Nov. 26  Syllabus change for 101!  Here's what's in the syllabus about the course grade:

                        * Includes short assignments

                        * Do all short assignments and 4/week blog posts, 30%.   Less than  all, less than 30%, prorated.

	Comments on classmates’ or other blogs 5%.  Credit to be negotiated at  portfolio conferences
	Class blog contributions 5% ungraded (I may have you fold this into your your individual blog; that’s open right now).  All assignments in class       blog done, get all 5  %.  Less than all, no credit.
	Six five-graf paper essays  25%.  All are pass/fail, plenty of chance to turn the fail into a pass

Okay--some of this stuff is no longer in play:

* The department chairs ended the final period in which you were supposed to take the final and in which my colleagues were supposed to read your essays.  There will still be a final worth 10% of your grade but it will be given over two class periods (Dec. 13 & Dec. 15 with the 17th open in case of emergency).  I will read them and pass/fail them, not my colleagues.

* I have only used the class blog twice--and then decided to abandon it.  So, the 5% that represented will be folded into your five-graf essays (not your blog grade; when I cut down on the number of blog posts from 4 to 2 a week, I couldn't any longer justify making the blog worth more than 30% of your grade)--so the six five graf essays are now worth 30 % of your grade, not 25%.

We may have conferences in the next few weeks where we'll talk about what you've done about posting on your blog and commenting on other people's blogs.

Nov. 23.  Recent EMCC harassment language sent to all faculty, staff, students: "Some of the signs to look for in your classroom include students ...making sexually explicit remarks to or about others, crude and vulgar language or jokes...."

I had a student the other day talking about how gross it was that her grandfather was still buying condoms.  She thought he might be 75.  I had to ask: "So, when do people get past it, just too gross to be allowed to be players anymore?  25?"  She allowed a few years after that might be okay.  Everyone was grinning.  But I suppose someone might have been offended.  Should I worry about them?  Maybe I should have been offended at the young lady's age-ism!

Nov. 17.  Very kind student CN, the very same who bought me anti-flu hand gel and has criminal justice tips too, is, for her sins in another life, one of my advisees.

She really got me up to advising speed, helping me locate a catalog, explaining the computer thingie, and showing me around the studentone--is that the right name?--stuff too.  She taught me what I needed to survive without embarrassing me more than I embarrass myself--and did all this for the grand payoff of my lousy signature on the fancy card which lets her register.

CN, I advised another student this noon, and you'd have been proud of me. Figured out this woman's classes, electives, sections, times, instructors, career moves, and future income bracket, all no sweat.  I won't say she was impressed--because she had me in 101 and already knows what a hopeless dub I can be, but at least we parted without her gnashing her teeth in frustration and disgust.

Thanks to CN!

One bad thing though. I had to give her advice as an advisor I disagreed with as a teacher--and I'd rather be an okay teacher than a tip-top advisor, so that hurt.

The situation was that she needed another elective to meet her graduation time goal--didn't matter what it was as long as it carried three credits.  It was also important that the course be one she could conceivably ace, as she's a very ambitious and determined student.  There wasn't much.  I half-jokingly pointed to my ENG 162, Creative Non-Fiction Writing.

I was half-joking because, having had her for 101, I knew writing was not her favorite thing.  A serious student but not a dedicated and eager writer.

But she liked the idea.  I told her as her advisor that it had the credits, it was doable for an A, it was a nice match.  I told her as a teacher she would probably hate every second of it.

I won't say I'm unaccustomed to students who don't like writing but I hated to see her signing up and paying good money for something she won't have fun doing.  Or maybe she will.

Or maybe she won't.  I still--forty years later--have a recurrent nightmare about my first year in college when I was taking a bunch of required courses I hated.  In the dream I wake up, realize I've overslept and missed Geology 101 or something similar, and drift back to sleep with an awful sense of impending doom (if you consider D in Geology doom, then the awful sense was an accurate forecast.) 

But then I wake up and it's ALL a dream!  I'm really me, today, and it isn't 1963 at all.  Thank heavens!

I just hope this student is not having nightmares about ENG 162 in 2045.

Nov. 15.  I say jokingly to wise student MH that I'll have to watch myself, having read what she had to say about her temper.  She says, 'I didn't write about my temper.  You're mixing me up with [equally wise student] TH.  Every one does!  I don't know why--we never met until this year.'

I had to admit that was probably what had happened and that it did take me a little while to disentangle their identities.  Is it the glasses?  The writing ability?  The fearlessness in dealing with school and teachers?  Those are some similarities.

It often happens that people with similar body-types or names or interests or faces or piercings or whatever do link up in a busy teacher's mind and become twin stars, revolving around the black hole of his ignorance. 

Nov. 15.  Pounced on and harassed yet again by student HC!  Minding my own business, walking into Maine Hall when suddenly: "What happened to you?  How did you wind up looking like you do?" 

Say whaa--at?

It was HC and her grinning accomplice TJ checking out a 1993 EMTC (that's 'Technical College,' kiddies) yearbook.

"Yeah, you didn't used to look so awful.  Your beard used to be okay, and your hair got all white and stuff."

I told her the truth, which was that three months ago I looked nearly identical to that eleven year-old picture, but on August 26, when I saw some of the hard-case students they were unloading on me (I won't name names...) yadda yadda yadda....

"Really," she said, "What happened?"

HC, I hope you hang around long enough to find out!  Can we re-open the discussion in, say, 2044?  My treat--Geritol regular or extra-strength for you? You too, TJ.

Nov. 15.  It certainly happens over the course of a semester that a teacher can become ineffective.  Or, rather, a teacher can run out of capital with a student--the relationship is bankrupt or, different metaphor, toxic.  After this point nothing the teacher does will ever be seen  as anything other than yet one more example of his badness, stupidity, incompetence, unfairness, and so on.  (Oddly enough, I have the exact same relationship with some of my supervisors, only with me playing the role of permanently disgruntled student!)

And the teacher is no longer able to see the student without recalling a little bit all the student's complaints, contempt, sour looks (or averted eyes) and literal physical shudders when the teacher sits down for a conference.

I have several of these failed relationships with students right now.  Easiest thing in the world for me to rationalize: unserious student; junior high mentality; unready for college; lazy and inexperienced; ruined by high school; etc., etc.  But, wiggle as I might, these are the students I have at Eastern Maine Community College in Fall 2004--no others--,and bottom line is I've failed with some of them.  Very bad feeling.

One of my students read the previous graf and wondered if I was saying I thought all my students were losers.  God, no.  I meant that when things go wrong, people try to shift the blame to the other side and sometimes I start doing that, but then I hold up and realize that, whatever the student's faults, I have some too and have to take some professional responsibility for the failure.  

Nov. 12.  Student HC is slagging me again--this time because I said 'Burlington Coat Mall' instead of 'Burlington Coat Factory.'  She says, "How can you make that mistake!  We are not a mall."  I make that mistake because +I killed too many brain cells back in the day, HC! 

Nov. 12.  Started off the day by tasting the bitterness of my own smallness of spirit--gossiping about a colleague in the hall.  The colleague walked by at a moment when it was impossible for him not to overhear that my spite and malice were directed his innocent way.  Today, I'm of the devil's party, to my shame.

Nov. 10.  Some of my students who read this blog might be interested in the good old days of sex, drugs, and rock & roll as we knew them then.

I started college in Waterville in 1963.

Sex: well, there was a rumor it existed. But this was just before the pill.  Condoms were still illegal in many states (any means of birth control was illegal in Connecticut), and abortions were illegal in all the states (pretty sure about that--it was NOT the sort of thing anyone talked about.)

Sex was not casual.  There were no such things as eff-buddies.  If you did it, you were about halfway to being married.  If the two of you made a baby, there was very little other choice.

I knew a girl in high school who got pregnant. I visited her in the semi-prison run by nuns in Dorchester Mass, where she stayed until the baby was born and immediately taken away for adoption.  Going the single-mom route was not done--that would have been wearing the scarlet letter of shame and dishonor.

There was none of this business about living together, believe you me.  When my girlfriend and I were living together in 1965 and the landlord caught us, fuhgeddaboudit.  Threw us right to heck out of the basement apartment.  Landlords were serious back then about the reputations of their places!

You will be pleased to hear that at least the biological end of it hasn't changed--or not much.  Be aware that 1963 bodies were not the same as twenty-first century bodies: most guys didn't work out, and it would have been bizarre to see a woman in the gym.  No woman had ever run a Boston Marathon in 1963 and girls' sports were still scaled way back because everyone knew, for example, that women couldn't run the length of a standard basketball court.

So bodies were much less athletic and ripped.  On the other hand, junk food was not a term we knew.  Junk food in Waterville meant going to Whipper's for a sub, a pizza, or a dagwood, all pretty healthy by today's standards.  Fewer people were overweight. 

