The Touro Communication Club Notes - #96 –November 25, 2009
Communication Quote of the Week
If two men agree on everything,
you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.
Lyndon B. Johnson (1908 - 1973) was the 36th president of the U.S.
The Touro Communication Club
2 pm - Wednesday, November 25, 2009 – Room 223
“SPAR Debate”
We need to return to practicing our Communication skills. This is another exercise to train your ability to think on your feet. You are given a topic – let’s say, “Honesty is the best policy.” You and a partner flip a coin for who is going to agree with the statement and who is going to disagree. You have a brief period to prepare, and then you argue you side. You will question your opponent and then restate your position. The audience will vote on who gave the best argument. They cannot take sides. To keep things lively, we have many other topics.
A Note to Communicators:
Finding Agreement #1
Strategy: To observe current events to discover important communication elements.
Tactic: To discover the elements of agreement and the difficulty in arriving at agreement in the current health care debate in Congress while trying not to take sides.
Finding agreement in any situation is at best difficult, at worst, impossible. The current health care debate is no exception – and it takes place mostly in public so we can examine some of the moving parts.
Goal: The nation has decided it wants a health care plan. Actually, President Obama is the one who put health care on his to-do list, along with 67 other issues. Obama is the instigator.
President Bush wasn’t interested in health care. President Clinton was, but botched the attempt in 1993 because he didn’t know how work the system. From the time of President Harry Truman in 1946, the health care has been an important issue.
Strategy: Identify what are the pieces you want in the bill. That’s the easy part.
· Be aware of what the other Democrats want in their plans.
· Be aware that the Republicans will probably vote against ANY Democratic health plan. (No Republican voted on Saturday night to close debate )
Tactic: Find allies who will support your bill or a compromise version of it/
Tactic: Anticipate the arguments against your bill and prepare your arguments for your bill.
Strategy: Recognize that certain members of Congress will not vote for your bill regardless of how good it is. In every past battle over social welfare issues (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid), Republicans have consistently voted against these bills. In the current cloture vote, the Republicans voted in a bloc of all 39 votes. One Republican (Voinovich from Ohio) did not vote.
Opposing strategies for each side: If you are a Democrat, make sure all Democrats vote for the bill. If you are a Republican, make sure all the Republicans and a lot of Democrats don’t vote for the bill.
Tactics for both sides: The leadership of each party should divide up their opponents and decide what it will take to keep or change their vote. Have individual conversations with
Tactics for both sides: Appear in all media arguing for your side.
Tactics for both sides: Have the lobbyists from various industries who will benefit or destroy the support for or against the bill.
Final tactic – Call in all the favors from Members of Congress to vote the way you want.
Final strategy – Cross your fingers.
The above is roughly what happens in Congress in Washington or the Legislature in Albany. It is very formal and public.
In countries where the process of finding agreement is opaque (China) or violent (Afganistan or Iran), there are many more variables, especially is you decide to disagree with the leader of your country.
Most people tire easily of all this back and forth negotiation to arrive at an agreement. These people want simple solutions quickly. A dictator is the only kind of government they want – when THEY are the dictator.
Any kind of democracy is torturous – especially is interpersonal relationships. If we think we believe in equality, just wait until someone disagrees with you. Then it’s “My way or the highway!”
We aren’t taught negotiation is school. Power is the only thing that comes instinctively to us. A knife, a gun or a fist can solve an immediate problem, but – DAMN! – There are all these pesky consequences – unfair treatment, lies, hurt feelings, emotional damage, etc. etc. Even verbal manipulation is a weapon for those who have fast mouths.
But that gets tiresome. What to do?
Sir Winston Churchill once said, “Democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”
UPCOMING CONVERSATIONS:
December 2 – “Walking the Talk”- Many of us have had the experience of knowing people who promise to do something and don’t do it. This experience can be personal or within a group. A Touro Dean once described two categories of participants in a project. “There are the show horses and there are the work horses.” The show horses talk a good game, but they “don’t deliver the mail,” as one member of Congress recently phrased it. There are dozens of ways this situation occurs. We’ll share our experiences and then discuss what to do about the phenomenon.
December 9 – “Moral Decay and The Need for a Dress Code”– Recently, Charles Mason gave me a copy of an academic article entitled “Moral Crisis in Higher Education and the Dress Code Phenomenon.” The article reviews “indecent dressing among youth today” and “the need to restore high moral standards, integrity and decency.” In one of our recent sessions, the topic of saggy pants stirred up much discussion. Some people feel strongly – pro and con - about the way certain people dress. We try to keep calm during the session.
December 16 – “Thinking”- Do we know when we think? Can you NOT think? Do you know how YOU think? Do you like to think? Then what do you think about? How can you direct your thinking? What about distractions? These are only some of the topics that will probably come up during the discussion. Maybe someone will know how to read our minds.
What about one of these topics?
“How Do You Fire Someone?”
“Rap and Hip Hop – What’s the Message?"
“Rodney King: ‘Why Can’t We Get Along?”
“Asking Questions in Class”
“Cold Calling in Sales”
“Meaning”
“The Seven Heavenly Virtues”
“Why Does History Repeat Itself?”
