Lemonade, Anyone?

My shrink told a story today about how he lost his keys (it was as riveting as it sounds). He said he was so worried about finding them that he was joyful when he did, & embraced that joy. I said, if it were me, I would have preferred not to have lost my keys in the first place. But still, nerdy student that I am, I took in the lesson, and found the silver lining in my cloud of pissed-offedness today.

Our seniors have to write a research paper on Hamlet every year. Our means of preventing plagiarism is to do the research for the kids; we give them a choice of a few articles to use for the "research," & I have tried to take them through the process step-by-step. I naively booked computer room sessions during class time to help with this, but by the time the ancient machines in there booted up, I had to tell the kids to start shutting down.

Whenever I give an out-of-class writing assignment, I get plagiarists. It never fucking fails. Even though I catch a few every year, & you would think there would be ample word-of-mouth on this, some hotshot always thinks they can get away with it. And they're not even smart about it. Drives me crazy.

Mind you, this assignment was due over two weeks ago & I'm only just now getting around to marking them. I'm aware that this is a total rationalization, but the very real plagiarism fear is one of the causes of my procrastination. I just don't want to deal with it.

So I haven't even marked 10 papers when I come across this year's Darwin Award: a lovely girl who has been sucking up to me all term. She tends to be absent at least once or twice a week, and - shocker - missed all of those computer lab sessions. She also complained regularly that she didn't have a computer at home.

Well, apparently she got one, because she handed in a paper - late, mind you - entirely cobbled of cut-and-pasted student essays & book notes available online. She didn't even make it all one uniform font. She didn't even make any attempt to disguise her method by, say, using a thesaurus or something. I was so furious I went about highlighting each copied section in a different color, writing in the URLs of all the links I found to her sources, etc. Then I got angry at all the time I wasted doing that, feeling lousy about something that was bound to happen anyway, seething with righteous anger & making mental notes about all the things I wanted to say to this girl when I have to sit down with her & her guidance counselor & possibly parent(s).

So how did the key story help me deal with this? It helped me realize that before that irritating situation stopped me in my tracks, I had read at least half a dozen original student papers. Only one or two were actually good, but even the ones that weren't so well-written responded appropriately; I had asked the students to form their own ideas about what they'd read, and they came through. As much as I was glad for them that they rose to that occasion, I'll admit my pleasure was mostly derived from the gratification of feeling that I had actually taught them something: that they had a good journey through a book, with my help.

Before I ever saw the plagiarist's paper, I had written this to post:

One of my students wrote a not-very-good paper on Hamlet, but I found this last part adorable. Is that condescending of me? Here it is:

"Hamlet is an interesting character to me. He's quiet, just like me. He's mysterious, just like me. He's also smart. He's crazy, like literary [sic]. He pretended to be crazy in the book but I think he is crazy thru out. He killed people, always thinking to kill himself, and acting crazy around everyone. But throughout all that, I still admire him and his courage to avenge his father's death. He reminds me of Simba from the Lion King.

"I would recommend this to everyone who is interested in Shakespeare and his writing. It is a good book and it will keep you interested if you know what they are saying."

So... yeah. Silver lining and all that. Yin & yang. It is what it is. It helps to remind myself that the ones who make me feel like I'm wasting my time are not the only ones there.

I gotta weigh in on this Huck Finn fiasco

Not that I have time to be doing this, but come on! I'm not even really weighing in; all I want to do is highlight some of the more insightful bits of the backlash. How anyone can think for a second this is a good idea is a profound mystery to me.

Let's start with this editorial from the Washington Post. I actually agree that she overdoes it with the analogies, but I do think it's clever as well as necessary. Somebody has to be pointing this stuff out. I also read through many of the comments, most of which are intelligent; only one is idiotic enough to say that this new version should exist. The best comment I saw was from someone called gilbertbp:

"Another point: Twain HATED slavery. A major point of the book (despite Twain's preface that anyone trying to find a moral in it would be shot) was that Jim, although an uneducated slave, is noble, even heroic. And Huck, even though he's been taught that blacks are inferior, that it is fitting and proper to hold them as slaves, recognizes Jim's nobility, his heroism, his essential humanity. He also recognizes that the proper white society that is trying to educate him at the beginning of the book, is dishonest and corrupt. And having learned those lessons, at the end of the book, he leaves civilization for "the Territory."

