Hallowe’en, Part II

Last year, we had three folk come by dressed as Obama. One of them was a young black boy who lives across the street. He wore a suit and very proudly announced that he was dressed as our next President. It seemed a hopeful thing, and a moment when the world changed at least a tiny bit.

This year, his older brother–who is white–ran down the street in a KKK hood made from a white kitchen trash bag singing either Fight the Power or White Power, I could not tell which. He didn’t stop and ask for candy, just made a mad dash down the very center of the street while the younger children in Princess and Transformer costumes brought me their plastic pumpkins to be filled.

I did not, do not, know what to make of it.

The young woman who lives next door, and who knows him, said only, “Oh, he’s funny.” She did not think he meant anything vicious by it, though it was a startling thing to see.

I do not know what to make of this; whether to be troubled by it or simply to see it as passing strange. But it was such a sharp contrast to last year I am unable to let the image go.

Hallowe’en

Last year, you may remember that Trick or Treat reached almost epiphanic proportions around here when the most common costume was that of then-candidate, now-President Obama. And the sea change that seemed to foretell has indeed come… whatever your politics, it is true that no one can ever again say, “Oh, the US isn’t ready for a black president.” No black child will ever again grow up believing that to be true. And if you think that, in and of itself, isn’t something to celebrate… if you can’t put aside the politics of the thing long enough to be glad for that… well, you might want to ask yourself some difficult questions about your own feelings on race. I’m just saying.

I don’t expect this year to have the same dramatic impact. I imagine we’re mostly back to Princesses and Superheros around here, with a few Transformers and a WVU football player or two mixed in for good measure. I’ve bought nasty, nasty candy this year in the hope that we won’t eat any of it: Milk Duds, Starburst Sour Gummies, and Crabby Patties. The last look like burgers for GI Joe to me. It already hasn’t worked. I’ve had two fun size boxes of Milk Duds since I did the shopping yesterday. All I can say is that the count would be much higher if I had bought Snickers bars and Reese’s Cups like last year.

So, come knock on our door and hold out your bag! We’ll be here.

Back to Blogging…

There are several really good reasons to stop blogging. It bores you. It bores other people. It interferes with your cocktail hour. You fail to let it interfere with your cocktail hour and accidentally post the one thing you promised your mother you would never, ever write about.

Or, you start teaching Freshman Composition.

Here is the thing about teaching Freshman Comp. The students–who cannot themselves spell, use punctuation correctly, or write a thesis statement–have the uncanny ability to identiy every little grammatical error and rhetorical flaw in an instructor’s blog. They will print out blog posts and bring them to class with things circled in red pen. Sometimes, the circles will have been drawn by their great aunts who taught English for a thousand years in one room school houses on the prairie and sent each and every one of their students on to Harvard.

They will also read about your picking up a homeless guy and giving him a ride back to town or stealing the neighbor’s berries and assume you are much, much more cool than you actually are, so you will be a great disappointment to them. But, then again, you were going to be that no matter what you did.

Anyway… next semester I am moving on to teach English 102, where the students are both too hung over and too jaded to even check my rankings on RateMyProfessor.com, much less correct my grammar. So I’m back!

Peace!

Sarah

Playing for Change

Playing For Change | “War/No More Trouble” – Song Around The World from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.

The Playing for Change song-around-the-world Stand By Me has hit Morgantown… three friends have emailed it to me today. And I am in love… with the song, the idea, the individual performers, and the possibility that we are not beyond salvation. But as much as I love the song Stand By Me, I think it lets us off the hook a little. Here is the same organization’s take on the War/No More Trouble. Buy the DVD for someone you love.

http://www.playingforchange.com/

P.S. Yes, Sherry, I posted a song with Bono in it, and I am not even going to say a single snide thing. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maximum culpa.

Fifteen Things at Semester’s End

1. I will miss the oddness of the 8:30 class, where many of the best students sat in the back and at least one of the students who often fell asleep sat in the front. It made me like all of them all the more, somehow, that they arranged themselves backward.

2. There was someone, I never figured out whom, that filled the room with the smell of freshly brewed coffee and just-baked bread every morning. I will miss that smell.

3. One of my students, a pretty girl trying to slide by on as little work as possible, really didn’t like me at all. She began every class by rolling her eyes at me in that annoyed teenage way. It inoculated me against every other insult the day threw at me.

4. Anika, you will have to start a blog that keeps the rest of us updated on your hair color! Personally, I have been waiting hopefully for black-to-red-to-orange-to-yellow, like the flames on a tricked-out Camaro.

5. What will you all grow up to be? What will you do in the world, and who will you become? I hate that I will never know.

6. Leggings aren’t pants.

7. Why did one of the smartest girls I have had in class to date do so badly? Her papers were clearly turned in without any editing; her work was shockingly sloppy. And yet, each time, she seemed surprised to find I minded and that it hurt her grade. I wish I understood, and so perhaps could be more lenient, but it’s a mystery.

8. Was there a reason–beyond coincidence–that so many of us got papers on light beer ads that looked at the exact same brands (but were not clearly plagerized) during the Genre Analysis unit?

9. No, really, I mean it. Leggings aren’t pants.

10. What has happened to the word “because” and why has it been replaced by the phrases “and so, as a result” and “due to” used incorrectly?

11. So, seriously, did you really think I couldn’t tell who was a wake-and-bake? I am dying to know if you think I am that dumb, or just that old.

12. If you go out and drink until 3:30am, you are probably NOT sober by 8:30am. Don’t schedule one on one conferences and then show up drunk! Particularly if you know you are an obnoxious drunk. Coming in stinking like stale beer and telling me that I have to give you an A or your parents will call my boss doesn’t help your chances at all.

