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 What has happened to the word “because” and why has it been replaced by the phrases “and so, as a result” and “due to” used incorrectly?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

Backpack Jack

The outlet mall at Flatwoods, WV isn’t very exciting.  The stores aren’t great—Tommy Hilfiger, whose clothes I won’t buy, is the only designer with a presence.  It is a good place to look for Christmas presents for newly apartmented, college freshman nieces and gadget-addicted (I’m sorry, I mean tool and I don’t mean addicted) husbands.  Plus, there is one of those Amish Bulk Foods stores that, I don’t think, have much to do with the Amish but do have lots of wonderful, bad-for-you sorts of things like bread-and-butter pickled beets and caramel-covered marshmallows.  So, I stopped yesterday on my way home from Thanksgiving in Huntington.

 

I got out of my car and heard someone barking at the top of his lungs, “…and all you God-damned Republicans are going to get what’s coming to you, all you fat fuck Jesus-freaks with your jacked-up pick-up trucks and…” Shit, I thought.  This is going to be someone I know. 

 

And it was.  Backpack Jack, who I met the first night I worked at Bartlett House back in the late 80s and who has been wandering in and out of my life ever since.  But then again, that’s what he does.  He wanders.  He labels himself a hobo and, if there is anything noble left in the call, he embodies it.

 

It seemed a civic duty to offer Jack a ride back to Morgantown; I’m a big fan of free speech, but I also think people should be able to bring their children to public places without being confronted by someone yelling obscenities.  Jack isn’t crazy, just bored and a little too in love with the idea of himself as an outlaw.  And, he told me, he had figured he wouldn’t get a ride to Morgantown that day and thought he’d just stand there yelling until the cops offered him a free place to spend the night.  Flatwoods doesn’t have a homeless shelter, and Jack says he prefers jail—fewer rules and no one who thinks they can save you.

 

The hour-and-a-half trip was like the world’s longest panhandle.  I guess Jack’s shtick is all he has left, because he kept it up long after I’d given him the five bucks he’d asked for and made it clear he wasn’t getting any more out of me.  That makes me sad.  Jack used to be more interesting.

 

We reminisced a little about his old running gang:  Cat Eyes, Big Al, and Steve who never did get a colorful nickname.  They’re all still on the road, although Jack says Steve was married for a while and is only just now de-trailered and single again.  We talked about the winter I had to cut through the duct-tape Cat Eyes used to keep his boots on to check for frostbite, and how sad it was that Big Al had ripped off a local shop-owner who is usually kind to the homeless and, as a result, wasn’t welcome in town by anyone these days.  It was a little like running into an old friend and a little like going back to a job I was no longer suited for, but mostly it made my car smell like unwashed man and wood smoke.

 

Still, it’s nice to live in a world small enough that I know the hobos on the road; when to stop, and when to keep driving.  The alternative—to always have to keep driving—seems both lonely and wrong.  I may be done letting homeless men live in my basement, but hopefully I will never have to stop offering them rides back to town.

Miracle Fruit

 

I am a complete fool for culinary curiosities.  The are  three jars of candied olives, a bottle of truffle oil, two different kinds of black rice, and several packets of instant pho in my kitchen cabinets right now.  For a few months, my friends Kevin and Sara had to avoid coming to dinner because I kept threatening to make chicken with truffles I had bought at TJ Maxx.  (When I finally opened the jar, they were dry, gritty things and I threw them away. I’m a sucker, but a picky one.)  

But Miracle Fruit is by far the strangest and coolest thing I’ve tried in a long time.  It’s a berry that (and this is just such a strange idea) has something called miraculin in it that bonds to your taste buds and temporarily keeps you from tasting the sourness of things.  

I bought my Miracle Fruit in tablet form on Ebay.  So, yes, just to clarify–I bought strange pills from an unknown person and let one dissolve on my tongue.  If you think this is the first time I’ve ever done that, you’re clearly a stranger who has just wandered over here from someplace a little more sheltered.  But anyway…  So, I let the pill dissolve on my tongue and then waited two minutes, as instructed by the few English directions on the box.  After two minutes, I took a giant swig of cranberry juice and almost spit it out because it was so sweet!  There was no bitterness it all.  So I tried orange juice.  Same thing.  Tastes like Sunny-D.  (So, yeah, gross.)  

“Well,” I thought, because I am prone thinking these sorts of things, “so what if it can make orange juice taste like Sunny-D?  Can it make lemon juice taste good?  I bet not!”  And then I liberally squeezed the plastic lemon until I had a good mouthful of juice.  (Maybe proof that all this dissolving-tabs-from-strangers stuff has been less than a great idea.)  And it wasn’t sour at all!  It tasted like those candied lemon wedges that sat on my great-grandmother’s coffee table.  (Again, not really a taste I’d go looking for, but you get the point.)

If you know me, you are probably going to get a box of these for Christmas, and maybe a few grapefruit or kumquats.  And you won’t believe me that it works as well as it does until you squeeze juice from your own plastic lemon onto your tongue

Changed

I feel like I’ve died and gone to America.

–composer Barry Franklin

I can’t stop crying.  I have been crying for five days now.  Every time someone says something to me that includes the words “President Obama,” I well up.  Jessie Jackson, Will Smith, and Oprah Winfrey cry, and I’m snot-nosed and red-eyed right along with them.  Colin Powell cries and–defends his right to cry–and I weep.  

Intellectually, I understand why I have been so invested in the Obama campaign, but until he won, I didn’t know myself how emotionally invested I was–not in his campaign, but in a dream of America that I pretended to stop dreaming some time during the Reagan years.  Or maybe it was after the The Cosby Show was cancelled and Cops debuted.  I can’t put my finger on it.  But it died when I was young enough that dreams were dying off by the dozens, and I don’t remember taking particular notice of it then.  

Now, in its triumphant return, I begin to wonder what other dreams I put aside that, instead, I should have worked toward.  It’s a scary, brilliant moment.  I am glad to have been here for it, and I hope I am up to the things it will ask of me in the coming months and years.