Politics, Personal

In all seriousness.

President George W. Bush will make his seventh and final (hallelujah) State of the Union Address this evening.

According to the U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 3

“[The President] shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”

I celebrate the State of the Union Address today, not so much because of any political motivation, but because the (generally) annual speech to the joint houses of Congress and to the nation and the world, coincides with a more personal event for me. Thirteen years ago, my partner and I set off on our first adventure together.

It started on a Friday. We worked in the same lab together, he a molecular biology grad student, me a biochemistry undergrad. Chatting over epi-tubes one Friday morning, we planned a lab-group outing. A performance art group was presenting a new piece that night on campus. I was on my way to class, and so he said he’d pass along the event to the other members of the lab group when they came in. We agreed to meet at the theater 15 minutes prior to showtime.

I showed up a few minutes late to find him waiting outside the door to the theater. Alone. He shrugged, and said that he guessed everyone had other plans. I learned later in the weekend that he had completely neglected to mention the plan to any of our friends or colleagues. We watched the show. We went out for coffee. The time we spent together stretched longer and longer. The sub-zero nighttime air of the desert in January did not deter us from ending up on the roof of the Chemistry building in the middle of the night to look at the stars. We ended up at a different coffee shop at five a.m. And not a thing had passed our lips but conversation and food.

Our waitress happened to be another chemistry student. She was due to get off work at six. We cooked up a hair-brained scheme to go to Tucson all together when she got off work. (Tucson was a four or five hour drive from where we were, across the desert and one state line, and none of us had ever been there). We waited, but she backed out, begging fatigue. Undeterred, we climbed into his truck and hit the road.

There is no rational explanation for why we did this. It was really rather stupid. For both of us. For a lot of reasons.

We spent the day in Tucson, driving around, eating again, and then drove back home late in the afternoon. Sleep-deprivation makes the next couple of days a hazy blur for me, but by the time of Bill Clinton’s second State of the Union Address in January of 1995, after a dizzy weekend, we were firmly Together.

And though we were married in July a couple of years later, each year we tend to note the passing of the state of the Union with a little bit more nostalgia and enthusiasm.

So here’s to us babe, and our Union. May we bear witness to many more presidential speeches together.

Love Note

From “Pepper” by the Butthole Surfers

I don’t mind the sun sometimes
The images it shows
I can taste you on my lips
And smell you in my clothes

Thoughts in a morning

Tucked in between loads of laundry, rounds of Uno (it’s a rainy day), crayon drawing appreciations, a loaf of bread, and lunch, I found myself standing over the sink, washing up a few dishes. Both home kids were happily engaged in play together in their room. The kitchen was quiet, and as I scrubbed the few things in the sink, my mind wandered freely. It was a glorious few minutes, almost meditative.

Here are some of the things I contemplated.

* * *

Yesterday’s teacher post…

I recall a look that Dr. Sheppard has, the one where she sort of smiles/not smiles and it’s clear that she thinks you’ve said something stupid. Sometimes with a raised eyebrow. Priceless. And that what made her a unique teacher was a combination of fierceness and accessibility. And then I worried that I wasn’t clear in the post that I HOPE she’s still intimidating, because I love her intimidation factor. And I’m quite certain that she still flashes that look on unsuspecting goofs she encounters. Some might use the word “withering.”

My header up there (Questions, comments, observations, miscellaneous personal abuse?) is totally stolen from Dr. Pinti. That was (is?) his signature segue. To begin a class, to transition topics, to close a discussion. It’s an interesting phrase. It invites students to seek his wisdom for clarification, or perhaps validation, and thereby reinforces his power position in the group. But it invites “comments, observations” as well, allowing for the students to feel that their viewpoint is valid or at least welcome. The “miscellaneous personal abuse” part almost never failed to get a laugh, or at least a smile from some students, which served as a relaxation point, or rapport builder. But it also admits the possibility that the teacher is not above irrational criticism. One could argue that it invites the irrational in order to immediately dismiss it. But though we frequently took the opportunity for statements and questions, no one ever took him up on the abuse offer, at least not in front of a class.

Other random directions…

Phrases and realignments of ideas for a piece about my mother that’s been rattling around in my head. * I tried to remember where I’d seen the piece about “domestic intellectuals.” (I’ve since remembered this, and hope to post about it once I’ve read through it carefully.) * And the shoes. Oh, the shoes deserve their own subheading.

The Shoes

Though it’s a rainy day, I thought about taking everyone for a walk since we’ve been sort of cooped up for a couple of days. (These kids are used to spending a significant amount of time outside, and they get a little aggravating when they don’t have that outlet for physical play.) But I immediately dismissed the thought because it would mean trying to get shoes on Child the Second. This is a task I cannot face today. A task of herculean proportions that yesterday resulted in a ninety-minute (endlessssssss) tantrum and no shoes on said child’s feet. If it weren’t so damp and windy and chilly, I’d be completely willing to let Child wear sandals or go barefoot. But since I might be guilty of some kind of dereliction of duty to let him go out in today’s weather without more substantial footcovering (not to mention that he’d likely decide very quickly that his feet were too cold), I thought sneakers were necessary. *sigh* So I wondered how I would get the shoes on his feet. Duct tape seems like a good idea. I could sort of get him down the way you see cowboys take down calves, and then put on the shoes and secure them with duct tape. Too violent? Yeah, probably. Hey, how about I just wrap his feet up in duct tape? Dry, but not much inslation factor.

