Not All Who Wander Are Lost

Jeez, I Remember This

After this journal of a teacher in the South Bronx public schools.

Emotionally thinking, I hit adolescence late: I was still a total nervous wreck -- a disaster, a seethe of hormonal bipolarism -- at 20, twelve years ago, when I dropped out of college.

I didn't identify as an adult, either. I still wrote poetry like an adolescent, and in those first few months of my Sophomore year was still just discovering many things that, it turns out later, were part and parcel of other people's teen years -- like pet snakes, sun tea, group massage, and Primus.

I had, I suppose, played some adult-like roles, but this was solely playacting; I had (for example) done no small amount of babysitting in my time, but did so mostly to potter around the homes of other people while their babies slept, rather than out of some love for the wee and the educable. I don't think I had really begun to think of kids as categorically distinct from what I was, let alone teachable.

After a month or two slamming my rage and anxious diffidence around my parent's house, by mutual consent I moved into a matress on the floor of a scummy studio-share with two Belgian exchange students, and joined City Year. Which meant, among other things, being a classroom teacher's aide and running after school program in one of the most "urban" (now there's a euphemism for you) schools in Boston: Dorchester's Patrick O'Hearn School.

The neighborhood was unsafe; we had to leave early enough to make it to the T station before dark. The bodega across the street from the school sold pop and cigarettes and quite probably drugs to the kids. During recess, the kids played on the asphalt courtyard. Most of the kids were already rotting inside.

I remember there was this kid, too, ten years old, who ate paste in great fingerscoops because he was hungry and wore all the right basketball clothes. At first, it seemed nothing we did would get through to him; he was resigned, already, to the neighborhood malaise, and would never get out. Until our afterschool program called for a day of jazz and tap dancing, and his eyes lit up.

Poor kid. Even at ten -- heck, especially at ten -- he knew how futile and limiting such a love would be. And we'd be moving on in a week. No one else around there was going to teach him to dance.

I bet he never got out. I wish I could remember his name.

Incidentally, City Year sucked. But then so does the forge, from the iron's point of view. I tell students that it's painful, but it's a good pain -- the pain of finding out who you really are, and doing something about it, dammit. I imagine it's a lot like the "good" endorphine-laden pain of the true athlete.

Oh -- and City Year brought me to the Museum of Science, Boston, where the director of the museum asked me to stay on once or twice a week. I slowly weaned myself from a night delivery job at a D'angelo sub shop, ended up with a three year fill-time education fellowship, and learned how to teach...and what I wanted to teach.

And now you know the rest of the story.

I Would Not, Could Not In A Blog

Happy Birthday To You!

Cranky child-hating master kiddie wordsmith Dr. Seuss would have been 100 this week. Ah, Ted, we hardly knew ye.

Relevant article also includes substance by Philip Nel, a Kansas State English professor and author of the new book "Dr. Seuss: American Icon," who says Seuss' heroes are "rebels and underdogs," and, in showing us Seuss' genius, reminds us there's such a thing as too much deconstruction:

"'Ham and eggs' is just ordinary, but if you turn it around so that it's 'eggs and ham,' that's interesting. And then if you make it green, there's real genius," Nel said.

As Seen On TV History

Today is the 20th birthday of the informercial. Just think: if it hadn't been for Herbalife, television might still be broadcasting test patterns at 3 a.m., and Suzanne Somers would have dropped off the cultural radar with the demise of Three's Company.

Interestingly, the article cites "informercial historian" Steve Dworman as a primary source, which is good for him, because I'm guessing he doesn't have much else to do with his time.

Bonus points if you can correctly identify which sign of the apocalypse this is.

Speaking Of Fortunes...

Like everybody else, I carry a greatest hits collection of fortune cookie fortunes in my wallet, right up against the license. I'm considering an impending vetting, but until I do, here's what's been worth keeping, with bonus editor's-cut commentary:

> Never trouble troubles till trouble troubles you.
Okay, what? I had to read this one several times to make sure it made sense. I'm still not sure. Additionally, note that this is technically not a fortune, but advice.

> You are almost there.
Almost where? This one also comes with just enough lucky numbers to make me wonder if I'm supposed to be almost at the store buying lottery tickets.

> Your future is as boundless as the lofty heaven.
Not sure why this one is here. Must have been having a pretty good day to feel validated by something so fluffy.

> Your happiness is intertwined with your outlook on life.
Don't think about this one too long -- you're not supposed to notice it's obvious, circular, and meaningless. Sure sounds good, in a Zen kind of way, though, doesn't it?

> You may attend a party where strange customs prevail.
Good. Sounds like my kind of party, unless by "strange customs" you mean goat sacrifice or Twister or something.

> A handful of patience is worth a bushel of brains.
As someone with a bushel and a peck of brainmatter and a self-inflicted sufferer of damnfool rash foot-in-mouth on a daily basis, I can assure you this is both true and difficult to accept. I keep this fortune right over my license picture so I'll see it often, and pray that one day I might osmose it through my butt, amoebalike.

> It is a nice day.
Recieved this evening. Simplicity itself; incidentally incorrect.

For the curious, also in my brownleather wallet right now: the driver's license itself; assorted receipts and ATM spew-outs; credit and debit cards, HMO card, and Red Cross donor card; a half-full buy-ten-get-one-free punch card from Magical Child toy store; a ticket stub from the second annual North Atlantic Folk Festival four summers ago; pictures of wife and child playing in the snow; a neon green index card with family, friend, and emergency phone numbers; emergency painkillers; an unfilled perscription for Neosynephrine; handwritten tiny-font blogentries-to-be from the Florida trip two months ago; three Bangladeshi bills in almost mint condition; business cards from the Malaysian Ambassador to Bangladesh, and from friend and summer-in-Bangladesh co-instructor Azra Naseem, of Pakistan. No cash.

Fortune

If you ever have a really bad week (and it's only Wednesday), find a small child who has never been in a toy store, and take her to one.

