Poems

Let’s Not See All The Same Hands …

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Supreme Court observers have noted that Justice Clarence Thomas is about to reach the five-year anniversary of the last time he asked a question during oral arguments before the court. No other justice has gone that long without raising his hand.

What does this mean? It means that Supreme Court observers are desperate people who need hobbies.

I was a kid who didn’t ask questions in class, in part because all the other kids were so gabby. I thought I was doing a public service by keeping mum. Somehow I got it in my head that we’d get to go to lunch before Mr. Sinclair’s room if we got done with algebra first. Maybe that’s what Justice Thomas is doing.

Oh, and I also didn’t want to get laughed at. I never bought the line about their being ‘no dumb questions,’ because I knew my head was full of them.

For some unexplainable reason, the odd notion of a consistently mum member of the black robed Supreme Court made me think of Edgar Allen Poe.

Once into a court Supremely strode a man some call unseemly
Whether he is that or something else I cannot say for sure.
As he sat among his brethren, criticism he’d been weatherin’
Harsh words, like balloons untetherin’, floated upwards from the floor.
“I’ve no questions,” Thomas muttered. “Like so many times before.”
Any questions? “Nevermore.”

“Surely some things make you wonder as you sit, be-robed, to ponder,”
said a counselor whose well-wrought argument had been a bore.
Thomas gazed up at the ceiling, noticed that the paint was peeling
Feeling an un-curious feeling. A feeling he had felt before.
And for years and years and years and years and years before and more.
Any questions? “Nevermore.”

All the others on the panel – all three women and each man’ll
have at least one query every session, say those who keep score.
Roberts. Kennedy. Scalia. Each of them, in turn, will be a
questioner. Some repeat. Scalia. Scalia. And, of course, Sotomayor.
Only Thomas remains silent as the Sphinx of ancient lore.
Listening, and nothing more.

In they come, their black gowns sweeping. One of them is, maybe, sleeping.
Justices, like angry birds, are poised to pounce on those before.
All their intellect is pooling with each new, successive ruling.
Reasoned judgments come unspooling out the giant courtroom door.
Only one is known for what we know he does not have in store –
Questions, Clarence? Nevermore!

Did you participate in the class discussion?

74 thoughts on “Let’s Not See All The Same Hands …”

  2. I wonder what drives a person in a high profile job, in which you KNOW someone is keeping track of things like how often you ask a question, to not ask a question? Maybe he is trying to get to lunch sooner. Or trying to go down in history with something, anything other than his early troubles.

    We moved around a lot when I was a kid. A lot. I only finished a whole year in the same school in 5th and 6th grade. So you’d better believe I was the quiet one, since I was ALWAYS the new kid on the block.

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  3. oh, they wouldn’t let me be part of their gang because i always have questions. and it’s getting worse as i age. i know so much less and i want to know so much more. i try to keep quiet (husband Steve is a model of quietude – and people believe he is very intelligent – well, he is) you know the old thing paraphrased “don’t speak and be thought a fool, speak and be a fool” so i try very hard not to talk, but it’s just very difficult. so i admire the quiet folks enormously.
    Dale, your ability to take on an author amazes. thanks for the great poem, we love Poe. and how you worked in Sotomayor! brilliant.

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    1. Thanks Barb.
      I’m so glad she was nominated. It might have been for this very reason.
      I never would have been able to get that section right with Harriet Miers.

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  4. What little we know about Justice Thomas’ tastes makes me happy that he doesn’t ask questions. He married a harpie fruitbat with a nasty temper. And back when he was trying to get Anita Hill to watch pornographic films with him, he rented such titles as “Long Dong Silver.” I doubt he has any questions to ask that won’t get covered nicely by all those other justices.

    Is today the day we get Clyde home, really home?

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    1. Depends. I have driven 1450 miles since 3 p.m. PST Sunday. If I can pull off another 570 or so today, I will be back in Mankato. Now I see there could be drizzle tonight in S. MN. And since my wife can never really get going until about 10 a.m. after completing her 20-pills-wait-an-hour-take-20-pills-and-mix-and-drink-some-disgusting-powder-and-then-eat morning routine. We will see. The 1450 miles has been hard on her too.

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  5. i think it is that every time he would ask a question thye woule tease him about the pubic hair on top of his coke can , so he learned to be quiet.
    the rhymiing of to be a with scallia and man’ll with panel are above and beyond the call dale.
    i asked questions but usually in a sidewinder way like we get here. in order to ask questions you need to care and i think if you are happy to have a job or just putting in your time then you don’t realy care about which damn law you are reviewing, just bring it on and lets vote on that silly thing anyway. clarance doesnt need to ask any questions because he knows how he will vote before he hears any discussion. gehring was the same way

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  6. Rise and Shine Baboons:

    Early on in school after my rocky, rocky Kindergarten introduction to a teacher who hated children, I was too scared to talk or participate. After a move to a new school, I became very chatty, but not always on topic if you all can believe that! By High School, especially in history or social studies, I’m sure everyone wished I would just SHUT UP. I figured out that if you participate the time goes faster. Seems true of life, too.

