John Goldfine's Web Page

Nov. 13. I was reading an article recently about how: "Yiddish speakers speak not so much with individual referring words as with such clusters of relations, ready-made idioms, quotations and situational responses. Since each word may belong to several heterogeneous or contradictory knots, ironies are always at hand."

It occurred to me that, although I don't speak Yiddish, my language is full of dozens of ready-mades.  I don't know why this should be so--although my grandfather's first language was Yiddish, he never spoke it to me.  Maybe it has something to do with watching and loving so many comedians who grew up with Yiddish and who used English as if it were Yiddish.

I started listing things I say--reflexively and often--to cover various recurring situations--here's a guide to understanding John A. Goldfine:

Phrase.........................................................................Translation

Nov. 3.  The dogs aren't doing Daylight Savings and so were up at 5 this morning complaining about our sleepy ways, moaning, crying, barking, whining, clicking toenails, tapping tambourines, whatever it took.

I lay there, realizing I had a very bad headache, drifting back and forth over the threshold between awake and asleep.  When I finally persuaded myself to sit up, I gagged and retched, a matter of great interest to Chloe, who was lying on my wife's pillow and thought I might bring up a snack for her.  The house was in the low fifties but I was burning up, pouring sweat, but, still, my forehead was dead cold.  Whew, I felt like major shucks.

Took my aspirin, blew my nose, made my coffee, fried my toast (a habit I got into during the Great Icestorm ten years ago), read the paper, tried to imagine myself driving to Bangor, getting up in front of my class (not that I stand up), and teaching.  Gathered as much pity from the missus as possible and found my car keys.

I was next to delirious by the time class started, what with fever, headache, lightheadedness, and general overall woozy.

So, I'm in the hall propping up the green lockers and patrolling for any late-comers, thinking about the lecturette I was about to deliver, feeling the anxiety build of a naturally shy person who does not like to speak in public as he prepares to speak in public, laughing at the fact that a teacher with 37 years on the books would feel nervous--until finally...it is time to stand and deliver.  I step into Room 223 and begin closing the door.

SCREEE-EEEK!  That puppy could use some oil.  I re-open the door.

"Hey, class, hey ya!" 

They slowly turn from the computers; they are wary: I only have one way of summoning the faithful to their education and it goes:  "Hey, ladies and gentleman, boys and girls of all ages, lend me your ears and spin away from those fascinatin' computers and come into my inner office.  Come on, come on, closer, closer, step into my web said the spider to the fly.  Come on, all the way."

And I wasn't saying all that--no wonder they are wary.  Instead I say:

"Hey, hey ya, Room 223 went to a Halloween party Friday night and dressed as a haunted house.  Check out the costume."  And I close the door: SCREEE-EEEK! 

A few laughs, but still not quite enough of the adrenaline jolt I need.  So I spread my arms and sing in a big phony bass voice: "Goo--oood morning, boys and girls!"  And then I wave them into my web, or, as a sharp student pointed out last week, "Mr Goldfine, it's supposed to be 'Come into my parlor,' not 'Welcome to my web....'"

And they come, by golly, pretty quickly, probably afraid the singing will start again if they don't.

I sit down and start my spiel about the isearch.  The door opens.  A student with a white clamshell container pops in , grabs a chair, sits, looks studious, opens clamshell, removes a foot long sausage on a stick, takes bite.  I'm deep into the intricacies of the Collected Data section of the isearch, but when I glance over and see that damned sausage, I totally lose it.  (Remember, I'm delirious with fever.)  I put my head on the table laughing.

I look up and ask him, mock seriously, "Have you got enough there to share with everyone?"  And then I lose it all over again.  He begins pulling mysterious wrapped items out of the clamshell until I wave him away and head back to Isearchland for a good long stretch, hoping to reestablish my credentials as Mr. John A. Goldfine, Doesn't Crack a Smile Before Christmas.

Oct. 28.  It all started with a grape Tootsie Pop, nice hard sugar-syrup wrapped around a Tootsie Roll center, which is made of, I assume, lots more sugar and some sort of artificial choko-flaveur.

One day many years ago, some colleague or student or someone dumped a pile of Tootsie Pops on my desk.  I swept them into my top drawer and have been sucking on them ever since.  That's what I was doing two weeks ago as I yakked to my favorite adjunct, Ms Louise, in my office.  Except I rarely suck.  I actually crunch.  And when I'm done crunching, because I miss smoking so darned much (last cigarette 12/14/67) I leave the stick in my mouth and roll it around until it's pulped and disgusting.

This day, as I crunched that Pop, I got more than I bargained for....

I have lost teeth and fillings to pork chop bones, to unpopped popcorn, to crusty french bread (I bit down funny), but this was my first lollipop accident.  I started spitting out bits of amalgam and called my dentist the next day.

I got in at 7:30 this morning and lay comfortably in one of those sleep-inducing dentist chairs.  Doc came in, poked around a little.  I can have a quick patch or a crown, he tells me--we've had this identical conversation many times before, and I'm not quite ready to admit that my days on earth are so few as to be covered by a quick patch, so I say, "Crown."

While his assistant takes my x-ray, he goes across the hall to his second patient.  I can't help hearing that she's in about the same situation I'm in--does she want a patch or a crown?  Oh, but wait, wait--his voice (I can't see him) is different than it was when he asked me.  If he'd had that tone with me, I'd have reared half out of that dentist chair trying to get a reading of his face.