I'm not talking about just any toy store, either. A sterile, compartmentalized superstore may be your reluctant source for the large-scale purchase or the sale, but it offers no intimate experience. The "learning" store has an important place in your child's education, but a wandering child in a toddler's garden of eden needs the simple and the soft as much as she needs flexibility and challenge; no child was ever truly happy curling up with a Leapfrog, and only the rarest of odd chicklings feeds her dollguests astronaut ice cream at imaginary tea.

No, go for the place with a mirror in the doorway. Any store smart enough to anticipate your need -- for, it turns out, the look on her face as she peers in the opening doorway, itself a hundred times more soothing than a month of begrudged and stolen kisses -- is a place you want to be most of the time.

Some Days You Are The Bug

There's so many things I want to blog about, but I just don't have the strength to be witty and pedantic.

So may links to pass along, but little time to collect them.

The term rushes headlong to a close; minutes count, but I don't even know what day it is most of the time.

In the days of whines and poses and the long nights of sleepless anxiety for backlogged work that follow, it's the radio that keeps me sane. If only I hadn't been feverish there in the overheated basement, a solo act with no callers to confirm my existence: silence and sanity only coincide when you've voices in your own head, not when you're a voice in others'. For what it's worth -- a day late and ten can't-go-on minutes short -- here's this week's playlist.

Tributary 2/23/04

Bob Dorough -- Too Much Coffee Man
Manu Chao -- Me Gustas Tu
Habib Koite -- Cigarette Abana / Batoumambe
Michael Franti and Spearhead -- Do You Love Someone
Rhonda Vincent -- You're In My Heart
Guster -- Fa Fa Fa Fa
Kasey Chambers -- You Got The Car
Skavoovie and the Epitones -- Bli-Blip
Oysterhead -- Oz Is Ever Floating
Nickel Creek -- Smoothie Song
Norah Jones -- Sunrise
Acoustic Syndicate -- Crazy Town
Bela Fleck and the Flecktones -- Communication
Be Good Tanyas -- Rain And Snow
Not Earthshaking -- One False Move
Guster -- Two At A Time
The Waifs -- London Still
Barenaked Ladies -- Wrap Your Arms Around Me
Norah Jones -- Creepin' In

Monday Mosh: The All Better Edition

Three baths, two bedsheet changes, one more nap than usual and a half a glass of water doled out tablespoon by tablespoon later; she hasn't thrown up since 4:30, so I guess we're on the road to recovery from baby's first flu. Thanks to both grandmas for calling with support after reading all about it in the previous blogentry (and within hours of posting!). It's nice to know we're doing it right even in the worst of times. Today's post-illness memetheme:

Mosh to something that makes you feel better.

How To Monday Mosh:

Dance around just 'cause it's Monday, and answer three questions in your blog or in the comments below, leaving us a link so we know you were here:

1. What song did you mosh to?
2. What did you step on / bump into? (Bonus points for breakage)
3. Why did you stop?

Baby's First Flu

Greyblue lips and pasty skin that blotches when she cries. A belly once distended falls to rolls of flab over the tautness of the diapertop as she leans forward in bed. We've had two baths, and three changes of clothes. She doesn't cry much, but she coughs and complains. My brave little soldier girl is pretty sick.

We rack our brains: what are the things our parents did to help us through this? We soothe her brow, and sing to her at off-schedule naptimes; lie in bed all day, and allow extra television. Like her mother before her she won't drink bubbles, so ginger ale's out, but there's some Jello firming in the fridge, for a later half-better time we hope will come to the sick house soon. Mostly, though, we just repeat the litany of illness: it's okay, we know, it's okay, we love you.

It's hard to know if the words do any good; what's hardest to watch is that she clearly does not understand how she's lost control of her body. She doesn't know how to read the signs of impending spew, though she's learning fast, the hard way: just now in the middle of a tea-and-toast lunch she turned to Darcie and said, questioningly, mommy? just a moment before four times what had gone in came out violently, spurting past the chair to the tablecloth and floor. She can't yet imagine, and doesn't have the words or concepts for her own insides rebelling against her.

Sometimes what hurts most about parenting is this kind of helplessness: knowing it will be okay, but knowing, too, that we cannot truly help her know that: she will need to suffer through until she can accept this strange new feeling as something which must be suffered through, and which will pass soon enough.

Outside And Inside

Late last night, walking the dog in the cloudy rural dark, a pair of headlights out in the meadow pointing away from us as we came over the rise in the road: a car off the road, out of place on the cross country skiing trail, surely sinking the in mushy groomed snow. Other lights at closer houses and a passing red security vehicle suggested it was already someone else's problem, but this morning it's still there, and we're no longer so sure. Surely someone knows about it, though -- how do you lose your car into the snow, and with the lights on, yet?

A student disappeared at local mountain Berkshire East after Friday's ski trip. He was discovered missing when the busses loaded just after dark and wasn't found until four the next morning, unconscious and cold at the base of a slope. As of last night he was in hospital but still not conscious; his parents were being flown in from Japan and should arrive today.

Here in the house the sun warms the bed, where Willow sleeps on her mother's lap after managing to vomit in every single carpeted room in the house since waking up at six. Poor thing. In the absence of my own awakened child -- to hold tight and wonder about her own adolescence on her own snowcovered mountains -- it looks like I'm getting to that pile of papergrading after all.

Fun With Googlism

It's nothing new, but if you haven't tried it, do so: abstract pastiche poetry generator Googlism scours the web for phrase fragments based on simple search terms, and the results can be quite surprising. Though most people use it for searches on proper nouns, I find that a poetic diversity of potential answers best springs from simple queries, like this or this.