* * *

And then they ran screeching through the kitchen, the last dish was rinsed, and the morning went on.

Forgot to tag...

Hm, many of the people I might tag have already done this meme. So perhaps it’s time to distort and tagback.

Since the gap in my answer was about teachers in the non-traditional, non-classroom sense, let’s see what Sharpsticks and Astraea can do with this:

Tell me about one non-teachery person who has taught you something meaningful or inspired you in some way. *smooch*

Inspirational Teacher Meme

Astraea has tagged me for a meme about inspirational teachers.

As far as in-the-classroom types, I have three that jump to mind immediately.

Mr. Gastman

He was my Language Arts and Resources teacher, and I was his student aid at Cleveland Middle School. Bits I remember of him: he had a way he walked, a sort of measured lope, so that you could tell it was him even from very very far away. He was always chewing on a piece of raw ginger. He was the first person I ever knew who observed the Jewish high holy days. He taught me what it meant to be a critical thinker, to question everything, and to have fun while doing it. He also gave me my first editing credit. I was one of a handful of students who tested many of the problems in a creative problem solving workbook he wrote. He gave me an introduction to philosophy and a tiny peek into what it might mean to be an academic, who worked to study ideas.

We kept in touch for a few years after I went on to high school. I wrote him notes about my classes and whatnot every few months. Each Christmas and birthday, he sent me some beautiful little card or another, often these gorgeous embossed, white-paper things, or contraptions of intricate paper cutting. And no, he was not creepy or inappropriate. Get your brain out of the gutter.

I feel certain that he would continue to be a dear friend if he had not taken his life. I was 17, I think. Or perhaps I’d just turned 18, when a friend (also a former student of Mr. G.) called to tearfully tell me that he’d committed suicide. His memorial was filled with former and present students, colleagues, and friends, who all tearfully told stories, sang songs, recited poetry, in celebration of the man who asked me “Is it possible to think of Nothing?” and didn’t blink twice when I suggested that I teach myself to speak Hawaiian for no other reason than that I was curious about it.

Dr. Dan Pinti

When I met Dr. Pinti at New Mexico State University, I was a biochemistry major, on a path to med school or research. I signed up for an Honors Class he was teaching, Arthurian Literature, I think. Pinti was charmingly self-effacing, critically challenging, and made medieval literature seem alive and real and relevant. He was pleasantly surprised to find a science major who was both interested in old books and astute in engaging high-end critical questions (his words, not mine). He invited me to consider his Chaucer course the following semester. The Chaucer course was an unusual choice for anyone other than English Majors. I declared a double-major and jumped right in. I had several classes with Dr. Pinti over the new three years. Chaucer, Dante, a medieval lit. seminar, and independent study in Anglo-Saxon. I was his research assistant for a semester, and he gave me my second editing credit in the acknowledgements to his book on Chaucer. (I’m seeing a trend developing here: book acknowledgements and foreign languages). And he made me an official heir of his academic legacy by giving me a copy of Brights’ Anglo-Saxon Reader that had been given to him by a professor of his. He was my Honors Thesis advisor, and attended my wedding. I never got a chance to hear him play guitar though. Cheers to you, Dr. P.! Up there at cold and snowy Niagara. :)

Dr. Alice Sheppard

As a graduate student, I encountered a lot of different types of professors. Dr. Sheppard was the first prof I met. We had coffee. She asked a lot of direct questions. She intimidated the hell out of me. Her questions were hard, her expectations were high, but her enthusiasm and her drive zinged off of her and infected me with a similar energy. I worked with her in and out of several years. Anglio-Saxon lit. (there’s another language one), a slog through Beowulf, among other things (it’s funny to me that though the grad courses are my most recent, they run together and are the most difficult to tease out one from the other). When I thought I was making a bold move, she offered a kind of dual advice, providing insight into where I needed to be cautious and where I needed to jump head-first. She was my first choice for a dissertation advisor, though contemplation about my exact area of study, and deference to the power and influence of more established profs steered me elsewhere for a director. Like Mr. G., Alice did not laugh at my more bizarre ideas, but engaged the critical value and possibilities of the ideas with me.

This is the kind of teacher I wanted to be. Energetic, serious (with a liberal dash of fun), smart and intimidating but also accessible and not infallible. She was also the first among my profs to make me feel like academic work was sexy. There was something exciting about the power and the play of words and an engagment with them in a critical way. And also that our critical work didn’t have to stop at the edges of the page or the door of the classroom. Our critical tools gave us insight into the political and cultural structures around us, insight that could give us power and pleasure and understanding.

Though she has left academics to become a dancer, I have no doubt that Alice continues to be a thinker and critic of ideas and structures. And I have no doubt that she is still intimidating as hell. :) Cheers Alice!

Others

I had planned to continue to discuss specific inspirational teachers of the non-classroom type, but I’m clearly too babbly. Know though that all of you who have given me a way to understand the world in a different way, or who have given me a new skill, I appreciate you all as well. Oh there are knitters and farmers and teachers and dj’s and moms and family members and other professors that are worthy of admiration and praise.