Surveillance

Here is the space that we will move into. In order to move here we have to fit a certain number of criteria (like the ACT, guys), live in New York, have three kids of two genders and not earn too much money. Mitchell Lama has enough rules for a politburo standing committee or the Republican Platform Committee, and one of them is a home inspection. We are to be inspected today between 1 and 4 in our current home.

Since we are completely legitimate, I’m not worried. I am so glad that L—- is the queen of all forms and documents and we are all set on that count. If it were up to me we’d be in trouble.

The idea of being inspected is a lot like the tribulations that they put people through in order to live in New York Public Housing (back in the day?). This is intrusive, but in order to move into this beautiful subsidized HUGE apartment we’re willing to suffer some (foucauldian?) surveillance. The inspector will be here today. I’ll let you know how it works out.

Class, Class, Class

 

ENG101

Well here I am grading a stack of papers that don’t seem to match each other in terms of style, content, skill level or even assignment (though that might be because they put them on the wrong piles on my desk). While the ideas are great, and most of the writing is passable, I am disheartened by the wide variety that my “open assignment” has garnered. When I assigned only critical papers instead of creative papers I knew just how to respond, but here, now I am “perflummoxed.”

I am giving suggestions (writing margin and end comments) that go in many different directions. For some they are grammatical and others structural (language and paragraph corrections) while for others my comments are stylistic and imaginative (“write a thesis that describes the rat’s attitude in the poem”).

The freedom of this assignment is making the paper a lot more fun for most of the students, but going through these low stakes first drafts is a lot of work. When I decided to retreat from my impulse to have the papers all critical analyses of the poem “The Message” I naively thought that everyone would suddenly “get it” and have higher skillsets. Sigh. It is especially hard since there was supposed to be an interim draft due on Blackboard where I could just comment on the content.

ENC101

I gave the class back their first ACT exams yesterday and I have to say that I really like the rigidity of the ACT exam in light of the first three paragraphs that I wrote here. While I was disappointed when I turned over the covers and discovered who I passed and who I failed, I have to say that I am optimistic. By reviewing the ACT criteria with other professors and reviewing the materials in the “book room,” I think I know what each of the “lost sheep” will need to do to succeed (pass).

The research plans that I’ looked at and returned yesterday also show a lot of promise. Of course about half were late, so I might just have the best of the bunch.

ENG225

This class is sharp. Of course I wish that I had more writing to confirm my opinion of their verbal skills. I am impressed by their responses to Phyllis Wheatley, and Olaudah Equiano. They are very mature in terms of their responses to these, honestly, fairly dry texts. I was particularly impressed by the close reading that they did of Wheatley’s poems. NICE.

When we got to Frederick Douglass’ 1845 yesterday there was a “clicking into place” of the class understanding. Wheatley and Equiano, neither of whom stylistically fit the “common understanding”of African American literature, suddenly made sense when the students read Douglass’ sentimental slave narrative Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. This is, in my opinion, the beginning of modern or contemporary Black Lit. The ability to make the connection between pre-abolitionist literature and the late-enlightenment works that preceded it is, I think, a break-through for the students.

And I love Frederick Douglass’ 1845 Narrative.

Back to the Grind

OK, so here is where I’m at with the classes right now. Things are happening so quickly that I can’t really put them all here, but I wanted any students to know that I’m grinding away with them on the readings (and grading).

The kids who live with me are great (Lennox didn’t even turn to look when she went into school, Mason’s Soccer team is doing well (W. 7-2 first game), and Chandler is taking care of business (even getting out of bed with out a fight).

9/19/2007 5:53 AM

Quickly: I read the Wheatley packet I put together and I actually like the poems this time. I remember reading them for orals in grad school and thinking that this was just a bump on the road to my destination. When I read them in college I found them long, dull and overly complex (“what was she trying to prove, and to whom?”). This time I found lots of great couplets and some interesting ironies. First the couplet I liked the most:

To-day, o hearken, nor folly mourn

For time misspent, that never will return

and

Say, what is sleep? And dreams how passing strange!

When action ceases and ideas range

Both of these poems from “Thoughts on the Works of Providence” sang to me and I wish that I had written a book that I could use these as epigrams for.

Batman is going well and I had a really good class going over the ACT exam in my 101C. I am cautiously optimistic about the students who are in the class passing in the exam given on the week of the 15^th (my brother’s birthday week). Once they pass we will be able to work on the research paper in that extra hour. I am excited. My observation about Batman: The Dark Knight Returns today is that whenever the TV shaped panels come on people say stupid things. I am really conscious of how Miller imagined the Punk Aesthetic being mainstreamed in the newscasters (and Mutants too, interesting twinning device, hurm).