Used oracularly for a special treat, googlism produces a diversity of grand truths and confucian pronouncements sure to cause subjective deepthought and hilarity, as with this recent googlism of the acronym for our beloved currently-in-flux school:

nmh is now frozen
nmh is not a single comprehensive program
nmh is ongoing
nmh is a miscommunication between the brain and the heart that can cause lightheadedness
nmh is all about spring term
nmh is also known for its tertiary and subspecialty care for adults
nmh is not the same as the common momentary dizzines that many well people get when they arise from a chair or a bed too quickly
nmh is consultant led
nmh is somewhat broken
nmh is often warm and embracing even in the midst of its grim
nmh is a potentially treatable disorder
nmh is expensive
nmh is now being actively maintained again
nmh is christian by heritage
nmh is still under active development
nmh is difficult
nmh is present

In other search engine news, a Google search for "search engine" gets surprising results -- I'd attribute this discovery properly but seem to have forgotten whose blog first mentions it. Does anyone still use Altavista? Vivisimo rocks, but until its interface becomes as user friendly as Google, I'm sticking with the old standard.

This stuff is great!

Jon Friedman's Confessions Of A New Coffee Drinker! Yes! Coffee! At McSweeney's!

Blair Who?

Just when you thought it was safe to come out of the insanity, legal reform org CommonGood cites plagiarist valedictorian wannabe Hornstine's suit against her school district as one of the Top 5 Ridiculous Lawsuits of 2003. Um, yay?

Concert Review: Guster @ The Calvin Theater

Like this, but bigger and in color.

When you've been to as many concerts as I have (see this backdated still-incomplete list of concerts I've attended for my street creds) you know it's the subtle things that make the difference. So you leave your coat in the car, the cold line outside the venue easily worth the traded-off stress of having to keep track of your coat in the cruching crowd. You wear confortable shoes, and practice stepping backwards into the social vacuum of the crowd when someone sqeezes through behind you, else the crush of the crowd pin you to the stage. You arrive early, to examine the front doors for a tipoff on crowd entering dynamics, and position yourself accordingly. And if, like me, your body getting older, you take Aleve for preventative purposes before leaving school with Molly for last night's show.

Prepared, then, and willing to wait until someone else starts the line outside, we arrived in 'Hamp with plenty of time for a nice bellywarming vegetarian stirfry supper at local sushi/chinese hotspot Teapot to warm our bellies as we stood outside sans coats for an hour outside one of my favorite local venues and watched the line grow behind us. The CVS-bought soupcans -- worth a free poster each once inside the door -- weighed heavy in my shivering arms. When the door opened we went for posters quick quick quick before flying down the aisle to a position quite near the stage, and sat down ofn the floor -- both to save the calves and to keep some space around us before the lights went down and the crowd pressed in.

Our placement wasn't perfect -- I spent much of the show watching a mole on the back of a tall man's neck. But two rows back from the stage a slight rock in either direction keeps first drums and bass, then lead guitar and keyboards in alternating view. We were close enough to see the lead singer's fillings, and to snag the pre-licked pick the cute lead guitarist of poppy-but-decent opening act Graham Colton, though the Guster set lists were fought over too voraciously for our tastes.

Guster was...Guster, though much closer than I'd seen them before. I hadn't seen them since a school-chaperone gig down to Hartford four years ago; in the interim they've gone a bit more sparse, and picked up a master keyboardist and second guitarist who added a wonderful layer to the geekrock sound the band-once-named-Gus has always been famous for. Leadsinger Ryan seemed a bit rusty on their first day back on the road after after a few-week band hiatus; he started a few songs with the wrong verse, and missed some licks. But the new album's work sounds great, and the wash of sound a nice change from what was once -- when I first saw them, a struggling Tufts college band just a year or two older than I am, on the post-edge of acoustic folk, with the funky lanky drummer banging away on a drum kit with his bare hands, albeit wrapped in white bandages to quell the blood and bruising.

Woke up this morning sluggish, almost drugged; my back aches, and my knees have been shaky all day. But it was worth it just to see Molly swoon when the Guster guys walked up to the edge of the stage for an acoustic and unmiked encore less than four feet from our unbelieving eyes. I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Woah...Is It Really Wednesday?

Then it must be time for another thoughtstarter from my second-favorite meme, which today asks: What's on your computer desk right now?

Only problem is, technically speaking, I have no computer desk. I have a desk -- covered, mostly, in piles of books and cheesy bangladeshi snacks -- but because the only place the cable could come in was all the way at the other end of the house, I blog on a laptop at the dining room table. Still, here's what's on the table:

Yet another set of yearbook proofs.

Today's mail: my contract, Darcie's favorite clothing store catalog, and some diaper coupons from Huggies. Also an opened phone bill and a reminder notice from the hearing clinic, both recieved yesterday.

A half-full box of organic cashews, an empty bottle Starbucks Mocha Frappucino lowfat coffee drink, and an empty dish of source-unknown crumbs.

Four thin rose-colored taper candles that Darcie's mother gave us for Valentine's Day.

Three half-melted sampler-sized Yankee Candle candles of assorted scents.

A much-reused video tape labeled "West Wing / ER / Monk" which actually contains two episodes of Ex-treme Dating.

A small bottle of Baby Bee Apricot Baby Oil.

A mostly-full bottle of patchouli Kiss My Face lotion wrapped in a plastic supermarket bag.

A take-out bag of leftover mu shu beef, sesame chicken, and rice.

Two dead flashlights.

A small rectangle of purple sponge.

There's a story behind every item. I'm just too tired to tell it. Plus, now I have to clean the table.

Consider The Source

I still have my reservations about Michael Moore, though he came across relatively well in The Populist, Larissa MacFarquhar's recent sympathetic New Yorker piece. But today's Moore-mail, a forward-from-my-father-first blathering on about the admittedly stupid Bush camp military service revelations, was more interesting for the chain of liberals that brought it home than its easy and obvious content. According to the aggregate annotations gathered as it moved through cyberspace, the mail got to my father from family friend and restauranteur Jim Miller, a co-founder of fave pizza chain Bertucci's and co-owner of "improvisational grill" FiRE and iCE, a fun spot all about variety, improvisation, and imagination, a set of values about as liberal as it gets.

