Two Boys

Come Clean

We'll meet face to face always risking absurdity.
Wondering will you tire of me, it's a sleight of hand.
Well I bet you won't catch me, catch me if you can.

The world's a wonderful place
If you don't mind laughing at your mistakes,
If you don't mind feeling like you've lost your brakes,
And if you don't mind a touch of hell every now and then.

You don't really know me,
The watery muck flowing through my veins?
The psycho-babble on my brain,
Well it's all the rage.

And it drives men wild,
This life unseen,
And I'd do anything
To come clean.

Well, when did everything change?
Is this ache some new twist on growing pains.
I've been holding a fist 'til the blood is drained
And the nails dig in. They may break your skin every now and then.

Now I'm yearning disabled
I'm longing for nothing I'm certain of.
Somehow reluctant to rise above
All the rage.

--Harrod & Funck

Adventures with Students, vol. 10 (or whatever)

I watched some major flirting today in my second composition class. When you have one of the young women dishing out major abuse at a guy that's sitting beside her, then have that one guy turn to her and say, "you like playing Halo? We should hang out sometime!"

...that's flirting.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

I'm preparing to teach excerpts from Book 4 of Castiglione's Courtier tomorrow. This is always one of my absolute favorite parts of the class, because it's where we begin to discuss the nature and effects of love. And it's fun to clarify the various ways love can be defined, because the students haven't really thought about it all that much.

It's basically a chance for me to open up the throttle all the way. How I love it.

This is not a Depressing Poem

from In Praise of Limestone:

I, too, am reproached, for what
And how much you know. Not to lose time, not to get caught,
    Not to be left behind, not, please! to resemble
The beasts who repeat themselves, or a thing like water
    Or stone whose conduct can be predicted, these
Are our common prayer, whose greatest comfort is music
    Which can be made anywhere, is invisible,
And does not smell. In so far as we have to look forward
    To death as a fact, no doubt we are right: But if
Sins can be forgiven, if bodies rise from the dead,
    These modifications of matter into
Innocent athletes and gesticulating fountains,
    Made solely for pleasure, make a further point:
The blessed will not care what angle they are regarded from,
    Having nothing to hide. Dear, I know nothing of
Either, but when I try to imagine a faultless love
    Or the life to come, what I hear is the murmur
Of underground streams, what I see is a limestone landscape.

--W. H. Auden, 1948

Watching the sun rise

And if a door be closed
Then a road off home start building
And tear your curtains down
For sunlight is like gold

--Interference, "Gold"

Blood drive humor

just got back from an excruciatingly long process of giving blood. I chose the wrong time to do it, that's for sure. Anyway, I always have to laugh when some strapping young gentleman comes sauntering by, asserting that the reason he can't give blood is that he'll 'pass out.' Mind you: later on, he'll engage in enormous feats of weightlifting and/or sexual gymnastics, but laying on a couch with a needle in his arm for 20 minutes: "I'll pass out."

suuurrrre you will. If your nerdy 34 year old english professor can do it, you can do it.

301

I reason, Earth is short--
And Anguish--absolute--
And many hurt,
But, what of that?

I reason, we could die--
The best Vitality
Cannot excel Decay,
But, what of that?

I reason, that in Heaven--
Somehow, it will be even--
Some new Equation, given--
But, what of that?

--Emily Dickinson, c. 1862

keep a straight face

At dinner, after being gently reprimanded:

Mommy, my eyebrows are starting to look angry.

Waiting for my Day

Mothers and children all around on a Monday morning,
The air is cool and clear.
I am too alone to be part of this suburban scene.
I am just an observer here.

I'm sitting here thinking, "Is this my inheritance?"
This dusty gypsy atmosphere,
This dust I'm breathing in is someone else's skin, not mine.
I grew up far from here.

Today I answered some primal call.
Found myself looking at the sea.
I can never get enough of this big ocean loud and rough
With the sighing sifting melody.

Right here is beauty like I have never known,
And I'm carefully placed here, not some cast away,
But I'm weary and aching for my home,
And I'm waiting for my day.

Longing in starlight,
I'm too stricken to move, too impatient to sit,
At the same time strong and weak.
I am loved enough to be part of this eternal scene.
Thus I am bold enough to speak.

And I say, "I used to read the Bible saying,
'This I know, this I know, this I no longer know,
This I no longer really care.'"
What's that matter anyway, that was yesterday.
Tonight I have belief to spare.
So much belief that I get scared, yeah.

Right here is beauty like I have never known,
And I'm carefully placed here, not some cast away,
But I'm weary and aching for my home,
And I'm waiting for my day.

--Jason Harrod

chime

Lileks strikes a chord this morning:

It’s a bad sign when music leaves you cold; you plow though your collection looking for something to strike a spark. The cheerful tunes sound false and the gloomy tunes sound indulgent.

(no pun intended, honestly.)

today: Vivaldi. I'll get back to you on whether he sounds false or indulgent. heh.

Wise

Thomas Jefferson kept his eye on us, most of us read well, the company was good, and I made it back okay. Glad I went; glad I'm home.

Eastward

my annual pilgrimage to Wise awaits.

