Grading, snow and the tragedies of life

One of my freshmen students fired off two emails today, only to show up at my office door a half hour later with dad to complain that the student had received a B+ in a course I had taught. First semester in college and this student is obsessing over a B+. Of course, the fact that the same student had to miss the last three weeks of classes due to a family trip (totally worthwhile one, I might add but irrelevant here) was dismissed. I was unreasonable, manipulative, and since grading essays on learning is totally subjective, clearly I had FAILED THIS STUDENT. The same student who could have attended a prestigious school instead of mine, etc. This was all from dad, by the way. The student just sat there and let daddy work his lawyer magic. Or not.

Wow- life is tragic isn't it? I am sure any errant reader of this blog feels the pain of the student and can easily see how important a grade in a first semester course is to one's entire life. Far more important than war, disease, devastating accidents, say.

Now look at Long Island Newsday of December 22nd in which riders of the LIRR on early Sunday morning in the midst of the worst blizzard to hit Long Island in decades were hysterical because their train was stopped and they were stuck in the snow for hours. OK, not pleasant to be sure but do you suppose that anyone noticed it was SNOWING A BLIZZARD outside?

We seem to have a modern disease in which the world revolves around us and our desires. Everyone and everything (including the freezing point of water, I suppose) should recognize that we are important, that we deserve to get whatever we want because we, well, want it and want it now.

I sympathize with the people on the train but to break open a window (because it was too cold in the train??) and to abuse the conductors who may not really know much more than the passengers about when help would arrive just smacks of hubris and foolishness. Yes, it is awful but band together and deal with it. And to abuse a faculty member after your first semester at college because you didn't get straight A's echos our notion that the world must bend itself to our desires. Why not discuss your grades calmly and with a willingness to learn? Gosh, maybe the student didn't do quite as well as they thought? Could we talk about it before threatening and insulting me?

Maybe we all just need to recognize that the universe does not revolve around us and our petty wants? Conductors might be a bit surly and faculty who are accused of unfairness do tend to get annoyed but where is our communal sense of reality, of responsibility and recognition of the world as it is? Most of all, with what graces are we blest and indeed lucky?

I do recall being a senior in college and received a paper back all marked up with red. I was devastated. But I also wondered what I had done wrong and how I had gotten this far without a teacher helping me improve. I was the fault as mostly mine. Not that I was happy, mind you. I approached my professor with a certain degree of hysteria, I am sure, but also respectful and willing to do what I could to improve. Hmm...

Saturnalia approaches

Time to bang the drums and call back the sun. As the days get shorter and shorter we long for that illusive entity, the sun. The Christmas lights (excuse me-- holiday lights) try their best to fight against the inky blackness and there is a certain degree of hope in their twinkle. But as the rain pounds down, I can only sit and consider the empty darkness outside.

Or can we hope for the moon?

Autumnal events

The most melancholy and therefore most human season of the year is the fall. As the leaves begin to take on hues of gold, crimson, auburn, we find our souls recalling the brevity of existence. Life is most intense in the autumn.

Lost in Translation

I have often told my students the humorous problems with translation that a former professor of mine for Medieval Philosopher shared with his students. If you take Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and translate it to French and back again you get The Raisins of Discontent. Now a wit has taken this one step further with the song "Take Me Out to the Ball game"! Try pasting the link below and visit this site.

http://linear1.org/gm/archives/00000007.php

August dog days

Ok, so it is officially hot here on LI. Hot and muggy. Have I mentioned that it is hot... and muggy? If I wanted to live in Sumatra, I would move there.

August is a bittersweet time. I finally have some time with no teaching responsibilities and yet, fall semester looms around the corner and so I find myself preparing readings, notes and files for the fall semester. Anyone who thinks that college faculty have an easy schedule never taught with all the background stuff that needs to go on. Of course, every semester brings fresh hope that I might do a better job and get one person excited about philosophy. I certainly try.

Well, having gotten my whining over, I will turn to a more cheerful subject. Julie and Julia is a delightful movie with the amazing Meryl Streep, the actress par excellence of our time. A delightful set of parallel stories that works quite nicely. Highyl recommend it. It almost made me want to learn how to cook, almost.

Included here for your viewing pleasure is a shot at Saratoga. A race day that will go down in infamy as I lost virtually all my money on every race. You would think the law of odds would have come out at least once for me!

Hektor Protector Contemplates the world

Hektor Protector, a rare and precious Cesky Terrier, sits and thinks about the world. And perhaps reflects on the wisdom of eating his Wendy's gear shift ensemble which turned out to be incredibly expensive to replace in a Volkswagen...