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  7. Shockingly enough I not only asked too many questions but was the first to correct the teacher.

    I once got to spend a day at the Supreme Court. It was good theatre with bad lighting (they need Anna and Ben). Justice Thomas is a waste of space in that cool setting.

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      1. but I’ve always admired that demure white collar that Ruth Bader-Ginsberg wears. The fact that she is also an opera patron has nothing to do with my admiration for her, really.

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      3. I worked an event with the MN Supreme Court last Fall when they actually ‘held court’ here in Rochester. The ‘court’ portion, while yes, rather dry, was sort of interesting and they got some humor in it once in a while…
        Once court was over and they took off their robes and sat down front and took questions from the audience they were just a fun group of middle age Minnesotans that would fit in well with Baboons.

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  8. I am a real hypocrite on this topic: I seldom spoke in class as a HS student. As a HS teacher I encouraged, forced, required student participation.

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    1. “my” Steve taught for 28 years – a man that hates to talk. he developed a method – discussion groups – that was excellent for students’ learning but it also got him off the hook for talking most of the time. pretty cool. now retired, he doesn’t encourage discussion 🙂 because it’s only me and he’d have to join in. but we’re both losing hearing (as i think you’ve alluded to, Clyde) so even if one does talk, the other rarely hears. 🙂 somehow we manage.

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      2. Or wait to give them time. Always ask the question and do not let anyone speak for about 7-8 seconds; tell them all to think first. Most girls process more deeply, such as thinking about the social implications, before they answer, which is why teachers should control who speaks in recitation and make encouraging and allowing others to speak as part of the grading of discussion.

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  9. In elementary school I kind of fell in the middle – I was not silent, but I was not the one who always had her hand up. This was mostly so I wouldn’t get teased for being “teacher’s pet” or “smarty pants.” By high school and college I got over that. And by grad school you could hardly shut me up. I’d like to think that I’m good at letting other folks get in their two cents, but I know in practice I can run at the mouth…

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  10. Yes-s-s-s… I was one of those nerds who thought he knew all the answers and would raise my hand, wave it more frantically in the air as others guessed wrong and fell by the wayside, and would sometimes forget to lower it while I proudly answered the question…most of the time correctly. *blush* Mamma didn’t raise no fool.

    Chris

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  11. Oh, yeah, I was the “always knows the answer” kid. I was nerdy enough that sometimes I waited to see if anyone else in the class had a clue, then nonchalantly came out with the answer once everyone was looking at me (“She knows, doesn’t she?”). A mistake on a spelling test was like a stake through the heart! Sometimes it backfired, though: in confirmation class two of us finished memorizing the catechism, and our reward? Memorize Psalms until the rest of the class caught up. We didn’t even get prizes; everyone in class got “Ten Commandments” bookmarks (anyone remember them, a chain of tiny scrolls with a commandment engraved on each one?), and I already had one. Highly disillusioning.

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    1. Aaah… the old “punish the victor” syndrome. I have also experienced this, often on the job. If you do something well, instead of getting a reward, you get more of the same!

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      4. Last shop I worked at had a saying, “we reward good work, with more work”-good if you want to stay employed, but wearing when you realize everyone is also staying employed with a lot less effort.

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  12. Morning–

    Sometimes I get a in a group meeting and I’ll get bashful… so I sit quietly and think about all the dump questions others are asking.
    But if I’m comfortable in a group then I’ll participate more.

    Was at a meeting last week that went off in all sorts of tangents and I sat quietly wishing we could get back on track so I could get back to work!

    But back in school? No, I probably just sat there looking out the window… and thinking about girls.

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  13. Good morning to all,

    I think I generally didn’t raise my hand or only did so once in a while. I probably wasn’t paying attention most of the time. Some how I managed to pass my classes with fairly good grades which I think is because not much was expected. In college a little more was expected, so I think I increased my participation.

    Some of my lack of class participation is due to my own limitations and some is due to the lack of student centered education in our schools. I think Carl Rodgers and others who pointed to a need to have a more student center approach to education were right. So much of our education system uses a top down approach where students are told they have to learn certain things in a certain maner without noticing that there are better ways to do it that would do more to engage the students.

    I guess I have fallen back into my not so easily amused mode today. Sorry about that.

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  14. Until fifth grade, I was such an enthusiastic little apple-polisher that I didn’t even perceive that other kids hated my guts for being so cheerfully willing to answer questions. Then just as the year began, our lovely fifth grade teacher got knocked up, and it was unthinkable in those days that students would see a teacher with a pregnancy bump, so she was fired and replace with Miss Bentley, the worst teacher in our school system, an acidic old spinster with the disposition of a scorpion. Early in the year I tried to answer one of Miss Bentley’s questions, but got it wrong. She decided that I had been making fun of her (Miss B had power issues), so she grabbed my hand and whaled away on it with her dreaded ruler. THAT turned me. I’ve never been so innocently supportive of authority ever since. After that I seethed with rage as I watched her and contemplated ways of getting revenge on her bony old butt. Thus it was Steve, sweet Steve, who actually left the thumb tack on her chair, cheered by the knowledge it would hurt because there was so little meat down there to absorb the pin. And just like that, a rebel was born.