And where did Jim get Moore's missive? Direct from leftdarling Howard Zinn, master of cognitive dissonance, who sent the message to him (and three people named Zinn) with the following notation in brackets:

Michael Moore wraps it up neatly, as usual. I would just add one thought: if someone shirks his military duty because he is opposed to the war being fought, he is following his conscience; if he believes in the war being fought and shirks his military duty, he is a hypocrite.

Too bad I'm neither left nor liberal. I've certainly got the creds, if I wanted them.

Incidentally, leftliberal readers might also be interested in the new City Lights newsletter, also sent along by Dad, who writes:

Hello Joshua - I am concerned that you may not have nearly enough radical left reading material and so am rushing this to you.

Thanks, Dad. My cup runneth over.

Here And There And This And That

...but not with Rusty.

Things are pretty tense around here these days, and getting worse daily. Teachers are getting cutthroat as they begin to internalize the hard reality that current performance will be the primary criteria for staying on after this. Contracts come out tomorrow, and no one's really sure who's getting one. This isn't helping. This isn't a good sign either.

Next year's cuts will be four times worse. I don't think the community can sustain this level of tension, rumor, suspicion and allaround ugliness for that long, though. If the current trend continues, I predict nervous breakdowns and picketing at graduation, and would peg the impending total collapse of social order once concrete decisions start being made about how to move forward.

But life goes on, I suppose. Mom and Dad came again today to hang with Willow, but for the second week in a row I was running a fever; though I ultimately made it to chair the faculty professional development committee this evening post-supper, I no-showed at the Information Commons for most of the afternoon, joining an also-sick Darcie for a nap while Gamma Suzin and Bapa Stee helped out with the baby.

Looking forward to this here on Thursday with Molly. Realized, in thinking about it, that I haven't been to a good show since this. Guess that's what having kids does to your time. Used to head down to Northampton for this and that almost every month; now I expend the creative juices on work and my daughter, and hardly notice who's touring.

Oh, damn -- just realized I forgot to tape this for my mass media and culture class tomorrow.

Also, today I learned this: an iced-over banana peel is still slippery, though no more slipdangerous than the sidewalk next to it.

[UPDATE 2/18/04 3:59 pm: For those who were worried, yes, there was a contract in my mailbox today. Now I just need to start the procedures for a paternity leave in the fall, and I can rest uneasy until next February...]

Yeah, I'd See It

Simpsons movie slated for 2006. Just in time, too -- those reruns seem shorter every day.

Fresh Air

No moon for days: the pinprick stars shine bright through a third clear night's dark sheet as I return from yet another edition of Tributary, your ten to midnight Monday night show here on WNMH 91.5 fm, serving Northfield, Gill, Keene, Brattleboro and you with a little bit of this, a little bit of that, from funk to folk and blues to bluegrass, from jazz to jambands and all the rock and pop we can squeeze in the corners.

The silent roads home pass out of existance some forty feet ahead as I define an inhabited universe in the otherwise dark with a headlamp glare that wanes like the moon when the hill turns steep ahead of me over the bridge. A grey something, too small to be a squirrel, flashes left at the fork in the road. I go right, towards the dark past-lights-out dormitories and snowed-over tennis courts and past them to home.

Tonight's playlist follows; it was cold in the studio, so most of the set's pretty upbeat.

Tributary 10/16/04

Bob Dorough -- Too Much Coffee Man
Michael Franti and Spearhead -- Everyone Deserves Music
Otis Rush -- Homework
Girlyman -- Postcards From Mexico
Phish -- Back On The Train
Biscuit Boys -- Ramblin' Fever
String Cheese Incident -- Search
St. Germaine -- Rose Rouge
Eddie From Ohio -- Let's get Mesolithic
Los Lobos -- Kiko And The Lavender Moon
Lisa Loeb -- I Do
Guster -- Scars And Stitches
Peter Gabriel -- Love To Be Loved
Bela Fleck and the Flecktones -- Sunset Road
Grateful Dead -- Deep Elem Blues
They Might Be Giants -- The Edison Museum
Pink Floyd -- Brain Damage
Richard Thompson -- Kiss
Shawn Colvin -- Say A Little Prayer
Chris Smither -- Real Fine Love
Brooks Williams -- She Loves Me (When I Try)
Deb Talan -- Two Points
The Be Good Tanyas -- Waiting Around To Die
The Wayfaring Strangers -- Man Of Constant Sorrow
Natalie Merchant -- Which Side Are You On

Monday Mosh: The Stupid Edition

I do dumb things. Like poking myself in the eye, or knocking a full beer over before I've even had anything to drink. Or smashing my wrist against the wall as I turn a cinderblock hallway corner, hard enough to make me need yet another new watch. Or like tonight, when I managed to end up scheduled for duty in the media center and in the dorm simultaneously. Both have been on the right calendars for months; I just never noticed the inherent conflict. Ever got a call at work to tell you that you were supposed to be at work? Now that's stupid.

So let's get it on and out in the open, shall we? Today's memetheme:

Mosh to something really stupid.

My Funny Valentine

A French Perfume, but, really, what's in a name?

Bought flowers for my wife and daughter yesterday evening before chaperoning a school 3 on 3 intermural basketball tournament: sweet-smelling fresia, a single pinktipped French Perfume rose for Darcie in among the baby's breath, a balloon for Willow. This morning while I slept late they went grocery shopping; when I awoke I was presented with a half-sized laundry basket (red, of course) filled to the brim with the tidbits I love best:

Entenmann's chocolate frosted doughnuts

Regular potato chips, unruffled and unflavored

A box of Slim Jims

Pepperidge Farm Mini Brussels cookies

Cashews whole and cashew Poppycock

A four-pack of Starbucks Mocha Frappucinos

Sobe Green Tea

Corned Beef Hash

Dinty Moore Beef Stew

Spongebob Squarepants Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Dinner

Assorted fave candybars: Baby Ruth, Mounds, Reese's Sticks, and a bar of Cadbury Dark

Also a stainless steel thermos mug, a coffee grinder, and a couple of unread Patricia Cornwell novels featuring Dr. Kay Scarpetta, Washington D.C. Chief Medical Examiner. Darcie said she just went to the store and bought everything I always lingered over. Too cool.