Girls almost always wore skirts and loafers or flats, almost never sneakers, all of which affected their posture, attitude, and approach to life.  Guys NEVER had facial hair or unusual haircuts or hair.  Most girls had perms.

And--it never would have occurred to anyone in 1963 to call a first year female student at college anything other than a 'girl' or--possibly, with a smirk--a 'young lady.'   The word 'woman' was reserved for what we now call 'older women.'

It was understood by many that if teenagers couldn't have sex because of the dangers and the difficulties, adults were pretty much way too past it to want to have sex, so, come to find out, pretty much NOBODY was having sex!

Drugs.  The drinking age in 1963 was 21 (after I left college it dropped to 18).  To a college freshman that meant little.  If we didn't want to depend on upperclassmen to buy for us, we'd head down to Freddie's on Silver Street.  Freddie would look worried, get whispery, make a point of getting you out of there quick, but he sure never asked for an ID.

And across the street from Freddie, about where the entrance to the Elm Plaza is now, was Onie's.  In those days, bars could only serve one drink--beer--, but Onie's served beer to anyone who could belly up to the bar.  One night I was there when a phone call came from the people Onie's was paying off at the Alcoholic Beverage Commission--we all had to leave immediately unless we had genuine ID!  Five minutes later, long before the cops arrived, the place was empty.

That was it for drugs in 1963.  You didn't think marijuana existed back then, did you?  Not until the mid-sixties in Waterville.  Pot and LSD arrived about '65.  Nothing else.  College kids didn't do pills....

Of course, we had major nicotine.  None of this sissy gotta-be-18.  None of this sissy filter stuff either!  We smoked in class, we smoked in the cafeteria, we smoked in bars.  25 cents a pack!  Unfiltered Luckies, or for the sophisticates: unfiltered Pall Malls.

Rock & Roll.  Aww, you've all heard that stuff on oldies stations.  All I can say is that what you've heard were the megahits, and that there were other songs and artists who people listened to besides The Four Seasons, the Kingston Trio, Elvis, and Phil Spector's girl groups.

How about a more interesting topic: dorm life.

In 1963, we had to live in college dorms for the first two years of school.  If you were a girl, you had to live in the dorms for all four years!  Cars were NOT allowed for the first two years. 

And, by the way, even people who had cars weren't all that excited: there were some big old granny boats, a few English sports cars, some VW bugs (still a novelty), and a few family sedans Dad had decided to pass on rather than sell.  No one had ever heard of a car from Japan--the biggest motorcycle Honda sold in the USA was a 50 cc step-through.  Korea?  Huh?

And I will bet you an icecream sundae that a photo of the college parking lot would show no more than two pick-ups, if that.  If that.  And one of them probably belonged to Buildings and Grounds.

There were no vans, SUVs, hybrids, hatchbacks, Prowlers, or four-wheel drives or front-wheel drives.  No muscle cars in 1963, either, not quite yet--everything was just waiting to happen!

So, if we didn't have cars, we probably didn't have jobs 'cause we had no way to get to them, but on the plus side, we didn't need jobs since we didn't have to buy gas (less than 30 cents a gallon, but in constant dollars, about what you pay today) and insurance (insurance was not required and most people didn't bother).

If you lived in the dorms and were a guy, you'd come in when you wanted.  If you lived in the dorms and were a girl, well, naturally, since women were the weaker sex and needed protecting, there was a curfew.  If you missed it, you could get locked out.  If the housemother checked on you after curfew and you weren't there, the blop hit the fan.

My girlfriend's room-mate was thrown out of college forever for immorality, because she missed curfew and spent the night at...(drum roll) her boyfriend's apartment!  She admitted it!  Shameless!

If you let girls like her live with decent girls, the thinking went, well, where would it stop???

Well, here we are and now we know!

Nov. 10.  Daily ATM Report, Maine Hall Unit: Unit seems to be functioning adequately.

Not that I dared use it after hearing from my favorite admin that her new sweater with its charge of static electricity not only fried it the other day, but shut down power throughout Bangor's East side.  Thanks, but no thanks, I got my dough at Dysart's in Hampden, where as a bonus I can break one of my stiff new Andy Jacksons almost immediately in the purchase of a Steve's Snacks Maple Whoopie.

But trouble lurks everywhere, even in Dysart's.  After my Jacksons came raining down, I counted and found I was one short, one Jackson short--that's twenty (20) smackeroos!  I thought of taking a wrecking bar to the machine but then paused for a deep breath, stooped, squinted and saw the errant bill trapped in the little gate thingie down there, whimpering that Alan Greenspan was gonna drag him off to the Federal Reserve if I didn't rescue him p.d.q.  Mission accomplished!   Andy Jackson reporting for duty!  (I thought I'd recycle a little campaign rhetoric there--a dite of red, a tad of blue--since no one else is using it right now, or if we're lucky, ever again.)

Nov. 10.  How much trouble can one punchy teacher get into?  I'm talking to student HC from Way Way Up North about her fine essay about getting a job at Burlington Coat Mall.  Hey, she has a good retail personality, and they've trained her to take measurements for men's suits, which started me to thinking about the last time anyone measured my pants  inseam for a suit--at the old Sklar's in Old Town.  David Sklar measured right from, uh, the bottom of the rise, so to speak, to my ankle bone or thereabouts.

So, I ask student HC if she does this task very often and if so, is it embarrassing--because, I add, "no offense, but I'd rather have a guy do it."

She pounces!  "You'd rather have a guy!  Really?"

Oh god, what have  I said!  How do I get into these ridiculous pickles?  Not that there's anything wrong with guys!  Not that I object to women in non-traditional roles!  Not that David didn't do a fine job.  Not that I need a darn suit!

In fact, there were a lot of suits in the halls today.  It's shameful to be prejudiced and only slightly less shameful to admit to it, but those suits made the hairs rise on the back of my neck.  They shake each other's hands with big hearty handshakes and ask after each other with booming jovial voices, you old sonuvagun!  It doesn't work for those of us with squeaky voices and damp hands!

I threaten a colleague: "You could be one of those guys."  He makes a face and tells me a funny story about suits, him, and his father--but this ain't his blog.  Ask him yourself if you want to hear it.

Nov. 9.  I saw the man pulling the Maine Hall ATM apart yesterday but didn't have the heart to go over and ask what could possibly be the matter with a newly-installed machine now--wasn't it just fixed?  In German, there's a word that means: taking an unholy glee in the misfortune of someone else. I confess that that word--schadenfreude--describes what I feel when I see that misplaced, poorly instructioned machine burping.  It would be nice if I were an altogether nicer guy, but until the school manages to move some roller chairs into the Acadia WL, I've got to laugh at our puny attempts,  like that ATM, to tame the modern world, if just to keep from crying, or worse. 

Yes, those roller chairs, another example of us not quite getting it right.

An Important Person did tell me yesterday that the chairs were being looked into...some problem at the warehouse.... I shrugged and said, "State work," implying, I hope, that, if anyone cared, two months would be long enough to build chairs from iron ore and raw plastic much less make the necessary phone calls to expedite matters.  Phone calls like: 'We have students who deserve decent seating, not second best and leftovers! What is your flippin' problem!!!!'

Well, I know you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, but that's my non-administrator fantasy of how, after a point, things should be handled.  Obviously, I'm not cut out for any position that carries its own phone line with it....

Nov. 5.  Maine Hall ATM update.  They got it working this morning, and I checked it out.  (Interesting that no matter how fancy a machine is, how hi-tech, when it's busted someone hangs a handwritten 'Out of Order' sign on it.  Shouldn't the manufacturer face reality and build right in a nicer-looking sign?)

Anyway, I noticed that the animated instructions show potential customers how to swipe a card, but the hardware on the machine is a card-insert device.

Good thing we know that it's the helpful spirit of the thing that counts, not the actual exact and precise instructions.  I don't suppose anyone really will be confused by the disparity between picture and reality, but, still, when we hear about the importance of communications in business and industry, why do we all nod so solemnly as though, yeah, of course businesses sit around desperately brainstorming ways to avoid communication errors?

Nov. 5.  I'm here to help students.  It's a matter of professional pride, and, man alive, if I've failed to explain something adequately, if I've failed to teach, I am extremely eager to help, to do better, to earn my keep, to turn confusion into light, failure into success.  My success is based on the student's success!

But what if a student misses a class?  Should I go over what the student missed so they don't fall behind?  My answer?  Sure--doesn't matter why they missed, good reason, bad reason, no reason.  I'll help.

What if they miss two classes?  Should I help?  Sure!

