Joe Dennis

God is always there

by Joe Dennis

“The Lord is near to those who are discouraged; he saves those who have lost all hope.” –Psalm 34:18

Little thought went into it, and it likely took a few seconds to write. It was a text I received on Sept. 11, 2014 from a former student (who was in my class in fall 2011):

I was thankful for the millionth time that I learned the silence interviewing technique from you. Amazing what people will decide to share during a 5-second lapse in conversation. Thank you!

This seemingly nonchalant text may have changed my life, as it came at one of the lowest points of my life. The text came at 7:12 that evening, as I was in the middle of a breakdown. Hours earlier I had just left the hospice where we had transferred my father. With my flight back home in just a couple hours, I had to hurriedly say goodbye to my dad and kissed him on the forehead. I knew that was the last time I would talk to him.

My mom was an emotional wreck so I was trying to stay strong for her while at the same time keeping one eye on my watch to not miss my flight. I knew I had to see Carla and the boys — I had been home so little the last few weeks that Matthew thought I had moved out. Work wasn’t even on my radar. My inbox was so full of angry emails and my suitcase was packed with ungraded papers, that I feared venturing into work.

I sat in my airplane seat as tears streamed down my face. I had hastened my last conversation with my dad. I had evaded my mom’s emotional pleas. I have ignored my wife, my kids, my colleagues and my students. I had failed everyone. I had lost hope.

Then that text came.

It came seconds before I had to shut off my phone, leaving me the 2-hour flight to feel its impact: in a moment in which I’m feeling my absolute worst, I was still affecting someone else’s life for the better. That simple text message was the best thing that could’ve happened to me in that moment.

The message came from a former student, but I know it also came from God, lifting me up when I most needed it.

Prayer: God, in the time when we most need you, you are there. Help us see you, and thank you for being there for us. Amen.

2015 Oscar Movie Reviews & Predictions

by Joe Dennis

Reviews published individually on Internet Movie Database.

My Oscars go to …

Best Picture: American Sniper
Best Director: Richard Linklater, Boyhood
Best Actor: Bradley Cooper, American Sniper
Best Actress: Felicity Jones, The Theory of Everything
Best Supporting Actor: J.K. Simmons, Whiplash
Best Supporting Actress: Patricia Arquette, Boyhood
Best Animated Picture: The Boxtrolls (not reviewed here)

The following reviews are in order of “should definitely win” to “why was this even nominated”?

Like 2010 Best Picture winner The Hurt Locker, American Sniper provides insight into how war impacts the psyche of soldiers. Although Navy SEAL Chris Kyle is celebrated among fellow soldiers, director Clint Eastwood lends as much time portraying the strain the war had on Kyle’s personal life, specifically his wife. Bradley Cooper (who trained for three months to gain 40 pounds of muscle) should win the Best Actor Award for playing the conflicted Kyle, who forces himself to develop a hatred of the enemy, referring to Iraqis as “savages,” so he can justify killing them. The action scenes provide an adrenaline rush, but it’s the intentional moments of silence — such as when Kyle, with finger on the trigger, is deciding whether to kill a child who is holding what appears to be a bomb — that make American Sniper the best picture of the year.

There have been many films that rightly glorify Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement, but Selma is the first movie to showcase the internal battles within the movement. Director Ava Duvernay places the focus on King’s struggles — not just with the people against him but also with the people on his side. David Oyelowo plays a King who remained determined in his battles with President Lyndon Johnson, his right-hand man Andrew Young and Malcom X. In the penultimate moment of the Selma march, we find King not engaged in a fight against segregationists, but in a struggle to save his marriage. Selma humanizes King, which strengthens his legacy.

The Theory of Everything is the ultimate love story. Eddie Redmayne does a phenomenal job portraying physicist Stephen Hawking physically self-destructing as ALS cripples everything but his mind. Redmayne showcases the pain Hawking must have felt at each new struggle he faces — such as his inability to crawl upstairs as his baby curiously stares down at his daddy through the baby gate. But the heart of the film is Felicity Jones, who should win a Best Actress award for her portrayal of Jane, Hawking’s determined wife. Jane refuses to let Stephen feel victimized, struggling to maintain a normal family life despite his crippling disease. Jane is the poster-child for the feminist wife: intelligent, determined and totally in control of her family.

The dark-horse of the best picture nominees, Whiplash poses the ethical question, “how much is too much?” J.K. Simmons plays tough college music teacher Fletcher, whose mission is to find the next great jazz musician. In his efforts to get the best out of his musicians, he verbally, and at times, physically abuses his students. Simmons should win the Best Supporting Actor Award for playing the character we should hate, but for some reason have an affection for. The movie is accompanied by an outstanding soundtrack and the best ending of the year, however is cluttered with an unnecessary plot line involving the main character and a girlfriend.