This is what I wanted for Valentine's Day, really: nothing to do and the girls napping early, a silent house as the day reaches its zenith; fresh ground coffee, plenty of snacks and a book full of two-dimensional silences and unapproachable rage. Thanks, girls. I love you, too.

Take Back The Love

Young (heterosexual) love, in silhouette.

At the end of a long week studying the eighties in my Modern American Culture class, a day on Political Correctness; with tomorrow Valentine's Day, I thought I might mention the eighties trend towards giving every kid in class a Valentine so "no one felt left out", and then use this politically correct valentine as a fun example. You know, the usual iconoclasm.

But I never expected a quick google search to produce such a motherlode of politicism around this day of red and roses. Here's Wendy McElroy, who for years has been watching politically correct feminists try to turn Valentine's Day into V-Day, standing for Vagina, Violence (committed by men against women) and Victory. And a six-year-old story, originally covered in the Vancouver Sun, about how the above silhouette of a guy and a girl just about to kiss -- once posted in the window of a college financial aid office -- was deemed offensive and "homophobic" by a few on-campus lesbians and gays. And lest we think it's just PC feminists trying to suck the fun out of my romance, this year, (mostly) Christian pro-abstinance teens across the country have started a movement to make the day before Valentine's Day a Day of Purity, a day where they publicly show their commitment to not having sex outside marriage by wearing t-shirts, handing out brochures, and just generally being in-your-face about their proud and voluntary sexual frustration.

Still, it's no surprise. Welcome, I tell my students, to the brave new world. Forty years after the term "politically incorrect" hit conservative circles, and twenty after the term became culturally rubricized, the eggs have hatched in our children. If my students are paradigmatic of their rising generation, PC, like Marxism before it, is one of those critical perspectives long since crossed over into the cultural subconscious to become "common sense", and so pervasively that students recognize but cannot name nor define the basic conceit.

And there's what's wrong with Valentine's Day, really: like everything else in our postmodernistic nobrow culture, it's been politicized, and in such a way as to remove all meaning yet simultaneously and subtly demand that each of us pick sides...or, like most of my students, internalize the debate unfinished, recognizing the validity of the political critique while simultaneously showing their disgust for a position they cannot afford to examine clearly. Indeed, (most) Marxists and (most) Feminists would, by the most basic assumptions behind their respective critical theories, have us believe that this is both beneficial and inherent: indeed, to Marxists, criticism is political, which is why they criticize in the first place.

To be fair, the aspirations of the politically correct bannerholder are hard to decry. As Tony Martin, in his prizewinning 1997 essay Feminine gender, past imperfect (political correctness and history), reminds us, No rational person can argue with the vision attributed to Political Correctness: a better, more inclusive society free of sexism and racism, with greater recognition accorded to women and minority groups for the purpose of achieving increased tolerance and international understanding.
But aspirations are neither values nor means. In fact, it's the very machiavellian nature of the PC popcult, and the resulting repression of language and other freedoms, which gives it insidious power and, simultaneously, argues for its dissolution. Too, not everything should be political, for politics demands logic, and squeezes out emotion. A political Valentines Day cannot help but match ecological guilt with cut flowers, privilege with bought roses, gender role reinforcement with acts of giving. And that's just wrong, to sully such nice things that way.

So I hereby declare it's time to get the PC out of Valentine's Day. Who cares if Hallmark invented it, like diamonds: for once, celebrate sweetly, lightly, and deeply with the one you love, and to hell with the agendas of other people. For a day, at least, pretend there's no one else, and simply be.

Backdated Radio Blog

Been carrying this week's crumpled whitelined paper radio show playlist since Monday night's pants, switching it from pocket to pocket in the hopes of some down time. My apologies for those waiting to hum along. You're listening to Tributary, your ten to midnight Monday night show here on WNMH 91.5 fm, serving Northfield, Gill, Keene, Brattleboro and you with a little bit of this and a touch of that, from funk to folk, from jambands to jazz, from blues to bluegrass and beyond. This week's first-hour theme: music from my high school years.

Tributary 2/9/04

Bob Dorough -- Too Much Coffee Man (Tributary theme)
Spin Doctors -- Jimmy Olsen's Blues (1991)
Crowded House -- It's Only Natural (1991)
The Bats -- Block Of Wood (1987)
De La Soul -- The Magic Number (1989)
They Might Be Giants -- The World's Address (1988)
Phish -- Fee (1988)
Nirvana -- Polly (1991)
James -- So Long Marianne (1991)
~~REM -- First We Take Manhattan~~ (1991; CD skipped)
Sting -- We'll Be Together (1987)
Rusted Root -- You Can't Always Get What You Want
Lucy Kaplansky -- One Good Reason
Moxy Fruvous -- Green Eggs And Ham
Patty Griffin -- One Big Love
Salamander Crossing -- You Trip Me Up
Erin McKeown -- Queen Of Quiet
Billy Brag w/ Wilco -- My Flying Saucer
Tom Landa and the Paperboys -- All Along The Watchtower
Great Big Sea -- Ordinary Day
John Hiatt -- Crossing Muddy Waters
Bob Dorough -- Marilyn, Queen Of Lies
Sarah McLaughlin -- Dear God
Dan Hicks -- The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)

Bathrobe

There's nothin' like a good soft robe

Because it was clean, and the only towel-like thing in the linen closet, I'm wearing the second bathrobe. You know the one I mean: mottled wornthin deepblue terrycloth, shrunken tight, short, and three-quarter sleeved from too many washings. The too-tight tie's about to pull apart, and when I first put it on, my arm went through that gaping hole in the armpit.