Death comes to a Tree

The Story of Erysichthon

Ovid tells the terrible story of King Erysichton who orders his men to chop down a tree sacred to Demeter. Even the workers quake and try to dissuade him. He runs the main dissenter through with his sword and the rest, trembling, cut the tree down, the majestic, beautiful tree. The dryads scream in agony. Demeter sees and sends Hunger to inhabit Erysichthon's innards. As he sleeps she hovers over him; he breathes her in and he awakes with an insatiable hunger. He cannot stop eating and yet wastes away. Later he sells his young daughter into prostitution in order to buy more food. She manages to transform into an animal and escape. But he sees a business opportunity and sells her again and again.

In the end he ate himself. Demeter has spoken. When man destroys the natural world, he destroys himself.

Now today I witnessed a terrible murder. A gigantic fir tree, decades old, was cut down on the order of my new neighbors in Saint James. This tree was the first to catch the snow in winter, feel the wind as it coursed through our small town, shade my house from the summer sun. Now there is only a gapping hole where it had stood. The side of their house stands exposed in all it mundane banality. The power saws have been churning away for 12 hours and they drowned out the screams of the living being that was killed.

May Demeter note this act of hubris. this act of outrage. May she find a way to remind these sad little people that the earth is all we have...

FRN@NYU.NYC

Ok, something happened to this... wonder where the link went? I will investigate.

Why I love NYC

I just spent a week down at NYU for a Faculty Resource Network Summer seminar. The topic was "Art, Public Policy and Politics." It was an adventure for me as I do not usually get to read sociology or policy. I live in a world of ontological possibilities and reality is a nice place to visit. The best thing about the seminar was the range of experience and interest among the 24 participants. Around one table we had:

-working artists from Atlantic City to Puerto Rico

-museum founders and leaders

-academics in art history, sociology, psychology, economics, and rhetoric-- and of course, philosophy but just two of us

-librarians of architecture

-performance artists and art therapists

-well, and more than I can recall.

Each person reads, listens and comments from his or her own perspective so that made for some fascinating conversations to follow, although at times confusing for this bear with little brain.

Now, here are some photos from the city experience. I do not intend a narrative commentary but have some fun. Look for the photo album marked FRN@NYU.NYC

Here is a video experiment: Amagansett on May 10, 2009. It was windy, sunny and gorgeous.

Here are an assortment of photos from May 10th in Amagansett, Long Island.

Goats- the answer to a lot of our problems

Ok, So my daughter has acquired a pet goat, actually Pan in disguise, who follows her around her garden and keeps her company as well as centered in the world. I want a goat. In fact, I am thinking that the world would be a better place if each person had to keep a goat. Goats need affirmation, by that I mean food, and something to do. Goats remind us that we are human and that other creatures exist in the world, thank you very much. Goats challenge mythologies of Satanic beings whose eyes and horns just happen, just happen, to be quite goat-like. Goats would take us out of ourselves, our cerebral centers of I-ness, and remind us that the world looks different through the eyes of other beings, including goats.

So, think about it. Why not a goat?

Springing along

Today felt and smelled like spring. Of course I was in the deep end of the pool of classes, online grading, paper collecting, quiz-giving and only surfaced to feel the air at the end of they day. Each day comes round and perfect and we squander them as we scurry around doing things busily.

Perhaps it is time to stop and simply see.

Attention Must be Paid

Perusing the papers today I see picture after picture of men who have been laid off or “excessed.” How can we speak of “excessing” a fellow human being? --Dismissing them as unnecessary, insignificant? Their faces share a common look: they are in their 50s and are trying to maintain their dignity in the stark reality of a dollars and cents economy that could care less. They have taken care of their families, worked to feed their babies and send them to college. They have served their country and their communities. They were accounted as a member of a work force. Their faces show struggle but also pride. Their eyes reveal the worry as to how they will keep their children in school, pay their mortgage, hold up their heads in their community. As middle aged men they see themselves as expendable and they know their future does not look bright. No one’s does, of course, in the current economic meltdown but if you are a 55 year old man, too young to retire and too old to re-invent yourself perhaps, where do you go? His family and friends look to him for nurture, for guidance, for protection. If he is married, his spouse works hard too. Perhaps she works in the home or perhaps out there in the world but their life is on the rocks and neither quite knows what to do now. Attention must be paid to these quiet heros who have labored all their lives to provide and now appear to be tossed aside. Their responsibilities weigh heavily on their sloping shoulders but they square their back and face the future. Those who remain employed might be tempted to turn their face and ignore them; too close to the bone perhaps. But we should not. We should thank them, respect them and make room for them in our businesses and work places. This we should do.

March around the corner

February begins to slip away as night falls and we can feel the tug of winter, grasping and holding on to us. Perhaps some snow or ice? Persephone is still underground. Demeter is waiting, anxiously pacing the stiff earth and sear countryside.

Now we are in Lent. Regardless of one's religious bent, Lent can offer us a time to reflect and notice the small still voice that whispers through the pines.

