil when he saw it.  And, instinctively he knew that from that kind of evil, we must turn away.  We listen to the news and we are like the maid at the window witnessing Carew’s murder.  We are like Dr. Lanyon whose knowledge of Jekyll’s secret leads to his own failing health.  We are horrified.  We turn the channel or watch cat videos on Facebook.  Like Lanyon, we don’t want to think about it.

Or do we? We can’t deny that there is an entire money making machine in our society that pours this stuff into our living rooms every day.  If we don’t want to watch the evil, if we are turning away, then how do we explain the popularity of shows like Dateline, 20/20 and Snapped, which showcase real murder in every episode?  Why is there an entire cable channel devoted to nothing but recounting the stories of people who have crossed the line, let their Hydes out completely and taken someone else’s life?  Is it curiosity?  Like my trip to the jail?  Is it a preventative?  Let me study why and how so that it never happens to me?  Does this watching protect us from our own Hyde side?  If we spend a little vicarious time on the wild side, an hour in our recliners staring at a screen, do we somehow experience Aristotle’s catharsis and get it out of our systems? We say a little prayer of gratitude that we aren’t the ones who allowed the anger to take over and who are being featured on national television and then we go back to doing the best we can to tolerate other drivers on the road, stand patiently in line at the checkout and recover without incident from the numerous betrayals we might suffer at the hands of others?  Again, awareness comes to mind.  Maybe the next time we tune in we should ask ourselves: why am I watching this?

Mental illness is tragic and evil terrifying, but more alarming to those of us who have dodged the bullet of disease and who are at our cores pretty good people, is the possibility that we could at any time, like the woman at the jail, “Snap.”  Scientists are interested too. One neuroscientist boils it down to the old “fight or flight” response that is buried deep within our primitive ancestry.   He explains that the potential for it exists any time you feel trapped or stopped when you want to go. That situation triggers within you some impulse that makes you act before you think. Anger, he says, is our first and most primitive impulse when we sense a threat.  And if we understand that we can go a long way to diffuse our response system (Dahl).  So, good news, the twelve steppers are right. Developing a keen sense of self-awareness is the first step to avoiding situations that can become out of control and result in life changing consequences.

So, following this logic, suppose one day that, while reading an article on my computer, I became aware of a side bar advertisement for a product for which I had recently conducted an online search.  I furrow my brow and frown at the screen.  My heart rate becomes elevated.   How dare some faceless, maybe even formless entity spy on my shopping habits? Wait.  Stop right there.  What is this feeling? It’s anger. So then I ask myself…why am I angry?  Does my primitive brain perceive a threat?  Indeed it does…..I perceive my own personal fortress to be vulnerable to foreign invaders , so how does this play out?  My inner Hyde maybe picks the laptop up off the desk, raises it overhead and, shouting rage filled assertions about the evils of consumerism and the government, slams the computer to the ground and then jumps up and down on it and then unsatisfied, finds a blunt instrument and clubs to it death just as Hyde killed Sir Danvers Carew in the park. 

Or, I recognize this anger and I make a different choice.  I go to the site that student, Lucas Baker, told me about, after patiently explaining the technology that makes this possible (only half of which I really understood): “Ad pop ups something. Com” and I calmly take rational and productive steps to eliminate the threat, in this case, ridding my computer of cookies or whatever it is that allows for this kind of transparency.  Or I don’t visit the site and I just say to myself, “Yes, I am a consumer in the 21^st century and companies are going to do whatever they can to get my money.  Ultimately, I still choose whether or not to buy those Reebok tights or not. “And I go on with my day.

Oh, if only it were that easy.  It takes practice.  And some of us will struggle more with it than others. And whether, as Dr. Jekyll or my friend Sean has done, you want to give that person inside yourself that has fight or flight anger issues a name and talk to that person directly and aloud as if they were in the room…

        “Okay, Mr. Schwan DuFAY, settle down.  Why are you angry right now?”

        “Scarlet, honey, tell me what you are feeling right now.”

…or cut the drama and just do some internal self-talk, the idea is as Shakespeare said, “Know thyself.”  Know your triggers, acknowledge your primitive brain, recognize fight or flight and keep it together, man.