She says in an old lady voice ('old' means older than me), "Oh, a patch is fine, I guess, Doctor."

And he comes back in to me.  "Are you working today?" he asks.

"Working on line.  I'm teaching three classes on the internet."

"Is that a lot different than teaching live?"

"Yeah, I wind up teaching the subject more.  When I have live students, I have to consider their personalities, their quirks, their faces and body language, and I teach the student more than the material some days."  He doesn't look like I've really shed an adequate amount of sunshine and light on the differences between online and live.  I say, "I couldn't help overhearing your conversation just now.  The difference between online and live is like the last five minutes here.  You ask two people the same question, but you asked in different ways and got different answers."

That makes him laugh.  "I did say it differently, didn't I?  And I knew you'd be listening...."

"And I knew you knew I'd be listening."

Doc says, "Well, when I start doing all my dentistry online, all I'll do is fill those cavities.  No more personalities and quirks."

Then he got that drill buzzing, and the conversation was over. 

Oct. 6. A typical John A. Goldfine breakfast: big bowl of unsweetened goatsmilk yogurt sprinkled with wheatgerm and flaxseed; two apples; two oranges; a bowl of unsweetened oatmeal; two slices of unbuttered and untoasted homemade whole wheat bread dribbled with molasses; all washed down with organic herbal tea.

:)  Just kidding!

I was wandering around class this morning and saw ace student DC eating some of those round crackers with cheese filling sold in the vending machines.  (I prefer the square day-glo orange ones with peanut butter filling--D1 in the vending machine closest to my office.) 

I just couldn't resist sticking my nose in.  In my chirpiest home-ec teacher voice, I said, "Hey, DC, breakfast is the day's most important meal!"

She replied, "I hate breakfast!"

I smiled, thinking what a repulsive hypocrite I was.  I said, "Tell you the truth, this is a case of do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do 'cause my breakfast today was two cups of black coffee and an Isamax gingerbread whoopie pie."

Even DC looked a little home-ec-teacherish at that confession....

Oct. 5  As a high school junior I thought A. was a thousand miles above me--she was a senior, class of '62.  But I sure liked her style, so much so, in fact, that I was pretty tongue-tied around her.  I just sort of watched and admired A. from a distance, a distance of a thousand miles.

But A. had a friend, W., who I liked the other way--just as a chum, a bud, a pal.  Her I could talk to, and we laughed at each other's jokes and told each other about our lives.  Eventually, with W. acting as a sometime go-between, I got over a little of my shyness and at the end of my junior year, A. and I became an item for a little while.

But I still couldn't talk to her.  I really didn't want to talk to her.  Some people you find easy and sympathetic; others live in mystery beyond a wall.  A. was a mystery--and talking was not exactly the point of the relationship anyway.

And then A. & W. went on to college and I finished my senior year and we all lost touch for a long time, but sometime around 1990, I began writing W. and talking on the phone (she lives in Seattle) and then emailing, and a couple of times when she came east I'd go to Boston to see her.  We still understood each other and still had fun shooting the breeze.

Once, we saw A. in New York, and not only could I still not talk to her, but I was no longer attracted to her either.  What business did she have being 30 years older than the last time I'd seen her!

Maybe you're thinking about now that W. should have been the heart-throb for me from the beginning, since she was the girl I actually liked, as opposed to lusted after.  But no.  Just the way some people live behind mysterious walls--others just are not fancied by that primitive part of the brain that goes hunting for a genetic partner.

I talked to W. on the phone this morning.  She was all in a state because our high school was having reunions and, rather than sending out letters to the Class of '62, the school just sent a sort of dear-all, inviting all 60s graduates to a dinner.

She was outraged that they had respected her so little that they couldn't have a special dinner and a special letter for her class.  It was the same sort of disrespect they'd shown us 45 years ago!  W. was having a fine old time being offended, being a victim, nursing her hurt feelings.

But for once, I didn't get it at all.  W. was on the other side of that wall.  Really, I said, who gives a hang? 

I can't say I don't nurse injustices, but this one escaped me altogether, and I had a raft of online papers to read for ENG 101 and 162, so...we said goodbye, not quite as good friends as before, perhaps.

Sept. 24. I was on the town planning board years ago and we approved a housing development called Eastwind overlooking Swan Lake.  The developers logged over the whole area, built a very steep and narrow dirt road up the hill (much steeper than the Board had approved), and then tried selling lots.

One look at that road would have scared away any builder who knows what winter is like in Maine, and I don't believe the development had any bites.  Then one of the developers went to Tommytown for raping little boys in an old barn on the property, and the whole thing sort of folded.

But the road was still there and my wife and I have walked down it on foot with dogs or on horseback many many times.  Where the road ended, up on the hill, became a Spot.

A Spot to dump crankcase oil.  And condoms.  White goods.  Brush.  Beer cans.  Deer carcasses.  Bags of trash. 

Two times my wife and I have stumbled on couples without the price of a motel doin' it up there on blankets.  Fortunately we were on horseback those times and had no dogs with us.  I've never yet met a dog who reacted with anything but outrage to the thought of humans grunting and rolling around in the middle of a dirt road.   Horses might be startled but aren't nearly as judgmental.

Lately action seems to be picking up on the dirt road.  Last week I met a couple of jokers in the woods who apparently were just out for a casual hike (the first hikers I've seen in 35 years, but so what!)  One of them was in camo, wore a knapsack, and had a big old machete with an electric tape handle.  Their van was at the Spot and a woman was in it, smoking.  I'm not Sherlock Holmes, but that knapsack/machete combo did make me wonder.

