Faculty WebPage For John Goldfine

May 20.  Following up on yesterday's post, I see in today's BDN a story about the crash in Searsmont that killed a former BAHS football star.  We all understand that one is not thinking or acting very well when one's BAC is twice the legal limit.  That isn't news.  The scary thing about the story, the comment that reminds me of so many student essays, is this from a state trooper: "He said he was going that fast only because it was a nice day and he felt like putting it down."

We have had some nice days lately, after a long winter, and they do make one a little crazy, a little hyperbolic and manic.  I get essays all the time blaming bad weather for crashes--why not blame good weather?  Sometimes I jerk my students around by saying the drinking age ought to be lowered to 16 (grins, wild head-nodding)...and the driving age raised to 25 (frowns, wild head-shaking.)

May 19.  Probably 20 % of the essays I get in the course of a semester are about vehicles: motorcycles, cars, pickups, eighteen wheelers, fourwheelers, snowmobiles, powerboats, race cars, draggers, and so on.  Maybe 80 % of those essays deal with some sort of risky and dangerous activity, lawbreaking, or motorized misbehavior. 

Some of the essays can be pretty good because for a lot of students, these kinds of topics are pretty close to the beating heart of them, where their souls really breathe free.

Personally, with the exception of time on my motorcycle, I'm a vehicular fuddy-duddy and pretty thoroughly disapprove of the content I'm reading.  I'm exactly the guy my students have to blow past doing 80 or 90 because 'these old guys just don't know how to drive anymore, if they ever did.'  Though disapproving, the issue isn't one I get emotional about until...I become the victim.

Riding horses on the shoulders of the road, I see nothing extraordinarily bad, just the usual.  People driving 60 or 70 past kids on bikes.  People cresting the hill half in the wrong lane, one hand tied up with a cell phone.  People ignoring a panicky horse and my hand signal to slow down.  People trying to squeeze their car between a horse and a truck on a two-rod road, because slowing down would...slow them down.   

If these bozos' driving was an essay, I'd kick it back for more work and keep kicking it back until the writers slowed down, paid some attention, and stopped scaring the dickens out of me, the missus, Kaldi, and Eclipse.

May 18.  Today's BDN carried a story about the MCCS sponsoring a writing contest for Maine's 16,000 high school juniors next year.  $100 prize for semi-finalists and $2500 (!) apiece for the three finalists in short story, poetry, and essay.

It's a neat idea--the only thing wrong with it is that I didn't come up with it--but the prizes for the finalists are way out of line.  Even serious and talented adult writers don't realistically EVER hope for a $2500 dollar payday.  A few minutes checking out Novel and Short Story Writer's Market will clear that notion right up.  So, the expectations the contest sets up aren't quite reasonable--of course, the State of Maine has spent many years destroying its citizens' sense of the probable and encouraging the childishness of its adult population.  We call it the Lottery--but writers need to cultivate something other than a jackpot mentality if they are going to keep writing, so the contest perhaps works against the most talented student writers' long-term good.

Or maybe I'm just jealous.  My biggest payday as a writer has been  around $300.

Then there's what our leaders have to say.  Apparently, Governor Baldacci believes that money is what "inspire[s] a new generation of Maine writers."

If I were Stephen King or Richard Russo, I'd be insulted.  Were they, the old generation, inspired by money?  Stephen King has said no, quite specifically.  Richard Russo doesn't read like a money-hound, but perhaps the governor sees different angles to Russo's oeuvre.

In his own inimitable style, our John Fitzsimmons chimes in, remarking (indirect quotation in the BDN) that "the new contest is a chance to celebrate writing and to emphasize the broader humanities curriculum offered through the former technical colleges."

Actually, the best way to celebrate writing is to read or to write oneself. Wouldn't it be neat if we had an essay, poem, or story from Governor Baldacci and President Fitzsimmons?  In fact, what the contest does is encourage writing by offering prizes.  That's not quite the same as celebrating, but it's probably close enough for Augusta, where a writerly precision in language is not exactly a hot item.

That the contest will somehow emphasize the broader humanities curriculum offered at the former technical colleges is a bit of a leap, except to the extent that the PR emphasizes that aspect, which it could only do by shifting emphasis away from the student writers whose work the MCCS wants to encourage...er, celebrate.

John goes on to say that each of the seven community colleges offers creative writing courses.  I'm an insider here and know something the average BDN reader does not--which is that EMCC will only offer creative writing if the numbers warrant it.  After all, in a business like the higher education business, it isn't sound financial policy to offer a course to only the few students who--to quote Governor Baldacci again--merely want to "inspire us to see the world through a wider lens."

Encouraging that sort of dreaminess is just a waste of money.

May 16.  Graduation Day yesterday.

It's a time for joy and a time for tears,
A time we'll treasure through the years;
We'll remember al-ways
Grad-u-a-tion day.

Copyright (c) 1956 by Noel Sherman and Joe Sherman

The missus claims the only version of that song she has ever heard is the one I sing, and I never sing it straight.  Of course, it's a majorly sappy song, but it's a majorly sappy day too.

I don't know why I react so badly to Graduation Day, but I do.  I was in such a pitiful mental state before graduation yesterday that I stopped off at the Saucony Outlet Store, over by the new Beal College building, for some quick retail therapy before the ceremonies.  Rubbing credit card receipts on my sore psyche may have helped a little.

Down in the basement of the Bangor Auditorium, in the faculty robing room, everything seemed peculiar and unreal; my colleagues looked to me as though they were in fishtank, separated from me by invisible walls.  Their faces were recognizable yet somehow not quite theirs, and I felt invisible too.  I believe the technical terms for my state of mind are 'derealization' and 'depersonalization.'  I wanted to be in the sun, alone, quiet, somewhere I could remember who I was and what the planet was made of.  Instead, the windowless, airless room buzzing with conversations I couldn't quite make out.