We’ve been working on “The Message” in my ENG101 and instead of having them write a critical paper on “The Message” I’m having them write a paper where they imagine themselves within the poem. They can talk to characters or they can be characters. They did a free write after taking the poem home and doing some preliminary work on it by answering some guide questions. The responses that I saw were really cool. I especially like the student who will have the rat discourse with the roaches, the homeless lady and the miscreants who are “pissing in the stairs, you know they just don’t care.” One student is going to have the suicide victim from the end of the poem come back and speak to the “son.” This will be a ghost story! How cool is that. C. wrote about a page and a half about being a tough guy and having to live the life described in the poem using Nas lyrics. Intertextuality: How cool is that?

Big Move (Sunnyside to Woodside)

OK, we got the call. It looks like we’ll be moving to Woodside. Before I go into the particulars of the place, which I’ve written in painful (and hopefully amusing) detail below, let me say that I think we’re all in shock and a bit out of sorts. Lots of big fights over little stuff, which leads me to believe that we’re coming to grips with the fact that change is coming.

We went to see the first apartment offered us at Big Six, the Mitchell-Lama Coop on Queens Boulevard in Woodside. WOW. It was huge, and, according to big Gene, in the best building (furthest from the BLVD.). Of course that puts it closest to the L.I.E., but that’s a different story. Which is worse, air pollution or noise pollution? And if noise pollution is better, what about the fact that some days (like yesterday) it is under the flight path to LaGuardia? Every two minutes another silver bird came grinding over us. The wheels are down by the time they come over, so you know that they are pretty low.

Hurm. I loved the apartment, why am I leading off with this? I guess that there is some thinly veiled ambivalence in my initial response.

 

The apartment is huge. The basic dimensions are 50’ by 20’, though there are some oddities that make it actually larger. When we first moved to University Village our apartment was a 600’ two bedroom, this is very close to twice the size of the place we were all happiest together, so if size matters, we should do well here. Of course, there is more to life than square-footage (or even acreage), so the jury is out on this one. My little piece of bottom land is on the 6^th floor.

It faces East North: that is the balcony faces North East, while there are two bedroom windows facing East and two (1 smaller) facing North. With the Balcony’s Eastward sweep, however, the overall feeling is East. The dining room and living room total almost 400 square feet, not including the screened in balcony. It is huge. If it were on the roof I’d open a farm. Of course the thresher will be powerful hard to get on the roof.

Each of the bedrooms is over 140 square feet (140, 142, and 159). OK, now the bedroom, the master bedroom we’re in now is barely 140 square feet, and some of it in hard to use nooks and crannies. There is a lot of jockeying for position vis-à-vis room selection, and I’ll leave the choice to the calmer and cooler heads who actually think logically and strategically. The master bedroom has two windows one small one facing north and one larger one facing East. It is large, and we’re thinking of splitting that room for two of the kids to share (there are battles over this division, but I’m not a snitch). The closets are huge, no joke. There is enough room for two Senators and an evangelical minister (who is health conscious: Falwell wouldn’t fit). I think that any of them would be large enough for Linda and I to fit all of our (hanging) clothes in together, though maybe I embellish here.

The kitchen is big, with so much cupboard space I feel like we could actually safely shop at Costco (when we lived in the village we would split bulk items like diapers and paper towels between families so that we wouldn’t overload our precarious little arcs). SO now I feel fully empowered to overshop in the American fashion. This is the New York version of getting a SUV. I’m fighting the desire to squelch my recycling impulse as I key this in.

We are so used to one person kitchens that I’m going to have to learn how to share the kitchen again (no more crabby “I’ll finish when you’re done and I’m alone in here…” statements). There is so much room in the kitchen that we’ll be able to pass each other carrying pizzas, while I foam cappuccino, as Linda practices her Kung Fu katas (her sticky hands technique is feared on both coasts of North America). Indeed, we will have room for all of the gizmos that I keep in the attic like the Cuisinart and slow cooker that I bring down for particular recipes.

And speaking of conflicts in rooms with plumbing: we will now have two bathrooms, though only 1 has a shower. No more worries about an ill-timed bowel movement when people are trying to brush teeth during the morning rush, we can have the offending element take “potty-B” and work it out as we file through and do our dental ablutions in a neat and orderly file in the master bathroom. The plumbing and construction look like that good early 60s vintage, though the water-saver showerhead is not long for my apartment. The tiles are all good, there is no decay or mold or cockamamie cosmetic paint (read camouflage), it is all so well maintained that I am ashamed of all of the messed-up places I’ve tolerated in my adult apartment-dwelling-life.

