"'ALMOST' CARRIES NO WEIGHT... ESPECIALLY IN MATTERS OF THE HEART."

Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is often read as a simple moral tale about greed transformed into generosity. Yet a closer reading suggests something far more psychologically complex: Ebenezer Scrooge is not redeemed because he was wicked, but because he misunderstood himself. His haunting is not merely punishment or warning—it is a guided awakening. When viewed through this lens, the story becomes less about correcting vice and more about discovering one’s true nature.

From the beginning, Dickens signals that Scrooge is not a villain devoid of feeling. He is described not as cruel by nature but as solitary, neglected, and emotionally withdrawn. His childhood vision reveals “a solitary child… neglected by his friends,” suggesting deprivation rather than malice. This distinction matters. Neglect produces guardedness, not evil. Scrooge’s later coldness may therefore be understood as self-protection rather than moral corruption.

The pivotal moment with Belle, often interpreted as proof that Scrooge chose money over love, can also be read differently when placed in its historical and psychological context. Victorian society prescribed marriage and family as primary markers of success, especially for men rising in status. Respectability was measured not only by wealth but by domestic establishment: a household, a wife, children, and social participation. Women, meanwhile, possessed few legal rights or economic protections; marriage was frequently their chief means of stability. Literature of the period reflects this reality repeatedly, portraying marriage as both aspiration and necessity.

Within such a framework, Scrooge may have believed he should want marriage even if he did not truly desire it. His engagement to Belle could represent not romantic destiny but conformity to expectation. The 1984 film adaptation starring George C. Scott crystallizes this possibility in a line not found in Dickens’s text but deeply faithful to its emotional logic. In that scene, Scrooge admits, “I almost went after her,” to which the Ghost replies, “Almost carries no weight—especially in matters of the heart. And you did have a heart then.” Though non-canonical, the exchange captures something psychologically revealing: the tragedy is not that Scrooge never loved, but that he hesitated at the threshold of a life he suspected was not truly his.

Tradition often depicts Belle returning a ring when she releases him—another embellishment not present in Dickens yet symbolically suggestive. A returned ring implies a proposal already made, a future already outlined: shared home, shared finances, children, responsibility. Confronted with the concrete reality of that future, Scrooge may have realized that what he thought he wanted was in fact something he had only assumed he ought to want. Belle’s decision to release him, which may have struck Dickens’s contemporaries as strikingly generous or unusual for a woman of her time, spares them both a life built on mistaken expectations. Rather than pursue other relationships in search of conformity, Scrooge instead closes that door entirely. His withdrawal, then, may not be rejection of love but rejection of a script that never fit him.

Seen this way, wealth did not replace love; it replaced expectation. Money is predictable, undemanding, and emotionally safe. It does not ask for intimacy or compromise. For someone uncertain of his place within conventional relational life, financial stability can feel like the only reliable form of security. Scrooge’s famous devotion to profit may thus represent refuge rather than obsession.

Such misalignment between inner truth and outer pressure often produces shame, defensiveness, and resentment. A person who cannot want what society insists he should want may come to distrust both society and himself. Scrooge’s bitterness, then, may stem less from greed than from a long-standing sense of personal failure measured against social norms he never chose. His disdain for festivity and companionship may reflect discomfort with a world that seems effortlessly to enjoy what he cannot.

The three spirits function, therefore, not as judges but as guides through a process of psychological integration. The Ghost of Christmas Past reconnects him with forgotten emotional truths. The Ghost of Christmas Present awakens empathy by allowing him to witness others’ lives. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come confronts him with the trajectory of his current path. This sequence mirrors the order of genuine transformation: understanding one’s past, reconnecting emotionally, and recognizing future consequences.

Crucially, Scrooge’s redempti
on does not culminate in marriage or conventional domestic fulfillment. Dickens concludes instead with a quieter triumph: “His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.” Happiness comes not from conformity to social expectation but from inner alignment. Scrooge becomes generous, affectionate, and socially connected while remaining unmarried. Dickens thus affirms that a meaningful life need not follow a single prescribed form.

