Artie Dam teaches history to Year 11s at the local high school. He’s unusual. When the students are restless, he asks if they’d like to know about venereal disease during the Civil War. On the first day of each new school year, he hands the students two sheets of blank paper: “Write about who you can’t stand, what you like, write anything. But write,” he tells them. Artie keeps what he learns to himself but remembers everything.