(Below and above the flags and next to the morning glory is our balcony)

Hard upon the two bathrooms is a closet that is so large that I immediately thought of putting a washer and dryer in there, though on sober reflection I think an office or computer nook might be better. Linda, however, smartly points out that we want the computer with internet access in a public space for reasons I don’t want to think about. The closet is about 4×3, which is much larger than the closet under the stairs where we had an office when I finished my dissertation.

Running around the flat on first

There is only one real drawback (besides moving during the semester) and that is storage space. We have a lot of (hard to access) storage space here in the attic, but maybe we’ll have to rent a storage space someplace for a couple of years until we get through the waiting list for a place here. There are multiple waiting-lists we’ll qualify for now: there is a whole magical world of wait-lists in the Big Six: there’s the storage room list, the parking lot list (and these are just the ones they let we new initiates know about). It will be a good use of the hundreds of dollars we’ll be saving in rent every month. I mean really, who wants to winter in the DR, or visit Javier, Julia and Lulu in Australia, or buy a minivan that we don’t fill so we can bring friends places out of the city?

There is a bike room, so I can take my bike off the street, and move the kids’ bike inside too. In fact, maybe I’ll buy them better bikes, since they don’t have to live on Skillman Ave anymore.

As I got up early this morning and worked on my lessons and grading, in our cramped cute apartment on a tree-lined block I have to say that I am sad about having to move. Yesterday one of Mason’s friends came to the door and invited him out to play soccer at the park, and he could just go. Tomorrow, around the corner and across the street there will be a farmers’ market where we’ll pay too much for fresh local produce. I love this safe, cute, quaint, human-scale neighborhood. But the size of the apartment and the savings and the security, and the professionalism, and the maintenance of the Big Six are making us an offer we cannot refuse. (I look forward to an apartment that won’t need me to manually unclog the toilet regularly-yuck!)

 

So though we’ve been feuding like a sack full of wet Democrats all day long, we are still a family. Chandler Mason Lennox, Linda and Stafford are all grateful for the huge new apartment we might live in. If I can find the right photo you’ll see our happy faces looking around the apartment in awe. I mean they all look big without furniture, but do they all have echoes? This change, though painful and terrifying, will be for the best, إن شاء الله.

Batman and Wheatley: Syllabi and Stuff

9/12/2007 5:31 AM

I got up and worked on my “Syllabus Quiz” for the second meeting of ENC101. I really like Michelle’s idea and I think that there is a good chance that this will help the students to better understand the class requirements. I have to admit, chagrined, that there are things that aren’t as clear as I would like them as I went over my syllabus to write the quiz, and so this is a work in progress. I am especially disappointed that I didn’t include the diminishing grade scale for late papers (x% less per day late). This is one of the many ways that I can see WiD (Writing in the Disciplines) helping me to improve my teaching.

I read the assignment for ENC101 today, and I love Miller’s Batman in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Now the art is just my style, not too detailed or “fine.” The coloring is wheat is really catching me this time. On page after page the majority of the colors are black white, gray and indigo, with just one element of color. Sometimes it is the Yellow of his logo (twinned with his utility belt, a brown rifle and the report from Harvey Dent’s pistol on pages 44 – 45) and other times it is a wry joke (like on page 19 where the milk and groceries are the only color of a female victim called “mommy” by the mutant perp). Just brilliant.  I’m worried that the students won’t know all of the villains and particulars of Gotham (e. g. Arkham Asylum, DA Harvey Dent, Dick Grayson , etc.).

Reading Wheatley’s poems for my Afro-American Literature class has me excited and puzzled (as I hope the students are). Is she being ironic when she writes of the “mercy” in “On Being Brought From Africa To America[?]” I really don’t know. I think I am applying late 20^th Century (faithless) values to an 18^th Century religious context. At least this time I “got” “On Virtue.” She has to have lust in order to pray so hard for “virtue” (read chastity). I’ve got to look up “pinioned” so that I can better interpret this poem.

We cancelled soccer practice yesterday because of the rain. I wish I could say I got more work done with the extra time, sigh.

