Do you like what you’re doing? Would you do it some more?
(Yes, I was introduced to Nick Drake through a VW ad. Stupid way to learn about Nick Drake.)
Do you hope to find new ways of doing better than your worst?
(Even stupider would have been not to learn about Nick Drake.)
My students are failing.
My American government students, to be exact: first-semester, first-year, bright, inquisitive, charming, and failing.
A big piece of this is on them. I tell them what will be on the exam (“make sure you study all of the terms which are bolded in the text, and the context in which these terms are used”; “study Figure x.x, as I almost certainly will ask questions about it”), write out the main points on the board, pause often for questions, and still, they fail.
They fail, in other words, because they’re not studying.
But they also fail because I’m doing something wrong. When I taught large lecture courses I always prepared lectures and rarely strayed from the material. My notes were always outlines rather than fully-articulated texts, and I made time for questions and comments every class, so a certain amount of riffing always occurred, but boyo, I kept the trains running on time.
Once I moved to smaller classes, however, I realized this approach didn’t necessarily work; smaller classes, it seemed, demanded more interaction. So I started mixing up my prepped lectures with more open-ended sessions, giving more time over to the students and allowing for a more free-form approach to the material. I hated doing this, at first—when I lectured, I was in control, and independent of students who may not have given two hoots about the material—but over time I learned to ease up, let things happen.
This still works in my upper-division courses, but, man, it is not working for this intro class. I’m not exactly sure how I’ll change things up next semester, but it will clearly involve a tightening of my requirements and a battening down of my presentations. I do think freedom has its place in the course, and will preserve as much of it as I can, but it’s clear that without more rigor, that free-thought is simply frittered away.
Critters, critters, everywhere, in shapes we I could not have dreamed up, yet they exist.
Nature is amoral, red in tooth and claw, fragile, a human construct, scary, comforting, everything all around us. . . whatever else nature is, she is a mother:
Southern white rhino photo credit: The Wilds
Giraffe photographer: Tibor Jager
Malayan tapir photo credit: Edinburgh Zoo
Okapi photo Credit: Julie Larsen Maher
Distant cousins. . .
Emperor tamarins photo credit: Drusillas Park
Cotton-topped tamarins photo credit: Drusillas Park
. . . and near cousins:
Orangutan photo Credit: Tad Motoyama
Gorilla photo credit: Wilhelma Zoo
I take nothing away from religious people, who find gods in all the weird wonder in the world, but I see all at this of the world, of nature, of existing for no other reason than existence itself.
Nature has no need of god, nor does one need god for wonder.
That’s not an argument for or against god, but an observation that there is already so much, on its own, already here.
(All photos from ZooBorns.)
I am not, as you know, a particularly religious person.
An agnostic, I believe I have called myself on severaleventy occasions. A-gnostic, as in, I lack knowledge [about matters of God]; skeptic regarding claims of god/s would also work, as would unbeliever when it comes to the supernatural (such that if there is any kind of being who might be called a god, that being would exist within and not outside of nature, insofar as I don’t believe that anything exists outside of nature).
Hm, perhaps I should have included more brackets and/or parentheses.
Anyway, despite by a-skepti-gnosti-naturalism, I remain interested in many things religion, and for all kinds of reasons (none of which—look! more parentheses!—I’ll discuss here).
Which brings me to this little jewel of a thought, quoted by Kurt Frederickson, and re-quoted by Fred Clark:
Swedish Lutheran theologian Krister Stendhal offers us three guidelines for broader religious understanding. He says: (1) When you are trying to understand another religion, you should ask the adherents of that religion and not its critics. (2) Don’t compare the best of your faith to the worst of another’s. (3) Leave room for “holy envy.” Recognize elements in the other religious tradition that you admire and wish could, in some way, be reflected in your own. These suggestions change the conversation. It enhances the dialogue and our lives.
A fine set of guidelines, easily adaptable for any kind of conversation in which anyone seeks to understand anything.
Now, if I didn’t have a cold and my brain wasn’t fooked by microbes, I’d use this as a take-off for a discussion of John Caputo, Gianni Vattimo, radical hermeneutics, weak theology, and just what the hell is meant by the “hard” versus the “soft” sciences and why that distinction is fucked up and bullshit, but, like I said, my own brain is fucked up and bullshit, so there you go.
Anyway, understanding. Yeah.
I felt such longing.
What to do with such a feeling, especially since it had been so long since I longed for anything? And why the longing, especially in response to the last, short scene of an uneven television show?
