Using Humor in Fiction: CONNECT the Reader

Like millions of others, I was scrolling through Facebook earlier today, and saw a post someone had put up - a joke - told as though it had actually happened to them, but it’s a very old joke:  a man gets hired as a clerk in a store, and, on the first day, is confronted with a very ugly and cranky woman with two children.  He tries to compliment her on her children, saying, “Are they twins?”  When she snaps that  they’re obviously different ages, why would he think they’re twins - he replies “Well I just couldn’t believe anyone would sleep with you twice…”  and he gets fired.

Every time I’ve heard it, the joke has made me uncomfortable, but it also makes me think of a different, and true, story.  When my parents were young, and my mother gave birth to one of my older siblings, they were in a hospital room, admiring their new child, when a nun (it was a Catholic hospital) came into the room, and asked if the child was theirs.  When they said of course, why would she ask, she replied, “Well, I just couldn’t believe the two of you could have such a beautiful child.”  (My parents weren’t always in well with those in the Church).  My father, without losing a beat, quipped to the nun, “Well, Sister, we didn’t do it with our faces!”

The two stories are similar, but there is an essential difference.  In the first one, the person who is not attractive is target, is the object of ridicule, is unredeemed.  In the second, the power comes

from the response my father made - not only side-stepping the insult, but in fact embracing it while turning the ridicule on the person doing the  insulting.

In a piece of writing, humor can serve many purposes - like the “comic relief” on stage or in the movies,  it can give the reader space to catch breath during intense or dark stories, or the humor itself can make a point, or it can reveal much about a character in the way she/he uses humor or reacts to it.  But, as with any element of a piece of fiction, each element must serve the essential purpose of connecting the reader to the story.  So, then, the question becomes - how do we want the reader to be connected?  Do we want the reader to identify with the snarky clerk who gains cultural capital by insulting an unattractive person, or do we want the reader to connect to the person who, once insulted, still claims their own power?

It is a question which, when creating a story, writers should consider with care - what purpose does this humor serve, and how do I expect that the reader will connect with it?  If my reader identifies with this joke, what does the reader then bring back to the story as they continue reading?   

This is not to say that we can’t have a character make a cruel joke at the expense of someone else in the story - doing so can effectively serve to reveal the dark side of a character, but my point is that we must be careful in how we present that - be sure that the reader will see it as revealing character rather than bringing that negative frame to the rest of the story.

Writing humor well is one of the most difficult challenges in writing.  But it is also potentially the most powerful element you can bring to a story.   What do you want the reader to take from this  should always be a question in the mind of the writer.  Careless insertion of humor can damage a story as much as - perhaps more than - taking the cheap shot can damage your image in the eyes of your friends.  Be careful with it.  

Have fun, bring laughter and relief to your stories, but, at the same time, in editing and revising, consider the humor element as seriously as every element of the story - perhaps even more so.

Write Like A River: On Working on 2 manuscripts at Once

A few feet behind my back fence, there’s a stream.  It’s not much to look at - the banks crowded with weeds often waist or shoulder high, the banks themselves so steep that you never actually see the stream when looking out the window or across the fence.  The south side of the whole development is bordered by this stream, and, across the stream is another development.  I hear the kids over there playing in the summer and spring.  Today, that stream is under flash flood warning.  I’ve done what I can to prepare the house and grounds - put emergency supplies in the car, thought about high places I could stow valuable things if I need to evacuate.  

In the meantime, I put the possible (but unlikely) emergency out of my head by working.  My muse has been problematic lately - filling my head with scenes that MUST be written until 1...2...3 in the morning, then waking me at 6 with more to write.  It’s the right kind of problem to have as a writer, but, one does miss deep, unbothered sleep.  The other problem is that I have two manuscripts scattered in not-so-neat piles across my desk.  One is the story, still unfinished (though full in my head) that keeps me up nights, the other is the near-final draft of a book written some years ago, and revised over the last couple of years, now nearing publication.  They are very different stories - one is the story of the multi-generation impact on a family of a mining accident, and the other is a story of one woman’s struggle with her relationships with other women.  

The mining story is the one keeping me up nights, the voices and secrets of this family so real, so insistent on being written.  I have to trust that process - just open, let the words go on paper, not worry about anything but how the story moves.  The other manuscript is finished, but not finished - requiring careful attention to every word, every passage, every spelling - the last and oh-so-important edit before publication.  Two VERY different processes, both of which I am working on at the same time.  And, given the situation in my house today, I kept having the thought that they were, each, like a river.

