My Beautiful Wickedness

I’ve been teaching five days a week (error in scheduling has me on campus pretty much all the time). I taught the intensive methods course (known colloquially as ‘boot camp’) and got to know all the first-year students pretty well. That has been the enjoyable part. The not-so enjoyable part has been grading 3 sections worth of weekly tests, teaching the early months of writing-intensive courses (when the writing skills have not yet picked up), and dealing with the students who are under-motivated. My solution is to focus on those who want to learn and go after the lost lambs but let the sullen and hostile fend for themselves. They have a choice to make — they will either get with the program or they will find somewhere else to study or they will persist in imagining themselves the victim of a hostage crisis of their own making, but I refuse to play the “you are my oppressor” game.

Note to sulky students: If you truly feel oppressed, you need to find a different place to be and something else to do. No hard feelings, kid, but it’s not my job to make you comfortable at every moment. I’m here to present material and challenge you and you then choose to learn or to ignore, to rise to the challenge or to go play beer pong or whatall. Most of your peers are trying their asses off while you’re asleep in my class, so I think it’s you and not me.

I’ve been working on an undergrad research journal and so that’s been good. The papers submitted vary in their readiness for print, but it’s kind of exciting to be working with a more progressed student who is thinking about grad school. Makes it easier to believe that the writing instruction I’m doing in boot camp will bear fruit eventually.

I’ve been working on student recruiting issues — we really want to bring in many more students and get more well-prepared students so we’re amping up the amount of time we spend contacting high school seniors. Right now my main contribution has been to help write some letters presenting what we have to offer, but I imagine that at some point I’ll be travelling around on the recruiting tour as well. I feel a little like a college coach.

And speaking of, I’m also a new appointee to the Athletic committee. I’m still not exactly sure what I’ll be doing there, but I tend to get along well with the student-athletes here and I think faculty tend to dismiss them intellectually and I’d like to turn that around. As the mother of a student who is also a dedicated athlete, I know that these are the kids who have to have exceptional discipline in a variety of arenas and I think it’s worth my time to advocate for them.

Along those lines, I’ve been spending five nights a week either at the dance studio or at the gym watching Kid do her thing. She’s actually dancing fewer routines than last year but she is more serious about ballet, so she’s taking class with her balletmistress more frequently. That alone accounts for why I’m not writing here. I just don’t have a lot of time at home any more and what time I do have, I’m grading.

However (before this turns into the most boring blog post ever…too late, too late), I will be getting my old work schedule back next semester so I will be able to write here more and with more interesting content.

Well, actually, this is John Winthrop’s take on it — you know, in “Model of Christian Charity” (wherein we learn that he considered the essential qualities of Christian community to be care-taking, mercy, and love towards one’s fellow humans…you know, preserving the commonwealth…):

“Question: What rule must we observe and walk by in cause of community of peril?

Answer: The same as before, but with more enlargement towards others and less respect towards ourselves and our own right. Hence it was that in the primitive Church they sold all, had all things in common, neither did any man say that which he possessed was his own. Likewise in their return out of the captivity, because the work was great for the restoring of the church and the danger of enemies was common to all, Nehemiah directs the Jews to liberality and readiness in remitting their debts to their brethren, and disposing liberally to such as wanted, and stand not upon their own dues which they might have demanded of them. Thus did some of our forefathers in times of persecution in England, and so did many of the faithful of other churches, whereof we keep an honorable remembrance of them; and it is to be observed that both in Scriptures and latter stories of the churches that such as have been most bountiful to the poor saints, especially in those extraordinary times and occasions, God hath left them highly commended to posterity, as Zaccheus, Cornelius, Dorcas, Bishop Hooper, the Cutler of Brussels and divers others. Observe again that the Scripture gives no caution to restrain any from being over liberal this way; but all men to the liberal and cheerful practice hereof by the sweeter promises; as to instance one for many (Isaiah 58:6-9) “Is not this the fast I have chosen to loose the bonds of wickedness, to take off the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free and to break every yoke … to deal thy bread to the hungry and to bring the poor that wander into thy house, when thou seest the naked to cover them … and then shall thy light brake forth as the morning and thy health shall grow speedily, thy righteousness shall go before God, and the glory of the Lord shalt embrace thee; then thou shall call and the Lord shall answer thee,” etc. And from Ch. 2:10 (??) “If thou pour out thy soul to the hungry, then shall thy light spring out in darkness, and the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in draught, and make fat thy bones, thou shalt be like a watered garden, and they shalt be of thee that shall build the old waste places,” etc. On the contrary most heavy curses are laid upon such as are straightened towards the Lord and his people (Judg. 5:23), “Curse ye Meroshe … because they came not to help the Lord.” He who shutteth his ears from hearing the cry of the poor, he shall cry and shall not be heard.” (Matt. 25) “Go ye cursed into everlasting fire,” etc. “I was hungry and ye fed me not.” (2 Cor. 9:6) “He that soweth sparingly shall reap sparingly.”

