Yes, I did keep blogging all summer, just not at this blog. Also, I think I'm going to try a new thing for my students this term: Twitter. I've fallen in love with it. You can find & follow me @jelindberg.
If you are continuing your English track with me this fall, I look forward to it. If you are moving on, I wish you the best. If you know someone who is signed up for one of my classes, tell them everything everything everything they need to know. If you got tired of me and don't really wish to see me ever again, then you probably aren't the one reading this, but I still wish you luck in the future.
I'd love to catch up and chat with you. Also, I mean it when I say you can always come to me for help. I'll be in the same lonely office on the third floor in Cville this term. I have all the same contact info. I'm here if you need me. (OR! You could tweet!)
This Tuesday, April 24, at 8:00 p.m. at The Music Room in downtown Atlanta. I'm reading, along with two others, and maybe some open mic at the end. It's a bar/restaurant atmosphere.
I advise you to review those poetry terms for tomorrow. It would be especially helpful to know how to apply them to an actual poem--maybe even one we've discussed in class. How's that for easy peasy pudding and pie?
When I was a little girl I spent a significant amount of
time with my grandparents in Warner Robins, Georgia—a flat, uninteresting place
populated by Air Force employees at the local base, fire ants the size of your
pinky toe, and waves of tiny black gnats. I love my grandfather, and he loved
me. Sometimes, when left alone in the yard or the basement for hours while the
grown-ups napped in the stifling midday heat, I tended to work myself into some
daydream that resulted in rather a mess of red clay and rivulets of water
through the yard or pulled out scraps of old clothes and pictures from the
trunks molding in the basement. My grandfather would take out his cigar to
confront me, and when I tried to account for my behavior (often truly mystified,
not remembering exactly how all of that mess came to be while I was wrapped up
in the story in my head), he would snap at me: “Quit acting smart, girl.” It is
not something he ever said to my brother.
As an adult, and years after his death, I remember thinking
this was an odd phrase even as a six-year-old. What does that mean, to act smart? And why should one stop? Does
it mean that you aren’t smart, if
someone says you are acting smart? Do
you only have the ability to act, but not the real intelligence? And if you are
acting smart, how do you come to be smart?
This memory resurfaces for me
in light of our recent (sometimes intense, thank you 3:30!) discussions about
women’s history and treatment in the media. When we declare March Women’s
History Month and spend a few hours thinking and talking about how, as Margaret
Cho put it, “the media treats women like shit,” are we acting smart?
Some of you seem to think so. Some of you seem to think that
by addressing the issue, we are creating the issue. This is the ‘speak no evil’
approach to history that declares there is only a problem if we call it a
problem. But it is a problem, and
part of the problem stems from not only how the media treats women, but how we
allow ourselves to be treated. One of the clips read at the event in the
library comes from A
Vindication on the Rights of Women, by Mary
Wollstonecraft, in 1792, where she rather sarcastically writes, “My own sex, I
hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of
flattering their FASCINATING graces, and viewing them as if they were in a
state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.”
When women act scatterbrained or ditzy
or bored with education or claim we are too small-minded to “get it,” whatever “it”
is, we are playing directly into that pervasive, obviously age-old stereotype
that gives everyone, male and female, permission to treat women as “perpetual
children.” This leads directly to laws, statues, and policies that result in a
further eroding of our own power to make our own decisions about our own bodies,
our lives, our families, our futures, our roles, our identities. We are too
weak and feeble-minded to figure this out for ourselves, we say to the (mostly
male) politicians. You guys do it for us.
And in this way, I agree with my grandfather. Quit acting smart. You are smart. Be it.
Here we are on Day 2 of Spring Break, and I'm already thinking of you again. I successfully kept myself from working yesterday by watching MI-5 on Netflix and drinking red wine making cupcakes. Today, I'm antsy. I find myself so completely immersed in planning for our days together, reading your own blogs and papers, and figuring out ways to make life in 1101 and 1102 more interesting for both of us that an abrupt hiatus like Spring Break seems to serve as a fitful interruption more than a much-needed rest.
It's been good so far between us, yes? I think yes. And yet...and yet...I must confess, I'm bothered by a few trends. Shall we discuss?
1) To the student who says: "Oh, we were supposed to read that? Oh, yeah, I didn't read it."
Hypothetically, what would happen if you turned in a paper, and I said "Oh, I was supposed to grade that? Oh, yeah, I didn't grade that."
2) To the student who says: "But it's soooo loooonng!"
Believe me, the ten pages of Pulitzer Prize winning, classic, captivating fiction you have the opportunity to read as a member of a first world country where you have the chance to come to an air conditioned room and sit for 75 minutes while people discuss literature and the arts rather than having to forge in the desert for food and water while rebel armies are shooting at you is not a chore. It's a gift. Read it and say thank you.
3) To the student who says: "This is booorring."
It's a scientific fact that people who say this are, indeed, themselves, boring. Boredom is a sign of a lack of imagination. Aren't you just announcing your own mental laziness to the rest of the class? When I hear someone say "this is boring,' (even if that someone is my own child, sprung from my own cells) I think "oh, here's someone who is caught in the throes of utter mediocrity. I will now stop listening to this person, because he/she has absolutely nothing interesting or worthwhile to contribute to this discussion."
4) To the student who says: "........" [crickets]
I know you well enough now to know at least three brilliant thoughts circle around in your brain while you sit there on the third row, not saying a word. Everything you write is astute, clever, and interesting. When you talk to me separately, you are funny and you are always right about your ideas. Please, for the love of all that is academic, TALK.
