The Proust Questionnaire

Marcel Proust, a French novelist, essayist, and critic from the early twentieth century, is probably best known for his iconic, massive novel Remembrance of Things Past. The book follows the narrator’s recollection of childhood and his transition into adulthood, pondering the loss of time and the eternal search for meaning. In contemporary times, Proust may be better known for popularizing a common parlor game of the Victorian Age called the confession album, where players answer a series of questions designed to reveal a person’s true nature.

Versions of the questions are now known as the Proust Questionnaire, and they are often used by interviewers. The most well-known example today is probably the profiles featured on the back page of Vanity Fair magazine where celebrities answer variations of the original questionnaire. I’ve always enjoyed reading this feature, and I’ve often used parts of the Proust Questionnaire in my classes. Yet, while I’ve pondered the questions when I read profiles of others, I’ve never taken the time to literally record my thoughts. Until now.

What is your idea of perfect happiness? A quiet Sunday morning with the sun just coming up, a cup of rich dark roast coffee with a splash of heavy cream, a slice of homemade strawberry rhubarb pie, and some cool piano jazz in the background to accompany it all.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? Those times I lack kindness and empathy

What is the trait you most deplore in others? A lack of kindness and empathy

Which living person do you most admire? My children are two of the most impressive people I have ever known, and I have endless admiration for how they live their lives. They are both more mature adults at the age of eighteen than I was in my mid-twenties. I’m in awe of their kindness, confidence, compassion, knowledge, talents, and genuine good nature.

What is your greatest extravagance? I never mind paying top prices for exquisite dining, and I also enjoy quality bourbon.

What is your current state of mind? Contentment and joy for how my life is now mixed with subtle but anxious ambition for what comes next

Which living person do you most despise? An old friend of mine once had a bumper sticker on his car that said simply, “Mean People Suck.” I agree with that sentiment.

When and where were you happiest? Summers in Keystone with the family

Which talent would you most like to have? To be a really smooth jazz piano player and musician

What do you consider your greatest achievement? My teaching career

If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be? Honestly, I’d like to try this one again.

Where would you most like to live? As my wife and I think of what comes next, we’re tossing a few ideas around. The south of France and northern Italy appeal to us, so the town of Genoa on the border might be the perfect compromise. I am also quite interested in the town of Alton, England, where Jane Austen lived and wrote. Interestingly, I grew up in Alton, Illinois, and never knew of the British counterpart.

Who are your favorite writers? I enjoy columnists like Mike Royko, David Brooks, Robert Fulghum, and I think Mark Kiszla is one of the best sports writers out there.

Who is your hero of fiction? Oh, it has to be Huckleberry Finn.

What is it that you most dislike? As a member of Generation X, I think collectively we most dislike inauthenticity and phoniness.

What is your greatest regret? I believe if we are satisfied with our lives then we should have no regrets about the ups and downs that got us here. However, I was just telling my wife the other night that I wish I’d seen more concerts and shows in my youth. On a more personal level, I do regret any and all the times I’ve senselessly hurt others.

What is your motto? I like Henry Thoreau’s reason for going to Walden – “I went into the woods because I wished to live deliberately.”

Self reflection and self examination are valuable parts of the human experience, and it’s helpful to occasionally take the time to think about what we really feel and believe. So, if you have the chance, perhaps sit down with the Proust Questionnaire and record your own “remembrances of things past.”

So, About the Guns

For my column this week in The Villager, I reflected on the continuing tragedy of gun violence. Specifically, I pondered why licensing and training aren't common sense for the pro-gun crowd. I believe increasing respect and personal responsibility, and decreasing fetishization and casual attitudes toward firearms is the best course of action for the United States. The country will always have a problem with gun possession and gun violence. And there will never be widespread bans or buybacks like in Australia or New Zealand. But I do believe we could gradually de-escalate the obsession with and proliferation of guns, and we could more maturely manage firearm possession in the United States.

While it’s not surprising anymore to be surprised with ever sadder and increasingly inexplicable stories of tragic gun violence and deaths, two stories in the news this week rattled and baffled us all over again. In one story which has been in the news for a year, prosecutors have charged actor Alec Baldwin with involuntary manslaughter in connection to the accidental shooting death of the cinematographer on a film set. In the other, it was yet another devastating story of a school shooting, this time with a six-year-old kindergarten student in Virginia who pulled a gun out of his backpack and shot his teacher in class.

America certainly has a problem with gun violence, and no specific gun legislation will end, prevent, or even curtail that epidemic. America has a history of psychotic people becoming deranged, acting out violently and publicly; it also has hateful, rage-filled individuals with access to deadly weapons. Whether it’s a person in the midst of psychosis or an angry impulsive person with violent intentions, it is far too easy to commit violence with implements of catastrophic destruction. That said, it's not simply a matter of passing an assault weapons ban or strengthening the health care system. One is an easy act; the other quite challenging. And neither will solve the problem. The Alec Baldwin situation and the child shooter in Virginia were not issues of mental illness. They resulted from careless negligence in the management of firearms. Acknowledging that weakness may be a key toward eventually decreasing gun violence in the future.

Growing up in the 1970s in southern Illinois where guns were not at all uncommon, I knew the National Rifle Association to be a gun-safety organization. Attending gun safety presentations, workshops, and even "day camps" where young people could learn to safely operate and respect firearms was a natural part of my youth. In fact, the entire purpose of the NRA, as far as I knew, was to promote safe, responsible understanding and handling of guns. To that end, I simply can't fathom the opposition to training, licensing, and regulation of firearms. Regulation is the key to solving the disagreement about America's alarming gun violence. Supporters of gun rights should be the primary proponents of maximizing safety while minimizing tragedy.