The Semester Begins (Summer Ends)

We went to Riis Beach for one last splash this weekend in between the madness of the kids’ first week of school and Mom and Dad’s first day teaching. The water was warm and we were there at high tide so the waves came up and were really impressive to look at and play in. We got there in the afternoon and the kids and the cousins stayed in the water for three straight hour, until we beached them (pulled them out of the water as unwillingly as mermaids and a merman). It was a wonderful end to the summer of Jacob Riis Beach visits (and Aunti ‘Neene couldn’t make this one). I guess I should mention also that we might not be able to ever go to Coney Island, The Coney Island of yore again: and I’m sad about that (Sigh).
I’m getting excited about my new classes, though, again the “new preps” are spelling lots of reading and extra new work. In a strange way I’m excited about teaching new classes in new ways, but it is always a lot more work. I wish that I had just settled down and done my regular preps, but I think that that is just a way to stagnate. While I want to improve my ENG099 skills/practice and get my ACT pass rate back up to where I started, developing a whole new prep for the common reading like I did last year just doesn’t excite me like trying these new classes.

At Opening Sessions I was talking with President Mellow and I mentioned that Dr. Katopes once published a book of fiction. I, somehow, ended up saying that I’d read it and send her my review. Getting a hold of it will be one of the problems that I have to overcome here: me and my big mouth.

When I started blogging my tentative syllabi for the coming semester I got some interesting hits from people who’ve taught the same books, been taught the same books and are interested in the graphic novels I’m teaching. The dialogues that began as responses to the posts went on as ecorrespondences that have given me interesting ideas and pointed out problems I might face. The internet can be helpful.

Oh Yeah, And I’ve got to give a quick update on the kids: Lennox is a big Kindergarten Girl at PS150 now. She, on Friday, left me at the door for the first time. I think she’s full of her new status as a big Public School Girl, and the wry pride I see on her face as she turns to say goodby one last time at the PS150 Kindergarten Annex on Across the street from our house is priceless.

Mason, who is still at PS150 is full of his new status as a 6th grader. That is big at the school and he has the upper-classman-swagger that is nice to see after a summer with girl siblings, girl cousins and a girl world that didn’t fit him. He also started Soccer on Saturday, and I see the life coming back into him each moment. The Schoolyear is a rebirth for all of us.

Chandler is just so great. She is growing into her new role as seventh grader like a beautiful garden. She has her metrocard and rides the subway to and from her school (chaperoned) every day seeing the world of the New York commute like, well, a New Yorker. Everyday she has a) tons of homework, b) complaints about the subway and commuters, and c) some really keen observation about the world she’s out there witnessing. I think that this exposure is making her more comfortable here in New York. I know that this independence will pay dividends, though I am nervous about her spreading her wings.

Yesterday Auntie Elena got tickets for a Broadway play for Linda and Chandler so Mason Lennox and I went to the Museum of Natural History. We all met up at La Caridad for dinner afterwards. The play was a great experience for Chandler and Linda, who chattered on about detail after detail of the matinée. We went to the mythical creatures show which the kids were really into (though I was a bit disappointed by). For me the real fun was when we got lost looking for “Dum-Dum” (at the end of the Margeret Meade hall) where we saw all sorts of animals and exhibits we never look at when we come with a plan. I think I’m going to stop getting maps when I go to museums to let the hand of fate guide me through the exhibits. It was great.

They are all growing well, Thank You God.

Kiko and Mike Ride (& great news)

So Sean FILED his Diss back at Berkeley.  Some very few of you know what it is like to have a dissertation from a prime piece of academic real-estate hanging over your head.  SEAN MAC, my main man, with whom I rode Northern California compulsively hiding from my own dissertation, finally filed.  He has a great story of bureaucratic fumbling and near-misses and the usual luxury horrors (he does have a Ph.D after all) that you’ll have to ask him about.

Holla at me. Here Kiko rides with Mike, which is VERY intimidating when it comes right down to it.  I want to speed up the pace, but I am mad-busy (don’t tell Mason I said that).  And of course, if you want to start from the beginning, go here.

Kiko, wanting to try this thin and expensive bike, to see what he could do if he had a chance on something that was good, docilely tried to understand Mike’s instructions, completely understanding the measure even if the theory escaped him.  He understood why his seat was too low on his work bike, and how the straight mountain bars pushed him up into the wind, slowing him down from Jamaica to Wall St. In Mike’s tontería Kiko found the answer to lots of questions he hadn’t thought to ask yet, and this made him trust the angloparlante.

