Black Veil

Today I taught Hawthorne's "The Minister's Black Veil" and I decided to wear Father Hooper's veil in class. Even with Halloween being around, finding a long black veil wasn't possible, so I had to improvise. I used a sheer curtain panel and draped it artistically. I think I looked a little like a pleurant.

It was fun. Since I have that class first period, I put it on before the first period bell and stood hall duty in it before class began. I wish I'd had a camera in the hall taping the reaction of the students who weren't coming in my classroom. It was hilarious. Of course, all my students know me well enough by now that they were completely unphased. I am, after all, "that weird teacher" and in my classroom, I suppose, all things are possible. I like to think that I'm giving them things to talk about when they have their high school reunion.

Hawthorne is a favorite of mine, but The Minister's Black Veil is a true favorite. The physical expression of the internal reality that everyone has something to hide is as real today as it was then. It goes back to that quote by Issa that I love so much about walking on the roof of hell picking flowers. Today I thought about my own "black veil" that hides all the things I don't want the world to see, not necessarily hidden sins, but hidden secrets, things from the past. I wish I could lay it aside as easily as I slid my makeshift black veil off at the end of the period today and all those memories with it. Unfortunately, as Father Hooper understood, some things aren't quite so easily hidden, forgotten, or put aside as that.