Combustible

 As I stare at my sandwich, I keep thinking about Jack London's story "To Build a Fire." This poor guy trudging through the Alaskan wilderness in fifty-below weather is going to die if he can't start a fire, but he's dropped his last matches and he can't pick them up with his gloves on-- but if he takes off his gloves, his fingers will freeze and then how will he build a fire? 

I wish I could build a fire in my office, but instead I'm wondering whether I should try to eat my peanut-butter sandwich with my gloves on--and risk getting glove fuzz on my sandwich or peanut butter on my gloves--or take off my gloves to eat so that my fingers get so cold I can't type?

Turn on the space heater and risk blowing the circuit breaker? Leave the space heater off to ensure sufficient electricity to do my work? Every option has its down side.

The bigger question is why I keep having this kind of dilemma. I mean, anyone who knows how to read a weather forecast could have foretold that we would need heat in the building this morning, but no heat is to be found. I've been trying to work with my gloves and coat on and a big shawl wrapped around my shoulders, but hunching under the shawl gives me a sore neck and back while shivering against the cold upsets my stomach and gives me a headache.

Worst of all is the anger. Trying to work in this kind of cold produces a constant simmering anger that threatens to burst out at any moment, so that I'm afraid to interact with students or write emails lest I lash out. If only the anger could produce enough heat to allow me to take off my gloves! But no--the anger just makes me want to cancel classes and go home, or else take early retirement and leave my freezing office behind for good.

Right now, though, I need to figure out how to eat my lunch. I guess I'm thankful that I'm not trudging through the Alaskan wilderness in fifty-below temperatures, but if I don't get this anger under control, I may just spontaneously combust.

Dance party in the sky

My day started very early with a doctor's appointment and blood draw before breakfast plus a flu shot that may have contributed to the overwhelming desire to sleep that hit me by midafternoon, but by that time I'd spent three hours driving north to meet my old grad school friend for lunch and a refreshing chat and then driven another 40 minutes to the home of my daughter and son-in-law and, of course, the grandkids, who read to me and played their piano pieces and demonstrated their progress in eating with chopsticks, so by the time the sky got dark enough to make the Aurora Borealis visible in northern Ohio I was so tired I was tempted to give it a pass, but the young folks convinced me to join them on a late-night jaunt to a local field where we were able to view the light show without obstructions, and when the middle grandkid said "There's a whole dance party going on in the sky," I had to take it on faith because, sadly, I couldn't see anything except a whole lot of dark sky with a pinkish tinge in certain areas, but fortunately the camera saw more than my aging eyes could see--and even if I couldn't see the dance party up there, I could see the grandkids dancing around in a field in their pajamas and warm coats and hear them marveling over the wonders playing out far overhead, and after the long and winding road I'd traveled to make it to that point, that moment was worth every ounce of effort.

 

Now that's some powerful teaching

I was reading The Last Devil to Die, a Thursday Murder Club mystery by Richard Osman, when I happened upon a passage that made me laugh out loud. It's a little long but worth the effort. Nina, an archeology professor, is meeting with an apathetic student whose name she can't remember when they are interrupted by a hefty Canadian thug named Garth: 

There's one with her now, an identikit boy of around twenty, a first year, certainly. He's called Tom or Sam, or maybe Josh. The boy is wearing a Nirvana T-shirt, despite being born many years after Kurt Cobain died. 

They are discussing an essay he hasn't written. "Roman Art and the Manipulation of Historical Memory."

"Did you enjoy the reading at least?" Nina asks.

"No," says the boy.

"I see," says Nina. "Anything else to add? Reasons you didn't enjoy it?"

"Just boring," says the boy. "Not my area."

"And yet your course is titled 'Classics, Archeology and Ancient Civilizations'? What would you say your area is?"

"I'm just saying I don't pay nine thousand pounds a year to read a bunch of left-wing academics rewriting Roman history."

"I imagine it's your mum and dad paying the nine thousand pounds, isn't it?"

"Don't privilege-shame me," says Tom or Sam or Josh. "I can report you."

"Mmm," says Nina. "Am I to take it that you're not planning on finishing the essay anytime soon?"

"Read my file," says the boy. "I don't have to do essays."

"OK," says Nina. "What do you imagine you are doing here? What and how do you hope to learn?"

"You learn through experience," says the boy, with the world-weary air of a wise man tired of having to explain things to fools. "You learn from interacting with the real world. Books are for lose--" 

There is a knock at Nina's door, despite the SUPERVISION IN PROGRESS note stuck on it. Nina is about to send the unseen caller away when the door opens, and who should walk in but Garth, the colossal Canadian she had met at Sunday lunch.

"Sorry, this is a private session," says Nina. "Garth, isn't it?"

"I need something," says Garth. "And I need it right now. You're lucky I even knocked."

"I'm teaching," says Nina, then looks at the boy. "Up to a point."

Garth shrugs.

"So you'll have to wait. We're trying to discuss Roman art."

"I don't wait," says Garth. "I get impatient."