Perhaps the same river.  The mining story the raging floodwaters, giving you no choice but to get wet, to immerse, to be carried along, and the other the mouth of the river where it joins the sea - each drop coming finally, comfortably home to the sea of origin.  A nice analogy, but what does that make me, the writer?   If I’m in a boat, I have to, for stories like the first, hang onto the sides and just ride the current, but, at the mouth of the river, before it comes home, my net comes out, fishing as carefully as I’m able for any detritus I don’t want the story to carry out to sea.  

I want to write like the river, especially the river today - lashed with rain, swelling with the power of the cold water, rushing along to the place all rivers go.  I don’t really want to be weilding the net, but, as I actually DO that work, the river and all it’s travels become more real.  Each word fished out, each misplaced comma removed, each scene cleaned becomes clearer, more essential.  And it is odd, too - pleasantly odd - how, as I do this work on two separate and very different stories, in a real way they become one.  The heartaches, the secrets, the pains that drive each of the people in the mining story are the same, in every way that counts, as those that drive the woman dealing with her internal struggles over friendship, betrayal, and guilt. It is, all of it, one river.

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NOTE:   I don’t get many comments published on this blog, but I frequently get messages via email or Facebook from people who’ve read here.  For all of you - first, thank you for sharing your thoughts and appreciation with me, and, second, please do not worry - if the stream rises, it rises.  I’m prepared either way.

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Look for “Locus of Memory” (the manuscript currently in editing) to be available on both Amazon and Nook in late December or early January.  There will also, for two weeks prior to release, be an opportunity to get the book for free on BookGrabbr - watch for notices on Facebook, Twitter, and my website.  

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Find me on Facebook at:  https://www.facebook.com/judy.c.mckenzie or my Facebook author page: https://www.facebook.com/Judith-Mikesch-McKenzie-306271749432891/

Or visit my website at:  http://www.judithmckenzie.com/

The 4 Best Pieces of Writing Advice on the Web - and One That Isn't There

Sometimes, even those of us who teach writing have to remind ourselves of what is the best advice on writing.  From time to time, I find myself searching for what writers - successful and unsuccessful, famous and obscure, literary and not-so.  In my recent searches, I found the following four to be the best pieces of advice I found. There are links to the articles in which I found all four pieces following each.
So here are the top four (and one more) in ascending order.


4)  Stop when you're at a high point - when the writing is flowing.
I first got this advice from a wonderful book called "Writing the Natural Way" by Gabriele Rico.  This author (Gladstone) puts this particular piece of advice further down his list than I would have done, but  I love his quoting of Hemingway on the subject:

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

Many have noted the positive impact of sleep and the mind's Beta-state on creative process, so there's no need to belabor that here. What is worth saying is: take this advice.

There is nothing quite so satisfying as coming to your writing table and knowing just where the scene is going as you sit down.  If you stop at a lull, or a "blocked moment," chances are that's where you'll be when you sit down to write again the next day.  And, of course, Hemingway was right - over the night, the ideas at the height of energy will grown and deepen in your mind, making the writing deeper as well.

The 5 best pieces of writing advice I didn't get in school 


3) Write the book you want to read.  
Seems obvious, but the author here (Chuck Sambuchino)  is quick to caution about the difference between  and, what a lot of would-be writers unfortunately hear:  the book you want to write.  The difference, as seen here, is largely in motivation.  You need, when you get to the bottom of it, to put yourself in the reader's place - what would motivate them to devour a book, to love it, to want to pass it on to others to share the joy?  That is the book you should write, not the one that gets you to an image of yourself as a writer.

What is the essence of a book that makes you want to curl up with it, that keeps you up hour after hour, turning pages - what is the core of that energy, that pull, the story, that draws you in and won't let you go?   The answer will be different for every writer, and it is that energy, that purpose, that you should write to.