What if they miss two months of class?  Should I help?  I've had several students who've missed most of the semester and who want to 'make up' the work.  "I can do it, I know I can,' they say.

What does that mean?  That it's a matter of will power and a few late nights?  That it doesn't matter that they missed the chance to improve slowly over time?  That it's okay they weren't around to help and listen to and learn from and with their class mates?  That they've hired me for a semester and so when they're ready to work, I darn well better be ready to help?  That writing well just is no kind of big deal and that it may take some slowpoke four months to do your class, but, baby, they can do it in half the time!  That they deserve extra help and time (which, as a result, I won't have for the ordinary here-most-of-the-time student) because, hey, they are just extra darn special?

Honestly, when these students ask me for help, I'm reluctant. How can I compress 7 or 8 weeks of lectures and conversations about writing into an hour or two--and why should I?  I gave the lectures already, had the conversations when the papers were ripe.  Why should I sit down now and tutor someone one-on-one who blew off dozens of chances to be a serious student?  Why should I enable them?

If I sound bitter, it's because I'm torn.  I don't like discouraging students.  But I also don't putting time and energy into people who've already shown they have more important things to do than improve their writing.

Nov. 5.  Student DA had a poor trick-or-treat season: not so many customers for the five pounds of peanut butter cups, chocolate bars, and Butterfingers she bought.  On my invitation she brought in to school what looked like 55 pounds of stuff and dumped it on a table.  Everyone's eyes widened, but I made clear that only students wearing masks could have any.

Fortunately for all of us needing a sugar fix, wise student JH remarked--oh, how truly: "Are there any of us who don't wear masks?  At least sometimes."

Indeed!  So we all dug in.

Nov. 4.  Doctor's orders: No hot food, no cold food, no tough food, no alcohol.  Do not exercise, do not brush teeth, do not spit.   Instead, take powerful prescription drug painkillers, and then do not drive, do not operate heavy machinery, do not correct student essays.

Periodontal surgery.  Doctorperson way back on my jaw buzzing away, blood and bone chips flying everywhere.  All of this happening not a mile from the campus of EMCC, where people went about their business in happy ignorance of the gory spatterfest over on Stillwater Ave.

You'll see me with my Listerine bottle tomorrow.

Nov. 3.  This can be such a weird place.  Here's a new ATM going in in Maine Hall--a great idea (or a great idea  before the Katahdin Hall renovation.  But now KH is touted as a one-stop shopping place, where you can eat, pay your bills, and take out a book without hardly moving your feet--but for the money to pay those bills you've got to shlep across the parking lot.)

Or there's the saga of the rollaway task chairs for the computer lab in Acadia.  There were chairs there in August--nasty chairs missing wheels, backs, hydraulics, and not enough of them.  Important Persons knowing what a whiner I am went to check themselves, lest money be spent when it wasn't required.  They came, they saw, and the nasty chairs disappeared overnight, replaced with library-style chairs--and one Important Person promised new rollaway chairs soon.  But another Important Person took over the job of making that happen but this & that and yadda yadda blah blah blah, so that when I checked back recently, I was told that it would all be looked into further. 

And there it stands--our nimble, entrepreneurial bureaucracy, not quite able to figure out in two months how to get 20 chairs from a warehouse into a classroom.

Oct. 30.  Tomorrow is my one-year anniversary at this blogging thing.  I've written the equivalent of a short novel here in this space--70,000 words and more--and obviously am enjoying myself. 

When I tell my 101 students to post a couple of times a week, I see myself doing them a huge favor--I got them involved in blogging!  They see the whole deal as just one more darned old assignment and label their posts with tags like 'Required post # 6' or 'Compulsory assignment 3'  or maybe even 'Torture writing #345.'  And in a lot of cases their stuff has all the joy, spontaneity, excitement, interest, and spirit that the words 'compulsory assignment' suggest.

Oct. 30.  Bad jokes can get you in trouble out there in the real world, which I used to define as the world south of Kittery but nowadays would say begins south of Augusta.  Here's a report on dorm life from the University of New Hampshire:

 http://www.erinoconnor.org/archives/001035.html

Makes my blood boil.

Oct. 29.  A very very kind student, CN, after reading what I said about the flu, bought me a dispenser-bottle of  handwash gel Wednesday.  Rub it in and it disappears--leaves your hands flu-free!

I made noises about how I couldn't accept gifts (unless I could eat them on the spot and they were full of grease and sugar), but thank you anyway.  She convinced me that I was being a jerk, and I 'compromised' between her sensible viewpoint and my dumb one by setting the bottle up on the big screen computer thingie.  Some compromise! Silly, naive me thought that the bottle would be there until it was empty, and I'd be washing my hands with gel for a month or so.

Today, when I reached for my gel, I found someone else must have rubbed it into their hands, because it sure had disappeared.  All of it, and the bottle too.

CN smilingly suggested I find the culprit by demanding that all my students present their hands for me to sniff!  Oh yeah, I'm sure I could explain how perfectly innocent it was: judge--I swear!, it is not kinky or weird in the least for English teachers to be running their nostrils over student hands on the trail of that telltale gel smell! 

Oct. 29.  Here's a prompt from my ENG 162: "Dump the trash bin on the floor, pull on your rubber gloves, and start hunting for the truth that only your throwaways know."

Ain't that a corker? 

I'm a great great believer in the power of lists to generate strong writing. 

Oct. 26.  The fly who loved me.

I was reading some contrast essays to my classes yesterday--old essays, ones printed on a dot-matrix printer, a technology my younger students might not be familiar with (check your attic!)--when a fly began dive-bombing me. It went on for two periods!  The classes politely listened, politely watched as I continued on, but no students were themselves personally involved with the insect--I felt like The Heap, a walking, stinking, amorphous  garbage pile who had stumbled into a wedding or a surgical operating theater.  I washed my hair!  I took a shower!  Brushed my teeth!  How can I be expected to retain any credibility at all when one of the lowliest of God's creatures is saying, 'Pay no attention to this guy--he's putrid, he's garbage!' 

Oct. 26.  Nice photo below the fold on the front page of the BDN today--1898, Charles Rice, the red-frankfurter maker, holding a dog in his arms.  Obviously, he adored the dog, and in those days before cars, frivolous lawsuits, fussy insurance companies, OSHA, FDA, and government inspectors of meat plants, he probably took his baby with him everywhere.

I have no doubt that the meat-cutters in his hot-dog factory made hilarious jokes when Charlie's back was turned about what the next batch of hot dogs might contain for meat--and that when he was watching they fed the dog choice tidbits.  I have no doubt that the dog sat through boring business meetings on Charlie's lap, scarfed up horse poop in the streets, barked imperiously when Charlie didn't do the usual and expected, and lived a long, glorious life.

The dog looks just like my dear old Precious--if she'd been allowed all the meat scraps a hot-dog factory could provide.

Oct. 24.  Her newspaper ad said one thing, the unpuppymill lady in person said another--so, is Timmy a poodle-shihtsu cross or a poodle-maltese cross?  The missus and I hope to have 15 or 18 years of Timmy's company in which to debate the question.  The unpuppymill lady is always very cagy about stuff, so there's no point asking her for clarification. 

The missus is reading in a book about how to recognize a puppy mill, but I wouldn't want to even hint that the unpuppymill is anything like the book's description...but the one time I asked to see where she keeps the dogs, you'd have thought I asked for the deed to her house and the keys to her truck.

Anyway, for brains, Timmy sure seems poodle-ish.  In a few seconds I trained him to touch my finger, and now he comes running for the chance.  So, when the horse started towards him in the field this morning, I squatted, said his name, held out my finger, and he galloped over for a quick pick-up.

Oct. 24.  I was working on student blogs a minute ago, typing in comments, when I noticed that the keys on the left were all sticky--that happens fairly regularly around here with my taste for sweets and the absence of a sign saying 'NO food or beverages allowed.' 

But my lemon 'n' creme whoopie pie breakfast was long ago history. 

I looked--and the keyboard is sticky (and pink) with blood coming from under the band-aid on my third finger, left hand--where I'd wear a wedding band if I wore a wedding band.  Last night, chopping beets with my dandy offset-handle and serrated-edge DBK 8-inch blade, I took off the end of that finger, lickety-split and zippety-do.

I bleed for my students, I really do.

Oct. 22.  I'm heading out to the puppy mill this afternoon (whenever I talk with the owner, she always volunteers that she is NOT a puppy mill--I never bring the subject up....).  Scooter and Chloe were both born at the un-puppy mill.  Of course, I'm only going to look.  Maybe I won't buy.  Maybe I just won't want a fourth dog.  Or maybe I'll decide that four dogs is actually only two apiece for me and the missus, and surely that's not too many, is it?  I mean, really!

