Category: tPA 2

Charity

Jeff

Blowing in the Wind

I always feel guilty walking past the bell ringers outside the supermarket. My father is a generous guy though, and every Christmas he donates a substantial sum to the Salvation Army. I have no reason for the guilt, largely because I have no money.

But I had a dollar in my pocket when I walked past. I was thinking about my father, remembering the way he fondly talked about voting for FDR: “He didn’t live long after that, but I was glad I got the chance— he did a lot for the poor people in this country.” It was a strange little tangent for my mind to take, and as I looked across the parking lot I thought for a moment that I might leave the cart in the parking space. But then I thought, “what would dad do?” He’d put it in the right place, of course. So I braved the whizzing traffic and pushed it across.

On the trip back, a car stopped and started honking at me. I looked back, and the man behind the wheel was about the same age as my father. He was pointing frantically at the pavement. I looked down, and saw the dollar bill blowing in the wind. I felt rather silly chasing it; I felt like the baby on the cover of Nirvana’s Nevermind.

The next car in line stopped and asked: “Was that money blowing across the road?”

Yes, I said.

I really should have given it to the guy with the bell. It would have saved the traffic disruption. But I’ve had less sympathy for those guys around here. I found out last year that because so few people volunteer to be bell-ringers these days, most of them around here are paid to stand there and make shoppers feel guilty. The incident also reminded me about the difference between Arkansas and California. In California, I wouldn’t have had to chase the bit of green paper because no one probably would have mentioned it. They would have waited until I left and picked it up.

Teaching Writing

Jeff1 Comment

I love teaching writing

Besides generally goofing-off for a few days, I have managed to get a couple of things done. I uploaded more major updates to my research site, including a page dedicated to Archibald MacLeish providing some bibliographic information, more excerpts, and fleshing out his positions on the timeline.

Grading a bunch of papers (and wondering why one class always does better than the other) I found a bit in a reflective essay that makes it all worthwhile:

At times, the course became confusing as to whether it was teaching “Writing for Work,” “Poetry,” “Literature,” “Rhetoric” or “English.” However, I found the common denominator soon enough to make a general relationship between them.

Sometimes, as my Blake instructor was fond of saying, “confusion is the best response.”

My approach often seems chaotic to people, but if I dig into things deep enough I can usually ferret out enough of a connection to make things work. I do like to make things up as I go along; it’s just the way I am. But I don’t think that even my twisted brain can connect the other things I wanted to remark about in this hurried entry (grades are due soon).

Trashlog is expanding! One of my favorite sites on the web is now soliciting international submissions for The Global Trash Collection Project, providing even more trash for the Internet. An admirable pursuit, in my estimation.

I was also quite taken by Pascale’s pointer to an item of interest in the Washington Post. Interesting is one of my favorite words. I must type interesting about a hundred times any time I try to write something. Then, I’m faced with the task of editing it back out.

Of course it’s interesting, you doofus! Otherwise, why would you be writing about it?

Sophisticated

Jeff

Sophisticated

If all who are engaged in the profession of education were willing to state the facts instead of making greater promises than they can possibly fulfill, they would not be in such bad repute with the lay public. As it is, however, the teachers who do not scruple to vaunt their powers with utter disregard of the truth have created the impression that those who chose a life of careless indolence are better advised than those who devote themselves to serious study.

Isocrates, Against the Sophists

I went to a thesis defense yesterday. Kiriaki Asiatidou, a Greek woman from Athens who is both stunningly brilliant and stunningly beautiful, carefully laid out her development of a pedagogical strategy for teaching first year composition. I’ve had a few classes with her, starting with a Blake seminar nearly five years ago. She pointed out that Greece, past high school, rhetoric simply isn’t taught. There’s a fear of it most places. The fear that it just isn’t a serious subject at all. I write this because I want to remember her name (I’m terrible with names). She’s returning to Greece now, and most of the staff is going to miss her.

After hearing her defense, I really wish I had talked to her more while she was here. Our classroom strategies seem very close. Her thesis was built on Protagoras, Isocrates, and of course she had to give props to Cicero too. She called her approach a “New Sophistic Rhetoric.” I picked up a lot of ideas from her regarding using mediatory essays in the classroom. Another thing that I’m thinking of amplifying is the promotion of a more international point of view— forcing students to write about issues that do not relate directly to the United States or its interests— promoting the idea of international citizenship, rather than just awareness of our own spot of ground.