Expunging "the 'n' word" from "Huckleberry Finn" dilutes the power of the book. It's a pity Twain is not alive today (he died 100 years ago this year) to confront his critics, because he'd find just the right way to vivisect these idiots with his pen. They'd wish they'd never HEARD of "Huckleberry Finn," because the whole country would be convulsed with laughter as he subjected these stupendous asses to the ridicule they so richly deserve."

One commenter mentioned that she is a writer and English teacher who uses Huck Finn in class. She included a link to her blog post about it. In my opinion, her analogy is the best of all:

"And honestly, if they do this, where do the revisionists stop in their desire to Disney-fy history? Will The Diary of Anne Frank end with a passage saying that the Germans took all the Jews to a farm upstate somewhere so they could run around and have more space...?"

She ends up over-explaining that comparison (she is a teacher, duh), but it cracked me up anyway.

Neil Gaiman tweeted this today: "It's public domain, so you can make Huck a Klingon if you want, but it's not Mark Twain's book." I don't follow @neilhimself, but I found that tweet because I do follow @realjohngreen:

"Inspired by @neilhimself, I turned a paragraph of Huckleberry Finn into a tale of Klingon oppression: http://bit.ly/gAeCsa"

FOLLOW THAT LINK, PEOPLE! It goes to John Green's Reddit post of said paragraph, in which the dreaded "N-word" is replaced with "Klingon." What makes it especially worthwhile is Green's own comments:

"The astonishing thing is that even when you turn it into a tale of Klingon oppression, it is IMMEDIATELY CLEAR to ANYONE who can read that Twain is ridiculing a deformed moral conscience that believes the government has the right to take away people's freedom, and further ridiculing the idea that a drunk belligerent white man is more qualified to vote than a black man.

I mean, my eleven-month-old son craps his pants at least twice a day, and even he has the critical reading capacity to understand what Huck Finn is about."

And on and on and on. Everything I want to say is being said, which I guess should make me hopeful. To those who apparently have said this new edition is good because it will allow teachers to expose students to a great novel, I say, "IT'S NOT THE NOVEL! THAT'S NOT HOW THE NOVEL IS WRITTEN!" (I should point out that words like "Injun" and "half-breed" have also been supposedly expunged from this edition). My hope is that the backlash will be so overwhelming that teachers will resurrect the original version and expose their students to THAT.

I hate to post a Mark Twain quote from the internet when I don't know the source offhand; I fear I may be spreading mis-information, since I know from direct experience that people have attributed quotations to Mark Twain that there's no way he ever said. But I believe he was capable of this one:

“Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.”

I'm out.

Nightmare

In the 18 years I've been teaching, I've pretty much started off every year with an anxiety dream in which my teeth crumble in my mouth. It was belated this year; finally showed up last night. With a twist.

I was the passenger in a car that my new dentist was driving. (Side note: I have an appointment for some serious dental work on Monday. Coincidence?) So I tell him my teeth are falling out, which is true, except more teeth than I actually have are falling out & new ones just pop in & fall out & so on. He's being very dismissive of my complaints, so I start spitting my teeth at him. He goes, "Okay, Mannequin Charlie's driving!" & he turns into a mannequin that looks like the robot from The Peter Serafinowicz Show, goes limp, drives the car off the highway ramp we're on & crashes it. Now I'm in this crashed car seeing my eyes in the rearview mirror & yelling at myself, "You're dreaming! Wake up! You remember Waking Life; look at the clock!" So I look at the car clock, & to be honest I can't see any numbers there, but to be a smartass I tell myself, "It says 10:61; what's your point?" I say, "No, no, LOOK AT YOUR CLOCK" & I realize I mean the clock in my bedroom. So I open my eyes & see my bedroom clock. That's how I woke up.