A lot of people take Graduation Day very seriously.  I understand that and don't want to rain on their parade, but the way it's done now seems all wrong to me. 

When I first started at EMVTI, faculty wore business attire to graduation--I thought that was a wonderful tradition: matter-of-fact and respectful, resisting the temptation to follow the crowd and play silly dress-ups with medieval robes, hoods, and mortar boards.  Alas, somewhere along the line, somehow, that genuine dignity was lost, replaced by the pretend-dignity of outward show.  Doesn't work for me.

As for the substance, in fiction writing it's a truism that there are only a few plots out there--what counts is the twists and details the writer comes up with.  In graduation ceremonies, it's the reverse: there's only the one plot and the details don't change and don't matter.  Garrison Keillor on Prairie Home Companion last night poked gentle fun at the graduation ceremonies at Lake Wobegon, and in no way was what he kidded at 7 pm any different than the reality of the ceremony in the Bangor Auditorium at 2 pm.

So, why do we do a ceremony whose every move is scripted and known beforehand, down to the jokes about keeping the speeches short?  Perhaps there was a time when the words actually were performative and conferred the degree, the way the words of a wedding actually change the legal state of the people who say them.

But, given the number of people missing the ceremony, that must be a fiction.  The USPS arriving at your door with the degree in an envelope is as performative as hearing President Hedlund tell you to switch your tassel.

Perhaps we can't bear to disappoint the people with cameras who plan to treasure always the memories and who want to treasure the tried and true pictures of mortar boards, handshakes, big grins.  Is that what graduation day is? A big photo op?  Solid PR?

I'd like a different graduation day, one turning its hierarchical nature on its head, one that demonstrates the graduates' new authority rather than simply asserting it.  What if each technology had a lead student on the stage--no faculty, no bureaucrats, no VIPs, etc. etc.  Just students.  Nervous, perhaps, but in charge. 

The lead student would speak a little about the technology and the class, would then call up the instructors, ask the instructors for a few words, and then have the instructors read off their students' names and give out the degrees.

I like that.  It ends the current passivity and puts the emphasis where it ought to be.

Postscript.  After reading the above post the missus dug out a photo album from '92 to show me her grad school graduation pix.  "That's why," she said.

"That's why what?"

"Why we have graduation."

"Because you look so happy?  You look that happy on a horse or singing or after a half-marathon.  You don't need graduation."

"It was great.  They played the Maine Stein Song!  A completely frivolous air--like a big party.  Lighthearted."

May 13.  Somewhere in the archives, too dusty for me to find and link to, is a post on the Friday blues, the letdown as the weekend starts, sadness and memories of loss inevitably either flooding, or at least trickling, in.

Same thing at the start of summer break. Not that I'm complaining.  Heavens, no.  But there is a sense of moorings lost and time an oppressor.

Putting the grades onto the registrar's form and handing them in seems like such a puny action to top off 16 weeks of talk, reading, writing, lecture, teaching.  There ought to be a trumpet fanfare, a ceremonial acceptance of the grades by, at the least, the academic dean in full academic regalia.

In any case, like it or not, I'm a man of leisure for a while, having read the finals and figured and posted my grades yesterday.

May 10.  It's not any kind of secret that there must have been wastage when the school changed its name from 'Technical' to 'Community' last July 1.  Still it's disconcerting to see eight or ten big cartons of 'Eastern Maine Technical College' envelopes out by the faculty mailboxes.  Either they've been in storage for the past 11 months and are now, finally, to be tossed, or they have been in limbo somewhere and are now to be put in storage--a note on them indicates 'Storage.'  Someday they may be collector's items, worth bucks on eBay!  Preserve them in Lucite blocks and give them to retiring faculty in lieu of pen-&-pencil sets!

It's embarrassing to see those envelopes there--not sure why, but it reminds me of the embarrassment of admitting that the alpha female and I--and any of our pups who happen to be around--no longer go to the trouble of making Thanksgiving dinner.  We just hit the big buffet at Miller's instead.  If anyone can explain the connection, I'll be grateful.

May 10.  A recent EM grad sez:

Thank heavens my garden is going in.  Now!  I'm going to stay on top of the weeds this year too--promise!

May 8.  The single biggest change since the missus and I started reading Jan Fennell's book is how quiet everyone is. I make my comments, requests, and orders to the dogs in a soft voice, purposely voiding it of emotion or stress.  Instead of jumping all over me and barking when I come in from a run, the dogs watch me calmly or ignore me altogether.  When Scoot is concerned about something on the road, he gives one short bark and I come out onto the porch to decide whether the pack should flee, freeze, or fight (it's usually freeze, i.e., ignore those pesky kids on four-wheelers).  (I might like to fight, i.e., pummel the pesky kids, but doubt anyone would be impressed if I said the dog made me do it.)  I thank Scooter for bringing the problem to my attention so that I could deal with it (not your responsibility, Scoot.)  Then we all go back to what we were doing: dozing for the dogs, books or computers or cooking or reading student essays for me.  It sounds ridiculous to thank the dog, but he pays attention and has a soft look he sure never had when I'd shout, "Shut the heck up!"  And he shuts up a whole lot better too. 

This is all new!  The alpha female and I thought we were hotshots dealing with dogs!  But we were clueless!  I really realized this the other morning when Scooter started his time-for-a-walk meltdown. We'd always assumed we couldn't argue with the meltdown--if we didn't do what he wanted when he wanted it, he'd go nuts, so on with the coats and out the door we went.  But this morning, I said, "This is b.s.  I'm in charge of when we go, where we go, and if we go."  I ignored him, and after a while he went back to sleep.  Wow.