Today there was an SUV there, and I think it was a couple again, but this time we had the dogs with us, and they raced down the hill to check out the action.  The car started up and headed off, but was forced to go slowly with all the ruts after the rain, and the dogs trotted along with it--they were perfectly cool, no barking.  But it was funny to see this poor couple chased away from their bower of love by a pack of five dogs and two laughing and unsympathetic oldtimers who have totally forgotten what it's like to be young, in love, and horny.

Sept. 12.  So there I am in my 10 o'clock class about to sound off on brainstorming the isearch when I look down.  On the back of my hand, on the knuckle of my middle finger is a large scrape and blood is welling out, lots of blood.

I make a very inappropriate joke about having to deal with a rowdy student (cheap laugh), and sort of hide it under the table.  A few minutes later I've gone to the men's room, grabbed a hank of paper towel to sop the blood, and am talking to a student at her computer.

Kind and decent student, Liltowngirl, comes over with her little first-aid kit containing an ointment, some bandaids, and gauze.  I thank her, remind her that teachers can't accept gifts from students, and then tell her I will make an exception in this case. 

Everyone looked relieved that a nice neat bandaid replaced my crappy blooded-up paper towel.

Well, how did I get scraped?  When I told my wife, she was disgusted with my duh-ness*.  I was in the weightroom and took some barehand swings at the rubber boxing dummy.  After only a few of the powerful Goldfine right hooks and crosses, I was looking at a big blister, which eventually burst.  Unfortunately, whenever I reach in my jeans for a dog treat or my knife or some change, the scab on the knuckle scrapes right off again, starting the blood flowing.

Just before class, I had reached for my wallet to pay ace colleague DW for some fancy coffee beans she'd mail-ordered for me.  With the results I've described.

* What bothered the missus so much was she knows darn well that down in my gym locker I have both heavy and light boxing gloves, suitable for pounding Rocky to smithereens or for making the light bag ratatat like a machine gun on a coke jag.  But did I go down and get them?  Was I too lazy?  Or did I say, 'Oh, frick it!'? 

I hated to confess,  but there are no secrets from the missus.

Sept. 8.  Between sets in the weightroom today I watched four guys finally get to work pulling up the old basketball floor, ruined by rain damage in the Spring of 2007.

If you think there is some fancy technique or machine for lifting a basketball floor, think again.  They had one circular saw, a broom, and a claw hammer apiece.  Not even a wrecking bar, a ripping bar, or a pry bar.  No respirators, no gloves, no hardhats, no eyegoggles or shields, no steel toes.  Doing it the good old way like back before the darned government got involved in everything.  I will say one guy had knee pads!

Imagine if EMCC were a basketball powerhouse!  Each piece of that floor would be carefully collected by the company whose job it would be to make the wall plaques.  A few inches of basketball court would be mounted on dark wood with a brass shield underneath, saying, "A Little Piece of Johnston Gym, Home of the EMCC Golden Eagles.  Presented to you for your many contributions to education in Eastern Maine."

Only the big contributors would get one of these completely worthless but possibly sentimentally-valuable objects!  They'd take them back to their offices and have someone mount them on their ego wall, along with awards from local service organizations and photos of themselves with politicians and other notables.

As it is, I suppose that floor is destined for Sawyer Mountain or Red Shield.

Sept. 8.  So there you are taking your driver's license exam and you just can't get that car parallel parked.  You fail.  Too bad.  Try again another day.

Wait a second, not so fast! 

That isn't necessarily how the State of Maine operates.  Maybe the test wasn't valid!  Maybe your boss snapped at you that morning and put you off your game.  Maybe the examiner reminded you of your first spouse, that jerk.  Maybe you "had an emotional response" to the test so it was "not an accurate reflection" of your skills.  It might be "irresponsible to release" your test results.

Yes, maybe the state should just throw out the test and give you a different one, without parallel parking!

Sound silly?  Tell it to the taxpayers whose tax dollars go to support the State Department of Education.  When 78% of the 15,000 students taking the MEA writing sample flunked, Susan Gendron's reaction was to shoo the results under the rug.  "Kids got ticked off..."  at the prompt, she said.  The prompt was, "Television may have a negative impact on learning."

But keeping cool is a big part of writing a persuasive essay.  You can't persuade people if you're stomping around shouting, 'Why do grownups always pick on TV!  I don't see any grown-ups I know sitting around reading Shakespeare instead of catching the Olympics!  That is such a lame prompt.'

No, you have to marshal your arguments and appeal to the reader's mind and heart both.  If you can't do that, why then--you flunk.  And no matter how hard your teacher or Susan Gendron make excuses for you, the essay still is no good, and it still flunks.

Or it did until recently.  The State of Maine has decided to scrap the MEA results....  And you may just be in luck if you are going for a driver's license soon and have somehow never managed to figure out that parallel parking deal.

Sept. 1. Student stares at a blank screen, says, "I'm thinking...."  It always reminds me of the old Jack Benny joke.  A mugger says to the notoriously cheap Benny, 'Your money or your life,' and Benny stops, puts his hand to his chin and replies, 'I'm thinking, I'm thinking!'

Hey, don't think!  That's not the part of your brain where writing comes from!