And for those times when you are making conscious choices to give in to lesser temptations and cross over maybe not to the dark side, but to some shade of gray, I say, reconsider.  Love yourself and our world enough to make a better choice.  For what would our world be like if everyone did the same? Besides becoming a smaller, more deformed looking population, the only joy would be from self-interest and that can only go so far to make a person truly happy. There is already too much sorrow, too much pettiness, too much crime, too much hurt, too much self-will run riot. The next time you are presented with a moral choice, ask yourself, what would Fanny do?

The End.

Note to self:  What to do with this?  I like it, but I don’t think it fits.

An interesting feature in Stevenson’s novel are those smaller sins that Hyde commits, the ones that lack spsecificity, the ones that Stevenson leaves vague and unnamed.   What could he be doing that is so awful we ask ourselves?  Inquiring minds want to know.  Stevenson won’t tell.  He leaves it up to our imaginations which can be far darker than we like to admit.    

Exam essay in progress

I’m driving to school.  I’m late.  The traffic is terrible and then someone pulls out in front of me.  At the last minute, I am able to veer into the passing lane to avoid a collision. Expletives crowd the cabin of my car. As I pass the offending driver, I crane my neck over the console in an attempt to make eye contact with the person that I’ve now decided not only lacks driving skills, but also intelligence about anything at all ever on the entire planet. I angrily press on the accelerator revving my engine and bringing the front of my car parallel to that of this thoughtless, no good, so-and-so. No luck.  He won’t turn his head.  “You should not have a license!” I shout towards the passenger window.  It’s rolled up.  No one can hear me. My next move is to speed up enough to pull into his lane, directly in front of him.  Once placed, I tap my breaks. And then, I tap them again. I look in my rear view for hoping to see a reaction on his face. Wait a minute. What is it that I want, exactly, from such a confrontation?  What satisfaction is to be had?  In the moment, it really doesn’t matter.  In the moment, I have let my inner “Hyde” take over.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was written towards the end of the Victorian era, a time of strict morals and a strong sense of propriety. The book explores the animal, infantile instincts and the potential for evil in all of us.  The same instincts that the norms of society perpetually force us to keep repressed for the sake of civilization, and also reputation.

At the end of Stevenson’s novel, good prevails over evil.  Restraint rules and order is restored.   But, the story goes that there was first another version with a different ending, one over which Stevenson’s wife, Fanny, whose name seems ironically apt, expressed disapproval which resulted in Stevenson throwing his only manuscript into the fire.  A fitting gesture for a novel about impulse control.  He rewrote the entire thing from memory reportedly changing the ending.  I wonder about that first ending.  Why did he rewrite it?  To please her?  To conform with what was right and true and good of his day?  I wonder about the statement he had originally intended to make, the one that met with criticism from his wife.  I can almost see her all laced up in her corset sitting rigidly by the fireside in a tall backed chair, her posture perfect, her lips pursed, her stare pointed at her husband who had grown weary of the stringent zeitgeist of his day. A small sliver of my inner Hyde hopes that he had, as rappers Salt-n-Pepa have said, “a chick on the side.”  Which isn’t fair of me because I’ve never met Fanny.  She was probably a wonderful human who was just, like most of us, trying to do the right thing.

My feelings about Fanny stem, I think, from the same exasperation that I imagine Stevenson to have had over the Victorians unwillingness to acknowledge the stuff which makes us human.  No matter the manners and gentility portrayed by the Victorians, no matter how much Fanny may have wanted to deny it, the fact remains that people across time and across cultures have the types of urges portrayed in Stevenson’s novel, and oh, the secret and deliciously devilish delight when we think of giving over if even in a small way to the way we’d really like to behave sometimes, doing what we’d really like to do, saying the things we’d really like to say. Let’s be honest, even the best among us have spent time and energy fantasizing, esprit d’escalier, about the things we really wish we had done or said when we’ve been cut off by a thoughtless driver or bullied by a domineering mother-in-law or insulted by an obnoxious co-worker or slighted by a hostile Meijer cashier. What would we say or do were we not bound by our fear of consequence, our desire to please others, our obedience to the social contract? Why we’d give them a “piece of our mind”, that’s what.  Or we’d “show them who’s boss.”  