The Best Piece of Writing Advice I ever Got - and the Worst


2)  Just Do It
This article (by Sarah Anne Johnson) contains many good pieces of advice, but this one is the most essential.  We writers are a whiny lot - we like to blame lack of writing on everything imaginable - work, kids, bills, a bad cold, a misbehaving dog.  The reality is, however, that  we find time to feed the cats, do the laundry, wipe the kitchen counters, stare out windows, go shopping, etc., etc.  To be a writer  is about making your writing a priority, or, as another contributor to this piece said, make it a way of life.  
Sit down and simply write.  Just do it.
There is even a quite funny meme circulating from the popular television show  How I Met Your Mother's character Barney Stinson on this very advice. (at the left)
(Note: many, many other pieces of advice in this article are also worth reading and taking to heart.)
Get to Work: Writers on the Best Advice They Ever Received



1)  BE BRAVE
Every writer - nay, every creative person - is riddled at some point or at some level of their being  with doubts.  They are the bane of our existence.  We question the worthiness of this draft, or this page, or this sentence, or, for God's sake, this word.  More than that, even, though, we question our own worthiness to write something anyone else would want to read.  So many writing students over the years have said these words to me:  "What could I write that anyone would want to read?"  In this piece, the advice comes from Eudora Welty:  
“No art ever came out of not risking your neck.”  
I tell students that they should think of the last thing they learned to do and ask themselves if they did it perfectly the first time. Universally, the answer is no - it took practice. And so does writing.  We are all going to write things that are bad - that's the risk.  But, in the end, we will find that moment when something we have written touches both us and the reader - we succeed at #3, above - writing the book we want to read. But only if we take the risk.

I always thought that I couldn't write science fiction, in spite of the fact that I loved it.  Then, a few years back, women in a writing group I was in at the time dared me to try.  I chose to do so during NaNoWriMo, the annual write-50,000-words-in-30-days challenge, giving myself deadline pressure in addition to the challenge issued by my friends.  The resulting book, Somewhere Never Traveled, became the best-selling book out of the seven I have published, not to mention that it freed me to pursue a genre which I have always loved.

All of the pieces of advice in this article (by Maria Popova) are wonderful, and worth reading.

Famous Advice on Writing

And, the one piece of advice I did not find on the web in lists or articles? 

#1-A:  HAVE FUN

Let yourself go - don't take yourself or your writing seriously at every moment.  Let playfulness seep in - not only to the stories you write, but to your choices of subjects and stories and characters.  The book I had the most fun writing, Somewhere Never Traveled, is also my most successful to date (not counting the sales of my two textbooks, which I would not want to compare to fiction sales).  Will it last? Will it meet the challenge of #3, above?  Time will tell, but I have no regrets.  I have never felt so liberated as when I finished that story.  And that matters. 

One Character Development Activity Every Writer Should Try

Have you ever been in a writing workshop where the instructor/leader gives an exercise to do, and everyone gets excited and gets beautiful results they can't wait to share, while you sit there like a dolt looking at your blank sheet of paper? I have. It ain't fun. All of us who write have tried methods, strategies, workshops, etc., that are wildly touted, and just don't work for us. It's wildly disappointing and more than a little humiliating. In my writing classes, though, I tell students not to forget those activities, the ones that don't work for them -- because they might work, later, for something else. I've had that happen to me. I sat in a writing seminar in my graduate creative writing program while everyone went nuts over a mind-mapping exercise, and I got exactly nothing. However, years later, in the midst of a huge block preventing me from finishing a book, I remembered that day, drew a mind map, and finished the manuscript that became my first book, Two Mothers Speak. I don’t usually talk about books on this blog - I’m not a book reviewer;   I don’t review others’ books.  I’ve also taken to being sure any political posts I put up go on my other (personal) blog, because the purpose here is about documenting and sharing a writer’s journey to create, sharing strategies, thoughts, and methods.  But, today, I AM going to talk about a book.

The current manuscript I’m working on has an underlying theme that deals with maps - maps and cartographic terminology function as metaphors throughout the story.  So,  being the insane research geek that I am, early on I immersed myself in learning about maps - interviewed cartographers, dug out 20-year old notes from when I worked in a county map room, and, of course, read books.  I ordered a number of books about maps from Amazon, and, as they do, Amazon made me recommendations on that basis.