The idea of Boyhood is groundbreaking — tracking a family over 12 years. It’s very neat watching a family evolve before your eyes. Director Richard Linklater should win the Best Directing Award for piecing together such a complicated puzzle. The movie promotes the growth of the boy, but it’s the development of Patricia Arquette as the mom that is most interesting. Arquette should win the Best Supporting Actress Award for showcasing a mom who is doing all she can to provide the best foundation for her children. While her kids are growing, the aging mother encounters homelessness, an abusive partner, and an absentee partner while she works her way through college to eventually provide the family with a firm — but still shaky — foundation. Although the premise of Boyhood is groundbreaking, the story — which is simply working class life — begins to lose its luster.

Hollywood is full of itself, and no movie is as self-serving as Birdman or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance This film is one big who trip, and its mere premise fails to make the audience feel sorry for main character Riggan, played by Michael Keaton. The disappointing ending adds to the viewer’s anger with the selfish Riggan. With that said, the movie has entertainment value. Tremendous acting jobs by Keaton, Edward Norton and Emma Stone (all deservingly nominated for Academy Awards) and the illusion of the movie being filmed in one continuous take make Birdman worth viewing, and makes director Alejandro Inarritu deserving of his Best Director nomination.

The Imitation Game tells the true story of Alan Turig, a World War II British mathematician who develops a monstrous machine (now known as the computer) that ultimately helps defeat Germany. Benedict Cumberbatch is outstanding in his portrayal of Turing, whose life story has two major facets: the development of the machine and being charged for the crime of being gay. The fault in The Imitation Game is director Morten Tyldum’s attempts to tell both stories. Ultimately, the story of Turig’s inhumane sentence — undergo painful hormonal treatment to reverse his libido — was seemingly crammed into the movie, not giving it enough justice.

The Grand Budapest Hotel is just plain weird. It’s the kind of humor director Wes Anderson is known for — think stupid humor for intelligent people. However, unlike his other films like Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, The Grand Budapest Hotel storyline feels disjointed, and the main characters gets so wrapped up in hijinks that it’s difficult to remember just why they are in a given situation.

Best day of the year arrives

Best day of the year arrives
Another Look by Joe Dennis
Originally published in The Walton Tribune
Dec. 25, 2002

As a child, Christmas was the best day of the year, and it started as soon as the clock turned to midnight.

Growing up in a Catholic household, midnight mass was the cornerstone of any Christmas celebration. Admittedly, I never looked forward to the extended service, but what kept me from drifting off in church was the hope that something would be waiting for me under the tree as soon as we arrived back home.

Surely Santa wouldn’t let me down. I would help my father make his specialty — molasses cookies — for the special event, and my mother would help me fill up a glass of milk and we’d leave it right next to a couple of cookies on a table in front of the tree. Every year, my mother assured me that even though we didn’t have a fireplace and a real chimney, Santa would find a way to get into the house. I wasn’t really sure how, because even though I insisted, my parents would not leave the door unlocked for Saint Nick. My biggest fear was that he would be making his stops on the south side of Chicago, and would not be able to get into the Dennis home.

But I was a lucky kid; Santa never failed to hit our house very early in the morning. We would stroll in from midnight mass around 1:30 a.m. — well beyond my bedtime — and I would scamper to the tree as soon as my father pushed open the back door. The milk glass was only half full, and the cookies were half-eaten; Bingo! Now, where are the gifts?

They were always there. Whether it be a Dukes of Hazard car, Star Wars action figure or Dennis the Menace books, Santa managed to come through. My euphoria would be short-lived though, as my young brain would catch up with the rest of my body and inform me it was bedtime. I would be back to the toys in the morning.

When I would wake up late Christmas morning, I would look out our front window for any signs of Santa’s visit. Since there was usually snow on the ground, this was pretty easy to do, and sure enough, I always saw reindeer tracks across the front lawn (though I failed to realize animal tracks were almost always visible on our front-lawn snow).

I would then retreat to the tree, putting my new toys to work, reveling in the best day of the year.

How Literary Magazine Changed My Life

The Weekly Wednesday: Literary Magazine Changed My Life

The Weekly Wednesday is a column written for members of the Georgia Scholastic Press Association, mostly comprised of high school journalism teachers.

by Joe Dennis

As I was shuffling through boxes at my mom’s house, I came across a folder packed with random pieces of paper filled with forgotten poetry, half-written short stories and attempted drawings from my high school days.

