David Holdt is an under appreciated yet tremendously talented writer and thinker, and also one of the better teachers on the face of the planet.  He taught for over 30 years at the excellent progressive private school, Watkinson, in Hartford, CT – and his class there, Writer’s Workshop, has probably changed the lives of most of the students that attended during that tenure. He still teaches at the University of Hartford, right across campus from Watkinson, and now lives in Tolland, CT. He might have a functioning website soon, if I can talk him into it, or if he already has plans for one and I just haven’t heard yet. Either way, I will also try to talk him into some modest blogging, but that may take a while.

The above is my effort to encapsulate Mr. Holdt, having realized now that people indeed do google David Holdt, and in the top ten results an old post of mine comes up that was the end result of a struggle to communicate to David a google map indicating the best places to park for Red Sox games in my old neighborhood in Boston.

Now as much as I like to advertise that David Holdt and I are friends, or that I try to get him to go to Red Sox games as much as possible, or that I know where to park for such games, if I had a car, which I don’t – if my meager website mentions of his name are one of the only google representations of such a great person….then that situation needed to be remedied. So now that first paragraph will work its way into the top ten results hopefully. A trick, perhaps, but as Holdt always says about Wikipedia, if you read it on the internet, it has to be true. (citation needed) (actually one is not, David Holdt hates Wikipedia.) (citation definitely unneeded)

In addition, since you’re obviously interested enough in David Holdt to click thru to my somewhat-very-less-important-than-his-impact-on-the-world-website – you might as well watch the speech he gave at his retirement gala this past Saturday, which is also his YouTube debut!

 

and, if you’re really really feeling like indulging yourself, you can even read the speech I gave at that same gala. (Altho my feeling is it read better than in reads) (And since I handed in, one last time, my final edit [the edits in pen at the table as I waited to speak] I have tried to fix it again with a few minor changes, including the massive typo in the first words of the first sentence  which scrambled my brain at the already nervous beginning of my speech – until after a 5 second [unwittingly dramatic] pause, I got it right and began)

Expand this post below or download to read it… they both come complete with the cool hyperlinks a speech can’t have when you read it on paper. Unless you’re a robot.

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Remarks @ Watkinson School
In honor of David Holdt’s Retirement
June 7th, 2008

 

An Invitation to Think
Chas Danner

 

It was one of my first trimesters at Watkinson. I was in Writer’s Workshop. I had written virtually none of the assignments over the course of that trimester. No doubt an F stared away from my name in the book in my teacher’s leather briefcase. He took me aside, and told me to take my in-class journal, which definitely had writing in it, but nothing I thought was very good, and take it the ALC, photocopy it, and hand that in. This didn’t seem to be a choice I was given, so I did what he said, and I passed with a C-.

#34) START IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ACTION TO HOOK THE READER (only give the background when the reader CARES)

This is of course is one of the 40 THINGS TO KNOW. (hold up THINGS TO KNOW)

My name is Chas Danner, Class of ’98, and I have no idea how I actually passed a single class of David Holdt’s. But whether you’d pass or fail, you still got THINGS TO KNOW on the first day. Holdt, that’s what I called him, would work with me to practically invent ways to pass, even with grades better than a C-. And indeed when I (barely) graduated Watkinson in 1998, even after I’d been in a class of Holdt’s every single day for two years, I just hadn’t had enough, and so took two of his (quite excellent) classes at UHart. And I totally failed both of ‘em, no way around it. Nope. No way.

#10) WRITE WRITTEN NOT CONVERSATIONAL ENGLISH

Holdt was one cool dude.

#28) SLANG LIMITS YOU, EXCEPT IN DIALOGUE, AVOID IT

Because of Holdt, first as a teacher and later as a friend, today I know all sorts of fascinating things. I know to respect Annie Dillard and John McPhee as the finest writers alive. I know not to eat aspartame, because the guys who invented it don’t. I know that baseball was the pipeline for many immigrant group’s acceptance into greater American society. I know

#32) SOME PENS FIT YOUR HAND BETTER: BUY THOSE AND RECYCLE THE REST.

I know you should stand up for what is right, even when it’s not popular, because I’ve read the editorial he wrote to the New York Times on the eve of the Vietnam war explaining the true historical struggle of the Vietnamese rebels, a truth more Americans needed to understand, and as I recall he almost lost his job for it. Also I know that Holdt read For Whom the Bell Tolls as a child, and decided then and there to become a writer.

And incidentally, I’ve also learned a lot about writing, although writing isn’t as easy as falling off a log. Take my word for it, I can no longer have my cake and eat it too. I can’t bend over backward being on the same page. For what it’s worth, if I ever found myself a fish out of water, I certainly won’t have bigger fish to fry. And it breaks my heart that I will never be Tall, Dark, or Handsome. But… you take the bitter with the sweet, just not the sweet without the sour.

#8) DO NOT RECYCLE CLICHES (She was always there for me.)

It would take days to remember and recite all of the things I have learned from Holdt.