Perhaps it was the tenderness of the moment, made all the more poignant by the unexpectedness of it all.
I don’t expect tenderness, don’t expect longing.
No, I have been frozen in fear of my financial burdens, overcome with debts I cannot and am not paying, triaging my money for rent, first, and everything else, second. My two temporary jobs ease me somewhat, but I can’t remember the last time I felt anything other than anxiety.
So this longing, this unexpected desire for, I don’t know, unexpected tenderness, was all the sweeter for revealing that there is still something more to me, something more to this life.
A repeat post from last Thanksgiving:
It’d take about 20 minutes before our dresses would be off.
My cousin A. and I, having been forced to wear something nice (and constricting) for Thanksgiving, would head into the den and whip off our dresses so that we could play—hard. While our mothers might have sighed over the sight of us scampering about in our slips and tights, at least they didn’t have to worry about stains and tears to the good clothes.
All of us kids would head upstairs, carefully closing the door behind us—the better to keep the adults at bay—before tiptoeing through our grandma’s bedroom to reach the closet door.
This was a great closet, mainly because it was less a closet than a long, dark, narrow passageway into the other bedroom. Who had a closet like this? It wasn’t a secret, but it felt like one.
The real treasure, however, was the attic, which we were of course and repeatedly warned against entering. Come on: you tell kids ‘don’t you go messing around in the attic’ enough times and of course that’s exactly what we’re going to do. It was dark and drafty and a little bit dangerous (all those nails poking through the rough wood) and had just the right ratio of stuff to space: a great play space.
There was an old Victrola in the attic, and while I don’t remember if this was Thanksgiving or not, one year my brother and A.’s brother somehow got that thing cranked up and going; we all fled as sound came out of it, giddy and afraid we broke it.
No, we did not dare tell the adults.
Another favorite was to grab a blanket and ride it down the (carpeted) stairs. The door ended right at the last step—no space or landing—so every time you bumped down the steps you’d slam into the door. This would the lead the adults to ask What are you kids doing up there?
Nothing!
You’re not sliding down the stairs, are you?
No!
At some point my dad and uncles would grab a couple of glass jugs and head over to the nearest bar for beer, although it seemed to take them quite awhile to go just the few blocks and back. But they’d always return, in good cheer and carrying the soon-to-be-emptied jugs.
Finally, it would be time to eat: Adults at the fancy cherrywood table lengthened just for this day, the kids either at a card table set up near there or in the den. The den was best: We had our own bowls of food, and could take as much or as little as we wanted, but, really, we could laugh and mess around and not have to worry about ‘behaving’ or ‘keeping it down’.
We’d all crash out for a bit in my grandma’s small front room, my aunts and uncles smoking and us kids waiting until the cherrywood table was made small again and the adults gave permission for us to take over the (much larger) dining room. The blanket came back into play, usually in some manner of us rolling ourselves in it and trying to chase one another around. If one of the adults was sufficiently, ah, loosened up, he or she would join us, and perhaps we could get them to slide down the stairs, too—only this time, with the door open.
T.v. would be watched—there was usually some holiday movie on—and pie eaten. Other cousins who had eaten elsewhere might stop by, either for pie or beer, and we’d hang out until the traditional holiday walk.
Honestly, I don’t remember if this is something we did for Thanksgiving or Christmas or both (I think at least Thanksgiving), but we’d all bundle up and head out into the south Sheboygan neighborhood, a knotted string along shovelled walks. When we’d hit the highway the adults would call us close, then we’d climb the stairs to the bridge over the lanes. We got a nice shot of the lights of the neighborhood, and we’d wave at the oncoming cars.
And then we’d spit.
No, we weren’t (well, we weren’t supposed to be) aiming at cars. It was just our thing: We’d spit off the bridge.
So happy Thanksgiving, everyone. And may you get the chance where you are to spit off a bridge.
D. was kind.
Her younger sister, J., was glamorous and a little forbidding, but D. was warm and she asked questions and listened to the answers, and even my teenaged snot-self could see that it was not a bad thing that my older cousin was soft and caring. We both loved animals, could always talk about animals.
I didn’t see her much: the occasional Sundays and my grandma’s, and, later, she and her husband would always at least stop by for the holidays; I’d sometimes see her at her job at the mall. Always, again, still warm, still kind. A little sad, maybe, but not crushingly so. She had a weakness for the weak, so it made sense that her kindness could also make her sad.