The good bathrobe was hanging over the bathroom door, lush and pinstriped, a Polo gift from Darcie the year I got her a bathrobe, too. (Lest you think bathrobes a lame old-people holiday gift, I might point out here that when Darcie and I had first met, I traded her a copy of U2's Zoo album for her almost-identical bathrobe -- our first love exchange.)

But it was clean, and close -- I didn't see the one on the door -- so I put the old one on post bath-with-the-baby anyway. And once I had her in my arms and we got to dancing around the living room, I wasn't about to stop for anything.

Later, the house dark, the girls home and asleep, I'll pass the good robe after a quick commercial-break pee, and think seriously about switching old for new, B team for A. But I won't do it. I'm just one of those people for whom, once you've dried off, danced, and finally settled into the television couch in the bathrobe, you're too far in the comfort zone to take it off again.

Excuses, Excuses

Because the width and depth of the web map I submitted to the school webmaster on Friday caused him to flip out by email... and cc it to my supervisors.

Because I fell asleep Sunday on the living room floor...and awoke at 4:55 a.m. with a crick in my neck and the television blaring. Remember when the only thing on before 5 was static and the occasional test pattern?

Because we're studying the eighties in Modern American Culture, and I love the eighties.

Because I had to rush home after class on Monday to take Darcie to the women's health clinic. Willow had a great time "helping" an older boy stack blocks in the waiting room after she'd had her fill of mommy's exam room, and the good news is her sibling's due somewhere around the last two weeks of September.

Because Monday evening I had to turn a student in because he had been bragging about breaking school rules in his public livejournal, and doing things like that makes me hate myself.

Because the Monday night radio show ends six hours before I have to get up for work. After weeks of radio silence, finally figured out the new number of the phone with help from a kid who called every number he could think of until he got it right. Nice to know the students were out there listening all the time.

Because my parents came up to babywatch on Tuesday, and Dad came up early to take me out to lunch beforehand at the awful diner in town -- where "cream of vegetable" means huge chunks of frozen cauliflower and broccoli boiled in whole milk.

Because the headache that started at the aforemention mediocre luncheon got so bad by suppertime that I had to skip a required dorm staff meeting and the Faculty Professional development Committee meeting which I was supposed to chair. Didn't matter, though -- I still couldn't sleep until midnight. I just sat and watched television like a zombie, on the verge of comprehensive malfunction.

Because the Ed Tech Group staff meeting this afternoon blindsided me into coteaching a totally new course for next term, one which will create a pool of pre-trained workjob students for the several labs and commons spaces overseen by our group members by delivering a modular curriculum of basic ed tech and media support skills. It's one I've always wanted to teach, and the modular approach seems useful: I'm not complaining; it's just one more thing, you know what I mean?

Because this evening Darcie took her yearbook editors out to dinner at the new high-end hotspot in town; I watched Willow, and after an extended bath, all she wanted to do was dance. For forty five minutes. To Skip To My Lou, over and over and over again. And whenever I stopped dancing with her, she cried.

Because I've been losing it all week. The stack of ungraded papers that migrates from classroom to car and back again has grown to two inches thick; I never even got around to assigning homework today, a cardinal sin in a curriculum which teaches full year courses two-at-a-time in ten week trimesters, where one day's classtime is 2 percent of the total course, and a a night's homework is equal to three nights in a traditional year-long system.

But happily, tomorrow is to be Winter Carnival, an unused snow day called at the last minute and turned recreational. No class, no stress, no six a.m. wake-up call. A sign from God, or the gods; if nothing else, a sign that the rest of our tiny walled world was equally overfocused and tired.

Looks like I win again. Heck, I even come out ahead: if I assign homework by email tomorrow for the next day, the kids will just think I knew the carnival was coming.

Monday Mosh: Remember The 80s Edition

We've finished Marxism and Feminism, and with just weeks left in the trimester we're finally up to the eighties in the Modern American Culture class I teach here at NMH. In preparation for Music Monday, I've been scavenging from the remnants of my post-adolescent vinyl; though I did find some good Dinosaur Jr., and a scrap of The Chills, mostly that's meant a lovely hour getting Duran Duran's Hungry Like The Wolf and height-of-cheesiness Safety Dance back out of my head. God, I'd forgotten how awful drum machines were.

You may not be a child of the eighties, of course. But there's cheese in every decade. This week's memetheme:

Mosh to something cheesy.

One Musketeer

You remember that tight-knit group of misfits you used to hang with? The four or five or three so inseparable, wherever you went people knew the others were soon to follow? Remember that time when you left a flashlight on in the tent and crept out along the train tracks for the bonding experience of your life, just to see dead Ray Brower?

Yeah, me neither.

I’ve been rereading Stephen King’s The Body, the novella that made everybody’s favorite celebrity blogger famous when it got turned into Stand By Me, and finally traced the tug of longing that keeps bringing me back to the story to a social phenomenon we already know: some people have a group, and some don’t. It got me musing on yearning for the camaraderie of inseparable friends, even if just for a moment, which I’ve never experienced. And then it made me depressed, so I stopped. But here’s what I got to before then.

See, I had friends growing up – even had a couple of close friends, maybe even best friends, at various times in my life. I could probably sit and dredge up memories of these guys for hours. But it’s just depressing to do so: they’re gone, and I’m so bad at keeping in touch it’s probably my fault, and who wants to think about that? – and so the cycle goes.

So instead, in my memory I’m the kid who reads so much and so deeply that my strongest memory of elementary school is the time the entire class went off to gym and I didn’t even notice I was alone and missing gym until the lights turned themselves off later. I don’t drink much because I’ve got no drinking buddies; I smoke because it’s company, sometimes. I’m the guy who doesn’t go out much, and isn’t missed. In my worst hours I fear that the real reason I teach is that its easy to have confidence when you’re the one with all the answers – and the power to fail others.

