The other day, I got an email with this as a tag line:

"I get up every morning determined to both change the world and to have one hell of a good time. Sometimes, this makes planning the day difficult." – E.B. White

I can understand the feeling. However, another quote I’ve been coming across a lot recently helps put it into a slightly better perspective.

“It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” Robert F. Kennedy

So, yesterday, I set out on determined to change the world and to have a good time by sending forth a tiny ripple of hope. The setting was Gina Coggio’s literature classes. Gina and I have been corresponding for some time, for example when I went to see her classes production of a play about The Hot Zone by Richard Preston.

When I wrote about that, I commented about the belief that good writing can change people’s lives, and that is what I talked with the students about. I pointed them to Candy Girl’s post, In Loving Memory: 27 Marines, 1 Sailor of 1st Battalion 3rd Marines. I explained that her husband was serving in Fallujah and that she had written some of the best stuff I’ve seen about what the war means to a person perhaps not all that different from some of the students.

I pointed them to Fran’s post about starting Chemo. Fran is a 31 year old woman who had commented on a friends blog and has written some good stuff about dealing with cancer.

I pointed them to Joe’s blog entry about his experiences when hospital administrators came to speak with him about his blog about his open heart surgery.

I pointed them to the blog about a woman from the Hartford area who went to Ethiopia to adopt a child.

I talked about how these blogs illustrate the many great writers out there that people don’t know about and suggested that perhaps there are some similarly great writers in Gina’s class. Gina talked about how the final for her ninth grade literature class would be for each student to select the piece they were most proud of writing over the year and to polish it up and post it on a blog that she will have for the class.

I really look forward to seeing that blog, because I do believe there are some great stories out there and that we will all be better off as we read stories from people whose lives are different than our own.

The first class I spoke with seemed to really get into the idea and sets diligently to work. The second class I spoke with was less enthusiastic. They seemed to be some of the students that aren’t enthusiastic about anything school related.

Nonetheless, one student walked over and showed me a story she had written. It was riddled with misspellings. It was not well constructed and hard to follow. However, there was passion there. I told her I liked her story and hoped she would expand on it. Is she an unrecognized diamond in the rough?

When it came time for the vocabulary quiz after I spoke, she was one of the people who handed the quiz back unanswered. She was unprepared. Another student also handed his quiz back unanswered. He was a person very full of himself. Swearing, boosting, ego tripping, but not very well.

It made me think of Nikki Giovanni’s great poem ‘Ego Tripping’. The contrast between the two ego trips particularly struck me and made me think of the scene from Act 1, Scene 4 of Cyrano de Bergerac. The Viscount says to Cyrano, “Sir, your nose is. . .hmm. . .it is. . .very big!”. Cyrano responds, “You might have said at least a hundred things By varying the tone. . .like this, suppose,. . . Aggressive: 'Sir, if I had such a nose I'd amputate it!'”

So, I mentioned Ego Tripping, not quoting Cyrano’s line, but implying it. As I walked out, I told the boastful one that perhaps he could be a great writer if he would only apply himself.

Will either of these seeds take root and grow? Did these pebbles send forth a tiny ripple of hope? Will these ripples of hope help change the world? I may never know. However, I do look forward to having a good time reading some of the stories these students put up.