One of them was titled Personal Geographies:   Explorations in Mixed-Media Mapmaking.  It sounded like it might be about making “art” maps, and I thought one of my characters would be very interested in that, so I ordered a copy.  Personal Geographies, however, is more of a how-to book on making maps as keepsakes.  It’s fun- there are instructions and color plates and the whole thing is very eye-appealing and inviting.  I was about to set it aside as possibly a gift for someone else when I took a closer look at two of the sections.   Titled, Mapping the Self and Mapping Your Experience, these sections encourage you to use the projects in the book, while suggesting a few more approaches, to explore yourself and your experience - in order to solve problems, relieve stress, understand yourself better, etc.  

It struck me that, while I’d done many similar exercises in the past for myself, I’d never considered them an activity for exploring and deepening a character.  In the following days, I mapped to the outline of a head memories and secrets and trials and joys of one of my main characters.  It’s not particularly artistic, (not the point of it, anyway)  but I came out of it, through this mapping and the both visual and kinesthetic experience of creating it with a much deeper understanding of what drives this person, and what haunts him.

This may have worked particularly well for me for this character because of the fact that maps are a frequent metaphor in this character’s story, but I think it could work in exploring the depth in character’s in any story, and I highly recommend it.  Besides, it’s fun.

A link to the book for your consideration:

Personal Geographies: Explorations in Mixed Media Mapmaking

On Cleaning House, Theater, and Not Being a Team Player - or - How to FIND FOCUS

I am not a good team player.   I work best, most effectively, most efficiently, when I work alone.  For a person, this is not necessarily a good thing, but it works for a writer.

This all came into my head recently when I made a work-trade with a family member and her husband - I’d clean the apartment they’d just moved out of, if he would come clean my gutters and install the leaf-shields I just bought.  Even with my tallest ladder, I (short sh*t that I am) couldn’t reach the gutters, and he (“a thousand feet tall” according to my daughter) can reach them.  I went over to

clean the apartment, and, as is often the case with a young family moving out, there was a fair amount of mess.  I set to it, and in a couple of hours had it cleaned, sparkling.  Looking around, I realized it was the kind of work I’d engaged in with groups of people that, even with more people working, had often taken considerably longer.  A former roommate of mine learned to leave me be when I was in what we termed “a cleaning frenzy” - because she knew I’d get far more done (and be happier) if left alone than if someone were trying to help me.  In team work for employers I am always happier (and more efficient) if I’m either leading the team, or have assigned tasks I can do on my own and bring to the group when finished.

From "The Last Days of Judas Iscariot"
2012 Production

The one area of my life (other than writing) where this has not been true has been theater - when I am cast in, or on the crew of, a play with others, I feel completely a part of the cast, fully focused and genuinely collaborative in a way that’s difficult (not impossible, but damned hard) for me with other teams.  I think this is because of focus.  In a play, the cast and crew all have the focus - the story - provided for us by the script.  We all, each in our own artistic ways, find our way to see, interpret, and work toward that focus under the guidance of the director.  It’s creative, it’s expressive, and it’s all about the story.  

In work tasks, on the other hand, everyone’s individual focus is about getting done, and everyone has different ideas about how to do that.  Even under the strongest leadership, people are often tripping over their fellow team members varying interpretations of how the task should be done, and it slows down progress.  Often, that is ok, because good ideas come up, and the team adapts, but it is also frustrating for all involved.

There are frustrations in plays, too (lord knows):   the cast member who doesn’t have his lines when everyone else does;  the actor getting the sillies and dropping out of character when everyone else is focused;  the director who gives conflicting directions or who is a martinet.  But the focus remains a constant - the story, the embodiment of it through ourselves.

So, this is why not being a team player can be good for you if you are a writer:   it is all about the story, and the focus for that needs to come from just you.  Uninterrupted, uninterpreted, unassisted YOU.  That is not to say that you remove yourself from life - you cannot be a writer if you are not engaged in life and with other people - but when you write your stories, the FOCUS needs to be yours - what YOU see as the heart and soul of the story (or article or essay or play) that you are writing.  

So struggle with those team assignments at work or in the classroom, trip over your friends who are trying to help you move or fix your car or make a Christmas present - but when you write, get rid of them all, sit down, and be alone.

On Michael Moore, Aaron Sorkin, and why Accuracy F*&**ing MATTERS

I write a lot about the mindset for writers, because I believe it’s important.  If you’re the writer who wants to focus on writing only for the market, then my words are not for you.  I think, as writers (as anyone engaged in creative work) we have an obligation to write what we feel needs to be said, and worry about marketing it later.  That, to me, is the difference between engaging  in your art and practicing your craft (both of which are necessary).   If it’s worthwhile, it will find a market.