And it has again, or so I’d guess. I just found out that her house had been condemned, and that she was taken into custody for hoarding. Forty cats, 5? 7? dogs, a number of birds. The place smelled so bad passersby complained to the police. My parents told me so many of the cats were sick, emaciated; they probably had to be put down.
It was on the news, my mom said. It was really upsetting, to see those cats like that. She worked at a vet’s office, and these cats had ear infections, eye infections—she couldn’t get them treated? But then again, that was probably where the problem began, she reasoned. People probably brought in animals they wanted to get rid of and D. took them in.
And it got to be too much, I nodded. She wanted to save them, thought she could save them, and when she couldn’t take care of them she wasn’t able to ask for help.
I feel so bad for those animals; I feel so bad for D.
I hope they all get help.
No, this is not me and not particularly what I went through or what I’m going through—except for the parts that are exactly like what I went through or what I’m going through.
And my penultimate-ish panel involved a small green stone instead of horror movies and Skittles.
But I did have my Eskimo vagrant moments. Still do. Probably always will.
There are worse things.
This is unacceptable: I’ve lost my voice.
Gone gone gone daddy gone.
I started getting a sore throat on Sunday, by Monday my voice was pebbly and on Tuesday, it was full-on gravelly. I did make it through my classes, but by the time I got off the train my voice had disappeared down my gullet. I tried to say “thank you” to a cute tot who closed my dryer door at the laundromat, and all that came out was a squeak.
You can’t yell at cats with a squeak and, unsurprisingly, they don’t much respond to a whisper.
My throat doesn’t really hurt; it just doesn’t work.
I don’t like it.
No more boy kitties; boy kitties break my heart.
Chillin'. It's what all the cool cats do.
My particular kitty-boy, Jasper, is in the hospital, with a problem which particularly affects males. (My old cat Jazz died from this, although he was much older than Jasper. I swore then I’d never get another boy cat. So much for swearing.) The doc should be calling me shortly to let me know how the procedure (to unblock his ureter) went—I expect it went fine—and I’ll pick him up tomorrow.
Of course, he should be in the hospital for at least another day, but I can’t afford that. To be honest, I don’t know if I can afford the care he’s currently being given. If his bill comes in toward the low end of the estimate, we’re fine. If not. . . .
I have no idea how I’ll pay it.
And then, of course, there’s the after care, which I also have no idea how I’ll afford.
But he was crying and I was crying and as I asked C., what, I’m going to let him die because I can’t afford to keep him alive?
C. did do me the great favor of looking for 24h care and telling me about CareCredit. I qualified for it—it pays the vet and then I pay it—but not enough to cover all the costs. Had I known about this before, I might have been able to get him into the vet before it became a costly emergency.
[*Update* The vet just called. He came through fine, his kidneys are fine, and he’s awake and groggy. So yes I’m still hyperventilating about the money, but at least Jasper’s okay.]
So, if you have pets and not a lot of cash, get CareCredit before anything bad happens; then maybe you can afford to pay for the little bad before it turns into the big bad.
Like it did with Jasper.
_____
*Update2* I learned a bit more about low-cost vet care—which, again, had I known about sooner, I might have been able to prevent this. (Joyce at Safety Net/Pets for Life was very nice about this, however, saying that this might have happened anyway. Thanks Joyce!)
So, for those of you in the New York City area, there are two (more) options you should know about:
I don’t have a contact number for the vet mobile, but if you’re in another borough you could call Safety Net for locations and dates.
I had looked previously for low-cost vet care, but somehow in my searches I didn’t find any of these services. Yes, I found the low-cost spay/neuter mobiles, but as I wasn’t looking for those services, I didn’t click on those links; had I done so, I might have also discovered the regular vet mobiles. And I messed-up in not finding the Safety Net program. I don’t know what search terms I was using, but they were clearly the wrong ones.
Jasper’s care cost a fair amount of money, and, more importantly, a great deal of distress to him. Perhaps had I taken him in when the problem first hit, we might have been able to avoid this. Joyce tried to reassure me by saying, well, even a vet can’t necessarily prevent blockages, and he would have had to have been unblocked anyway.
Finally, even if you’re not in New York City, you might have a Safety Net/Pets for Life program in your area. The NYC one is apparently run through the Humane Society, but it also has a page on the Animal Care and Control page. Check your local animal care societies to see if its available near you. And get CareCredit (which doesn’t cost anything to apply for and keep it on hand), just in case.
AbsurdBeats 