Finally, once they had finished the adjustments and locked up the delivery bike, they set off towards the East.  The bike that Mike had brought for Kiko was a bit vintage, so the shifters were on the tube that ran from the headset to the crank and it took Kiko a while to be able to stay in his tuck, hold his line and change gears.  There were other riders out there in matching team kits, and they looked at Mike in an older Discovery Channel jersey from the Tour de France three years ago and Kiko in jeans and a t-shirt like the mismatched pair that they were. 

Mike was trying to make clear the theories surrounding shifting (“start easy, shift down once your cadence, RPMs are over 90 or a 100”), drafting (“if you stay right behind me there is less resistance, and you can rest”), sprinting (“you only want to thrash around site-to-side to keep people behind you, otherwise it is a waste of energy”) and, most importantly, pack behavior (“you want to keep going straight, hold your line, it’s like being in a band, the drummer doesn’t pay attention to what the guitarist does; keep your beat”).

They went out practicing these ideas to a bit past Old Westerbury, and on the way back they put them into practice.  It was a bout noon and the riders from Long Island who had looked at this odd couple on their ride in saw them firing on all cylinders on the way back.  Kiko was drafting off of Mike and then, when mike pulled out of line, he charged up and offered his draft to Mike, though he rode so hard and fast on that slim little bike that it was hard for Mike to hold on and keep his draft.

M____. Seven Years Ago

 

More from the way-back machine:  They were so cute when they didn’t have wills to challenge us with.  He is still a great kid, but things aren’t so easy now.

M. is cool-dino-mad these days.  Everything is cool.  Cool this, and cool that but most of all: “mean dinosaurs are cool.”  I wish that I could write “cool” like Mason pronounces it when he says “That’s cool,” or “that’s not cool.”  COO-el, or better COO-wel is the best written pronounciation I can come up with.I know that it is the generic little boy way of saying those words, but watching it on my little three and a half year old son’s face, with his enthusiasm and emphasis, just makes me melt.  He is just so invested in the coolness of the denizens of the Jurassic, through cretaceous epochs.  If it is less than the size of a school-bus, or younger than 65 million years old it just doesn’t rate (unless it is Jason Giambi the first-baseman for the A’s [hey he was with the A's then]).  

I don’t know if he is cuter when he asserts coolness on something, or seeks approval for the coolness of something.  I do know that the denial of coolness is always intoxicatingly cute.  “That’s not cool!  T-Rexes are cool!”  In this little assertion, lisped in juvenile assertiveness, is all the confidence and certainty of the shorter set.  Doubt never enters the mind of the absolutely positive M. S. G.  When he is like this even his big sister’s assertions of the order of things don’t matter.  He knows.  He is right and sure and good.

I vaguely remember trying in vain to convince my parents of the coolness of Batman’s utility belt on one of the benches facing west in Tompkins Square Park. I remember looking to the congueros as their beats washed over us from the central benches and tables one sunny afternoon. It must have been a weekend because my Dad was there, and couldn’t wrap his mind around the absolute coolness of all of the things which came out of Batman’s utility belt, just when he needed them.  I am sure that he agreed with me so that he could get back to the Sunday Times, Pall Mall and container of coffee.  But I knew he didn’t really get how cool the yellow utility belt was. 

Even though I get down on my knees and play dinosaurs with Mason, and show him the claws, or teeth, or speed, or meanness that I think is cool about his t-rex, or carnotaurus, or velociraptor, or deinonychus, I know he is unconvinced about my ability to really understand the essential elements of coolness.  When I get too enthusiastic he gets a bemused expression on his round face and says, “naw, Daddy, that’s not cool!”  He is kind in his amused sadness about my complete inability to understand even the most basic tenets of coolness.   I think he knows that I am just trying to “be down” and that I cannot possibly understand the terms, conditions and limitations of coolness.  He sees my sycophancy for what it is, a desperate attempt to be a part of my son’s life.

Angel, his crony and thick gossip understands (and defines) cool in ways that I will never ever get in a million years of trying.  (Not that any of us have anywhere near that time with our ever-growing offspring.) So when I see the two of them playing at daycare and I try to insinuate my way into their circle of two they tolerate me, knowing that grown-ups just don’t get it.  Even if we are the ones who read them the books which give them the expertise which undergirds dino-cool, we can’t seem to use the special little boy decoder ring which translates it all into cool.  This decoder-ring, as precise and accurate as the enigma machine, and twice as hard to crack is forever on a shelf grown-ups can’t reach.  I can make the exact same observation about a pachycephalasaurus’s head as Angel a minute before him, and it is still “not cool” until Angel encodes it.