Sadness

Today the universe lost a special and wonderful person. Perhaps she was ready to leave. But we were not. When you pass by an older woman on the street you probably do not even see her. You dismiss her as insignificant, unimportant, old and thereby done. How tragic- for you. My friend was a bright shining hard beam of witty and loving goodness. She was mercifully spared the indignities of modern medicine except for her final six days in the hospital. No purgatory for her. She knows what is what.

Some people must go through months of process to disconnect from the world. Others are floating here but really existing in the heart of all that is. That was my friend. I cannot name her but I can tell you that in the world, there are those who matter. Whose gentle goodness and keen intellect and sharp sense of humor define what it is to be human. That was her. Only the poets can capture this feeling. Mary Oliver. Charles Wright. Others. Only the poets. Not the philosophers Maybe Plato... Maybe...


"To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go” --Mary Oliver

The Aesthetic of Nature

What is it to view nature aesthetically?

The Geography of Childhood

I am working on an article/presentation on the concept of space, nature, animals and childhood. In what ways does our immersion within a natural world, the space that surrounds our home, our path to school, our after school dreamtime affect who we are and who we become? Surely who I am has been deeply formed by growing up in the middle of a city where the Queens borough Bridge defined my skyline and floated above the rooftop world where clothes were hung and hide and seek were played. the dizzying drop to the ground always offering an edge of terror to the black tar sponginess of irregular shapes and secret spaces. Then again, roaming through wild grass on the edge of the ocean, establishing my kingdom of dune-home, secret paths through swamplands-- all of these childhood imaginative space, a shining circle of being in which I could breathe, be myself and rule.

My story is but one. So, how does the world as nature, as animated, appear to the young child and offer her an ontological anchor? What living beings spoke to you when you were five? And told you their secrets? Adults are divorced from the camaraderie of the child and animal world. Both child and animal are small, viewed as insignificant and indeed, as we might say today, are marginalized from the adult world of power and action. Ah, but are they? Or do they inhabit an alternative world in which animals confide in the child and the child rules her kingdom by the sea, in the playground, backyard, dusty alley. What world is revealed to children that adults have lost the ability to see, to sense, to feel?

Heartbreaking movie

So I just watched the Visitor. What a heart-rending movie about being lost in life, illegal in this country and transcending barriers.

Al Qaida operatives

President Obama announced that the US would close Guantanamo within a year and then the press leaped on the news that one person, released from there in 2007, appears to be a chief Al Qaida lieutenant. Has anyone asked whether a prolonged stay at that facility might not turn a reason person into a USA-hating fanatic? Perhaps he was swept up in the early collection days and was never a political enemy of us. Ah, but after God-knows-what treatment, perhaps that turned him into a person ripe for recruitment... Just a thought.

Great video about the 44 presidents

This is a wonderful video featuring the presidents morphing into one another.

Oxford Philosophy

Let's try to embed a player with this Oxford Philosophy spoof by Beyond the Fringe, courtesy of Youtube. Now, this reminds me of a discussion between myself and my friend [and I say "friend' with a certain degree of ironic referential annotation] Larry Reinstein...

Old Photos from PBT

 
 
 
 Here are some great photos from my brother Paul.  

The Bishop

Here is a priceless video from-who else but Monty Python?- on THE BISHOP.

There's a rat in the kitchen, what am I a gonna do?

Some of you may recall the iconic UB40 single, "There's rat in the kitchen..." I am thinking that UB40 must certainly have been instrumental in introducing ska to the American scene in the 80s or early 90s.

In any case, I had my very own epiphany this morning when I arrived downstairs in my house, at 6 am, in the pitch black, to discover indeed a rat in my kitchen. Huge. Dead. Ghastly. I reacted in the appropriate adult way; that is, I ran screaming back upstairs to awake Mike and demand that he deal with it forthwith. Luckily Mike is always up for dead animal removal and picked it up by the tail (augh!!) and put it outside. I got him to agree that it was not a mouse but a genuine, bonafide RAT. Lest you doubt my veracity I am including a picture of the above referenced rat. NOTICE HOW HUGE IT IS...

Now, to whom do we owe honor and glory? We are betting on Rodney, cat supreme but Hektor, the terrier- mind you, did mysteriously go downstairs last night for a while. I do not think he can claim the kill as I am almost positive he would have brought it back upstairs and proudly displayed it on my bed. Oh the horror, the horror. In any case, Rodney was sauntering around the kitchen this morning with a look of modest pride, seemingly saying/thinking "Ah yes, the rat... Well [modestly said] it was really quite simple, really. No problem at all."

The real question is: did the rest of the rats get the message...?

January 2009

Well, I have been busy doing stuff and have neglected my blog. I am sure the world has been holding its breath for the next installment!

I just returned from visiting my friends, the Harris', in Westport, CT. Brig is restoring with utmost faithfulness his childhood home. That involves taking it back in time to the Federalist period and beyond with plaster, original floors, and even kitchen! Good news: they get to keep an early 20th century bathroom rather than going back to the outhouse. Yikes!

But it will be stunning, I am sure.