#13) DO NOT B O R E YOUR READER

But his strength as a teacher is not about the facts that I know, or the arguments that I have come to agree with… Originally I limped into Watkinson as an intellectual refugee, having reached a sort of ground zero in underachievement six months prior by dropping out of my previous school. The reason for this was what as an adult I would probably call a nervous breakdown. At 16. The confusion and humiliation of this experience made me feel like I hadn’t just dropped out of school, but out of the belief that I was capable of anything at all anymore. I would later find out that Watkinson was possibly the best place in the world for me to regain my balance. But more than that a remarkable thing happened to me in this remarkable place. I didn’t just learn about Zinn and Gatsby and how much everyone liked my alumna older sister – Because of the progressive curriculum, because of the exceptional faculty, and most of all, because I met David Holdt, I relearned how to Think.

THINK. What is Think?

#7) NO ONE WORD SENTENCES AT THE BEGINNING OF A PARAGRAPH (Pain? What is Pain?)

THINK

Holdt is an inspired nester. His classroom, and his home if you’ve ever seen it, is a study in personality saturation. Pictures, stickers, bits of writing and quotations, stacks of books and papers, and – of course – anything and everything relating to baseball… Every square inch of wall has been confronted and personalized. And inside his classroom there was a sign posted, I believe in the upper corner of the chalkboard, right near the door, so that you couldn’t possibly exit the room without at least subconsciously reading it. One word alone on a white page.

THINK

There it was. The tagline of The David Holdt Experience.

Writer’s Workshop was a unique class, probably unlike any other class anyone in this room has ever, or will ever take. The structure was simple, you, (hopefully quietly) sat. Holdt, would read something aloud. Then, you’d write. That was it. Every-day. But Holdt wouldn’t just read from a textbook, he would read from a lifetime’s collection of essays and stories, pieces that he liked, that had an effect he liked. In two years, I don’t think I heard the same piece twice more than a handful of times. As each piece was chosen to provoke thought, virtually each one did. And it was always Holdt and only Holdt that did the readings. Students didn’t take turns reading from some book like in other classes, Holdt read, and you wanted him to. His familiarity with the work, with reading aloud well – intellectually amplified the experience. He had us submit our own work for him to read one day, and I gave him probably the best thing I’d written that year (for another class of course) and it sounded ten times better in his voice than it ever had in my head or had looked on the page. He hadn’t even read it before and yet he nailed every nuance in language I had modestly tried to pull off. David Holdt could read you the encyclopedia and you’d swear it was literature. That is of course, if he even needed to read it – he wouldn’t, Holdt is an encyclopedia.

#37) METAPHORS ARE BRIDGES, BUILD SOME

#23) DO NOT USE “YOU” WHEN ATTRIBUTING FEELINGS OR EXPERIENCE (eg. When you go to Spain you will love the feeling of romance, the way you like the classical guitar)

After Holdt would finish reading to you, he would then offer a few thoughts of his own on the subject – sometimes questions, and sometimes statements. But he would always lead you into writing time the same way: He would say, “THINK ABOUT…..” X. Whatever angle of thinking the reading had opened a door to, how you related to something, a moment in your life when you felt X or Y, sometimes very specific, sometimes more broad. THINK ABOUT….. the pace of a typical education, even a progressive one like Watkinson – the rigor of memorizing information, of preparing for tests, of analyzing literature or historical resources or scientific processes. THINK ABOUT….. a class where that pace came to a near stop. You could just raft up with a bold idea or two and see where it took you. To have Holdt as a teacher, was an invitation to Think.

THINK ABOUT.…. the people in your life to whom you owe an unrepayable debt. THINK ABOUT..… how much you appreciate the people you care about, the people that have had any positive impact however small or profound. Can you put a value on this experience? Perhaps your parents? How can you repay them for raising you? How do you ever stop rewarding the love of your life for their effect on that life? And your teachers, in and out of school, because so many people throughout your life become a needed teacher… It’s almost impossible to imagine completing any such compensation. You owe your parents to have a better life then they have had. You owe your loved ones your trust, your compassion, and your forgiveness. You owe your teachers every success you can muster. And I don’t believe this to be some banal observation; it’s a philosophical agreement every human being buys into at birth. To the important people in your life, you owe an unrepayable debt – but that does not mean you give up at its magnitude. You chip away at it, every now and then you take a moment to articulate to someone what they mean to you, you be generous, maybe even over-generous. This debt is a great honor.

Watkinson nurtured my wounded pride and reinvented my intellect. I owe it a debt, and should I ever become a kajillionaire I promise I will build the Danner Spa Building – which will be the new Teacher’s Lounge. But Holdt taught me to think, he taught me to think like him, like a writer. To always look at the world from new angles, to digest it as fast as I can – but always in a way that I can communicate. It has become the core way I process ideas, and the vehicle for making previously invisible connections between those ideas. It is the way I simplify and complicate my experience as a living and hopefully intelligent human being, every single day. To make every day a thoughtful one. And I may still be an underachiever, but whatever I will achieve in life – will have its foundation in that cradle of Holdt’s classroom. I cannot, and will not, attempt to put a value on this. It is one of my unrepayable debts, and I am so happy that after leaving school – “Holdt” became “David” for me, and that being the best friend I can be to my old mentor is how I can repay my debt, year after year.