Discuss.

My Reaction to JG & DFW

If you’ve been a John Green fan for any length of time, you’ve probably noticed his periodic invocation of David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech for Kenyon College from 2005. He recently tweeted it again. It’s been bugging me for quite some time & it’s taken me awhile to write up my thoughts on it.
I know that John Green is a Christian, & I know he doesn’t talk much about it publicly, & he lets the DFW speech speak for him on the matter. I guess my real issue is with DFW, who can no longer defend himself. I’ll admit I’m fascinated to know more about JG’s beliefs, but I totally respect his right to keep them to himself.
In case anyone reading this is unaware, I am a decided atheist. I realized I didn’t believe in God when I was 12 years old, but I absolutely didn’t have the guts not to go through with my confirmation. As awesome & wonderful as my Catholic high school education was, the religious instruction only deepened my agnosticism, which is what I called it until well into my twenties when I recognized it as what it was and is: atheism. There, I said it.
Anyway, I take issue with the DFW speech. The idea that worshipping a “higher power” will save you from the miseries of worshipping superficial things doesn’t ring true to me. One excellent (though lengthy; I cut it as much as I could) example is from (*fangirl alert*) James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, in Chapter 4 when Stephen has confessed his sins and is trying to be as pure & devout as he can be.

His life seemed to have drawn near to eternity; every thought, word, and deed, every instance of consciousness could be made to revibrate radiantly in heaven; and at times his sense of such immediate repercussion was so lively that he seemed to feel his soul in devotion pressing like fingers the keyboard of a great cash register and to see the amount of his purchase start forth immediately in heaven, not as a number but as a frail column of incense or as a slender flower.
...
To merge his life in the common tide of other lives was harder for him than any fasting or prayer and it was his constant failure to do this to his own satisfaction which caused in his soul at last a sensation of spiritual dryness together with a growth of doubts and scruples.
...
When he had eluded the flood of temptation many times in this way he grew troubled and wondered whether the grace which he had refused to lose was not being filched from him little by little. The clear certitude of his own immunity grew dim and to it succeeded a vague fear that his soul had really fallen unawares. It was with difficulty that he won back his old consciousness of his state of grace by telling himself that he had prayed to God at every temptation and that the grace which he had prayed for must have been given to him inasmuch as God was obliged to give it.
...
Often when he had confessed his doubts and scruples--he was bidden by his confessor to name some sin of his past life before absolution was given him. He named it with humility and shame and repented of it once more. It humiliated and shamed him to think that he would never be freed from it wholly, however holily he might live or whatever virtues or perfections he might attain. A restless feeling of guilt would always be present with him: he would confess and repent and be absolved, confess and repent again and be absolved again, fruitlessly. Perhaps that first hasty confession wrung from him by the fear of hell had not been good? Perhaps, concerned only for his imminent doom, he had not had sincere sorrow for his sin? But the surest sign that his confession had been good and that he had had sincere sorrow for his sin was, he knew, the amendment of his life.
--I have amended my life, have I not? he asked himself.

Compare DFW:
Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.

Doesn’t sound very different from Stephen’s experience worshipping God, does it?
The bottom line about the DFW speech is that it smacks of Pascal’s wager to me. “You have nothing to lose by believing in God, & everything to lose if you don’t believe & God’s real, so take the mercenary approach.” CHOOSING to believe is not the same thing as BELIEVING and KNOWING IN YOUR HEART. I’m not a DFW fan (I have Infinite Jest but haven’t tackled it yet), but I am a John Green fan, & while it doesn’t bother me that he believes in God, it does bother me that someone so intelligent & dedicated to truth & awesomeness would champion an idea that sounds so phony to me. Maybe I’ve misinterpreted something.
Always a possibility.

Last Bike Ride of the Summer

Pics are up on my fb page (& Tony's). This is just some random crap from this weekend's ride I feel the need to remember:

- We always see plenty of people fishing, but this time lots were crabbing as well. At LSP we saw a man chasing his son around with a crab while the kid screamed. Then he tossed it back in the water.