The spirits visit Scrooge precisely because he is not beyond hope. He can still feel sorrow, tenderness, and fear. In Dickens’s moral universe, those who can still feel can still change. The haunting is therefore not a sentence—it is an intervention.

Ultimately, A Christmas Carol is not merely a story about learning to be good. It is a story about learning to be honest with oneself. Scrooge is saved not from wickedness, but from a life that was never truly his.

COMMON ROOM

I’m not exactly sure when I first came across LIFE’s now-famous photo of off-the-grid communal living in the 1960s, but I must have been in about 5th grade.

I had no idea what either “hippie” or “commune” meant, so I did what one does: I asked my mum.

I don’t remember her answer exactly. I’m sure she gave me the 15,000-foot overview, and I suspect the word “dirty” made an appearance. A woman of her social ranking could not be expected to understand—let alone endorse—the idea of people heading off into the woods to live in cobbled-together shelters, half-clothed, bug-bitten, and cheerfully eating whatever survived the garden.

Naturally, I was immediately taken with the idea.

Even then, I think what I wanted wasn’t a commune so much as permission—but I didn’t have that language yet. What I had was a plan.

Almost immediately, I decided that my commune would be a wee bit different. Not quite the neat rows of little-boxes-made-of-ticky-tacky suburban life I knew—but also not a scatter of sticks, tarps, and wishful thinking. What I envisioned was a large house somewhere deep in the woods—accessible, but not obvious—surrounded by what we would now call tiny houses (though such a term didn’t exist in the late ’70s when this first took hold).

The “Mother House,” if you will, would be mostly one great big room: an industrial kitchen, a large bathroom with a giant hot tub and several showers—because while I was intrigued by the general clothing-optional lifestyle of communes, I was also practical enough to understand that folken might not always want to bathe en masse. Each tiny house, then, could have its own shower/bath combo for those so inclined.

Food would be prepared in the House, on a kind of rotating basis, and people could choose: eat together, or take a plate back to their own wee dwelling and eat in solitude.

That was the point.

The whole design hinged on a balance between Community and Solitude, depending on how one felt at any given moment.

Feeling gregarious? Head to the Mother House—eat, drink, watch TV, play games, see who’s about.

Feeling aloof? Go back to your own space—read, sleep, think.

If you wanted conversation, privacy, intimacy—you had a place for that, too.

And it mattered, deeply, that these were full dwellings set apart from the House, not just rooms down a hallway. The point was to be able to get away completely when you wanted to—to be alone without compromise. No thin walls. No shared bathroom at the end of the corridor. No incidental encounters unless you chose them.

You could be with people.

Or you could not.

And both were equally valid.

There were, admittedly, some gaps in the plan.

I wasn’t particularly keen on the idea of children running about—not in great swarms like in the photo—so I never really worked out how that would function. I suppose they could be passed around as needed; long before “it takes a village” became a common phrase, I knew that part was probably true, even if I didn’t much care for children myself.

Drugs didn’t enter into it at all. I was far too young, and my parents only rarely had a rum & Coke, so the appeal of mind-altering substances wasn’t even on my radar. If cooperating with Da’ Maaaan meant having things like running water, electricity, sewage, and mail delivery, then so be it.

What I wanted wasn’t rebellion. It was choice.

Specifically, the ability to say, politely and without consequence: “I really don’t want to be around anyone right now.” —and to have that be accepted.

Such things were (are?) generally not afforded to children.

In school, we were all together in one great fishbowl of a room, all day long, and if someone decided to come along and yank your chain, they had pretty much free rein to do so. One could not, for example, say, “I’d like to go sit in the closet by myself and be away from the rest of you cakesniffers,” and expect that request to be honored.

This is why, in 5th grade, when I was on safety patrol for the longest outdoor shift, I would sometimes opt instead to sit in the cafeteria and drink hot chocolate. Being alone in a large, empty room was preferable to being out among the noise and chaos of recess—but that’s a story for another day.

Even at home, there were times I didn’t want to eat dinner with my own family, and I couldn’t understand why this was considered rude. I didn’t want conversation. I didn’t want small talk. I wanted to eat quietly, by myself.

