“‘The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon
itself.’ Ralph Waldo Emerson offered that observation in 1837, but his
words echo with painful prescience in today’s very different United
States. Americans are in serious intellectual trouble — in danger of
losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of
anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations…” Susan Jacoby, Washington Post
“School’s out for Summer”
Three colleagues with a combined 100 and something years of teaching experienced retired and left me in charge. One of them just found out she has cancer. It has been a sad couple of weeks, but it is really starting to sink in.
I’m finishing my master’s in the next two weeks and then I’m reading like a madman for the AP course I’m teaching next year.
I took tickets at graduation today. You see all walks of life. I always see kids’ parents I haven’t met before and go, “Okay. It all makes sense now.” I’ve never seen so many tattooed titties in one place. It must be a rule: you get a tattoo on your tit, you have to wear clothes that show it to everyone.
My favorite today was the tiny, ancient, toothless black lady wearing a purple and blue flowered dress from the 1970s and a fluorescent lime-green stocking hat, even though it was eighty outside and felt like the eighth level of Hell in the gym. The eighth level is the last level that’s hot, in case you were wondering. The ninth level is ice, because it’s the furthest away from God. God is love. And then Dante climbed over Satan’s back to get out.
May 172008
Here’s a quick funny story:
The school where I teach drug tests athletes. A student told me that when she was drug tested for the first time, she thought they needed the blue water in the toilet for the test. She peed, scooped the pee out of the toilet with the cup, and took it to the nurse. The nurse asked her why it was green. The student replied, “Because blue and yellow make green.”