Anyway, we may soon have a new photo soon to grace this page!  Naturally, not being a puppy mill, the owner deals only in cash, and just in case, I'm all cashed up from the Dysart's ATM.  Stay tuned.

Oct. 21.  I spent a good deal of time in class yesterday going out of my way to say the opposite of what I hoped, lest I jinx a certain athletic group from my home town, the Hub of the Universe, Beantown, city of my birth.  I find in writing this post that, even at this present triumphant moment, some deep caution in me, some awful fear, some mental encyclopedia of bad moments in sports history still prevent me from mentioning that group by name. 

To any students reading this: okay, the equivalent of that golden basketball-sized meteorite coming through the ceiling of the classroom DID happen last night.  I kept saying you couldn't prove it wouldn't, but it was not a-gonna happen.   Teacher was wrong.

Oct. 21.  Sometimes a teacher persists in folly, despite the evidence of his senses telling him that a given assignment simply is not working for his students.  Last year I referred to this website and the assignment it led to as "notorious."

But, instead of dumping it, I even added a wrinkle to it yesterday--figuring that it taught the research skills of browsing and keyword development,  and the critical- thinking skill of 'treasure-hunting,' and was an just overall inspirational example of the power of research.  Alas, most of my victims simply saw it as an impediment to the real purpose of the course, which must be to churn out lots and lots of writing.  If I set it up as something they had to blog or with a worksheet or as an item to be tested later, it might get some respect.

Oct. 16.  I forgot my flu shot last year.  Or, rather, I marked it on my calendar, reminded myself every morning for weeks that I had to be in Rangeley at 10:20, and on the appointed day, I walked--past Rangeley, all the way to the end of Sylvan Rd, back to school, and taught my 11 o'clock with only a vague hum in my mind warning me of some important task left undone.  Not until I was driving home did the penny drop....

I wound up making a flu-jab appointment with my doc, the one whose philosophy is that we're all going to die pretty soon anyway, so why make a big hoo-haw and fuss.  Which is okay, because (at least until I'm all messed up with kidney stones and whimpering for morphine), it's pretty much my philosophy too.

But I don't want the flu!  I know it will arrive the day I'm doing grades, probably Dec. 17 at 2 pm (flu comes very quickly, and one feels fine one minute and like poop the next), and hang on for three weeks of vacation when I should be enjoying myself as much as a person can enjoy himself in December when he hates holidays, hates the cold, hates the snow, hates all outdoor winter activity, and also hates building and feeding fires in the woodstove.

In other words, enjoying myself not much, but a heckuva lot more than if I had the flu.

So, if you see me in class rushing off to wash my hands after using a student's keyboard or pushing my chair back fast and without embarrassment as a student coughs or not offering my pen to someone hunting for a writing instrument, you'll know why.  And you can snicker too, 'cause, obviously, I'm going to get the flu, no matter what.  But then, so are you.

And, for the luvva pete, if you have to snicker, cover your darn mouth when you do it, willya?

Oct. 13.  When I was in the first grade back in 1951--yes, nineteen fifty-one!--we took something called the Metropolitan Achievement Tests, using cutting edge technology: a sheet of paper with little circles we had to fill in with number 2 pencils.

Where does old technology go when it dies?  It doesn't have to go anywhere, because it doesn't die!  This week students at EMCC are filling in little circles with number 2 pencils for course evaluation surveys, the same little circles we filled in a half-century ago.  Those surveys will be sent to Orono, I believe, where a machine that's probably the size of a Chevy van will scan them and have feedback results almost immediately--that is to say, in a month or so, more or less. 

For my online course, I'm going to set up a website that will be called something like http://162feedbackpraisecriticism.blogspot.com and let students post anonymous feedback, praise, criticism, and so on.  Of course, there won't be machine-scoring, and there won't be any numbers or statistics to help me out.  I'll just have to read what people say and then think about it, which is another pretty old-fashioned technology....

Oct. 12.  I can't resist--and don't even try--making fun of politician talk. Governor Baldacci is in the news again, blabbing about the Maine Community College Writing Contest.  (Full disclosure: before Stephen and Tabitha King and Richard Russo get to choose the winners, there is a two-step screening process.  First, some volunteer cc writing teachers (I'm one of the volunteers) make a cut; then, I believe some of the usual suspects at the MCCS offices make a second cut.)

Anyway, the governor felt the need to put in his two cents worth, but every time he opens his mouth, he says something either incredibly obvious or incredibly pointless.  In today's BDN, he says: "Writing is an important form of communication."

Indeed it is, Governor!  Thank you for that thought.  Why, for importance I'd place it somewhere just behind speaking, but well ahead of crayon drawings, sticking out your tongue at someone, or dropping to one knee in front of your sweetie--various other important forms of communication.

He continues: "...when we talk about creative writing, we are also talking about the creative economy.  These are the types of skills and talents that people need for building strong communities and businesses."

Governor, do you know what writers do?  Can you explain how writing talent translates into strong businesses?  Because writers sit alone in rooms, staring at the walls, listening to voices in their head and talking to themselves.  Writers have huge egos requiring constant tending and can never overcome their sense of themselves as outsiders, the last ones picked for the kickball team.  Writers crack the jokes and become class clowns and sometimes even teacher's pets, but, y'know, at bottom nothing ever quite satisfies their itch to be understood, to get attention.  Which is why they sit down alone in a room to do it all over again.

But I'm having trouble picturing how how any of the above-listed skills could help, say, Rob Newcomb, who bought the Swan Lake Grocery when he was a teenager and has hustle hustle hustled ever since to build a strong business and community in Swanville.

I occasionally write the governor to hassle him about stuff, and I always start my letters the same way: "Had I known when I student-taught you in Bangor High School in 1971 that you would--" (and today I would finish my letter:) "--be uttering meaningless cliches and platitudes and pumping hot air into the pleasantly cool skies of Maine, I would have sat you down and made you read Orwell's 'Politics and the English Language' over and over until some of it stuck."

Oct. 8  Here I am in the Acadia Writing Lab at 8:26 with less than a third of the class (four out of thirteen) present, which allows me time to blog!  I do have a new customer, however, a small brown spider cruising the edge of the computer table five or six inches above my lap.  When I pushed back from the table a second ago, blipppp!  Down she came on a thread to a level below my knees--so I've moved the keyboard to one side and turned the monitor to avoid any misunderstandings or hysterical moments.  I make my living in the lab here, but what the heck kind of living is there in this basement room for a little brown spider?

I'm asking my students for topics to write about, and Andrew came up with Halloween.  Okay--what about the time someone stole the 200 lb plus pumpkin right out of the yard behind the house and my missus saw it a day later?  She saw it--it was in someone's dooryard, about five miles from home.  You get to know your 200 lb pumpkins and there was no mistaking it.  This was our Baby Huey of a pumpkin.  She drove right up to it and ordered me out.  "They're not stealing our pumpkin.  Get it in the car!" 

"Dear," I protested, "Someone is going to come out of that house with a 12 gauge and blow me away."

"Do it," she said, my wife, the pacifist, the meek, the mild.  "They're not taking that pumpkin."  So I did.

Come to think of it, there's a pattern here.  When someone stole her new bike, she cruised Belfast until she found it, then marched up to the porch where it was stashed and stole it right back, without waiting for police backup or the SWAT team.  She was that peeved.  Keep in mind, any readers of felonious intent, that my missus is not a spineless chocolate eclair like yours truly.

Oct. 6.  Horror.  Anger.  Confusion.  I'm upset, still upset, really upset, and those are some of the components of that upset.

I'd been working on showing google.com features to my nine o'clock class on the bigscreen computer.  Then I wandered around talking to people about their work.  Then I walked outside for a break.  At my ten o'clock, when I brought the screen up to do the google thing, I noticed that someone had unplugged the big monitor. I plugged it in--the history list was showing in the address window and one of the addresses, stuck between yahoo.com and google.com was www.nakedfatblackgirls.com.

I hadn't logged off.  Someone had sat down at my keyboard and typed the address in, and then, probably realizing that this 'prank' wasn't really all that darned funny, pulled the plug on the monitor and scooted.

Sherlock Holmes is dead, and my polygraph is too big to bring to school, so unless the culprit comes forward and confesses, Mystery Student will stay mysterious.

Advice is easy to give.  I tell students to back up all their work.  Is all my work backed up?  Yeah, right.  I tell my students to log off when they leave.  Do I log off when I leave for a minute?

In 1985, while working at Penobscot Job Corps, I parked my sports jacket on the back of my desk chair and put in a day.  At the end of the day, the wallet was gone from the inside pocket.  Dumb.  Nowadays, you'll see me dragging the butt of my jeans, wallet riding in the left rear pocket--I sure wish I could leave it in my coat, but I don't.  Ever.