Have you ever backed a trailer?  Horse trailer, boat trailer, wood wagon, tractor trailer?  The last thing you want to do is think about what you're doing.  If you say, 'Should I be spinning the wheel clockwise or counter-clockwise, looking in the rearview or over my left shoulder..." you're already jack-knifed!

To back a trailer successfully you need experience (the experience of success and the experience of failure), muscle memory, confidence, and the ability to blank your mind out and avoid thinking.

To write successfully, pretty much the same.  Ask any trucker!

Aug. 25.  Disorganized people only get into worse trouble when they try organizing themselves....

Last May I sorted through 21 years of student papers, just picking out the keepers.  I put a heavy paper clip on them, slipped them into my bookbag--promising myself I'd give them a second look over the summer and reorganize them even better.  And, then, naturally, two minutes later, forgot about them completely.

So, there I am before my first class this morning, desperately, hopelessly, sorting through the folder of 21 years hunting for 'Double Standard Dad', having, as I say, totally forgotten about the new, clipped-together stuff in my bookbag.

Finally, the penny dropped about 15 minutes into class.  If you're born a slob, as I was, it's better to know your weakness and never try to do better.  Ever.  Live with it.

Aug. 22. Confused, miserable, wondering what this computer stuff is all about and why you have to deal with it on top of your crying baby, your empty gas tank, your nagging mom, your mean boss, your play-around significant other, etc, etc???

Me too!

Until the day before yesterday, I opened Frontpage, logged in, got on this website, and did my thing. But since the day before yesterday, I’ve downloaded two new programs, tossed two useless Ethernet cables, written endless pleading letters to IT, called my ISP—oh, man, you do just not want to know.

If you like you can picture me right now, sitting on a hassock, facing my laptop, which is sitting on a shoebox which is sitting on a kitchen chair.  My back is killing me, typing like this.  My human-size computer is two feet away, not hooked up to the internet and not owning the Sharepoint Designer software required to update my faculty page.  My comfortable chair is also sitting two feet away, but it won’t drop low enough to access the laptop.

As I said, you don’t want to know….

Aug. 18.  I had a student many years ago who worked at Diva's as a dancer (and now that I come to think of it, I had another who danced at La Casa, up past Millinocket....)

The La Casa student had a kid, a loan, and a college education to get and was completely matter-of-fact about her job.  It wasn't an occasion for jokes, eye-rolling, winks, snickers--she needed a job, she had a job, end of story.

The Diva's student was different: she brought the job up herself and immediately said, "It's not what you think."

I said, "Okay," and never mentioned it again.

But she did, and always defensively, angrily, until I couldn't help but decide that whatever she did there was making her pretty unhappy.

I thought of these women the other day because of my dream.  In my dream Hollywood Slots had contacted the school and asked us to create a certificate program for women in the Escort Service Industry (it was just a dream--Hollywood Slots is in the gambling business, not escort services!)  I told the Powers at school that--humans being the weak and fallen creatures we are-- the Escort Service Industry was always going to wind up in the newspapers on the court pages. 

But the Powers pooh-poohed my typical negativity and said I needed to be more forward-thinking and entrepreneurial.

Aug. 13.  I've reached the age when I pay a lot of attention to the obituaries to see what the future holds. 

One thing I enjoy in the obits is checking out the first names of some of the older folks:  not many Scotts, Jasons, Brandys, or Mandys--but lots of Avises, Mavises, Violas, Alberts, and Edgars.

Nicknames, especially for guys, were big back in the day: Buzz, Dink, Bud, Dub, Frenchy....

Well, obviously If some kid tried tagging you with a nickname like one of those today, there'd be a recess lockdown and bullying lawsuit right behind.

I don't have a nickname--not Johnny, Jack, J-Boy, J-Head, J-Go, or anything like any of those.  I call my wife by her name (Jean), like mine a classic.  The only nicknames around the house are the names we call the dogs, namely: 

Scooter: Scoot, Scootie, Scoots, ScootieBug, ScootieBub, Oot, Ooteyscay, Scootonius, Scootonius Maximus, Scootski

Chloe: Chlo, Chloster, Chloina, Chloke, Cloaca (look it up!), Chloberry, Miss Chloe, Chlorina Chlorina, Chloski, Chloey Woey

Maddie: Mads, Mad, Maddylou, Maddywaddy, Madderina, Madalina, Madaluna

Boca: Bocalou, Bocaboo, Bocaroo, Bocarina, Bocabug, Bocabub, Boke, Miss Boke, Bocaluca, Bokina, Bocawoca, Bocadel, Boki, Bokiewokie, Bokiesmokie, Bocagranday, Pinky (it's a long story) 

Timmie: Tim, Teem, Timster, Timbalino, Timbub, Timbubtoo, Timmywimmy 

Can you tell from the list who my favorite is?

Aug 12.  Human communication, alas, remains mostly a mystery to this teacher of communications.  So, I keep my eye on the dogs hoping for a few clues.  Here are some things I've found out:

* When the neighbor's dogs are in their pen (which is rarely--usually they're out and about on my property, crapping on my path, infuriating my dogs, swimming in my pond, eating my cats' food, barking at me, and generally being nuisances)...when they are penned, they bark a particularly piteous bark, which makes even me feel a little sorry for them.  My dogs understand that it is the bark of a slave, of a prisoner, and does not require any response from them except quiet contempt.  They pay no attention whatsoever.

* When the neighbor's dogs bark at a deer, my dogs are all attention, ears up, noses in the wind.