Provide, Provide

The witch that came (the withered hag)
To wash the steps with pail and rag,
Was once the beauty Abishag,

The picture pride of Hollywood.
Too many fall from great and good
For you to doubt the likelihood.

Die early and avoid the fate.
Or if predestined to die late,
Make up your mind to die in state.

Make the whole stock exchange your own!
If need be occupy a throne,
Where nobody can call you crone.

Some have relied on what they knew;
Others on simply being true.
What worked for them might work for you.

No memory of having starred
Atones for later disregard,
Or keeps the end from being hard.

Better to go down dignified
With boughten friendship at your side
Than none at all. Provide, provide!

--Robert Frost (1936)

Doing Work

He's seen me do it so much that he's decided he wants a turn. The Little Boy has started getting on the computer to do work. Tonight he got his mom to open up the iBook, whereupon he typed the following words (given some prompting, but no help, in sounding them out):

Jonathan (he knows this one automatically)
cat
dog
hat
bat
frog
bed
raft

Design

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth--
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth--
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.

--Robt. Frost (1936)

*blam*

Recent statements heard from the mouth of The Little Boy:

"Mommy, does Daddy live at work?"

and

"Daddy, I want you to smile."

I hope he put the second team in

went to a football game last night, stayed until around 8:00, at halftime. Had to put Little Boys to bed, y'know.

The score at that point was 49-7.

The final score of the game: 87-21.

I'm guessing the brave gentlemen from Concordia College were a bit overmatched.

I try not to think too much about this. . .

. . . because I don't know what to make of it.

Last week, the search committee I am on, tasked with hiring a professor of African-American literature, met with a High Ranking Official from the Office of Equity and Diversity at my institution. Over the course of the conversation (which was about four times as long as it should have been, given the content of what was said as opposed to the verbiage with which it was expressed), this little nugget came out (not verbatim, but the best I can remember):

"I'm against discrimination, but I gotta say that I hope you bring an African-American candidate forward for hiring. Because if you don't, I don't know that the hire will be approved."

er...

You're not as clever as you think you are

Scene: composition classroom. Draft workshop.

Student in the back of the room has finished her review (and has worked hard, no complaint there). She moves to the very back seat, ostensibly blocked from my view by another student, and begins texting furiously, but furtively.

I look straight at her and smirk. She tries the poker face. I'm not buying it, and we both know it.

Awesome.

This is not the way to begin a Monday Morning.

At the main intersection of town, while trying to stop for the red light, to fall off your bike because you're clipped into the pedals and you can't get your left foot out in time, looking like a toppling gear-laden tree. Oh the shaaaame, the shaaaaaaaame! heh.

Six Months

picture taken by Big Brother:
















Lion thanks to Hambone:

Soybean 5K

Third place overall in the women's 30-39 yo division! The legend grows (literally).

In which Piers looks for an escape hatch

Yesterday afternoon, after doing a guest 'lecture' on The Tempest, I was sitting in my office recovering, minding my own business, when a large man shows up at my door. He asks to come in, says he wants to talk with me and get my opinion about something. Warily, I invite him in. He proceeds to take out a notebook and show me a 'poem' he wrote about communication. I make out over the course of our conversation that he's a returning student, probably at least 10-15 years older than myself, and that he's got a lot of complaints about "kids these days." After trying to offer what constructive criticism I could on the poem, I attempted to engage the communication issue by relating how many of my students lack the knowledge of the Bible and Classical writers that my material presupposes. All of a sudden, he breaks into Hamlet's soliloquy from 1.2:

O that this too too sullied flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew,
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter. O God, God,
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!

...and so on. He keeps going, and going, even using a faux accent, and then regales me with the story of how he learned it back when he was in college in the 70's or whenever it was.

(Blackbuzzard and Hambone, you can imagine the expression on my face at this point.)

Now he wants to visit my Shakespeare class and do a performance. Time expands sometimes, and usually at the wrong times. I don't know exactly how long he was sitting in my office, but it felt like half a day.

Almost Mobile

Funny Pictures

The Modern Labors of Hercules. Click through--you won't regret it.

Tell me I don't have to answer this question.

from my British Lit. survey, a question about Beowulf:

The story didn't really make this clear, or either we just didn't read this part. But why wasn't it clear that the dragon was somewhat his child, or was that his child?

damn movie.

The Big Three

This article today brings something to the forefront that's been rumbling around in my mind:

1. Teaching: check.

2. Service: check, and check, and check, and check.

3. Research: *crickets*

Bean Parade!

Bands, Horses, John Deeres, Cheerleaders, Fire engines . . .

Little Boys:














Sleepy Babies:














He thinks he's The Stuff:














Advertising the Strawerry Festival at the Soyean Festival:

Photographic Art From the Little Boy

"My Toys"

crossroads of goood livin'

Soybean Festival starts tonight, with a parade! Needless to say, The Little Boy is most excited.

Labor omnia vicit improbus

So. We tackled the shambles that was our residence. Victory was hard-won, but we prevailed. There are still mopping-up operations in progress, but at least we've gotten a reasonable facsimile of normal.

I do not recommend a major overhaul during the first week of classes.