Nor will I be leaving my computer until I've logged off.  Ever.

Oct. 4.  Coming in Friday, just past the Dahlia Farm Road, there are some dead flat fields. I was zipping along on a motorcycle, slightly faster than I want to admit to here, when out of the corner of my eye I spotted in the fields two of those silly reddish-plastic deer people put on their lawns (funny--because they wouldn't actually enjoy real deer browsing their gardens and plantings.)

"The heck!  Why are they setting those lawn deer way out here in the field?"  was my first thought.  My second: "Duh!  Those are NOT lawn deer!"

Sure enough, when I drove by in the fog this morning, the deer either had been moved into the garage for winter storage or had wandered off, preparing for next month's hide 'n' seek.

Oct. 4.  I think in high schools sometimes teachers assign work but never plan to read or even collect it.  Students catch on pretty quickly to when they're being assigned busywork, which may explain why--when I neglected to mention in one of my Friday classes that, yes, I certainly hoped to see the work students had prepared for that day--no one handed it in, except one person who asked if I wanted it.

I also think high school teachers sometimes build their whole careers around only accepting work with students names at the top RIGHT, RIGHT!!! corner of the page and turned in on the center LEFT, LEFT!!! of their desks.  And they get very emotional if things aren't done just-so.

Just hand it in, folks, any which way, so I can read it!

Sept.29.  I read an article once about bad drivers and how we should react to their mistakes by sending a prayer after them, a prayer that they get home safely and learn to do better, just as we should learn to do better too--a prayer, instead of a curse, because none of us is perfect, and we all have our stupid and selfish moments behind the wheel.

This morning, alas, a prayer was not on my lips.  The only thing I said that is in the dictionary was the word 'you.' 

Heading north on 141 towards Monroe village, the Marsh Stream road comes in on the right.  Any car on that road pulling onto 141 needs to come to a full stop, so the driver can check to the north, where a short hill cuts visibility--once the road is clear there, the driver glances south, where he can see a quarter-mile, and then pulls out.

Black extended-cab pickup with a cap.  He approached the stop sign--too fast, not stopping--glanced north, I hope.  He may have glanced south, toward that rapidly approaching motorcycle with me on it, but with those tinted windows, it's hard to say.  Anyway, he rolled right onto 141, directly in my path.  I stopped ten feet from his door, half-slewed sideways in the gravel where the two roads meet.  He proceeded on his way with no sign of having seen me at any point.

I waited a few seconds, downshifting, letting the adrenaline subside, half-hoping he'd come back so I could give him holy heck, but, no--no prayers and no further curses.

Sept. 28.  When my peaceful and mild-mannered missus was a three year-old, and sister Joy was born, something happened.  What exactly the something was has been lost in the mists of time, but the upshot was a punching bag set up in the cellar for the three year-old to beat on, rather than doing whatever the something was to poor Baby Joy....

For the past year or so, I've been beating on the bags in the gym during my workout.  It's kind of simple-minded to say 'oh, he hits the bags, he must be dealing with his stress and aggression.'  I'm no dancer, I'm no musician, I ain't got rhythm--but it does my soul (not to mention my deltoids) good to get the speed bag a-rat-a-tat-tatting.  Then I jump over to the body bag: jab-jab-cross, jab-jab-jab-cross, jab-jab-hook, jab-jab-jab-hook.  Different rhythm, also very satisfying. 

Sept. 22.  It's a week shy of what would have been the 46th birthday of Maine writer, journalist, and teacher Tory Brotherhood Haiss.  Tory was the first person I ever knew with a word processor--this would have been in the mid-eighties.  A word processor was not a typewriter nor was it a computer--it was a little bit of both.  You could see your words in a tiny LCD display, even save them, and print them out later, which was a huge wow-factor.  But it had about as much memory as today's electronic egg-timer.

It also had various fonts and type sizes, four of each maybe--it was no MS Word, but it wasn't your portable Underwood either.

I wasn't impressed though.  Seemed like more trouble and money than it could possibly be worth....  That electronic junk would never catch on!

Tory was being stiffed by an organization for whom she'd written a few articles--they wanted a bill on letterhead before they would cut her a check.  She sat down at her word processor and whipped up a very impressive looking piece of stationery ('Tory Brotherhood Associates' was the name on the top--instant incorporation and a few invisible hires!) and underneath, in different fonts, a standard-look invoice.

Nowadays people can fake anything on computers, but twenty years ago, this was cutting edge.  I was blown away by her ingenuity and determination.  She pointed to the 'Associates' after her name: "They're going to have to pay more, now that I have all this overhead."

Sept. 22.  Talking to a student about an isearch, something about rap.  I say, "So, you want to be a white rapper?  Eminem?  Dja see [trying to remember], uh, 'Five Mile'?"  He freezes, I feel other students freezing.  Uh-oh, remembered wrong.

He says, "You mean 'Eight Mile.'  Aww, I can feel my face burning.

I say out loud what I know they're all thinking, "Huh!  Mr. Oh-so-kool English teacher knows a rapper's name.  Wow!  Can't even get the movie title right!"  They grin and relax, the signal for me to look very serious.  "Hey, everyone's seen 'Eight Mile.'  That's nothing.  Have you seen 'Five Mile'?"  Gets a laugh. Not ten minutes later, talking to another student, I have 'Fahrenheit 9/11' produced by Roger Moore--that's Bond, James Bond, to you.  It isn't memory, folks.  It's trying to talk sensibly for five minutes apiece to twenty students in a fifty-three minute period.  I lose a few of the refinements, like names, dates, places....

Sept. 22.  Walking into Acadia this morning, two former students were hanging in the front hall.  "Hey," I said.

And then, one of these guys knocked me for a loop.  "Those things we did last year--sneer quotes--did you invent them?"  They both waited, eager for an answer.

These guys are not writers-in-training!  Their shop is hot, dangerous, and at the end of the day, their hands are not clean.  But at 7:55 this morning, four months after their last class with me, they wanted to know about sneer quotes!  (Actually, I suspected they wanted to get me in a fight with some other instructor: 'You said blah blah blah, but Mr. Goldfine says blippety-bop!')

Nevertheless, I could not resist two guys from last semester who  remembered sneer quotes!  Who knew they were listening!  So, I said, cautiously, "Yeah, sneer quotes, scare quotes.  I didn't invent them."

One turned to the other. "See, he said he'd never heard of them."  And I knew they were probably going to say to the other instructor: "Hey, John A. Goldfine told us this morning you were a jerk if you never heard of sneer quotes, you weren't fit to be teaching English.  He wants to duke it out with you."

Oh, man.  I know what the other instructor said!  He said, "I've never heard of using sneer quotes in a formal paper.  You need to explain your disagreement with the point, not use the sneer quotes as a crutch."

But they heard something slightly different.  Even so, I'm still tickled that they had sneer quotes on their mind and wanted to use them in their writing, however inappropriately to the assignment.

Sept. 21.  I hear a lot about apathy these days: people around me claim they don't care any more, say that colleagues just roll over in meetings because they're apathetic, or wonder if cultivating apathy might be a a relief from the constant aggravation.

I have a good number of the seven deadly sins on my plate already, thank you kindly, but apathy, close cousin to spiritual sloth, is not one of the ones I claim.  I'm way too much of a pepperpot; my buttons get pushed; my chain gets jerked--and suddenly there I am sitting down at a keyboard to uncap the volcano and scorch the evildoers with a flow of sizzling lava (the lava pouring out of Mt. John ain't no baking soda and vinegar, baby!)

No doubt administrators soothe themselves to sleep dreaming of  faculty who are always eager to join a committee, chair a study, travel to a conference--faculty who cheerfully agree with the always- well-thought-out plans of professional college administrators and who want only to help implement those plans in the most quality fashion possible.

Until that faculty shows up, administrators will have to make do with the crooked timber of humanity they have on hand--some pepperpots, some broken souls, one or two go-getters, their eyes, no doubt, on a future career in one of the corner offices.

Sept. 19.  The wind was whipping down Pitcher Pond toward Ducktrap, not enough for whitecaps though, and, despite nervous noises from someone I first met 41 years ago this month, I launched the rowing canoe.  Scoot jumped in without hesitation; he's always ready to head out.  Chloe dithered a little, couldn't quite pull the trigger and found herself left on shore, racing along the beach with her eye on us.  We headed back in and this time, when she had her chance, she took it, and then we all three pulled for the island.