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  15. I was always a verbal class participant, and was usually frustrated with the lack of effort put forth by my fellow students. I have a pretty low tolerance for boredom and couldn’t stand it when everybody else just sat there. We had a history teacher at our school who was one of the best teachers I ever had, and he had a method of encouraging class discussion that was almost too much even for me to tolerate. He would start every class with “Any comments or questions?” and that would open the floor to anything anybody wanted to talk about, usually having to do with politics or school policy or whatever. He was a noted liberal Democrat, and conservative students loved to take his classes so they could challenge his views. More liberal students in the class would also enter the fray with their opinions. This teacher was the debate coach, and if the opening discussion took all of the class, so be it. In my own rule bound way I would have much preferred it if the lively discussion had been about the third Punic war or what ever it was we were supposed to be studying, but it was often quite entertaining and educational.

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  17. Dale, what a poem; you’ve outdone yourself! I love it when these make me laugh out loud.

    I honestly don’t remember much about participation until college. I imaginey I participated as much as was expected, but don’t remember being moved to any kind of active participation till a Marriage/Family Life kind of soc. course where the prof. had imported some feminists to lead a discussion on. I was so turned off by the rabid nature of their diatribe, something about not there having to be something better than the sh**pile that the men had created, that I found myself verbally defending the nonfeminist side. Told how I’d never been discriminated against and thought my career would offer plenty of opportunity for advancement, etc.. I was in , of course, Elementary Education. 😐 (It took a few more years and a Psych. of Women course before I figured out I was a feminist.)

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  18. I was shy as a kid and didn’t do a lot of hand-raising. In law school, the “Socratic method” was tough for me but I mastered the art of appearing engaged, making some eye contact but *not quite* at the critical moment when the next question was being launched, and ever so occasionally volunteering so the instructor didn’t feel like I was coasting. Not saying something really stupid on a regular basis made me appear smarter than I actually am … unlike the “gunners” who made it evident which of them were intelligent and which just liked to think they were 😉

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  19. I didn’t raise my hand much in school ~because~ I usually knew the answers. I was one of those ‘gifted’ kids, so school stuff came pretty easily to me. I felt like I should let others answer so that they could get more out of the education process. I never wanted to be one of those ‘anyone else’ers.’

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  20. How come nobody has said, “Oooooh, pick me! Pick me!”?

    I was pretty quiet in grade school, came out a little more in high school and retreated again in college. Now I’m pretty sure people wish that I’d stop asking questions all the time. I think that switch got flipped early in my career with the state. I just can’t help but ask WHY all the time. When doing something just doesn’t make sense, I tend to question it a lot. Einstein said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” That’s why I ask.

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    1. amen, and good on ya’ KiW!
      when i went to college (in my late 20s, as i’ve said) it was to the U main campus so that i wouldn’t have to talk – and it worked out that way. after i (finally) chose a major, i went to St. Paul campus and began my understudy of Cliff Claven. 🙂

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    2. I think I’m a little like you, Krista. I’m also sure some people get tired of my many questions at some meetings. It seems to me that one needs to be engaged when one attends organizational meetings, right?

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      1. i think for a lot of people like that go to those meeting to fulfill some lacking area of their life. they are not there for the cause they are there to get a social life and some interaction at another level. i give up on organazational balderdash

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      2. If the group isn’t too large, I’m thinking of our sustainable farming chapter board, some socializing is good and is needed. Part of the reason to be on our board is to do a little visiting which is okay as long is we take care of necessary business. The socializing is kind of a reward for being willing to serve on the board.

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      3. Meetings or no, there’s just too much bureaucratic garbage that must be done where I work. Our former Guv increased the amount of bureaucracy enormously in the name of “making state agencies accountable.” Now, fewer employees have to do much more administrative work instead of the work they were hired to do. Much of this administrative workload has been assigned to managers. The state would benefit more if this particular group was allowed to devote their time to planning for the natural resources of tomorrow.

        The new trend is to expedite processes – currently environmental review processes. It would be less hazardous for Minnesota’s environment if they expedited processes for facilities maintenance, hiring or purchasing procedures instead.

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  21. Completely OT! Glorioski… my mother (78 years young) is getting email today. She always said she would never, but I guess it’s just one more lesson in never saying never. Oh, and she just got a job too – with the park service working on a special project to encourage seniors to exercise more – a Senior Olympics kind of thing, but without competition. She never ceases to amaze me!

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    5. VS – I haven’t heard anyone buy my mother say Glorioski, and then it was “Glorioski Zero”. I’ll have to ask her about that…

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      1. It’s from West Side Story… from the song that the Jets sing to Officer Krupke. I don’t know why I’ve always remembered it!

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    1. welcome back sleep well in whatever is home for now. glad to have you back looking forward to your sharing with the group the details and photos of the trip.congtrats on a job well done to you and sandy.

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