Most memorable was a stack of song lyrics I wrote. It was the early 1990s and I was going to be a rock star! My best friend played guitar and I would take my folder of poems and we would jam. He would play riffs as I shuffled through the papers finding a set of lyrics that best fit with the jam. Once I found a fit, I adjusted the lyrics as he strummed some different chords and we would develop a chorus and intro for the song. We ended up writing almost 20 songs that way.

Each song was deeply personal to me. “Change in the Weather” was about Ivey — the girl I so desperately wanted to be my girlfriend, but I didn’t quite know how to make that happen. “Dial the Devil” was about my inner demons that wanted to come out every time I lost my temper. “Confusion” was about my battle with depression (although I didn’t know it at the time). As I read through each lyric sheet — with the chords scribbled above them — the emotions of that teenage boy 25 years ago took over me.

I was very guarded with my lyrics — they were deeply personal and I feared letting others read them would leave me vulnerable. It’s why it was such a difficult decision for me whether I should submit a poem to my high school’s literary magazine. I was pretty successful at staying under the radar in high school. An all-boys Catholic school with a proud tradition of state championships in football, basketball and hockey, one had to either be an athlete or an Ivy-league bound genius to get recognized. I was neither. So I made a conscious decision to stay invisible. But my English teacher (and literary magazine adviser), presumably being impressed with some of my poetry written for class assignments, encouraged me to submit something.

So I transformed my darkest and most personal lyric into a poem and submitted it to the literary magazine (here’s a segment):

Sadness. Happiness. They battle for my mind.

My sense of self is impossible to find.

Confusion. It’s taking me over again.

I don’t know what message to send.

In my sorrow you get amused.

I’m angry and confused.

When I learned it would be published, I experienced the full gamut of emotions, from pride that my work would be published to fear that my true self would be exposed. Weeks later when the issue came out, I grabbed my copy, proudly looked at my name in the table of contents and flipped to page 16 to see my words. Almost immediately, a sense of accomplishment — one that I haven’t felt in high school — took over me. That sense of pride grew when teachers complimented my poem, when other students in the literary magazine befriended me and when I was actually approached to join the drama club. After three years, I was finally visible in my high school.

Being published in the literary magazine was the start of my journalistic career, and more importantly the evolution of my public self. It’s scary to think my life may have been completely different if Mr. Taylor didn’t give me that extra push to submit my work to the magazine. Because of that seemingly uneventful, but truly fateful moment in my life, I try to look out for those students flying under the radar, and give them that vote of confidence and extra push when appropriate. They don’t know it yet, but It just might change their life.

GSPA Weekly Wednesday: Adrenaline Rush

The Weekly Wednesday: Adrenaline Rush
by Joe Dennis, GSPA Director

As a former journalist who worked in a newsroom, I miss the adrenaline rush of doing the interviews, writing the story and getting it published all in one day. Sure it was stressful — and one of the reasons I left the newsroom for academia — but I rarely find something that matches that feeling of accomplishment that I sensed seeing the paper, filled with a day of my work, come off the press.

On Tuesday night, that feeling came back. With another Grady professor we served as editors of a six-person Election Day newsroom. Our team of student reporters were dispatched at 7 a.m. to various polling locations across Athens. Their mission was to get the “stories behind the story” — talking to voters, poll workers and election managers as to why they are there, why they vote, who inspired them to vote, etc. By 8 p.m. we had several written stories, photos and videos posted on a website we created — http://www.athelect.com — and eight student-written stories or videos also posted on the Athens Banner-Herald website.

At the end of the day, that feeling came back to me, but more importantly the six students felt it as well. Working together for almost 13 hours we put together a pretty solid body of work. Of course there were challenges — at times we argued, sniped at each other and had periods of grumpiness. But we also laughed a whole lot, high-fived, shared humorous personal stories and bonded in a way we never could through a typical classroom environment. And we learned, again in a way that we could never learn in a standard classroom.

For example, in teaching video shooting I consistently emphasize the importance of good audio. But still, with every video assignment I have students turning in good clips with horrible audio. Typically, they can just go out and shoot again. In our deadline-driven Election Day newsroom, though, there were no “redos.” So when a student came in with a video piece with horrible audio, we just couldn’t do anything with it. Her hard work was essentially wasted — a tough lesson to learn. But I bet she gets good audio from now on.

This experience got me thinking how a same-day deadline newsroom scenario could be replicated in high school journalism. Perhaps you can open your classroom after hours to have team coverage of a home football game, school event or “High School After Hours,” dispatching students to various events happening on a particularly busy day after school. The focus of stories would be on people — and why they are there — not your standard news story of the event.

Finding a scenario that would allow willing students to get that newsroom rush would be great for staff bonding and morale. And who knows, you might get that rush of adrenaline too.