* When the neighbor's dogs bark angrily at a stranger in their yard, my dogs bark angrily too, then stop and listen.

* When I take Scoot to the store and come home, the four dogs left on the porch bark, the bark that says, 'Unidentified dog in the 'hood!'  Scoot hears that bark and goes running behind the barn hunting for the stranger, never once guessing that it might be him his pack is barking at.

* When the coyotes howl at night, my dogs all race to the window, bark anxiously, and then shut up and slink over to me and the missus, getting as close as possible.

* When Scoot growls, Timmie and Maddie cower.  Boca and Chloe know his growl is not for them and ignore it.

* When Chloe growls, everyone ignores her and carries on doing whatever it was that made her growl originally.

* When Boca growls, everyone finds something very interesting to do somewhere far far away (She weighs 10 pounds to Maddie's 70.) 

* Maddie and Timmie aren't allowed (by dog ordinance) to growl, except at each other and then neither pays the other much attention.

* When the Thunder God growls, every dog needs to be touching me.  If I get up for a glass of water, a cloud of dogs moves with me, pressing against my legs--it's very easy to step on paws at moments like these.

*  When I try to talk dog and growl at a misdemeanant, I'm ignored.  Apparently, my vocabulary or accent is wrong.  If, however, I refuse to look at or speak to a dog, in no time they are hanging around trying to get on my good side again.

* When I shout at a dog, the dog is frightened, but also embarrassed for me that I have so little self-control.  Powerful animals are not yappers.

Aug. 7.  A man came to the door today.  He wore a green tee shirt which said, 'Kiss me, I'm drunk.'  He was smoking, unshaven, and toothless--and I thought of him as an old guy, though he might have been my age or younger.

"Have you got any scrap metal.  Cast iron? Appreciate it...."

I thought about it a second: he was going from door to door asking people for something which, if they were so inclined, they could take to the scrapyard themselves and get money for.

But he wasn't a beggar. He was offering a service in return for the scrap: clean-up.

When we moved in here in 1973, all sorts of stuff had been left behind in the cellar, in the shed, in the woods behind the shed: a pedestal grinder wheel, the kind of pipe you use to support cellar beams, an agricultural spreader, a coal stove, a truck engine, an ancient reel type lawn mower with an engine mounted above and a chain running down to the reel and to the wheels.  Other stuff.  Stuff I haven't done anything with in 35 years. Stuff that will make it hard for my kids to sell this place after my wife and I are dead.

He made two trips.  The truck engine is buried under the winter's supply of firewood, but he promised to come back for it in the spring.

Aug. 7.  Gearing up mentally--not for the start of school which doesn't trouble me-- but for the inservice faculty development day which always infuriates me.

I have to work hard now to inoculate myself against the anger that results from 6 hours of unfunny jokiness, droning voices, trivial material presented excruciatingly slowly, and most of all the insulting cultural sensitivity 'training,' mandated by the federal government, which usually amounts to someone on a high moral horse telling assembled faculty that we are insensitive, crude, racist, sexist dolts. 

So, how is that approach working out, administrators?

Boyoboy, I hate being preached at.  But that's how the school year starts for faculty.

Part of my way of inoculating myself is to read things that underline how dumb the preaching approach is and what a big world it is out there, so big the cultural-sensitivity warriors have been left behind, able to flourish only in the backwaters of academia.

From a review by Simon Blackburn in the 8/13 New Republic of a book by Alan Sokal called "Beyond the Hoax":  back before 9/11, the writers say, cultural relativists were in the saddle.  "It didn't do to thump the table or insist too much...especially if the ones being thumped at were victims of the colonial past or descendants anxious to claim the status of victim.  In that sacred sector, respect was the order of the day, even if it meant smiling politely at creationist timetables of earth history, Hindu versions of science, homeopathic medicine....  There are times when we have to do better than 'whatever' and 'anything goes.'  A country needs to understand what is good, and also what is not good, about its preferred ways of living.  It needs to understand what is good, and why, about its science, history, and self-understandings...."

Aug. 2.  Nice article in today's BDN about plans in a Texas school district to have student violators of the school dress code wear prison jumpsuits in lieu of an in-school suspension.  Good photo of a pudgy Deputy Superintendent staring at the jumpsuit as if he already had a recalcitrant teen rebel in it.

Isn't it nice to be in college and away from all the incredibly petty bs that high school often seems to be about?  Administrators who obsess over teenage clothing and skin--what can I say?  They spend a lot more time than is healthy... obsessing about teenage skin.  In this particular district, there seems to be a fantasy about prisoner teens helpless while stern prison wardens do 'stuff' to them...for their own good--of course!

Kinky!

Aug. 1. How I Spent My Summer Vacation...

Aug 1.  World War I started on August 1, 1914.  One result of World War I was the destruction of the Ottoman Empire, which led to the creation of of Iraq and a promise from the British to allow Jewish immigration to Palestine, results we still live with.

More results we still live with: the Russian Revolution, the Nazis, Chinese communism--they too all stem from events beginning on that August 1.

Even community colleges owe their existence to World War I--without that war and the Second World War, we might well be living in a world without electronics, satellites, computers, commercial aviation, mass automobile travel, a pre-1914 world where even a high school education was considered more than most people needed.

Aug.1.  Cheer up, writers!

"Eventually, all novelists, if they persist too long, get worse.  No reason to name names, since no one is spared.  Writing great fiction involves some combination of energy and imagination that cannot be energized or realized forever.  Strong talents can simply exhaust their gift, and they do."

