Another election has come and gone. With the return to divided government—more the norm than the exception in recent decades—we hear predictable calls for bipartisanship and working across the aisle. How might that work? These three terms are often confused:

Compromise is agreement reached through concessions on both sides. The word has negative connotations, not always deserved, depending on what’s conceded. Refusal to consider even minor concessions shifts a divided government from checks and balances toward gridlock.

Meeting halfway can be foolish. The midpoint between poisoning all the nation’s schoolchildren and none is to poison half the children. Less dramatically, if my friend wants to meet for dinner and I’d rather meet for lunch, eating midway at three in the afternoon may irritate us both.

Common ground involves human needs and concerns shared across party lines. In northern Israel, Jewish and Muslim women with a shared desire for healthy families and the means to support them cater meals for underprivileged children. While compromise is iffy and midpoints often fail, collaboration across difference can work when decision-makers value common ground more than making their rivals lose. 

Renaissance, square, contra, social, modern, international folk: I’ve done many kinds of dance over the years, none of them well. When I failed the audition for the modern dance honorary Junior Orchesis in high school, the judges said my choreography was creative and original but I didn’t point my toes on the leaps.

Composing dances was always fun. Even as a beginner, my response to any new step was, “Here is my variation.” Floor plans in choreography appealed to the same part of me as maps and house plans. My teacher, Toni Intravaia, was among the few dance instructors anywhere to teach children Labanotation, a system to record human movement on paper. That led to my implausible credential as a prize-winning choreographer with “Country Capers,” national winner of the Dance Notation Bureau’s Junior Dansnotator Choreography Contest.

Today, handheld devices can record movement electronically, and digital technology lets me rediscover “County Capers” on my computer. Labanotation expert and Dance Notation Bureau co-founder Ann Hutchinson Guest turned 100 this past Saturday. Toni Intravaia died this past April at 95. I’m ever grateful for their encouragement of children’s creativity more than half a century ago, even if I never did learn to point my toes. 

While most parents I know reject the adage that children should be seen and not heard, leadership and personality gurus tell adults to shut up and listen. For evidence, plug the title of this blog post into your favorite search engine. What’s up? Do we want people to talk when they’re young and stop it when they’re grown?

Like most generalized advice, the wisdom of listening more and speaking less varies with the direction you tend to err. Are you more apt to dominate or defer? Though I haven’t found a whit of advice to talk more and listen less, “find your voice” generates millions of hits. Some youth programs use a ground rule “step up, step back,” asking quieter participants to extend themselves and more assertive participants to give them space.

Of course, “be seen” is not the same as “listen.” Less obviously, talking is not always the equivalent of self-expression. The goal isn’t just to take turns or achieve balance, but to absorb and process what we hear and let it inform our output.

​One writing instructor prohibits the student whose work is under discussion from speaking until everyone's comments are finished, sometimes an hour or more. Then there’s a chance to ask questions. This is remarkably effective at quelling the urge to retort, defend, or argue. Forbidden to talk, all the student can do is soak it up and take notes. The input starts to gel. Over time, listening and applying what I hear strengthens my artistic voice. 

“The newspapers are making morning after morning the rough draft of history. Later, the historian will come, take down the old files, and transform the crude but sincere and accurate annals of editors and reporters into history, into literature.”
           - “The Educational Value of ‘News’,” The State [Columbia, S.C.], Dec. 5, 1905

In writing polio eradication history as it happens, I draw heavily on what journalists write. I interview some of the same participants. To say journalists cover the present, while historians treat the past, is only partly true. Six weeks after an event, both the magazine or website journalist and I may write accurate accounts, but they will differ in focus and perspective. Beyond past versus present, the difference is also about the future. Journalists ask, what matters to readers today? Writers of current history ask, which of today’s events will readers five years from now care about, looking back?

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative began thirty years ago, in 1988. This year's World Polio Day event will be livestreamed in Philadelphia this Wednesday, Oct. 24, with a recording posted soon afterward. Journalists will watch for the latest news on efforts to end polio. As a historian, I’ll also be looking for clues to major turning points in the polio story—developments that will still stand out when we read about them long after the world is free of polio.

Back in grad school, I wrote about early modern Europe. Personalities only occasionally shone through the fragile archival materials. When they did, I had a blast. Some 17th-century Puritans were vain, some petulant, some playful, some quick to anger. I wrote them as I found them. Those pages of my dissertation were the most fun to write, and to read.

Years later, writing a short history of a local church, I encountered a new constraint. True, the sources were more abundant, the personalities easier to reconstruct. Yet writing them as I found them demanded a different quality of care. This wasn’t investigative journalism of public figures, but an honest narrative of well-meaning, imperfect individuals, likely to be read by those same people or their widows and children. I struggled for diplomatic wordings such as, “His greatest strength was not in preaching but in pastoral care.” Had the beloved pastor in question died three hundred years earlier, I’d have felt free to say all sources agreed he was a lousy preacher.