That is not to say that you should not consider your reader.  You should.  If you don’t make them believe you, then what’s the point?  That brings me to something that’s been on my mind a lot lately:  accuracy.  Which, it should go without saying but appears not to, requires careful research.

A couple of years ago, I was working on my most recent novel, The Hapless Life of Samuel Joseph.  I wrote a passage where my character was trying to convince his uncle, who was a profound inspiration and influence in his life, to go hang-gliding with him.  The uncle refused, and Samuel called him a wuss.  I stopped, looked at the passage, and then wandered out into the living room, where I asked my then-housemate,  “When did we start using the word ‘wuss’?”

She looked up at me.  “I dunno.”

It took me three days and hours online on linguistic and etymology sites to find out that I was about a decade too early to have Samuel use that term.  I changed it to “wimp.”  (Which, by the way, dates back to a 1927 Poppye cartoon - found that out, too).

What does it matter?  It matters, and here’s why:

Some time ago, I went out to the theater to see the film “The Social Network” with three friends, all of

This never happened, by the way

whom are fellow-educators.  Afterwards, we went to dinner.  At dinner, one of my colleagues, let’s call her Blah-Blah (those who are HIMYM fans will know where I got that), was going on about Zuckerberg’s character and the things he did.

“Blah-blah,” I said, “We don’t know that he actually did that.”

“But,” Blah-blah  looked confused, “It’s right there in the film.”

“Exactly,” I said, “it’s a film.  It’s Hollywood - who knows what they invented.”

“Oh,” she said with confidence, “Aaron Sorkin wouldn’t just invent things.”

Oh? …  thought I, but went back to my dinner and let it drop. Sort of.

Aaron Sorkin

Over the next few days, I researched both the film and Aaron Sorkin.  In an interview, someone questioned him about the accusations of inaccuracies in that film, in other films of his, in The West Wing, etc.  His response?  ““What is the big deal about accuracy purely for accuracy’s sake?” (to New York magazine - link to source below)

A few years before that, I was reading (because one of my book groups was reading it) .. well, let’s just say it was a book about horses.  And Montana.   And a best-seller.  It was beautifully written, but I was pissed off.  The valley in which the story is set is a place I spent a great deal of time in my youth, and I knew it well, and the author had both the geography and the weather and much, much else completely wrong.  I couldn’t finish the book.  I hear the film was awesome.  I couldn’t make myself go see it, because I knew that place and those people, and he was just.  Completely.  WRONG.

I researched the author and found he’d never been to Montana, had, in fact, never spent any significant time outside of London.  Yeah.

If this were a problem only for fiction, I’d shrug my shoulders and blow it off.  But this attitude of “what’s the big deal” has completely worked it’s way into our culture in a way that is destructive to many of the foundations of our culture.   As a “f’r’instance” (as my mom used to say) - another book I read for a different book group was Stupid White Men by

Michael Moore

Michael Moore.  I admire a great deal of what Moore has done - Roger and Me and Columbine were ground-breaking, and essential to transparency.  But, his books I have problems with.   I laughed my way through Stupid White Men and then, as I am wont to do, got into research before going to the book group meeting.  

I selected 40 quotations and statistics he used, looked them up in his bibliography, then went to check the sources directly.  Twenty-nine of them (29 out of 40!) were inaccurate, totally absent from the source he’d cited, quoted out of context, or edited to fully change the meaning.  So I checked a few more.  Same results.  I wrote Moore a letter to which he never responded.  

At the book group meeting, I brought up a few of these inaccuracies, and was waved off.  So I got out my list, cited the actual sources, told them how freaking many I had found - (72.5% of the sources checked were just plain wrong).  There was silence for a moment, and then they began arguing with me.  We need to support Michael Moore, no matter what.  He’s on our side, Judy.  Then, it hit me:   they were mad at me.  Not mad at Moore for playing fast and loose with the facts, but mad at me for questioning something that held up their belief system.

And that, for God’s sake, for the absolute love of God, is why accuracy is important.  That, Mr. Sorkin, is why it is, in fact, a big fucking (pardon moi) deal.  Putting down things in print is a tremendous responsibility, precisely because, no matter how much you quote artistic freedom, there will be people who will believe you, and act on those beliefs.