 But, we know better.  We’ve been conditioned that way, since we were young and some of us more successfully than others, for the greater good. Even when it seems that a bit of bad behavior might be justified or even excused we still blanch at the thought.  Or rather, we blanch at the possible consequences. If we could act out and get away with it, that would be one thing.   We know that it isn’t smart to put our lives and the lives of others in danger on the expressway because of a little road rage. We know that family holidays will be happier if we keep our mouths shut when mother-in-law comments on our housekeeping.  We know that lunch in the break room will be less awkward if we just pretend that annoying co-worker doesn’t exist, and we know that our eggs have a higher likelihood of reaching our homes unbroken if we just smile and nod when that cashier talks about the awful eternity he has left to work his shift. We hold back our impulses.  And we avoid--at the least—uncomfortable confrontations and necessary apologies--at the worst--incarceration, death and chaos pain and suffering for all.

Still, we are human and even though we know better, no one makes the right choice all the time. Every day, we hear the tragic consequences that result from the victory of our inner Hydes, the dark side of ourselves, our alter egos.  Indeed, I have a friend who has given hisa name that is a sort of derivative of his own.  So, if his name was Sean Duffie, his alter is Schwan DuFAY. The important thing about the fact that he has named his is that it indicates an awareness.  And as any member of a twelve step recovery program can tell you, awareness is the first step to change. It got me thinking about my own alter ego and all the missteps she has made in her life.  I like this idea of separating her from myself so that I can take a look at her.   In that spirit, she’ll need a name.  Scarlet.  No last name.  Just Scarlet.  It’s a name that says it all: total disregard for the spilled blood of others. And I am definitely being hyperbolic and speaking figuratively.  She isn’t as bad as all that. But, let’s just say I’ve got my own history of choices that make me cringe when I replay them in my head. They are the ghosts that visit in the night bringing insomnia with them. I mean I haven’t killed anybody, but I have plenty of my own “what was I thinking?” moments. We all have.  Is it possible for any human to be our best selves all the time?  And aren’t these episodes, in a way, necessary?  If learning and growth comes not from, as one of my former teachers Sr. Phyllis Supanchek once told me, the mistakes we make, but what we do with them? Doesn’t the entire harmony of the universe hinge on balance?  Light and dark? Empty and full? Good and evil? Think that over: bad choices as a necessary evil to maintain equilibrium? Well, then okay.  But, I guess then I’m just going to try to be the person who does the least harm.  It feels good to revel in this awareness.  So, then was is terrifying to contemplate are those times when I have been Hyde, but I don’t know it until after the damage has been done.  Times when I don’t remember drinking the potion in the first place.

During the time I was studying to be a teacher, all of my college professors actively sought to raise their students’ anxiety levels about  the importance of volunteer work.  They pretty much had us all convinced that if we didn’t spend hours manning the phones at the red cross or immersing ourselves into other teachers’ classrooms there was no hope of ever getting a job. We needed things to put on our resume.  And getting a job was priority number one for me, so I signed up for an opportunity that I felt would not only help me show myself as a caring and devoted educator but would also, at the risk of sounding ghoulish, be entertaining.  But, that isn’t exactly the right word: entertaining.   I signed up to do some tutoring at the Kent County Jail. So, it wasn’t that I was going there to be entertained, but rather to satisfy a natural curiosity about the place. It was as though a tiny Hyde inside me wanted to witness life on the inside. For whose benefit?  I’m not sure. No.  I am.  For my own. For my own benefit. Not proud of that, but it's the truth.

As I pulled into the parking lot, I stared at the circular building lined with several stories of evenly spaced miniscule windows.  Jail cells, must be, I thought.  Someone somewhere must have done some research on inmate cooperation and determined that even a little bit of sunlight makes everything run more smoothly. I thought briefly of the life inside the cells.  In my mind, I saw a bed, a toilet and a person in a striped suit sitting inside quietly doing nothing.  I walked in the front doors and was greeted by several uniformed police officers, one of whom asked me to place my purse on a conveyor belt while the other wove a wand around my person checking for, I assumed, weapons. Having passed both tests they allowed me passage through the first set of many locked doors.

To get to the women’s unit, we had to pass by the men’s first.  All that separated me and the incarcerated was a set of metal bars.  Feeling a little like Clarice Starling, I ignored their ungentlemanly comments—Fanny would have been appalled-- and kept my gaze fixed on the back of my uniformed escort.  