Having already set forth the practice of mercy according to the rule of God’s law, it will be useful to lay open the grounds of it also, being the other part of the Commandment and that is the affection from which this exercise of mercy must arise, the Apostle tells us that this love is the fulfilling of the law, not that it is enough to love our brother and so no further; but in regard of the excellency of his parts giving any motion to the other as the soul to the body and the power it hath to set all the faculties at work in the outward exercise of this duty; as when we bid one make the clock strike, he doth not lay hand on the hammer, which is the immediate instrument of the sound, but sets on work the first mover or main wheel; knowing that will certainly produce the sound which he intends. So the way to draw men to the works of mercy, is not by force of Argument from the goodness or necessity of the work; for though this cause may enforce, a rational mind to some present act of mercy, as is frequent in experience, yet it cannot work such a habit in a soul, as shall make it prompt upon all occasions to produce the same effect, but by framing these affections of love in the heart which will as naturally bring forth the other, as any cause doth produce the effect.

The definition which the Scripture gives us of love is this: Love is the bond of perfection. First it is a bond or ligament. Secondly, it makes the work perfect. There is no body but consists of parts and that which knits these parts together, gives the body its perfection, because it makes each part so contiguous to others as thereby they do mutually participate with each other, both in strength and infirmity, in pleasure and pain. To instance in the most perfect of all bodies: Christ and his Church make one body. The several parts of this body considered a part before they were united, were as disproportionate and as much disordering as so many contrary qualities or elements, but when Christ comes, and by his spirit and love knits all these parts to himself and each to other, it is become the most perfect and best proportioned body in the world (Eph. 4:15-16). Christ, by whom all the body being knit together by every joint for the furniture thereof, according to the effectual power which is in the measure of every perfection of parts, a glorious body without spot or wrinkle; the ligaments hereof being Christ, or his love, for Christ is love (1 John 4:8). So this definition is right. Love is the bond of perfection.

From hence we may frame these conclusions:

First of all, true Christians are of one body in Christ (1 Cor. 12). Ye are the body of Christ and members of their part. All the parts of this body being thus united are made so contiguous in a special relation as they must needs partake of each other’s strength and infirmity; joy and sorrow, weal and woe. If one member suffers, all suffer with it, if one be in honor, all rejoice with it.

Secondly, the ligaments of this body which knit together are love.

Thirdly, no body can be perfect which wants its proper ligament.

Fourthly, All the parts of this body being thus united are made so contiguous in a special relation as they must needs partake of each other’s strength and infirmity, joy and sorrow, weal and woe. (1 Cor. 12:26) If one member suffers, all suffer with it; if one be in honor, all rejoice with it.

Fifthly, this sensitivity and sympathy of each other’s conditions will necessarily infuse into each part a native desire and endeavor, to strengthen, defend, preserve and comfort the other. To insist a little on this conclusion being the product of all the former, the truth hereof will appear both by precept and pattern. 1 John 3:16, “We ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” Gal. 6:2, “Bear ye one another’s burden’s and so fulfill the law of Christ.”

Conservatives are very quick to embrace Mr. City on the Hill when he is talking about American leadership and exceptionalism, but very slow to walk his walk about what actually was required of the just society — bearing one another’s burdens as a society, because inequality of condition is an ongoing social fact. They should read the whole document, not just the first and last paragraphs.

Ok, so I have this crazy neighbor — crazy in a funny ha-ha “look what that crazy bastard is out there doing” sort of way. When we replace a toilet, he goes immediately out and replaces his toilet. When we mow our lawn, it won’t be fifteen minutes until he’s grunting and sweating to mow his. When we pulled some old beaten-up furniture to the curb, he did too — but his pile was a little bigger and a little more beat up. This has gone on for five years. Yesterday, I painted our front door a beautiful sky-blue and I jokingly asked my husband what color Louis was going to paint his…and wouldn’t you know it? Red. He painted it red. I think I might loudly announce I’m going to have sex tonight so that Mrs. Louis can get herself some.

It’s delightfully hot outside — finally some real summer weather. Everyone else in my family is stricken and I’m in my glory. I’m out here on the porch to get warm because it’s so cool inside with the A/C on.

Kid has gotten one of her pieces of solo music — Jamie Cullen’s version of “Kick in the Head.” I think she might tap to Ella Fitzgerald’s cut of “Give Me The Simple Life.” It’s going to be very groovy and Rat Pack-y around my house this year.

Martha Graham was a genius. It’s a shame that she was so fiercely unlikeable and self-involved, because it made it easy to dismiss what she accomplished by being driven, vain, and uncompromising.

I have been catching up on scrapbooking — that exercise where you try to figure out what you’ve been doing with your time when you haven’t been working for the man. It’s a real clarifying exercise. I now don’t feel so bad that I haven’t published more; I have spent my years very wisely enjoying my life with my husband, my child, my friends, and my extended family. The archives and journals will still be there in a few years and actually, I’ve done a lot of professional writing in the last few weeks, but I wouldn’t trade what I have done for all those things that I idly wish from time to time that I would have accomplished.

