Today is the second day that school has been cancelled due to ice. I hate the cold, so I stay inside; I am suffering from cabin fever. I have read, although with my new bifocals I am not having an easy time of that. They tell me I will adjust, but as of now, three hours with them, I have not. Impatient as well as being restless do not a good pairing make. My class tonight at UT has been cancelled as well. I know the world does not shut down in parts of the country where cold weather is more of a constant. I know, I know: we are not used to it, we are not prepared to handle it etc. etc. I am safer sitting here at home. Boredom takes over and dominates into inaction. Over the semester break I did get a bit read: The new Jim Harrison novel ( I really like this guy: kind of rambling multi-story lines with deep reflections on life, politics, personal relationships, and religion), Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (Can’t believe it took me so long to finally getting around to reading this; it should be required reading in some class where required reading takes place), Pedagogy of the Oppressed ( a fun read, but coupled with Bury my Heart, becomes oppressive thinking about the powers that be), a large chunk of Lisa Cary’s book, and the first hundred pages of Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown ( a fun book, it has been at least ten years since I read him: wild stuff).
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where i stand
by
today like the sand
tomorrow drifted fromonly so much to see
only so much permited
beneath these veilsshadows flow about the light
like fog in the creek bed -
Once More Into the Breach!
Work is back in session. The seniors went to a meeting where they were given packages for their graduation gowns and all the ephemera that goes along with it. The cost is outrageous; the cheapest package is 260 dollars. Of course they could just buy the gown for 30 bucks, but they are sold on the idea that they need all of invitations, and memory books etc. I wonder about the ethicacy of bringing in a company like Herf-Jones to sell class rings one year followed by the gowns et al the next. These things are not cheap. I wonder also if the school gets a cut. I know when I taught journalism at the middle school that I was able to get a percentage of the money from the school pictures for the yearbook. It enabled me to sell the book cheaper. The various photographers would court me each year trying to get the contract for the next year, offering different deals. If the school does get a percentage off of the gown sales, shouldn’t that be stated up front? Could the price be lowered if the school took a smaller amount? If they do get a cut, where does the money go? Of course all of this is conjecture since I have no clue whether or not the school gets any money or not from the sales. I see all of this graduation stuff with a very cynical eye. Of course, I can go on about the importance of ritual in society, but that will have to wait until another day.
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ice
by
another sigh follows the first
an unvoiced prayer I read once
so prayer piles on prayer to heavennot so much the worry as the cliched
reaction and response from myself
and others: maybe it’s not truemaybe if the word isn’t spoken
the spirit will not be called
the stroke will remain yet to fallI sigh yet again worrying
the smallest ache, the slightest
difference into a panalopy of symptomsthe words, all words, are cliché
meaning trails in an icebreaker’s wake
ice fragments jostling for reformation -
Late Night Rambling
It’s late. My daughter and her friend from down the street are playing their Christmas music from band. Today we all went and cut a tree down for Christmas at the Elgin Christmas Tree Farm. It takes a bit longer , but it is something we have been doing for the last 15 years with our kids. We sit in a trailer of hay pulled by a tractor out to the fields where we wander about looking at hundreds of trees. It is goofy, but fun in a middle america kind of way.
I started reading “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” a couple of days ago; it is good, but depressing. Kind of like reading Holocaust books: you know how it ends, but you read it anyway to the inevitable end. It is nice to read something because I chose it rather than what I have to read for classes. I like the books for class, but I would rather read what I want. I have a list that I will attempt over the Christmas break, and before class starts up in the spring. I am always more ambitious than I really have time for, but a valiant effort will be made anyway. It reminds me of when I was little and would pile my plate at family Christmas gatherings because everything looked great. My mom always warned me that my eyes were bigger than my stomach. Now my plans are bigger than my head. With luck it will not be like the diner in “The Meaning of Life:” just one more mint, what can it hurt? -
a windy day
the door into the garage whistled incessantly
I wanted to read and sleep
curled on the couch in the back room
dream of other things less focused
instead I wrote a paper for class
ambition trumping desire -
End of Semester Reflections
My students are taking their midterms. For the last couple of weeks they have been asking me if I was giving a midterm. (I thought it was required). When I said yes, they would look at me quizzically and ask, “Over what?” It amuses me still that they think they don’t do anything in my class. They read self-selected texts, they write on self-selected topics; they freely confess that they have read more books this semester than they have read their entire high school career; yet, they still think they don’t do anything. It is only a real English class, I guess, if they are doing vocab worksheets, and all reading the same text that the teacher has to explain to them before they write the same formulaic essay about the symbolism of the whale, or the rose, or the crucible. Ez came home the other day and confessed that he hated English, and had no interest anymore in it. Ez reads voraciously, since he was in third grade. He writes well, although he doesn’t think so. He and his friends exchange books at Christmas and give each other book store gift cards on birthdays. Yet, somehow the AP program they are all in has killed any of the pleasure they find in texts. Which brings me back to my midterms, my students have to answer two out of three essay quesstions, one is about the books they have read this semester, one is about the writing they have done, and one asks them to think about how the reading and writing they have done has influenced the way they read and write. At first they are stunned, but when I read them, they have written some of the most thoughtful pieces they have done all year. They know what they have done; as do we all.