--Larry McMurtry, author of 'Lonesome Dove'

July 18.  I know plenty about school anxiety dreams, but this wasn't one of them.  It was not one of the classics where I show up in class unprepared, too many students, too few computers.

There's no nice way to say it: I'd been fired, terminated, sacked, made redundant, let go, given my walking papers, told to hit the highway.  After 21 years, EMCC had snitcanned me.  I still don't know why!

I had to give my keys back to Larry Cossar--and somehow they'd grown tiny over the years.  (Freudians can snicker now, 'cause we all know what keys symbolize, eh?)  I tried writing Larry a note that would say, 'These are my keys,' but someone in the office was talking while I was trying to write, and instead of my words, I kept writing his down.  He was saying, "Well, according to the King James Version of the Bible...."

Bad as it was to lose my job and my keys, to find myself unable to write my own words...for this English teacher, that hurt.

So, later (real time now, no dream), to banish the image of the tiny keys, I got my wife to put on her shorts and my new raincoat (getting kinky!), and I took her outside where I sprayed her down good with the garden hose  (I hope you Freudians are still paying attention!)....  Yep, the new raincoat works fine, and I can pack it for my trip to the rainy places starting tomorrow.

My neighbors, god love them, what did they think of the two old-timers dancing around the back yard, dogs barking, spraying each other? 

June 28.  I like to think of myself as a Writing Warrior, open to all assignments, any style, every challenge, quirky, funny, persuasive, devastating, menacing, reassuring--whatever the situation demands I can do and do do.  I will stand and deliver.  And I will bring it to the reader in spades.  And I will clamp my jaws on his jugular until there are simply no more metaphors to be mixed!

And what's more: the Writing Warrior constantly recharges his batteries by running the motor.  The Writing Warrior Writes, good times bad times richer poorer sickness health rain snow darkness commas no commas, he writes.

Now  you'll note my last observation here was on June 15 and today is June 28, a time lapse which hardly squares with the Writing Warrior ethos....

I keep trying--and failing--to write about some of the things that have distracted and exhausted me this past few weeks: rebuilding a stone wall, scything, repairing a tractor radiator, weeding asparagus and blueberries, bushhogging, splitting next winter's firewood, exercising my horses and dogs. 

I write a graf about how much better at laying up stone the oldtimers were than I'll ever be, or about how the aristocratic dilettantes in 'Anna Karenina' played at scything and peasant virtues for an hour or two (until they got a little warm and bored), or about how my vertebrae rebel at the acceleration of the axhead and the torque of the scythe, or how even levers and inclined planes don't take all the brutality out of moving stones...but I lose interest in my own material. 

I do exactly what I order my students not to do: I write it, say, 'What a POS,' and dump it.

I just don't want to write those grafs and I'm not sure why, so here I am doing exactly what my students do when they are running on empty: writing a piece about running on empty.

Usually those pieces are process essays about not being able to write process essays--at best, they can be witty; at worst, they are smirky, generic, and pointless. 

Two months more of vaykay, and then, in the immortal words of Chuck Berry:

"Oh, but tomorrow morning
She'll have to change her trend
And be sweet sixteen
And back in class again."

That 'she' is really 'he', dear reader, (which is to say, 'me') or possibly 'you,'  future student or colleague.  And maybe by then, I'll be Sweet Sixteen, out of my slump and hitting again, the Big Papi, the Manny, the happy Warrior.

June 15.  The local paper came with a supplement this week: "Class of 2008 Graduation Keepsake Edition" with pictures of Belfast, Mt View, Searsport, and Isleboro graduates.

I don't know what other people do with it.  I study the pictures, imagine the lives the graduates have had and the lives they're going to have, starting the morning after the graduation parties. 

My thoughts go something like: "Geewhiz, why is he wearing a baseball hat?  And backwards? That guy looks like he's about ten.  Whew, she's awfully cute, and this guy is pretty stuck on himself, huh--what's up with his hair?  Oh no, not a cowboy hat?  I hope you play in a country band, pal!  Good lord, girl, button up!  And you--wipe that stoner smile off your face.... Omigod, that must be so & so's grandchild--where does time go?  This guy in the trotting sulky and driving silks--I can respect that.  Heavens, mercy!  Are Big Macs and Dunkin Donuts the only foods available in this school district?  Hmm, you're not a Waldo County native, are you--how did you like your exchange year?  Haha, you are going to be so sorry you let this picture get printed, Miss, so sorry the rest of your life--how could you!!!  Hmm, this guy's gonna be in my ENG 101 next fall, and I can already see he HATES to write."

June 3.  Yesterday the BDN had an article in which a recent hs graduate talked about his plan to attend SMCC to get a firefighting education.  But 'plan' was not the word he used, nor was target, goal, ambition, hope, desire, or objective.

He used the word 'dream.'

To study hard to go to school is a plan.  To earn a degree in a particular subject is an ambition.  If that sounds dreary and humdrum, so be it.  First you get the degree.  Then you fight fires until you can retire.  Then you retire.  Then you die.

That sounds like a nightmare, but god is in the details--firefighters do good, necessary work, have fun in the stationhouse, cook for each other, work out and stay strong, marry, have kids, fish at camp, and so on.

That's a lot less nightmarish, but it still is not what I'd call a dream.