The intellectual value of the Sophists has fluctuated over time, and just the day before I had been thinking about the only word in common usage that has connections with “sophistry” that does not have a negative connotation: sophisticated. It got stuck in my head after listening to Firehose’s cover of “Sophisticated Bitch” by Public Enemy. I didn’t get around to looking into it into today. I had a feeling that the positive value of “sophistication” had to be a recent development. I was right. According to the OED:

  1. Mixed with some foreign substance; adulterated; not pure or genuine. [1607-1897]

    1. Altered from, deprived of, primitive simplicity or naturalness. Of a literary text: altered in the course of being copied or printed. [1603-1963]
    2. Of a person: free of naïvety, experienced, worldly-wise; subtle, discriminating, refined, cultured; aware of, versed in, the complexities of a subject or pursuit. Also transf. of a play, place, etc., that appeals to a sophisticated person. [1895-1971]
    3. Of equipment, techniques, theories, etc.: employing advanced or refined methods or concepts; highly developed or complicated. [1945-1979]
    1. Falsified in a greater or less degree; not plain, honest, or straightforward. [1672-1861]
    2. Of a printed book, containing alterations in content, binding, etc. which are intended to deceive. [1862-1952]

  4. Comb., as sophisticated-looking. [1925-]

Kiriaki is sophisticated in the finest sense of the word.

Making the Grade

Jeff1 Comment

Making the grade

I just finished the first round of grading and I’m amazed. So far, I’ve handed out about eight A’s. The attrition rate for classes this semester was abysmal, with nearly a 50 percent drop rate. For some reason, that doesn’t bother me. Most who managed to stick it out ended up significantly better as writers. I’m thrilled. Even the most trivial of topics were well argued and not inflated. I told them that falling short of the requested length was a more forgivable sin than bloating the paper with useless, boring, crap.

They actually listened. I’ll never get over that I suppose— talking to a room full of people that actually do listen to you and act based on what you say. Maybe it’s because I’m easily amused— or maybe it’s because life outside a classroom just isn’t like that most of the time. One of the reflective essays had a fascinating question in it:

“Why do you care about this stuff?”

The student who wrote it has had a complex life— eight years in the military, time in prison, conversion to Islam, and then back to school. He was fascinated with the way I confronted hard questions about racial and gender equality.

I deal with these issues not because I am promoting a political agenda in the classroom, but because the rhetoric surrounding these issues is so fascinating and strong. I find it useful to examine the basic assumptions (backing and warrants in Toulminian terms) which undergird political arguments. Examining the Declaration of Independence in particular is useful, in my opinion— both as an example of an enthymeme and for the things it leaves unsaid. It says that “all men are created equal” and yet avoids defining just what a “man” is. I suspect that no one really thinks about that much in high school, or in general— it says we have “unalienable rights” and yet it doesn’t say how those rights are apportioned— do women count? Not in 1776. Do people of color or Native Americans count? Not in 1776. I find it fascinating how Americans accept this document without wondering exactly what it meant. Now that’s effective rhetoric— it slips right past people, unnoticed, as a mythic declaration that every American assumes includes them. It doesn’t. After hundreds of years of struggle, the situation may be better— but the rhetoric is still hazy, and intentionally so. It’s more effective that way— if you don’t question.

The student’s question was a good one— why should I, as a person “automatically guaranteed entry into the white male patriarchy with all its attendant rights and privileges” (as one of my professor’s is fond of reminding me) care about things like gender and racial struggles? He really wanted to know if I started caring about this stuff because of school, or because of real life. The answer is real life, mostly. But it’s hard for me to separate the two. Right now (and hopefully for a long time to come) school is my real life. And I like it.

I like giving people the tools they need to fight for what they believe in— without guns, without fists, without hurting anyone. Yes, it can hurt to break down some treasured assumptions about what it means to be patriotic or a good citizen. But this is mental fight, and it needs to be raised to a higher level so that we won’t be embarrassed in the future by the hollow rhetoric of talking heads. I want to teach people how to take that junk apart and make better decisions. It isn’t about conveying politics. It’s about transmitting the tools needed to “not get fooled again.”

As long as some people are not free, none of us really are.

Archie’s Letters

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Archie’s Letters

I got distracted this evening looking at some letters by Archibald MacLeish. There’s a letter from February 1930 that I suspect must have been written to Hemingway while he was residing in Piggott, Arkansas:

Dear Pappy:

Thanks for the warning about the mosquitos. Its a damn shame. I had wanted Ada to be near you and Pauline. But I can still take advantage of her father’s generous offer to put her up at Daytona and she’ll have the sun there if she doesn’t have anything else.