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A Lttle Christmas Cheer
by
Every year about this time, the student council at my school does what they call adopt-a-child. Many of the students at the elementary schools that eventually feed to my high school are low ses. Many of the classes sponsor an elementary child, the students in each of the participating classes, donate money, then, in the case with my seniors, they go and buy clothes and toys and stuff for the child for Christmas. This year 76 ( a new record, although I don’t know why some classses don’t participate) elementary studens were sponsored. My class had a 5 year kindergarten boy, who came over today. My students thew a party and gave him his gifts. it was cute. They bought him a bike, a soccer ball, several sets of clothes, several pairs of shoes, and little cars. At one point he was in the hall outside my room kicking his soccer ball with three of the varsity soccer boys. Each year it amazes me how sweet my students can be around the children that come over. It is easy to forget how close they are to still being small children.
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After Being Apart, Burlington Airport 1989
I wandered aimlessly about the terminal
early
with little to doI found the gate again
checked arrival and departure times
againwatched the model airplanes,
the history of flight,
that hung above the terminal floorI returned to the gate
sat next to a pillar near the escalator
I waited, pretending to readthen there they were again
her eyes I fell into
years before -
Awake at 6am
by
I was able to sleep an hour and a half later than normal today due to the day off. So I was up by six. I don’t remember the context anymore but Dr. Cary last spring in the Systems of Human Inquiry class said to me, “You’re heading toward insomnia.” I don’t know if I can’t sleep, or if I just don’t sleep. Although Sunday night I woke up every hour, thinking/dreaming about both school and work. Oh, well: this too shall pass. I think I finally have a topic for the last paper in Cary’s Instructional Theory class: The politics of Power and Performance in the Classroom. I woke up this morning with the topic as I rolled out of bed to let the cats out. I will use McWilliams’ “Pedegological Pleasures” with little bits of Ellsworth’s “Places of Learning” thrown in for flavor. All very post-modern: I am such an academic wonk. Sounds like a winner, if not then at least something to babble about for the required length of space. Next semester I am only taking one class; I am hoping I will have an easier time. But I will probably find other just as stupid things to worry myself with.
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You are the Hanged Man
Self-sacrifice, Sacrifice, Devotion, Bound.
With the Hanged man there is often a sense of fatalism, waiting for something to happen. Or a fear of
loss from a situation, rather than gain.The Hanged Man is perhaps the most fascinating card in the deck. It reflects the story of Odin who offered himself as a sacrifice in order to gain knowledge. Hanging from the world tree, wounded by a spear, given no bread or mead, he hung for nine days. On the last day, he saw on the ground runes that had fallen from the tree, understood their meaning, and, coming down, scooped them up for his own. All knowledge is to be found in these runes.
The Hanged Man, in similar fashion, is a card about suspension, not life or death. It signifies selflessness, sacrifice and prophecy. You make yourself vulnerable and in doing so, gain illumination. You see the world differently, with almost mystical insights.
What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out. -
"Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood"
One day left in the work week: Thanksgiving Holiday. The second year I taught, sixteen years ago, on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I left the school building at the end of the day drove across town to the bakery I had worked at for two years looking for the owner. I was going to ask for my job back. Judy probably would have hired me; I was desperate to quit teaching. Five minutes before I arrived at the bakery, Judy had left for the day. I ordered a cup of coffee and a cookie, then sat by the window and read the paper. Such are the vicissitudes of fate. Pictures of me from that Thanksgiving show me drawn and thin. The double stresses of a new baby, our first, and my first year teaching in Austin were physically draining me. By the end of the school year I had lost seventeen pounds; I weighed less than I had when I was a junior in high school. I was not having a good year. Today I am just tired. Most of the stress I have now is self-inflicted by my mid-life decision to go back to grad school and work on a doctorate. I wonder if maybe I should have just bought a new sports car instead.
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Talking Toward a Mountain
by
The mountain, a blue shadow,
formed from air, thirty miles off.
We drove talking of other things;
the mountain grew into pressence
slipping into our conversation as
easily as it slipped from the sky.
We drove eighty miles per hour down
a straight road; the mountain
became the mountain; no words
could displace it into meaning
more manifest than its silence. -
Secrets of the World
We have always lived
among the ruinscivilization’s continual cascade
a spring wells up again
and flows away recursivelypick up that fallen stone
see fragments of figures
dancing in half turnswe can make something
from the scraps of nothing
remaining -
I Got Developed; why so Negative?
by
Spent the day at the Education Service Center with the entire high school faculty for our professional development day. The topic was toxic vs. Supportive school culture. In our groups we defined culture following one of four prescribed metaphors: Web, complex pattern, garden, or glue. I thought of George Lakacs’ book “The Meaning of Metaphor,” where he makes the case that our thoughts are controlled by the metaphors we put into play. I went to one of the “web” poster papers and wrote: culture traps us like flies, culture is a normative agent, and culture is control. I was not in a cooperative mood. We also got to investigate our “belief sets,” which I believe meant our tacit ideologies, but using that bit of terminology would have taken most of the afternoon to explain and would have engendered too many offended sensibilities. As it was “belief sets” caused enough of a tremor through the room. My herniated disk was acting up so the day was fairly painful until I remembered I had my pain pills in my bag; then I didn’t care. We were fed pretty good bar-b-que however, and as the storyteller at Williamsburg said in the middle of a ghost story, “Free food is free food.” All cynical attitude aside, the principal of my school is trying to change the culture of our school; he has made progress from the first year I started here. I think a lot of progress could be made simply by teaching the coaches to stop handing out packets of worksheets, and helping them learn to teach. But then the football team is winning so no one complains.
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