‘Nuff said.

Aaron Sorkin critique

How Aaron Sorkin responds to accuracy critics

Michael Moore critique - worth a read

Greeting the Reader - Adventures in Namibia and Helena, Montana

Just  the fact of saying hello.  Of greeting another person.   It’s not something we think about a lot, but maybe it should be.

I recently took a long road trip back to my home state of Montana.  I don’t go as often as I might like.  I’m a person who feels a sense of connection to place, and the mountains of western Montana are one of the places on this planet that call to me.  I loved the trip - I like driving, and lots of the drive was through very beautiful country.  I noted runaway truck ramps in the mountains, now looking much more like they could stop tons of speeding metal than they did when I was a kid.  I saw sections of

highway in Idaho and Montana which seemed to have been tinted before they were laid down - some a pale green, others rose-colored or orange.  I saw a sign outside of Missoula, Montana advertising the Testicle Festival.  (You need to have been raised near ranches to know what that means).  I loved the road rolling under me, the vast stretches of sky, the abandoned farm buildings roadside with their ramshackle and unlikely beauty, the long stretches of road with nothing but trees, land, and sky.

I spent time at my sister’s house, cooking, talking, laughing, and catching up.  We didn’t go out much, but when we did, I found myself struck by something.  Walking into or out of a store, if someone - a man, a woman, old or young - passed by me, they’d say hello and smile.  The first time or two that it happened, I was startled enough that I didn’t have time, by the time I collected myself, to respond before they’d walked on.  When I thought about it, I had to smile.

You see, I’ve experienced it before, but from the other side.  Eight years ago, I spent a few months teaching in Namibia in southern Africa.  I was assigned to a small school in northern Namibia.  In “the North,” we were told in orientation, there was a very important local custom:   greeting.  Any person

you encountered, you greeted - not to do so was to insult them.  In Oshiwambo (the local language), the greeting went like this:  

Person A:  Wu uhala po.  

Person  B: Ee-ee.

A: Onawa tuu?

B: Ee-ee, ngoye wu uhala po?

A: Ee-ee.

B: Onawa ngaa?

A: Ee-ee, Onawa.

Roughly translated as:   How are you?   I’m well.  Really?  Yes, and you?  I’m well.   Good.  Yes, Good.  

You did this greeting with every person.  It was an adjustment, feeling awkward at first, but I came to love it.  I particularly recall walking along a path through the brush near the village of Onankali.    I had come there to visit another volunteer, a friend, and we were on our way to a church service in the village.  An older woman came around a bush on the path ahead of us, clearly in her Sunday best, and greeted me, and smiled with delight, taking my hand and speaking in rapid Oshiwambo when I responded.  I didn’t know much of the language, and could only continue the greeting with her, but she was delighted.  At the school where I worked, most of the daily greeting was done in Namibian sign language, as it was a school for the deaf, so I hadn’t learned much of the dozens of variations of the local language spoken in the region, but she didn’t care - I had greeted her appropriately.  When we got to the church, she introduced me to the other women as “kuku McKenzie” - “grandmother McKenzie” - in their culture, a high honor.   I also remember the times I failed to greet appropriately, and being taken to task for it once in a taxi with another woman, who told me I should learn better.  

It was this training that stayed with me for some time after I returned.  When our group returned to the States, we landed at Dulles International, and a group of us stayed the night at a local hotel while we waited for our outgoing connections the next day.  At the hotel that night, we wanted some ice in the room, so I walked down the hall to the ice machine, and, when a man was walking toward me down the hallway, I greeted him with a Hello.  It was automatic - one greeted people.   He looked at me as though I had shouted at him, and scurried away down the hall.  After a startled moment, I laughed - I still often laugh when I think about it.  This is how I felt in Helena, Montana when people greeted me.  

The population density in Montana and Namibia is about the same - about 6 people per square mile.  Maybe when there are less people, it becomes more important to connect.

This is what has me thinking about the relevance of all this to writing.  In writing - there are,in a very real way - just two people:   you and the reader.   What we need to do as writers, each and every time we sit down to write, is to greet them - they are a part of our story, and we need to remember their faces as we work.  We need to turn, see them, and make sure they are there with us by acknowledging that they are something more than anonymous passers-by.