Met Dotty Parker Saturday night and think she’s swell. I have always been afraid of her because I thought she was the kind who would be affectionate to you with her right hand and murder you with her left. But she was so fine in talking about the Murphys and you and all her friends and so damn wise and intelligent about people that she took me in about eight minutes. She may be serving me up cold at the minute for all I know but I doubt it and if she is it doesn’t matter anyway . . .

The mosquito is the Arkansas state bird, and Hemingway spent a lot of time shuttling between here and Florida from 1929-32. Nice to hear that “Dotty” Parker is swell too. But that’s not really what I was up to here. I wanted to note a couple of MacLeish’s thoughts on Conquistador for Loren, in case he doesn’t have the letters lying about. In a letter to Robert Linscott in October of 1931, he was stinging over the failure of an earlier book, New Found Land to sell:

. . . I can’t help feeling that had New Found Land appeared in a regular edition and had been pushed it would have sold extremely well. What reviews I saw were favorable & the book was a book of short poems. As a matter of fact, if Hart Crane is not misleading me, the Bridge sold in the same year very very much better. Comparisons are ridiculous but what else is there in the world?

. . . After all, books of verse have been advertised in America— have been pushed. You know & God (if it isn’t an anti-climax) that I loathe blurbs & have no desire to see my name like Edna Millays with “Immortal Poetry” over it. But there are things that a publisher can decently do for a book which a poet can’t do— unless the poet is Amy Lowell & as rich as Amy & as gifted in self-publicizing. And those things H.M. [Houghton Mifflin] have never done for my books. Because you lose money on a book of verse anyway, you will say. But isn’t that a vicious circle?

But this is futile. I certainly can’t, & don’t wish to teach H.M. their business. But I have worked on Conquistador for many years. I believe it is going to be a really good poem— but certainly not a popular one. And I want to see it well treated by a publisher— not just issued with an item in trade paper & allowed to sell itself if it can. . . .

Mentions of Conquistador appear for years before this— MacLeish wrote everyone he knew asking if anyone else had ever done a long poem on the topic. He wanted it to be original. Evidently, Pound criticized it severely (but in good spirits). There’s more to be quoted from there, if I get the time. My favorite phrase about Pound from the letters was: “Pound is a unicorn who turns into an ass every time you look at him too closely.” I was curious about how MacLeish thought of the poem, because it is not nearly as “accessible” as most of his poems. I found the answer in a letter written to his mother, on the occasion of the death of John Hillard— a meditation on death written in February of 1930 which quotes approximately the opening line of Conquistador:

What I must do is step aside into the quiet & think. By thinking one begins to see. It is strange. Only by ceasing to see can I see. Myself I do not love but unless I behold myself once in these windows. I am nothing & never lived & the roar of the wheels will roll over me. Over us all. Over us all. And all that was young & lovely in the world. I am not afraid of death. But I pity it. I pity its silence. I sat for a long time in the vault of poor Harry Crosby. He had shot himself. He lay on a narrow couch under a dark red cloth. He had made a great noise with his death. But already I could hardly see his face. I had to turn back to see him.

I am hurting you with these words. Forgive me. Believe me. I am not what you think. I am an evil person. I take no happiness in anything on earth but the sonorous sounds of certain words. It is a very wrong thing. Poetry is not always in me & sometimes coming out. I go to it as a man goes to what he loves & is ashamed of. I go to it out of my life. I come back ashamed. You do not understand. Do not try to. “How do the winds follow unfortune”— I write that & my heart is smooth. What at all have I written? Well, I am a poet. I do not describe myself by this word. I do not speak it. No one speaks it to me. But I am that thing. And it is agony. It is not wisdom like a quiet light in the brain, nor wisdom in the ankles of the body. It is no wisdom. It is thirst. Only with this wine— And only I can make this liquor. Out of what? Out of— Oh be still, be still. I do not write letters such as this. I am not to speak so. Never answer it.

I once said things much like this when I was working fervently as a photographer. I never felt like it was a good thing either. It just was.

PA Adrift

Jeff3 Comments

PA Adrift

Eyes Adrift on Friday night was about what I expected. I was thrilled, but I suspect the majority of the crowd were rather disappointed. Eyes Adrift was not Nirvana, Meat Puppets, or Sublime. They were much closer to the spirit of bands that were traveling around before the pre-packaged punk in the wake of Nirvana started filtering onto the air waves. The show had a lot in common with that period of time in the late 80s when people actually played music because they liked it, instead of as a stepping-stone to being a corporate lackey.