It turns out that this blog-friend and this neighbor/teaching colleague/fellow beleagured interdisciplinary studies chair know each other pretty dang well.  Facebook is one big non-stop WTF? for me these days.

And now I’m wondering…so, is he kin to the bluegrass Rices and why haven’t I asked him about that before? Because bluegrass, like the “so, are you kin to…” questions that help me make sense of who you are and how we are connected, is a foreign language up here and the idea that anyone else speaks it just never occurred to me.   That’s the problem when you learn to pass — it becomes so ingrained to keep your lives separate, the place you come from and go back to different than the place where you go to earn your daily bread, that when the two places meet, it’s discombobulating.  

Well, after ten Nintendo-free years, we broke down and got a DS for the family (that is, for Kid and John…I imagine that I’ll never even get to touch it.) I’ll let you know how it goes. I’m worried that all the time that used to go into making samba outfits for dolls and making fairy houses and so forth will be eaten up tapping away on a screen and bossing around digital dogs rather than playing with her real live (and far less cooperative) cat.

Oh well. I could have kept saying no, I guess. That’s the suck part about being a progressive, though. Sometimes you have to walk the walk and really let the kid be who she wants to be, insofar as it is not dangerous, harmful to her health and enjoyment of life, or excessively disruptive of family harmony.

Summer is very laid back. We sit around in our jammies and watch documentaries about the Rio Carnavale before breakfast and have a leisurely bout of e-mailing in the mid-morning. And then, out of the blue, I hear a distinct samba rhythm being beaten out in Kid’s playroom. “No, you line up right here. It’s not your school’s turn in the sambadrome yet. Nic, you get to go first. Your school is Mille Flor.”

Now, there’s no one except the two of us in the house. John’s at work. The cat couldn’t possibly be hitting the toybox like that. So it must be Kid. But who is she talking to? Her dolls. She’s dressed them all up in her best approximation of samba costumes, with coffee filter skirts and halter tops made of scrap fabric and ribbon. Their headbands are twisted foil.

This is why I love kids. They can go from not knowing anything about Rio to putting on their own samba parade in an hour.

Sometimes, the signs are hard to interpret. Other times, they hit you over the head with a “WTF? Are you stupid?”

So, in the last three days…

I’ve gotten not one, not two, but three unsolicited writing jobs (FOR CASH MONEY!) out of the blue.

I’ve had word that a press that has inquired about my mss in the past got a ginormous grant to publish books that have the kind of source base that mine has.

And

I’ve discovered that my primary research notes (many of which I thought had been lost completely in the Great Hardware Disaster of 2009) survived in a backup that I gave my husband a certain amount of shit for doing way back in 2006.

I have time, opportunity, and motive (as they say in the murder mysteries). What’s stopping me but me?

Do you realize that I have never ever in all my life fired up a grill myself to cook anything? I cook over an open fire and I cook over a stove, but I’ve never used the manly tools of food prep.

Guess who’s going to make some succulent chops tonight, just for the hell of it?

Yes, you. The kid who has ignored me every advising session for the last three semesters. You, the student who has been repeatedly informed (I know, I have the e-mails) that you need to take the required methods course before you can take anything else besides survey intros. You, the person who aspires to be a high school history teacher but can’t be bothered to show up for a single women’s history class because “it’s dumb that I have to take this.” You who are apparently mystified about why you’re failing out of school.

I know you’re on academic probation. I didn’t hear it from you, of course, but because we do crazy things like talk to each other between Academic Advising and the disciplinary departments and the Dean. I know. Your contention is that you’ve gotten bad advice or no advice, but in the last semester, I’ve tried to contact you five times by e-mail and three times by phone. The only contact you’ve made to me is a demand that I give you your password for on-line registration so that you can register haphazardly for more credit hours than three people of your intellectual heft could manage.

I will make one more effort to steer you out of trouble and point out that a) you still haven’t taken the methods course that I’m offering this fall; b) you are enrolled for courses that will not advance you towards degree completion, even if you pass them; and c) you are taking a brain-crushing overload and that course, when you are already on academic probation, is unwise.

And then you’re on your own, cowboy.

I have had so much fun in the last week or so that if I have to have any more fun, I’ll probably just cry from overstimulation.  I had a good time in Boston (NYC trip got cancelled at the last minute, but I didn’t really mind) and Kid’s dance team was extraordinarily successful.  She personally won 10 platinum medals, a high gold medal, six first place rankings (including top honors in all her solos, duets, and trios — so I guess you could, if you were lame, call her national champion in her age group even though there’s about a billion national dance competitions), and several overall high scores.  The trophies were huge and heavy and I had to carry home a lot of them. The best part (other than her having a great time dancing and meeting new people and working with new choreographers at the master classes) was that her team won the sportsmanship award for the whole competition.  The people running the competition couldn’t say enough good things about the kids and the way that they supported each other and were courteous and helpful to the other teams.  That makes me feel pretty good as a parent.

We got some time to do the tourist thing and I’ll tell you where we went on the next post.  Right now, though, I’ve got a kid who is really hungry and needs some breakfast.