Podcaster Marc Maron has a feature of his show he likes to call "I don't get why." The point of the segment is just investigating issues in order to seek clarity and understanding. For example, "I don't get why mandatory regular training, licensing, and registration of gun ownership and ammunition purchases isn't just common sense." It truly baffles me that a society where every automobile must be registered and every driver must be licensed can't have the same expectation on gun ownership. It seems so simple. Anyone who wants to own a gun should undergo extensive formal training, pass an annual test, and maintain a license that is regularly evaluated and renewed. Every firearm should require a registration number assigned to a specific person. That tracking system should be implemented for ammunition purchases. Otherwise, it seems unconscionable that an individual – a mass shooter like James Holmes in the Aurora shooting, for example – can amass an arsenal of thousands of rounds of semi-automatic bullets with no one including law enforcement knowing what is happening.

When Timothy McVeigh blew up the Murrah building in Oklahoma City, the nation reacted quickly to prevent such weapons of mass destruction from ever being assembled and used against Americans again. Law abiding citizens agreed to the regulation of farm fertilizer purchases. Similar tracking was added to the purchase of hairspray after a Denver-area man attempted to create a bomb to set off in New York City. Those restrictions were literally put in place to protect Americans from terrorist violence. Yet, the same would-be terrorists could purchase thousands of guns and millions of rounds of ammunition without ever drawing the attention of any law enforcement agencies. How does that make sense?

America has plenty of guns, and it’s certain there will be more tragedies. But we can do more to increase safety. Tragic accidents like the film set shooting and a six-year-old getting a gun could be decreased. Firearm possession is a serious responsibility and should be treated as such. America will not quickly decrease gun possession or violence, but it could take incremental steps to improve personal responsibility and safety while lessening recklessness which leads to avoidable tragedy.

Greenwood Village Should Restore Arts Scholarship

Some thoughts on a local issue:

In the film Dead Poets Society, teacher John Keating, played by Robin Williams, tells his students this: “Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are the things we stay alive for.” I would add the term “art” to his list, for that is what he is talking about, the Arts. Art sustains us, consoles us, inspires us, heals us, makes us human.

Greenwood Village has long been a community that values and supports the arts. It is, or at least was, a community that cultivates the arts among young people. Programs like Art in the Park, which my daughter took as a child and now works as a rec aide, and the impressive array of Curtis Arts Center classes promotes the arts to the next generation. Until recently the Village also supported the arts with the annual arts scholarships awarded by the city’s Arts & Humanities Council. For thirty-five years, this scholarship has been a wonderful message and symbol to the community and its neighbors, as the award has always been open to any student in Arapahoe County.

However, the Greenwood Village City Council recently eliminated the scholarship after the Village’s Arts & Humanities Council rejected a directive to limit the scholarship to only high school seniors who are Village residents. The City Council’s misguided and unilateral decision to end the scholarship on December 1, was a disappointing lump of coal delivered to the area’s young people just in time for the holidays. Their "take-my-ball-and-go-home" attitude sends a terrible message to our community, especially to young people. For inexplicable reasons, city leaders have broken a thirty-five year tradition of offering an arts scholarship simply because they couldn’t restrict the program to only Greenwood Village residents, even though that had never been the practice.

Until now, Greenwood Village has never limited appreciation of the arts to only Village residents. Non-residents have always been welcome in the city to enjoy the arts, whether that’s art shows and classes at the Curtis Center, summer Concerts at the Crescent, or movies at the Landmark. Past city leaders have always wanted non-residents to enjoy – and, of course, spend their money on – concerts at Fiddler's Green. And it seems money is the crux of the Council's misguided vote. By eliminating the scholarship altogether because they can’t limit it to Village residents, the Council is basically telling all young artists in Arapahoe County, "If-we-can't-have-it-no-one-can."

Yet, current council members conveniently forget the city depends on non-residents coming to the Village and spending their money here. Many non-resident spenders are high school students who spend thousands of dollars on lunch every day they come to school in the Village. They spend thousands of dollars hanging out with their friends here. Many study art, music, and dance in the Village, with their parents spending thousands of dollars on classes. The City Council shouldn’t send a message that they are not a part of our community every day they come here. Giving a scholarship to a non-resident is not a waste of city funds – it’s an investment in the arts and in the youth of the community. And it might actually return to a family some of the thousands of dollars they have spent in the Village over the years.

Greenwood Village is not a self-sustaining municipality whose residents generate enough revenue to support all the amenities they value. As part of Arapahoe County, the DTC, and the greater metro area, the Village benefits from outside money and civic programs. For example, every day students at Cherry Creek take a beautiful path through Chenango Park on their way to spend money at Belleview Square. That path was funded in part with a grant from Arapahoe County. Additionally, as reported by The Villager, the City Council and residents should know arts programming in the Village received $70,000 in funding from the metro area’s SCFD funds – that’s the Science Cultural Facilities District, the regional district providing arts funding for the greater metro area.

So perhaps the current City Council could dispense with the idea that Greenwood Village is only for residents, and these community leaders could focus on opening doors rather than building walls. The Council should honor a legacy that precedes them and should outlive them, for the Greenwood Village arts scholarship is a shining example of civic stewardship. The Greenwood Village arts scholarship is about one thing and one thing only – supporting the arts through the young people who are its future.