At large family gatherings—Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter—I found myself withdrawing at regular intervals, stepping outside or slipping into an empty room just to recalibrate.

As an adult, not much has changed. In the fall, especially, as holidays approach and we’re all encouraged to gather, to celebrate, to show goodwill—my instinct tends to run in the opposite direction. Not out of dislike, nor even discomfort, but out of a need that feels just as real as hunger or sleep.

As the meme says: “I’m staying in today; it’s too peopley out there.”

Even among those I love.

It occurs to me now that I was never trying to build a commune at all. I was trying to build a place where solitude wasn’t something you had to apologize for. A place where stepping away didn’t need to be explained.

A place where the door could close— and that, too, would be understood.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL, and the E'er-Shifting History of Emotion

 In the nearly two hundred years since Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol (1843), readers have returned again and again to its ghosts, its message of generosity, and its dramatic transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge. Yet the emotions this story evokes are not static across time. Recent work in the “history of experience,” such as historian Rob Boddice’s argument that emotions are culturally constructed rather than universal, suggests that Victorian audiences and modern readers may not feel Dickens’s novella in the same way. The character of Jacob Marley — already dead when the story begins — offers a powerful lens to examine how emotional meaning shifts depending on the worldview of the reader.

For a Victorian audience, Marley’s suffering would have communicated a terrifying spiritual truth. Mid-nineteenth-century England maintained a widespread belief in an ordered Christian universe in which sin, charity, and salvation were visible and enforceable realities. Marley’s chains are not symbols of regret but manifestations of divine justice. His ghostly warning is a credible threat: anyone who ignores the poor and fails in their Christian duty risks eternal torment. In this emotional framework, Scrooge’s transformation is a literal rescue of his soul. Victorians would have read the story as a moral intervention, prompting feelings of fear, shame, urgency, and hopeful repentance. Marley’s agony embodies the message: he has fundamentally misunderstood the true structure of existence, and now the universe itself will not let him forget it.

A modern reader, however, approaches A Christmas Carol from a very different emotional architecture. Today’s audiences are often more secular, psychologically oriented, and skeptical of supernatural consequences. The ghosts are read less as divine forces and more as literary devices or embodiments of inner life. Marley’s chains become metaphors for emotional burden, isolation, and unresolved guilt. Scrooge’s transformation is framed as personal healing: he reconnects with fellow humans and discovers empathy, joy, and belonging. Rather than fearing damnation, modern readers are likely to feel compassion for Scrooge’s loneliness and root for his self-improvement. The novella becomes a comforting tale of mental and social recovery rather than a spiritual warning.

Seen through the lens of the history of experience, both audiences respond authentically — yet they respond differently because the meaning of emotions has shifted. Victorians feared that failing to love one’s neighbor would have eternal consequences; modern readers fear living a life devoid of connection or purpose. The same scenes and characters produce distinct emotional effects because the cultural frameworks that generate fear, hope, guilt, and joy have transformed. Marley’s declaration that “mankind was my business” once signaled a divine commandment; today it reads as a reminder of shared humanity.

Ultimately, A Christmas Carol endures because its core desire — a second chance to become better — resonates across time. But understanding how readers have historically felt the story helps us see that even familiar emotions are not timeless. Different eras encounter the same text inside different emotional worlds. Dickens wrote a Victorian ghost story meant to provoke repentance; we read a psychological redemption story that offers comfort and hope. The novella does not change — but we have. That, perhaps, is the most powerful haunting of all.

TH' 7th VOYAGE OF IJON TICHY

 

NOTE: in an attempt to turn my 4th grade students on to th' lovely world of time travel and set th' stage for their eventual discovery of Douglas Adams, I took th' liberty of adapting one of my fav short stories.

The Seventh Voyage of Ijon Tichy 

Adapted from THE STAR DIARIES by Stanisław Lem 

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Ijon Tichy had traveled through space many times, and he liked to think that very little could surprise him anymore.

He was wrong.