"Probably ADHD," says the boy, clearly glad there is now a man in the room.

Garth looks at the boy, as if noticing him for the first time. "You're wearing a Nirvana T-shirt?"

The boy nods, sagely. "Yeah, that's my vibe."

"What's your favorite song?"

"Smells Like--"

"And if you say 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' I will throw you out of that window."

The boy now looks decidedly less happy that there is a man in the room.

"Garth, I'm teaching," says Nina.

"Me too," says Garth.

"Uh....," says the boy.

"Easy question," says Garth. "Nirvana is the fourth-greatest band of all time. Name their best song."

" 'The Man Who...,' uh."

"If you're about to say 'The Man Who Sold the World,' think again," says Garth. "That's a Bowie cover. We can have a different discussion about Bowie when we're through with this."

"Leave him alone, Garth," says Nina. "He's a child. And a child in my care." 

"I'm not a child," says the boy.

"You want me to help or not?" says Nina. "Why don't we call it a day anyway? If you haven't done the essay, there's no point."

"My pleasure," says the boy, getting up as fast as he can.

"Wait, you didn't do your essay?" Garth asks.

"Leave him alone, Garth," says Nina.

"What was it about? The essay?"

"Roman art or something," says the boy.

"And you didn't do it? Couldn't be bothered?"

"I just...didn't...just wasn't...interested."

Garth roars and beats his chest. The boy instinctively ducks toward Nina, and she puts a protective arm around him.

"You weren't interested? In Roman art? You are out of your mind. You're in this beautiful room with this intelligent woman, and you get to talk about Roman art, and you're not interested. You're not interested? You've got three years till you actually have to go and get a job! You know what jobs are like? Terrible. You think you get to discuss Roman art when you've got a job? You think you get to read? What are you interested in?"

"I have a TikTok channel," says the boy.

"Go on," says Garth. "I'm interested in TikTok. I was thinking of dabbling. What do you do?"

"We do....fast-food reviews," says the boy.

"Oh, I like that," says Garth. "Fast-food review. Best burger in Canterbury?"

"The Yak House," says the boy.

"Noted," says Garth. "I'll check you out. Now I need a word with Ms. Mishra here, so I'm going to ask you to skedaddle."

The boy doesn't need asking twice, and shoots for the door. Garth puts out a massive arm to stop him. "Three things before you go though. One: if that essay isn't done next week, I'll kill you. I mean that. Not like 'Your mom will kill you if you don't tidy your room.' Actually kill you. You believe me?"

The boy nods.

"Good, stop wasting this opportunity, brother, I swear. Two, if you tell anyone I threatened you, I will also kill you. OK? Not a word."

"OK," says the boy.

"It better be OK. God cries every time someone lies to a Canadian. And three, the best Nirvana song is 'Sliver' or 'Heart-Shaped Box.' Understand?"

"Understand," agrees the boy.

"I played bass for a band called Mudhoney for two tour shows once. You heard of them?" says Garth.

"I think so," pretends the boy.

"Great, you check them out, and I'll check out your TikToks. Off you go, champ."

Garth ruffles the boy's hair and watches him run out. He turns back to Nina.

"Nice kid."

Since reading this, all I can think about is how different my life would be if I had a Garth in all my classrooms or standing in the corner for every student conference. It wouldn't do much harm to throw anyone out of my office window, but I suspect that Garth rarely has to follow through on his threats.

An awkward interregnum

Here we sit in an odd interregnum: things are going swimmingly in class and out; I'm checking things off my to-do list, planning campus workshops, developing plans to celebrate faculty research and scholarship, enjoying opportunities to make good things happen on campus, but at the same time in the back of my mind sits the constant awareness of the looming Board of Trustees meeting where Important Decisions will be made about how we're going to continue digging ourselves out of our ongoing budgetary mess. 

Earlier in my career I was never really aware of when the Trustees were meeting or what they might be doing; if they made a decision that affected me, I assumed that someone would let me know. But ever since we dug ourselves into this budget apocalypse, every Trustees meeting feels like an existential crisis. Will they cut programs? Cancel positions? Impose further restrictions? Or will they announce some big new donation to fund an initiative that will save all our necks? 

I tell my students that liminal space is a place of possibility--we stand in the threshold of opportunity where anything can happen--but it's also a space of limitation because we can't fully engage with activities on either side when we're stuck in the doorway. But here I sit, uncomfortably aware that something is going to happen in the next couple of weeks, or maybe nothing will happen and we'll scrape along as best we can with the resources available. 

So things are good! Until they're not--and who knows when the door of opportunity might slam shut in our faces?

  

Would you get a root canal from a Muppet?