“Repetition”
“Cynicism”
“Heroism”
And dozens of others!
What happened on Wednesday, November 18, 2009? “Charles Borkhuis and his Radio Plays”
For today’s program, we had a healthy mixture of new and familiar faces, mostly faculty. The new faces were Mirela Burca, Lacy Shaw, and Leon Perkal. Among the familiar faces were Richard Green, Lorinda Moore, Meggy Lindsay, Abraham Luna, James Millner, Charles Mason, Pamela Sheppard, Markus Vayndorf, Rene Vasquez, Carlisle Yearwood, Jean Missial and Hal Wicke And, of course, Charles Borkhuis, our guest for the afternoon.
The purpose of this session was to be able to hear a work of art and then question the working artist, who happens to teach at Touro, to discover how he does what he does.
English faculty member Charles Borkhuis leads several creative lives outside of Touro. In addition to his poetry and essays, his many radio and stage plays have received national and international acclaim.
During the afternoon, we listened to two 26-minute radio plays of Charles Borkhuis which were performed on National Public Radio. We listened to “The Sound of Fear Clapping” and “Foreign Bodies.”
Each was homage to the Hollywood film noir genre of the 1940s and early ‘50s, which was rooted in German Expressionism of the 1920s. Drawing on the literary detective novels of Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane, these movies starred familiar names of Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. Some film noir titles might include “The Maltese Falcon,” “Key Largo,” and “The Asphalt Jungle,” which reappear occasionally on Turner Classic Movies (TCM).
Professor Borkhuis said he was inspired to write these radio plays from his childhood experiences of listening to radio drama like “The Lone Ranger,” “The Adventures of Sam Spade,” and radio comedies like “Abbott and Costello,” “Amos ‘n’ Andy.” Several faculty also remembered these radio shows with great warmth.
The old-time radio plays may have been the inspiration for Professor Borkhuis, but what he does with the format and its elements completely reinvents the genre. .
To retell the plots of both plays after one hearing is, for this reporter, an impossibility. In each, a gravelly-voiced central male character narrates his difficulties with time, people and
.Professor Borkhuis creates a riveting aural portrait that mimics its origins while transcending its limits. The voices and the music painted a tortured central figure which is at the mercy of forces beyond his control.
Unlike its film noir inspiration with its linear plot and stereotypical characters, he manipulated time and, with sound overlays, was able to create a simultaneity that the old-time radio plays had never envisioned.
With a long list of books of poetry to his credit, the poet in Borkhuis manipulates his radio language to heighten the impact of the story. Narration, dialogue and repetition of key phrases create a complex verbal portrait of the entanglements of the principal character. Occasional contemporary references were jarring opposition to the 1940s mood he created.
Between each radio play, everyone asked questions of Professor Borkhuis, ranging from the mechanics of production to how he got his ideas for the two shows. He was very gracious in answering every question in detail. The second play, “Foreign Bodies,” had a jazz theme and Professor Borkhuis pointed out several moments where the structure of jazz music was reinforced by the music of jazz.
· “For me,” Professor Borkhuis commented, “Poetry is an escape into an imaginary world that is always new.” Other thoughts included:
· “As adults we have lost that atmosphere of a child’s world.”
· “There are poetic moments in washing dishes.”
· “A Zen answer not far from the dreaming world.”
· “Awareness is a new day.”
· “Get into the state – the spell – James Joyce’s ‘Epiphany.’”
· “I look for a spark. I read bits from 12 books until something, a voice, triggers a spark.”
· “There are a lot of choices which I have to edit, particularly to a 26 minute format.”
· “The spiral is an image of human projection, going forward yet returning to previous themes.”
Professor Borkhuis: “I was working with a student the other day. I asked her to write her ideas randomly on the board. These thoughts are bubbles. We then began to work to make connections between and among the bubbles to make a coherent paragraph.”
· “There is a value in repetition.”
· Yearwood: “Sliding between your own thoughts.”
· “You establish a dream spell and then prime the pump. The mind works associatively.”
· “I enjoy my teaching – it is a stimulating, creative process.”
How long did you take to write these plays? “Picasso was asked the same question about one of his paintings. He said, “Sixty-seven years.”
· “The product is the process…a pebble on the road becomes gold.”
· “Sound and silence over music.”
· “Leave your egos at the door.”
Jean gave an interesting final thought: “I always think in terms of ends – the products. I think I have to work on the beginnings and middles as well.”
As the group concludes, everyone applauded Professor Borkhuis. “Exhilarating!” “Wonderful!” “The best program yet!” were among the many, many comments
For those interested in hearing Charles Borkhuis’ two radio plays, here is the link:
We always have a great time exploring these issues. So often our daily life never focuses on these Communication issues. If you have something you want us to discuss please let us know and we’ll add it to the list.
Next time bring a friend. The Communication Club is always an open discussion, limited only by time. Everyone gets a chance to speak. All opinions are welcome. Here is an opportunity for students to challenge professors’ views outside the class without any homework or assignments. You just have to show up and listen and talk if you want.
Hal Wicke