After much scanning of cards to unlock and open doors, there was also much slamming and locking of doors.  After a brief elevator ride, we were finally at the women’s area where I was to meet the group of women with whom I’d be working.  It was not at all as I had imagined.  There were no striped suits and there was no quiet. They were seated around a table with sheets of paper and only the smallest stubs of pencils (can’t give them anything they can turn into a weapon).  I should mention that I was not alone on this journey.  I was accompanied by a Social Worker whose job it was to spend time every day with people who had let their inner Hydes prevail for whatever reason.  She spent every day trying to striving to instill in inmates a sense of awareness I’ve mentioned so that they might make different choices and silence the beast within.  Thankfully, she led the meeting.  But before she got started, I sat in my chair trying to seem unafraid aware that I was fooling no one.  Tying to assume a posture of “I’ve been here before” and “This is no big deal” when clearly it was. I listened to the women talking to each other while trying to pretend that I wasn’t.   I am, of course, omitting the expletives peppered in less for emphasis and just as part of the normal sentence structure.  They bantered back and forth loudly, laughing sometimes shouting, just as any group of women might anywhere else, at the workplace, lunch at the mall, at the gym, only the dialogue had with an edge and the content of their conversations sometimes included things like hearing dates or lawyer problems or issues with visitation, who was and was not coming to see whom and how exactly that made them feel and what they were going to do to them once they got out.  It seemed I was invisible as they threw around the details of their lives for anyone to hear The only real piece of conversation I remember from that visit so long ago came from a woman who looked to be about sixty.  She was thin and sat with wide blue eyes, her hands folded into her lap, her brown bob hanging limply on the sides of her face.  I was not invisible to her because after sizing me up, she leaned in towards me as if I were her secret ally and said just this, “They said I strangled him, that I had my hands around his throat.  I don’t remember doing that.” And then she leaned back into her seat and looked around at the talking women, listening or not, I’m not sure.

Her words have always stayed with me.  I mean, I didn’t know whether to believe her or not.  She was in jail, after all. But if she were lying, her perfomance was pretty convincing. Maybe she was going for a temporary insanity defense.  But I think the reason I remember it so clearly is because of this idea….is it possible to be so out of control, to lack any awareness and do something so heinous?

(STILL REFINING THE REST AT THIS POINT)

  Because if so, that’s terrifying.  How much control does that inner Hyde have?  Yes, sometimes while I’m driving and the other drivers around me aren’t meeting my expectattions, I just shut up and give them their space…..other times, my language sounds just  like that of the women I met in the hjail that day and I have to apologize to my passengers. But sometimes its just beyond the edge of my control…..the stuff I do that I regret that Im sorry for later…where I ask myself What was I thinking?  But not to the point of putting my hands around someone’s throat….or slamming into someone else’s car and then getting out and drawing a gun.  But that stuff, unfortunately does happen.  And the most mystifying question is how?  How does it get to that point?  Is it a lifetime of giving in to the alter ego that makes the degree of bad behavior increase or dcan a person, as a popular tv show claims in its title, just “Snap.?”And what preseves some of us from taking it to that next level?  What is it that separates those of us who are outside walking around drinking starbucks and buying tvs from the folks with the stubby penscils behind the the bars?