On his seventh voyage, while drifting peacefully through the dark and silent stars, something very small—and very unlucky—happened. A tiny meteor struck his rocket. One not much larger than a lima bean.

It didn’t make a dramatic crash. There was no explosion, no fire, no flashing lights. In fact, it was such a small bump that Tichy almost ignored it.

Almost. Because the meteor had hit the worst possible place: the steering controls.

At first, Tichy simply tried to turn the ship. Nothing happened. He tried again, a little harder this time.

Still nothing.

Then, slowly at first, the rocket began to spin.  ichy frowned. “Well,” he muttered, “this is inconvenient.”

The spinning grew faster. The stars outside his window stretched into long, shining lines. The rocket whirled like a top, faster and faster, until Tichy had to grab onto the edge of a control panel just to stay upright.

And then something truly strange happened. Time… slipped.

Tichy didn’t feel it the way one feels a bump or a turn. It was quieter than that. But suddenly, standing in the middle of the control room, was another person. Tichy blinked.

The other man blinked back. They stared at each other for a long moment. Then, at exactly the same time, they both said, “Who are you?”

They also both answered at once: “I’m Ijon Tichy.”

There was a pause.  A rather long pause.

“Well,” said Tichy, clearing his throat, “that’s impossible.”

“Clearly not,” said the other Tichy.  “Obviously I’m you, but I’m the you from about 5 hours ago.”

It did not take long to figure out what had happened. The spinning rocket had somehow looped through time, bringing a version of Tichy from a few hours earlier into the present.  This was confusing—but manageable.

At least, it was manageable for about five minutes. Then the rocket spun again. And another Tichy appeared. Now there were three of them.

The newest one looked around in surprise. “What is going on here?  Why aren’t the controls fixed?”

“That,” said one of the older Tichys, “is exactly what we are trying to determine.”

The rocket continued to spin. And with every strange twist through time, another Tichy arrived. Soon there were four. Then five. Then six. The control room grew crowded with identical space travelers, all talking at once.

One Tichy insisted they should fix the controls immediately.  Another argued they needed a plan first.  A third claimed the controls had already been fixed—because he was from the future and had done the repair himself—though no one could see how.  One of them tried to take a nap in the corner.

“Gentlemen!” Tichy shouted—though he was not entirely sure which one he was anymore. “We must remain calm!”

“Agreed!” several Tichys replied.

They did not remain calm.

The trouble was that some of the Tichys remembered things that had not happened yet. One of them announced that he was from tomorrow and had already gone outside on a spacewalk to fix the hole in the side of the ship with the help of several of the others.

“That’s impossible,” said another, “there aren’t enough spacesuits for all of us!”

“Well, I just got here from yesterday,” said a third, “and the ship was perfectly fine then!”

“Of course it was!  Because that was yesterday before the controls were hit!” shouted another Tichy with a white bandage wrapped around his head.

Someone pointed at him. “Why does he have a bandage on his head?”

Everyone turned.  “That,” he said, “is from tomorrow. One of you knocked me into the control panel.”

“Hey,” said another Tichy slowly, rubbing his leg, “is that why my knee hurts?”

This did not improve anyone’s mood.

At one point, one of them pointed at another and said, “In a moment, you’re going to drop that wrench.”

"I am not,” said the second Tichy.

A moment later, he dropped the wrench.

The first Tichy folded his arms. “There. You see?”

This did not improve anyone’s mood either.

Eventually, after much arguing, they all agreed on one thing: the ship had to be repaired. The steering controls needed fixing, or the rocket would spin forever—and possibly fill up entirely with Tichys. So many Tichys, in fact, that they would run out of room. And then they would run out of food. And then—

“…toilet paper,” someone added quietly.

Everyone stopped. They all thought about this. And suddenly, they all became very serious.

“Who will fix it?” one Tichy asked.

“I will,” said another.

“You already tried,” said a third. “It didn’t work.”

“I haven’t tried yet!” the second Tichy protested.

“Yes, you have,” said the first. “From my point of view, you not only tried—you made it worse!”