I was trying to tell my students what it felt like to get a root canal from an endodontist who looks just like Dr. Bunsen Honeydew but they said Who's Bunsen Honeydew, which made me want to throw in the towel right there and then because I'm clearly getting too old to communicate with these infants, but then one of them said Is he the Muppet in the lab with Beaker? and I breathed a sigh of relief, but by then I'd ventured pretty far from the point of the story, which is that I spent two hours this morning having my jaw and face stretched and immobilized so a bunch of sharp, whiny dental instruments could do horrible violent things to one of my teeth--a tooth that required attention from a specialist because the roots are curvy, much like the rest of me--and to multiply the usual horrors and indignities of dental care, the face of the man wielding those instruments looked just like Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, which made me want to either laugh or scream (because of Dr. Bunsen Honeydew's calamitous klutziness with tools in clips like this one) except I couldn't do either because I couldn't move my mouth, so that I had to grunt faintly when Dr. Not-Bunsen-Honeydew asked me repeatedly whether I was doing okay, and when I really needed a rest room break so as to avoid an embarrassing incident in his nice sanitary endodontal office, my attempt to say rest room caused the endodontist to respond, So you say you're Russian?, which I'm not, and even if I were Russian I doubt that I would feel the need to convey that information whilst having my rotten curvy tooth drilled by a guy who looks like Dr. Bunsen Honeydew.

But I made it to the rest room without incident and I survived my root canal and I taught my classes, despite feeling about 102 years old, and the novocaine had worn off by the time classes were over so now my primary goal in life is to hunt down some pain-killers and call it a day. A bizarre day, but at least the hard part is over.

Irony, sardony, Irene-y, unread

The visiting writer talks with her hands, squeezing an invisible ball as she describes her attempts to put pressure on language. I watch her, mesmerized, glad for an opportunity to sit at a desk like a student and listen for a bit.

But not too long, because those desks are uncomfortable. Even more uncomfortable was the temperature in the auditorium where the writer later gave a public reading. I had the foresight to take a blanket, but it didn't help much. Every day I experience the irony of constantly being urged to cut costs while working in buildings so excessively air-conditioned that we have to huddle under blankets so our lips don't turn blue.

Speaking of irony, why don't we follow Nella Larsen's example and adopt sardony? It shows up in Passing with a footnote claiming that Larsen was the first to use the word in print, but apparently it never caught on. I could dish out sardony every day of the week if there were any market for it.

My students discussed the first half of Passing on Wednesday, and at the end of class I asked them to predict what might happen next. Without fail, their predicted humiliation and doom for Clare Kendry. No one even mentioned Irene. I mean, how could anything significant happen to sweet little Irene? Surely she's just an objective observer of Clare's downfall! I'm eager to see how my students feel about Irene after reading the rest of the text.

I just hope they're actually reading it. Inside Higher Ed featured an article the other day asking "How Much Do Students Really Read?" It turns out, unsurprisingly, that many students prefer not to read their texts but instead watch videos or scan AI-generated summaries. One exception: English majors are more likely to read texts, some completing as much as 75 percent of assigned readings. I pity the English major who reads only 75 percent of Passing--or of Percival Everett's James, which we're finishing in my capstone class today, or Colson Whitehead's Nickel Boys from last semester. The revelation at the end shifts the meaning of everything that comes before. 

What came before that shivery reading by the visiting writer? A discussion of tattoos--namely, the dearth of same amongst English Department faculty. I shocked our students by telling them I have two tattoos but then I had to explain that they're just dots tattooed on my hips to guide the great big clunky medical machine that delivered precision rays of radiation to my innards 15 years ago. Another colleague admitted to having a small fraternity-related tattoo, but the rest of us are woefully unadorned. I proposed that we hold a student competition to design an appropriate tattoo for the entire English department, maybe some memorable words from a text, provided that anyone still knows how to read words (she said sardonically). Then instead of putting pressure on language, we could allow language to put pressure on us.

Read but not said

My capstone class will start discussing Percival Everett's James this afternoon, having finished with Huckleberry Finn last Friday. A few students are listening to the texts on audiobooks, so I asked them how the audiobooks handle the frequent use of the n-word. Apparently the narrator just says it, out loud, over and over again.

In class we're talking about the n-word and using the phrase the n-word but not saying the word out loud. In interviews about James, Percival Everett states that he chose to use the word in the novel because he didn't want to whitewash history or misrepresent the nineteenth-century vernacular, but while he uses the full word in the novel, he says the n-word in interviews. 

One student in my class tells about the time when her high-school English teacher introduced study of Huck Finn by going around the room and requiring each student to say the n-word out loud so they could get comfortable saying and hearing the word they could not avoid seeing on the page, but enough students (and parents) were uncomfortable with the exercise that the teacher backed off. 

Another student is student-teaching in a local high school and feels that trying to teach Huck Finn in today's high school environment would be more trouble than it's worth. I see her point, but nevertheless I jumped at the opportunity to teach Huck Finn alongside James. If nothing else, the portrayal of Jim in Huck Finn provides a valuable lesson on why it's important to empower diverse voices. Huck's voice is so charming and full of energy that it may distract readers from the stories he's eliding or ignoring altogether. James fills that void, providing a compelling counternarrative that sends us back to Twain with new insight, new questions.

But still we struggle with how to handle the n-word. In my class the word remains read but not said, which is an imperfect solution but at this point it may be the best way to introduce students to the incredible story of James.