Scoot stood on the bow thwart balancing and keeping an eye on the passing scene--he's only ever tumbled in once.  When I see him up there, benign and watchful, I always think of this book, one of the first I ever remember reading (Reading level according to the librarians: baby to preschool.)  Scooter is my Scuppers the Sailor Dog, the dog I've wanted to have ever since I was six or seven.  One of the reviews on Amazon asks: "Is there a more charming picture in children's literature than Scuppers the Sailor Dog standing on the prow of his little boat, dressed in wet weather gear, with a spyglass to his eye?"

My answer is no, there is not, but fine as the illustration is, it pales next to the actual sight of my Scooter with his forepaws on the gunwale of the blue Old Town Discovery.  After I'd pulled a few strokes, got my rhythm, and could feel how much the wind was going to let me dig in and use my back and knowing Scoot was behind me alert to problems and Chloe was in the bilge alert to Scoot's alertness, for a few seconds there my brain flooded my mind with endorphins, the body's natural high, and I was purely happy.  Just for a few seconds.

Then I thought, "God, this is perfect," and, as soon as I had a thought, even a happy thought, the endorphins dissipated.  I was still glad to be out on the water with my dogs, but that first thrill of a drug hitting the brain was gone.

We circled the island, slid back with the wind, still having to pull quite a bit to keep the boat from yawing, and then we were back at camp, the dogs excited as heck to see Mumma who had been out of sight for a half-hour now.  Seeing Mumma is always a thrill for me too, but I'm a little past the crazy-waggling-my-rear-end stage.  

Sept. 17.  One thing that happens in the cold is contraction. Things shrink, whereas in hot weather they expand.  You huddle in a crouch over the woodstove waiting for the heat to start pumping; you lie on the beach flopped open to the sun.

Sadly, my brain contracts in the cold weather too, not that the weather this September in Maine has been anything but delightful.  But I'm wearing a light sweater as I write at 5:30 am, and I'm getting lazy and forgetful, signs of a contracting brain.  I was sitting at the dining room table last night reading a gun catalog, if you can call   fantasizing about all the pretty guns it would be fun to own and exercise out back 'reading'--when the phone rings.

My cousin from Mass.  Asking if I would be coming to her daughter's wedding in a couple of weeks.  Oh oh oh oh OH!  They sent me an invitation back in August; they asked for a reply by Sept. 15.  They deserve a reply!  They're not telemarketers!  They want my company and they want to fill me up with catered food and free booze--you'd think I could answer!

I blame it on the cold--on my shelf is another wedding invitation from another cousin--gotta get them a present even if the wedding was two weeks ago!  There's a reminder to cancel insurance on a car I haven't owned for a week.  There's some IRS paperwork due Sept. 15--my cousin will give me a nice call when I screw up, but my Uncle will charge penalties and interest and not offer me free food unless it's in federal prison for messing up my taxes!  There's postcards I'm supposed to fill out and send to friends, postcards from a trip that ended nearly a month ago.  There's a medical history I have to fill out for the oral surgeon who is ready, willing, and eager to carve up my gums for her fun and profit (so that my dentist can also frolic in there, doing stuff that needs to be done if I want to eat anything tougher than tomato soup, but which, unaccountably, Delta Dental will not cover.)

That's the stuff I've let slide, even though I'm up-to-date as of last night on all 80 or 85 of my student blogs.

If it were summer and my brain were looser, I might be doing better with the paperwork aspect of life. 

Sept. 15.  You probably don't like poetry.  I certainly don't like poetry.  But I am sentimental and I do love dogs, and this poem is completely accessible--you don't have to like poetry to like this poem.  (Scroll down to the dog picture--poem is just below and that's the best hyperlink I can make this early in the morning).  In fact, my missus, who does love poetry, won't read it because she knows it will tear her up (knows it without reading it, on my anti-recommendation).  But I recommend it to you--oh boy, do I!

By the way, it's quite short and I'd reprint it here, but--you know what?--it's illegal to reprint something this long without the author's permission.  Like he owns his own words!

Sept. 14. When I came home from school yesterday ranting and raving about various derelictions and misdeeds of people whose actions I don't control and how those actions screwed up my mind and hence my classes, the dogs lay down about eight feet away, chins on the kitchen linoleum, their eyes on me to see if I was going to start throwing things, or if I'd get louder, or if my anger was in any way likely to be visited on them.

That tended to calm me right down.

Students aren't like dogs, of course, but they're equally good at sensing teacher's mood and also what teacher takes seriously.  I have a website for my ENG 101 course http://hoganroad.blogspot.com and started the semester not quite sure how I was going to use it.  I said  candidly in my syllabus that it was in the nature of an experiment, material going on there for student reaction.  My first post was about writing journals--something I'd written for 162.  Students started posting reactions but after I'd read a couple of dozen, I pulled the plug because I could see the students were not inspired or interested but just doing yet one more dumb assignment.

So I posted a piece of student writing I liked and asked for reactions IF people had ones, but it was optional and not to post just to say assignment-done.  Two reactions.  I reminded people via email it was there.  One more reaction.

I'm kind of smiling to myself how well they read my indecisiveness on this--they're voting with their feet: either tell us to do it, Goldfine, and we will or shut the heck up about it!

Sept. 10.  I don't use lecture notes anymore, haven't for 15 years or so--I do need to write myself reminders if I have three or four housekeeping issues to bring up with a class, but the stuff I want to say about writing is pretty much on my mind and out my mouth without the need for much forethought.  Does that sound awful--that I don't think about my lectures ahead of time?

Not thinking about them doesn't mean I have them memorized and always give the same lecture class after class, year after year--on the contrary, it's being tied to notes that guarantees the same lecture for all eternity.  I'm flying free, while yet improvising on a familiar theme.

Today I gave my isearch intro to four different classes.  Without any plan beforehand, something I usually say a couple of weeks into the isearch today became a major theme of the intro.  I got right into stuff about how research, curiosity, looking for answers is a human birthright that teachers steal away and say you, the student, can only do with their expert help, which naturally turns human nature sour and makes people who research issues every day of their lives (consumer decisions, romantic choices, life issues) believe they hate research.

I got excited about my own material.  I was turned on, juiced, and jazzed.  And I like that--it's one of the fun things in teaching.  In my first and fourth period especially, the words, examples, jokes, exhortations poured forth easily and well.  There were times I knew I just had my audience--they wanted to be skeptical, they wanted to dismiss what I was saying as weirdo b.s., but they couldn't and they stayed to listen and consider, despite themselves.  I was proud.

Now periods 2 and 3 didn't work out quite as well--not sure why.  I was so pumped before period 2 that I did an impromptu magic trick to pass the time before class.  I enjoyed myself but know full well that I can come on too strong and that enjoying my own nonsense too much and too obviously can be a turn-off for students all too used to crazy teachers with captive audiences.  So, maybe it was that or maybe it was the stupid little voice inside telling me that I had to give period 2 as good a class as period 1 had, and if only I had NOTES, I could cookie-cut my classes so they were all perfect. 

Period 4 reacted differently than the other classes had to what I was saying, and maybe it was that or maybe it was the Munchkins two women had brought in for class snacks, but I got back on track.  Back on track means I was as strong as first period, but the material came out differently, different emphasis, different sidebars and discursions.

Two good enough classes, two excellent classes.  To quote James Brown: I FEEL GOOD!  Or I did feel good.  Now I feel a letdown.  You go up, you go down.

Sept. 9.  If you read my blog much, you'll already guess I talk to my dogs quite a bit. I try to keep it practical, though I do spend a lot of time telling them how good they are, how beautiful, and how Mumma hates them so they better be nicer to me than to her if they want any supper!  (When I say that, they always raise an eyebrow and say, "Yeah, right, Daddy!"  Once I clearly heard Scoot say, "NOT!")

I hate it when people talk baby talk to them--it sounds incredibly stupid and patronizing, and I'm sure it hurts their feelings to be talked down to that way.  But if I do it, it's merely a simple expression of warm feeling the dogs understand perfectly and don't mind at all.  Mostly, I avoid baby talk.

Truth is, the more I can communicate with the dogs through dog language and training, the less I talk to them at all.  But I'm always imagining what they would be saying if they could talk.  Right now, I'm thinking about writing a response to a prompt for my 162 class about what-if the walls or something inanimate could talk, but dogs are anything but inanimate.

Sept. 9  I'm a teacher and always with an open eye, eager to find lessons in life and lessons for life, though, heaven knows, I find them pretty darn seldom.  I got a double-lesson tonight from Professor Chloe, who holds a Ph.D in Human Psychology.

We're eating supper on the porch.  Chloe is on the shelf by the table, working me for treats: she sits pretty, she stares straight up overhead, she rests her head on my beer glass, she lies down motionless except for her eyes, she stands on two legs, she touches her nose to the screen window and freezes.  These are all tricks either I've taught her or she's trained me to accept as behavior worthy of a click 'n' treat.