​In my current history-as-it-happens writing about polio eradication, fortunately, treating personalities with respect comes easily. The players are doing important and valuable work, policy or strategy disagreements are just that, and differences in temperament or style don’t tempt me to mockery. Debate may arise about who gets credit or which events merit coverage, but that’s a subject for another post.

We’re just back from a four-day escape to Wisconsin’s Door County peninsula, our vacation home away from home. We walked our favorite walks and viewed our favorite views. The comfort of familiarity contrasts with the stimulation of last year’s visit to Greece, where everything was new to us.

​Human senses tune into change, novelty, the unexpected. In Greece, grand edifices like the Temple of Poseidon grabbed my attention. Perception operates at a different level in a setting one knows well. In northern Door County, where every turn of the road is familiar, it’s the doe and fawn by the roadside who catch my eye. The particular blend of red, green, and yellow in this patch of woods, this particular week. The cormorant preening its feathers on a ledge fifteen feet from the observer. Sunbeams shooting straight up into the clouds from a purple sunset over the bay. The joy of novelty in a home away from home lies in the ever-changing details.

​Personal or public life disrupts focus at times. My mind goes round and round, spinning conversations or retorts, refusing to go in a straight line long enough to produce a journal entry, let alone a blog post. Where does making art, music, or dance fit into times like these?

Processing. Words aren’t the only way to journal. One friend assembles a collage to work through grief, anger, and fear. Another dances in the kitchen.

Transforming. After National Guardsmen killed unarmed students in 1970, survivors channeled their rage into creating Devo and other independent rock bands in nearby Akron, Ohio. Click here for the Chicago Tribune’s “How the Kent State Massacre Changed Music.”

Recharging. A recent lunch conversation turned to the strain of caring for ailing relatives. One woman recalled the joy of escaping into her writing for three consecutive hours, her spirit revived by the respite for creativity.

“Girls Refuse to Work under ‘Zombie’ CSM,” the Toronto Globe and Mail reported in August 1944. Canada’s Zombie army of World War II is my latest gem unearthed in digging up family history.

When Canada joined Britain in declaring war on Germany in September 1939, the prime minister promised to send no one but volunteers into overseas military service. He feared repeating the turmoil over the draft in the previous world war, when French Canadians protested risking their lives for the British Empire.

The 1939 announcement brought a surge of volunteers for the Canadian Active Service Force. The next year Parliament authorized military conscription for home front service only. Draftees could choose to “go active,” but few did. Families of men fighting overseas scorned the non-combat conscripts as Zombies, not-quite-soldiers with no will of their own. The Globe and Mail reported, “Nice girls do not dine or dance with them.”

For what it’s worth, I haven’t confirmed any Zombie relatives, and I’d happily dine with one if I did. Lots more on the Zombies is here and here.

After six months failing to cure a pinched nerve, I told the physical therapist I was ready to graduate or flunk out. The therapy was wearing me down. He approved and brightened my summer with a lighter, maintenance routine.

There’s always more you could add to your life for self-care and self-improvement. Exercise, learn a language, eat right, meditate, and on and on. Trouble is, we all know there is a limit. If it isn’t hours in the day, it’s the stress of being more and more on duty, even if the duty is to oneself. Where’s the self-care in beating up on ourselves for all the self-care we aren’t doing?

Maybe if I’d gone further with physics or calculus, I could devise a formula to calculate the turning point between worthwhile and obsessive self-care. Perhaps economics offers a clue in the concept of marginal utility: the diminishing benefit gleaned from adding one more unit of whatever.

Not having mastered any of those disciplines, I give a lot of weight to trial and error. What leaves me sluggish or tense? What refreshes me? I used to journal three full pages a morning, come what may. Being more flexible about it improves my spirits, but skipping it two days in a row throws me off balance. There’s nothing like personal experience as a guide for where to draw the line.

Journalism, detective work, biography, historical fiction: Investigation is basic to them all. Fellow authors ask with a grimace, “But doesn’t your writing take a lot of research?” Absolutely! That’s much of the fun.

Where to begin? Instructors warn students not to use Wikipedia as a source. It’s unreliable; anyone can write anything there. On the other hand, anyone can correct errors and add new findings. It's often a great starting place. The guidance should be, don’t trust Wikipedia or cite it as an authority.

Anonymous tips give detectives and journalists essential leads for where to search and what questions to ask. The anonymous source carries no weight in a court of law, nor should it make news headlines outside of the tabloids. Like Wikipedia, it’s a beginning, not a conclusion. For any form of reputable research, we get pointers where we can. Then we set about the hard work of ferreting out the facts.

Click here for Wikipedia’s tips for using its site for research.