Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Word Glutton

I have been reading non-stop since school dismissed Friday. I've plowed through two and 3/4 novels between house cleaning, eBay perusal, construction projects, and catching up on overdue appointments and obligations. The sheer luxury of taking a few hours to rip through a book is almost intoxicating.

This is summer, and if I do nothing else in summer, I always feed the word hunger inside me. I'm not talking about lofty literature. I'm talking about the simple pleasure of letting pulp and ink sweep me away into someone else's life, someone else's dilemma. I'm talking about armchair travel, finding out whodunit, and what's going to happen next.

As I've probably mentioned before, I read almost everything. Most of my students probably think all I read are the lofty classics, but the simple truth is I love pulp fiction, chick lit, sword-and-sorcery, general fiction, Southern authors, biography, history, mystery, and so forth every bit as much as I love Jane Austen (okay, mostly as much...Jane's a special case). The only books I studiously avoid are those with a political or philosophical mission. I can think for myself, thank you. There's nothing more dull than a bunch of allegorical characters blathering on about the dark, pointless nature of existence. Please. They always strike me as anorexic models with no grasp on the realities of life. I can almost see them, their frail bodies draped in black, cigarettes waving through the air in exaggerated arcs of gesture, having conversations that mean nothing to anyone, not even themselves.

I also don't like books that focus entirely on "man's dark struggle to survive." As I've said time and time again, every individual's daily life has enough darkness in it to meet whatever universal requirement there may be for that. There's no need to wallow in it and seek it out in fictional doses. William Blake, fantastic looney that he was, believed in an Organized Innocence, an acknowledgment of the evils, a willingness to fight them, but an absolute refusal to let that darkness close off the windows of light and good. Good for him. So many works people tout as "essential" have far too much of that focus on dark to the exclusion of good. I find it depressing and pointless most of the time.

I am looking forward to a summer of good reading. It may not all be reading of AP's "works of literary merit", but I am quite sure that my brain cells will survive the insult. It's time to dust off the library card, fling the cats from the crocheted comforter, pour a big glass of Red Diamond, and luxuriate in the selfish gluttony of the written word. I think I can balance my addiction with the feelings of guilt and the need to do something "productive" and get my summer to-do list checked off while I catch up on my books. Well...most of it, anyway....

Saturday, May 27, 2006

School Ends

It's finally done. I've been fighting a relapse of the crud, trying to get things finished up at school, and I really haven't felt much like blogging. Now, everything has come to a close, and I think you'll start seeing more posts from me.

I lay on couch and read most of today. The rest of the day, I was helping Dad wrestle with my ancient water heater. It went belly-up earlier this week and getting it out turned out to be more of a hassle than one might imagine. Apparently, it was installed just about the time I was born and had rusted away to almost nothing. Trying to move it caused flakes of rust to come off. To get a good grip, we just sort of punched through the side and made a handhold. Once again, only that great magic, kind force of the universe was holding all that rust together in the semblance of a water heater. By all rights, as far as I can tell, it should have disintegrated long ago.

We're still working on it...plumbing sucks. I have water all over the house again, though, and the water heater for the back of the house is still working, so we can drink and bathe. (Well, I can bathe. The cats and my dogs take care of that in other ways.)

I have started a couple of minor renovations on my main bathroom, just moving stuff around and spray painting a couple of smaller items. I am going to try to get the ancient contact paper stripped off the walls (no, I didn't put it up) and paint. I may get crazy and put down some self-stick floor tiles to try to do something with the horrid floor. It's nice to have summer to tinker with stuff. I miss my tinkering time fiercely during the school year.

I also got a new laptop. Well, I'm using a new laptop. I can't say it belongs to me. Our school system bought laptops for all their teachers to use. They're Gateway, and they're "da bomb." (Do people even say that anymore? Should people say that anymore?) It's wireless, and will command a wireless projector they're in the process of mounting to my classroom ceiling. They're also tablet PCs, so I can draw little stick men for my classes. :) Maybe this way I can get my instructions across more clearly.

In all seriousness, this is exciting for me. I finally have the tools to do some serious tech stuff in my teaching. Before, I was having to rig a bunch of stuff and pray for good results. Now it's all simply right at my fingertips. It's almost overwhelming.

Well, I'm off to play with my fantastic machine for another night. I should be sleeping, but hey, it's a tablet PC and school's out for the summer. Life is good.

Sunday, May 14, 2006

Fable

There's a story I want to tell. Consider it a modern fable, if you will.

Once upon a time, there was a senior. That senior had worked very hard for the past thirteen years (K-12) earning academic honors and the trust and respect of the senior's teachers and peers. Suddenly, during the senior's last year, the senior decided to slack off a bit. The senior's grades began to slide and the senior was forced to consider the fact that the almighty GPA might fall.

This is when the senior made a fateful choice. The senior chose to access the grades through the school's computer and change those that did not meet the high expectations everyone, including the senior, had for the senior. The senior was crafty and subtle. It was a process that was painstakingly done over the course of an entire academic year. Finally, the day after the last final, the senior logged in once more, edited the last of the grades that offended, dashed off a condescending email requesting the senior's final grades from teachers, and with a smile, left campus for the last time until graduation practice.

