Note: I include this as a post on my blogsite mostly for those classmates of mine who would like to see it. Don’t know if it will make sense for other readers–parts of it will, perhaps, others not so much. For example, to get the opening gag, you’d have to know that I now teachContinue reading “A Talk at the 30 Year High School Reunion”
Category Archives: Culture
Why I’m Thinking All The Time About Tiny Houses
Every few years or so I adopt a new obsession, embarrassingly, around some kind of thing I’ve come to believe will change my life in all kinds of positive ways. I say embarrassingly, because usually the obsession revolves around some material thing. Let me give you a quick run down of the last decade, forContinue reading “Why I’m Thinking All The Time About Tiny Houses”
#51: Benefit Car Crash
I misread the advertisement for a benefit car wash as a benefit car crash, honestly enough, my eye glancing quickly over the headline, eliminating the ‘a’ in car and the ‘w’ in wash, the brain filling in some redundancy so that sense could be made–because no one would advertise a benefit crash without specifying theContinue reading “#51: Benefit Car Crash”
#44: Sure, I Will Marry You
Sure, I Will Marry You Sure, I’ll marry you, if you’d like. That’s what I told a student of mine who sent me this message out of the blue fifteen years or better after he’d been in my classroom reading some Shakespeare, saying he had asked his girlfriend, who was also a student of mineContinue reading “#44: Sure, I Will Marry You”
#32: Gatsby? What Gatsby?
Gatsby? What Gatsby? is what Daisy says when she hears Jordan Baker mention the name to Nick, and it’s what teenagers used to say before they knew Leonardo DiCaprio was starring in the new Baz Luhrmann film. Suddenly, now, they want to read this novel because they recognize the name and because Leonardo is starring inContinue reading “#32: Gatsby? What Gatsby?”
#11: The American English Teacher Reads the Ancient Chinese Masters
The American English Teacher Reads the Ancient Chinese Masters I want those mountains, that river, my head in those clouds–that kind of wandering, self-ablaze, alive with possibility, drunk with wine, as silent as nature, missing now– found again only through right diligence, an effort conspired against by almost every natural fact of modern living. IContinue reading “#11: The American English Teacher Reads the Ancient Chinese Masters”
#10: Your Dumb Smart Phone
The assignment today was to write an “un-love” poem. The Smiths come to mind, for so many reasons, but in particular the lyric, “I’ve come to wish you an unhappy birthday” from the Strangeways, Here We Come album. Morrissey was/is the king of the “un-love” song. Sure, I can do that, I thought. And IContinue reading “#10: Your Dumb Smart Phone”
Of A Twelve Step Program for Young Cell Phone Addicts
I’m serious. There’s not a day that goes by any more when I don’t tell a student or several students, sometimes repeatedly in a single period, to put their cell phones away. And lately there hasn’t been a week that’s passed without a serious discussion around the lunch table about the need for some sortContinue reading “Of A Twelve Step Program for Young Cell Phone Addicts”
Of Moral Perfection
This is the assignment I gave to my students this week in American Literature. I wrote it on the board. “For homework, arrive at moral perfection. You have one week.” A few of them looked at it right away and were puzzled and slightly amused, but as we worked through the lesson of the day,Continue reading “Of Moral Perfection”
Of Internet Trolls and Stupid Insecurities
A first for me! I’ve experienced, or have been the victim of, my first internet troll (or so I think). It’s only been in the last year or so that I’ve become aware of such an animal as the internet troll, my first introduction probably coming from an internet video blogger by the name ofContinue reading “Of Internet Trolls and Stupid Insecurities”
michael jarmer 