“Hey, that’s right!” said the Tichy with the bandage. “You knocked me out of the way and I bashed my head!”

“Wait,” said another, “is that why my knee hurts?”

This led to a long and rather heated discussion about time, which did not solve the problem. Everyone began shouting at once. The ship kept spinning. And more Tichys kept appearing.

Some climbed ladders. Some gave instructions.  Some ignored instructions.  One of them began writing everything down in a notebook, though it was unclear whether this was helpful. One of them tried to get everyone’s attention by loudly saying that he was here from this coming Saturday and there was no food left and someone had better do something, and do it fast. At last, a quieter Tichy—one who had been watching more than speaking—raised his hand.

“I believe,” he said carefully, “that everything we are trying to do… has already happened.”

The others fell silent.

“If that is true,” he continued, “then the solution must already exist. We simply need to do exactly what we have already done.”

There was a long pause. A very long pause.

“That makes no sense,” said one Tichy.

“On the contrary,” said another, “it makes perfect sense.  I know, because I’m here from next week and everything is in fine working order.”  Someone else then shouted that it if the ship was repaired then why were there so many of them and why was the ship still spinning?  Meanwhile, three more Tichys had appeared, one of whom had a long beard and no shoes and smelled terrible.

The quiet Tichy, who may or may not have been the original one, raised his hand and said, “follow me.”  Reluctantly, they began to follow this strange idea.

Instead of arguing, they watched what each version of themselves did—and then did the same.

If one climbed a ladder, another followed.  If one reached for a tool, another handed it over.  If one gave an instruction, the others listened. Slowly, carefully, the chaos began to organize itself. It was as though they were all part of a puzzle, and at last the pieces were fitting together.

Then, quite suddenly— The spinning stopped. The rocket steadied. The stars outside returned to their proper places.  And one by one, the extra Tichys disappeared. Until there was only one.

Ijon Tichy stood alone in the control room, breathing hard. Everything was quiet again.

He looked around carefully. No other versions of himself.  No arguments.  No ladders.  No notebooks. He turned to look at the controls. They were fixed. Perfectly.

Tichy nodded slowly. “Excellent,” he said.

Then he paused. Because one small question remained. He looked at the controls again. Then around the empty room. And finally said:

“…Yes, but who fixed them?”

************************** QUESTIONS FOR CLASS DISCUSSION:

Level 1: “Make Sure We Got It” (Comprehension)

• What caused the problem on the ship?

• Why couldn’t Tichy steer anymore?

• What strange thing started happening because of the spinning?

• How did Tichy first react when he saw another version of himself?

• Why did more and more Tichys keep appearing?

• What problem were all the Tichys trying to solve?

• What finally made the spinning stop?

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🟡 Level 2: “Now Let’s Think About It” (Understanding & Logic)

• Why didn’t having more Tichys actually help solve the problem?

• Why did the Tichys keep arguing instead of working together?

• What made the “follow what we already did” plan work?

• Why was it confusing that some Tichys remembered the future?

• What does the bandage on one Tichy tell us about time in the story?

• Why did everyone suddenly get serious when they mentioned running out of toilet paper? 😄

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🔵 Level 3: “Wait… What??” (Paradox Thinking)

• If the controls were already fixed… why did they need to fix them?

• Who fixed the ship if everyone was just copying what already happened?

• Could the problem have been solved without the time loop?

• If you met yourself from the future, would you believe them? Why or why not?

• Can something happen because it already happened?

"FOUR DEAD IN OHIO", SOME 56 YEARS LATER: A MILD REFLECTION

 Every year, right at the beginning of May, it shows up on my calendar. Not a birthday.  Not an appointment. Not something I have to do.  Just a quiet marker: May 4, 1970.  The day four students were shot and killed at Kent State University.

I was two years old at the time, living about forty miles north on th’ veritable shores of Lake Erie. Which is to say, of course, I don’t remember it happening. Not in any direct sense.  No memories of  images, news broadcast flickering in the background, no moment of realization. Nothing like that.

And yet, somehow, I remember it.

Or maybe that’s not quite right. What I remember is everything that came after.