A dream has to imply something so unusual, so unlikely, so far-fetched (yet still tenuously possible) that it starts to lose the quality of reality.  If he'd said that after he got his firefighting degree he planned to walk from Tierra del Fuego to the Aleutians and then sail single-handed around the world, that would be a dream.  If he'd said he wanted to breed monarch butterflies that could live anywhere and eat anything and were not subject to the shrinking environment of their Mexican winter hideaway, that would be a dream.  If he'd said he wanted to bring peace to the world and perfect harmony to all God's creation, well...that would be pure crazy--but dreams have to have a little of that crazy quality to be dreams.

Becoming a firefighter is a fine thing to become and will still leave him plenty of room to dream.

June 1.  The first flush of summer things done: garden mostly in, tractor greased, motorcycle inspected--and so last night, my first school dream.

I was meeting a composition class in a student's house in Brewer.  George W. Bush was somehow involved and he had 39 pinstriped blue suits, for both men and women, which the Brewer student had to hem before class. Impossible, she said.  The President was annoyed but took it well.

39 students was a lot!  Nearly twice what my contract states is my maximum.  But we all crowded into the living room.  Did students want me to talk about the differences between writing for television and movies, about the importance of both continuity and cliffhangers in tv and finality and satisfaction in movies?  Or about isearches?

Mmmm, they all could see I didn't want to talk about isearches, but isearches is what they voted for, so off I went.  End of dream.

This morning, walking the dogs, I thought about new approaches to the isearch, about making it more than a dreary exercise.  As so often when I run into my own limitations as a teacher, I start blaming students. Why can't they be more this or less that?  Why can't they appreciate the opportunity?  Why do they always-- and why don't  they ever...?

So, I imagine giving angry little lecturettes I well know I should never and would never give.  Speeches a baby teacher, who thinks you catch more flies with vinegar than with honey, would give.

That ain't me.  But the impulse to hector, hassle, insult, sneer, maybe even rant, is not far from the surface in the Goldfine psyche.  Between now and the start of school, I have to figure out what I actually can do to glorify that isearch.

May 16.  Wandering around this morning, nothing to do--I've gone from top gear to reverse overnight.  Check my email.  Check my student blogs, but--face it!--the grades are in, and, other than fielding complaints and tinkering with my syllabus, there's nothing left to do for three months.

My missus says it's post-prison-release syndrome, noting that this syndrome is not in DSM.  She just invented it.  "You need the guards to tell you to get up, to go to breakfast.  You can't handle freedom."

I said, "Fine, I'm going back to bed. Wake me when school starts."

"You'll get over it."

"It's either sleep for three months or I start rearranging the cupboards today."

"If you do that now, what will you do after you retire?"

"Clean the cellar."

We can go on this way for hours.  Actually, we've been going on this way for 45 years....

Truth is, the last week or so of school is hard for teachers.  If there are students reading this, I don't expect your sympathy, but while the strong students all scamper happily off into the sunset clutching their A's, the problem students crawl out of the woodwork, leaving all of us, all the teachers,  wandering around in the halls either talking to themselves or looking for colleagues to vent to: students who want to hand in papers well past deadlines; students who get furious when you tell them how their grade stacks up; students who cry when you tell them how their grade stacks up; students who miss the final because they thought it was Friday; students who appear out of nowhere with isearch papers on oddball topics that just happen to be favorites of those companies that sell term papers; students who ask questions about the syllabus they should have asked in January on the last day of class ; disappointed students who take the opportunity to tell their teachers how bad they suck  ('haha, just kidding, Goldfine!')

I find myself without any bounce at all.  I can't shake things off.  Dealing with failure, I feel like a failure.  I lose perspective and I lose judgment and start making little mistakes--submitting an Incomplete for a student, for example, when his final exam was sitting on his blog (not in my email.)   When I've done enough minor stupid things like that, I begin to feel stupid--irritable, bullheaded, hopeless, without options.

Is that just simple depression or is it how stupid people generally feel?

All that's made me happy this week is two sessions in the field with a spade, a tractor, a logging chain, and a crowbar, pulling big chunks of granite out of a cellar hole so I can use them in wallbuilding.  Nothing is as mindless and all-absorbing as shifting a big rock with a crowbar, getting a chain under and around it, and dragging it across the field to where its new permanent forever home will be.  The perfect antidote to all the things that have made me miserable for weeks.

Apr. 27.  Yesterday was the anti-school day, a day like Christmas or Easter or Independence Day that could not possibly ever have any school stuff  in it.  Not going to be too many days like that ever: mid-sixties, cloud-free, bug-free, pollen-free, snow-free, low humidity, pleasantly breezy.  No days like that for the snowbirds in Florida! 

Here's how I spent yesterday:

* made breakfast (black French roast black black black, fried sourdough bread, raspberry preserves [gift from my department head])

* walked dogs

* put winter-stored battery in tractor

* rode motorcycle to Belfast looking for tractor battery whose pull-date was not back the 20th Century

* drove car to Morrill to pick up load of 5-10-5 fertilizer and seed potatoes

* removed battery-charger from battery and did what I should have done in the first place and rode motorcycle with old battery in backpack to Ingraham's Equipment on Knox Ridge to actually get a tractor battery.  From Knox Ridge yesterday I could see all the way from Mt Washington to Mt Katahdin--whew!  Along the roads, everyone was out in their yards, raking sand, rototilling, painting steps, bagging rays, trying to start tractors with dead batteries, etc

* teased the guys in Ingraham's

Them: "Bad news if that battery is leaking acid into your backpack and down onto your butt...."