I guess it won’t be this guy – now that he’s retiring, and it might not be here, but I can only dream that my kids someday have a teacher like David Holdt.

I will finish by relating one specific bit of knowledge I might never have come across had it not been for David. You all of course know that he is a huge Red Sox fan, as any reasonable person should be. This is a special fact for David and I because his relentless baseball reading choices in class are responsible for me becoming a huge fan again myself, one who ended up with season tickets to the Red Sox, starting in a year called 2004. And not only did he and I go to what turned out to be the pivotal fate changing game in the middle of that season, but I dragged him to his first World Series game in the fall, the Bloody Sock World Series game. An honor for me – more payback… almost poetic. But he was originally a Cleveland Indians fan, being from that part of the world. And as I’ve learned from David, there was once a player on the Cleveland Indians named Larry Doby. In 1947, after serving his country in World War II, the 23 year old second baseman was converted into an outfielder to debut with the Indians, on the day after the Fourth of July. And although he’d only play 29 games that season, the next season he would hit .301 in 121 games to help the Indians win the American League pennant. Over his 13 year career he would be an All-Star seven times, and twice lead the American League in home runs. And in a era when the New York Yankees absolutely dominated the American League, only the Indians and Doby were able to beat them for the Pennant in 1948 and 1954, something any Red Sox fan can appreciate. But Larry Doby wasn’t the only player to make his debut in 1947. Three months before him, on April 15th, a National League rookie on the Brooklyn Dodgers named Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier and became the first black player in the major leagues. Larry Doby, was the second, but the first in the American League.

Now you could say this was a whole new ballgame in the American league, but you wouldn’t have in 1947, because the cliché “a whole new ballgame” or “a whole other ballgame” is believed to have originated in 1970. And was first used in printed form in 1971, in the New Yorker, a mostly pictureless magazine Holdt has often tortured teenagers with.

#6) USE SPECIFIC DETAILS, THEY LEND AUTHENTICITY, AND THEY ARE THE CHOCOLATE CHIPS IN A CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE-THE COOKIE IS BLAND WITHOUT THEM

Larry Doby may not have gotten many headlines, or much credit, but he encountered the same prejudice, rejection, and threats that Jackie Robinson did. But Doby didn’t care. The owner of the Indians told him that he was going to be a part of history, but Larry would later say “Part of history? I had no notions about that. I just wanted to play baseball.” And that’s what he did in the 1948 World Series, when he hit the deciding home run in game four. Afterwards in the clubhouse he was photographed embracing the winning pitcher, Steve Gromek, who was white. They were face to face, giant smiles on their faces, and that photograph was published nationwide, attached to the notion of victory. It was one of the first images of desegregation to reach into the national consciousness. And two days later Doby became the first black player to win a World Series. He had hit .318. (By the way the Indians, taking a cue from the Sox – have not won a series since.) Larry Doby was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1998, and died at the age of 79 in 2003.

He had said, “It was a learning lesson for baseball and the country, If we all look back, we can see that baseball helped make this a better country for us all, a more comfortable country for us all” That was Larry Doby. Another hero not yet sung by casual American History, but one we should remember, especially today – at the end of the week our country has finally nominated a person of color for leader of the entire free world.

Larry Doby is the kind of story that the world needs David Holdts to help the rest of us appreciate. And so in honor of that, of your decades of making young people Think, and in continuance of my unrepayable debt to the best teacher I have ever had, I have here a baseball for you, signed by Mr. Doby, right on the sweet spot. And as I’m sure today proves, in this room, in our Lifetimes of memory, you will never, ever, be unsung. THINK ABOUT……. that.

And Don’t Forget:

#14) READ MORE THAN YOU DO NOW

#33) SAVE EVERTHING YOU WRITE

And I’ll add

#41) ALWAYS LISTEN TO HOLDT, and WHAT DOES HOLDT ALWAYS SAY?

 

THINK

 

 

 

UPDATE (6/11):

Incase you couldn’t find the hyperlinks (hint, they’re Blue) here they are in plainer form-
Referenced items, available online:

Watkinson School
THINGS TO KNOW handout from Writer’s Workshop
David Holdt’s 1965 NYT Editorial
Info on Howard Zinn
“Best thing I’d written that year” piece from 1998
July 24th, 2004 Sox “pivotal” victory over Yankees
Bloody Sock World Series game
Photo of Larry Doby
Video of the 1948 World Series (turn volume way up)
Steve Gromek’s NYT obituary
Clubhouse Photograph of Doby and Gromek
Larry Doby’s page at the Hall of Fame website
Articles on Larry Doby @ NYT

 

also.. it occurs to me that any edits I have made on or after Saturday are within bounds because I am only following

#40) NEVER stop with one draft. AND REMEMBER: NO PAPER IS FINISHED UNTIL THE AUTHOR SAYS IT IS