As a fervent indie band supporter of the late 80s/early 90s, what I mean by saying that the show had a lot in common with that time is that it was fucked-up. The small venue quickly filled up with the all-ages crowd of grunge wannabees, with their knit caps and flannel. Laguardia (the Philadelphia one) took the stage and nauseated me with the sort of whiney college-band crooning that drove me from the scene way back when. But they got better. When they weren’t trying to be Wilco, they were actually pretty good. It was the keyboards that got me most of all. The natural sound of a keyboard is a drone. I don’t go to a club to be droned to death— I like rock, not atmosphere. Mercifully, after droning a bit, they picked up guitars. The next tunes were reminiscent of the paisley underground crowd, Rain Parade in particular. It was a cool tone, and fair tunes. I just tired of the self-involved nasal whine that never seems to go out of fashion. They were just on the loud side of what the house PA could handle, but the sound was good overall.

When Eyes Adrift came on stage, it all went to hell. They were much quieter, and the guitar was nearly non-existent. Curt Kirkwood couldn’t hear himself either, and the drums sounded like beating on polyethylene tubs. They stopped partway through the first song to get the guitar working, then soldiered on without much ado. It took until halfway through the set before the sound was passable. But the tunes were strong, and the desire to play them was stronger. Once I could hear him, Kirkwood’s guitar playing seemed as good or better than ever. Novoselic was his usual dry self, though he did loosen up before the end with some of his signature clowning. It was punk rock. I don’t think the crowd was ready for that. I mean, it was sloppy, heartfelt, touching, and not factory-fresh perfect crunching. I had a great time. The crowd was cool and distant, until the last Grateful Dead style guitar freakout. They loved it. I could have survived without it.

Still, it was a great break from the plastic music world of today, with its strings and horns and drones and whines. It was a good set of tunes, played under the worst of circumstances without complaint. I don’t know what happened. The sound guy at this venue is usually great, but something got screwed. Laguardia got a better go of it, and it makes me sad that there was an opening band at all. Laguardia fit with “today’s sounds” and Eyes Adrift were completely out of step with the market trend. That’s why I loved them. I don’t care for much of what I’ve heard in the last few years, because it all sounds the same. Eyes Adrift don’t sound the same as their previous bands, or the current crop. While I’m not going back to the club to pick up my jaw from the floor —I brought it home with me intact— I did have a good time, fuck-ups and all. It seemed more like real music that way.

Representing Crisis

Jeff

Representing Crisis

A beta version of the website collating my research is now up and accessible. It is now more friendly to lower bandwidth users, and more extensively linked. Testing the earlier version revealed something I had long suspected: typical users are much smarter than Jacob Nielson gives them credit for. They had no difficulty using the navigation, and inspired me to make more intra-page navigation available.

This is just the first step toward a more logical arrangement for the material that I’m gathering. I realize it is difficult for even long-time readers of my blog to figure out how the pieces I occasionally post fit together. Eventually, I will link from the timeline and other indexes that I will be adding to the blog entries. Blogging my research has been great, but it is very difficult to set up logical categories when you have no idea where things fall, or what the categories are when you find pieces to the puzzle.

The major reason for doing things this way is because some of the figures I’m researching are well represented on the web— such as Lewis Hine, who was the first sub-page added. Right now, it mainly collects the most useful links I’ve found. I want to add a more detailed bibliography to print articles later. Other figures, like Edwin Rosskam, have little or no presence on the web, a situation I hope to remedy. I want to place representative samples from his books online. There is a lot of work to be done, and by doing it this way I’m getting a bigger sense of how these things are related to each other. This will help my writing process.

The address to the front page will remain constant as material is added, so linking to it is fine now. Right now, it covers a lot of material in a shallow way. The depth will come later. I mainly wanted to get my approach and navigation issues sorted out. Suggestions for additions, or any error reports are welcome. This is a major step for me, after six months or more of gathering stuff— some items probably won’t make sense to everyone, because they are part of my larger thesis though not specifically representational in nature. It was nice to step back for a second, and gather them together.

The pages validate, and are designed for at least 1024×768. I haven’t tested on a variety of browsers yet. I did resort to tables for positioning so I hope it won’t present a problem for the usual suspects. I’ve only checked it with Mozilla and IE 6.