I’m not talking here though about the mentally ill.  And clearly, our jails are filled with people who are in the wrong place.  The criminalization of the mentally ill is a much debated topic and everyday people who suff e r form schizophrenia and borderline persaonality disorders are imprisoned when what they really need is help, chemical or otherwise, to heal the monster or at least shove it into a metaphorical closet for a time.  And I’m really not talking about pure evil either.  It exists.  Not just in novels.  It existed in the Victorian era, in a ll of the eras before and after it exists now.  Just listen to the news.  I think there is nothing more to explore when a young man decides to walk into a school and shoot a bunch of first graders.  There’s no depth of exploration to be had about a man who kills millions of a particular race in the name of ethnic cleansing.  There’s nothing more to say about a woman who kills her own children so that shse might spend her life with a man who would rather remain childless.  That’s just pure evil.    Likewises the appeal of Jekyll and Hyde does not lie in the specific atrocitis that Hyde commits,.  Rather we are like the maid at the window witnessing Carew’s murder.  We alike Dr. Lanyon whose knowledge of Jekyll’s secret leads to his own failing health.  We are horrified.  WE turn the channel or watch cat videos on Facebook.  Like Lanyon, we don’t want to think about it.  Well, most of the time.  We can’t deny that there is an entire money making machine in our society that pours this stuff into our living rooms every day.  If we don’t want to watch the evil, why re shows like Dateline, 20/20 and Snapped so popular?  Why is there an fascination with murder and death?  Why do we have an entire cable channel devoted to nothing but recounting the stories of people who have crossed the line, let their Hydes out completely and taken someone else’s life?  And what does it say about us that we are willing to spend time ?  People love a good story.  And there seems to be no shortage of material .They want the same thing I’m asking here.  They want to know why.  They want to know what happened.  How it got to that place. Or does this vicarious watching protect us from our own Hyde side?  WE spend a little vicarious time on the wild side , an hour in our recliners  staring at a screen Somehow we get it our of our systems, say a little prayer that we aren’t the ones who allowed the anger to take over and then we go back to doing the best we can to tolerate other drivers on the road, stand patiently n line at the check out and recover from the numerous betrayals we might suffer at the hands of others. The minute I knew I didn’t have to worry about my son playing video games.  He came down the stairs and we were watching the news coverage of a recent violent tragedy.  He stopped halfway down, looked at the TV and said, “Why are you watching that?  It’s horrible.”  This was a kid who spent hours in his room   He knew the difference.  He knew evil when he saw it.  And from that kind of evil, we must turn away. 

The appeal for most of us is those other smaller sins that Hyde commits that really intrigue us, the ones that Stevenson leaves vague and unnamed that seem most lurid in a way that isn’t as harmful to others of their lack of specificity.  What could he be doing that is so awful we ask ourselves?  Inquiring minds want to know Stevenson won’t tell.  He leaves it up to our imaginations which because of our our hyde like urges are far darker than we like to admit.    The phenomenon I am more interested in is the everyday folks.  Science has tried to explain it.  One neuroscientist boils it down to the old “fight or flight” response that is buried deep within our primitive ancestry.   It’s the last time you felt trapped or stopped when you wanted to go and that triggers within you some impulse that makes you act before you think. Anger, he says, is our first and most primitive impulse when we sense a threat.  And if we understand that we can go a long way to diffuse our response system(Dahl)

And part of the means to understand this is to also understand the term “threat” and how we perceive it.   For example, while researching this topic, I visited several online articles that discuss this same idea.  While reading I became aware of a side bar advertisement for a product that I have recently shopped for.  I suddenly became angry.  So then I ask myself…why am I angry?  Does my primitive brain perceive a threat?  Indeed it does…..the fortress feels vulnerable to foreign invaders , so how does this play out?  My inner hyde maybe picks the laptop up off the desk, raises it overhead and shouting rage filled assertions about the evils of consumerism and the government slams the computer to the ground and then jumps up and down on it and then unsatisfied, finds a blunt instrument and clubs to it death just as Hyde killed Sir Danvers Carew in the park. 

Or, I recognize this anger and I make a different choice.  I go to the site that student Lucas Baker told me about, “Ad pop ups something. Com” and I take rational steps necessary to rid my computer of cookies or whatever it is that allows for this kind of transparency.  Or I say to myself, “Yes, I am a consumer in the 21^st century and companies are going to do whatever they can to get my money.  Ultimately, I still choose whether or not to buy those Reebok tights or not. “And I go on with my day.

Oh, if only it were that easy.  But like so many other things in life….awareness is the first step. And whether, as Dr. Jekyll or my friend Sean has done, you want to name that person inside yourself that has fight or flight anger issues and talk to that person directly as if they were in the room…

“Okay, Schwan, settle down.  Why are you angry right now?”

 or you want to own that part of you that is ready to fight to the death and just do some internal self talk, the idea is as Shakespeare said, “Know thyself.”  Know your triggers, acknowledge your primitive brain, do some self talk and keep it together, man

 And that’s fine.  I think the more interesting idea is about when we are unaware that we are Hyde.  Until later when regret etc

great delight when we think