Through a regular checking of the grades, the changes were discovered. All hell broke loose. Administrators and teachers were angry and disappointed. Trust and respect which had been established shattered like a ceramic cookie jar dropped by a pillaging child. Ultimately, everything the senior had worked for over the course of time was taken. No graduation, no honors, no speaking at graduation. It was all gone. The senior would lose rank, prestige, and even the right to attend the senior's own graduation. Nothing would be left to show for thirteen years of work except a stripped-down diploma which would be mailed the day after the grand ceremony.

What makes somebody throw away all those years? It's a question to ponder. The moral of this modern fable might be that there are some gambles it's better not to take. It might be that there are some gains that are meaningless when they are earned by force and dishonesty. Finally, though, I think it has to be that there is never a good time or a right time to abandon the things we know are right. None of us are ever above ethics, even if our time in a certain place has come to a close. It's never too late to have it all taken away because of a poor choice.

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Ears

I, par for the course, have been very, very sick lately. Apparently, I have bronchitis, a sinus infection, and my right ear is so infected that it has completely closed off. I take a huge handful of pills every day and am using a frightening albuterol puffer thing. I have drops for my ears and nasal spray. To be brief, it sucks.

The part that is taking the longest to get over is the ear thing. I damaged my ears in Japan with an ongoing infection and bizarre medical practices. They've never been "strong", but after that, they seem to get much more irritable much more often.

I was sick in a place in which I did not speak the language, so I was reluctant to go to the doctor. The infection finally reached the point where my ear was continuously draining, and I finally got up the nerve to ask my boss to take me and translate. He agreed, and we went to a local clinic in my neighborhood.

The doctor made some cursory inspections, and the next thing I remember was him coming toward my face with a small wire. I grabbed his wrist right about the time I realized he planned to stick the wire, which was actually a camera, up my nose. My boss thought it was the funniest thing he'd ever seen. Apparently, Japanese doctors don't feel the same compulsion to tell you what they're going to do before they do it that American doctors have. It was a tense moment.

Finally, though I sat there and cried while he looked at the inside of my head with the little camera. I can't describe that feeling, but it still makes me shudder to think about it. He gave me some little packets of medicines and told me I'd have to come back every day for treatment. Every day for three weeks, I had a breathing treatment and that horrid little camera up my nose. I didn't get well until I managed to get back home and get some medicines based on my body weight. To this day, it ranks among my worst memories.

This ear infection has brought it all back. I'm still pretty weak from the other, too. I spent all day Saturday and Sunday in bed. Mom and Dad, my wonderful, wonderful parents, took care of me. I don't know what I'd do without them. I think I need a keeper.

Anyway, that's what's going on in my world. There's more. My seniors are gone, and their leaving was actually graceful and lovely. I'll write about it later on. Right now, I have to go take round two of medicine for the evening, and then I need to fall down again.

Friday, May 05, 2006

After the AP

Yesterday was the day of the AP English exam for my seniors. I nervously waited to hear how they think they might have done. I saw two or three of them, and they said they felt confident, but they had big problems with one of the essays. Oops. They got a passage from Oscar Wilde and it threw many of them.

I feel so relaxed now that it's over for this year. I have been working on my plans for next year for quite some time, but now I can begin to do so in earnest. I want to get some final feedback from this year's class, and then it will be almost time to start all over again.

Since everybody was gone 2nd and 5th yesterday, I used the time to create webpages for my classes. It's something I'd thought about doing half a dozen times, but a colleague of mine brought it back up to me again, and since I had the time and couldn't focus on anything else, I decided to go for it. I used Google's Pagemaker. It's about as basic as possible, but it was plenty to do what I needed. I'm not a corporation, after all, and although the current trend of thinking about education often refutes this, I am not trying to sell anybody anything.

There are many changes I want to make for next year. I am switching out some works, reducing the total number studied, putting poetry into a chronological order, and several other things. I want to make it harder and better. It's become sort of a hobby for me. I don't know what that says about me, but it's true.

Well, I am currently giving a test, so I guess I should get back to it. It's strange to be doing this from school. I wonder how long this strange reprieve from being banned as "tasteless/obscene" will last?

The Poem

This is the poem I've been promising to post for so long. For some odd reason, I can get to blogger from work today, so here tis:

Sisyphus Days

Too often my life becomes
the tritest of Greek tragedies.
The worn wood door opens on my classroom –
I step in as Prometheus
ambrosia-fed
Dickinson and Plath
Frost and Cummings
fill heart and battered brown tote
with fire to transfigure, refine,
burn away the dross
of unthinking childhood.

By the end of the day
I am battered and bruised.
The gods are sullen or filled with ennui
and do not interfere.

The boulder I have been pushing
uphill
with such foolish optimism
crashes across me
as it races
unthinking
bell-driven
to the door
to the bus
to the sweet Lethe
of television-video-game-all-night-phone-call
and I sit in the abandoned room
alone.