5) To the student who snores:
I don't lecture in your bedroom. Don't sleep in my classroom.
6) To the student who shows up so stoned that the rest of us crave Doritos:
Dude, I don't know whether to be flattered that even though you clearly have other priorities, you still show up for my class; or, insulted because you think this is so easy that you can show up half-baked and still manage to pass. Actually, who am I kidding. We both know you aren't going to pass.
And, 7) To the students who read, show up sober, and talk:
You guys are awesome. I've loved meeting you, and I look forward to another eight weeks.
Poor last five students who won't get your papers graded tonight. For the rest of you--grades are on Vista! Overall, excellent job. The average for all four sections of 1102 comes out to a 82. Not bad. I'll return all of these next week. Enjoy your weekend!
65/75. I'll finish tonight. Grades will be posted to Vista before I go to bed. I SWEAR IT. This has been a marathon day, but I've learned some crazy/wild/wonderful tidbits from your papers, 1102.
"Did you know that Willie lives in Hawaii in a complex with Woody Harrelson and Owen Wilson?" The blue glow of her pet device lit her face in the back seat as I glanced at her in the rearview mirror. She sat next to my older boy, Anderson, who was steadfastly looking out the window, thinking his teen thoughts, until she said this.
"Wha--?" he turned to her and sat up.
I was skeptical. "Are you on Wikipedia with that thing?"
"It says right here," she continued, sensing that she finally had both boys' attention. "Willie Nelson, Woody Harrelson, and Owen Wilson?!" asked the younger boy, Noah, clearly imagining some kind of Zombieland/Hangover playland.
"All they need is Bill Murray," I added. And then, "we're here."
Willie Nelson had played the Forum in Rome once before, and we missed it. I wasn't going to miss this one, even if it meant putting aside an electronic stack of research papers, essays, blogs, and showing up to my faculty meeting on Friday morning looking like a Hawaiian zombie from Willie's complex.
My love for Willie descends down my mother's line back to my grandfather, Colonel P. C. Smith. On the day the man retired, when I was about ten or so, he left for a few hours in the middle of the day and came back in a brand new white Ford truck. His wife, my gracious and dignified grandmother, responded as she often did to his unpredictable behavior. She said "Why, Percy—what in the world?" Not challenging him, mind you, but gently and obviously questioning his choices in life.
He said, "Well. Lela. I'm retired now. Retired people drive trucks. So I bought myself one."
He had gone up to the nearest dealer in their town of Warner Robins, Georgia, picked one off the lot, and paid cash for it.
Willie was truck music. When Percy drove up to the Piggly Wiggly to pick up hamburger meat for dinner or ran a letter up to the post office, I would clamor up into the cold, blue vinyl bench seat and carefully strap myself in. Percy drove slowly—not like old person annoying slow—but like a man who had finished all of the hurrying he had to do in his life and didn't feel particularly rushed to get to the end of anything. We usually listened to Willie:
Get your coat, and grab your hat. Leave your worries, on the doorstep. Life can be so sweet On the sunny side of the street.
I know my mom understood the connection to Willie and why it felt important to go see him in Rome on Thursday night, but the kids clearly did not get it. They reduced the average age of the Forum crowd by about forty years; in fact, we did witness groupies on the front row of the place waving their canes in the air during "Whiskey River." While Willie ran through the old standards with a sense of duty, skipping words, dropping syllables, the boys tried to find a place in row to angle their long legs and started punching away on their devices. They tuned out. I questioned my parental choices (something I do more often than I like to admit) and wondered if I should have left them at home instead of dragging them out on a school night to a geriatric concert with an arthritic crowd.
Then Willie started in on a few new songs. He mentioned he had recently had surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome, and the experience generated a new song. Anderson glanced up from his iPhone as Willie struck the first chord and started singing in his clear, strong, familiar voice:
Too many pain pills, too much pot Trying to be something that I'm not I ain't superman.
Anderson chuckled and nudged Noah, who sat up and started watching the man on stage. Husband and I exchanged glances, communicating in the silent way of married people. My look said, "Hurray! They are liking it!" His look said, "They are enjoying an old man sing about his drug lifestyle. What have we wrought." He really is the better parent.
Willie finished his set with "Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die," a song that fits a man who was once caught getting stoned on the roof of Jimmy Carter's White House. He still sounds like Willie, and I still love him for his independent nature and his desire to please no one as much as himself, even if I did wish he'd give up his illegal habits. Plus, when I hear his voice, I still see the rows of peach trees in Houston County, Georgia, lined up like teeth in a comb, flicking by one by one as we mosey past in Percy's white truck.
This blog post and page are beautiful. Love it. Also partial to the subject matter because I worked in Macon as a cocktail waitress for two summers many moons ago. Ms. Lindberg: slingin' drinks and smiling pretty for the tips. It was a wild, wild time--thanks for the nostalgic moment, Brandon!
The radio show Marketplace from American Public Media, a show focused on economic issues, is doing a year-long investigative piece on how we are feeding the world. In conjunction with that radio series, their website has some cool tools, including this:
Robin!!: Mel's Great Escape: I am 32 years old and it hit me the other day that I've never had to deal with the loss of someone I love. It sounds hard to believe, and ye...
Have you heard of it? News out today claims that Burger King, Taco Bell, and McDonald's have all agreed to abandon the practice of grinding up the leftover bits of bone and gristle, dousing it with ammonia, adding some dyes and other bits, and then using it as "filler" in their beef.