Me: "Hey, if I want negativity, I'll just look in the mirror.  I come to Ingraham's for the positive, optimistic view."

Them: "Nice day for motorcycle ride, even if you do have a battery on your back."

Me: "There!  I knew you could rise to the occasion!"

* inserted new battery in tractor, started first kick

* hooked up spreader, spread a half-ton of fertilizer in South Pasture

* walked dogs

* tossed maple slash onto the stone wall

* rode horse

* drove to Swan Lake Grocery for wrap bread, roast beef, tuna, milk, cheesecake, dog food, toilet paper, etc

* made supper (tuna wraps for missus, roast beef wraps for me, cheesecake for dessert)

* walked dogs

* read book

* called it a day (and what a day!)

Today, of course, a bit sore, I was back at [real] work again, reading essays and isearches. 

Apr. 23. I feel....

Whoa-oa-oa! I feel good, I knew that I would, now
I feel good, I knew that I would, now
So good, so good, I got you

Whoa! I feel nice, like sugar and spice
I feel nice, like sugar and spice
So nice, so nice, I got you

--James Brown

Usually, I don't feel good and I don't feel nice, and today, all day, I had a raging headache.

I do, however, have a history with James Brown....

Anyway, I was off on a noon walk down the Sylvan Rd. with colleague CL, and as we stepped out of Maine Hall, out of the stuffiness and stultifying air into the Spring sunshine, suddenly, headache and all, I found myself singing James Brown's ditty.

Oh yeaHHH!  I just felt good.  I was ready to drop to my knees on the hard concrete, exactly as the Godfather of Soul would have, to declare my pleasure in being alive and out.  I sang a little more!  Got bemused looks from some students.  Told CL she'd seen the depressive JAG for decades and she could damn well put up with the manic one for...aw, after about thirty seconds, I stopped channeling James Brown and returned to poky day, traffic everywhere, gravel underfoot, recession looming, retirement a mirage, body failing, temper short, temperament shot, etc etc.

But for a few seconds, whoa-oo-oa I felt good boom boom boom BOOM!

Apr. 20.  A colleague told me Friday that the school server ate all his students'  homework, i.e., while he was doing some stuff on line, the server reached its max load and began devouring files to make space for further uploads.  Later, he discovered that his new computer no longer has internet connectivity, a software problem, which, after he yakked for hours on the phone with tech support in a far-distant land, his computer manufacturer promised to make right by sending him a patch....  Oh, wait, no internet.

So, I was already primed for weekend trouble--and this is the weekend of all weekends I need my computer because I have first draft isearches to deal with for my online students.

(And even simply opening my school web page to post this prompt makes me nervous--what if I lose everything because of the school's lame servers or what if the server reads this and is offended that I'm calling it lame and decides on electronic revenge???)

So--trouble.  Saturday, my anti-virus company AVG (really good guys--they actually answer emails, their interface is simple and straightforward, the computer stays clean) sends a note offering a free upgrade of my anti-virus program.

I'm wary because anything out of the ordinary makes me nervous (we teachers are not exactly living on the edge, y'know).  But, okay, trying to be a competent citizen of the this interwebby thang, I bite and start the download.

It goes without a hitch.  I install and reboot and... uh oh, no internet connection.  WTF?

I reboot my modem, reboot the computer, and continue that for a while.  Frippin despair--all I did was download an update, and somehow my darling AVG fricked up my computer!  Now what, now what?

Finally I call my funky little ISP that doesn't do weekend tech support and leave a message.

But, picturing myself driving up to Bangor Sunday to use the school's computers or throwing myself on the mercy of my favorite adminstratrix, who lives in Belfast and has a computer or two--shucks, I don't want to do either of those!  I can't leave it alone.  So, I call the secret cell phone number of the owner of the ISP, a number he gave me once in a moment of weakness when nothing was going right for him and I was ragging on him unmercifully.

He answers, already in a rage that should daunt anyone.  His greeting is, "We're working on it!" 

"You mean it's you, not me?"

"We're working on it."

I hang up, toss up my arms in Rocky-style triumph.  It's them, not me!  Them, them, them!

But then a dark thought comes: is it possible that evil AVG gremlins came to my computer and then backed up through it and uploaded to my ISP's computer and killed their tower?

Is it?  Does the bear live in the woods?  It's the interweb thang and anything at all is possible.  You heard it here first. 

Now--back to those pesky isearches.

Apr. 7…back in class again.

But not before the commute.  Today’s commute was notable for four things:

·         *  Back on two wheels, first time since 9/27/07 when my bike went into the shop….

·         *  A fox darted across the road, exactly where my predecessor in this job used to live….

·         *  The guy with the veteran plate who whipped by me on the interstate, cut back in way too soon, braked, then straddled the center line—more or less—for a few miles.  Where I come from the operative term is OUI….

·         *  The light at the intersection of Cold Brook Rd and Hampden Bypass not giving the left turn arrow through two sequences.  I’ve heard that there are law-abiding parts of the world  where a driver would dutifully wait for the light to change until his gas tank was empty.  Not so in the land of the free, where I waited until it was safe, ignored the red arrow, and made the turn—only to see a Hampden police cruiser cruising straight for me.  Maybe he was thinking about his tax rebate or the chance to hear woodcocks tonight: in any case he left me alone….

 Apr. 3.  All of my student