We have a new trick we're doing, or rather a combination of two old tricks.  I tell her 'whoa' and she freezes--trick #1.  I tell her 'touch' and hold up a finger (or pencil, cane, carrot stick, etc) and she will touch it, even if she has to run after it because I'm moving it away)--trick #2.

So between slurps of soup, I tell her to whoa and hold up my finger but don't tell her to touch.  What should happen is she freezes and waits until I say 'touch' and then touches my finger.

But she seems to be screwing up, which is not like her at all, and trying to touch my finger after I say 'whoa.'  Then I pay a little more attention to what she actually is doing.  She's not quite freezing immediately, it's true, but she's not actually touching my finger either.

She thrusts her little mashed in ShihTzu nose toward the finger but stops just about a half inch shy of touching.  Freezes.  And waits.  And waits.  And when I finally do say 'touch,' she only has a short distance to go, and the trick is over that much more efficiently because of her little up-front cheat.

When I finally realized that she was doing, not what I expected, but something that almost fit the letter of the law, when I saw the expression on her face which said, "Daddy, you butthead, I'm doing your dumb trick, I AM NOT touching your stinking hand, will you please for the luvva pete stop telling me I'm screwing up!  Did I call you a butthead already?"--when I finally realize and see, I get my best laugh of the day, and the laugh is on me.

Chloe is working hard at making me a better trainer.  I had her do the trick again but I was so startled when her nose thrust forward and stopped just short of my finger that I clicked right then, instead of finishing with the touch command.  I treated her anyway, feeling that I'd screwed up, but then realized that of course, I could reward her for simply freezing, I could legitimately break the trick off in the middle.  She'd done something very worthy of reward--and that was Professor Chloe's second lesson to me of the evening.

I wish I could pay enough attention so that my students could teach me as well as Chloe does.  I wish I could teach my students as well as Chloe teaches me.  Chloe wishes I'd cut the shuck, can the jive, and get some more of those darned dog treats pronto.

Sept. 9.  Boo Hoo, Poor Me Department.  I'm reading about 85 student blogs for every class period and there are at least 6 or 7 new assignments a week on each blog and I'm commenting on many of those.  You do the arithmetic.  I haven't been able to post here, not because I don't have time--I could always find fifteen minutes for a quick post--but because writing dozens and dozens of short responses to student writing screws up my brain for anything more sustained and slow-moving.  Imagine climbing off a rollercoaster--the ground feels funny underfoot, and you're not really ready to run a five-mile road race, though you will be soon.  Heck, you can barely totter away from the rollercoaster to the next thrill.

That's how I feel after a couple of hours reading and writing comments on student blogs.  I can't quite shift gears to write about collecting firewood, or riding horses, or playing with dogs, or working in the garden, or hassling with admins, or even amusing moments in class, though these all have been part of my life the past week.  All I can seem to write about (and you're reading it) is how much I'm reading and writing, not a topic with a lot of legs.

Sept. 7.  So many dead brain cells, burned out with my nightly beer at supper and (back in the day, way back) drugs--and most of them killed in the part of my brain that processes names and faces.  I know you, I do, you're my student, you wrote a really funny piece about how your dog ate the wedding cake, you sit on the right side of the room about halfway down and have a green bookbag with your initials in Italic script. 

And your name is...ummm.  It takes me a big part of the semester to get everyone's name, not because I don't care, but because of those dead brain cells and also because I'm nearsighted and you're often just a blur--a very nice blur, but kind of...blurry.

Sept. 6.  After the Labor Day race (I've lost ten minutes in 12 or 15 years--but who wants to tour the course in 37 minutes and get windburn from the speed and have to deal with a pack of youngsters?  Not me!), the missus and I made the traditional annual trek to Shaw's, where we get all the weird stuff that hasn't made its way to the Swan Lake Grocery yet--sushi and Mailhot cretons (pork spread to you) and several different flavors of Stonyfield smoothie.  If we ever have any grandchildren, just the stuff to get them whimpering and begging their parents to please please please don't make me eat grampy's cooking.

And who should I see at the head of the pasta aisle but former ace student M.L., who said, unsolicited and unprompted, that he'd been reading this webpage all summer and enjoying it.

Bless his heart, bless him!  M.L, when you see me in Shaw's next Labor Day, the only thing nicer you could say is: "Goldfine, do you still have those wicked cute dogs?"

September 5.  Because the school's server hosts this webpage and because I'm a teacher, I'm often sorely tempted to turn a neutral post into a little lesson.  Maybe I'm afraid my bosses will hassle me if I just post about potatoes.  'What do potatoes have to do with education, teaching, and writing, John?' they will ask, just before they dock my paycheck a zillion dollars for Implementing Irrelevant and Inappropriate Electronic Media Communication Products, or however it is bureaucrats would phrase my crimes and misdemeanors. 

The last time I was tempted to find a moral, I was writing about lupines and, even saying flowers offer no moral, which I did,  is a kind of moral all by itself, isn't it?  But today, okay, this post is about potatoes, just potatoes, and nothing but potatoes, so help me gosh.

And what a year for potatoes it's been.  Peas, potatoes, artichokes all having a great summer.  Tomatoes, okra, broccoli, corn, so-so.

I have Kennebecs, Burbank Russets, and Red Norlands in the ground.  The Kennebecs are my back-up spud, there so that if the other two do poorly I won't go without.  But it's the reds and the bakers I get enthusiastic about. 

I was turning up dozens and dozens of big long Burbanks today--my hands are still dirty!  Big eight or nine inchers, many of them.  If they were that size and Kennebecs, they'd probably be hollow inside, but my faithful Burbanks are perfect, I just know it.  Oh boy, they will come out of the oven sizzling and I'll douse them with homegrown parsley and homegrown horseradish and the best storebought Shurfine margarine money can buy. Oh boy, oh BOY!

And I always bake way more than I need so that I can slice the leftovers the long way and then either fry them or soak them in oil and vinegar and rebake them.  Mmmmm.  Hard to believe I just had a sandwich, because my own writing is making me salivate.

And the Norlands get boiled and made into mashed potatoes with cheese and anchovies and parsley and my other secret ingredients I have no plans to divulge to my readers.  And if I don't use them all, they can be fried up with onion and celery or made into potato salad or put into chowder.  Ahh, life isn't necessarily good, but, with enough potatoes, it isn't necessarily bad either.

Last winter, in the cold snap in January, I lost a lot of potatoes stored in the pantry--and that hadn't happened in the 30 years I've been putting them in there.  This year, if the winter gets too serious, the dogs can move out of their beds or sleep with potatoes, because these babies are too beautiful to not come in out of the cold.

And--ahem--is there a moral here?  I plant the seed potatoes not knowing quite what to expect, how things will turn out.  I spray them and mulch them and weed and pick off beetles.  Sometimes I even forget about them for a while.  But finally, the magic and mystery happens, and I'm out there with a fork, getting thrill after thrill as I see my little pupils--I mean 'potatoes'!--my little potatoes come out of the ground and tumble into old plastic milk cartons belonging to dairies which have been out of business for decades.  And they're happy and I'm happy, and we've both done our job, but it has nothing to do with teaching, alas, and there still is no moral!

By the way, if anyone knows how the old ladies make those augratin potatoes they serve up at Grange and church suppers, I'm looking to know the secret.  In fact, I'd trade some good spuds for a good recipe.

September 3.  This is what I call a corker and a keeper.

The conventional teacher advice is to consider the audience, and that's a fine default setting, but sometimes that advice gets in the way.  This writer has paid her audience the huge compliment of ignoring it and turning inward to her memories and feelings.  If the audience can follow, fine.  If not, it's no concern of hers because the writing isn't for the audience.

But it's one of those paradoxes.  How do you really draw in the audience?  By letting it figure the writing out for itself.  By trusting it to be able to do that.

The only thing I regret is that Josiejo wrote this about 48 hours into the semester--it's going to be pretty hard down the road for me to claim I taught her everything she knows about writing.

Stairways

posted by josiejo

September 2.  I've been bustin' butt getting student blogs under way, collecting email and blog addies, lining them all up in the right folders, stamping out brushfires, emailing and talking to confused students (it's mostly new to me too!), and, oh yeah, somewhere in there thinking about actually teaching students something as early as tomorrow!

My 162 students have prompts they are responding to and the first one is 'Alone in a room--what do you hear?'  Writing with students is a huge relief from teaching-as-such, and my faith is that students learn something from seeing a writing teacher write.  They might learn that he ain't all that, which might give them some confidence.  Or they might feel intimidated by his glorious prose, from which they might conclude either that they have to try harder or that their lives as students are hopeless.  Hoping that last one isn't what they learn.... 