For the next decade or so—through childhood, through school, through just being in Ohio—it kept coming up. Every year, around the same time, people would talk about it again. Teachers. Adults. The news. It had a kind of seasonal gravity to it. Like something that didn’t stay in the past but circled back, annually, asking to be noticed.

Then time passed and like a lot of young adults, I moved away.  And it disappeared.

Down here in NC, nobody really talks about it. You could bring it up in casual conversation and get a blank look. Kent might as well be a foreign city. Ohio, vaguely north. Lake Erie?  Uh, I think I can find that on a map, gimmie a minute…  The whole thing recedes into something regional, almost obscure.

But it never receded for me.

It’s still on my calendar. It still catches my attention. And every year I find myself wondering why this one event—only four people, a bit more than half a century ago—has stuck with me in a way that so many other, larger tragedies have not.  Because it’s not like there haven’t been others.

There have been dozens—maybe hundreds—of mass shootings since then. Columbine High School massacre. Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Pulse Nightclub, the Naval Station in Pensecola; mein gott, there’s a Wiki page that just endlessly rolls on and on and on in chart form.  Its horrifying.  Names that briefly dominate the national conversation, then slowly give way to the next one. The scale is often larger. The loss, no less devastating.

And yet, I don’t mark those dates. I don’t carry them the same way.

Which raises an uncomfortable question: is that unfair?  Why this one?

Part of the answer, I think, is proximity. Not just physical, though that’s part of it. Kent, Cleveland, Canton, Avon Lake, Rocky River, Elyria—these aren’t abstract places to me. They’re part of the same mental map. The same world I grew up in. Even if I was too young to understand it at the time, the event happened inside the geography of my life.  But proximity alone doesn’t explain it.  There’s something else about Kent State that feels different, even now.

It wasn’t just a shooting. It was the Ohio National Guard. It was authority. It was the people who, in theory, are there to maintain order, to protect. And in that moment, they turned their weapons on unarmed students.  That carries a different kind of weight.

Most mass shootings are horrifying in a way that feels chaotic, senseless—violence erupting from somewhere that already feels unstable. But this… this suggests something else. Something more unsettling.  If the people meant to protect you can become the source of danger, then what exactly is stable?

I don’t know that I had that thought consciously as a child. But I suspect I absorbed it anyway. Not as a conclusion, but as a kind of background unease. The sort of thing that lodges itself quietly and stays there.

And then there’s the timing of it all.  Kent State, for me at least, feels like it sits at the far end of a long quiet stretch. An event that was rare enough, singular enough, to be revisited and remembered year after year.  After that—much later, really—things change.   The shootings become more frequent. Then common. Then, disturbingly, almost routine. To the point where some of them barely register in the wider news cycle anymore. Not because they matter less, but because there are too many to hold onto all at once.

And maybe that’s part of it too.  It’s easier, in a strange way, to attach meaning to a single, recurring event than to a constant stream of them. The mind can circle one thing. It can’t circle everything.

Still, I don’t think this is just about me.  Because people keep returning to Kent State.

Decades later, there are still books being written. Research being done. Entire graphic novels—like Four Dead in Ohio—built around trying to understand what happened there. And those aren’t casual undertakings. No one spends years assembling something like that, diving deep into old newspapers and interviews and maps, drawing hundreds of detailed frames across almost countless hours, unless there’s a question they can’t quite put down.

Which makes me think this isn’t just a personal quirk.  It’s a kind of shared orientation.

Some events don’t resolve. They don’t settle neatly into “past.” They keep asking something—about authority, about protest, about what a society does when it turns on itself, even briefly. And different people, at different times, feel compelled to go back and look again.

I seem to be one of those people.  Not in the sense of writing a 350-page book or dedicating years of research to it. But in the quieter way of keeping a date on a calendar. Of noticing when it comes around. Of asking, again, why this still feels like something that matters.  And maybe that’s enough.

Maybe the point isn’t to distribute attention evenly across every tragedy, as if memory were some kind of moral accounting system.  Maybe the point is just to be honest about the ones that stay.

This is one of mine.