- Just off Bayonne Park, the bike path to nowhere that Tony mentioned.

- In an especially crappy section of Jersey City, two groups of people screaming at each other outside a live poultry place. Rode through there pretty fast.

- Under an overpass in the same 'hood, a visual pun: someone left a metal fork in the road.

- Shop called "Gentlemens Apparel" boasting boxer shorts, handkerchiefs, & "kung fu collectibles." Whatever those are.

- The very different perspectives of NYC available. The area between the Williamsburg Bank building & the bridges seemed huge, but still nothing compared to the distance between Whitehall St & the Empire State. It was also hard to tell the NYC buildings from those in Jersey. I guess their proximity made them seem comparable in size!

- Little sailboats at the edge of LSP before the Waterfront Walkway begins

- Looking out across the bay & catching the SI Ferry midway through its ride.

- The insanity of Pont Liberte: the canals between the condos, the golf course, swimming pools, strip mall, the sanitized-for-your-protection feel of it all, the snobbery of the jogging dude we asked about the walkway. Then to realize we were mere blocks away from the "live poultry" neighborhood. Even the path you have to drive into the place was run-down & creepy looking.

Bloomsday Post #3 (from Nicole Spodek)

My little Nicole is flying the coop - she starts Sarah Lawrence in the fall! Wish her luck and read the post that made me so very happy when I found it in my inbox this morning: a response to "unique perspectives on first-time reads of the novel" (Ulysses, duh).

I was fifteen when I first opened Ulysses. I would never have even dared touch the thing if it weren’t for a dedicated, hopeful, determined, and goddamn out-of-her-mind English teacher asking me to do so. She had devised a plan, you see. She suggested that we start a reading group in order to conquer the massive pile of pages before the end of the school year. We’d meet once a week, read aloud at our leisure, and ultimately try to finish the book while gaining some slight understanding of what was going on. We’d have to recruit people, of course, and this took perseverance.

Flyers were posted, as we declared its greatness; they must have scared those puny high schoolers away, as all of our members ended up in the group by word of mouth. Every Wednesday, after my last class, I would enter the musty library, Ulysses in hand (after it had been lugged around for six hours), waiting for the highlight of my week. One friend once asked where I went every Wednesday after school and when I told him that I was headed to my “orgy in the library,” he, naturally, followed me. He ended up staying with us for the rest of the year and became an indispensable member of our Ulysses Reading Group, or URG.

Being a member of URG was probably the only useful experience of my four years at high school. I was actually challenging myself by trying to interpret the mess of words and ideas that is Ulysses. Joyce was my toughest teacher, and reading Ulysses was the most intense assignment I had ever received. Sure, I didn’t understand 85.6 percent of what was going on, but reading in such a large group made everything worthwhile. We made sense of the chapters and understood the significance of their titles; we traced the steps of Bloom and Stephen; we interpreted the various meanings of things as silly as colors. But most of all, we had fun. I don’t think Joyce had intended us to laugh as much as we did, but we found humor littered throughout. Irish slang gave us the most acute cases of The Giggles. The phrase “sturzgeburt on the haha” was like nothing I’d ever laughed at before. We had our intense conversations too. Religion talks were rampant – we’d sometimes stay at the school until 6 p.m. just trying to get our points across. It was crazy, nonsensical, outlandish, and over-the-top. But, in the end, we accomplished what we had set out to do. We finished Ulysses before the year ended, giving us time to celebrate once Bloomsday rolled around. And so, two years after my completion of Ulysses, I feel nostalgic. I will forever cherish the memories from my URG days. I couldn’t have asked for a better introduction to Ulysses. Because that’s all it was: an introduction. I don’t think you’re expected to understand it until your eleventh reading.

*that "dedicated, hopeful, determined, and goddamn out-of-her-mind English teacher" was me!

Bloomsday 2010 post #2

I totally forgot to write about this, but one day back in April, Milton came up to me and said "Mrkgnao!" Even my cat quotes Joyce!