Here's my response to the prompt:

Sept. 2.  Lord knows I try to be a good internet citizen.  I'm always cleaning up my hotmail junkmail and dealing promptly with other mail, lest MSN get annoyed with me for clogging up their servers.  So, imagine my chagrin this morning when they practically accused me of being a spammer!

Yes, Hotmail said I'd sent out too many messages in the last 24 hours (all to students, mind you!) and they were sending me to my room without supper to teach me a little lesson.  Or--

For a mere $19.95 I could have Enhanced Hotmail or whatever it's called (I'm so used to reading about enhanced and enlarged body parts in Hotmail I've forgotten most other adjectives) which would let me return to respectability and begin emailing students again.

Did I go for their pitch?  Check your email, people, 'cause you have enhanced and enlarged mail!

September 2.  I thought of this yesterday but forgot to put up the link.  Auden was writing the day the Second World War started, as Germany, with Soviet connivance, invaded Poland.

September 2.  Carol Lewandowski asked me to write something for this year's first issue of the school paper. I reacted like a student panicked by a teacher's demands: how many words, when was the deadline, what was the topic.  Throwing anything out there to avoid facing the assignment.

Then I tried using the missus to solve all my problems.  "Cal wants me to write something for the school paper."

"What's the topic?"

"Whatever I want."

"That's like tossing a whoopie pie at you.  You'll catch it on the fly and gobble it down."

"Yeah?  What should I write about?  Cal says not to forget my audience."

"I'm not giving you any topics.  You know what you're doing."

"Okay, fine.  How about Sex as a topic.  Very few people aren't interested in that."

"In the school paper?  C'mon, grow up.  How about something about journalism?"

"Sure, right: 'Our nation today is at war to defend and extend the freedoms guaranteed you in the First Amendment: the freedom to read a free press and to say and think what you like.  Here in the community college setting--.'"

"It doesn't have to sound like that.  You don't have to write it badly."

I sulked.  What's the point of being married for 35 years if your darn wife won't give you writing topics!

Aug. 31.  Here's a quotation from a writer named Steven Den Beste: "I don't want to improve; I wrote it the way I wanted to write it, and the result is my expression. If I wrote it the way they think I should have written it, it would no longer be my expression."

I'm extremely sympathetic to his opinion, though the State of Maine pays me good money to intervene and advise, suggest, exhort, even demand that student writers write it the way I think they should have written it. 

Aug. 31.  As a child, I was terrified of the old man down the road--he spoke only broken English; instead of a nice house, he lived in a hole dug into the hillside and lined with stones; and, scariest of all, he gathered mushrooms!  (And all this within the city limits of Boston Massachusetts!)  Why a harmless hermit should frighten children I'm not sure--something to do with his profound differences from us in age, body, outlook, differences we had to deal with on our own, not too successfully...

Dark, humped over, gathering mushrooms.  He must eat them.  Like a witch.  Aren't they poisonous?  Toadstools, ewww!

Anyone with an irony detector knows what's coming.  Here I am a half-century or so later, digesting an omelet made with chanterelles I found on the old animal pound road on the way to Swanville this afternoon.  Pretty soon there ought to be some nice agaricus campestris over at Osram Sylvania and once I found a few king boletes under the shade trees next to Katahdin. Yeah, me, the humped-over old mushroom gatherer.

If I don't show at school tomorrow, you'll know I misidentified the fungus, and it was actually a poisonous jack-o-lantern (which actually do glow in the dark, if you want major ewww factor.)

Aug. 31.  Getting on the good side of Mr. Goldfine, several students yesterday heeded my advice and complimented Scooter, the dog in the above photo, for his cuteness and overall wonderfulness.  Slick move! 

Aug. 31.  I've spent a zillion hours organizing email and blog addresses and making mistakes I think I can avoid remaking, though with my track record, who knows?  So far, I have the email addresses of about 40 of my 96 students and only 13 or so blogs (a lot of blogs I couldn't open because there's nothing in them yet, so that was a bunch of wasted effort....)  But it won't be as slow in the future, it won't it won't it won't.  It won't!  (Be positive!)  Right?

Of course, the last thing I need is to be sitting here a second longer, but how am I going to encourage my students to write, come hell or high water, if I'm generating excuses for myself to avoid putting my fingers to the keyboard?

Aug. 29.  Last day of summer vacation.  My afternoon recreation choices: head out to Windsor Fair for a day of studying the racing form, wagering in 2 dollar increments, collecting my winnings in ten cent increments, doubting I could possibly look as old as all the other old bettors, eating doughboys, deciding for yet another year against riding the crazy bicycle, and, finally, wondering if a sausage sub with all the trimmings would hurt my appetite for supper.

Or, choice two: stick around the house.  Weeding a little (I'm not trying to stay ahead any more.)  Grubbing up potatoes for supper, cutting some artichokes, snapping off a few corn ears.  Picking blueberries.  Walking the dogs.  Maybe running.  Writing.  Worrying about tomorrow.  Blathering to the missus.

My decision?  Post time for the trotters was at 1 pm.  As I write, it's 1:12.

Aug. 29.  We heard from administration Friday that faculty was giving too many A's. 

Although I'm sympathetic to the call for high standards, arguably administration is messing around in an area which is none of its business.  I don't want to be told how I should grade because ultimately that would mean administration would tell me how and what I should teach.  If the administrators demand hard-number accountability (and that's their direction), eventually they will tell me to find some objective way to test and score student writing. 

Since my professional philosophy is that such tests are meaningless, trivial, and destructive (as is the work students do to prepare for them), I would be faced with the classic underling pickle: serve the lords above me or serve the Lord above.

For the record I don't grade effort, I don't have a 'class participation' or 'attitude' fudge factor as some of my colleagues do.  But figuring out whether a piece of writing is worth an A or a B or a C is not of much interest to me.  What does interest me is slicking up whatever writing a student presents me with.  When the piece is about as good as I think it can be, I take it for full credit.  I consider that I maintain a standard of excellence, as a bureaucrat might say, without wasting everyone's time focusing on grades.

If Deans and Presidents feel that their lists and letters of commendation are devalued when too many people are on them or receive them, maybe such external motivators ought to be dropped completely.  Do we really want a culture where people work for the recognition and approval of higher-ups, rather than their own intrinsic satisfaction?

Aug. 28.  I mentioned 'Double Standard Dad' in an August 15 post.

Here it is.

Aug. 27.  Half-day of faculty development today where various administrators told us things.  Things like they are interested in quality instruction, things like Maine has economic problems, things like diversity is good for all of us, things like the college hasn't got much money for publicity so word-of-mouth is important, things like communication is good so that people find out each other's best ideas.

If you're saying: 'Yeah, like duhhh!--tell me something I don't already know!" you're right.  I thought our administrators seemed tired, beaten down, bored, not really in the game at all today.  Or maybe I'm just projecting on them the way I feel after listening to them for four hours. 

There was a time when I had hopes that new administrative blood might make a difference--and it has, just not a particularly positive one.

August 27.  One thing I found out today is that the original Maine Hall architectural plan is being reverted to, and Room 155 (the office I share with Robb Freeman and used to share with Ed Raymaker) will become a single, MY single.  I'm a true blue conservative and generally dislike anything new and reflexively prefer the old ways.  I haven't changed my colors just because I will have my first-ever private office.

Giving me an office is a waste.  I only spend a few minutes a week in my office and, without Robb there to yak to, am likely to spend even less.  So, why dedicate space to me that will never be used?

Also, I'm going to miss the chance to wander next door when I'm bored to pester Thom Amnotte and hear the latest about his hockey-playing nephews, his garden, his athletic exploits, his always interesting advice about teaching.  We agree on very little, but it's always fun to shoot the breeze--now, as an unintended consequence of room shuffling, faculty will be more isolated than in the past.  Strangely enough, at today's morning meeting we were given a huge pep talk on how important it is for faculty to communicate with faculty....

Maybe some committee set up by some admin of the future will arrive at the idea that one way to improve communication might be to have faculty... share office space!

Probably the admins think faculty will be thrilled to have its own offices.  Maybe some of us will.  But being thrilled at offices is really an admin thing--we have admins on campus who've had six or eight different offices in an EM career no longer than mine.  You know you've arrived when you have the nice panelling, a little artwork, a rug, a wall of awards and photos....

But teachers do most of their work in their classrooms, not their offices.  My classroom is four chairs short of the twenty I'll need Monday.  Some of the other sixteen chairs are badly beat-on and busted.  The room has a creaky old AC which drowns me out when I talk.  It's dark and narrow.  I'd rather have four new task chairs in my classroom and skip the solo office, thank you very much.

I guess I'm pretty negative, but I like to think of myself as no wishy-washy negative guy, oh no.  I'm very positively negative!