13. If you choose to write about binge drinking, drug abuse, or skipping class to go skiing, you really shouldn’t be so shocked when I doubt you the third time you tell me you have strep throat.

14. Really, I can’t say this enough: LEGGINGS ARE NOT PANTS!

15. This semester, no one failed. No one was even in danger of failing. Thank you all for that. You have no idea what a gift that is to an instructor… we hate nothing as much as we hate having to stop teaching and start parenting. None of you made me do that this semester. I am grateful.

Sarah

Play List for a Lousy Day…

Road Movie to Berlin — They Might Be Giants
I’m Your Man — Leonard Cohen
12/26 — Kimya Dawson
Good People — Jack Johnson
Brokedown Palace — The Grateful Dead
Love Kills — Joe Strummer
Smells Like Teen Spirit — Patti Smith cover of Nirvana
My Girl — Nirvana cover of Leadbelly
Skin and Bones — The Foo Fighters
Meanwhile Rick James — Cake

Yep, it’s been that kind of day. Play it loud in the car and just keep on driving…

After Our Blood and Tears…

Barack and Michelle Obama have walked up Pennsylvania Avenue, waving to the cheering crowds as the President and First Lady of the United States of America. We are a different country now; a better one.

If you are one of my rare friends who is unmoved by the historic meaning of this moment, I ask you in kindness and in love to examine your own heart and see if there may not lurk there some burden on your soul.  For the rest of us–those of us who are prouder and more sure of ourselves as Americans than we can remember being–today is a victory over the real enemies of our country:  fear, hatred, xenophobia, and jingoism.  

You can tell I’m moved because everything I try to say about this day is pretentious.  I can’t find work-a-day words for an event of such great moment.

So I’ll shut up, and leave you with Aretha, who sings what we can’t speak.

First Day of Spring Semester…

…and I am already feeling guilty for having, once again, bogarted all the best English 101 students.  I have students who are artists, musicians, film makers, smart people, interesting people, kind people, and even one who is missing a rib.  There are boys with ponytails and boys who are just back from serving in Iraq.  There are girls who play rugby (who do they scrum? I’ve always wondered) and girls who fight injustice and poverty.  There are fans of Modest Mouse and Neil Young, an undreadlocked Bob Marley devotee, and no one who claimed Buck Cherry’s “Crazy Bitch” as his or her favorite song.   There are, all told, forty-four sets of stories who will be sitting in my classroom tomorrow, just waiting for me to ask them to be told.

How lucky am I?

Six Miracles of the Past Year

1. No one I love has fallen off their respsective wagons, although the roads they ride are rough and they have sometimes had to hold on to the someone else’s hand to stay inside.  Thank God for wagons, and for hands to keep you inside when you feel you’re about to be tossed to the side of the road.
2. There are the twin miracles of new friends who bring fresh ideas and ways of seeing things, and old friends who managed to endure my nuttiness for yet another year.
3. No one can ever again say, “A black man will never be president of the United States.”  And, while that doesn’t fix everything, it sure is a big move in the right direction.  (Although I don’t know what to make of this Rick Warren thing, and can’t help wondering if someone isn’t trying to fool me into believing that bigotry isn’t something we can overcome, but something we have to endure.  But not this year; this year I have hope, and I’m not giving it up that easily!)
4. Love.
5. There has been death, but in each death there has been solice and everyone who has been left behind has found a way to carry on.  It didn’t always look like this would be true; the people I love are amazingly resilient, spirited people and I am blessed to know them.
6. In spite of eight very bad years, it seems the world has not lost it’s willingness to forgive us, if we turn things around.  And it seems like maybe we do have a national conscience.  People are eating local, going green, and thinking about what they consume.  We have questioned the wisdom of going to war, and once again decided that we do not want to be a warlike people.  Maybe there is hope for us after all.

Liquor is Quicker…

 

Stadium Spirits, Huntington WV

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am spending most of my semester break working with my father in a liquor store in my home town.  The reasons for this vary by audience.  My father thinks I need the money.  My husband believes that I’m just trying to help out my father.  Both are right, of course, although both would deny needing my help so have to frame things the way that they have.  

The work is simple; aside from stocking shelves a few bottles at a time because I am not strong enough to lift the cases of liquor, I mostly dust or stand behind the counter watching yet another CSI or Law and Order marathon on cable.  Some days, I barely earn the minimum wage this job pays.  

Still, there are complexities.  I bristle at being spoken to rudely by underaged would-be customers; I want to say “Hey, kiddo, in real life I’m one of your instructors.”  (Although, of course, I’m not.  They go to Marshall; I am at WVU.)  A few old friends have come in to buy wine, and I find myself explaining, right off the bat, that I am here to help my father–completely leaving out the and we could use the extra money bit.  I walk a fine line with my father’s boss.  I am aware that I shouldn’t be too “uppity,” but it’s been a long time since I played the game of Yes, Boss.  I’m not good at it, and I am afraid it will reflect badly on my father, that it will seem like I’ve gotten above my raising.

I am uncomfortable selling blunt wraps–pre-rolled papers in flavors like Wet Mango, Purple Haze, and Krypto (this last, I think, is for rolling marijuana-flavored marijuana)– to the students and younger townies.  I want to lecture them, instead, on the both the dangers of drugs in general and the travesty of hiding the taste of good weed behind Jolly Rancher flavored papers.  I do neither.  Instead, I smile at everyone, make eye contact, call customers “sir” and “ma’am” even when they are young enough to be my children, and keep my tongue-clucking to myself.  

Most of the lessons I’ve had to learn this year have been about keeping my big mouth shut.  This is just another of those.  The Universe is not a subtle teacher, and I think it’s finally starting to sink in.