There’s no trick to what went wrong. And the causes are clear, psychologically (a heady concoction of social anxiety and a lack of confidence driven by by astute self- and other-consciousness), environmentally (a slight disfunction at home and a root-tearing-up move to a new school district in second grade, when the teams and the rules of the game had already been established before you) and behaviorally (an earnest goofiness, the kind that attracts bullies.)

My name is boyhowdy, and I’m alone. My life is full of acquaintances, but bereft of blood brothers.

I sit with my teaching peers at high wooden tables in the dining hall and smalltalk my way through a short meal, but no one ever comes by for a beer.

Darcie’s the same way, but less comfortable socially. When we met in college, a party was raging around us, but she was holed up with our only mutual friends playing Pictionary; when I stumbled into their room in what, until that moment, I had intended to be my usual drunken rounds, I stayed until we left together…and now you know the rest of the story. In twelve years I’ve only ever met two or three of Darcie’s friends, and she’s never really had a night or afternoon out with anyone in the six years we’ve lived here; I, at least, do sometimes head out for music or a drink with one of a small number of folks, though but once or twice a year.

But it’s been a long time since college ended, and as much as dropping out so suddenly brought us together, it also insulated us from that world. While our friends stayed on, together, towards graduation, we were off and running, barely paying the phone bills with delivery jobs, becoming old before our time. By the time I went back to college I had too little in common with my peers to know them so deeply: four years older and practically married, with the girlfriend living down the hill – not much of a foundation for an active social life. The frequent trips down the hill pulled me from the deep and abiding relationships my parents have with their college friends.

And now? More than anything it’s the curious distance which develops here in a boarding school environment, where the role modeling never ceases, where all prospective soulmates are also the people you work with, which perpetuates distance. But where others seem to find peers and peergroups from other departments, keeping professional and personal separate, as a teacher of all of them, faculty and students alike, I’m just too close professionally to be a natural choice for friend – and lack the grace and nuance to make it work despite the uphill climb.

So if I’m not working, you’ll find me home – a place where we have each other, and that’s a whole lotta love, let me tell you. But sometimes I wish I had a gentleman’s club, a confidante, a loose band of brothers. Even a place where everybody knows your name would do.

Sign of the Times

The US State Department has issued an edict banning its longtime standard typeface from all official correspondence and replacing it with a "more modern" font. ...In an internal memorandum distributed on Wednesday, the department declared "Courier New 12

Willowisms

I see the moon
The moon see me
Goddamn the moon
and goddamn me

It's too hard not to laugh, though it positively reinforces. Especially noteworthy: the corruption of language has to be coincidental, no matter how clear -- goddamn just isn't part of our vocabulary.

Mundania

Still no car keys. Darcie called a locksmith, who said we'd be able to get the key code from the original dealer. But when we finally tracked them down we discovered that they throw that kind of information out after seven years because by then most people have changed the lock on their car, so the information is irrelevant and confusing. What? Who does that? Incidentally, the locksmith around here will change a hundred bucks to remove and borrow the door lock from the car and use it to make a new set of keys. Not bad, when you consider that the 'smith will have to make a house call to get the lock core because, after all, if we could drive it there, we wouldn't need his help in the first place.

As my school-provided laptop has ground to a halt over the past few weeks I've learned an important lesson: if you move offLAN, don't forget that your virus scan auto-update is intranet-based. Mickey the IT tech reports that my laptop set a new record for viruses (over 60) and popups (over 800), and may need to stay in her shop for a few more days. So now I'm carless and computerless, albeit thankful for redundancy within the family in both cases -- conveniently, the IT folks lost their assets manager in the recent budget cuts, and forgot to ask for Darcie's laptop back when the school didn't rehire her last year.

Even my body isn't working right. I hit a record five nosebleeds in one day yesterday; highlights here include sneezing during a class lecture, feeling that unmistakable trickling feeling, and actually asking the class if they minded if I kept teaching. (They didn't, so I did, with a tissue on my nose until it stopped.) Then today I fell asleep on the couch after returning from our dining hall supper, crushing one of my favorite ties, and you know they're never the same after you squish 'em. Woke up for a brief systems check an hour later, and despite oodles of papers to grade and other sundry backwork on the brain, crashed alongside my wife and child, nearing the end of their extended shared bedtime ritual, in our communal bed for an additional hour, waking only when my vivid dream of hospitals somehow led to a chase scene on a glass staircase above a flooded restaurant, and my shoes began to slip.

Lucky I awoke: despite impending snow 'n' ice, I've got a presentation on "Blogs as library resources: implications and reservations" for the library staff tomorrow afternoon. And I must give my Modern American Culture class a quiz on Marxist and Feminist critical theories tomorrow if we're to stay on track, and to give it, I need to write it. I'm thinking a little What are the differences and similarities between hegemony and patriarchy?, maybe some In what way is the act of criticism political? or Why do many Feminists reject the validity of Men's studies? Yeah, and something about the relationship between Marx and Marxism. That'll hold 'em for a while.

And This Time, I Mean It

What's On your "I'll never do that again" list Right Now?

I will never again... get within six inches of a surge protector in a third world country, especially a Bangladesh school library.

I will never again... roll over and go back to sleep because "it's only a little nosebleed."

I will never again... order the "volcano" wings.

I will never again... push down on the scale to see if it will break.

I will never again... raise my hand to speak in a room full of my teaching peers. Even if what I thought I had to say was going to make sense before I said it. If you know what I mean.

I will never again... refer to the "the stink of IT," especially when talking to my boss, the head of IT.

I will never again... get so carried away in a lecture that I tell an entire class of students that the guy who wrote Lord of the Flies is the same guy who wrote The Princess Bride.

I will never again... take the car key off the key ring, because, man, was that stupid -- now I'll have to send the VIN number to the company or something -- hey, does anyone know what you do if you've lost the only key to your car? And we'll have to share the other car, which means lots of confusion and fights and waiting for rides in cold lobbies.

I will never again... make love to anyone but my wife. I've been thinking about that for some reason lately. Not in a bad or creepy way, mind you. Just...thinking about it.

Now That's What I Call Media Exposure

Frankly, Janet, I don't give a...Oops!

It's been a good week to be a media studies teacher.

1. Janet and Justin: Did they or didn't they? I've been seeing this peripherally for a day and a half already; the game was boring and the ads mediocre at best, so in an otherwise light news cycle we're left with a cultural conundrum and an airspace thick with rumor, including Janet taking all the heat, the possibility of a "full FCC investigation" and/or a million dollar fine, and -- no surprise here -- a rash commitment from CBS that they will never contract with MTV for a halftime show again. But in my mind, what's interesting about this whole flapdoodle is that it doesn't matter whether or not it was planned, or by whom. Neither the presence or absence of intent nor the ultimate assignation of blame will make one whit of difference to what the ultimate effect of it will be on the medium of television, and our cultural discourse that follows: football has been recreated as a sport of boors (including those TiVOheads who made this bare-boob moment the most repeated event in TiVO history) and, as such, anathema to family values. The breast moves, and having scarred, moves on. So much for feminism.

2. CBS refuses to change their policy on "issue ads," doesn't air Moveon.org contest winner. The real news here, though, is that the liberal media is addressing the issue as one of Free Speech and responsibility to the public, when anyone who's read even a little bit of Neil Postman would realize that it's a cultural DISservice to allow TV to be used for "advertising" complex ideas. CBS' responsibility to the public should lie in recognizing the iconographic tendencies of their medium, and refusing to allow public discourse to be dumbed down. As if one could sell more than raw emotion in a 30 second ad. Even the New York Times, while acknowledging that the Right is probably hurt worse and more often by this policy than the liberal Left, misses the point on this one, suggesting that exposure alone is reason enough to air such ads during the Super Bowl and, in doing so, mistaking power for positive change. Champion-of-the-literati Postman would have been so disappointed.

3. Mary-Ellis Bunim, 57, creator of Real World, Simple Life, called back home by Satan. 'nuff said. And while we're on the subject, does the new Survivor, which features past winners and also-rans from previous episodes of Survivor, still count as reality television, even though these folks have already done this once before? Have we traded in the real for the surreal, when we know that Richard Hatch is going to strip down, and then he does strip down, and we watch it anyway? Surely we are merely witnessing an old form of metanarrative, like Road Rules vs. Real World, or when the Flintstones met the Jetsons -- that rapid commodification of the genre itself, towards self-parody and recycling, when you know they've all long since jumped the shark. But I'll wait until they stop fuzzing out Hatch's nether parts for prime time to make the final call on whether its reality, or just reality television, that's on its last breath. The cynic in me says I won't be waiting long.

4. Also in today's obituaries: some guy who revolutionized and standardized the use of film trailers before the main feature. Just imagine a world where you can sit in a well-and-warmlylit theater and talk to the person next to you until the movie starts. Now thank Andrew Kuehn for taking that pleasurable experience and replacing it with fast flashy adverts that startle you out of your seat, waste as much as ten minutes of your time, and in no way set the tone for the movie that follows. Can't tell whose impact on culture was worse, Kuehn's or Bunim's, but they both ought to be glad I'm not the one who has to decide on their pennance for all eternity -- the possibilities for just desserts are tempting indeed.

Are You Out There?

Though boarding students had to return from their long weekend by nine tonight, the campuses were deserted and the libraries and classroom buildings dark as I drove over to the other campus just before ten for tonight's radio show. That and the clear bright mostlyfullmoon night to set the stage and the show flowed like a dream. How different, how disorienting to emerge into the past-bedtime midnight to an isolated fogworld, rime on the car, and a dark drive home with the high beams fading conically before me into nothingness.

Perhaps it was, after all, a dream. After all, as a wise professor once said, you can't stop sound to look at it more closely, it disappears. Still, when the show's over, the playlist remains. Here's tonight's set.

Tributary 2/2/04

Bob Dorough -- Too Much Coffee Man
Oysterhead -- Oz Is Ever Floating
Ben Harper -- Mama's Got A Girlfriend Now
Beau Jocque -- The Back Door
Sam Philips -- I Need Love
The Gourds -- El Paso
Parliament -- Tear The Roof Off The Sucker (Give Up The Funk)
Michael Franti and Spearhead -- We Don't Stop
A Tribe Called Quest -- Left My Wallet In El Segundo
The Rembrants -- Plans For Nigel
The Wallflowers -- I'm Looking Through You
Acoustic Syndicate -- Pumpkin and Daisy
Jack Johnson w/ DJ Logic -- Rodeo Clowns
Moxy Fruvous -- Present Tense Tureen
String Cheese Incident -- Take Five
Bruce Cockburn -- Mango
Dar Williams -- Are You Out There
Erin Mckeown -- La Petite Mort
Dave Matthews Band -- Satellite
Daniel Lanois w/ Bono -- Falling At Your Feet
Indigo Girls -- Least Complicated
Slaid Cleaves -- One Good Year
Susan Werner -- Time Between Trains
The Bobs -- Something In My Ear
Negativland -- Escape From Noise
Barenaked Ladies -- Light Up My Room

Oh My God, It's The Monday Mosh!

Too tired this afternoon after a six hour stint Willow-watching while Darcie went off to mallshop for an event she's designing for the school, and a bit shaky after the napless baby tripped on a roller toy by the big fire escape window and thonked audibly and headfirst into the low sill, but the long weekend provides a day of extra recovery, at least, and the football was just what I needed. Though I was born on a Superbowl Sunday, this one snuck up on us; if we hadn't gone to the dining hall and seen all the portable game-food, we'd probably have missed what turned out to be a fairly consistent game. And da Pats was wicked, mush!

This week's memetheme:

Mosh to your winning-est anthem.