I’m old enough now to have figured some things out, and I can see younger people shooting themselves in the foot from time to time. If I indirectly, politely, tactfully suggest a probably more fruitful strategy, they have a reason why it’s not going to work, or why they shouldn’t do it. I say, fine, and continue to be friends and not bug them. But I also silently resolve to keep track and see where they’re at in ten or twenty years, and whether the goals they say they’re pursuing by the strategies they’re employing are getting achieved.
In one case, a friend who wants to be a composer insists on composing for ensembles that don’t exist and on composing music that is far too difficult (she says) for the players she might have access to. These are unique groups: vibraharp, cello, and two saxophones; solo harp [not an ensemble, but still she has to a) find a player b) consult with a harpist (she doesn’t know any) who can tell her whether the music she’s writing is playable].
My advice, if I were asked, and I haven’t been, so I keep to myself, would be to write for groups that exist and that she has access to, get her composing chops going that way, and, when she has some clout as a composer and musicians want to play her work, bring out the more exotic creations. At this point, she can’t even organize a rehearsal at the union because she has one piece for the vibes, saxes, and cello group—how is she going to entice professional musicians to come down for a half hour and play through one piece? She has also enrolled in a graduate composition program but is already planning to transfer out because there is so much music history involved, and she wants training in composition, not music history. I asked her if she’d found a program elsewhere that suits her specific need, and she said, not so far—at least, not in the area, and she doesn’t want to move. She wants to be able to teach in the future, but I doubt that teaching and getting a degree without much academic substance are compatible. I doubt that she can find any credible institution to get a master’s degree where she takes nearly all composition courses. Most teaching positions that I’m aware of call for a utility person who can teach not only composition but music history, musicianship, basic harmony and theory, etc. Very few institutions can afford someone who does nothing but compose, and they can get the big names. But, she is determined. In ten or twenty years, we’ll know whether she was right.
With another friend, those twenty years—and more—have passed, and the results seem to be in. Twenty years ago, she talked a lot about books she was going to publish, articles she was going to write. Her recurrent theme was, “I’m really happy about getting back to writing.” Yet, whenever I took stock of how she occupied her time, it seemed to be with politicking around the school where she was teaching, or palling with friends, or planning this and that gardening project, etc., etc.. To this day (25 years later) I’m not aware of anything she has published. At one time or another, she thought about getting into a teaching position that would be somewhat more lucrative, but it never happened, and she remains at the institution where I first met and knew her for a very, very bright, very funny, intellectual omnivore.
And there’s myself, of course: when I got out of graduate school, I was going to be a critic/scholar. However, I got bored with that pretty quickly. Then I was going to be a novelist. I took writing courses, went to workshops, wrote five or six unpublishable books, tried to find an agent, and finally decided that I wasn’t making any money, and (most important) I wasn’t enjoying the act of writing any more. In fact, a friend sent one of my books to his agent in New York. The agent wrote back that I should be writing more like the author of the Black Dahlia. I had read several of his books, but they were so horrifically and appallingly violent that I couldn’t see trying to come up with incidents and descriptions like that myself. I would have become a joyless monster.
So, it was back to the default value: music. I don’t make any money at that, but I enjoy it, and my charts are getting some minor reputation (perhaps for their weirdness, perhaps for some originality) among the musicians I have access to. It’s forty years since grad school, which was a different world.
Perhaps the lesson here, applying it to my examples is, plans change, goals evolve, people drift toward their joys one way or another. I much prefer that way of talking about it to the rather cold formulation that one sinks to one’s level and stops there. (Incidentally, that rather supercilious and pretentious way of describing others came from an unknown dance teacher at an unknown community music school. She would have been her own best example, but I don’t think she was referring to herself.)
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Get the Hook!
They say you should always be suspicious of someone who places a watch in front of him as he starts speaking.
This may be true. This was a dark moment in the annals of a Southeastern Michigan regional meeting scholarly conference.
I had been handed the chairmanship of one of the sub-groups, and I thought it would be interesting to combine some scholarly presentations with some creative-writer presentations. That in itself was not a mistake and would have turned out well—there were well-known creative writers from several Michigan colleges.
The mistake was in my choice of the scholar. A U. of M English Department professor, the year before, had given an excellent, concise, well-focused paper that was very well received. He applied again this year. The difference was that he offered only a proposed topic, not a finished paper. On the strength of his presentation the year before, and the possibilities of the topic, I accepted the proposal.
This time, however, the paper itself was never completed. When the professor sat down at the table in front of the room to give his 15-20 minute presentation, setting his wristwatch carefully in front of him, we could not know that he would launch a nearly 1 1/2 hour rambling, diffuse blather, which he was obviously making up as he went along, and which, to a large extent, consisted of a plot summary of The Tempest. The other participants were champing at the bit, and I—green as I was—didn’t have the nerve to simply interrupt him, or signal him that he had five minutes left. He was rude to his colleagues, and my mistake was a) to have accepted a proposal rather than a finished paper; and b) not to cut him off, even midsentence, so the other presenters could have their shot.
2. A similar thing happened at another academic conference, this time at a Society for Photographic Education meeting in Dallas, Texas. Again, I was the moderator. I believe the topic was language and photography, which was hot at the time. The section was to consist of two speakers, one from Cranbrook Art Academy, the other from the University of Washington; he was a well-known scholar/critic on theoretical issues in visual interpretation. The first, from Cranbrook, was to be a discussion based on visuals. The second, a more theoretical approach.
I had asked both of them to cover those areas, thinking that the combination would be very effective.
And it would have been. I should have seen danger ahead, however, when I noticed the Cranbrook speaker loading more than 100 slides into a tray. There is no way anyone can get 100 slides into a 15-20 minute presentation.
But that’s what he seemed determined to do. The Cranbrook speaker launched into a presentation that, in spite of repeated cut-off signals, took at least an hour and effectively crowded out the other speaker, who was left with time only for a brief summary of his point(s), which he did concisely, and the distribution of a well-selected bibliography related to the issue at hand.
Lessons: never accept a proposal when a completed paper is the basis of acceptance. Once the proposal is accepted, the speaker has no incentive to complete it. This U of M professor may also have felt that there was so little at stake in this regional conference that he needn’t worry about his presentation. Even if it stunk, which it did, it would appear on his bio as a “Paper Presented,” and he would get tenure/promotion credit. Crass opportunism.
The other lesson, related to both speakers, is: as a moderator, don’t hesitate to enforce the 20-minute rule. You have the authority, and the other presenters are looking to you. Get the hook, if you have to, and forcibly drag rude, inconsiderate colleagues offstage. You are entitled to punch them if necessary.
I suppose there will be other such manifestations of blind ego as these speakers, and the whole affair is history, but neither event blessed me with a sense of joy in the scholarly community, and both events still anger me on the very few occasions when I remember them. Maybe this blog will be cathartic.
This may be true. This was a dark moment in the annals of a Southeastern Michigan regional meeting scholarly conference.
I had been handed the chairmanship of one of the sub-groups, and I thought it would be interesting to combine some scholarly presentations with some creative-writer presentations. That in itself was not a mistake and would have turned out well—there were well-known creative writers from several Michigan colleges.
The mistake was in my choice of the scholar. A U. of M English Department professor, the year before, had given an excellent, concise, well-focused paper that was very well received. He applied again this year. The difference was that he offered only a proposed topic, not a finished paper. On the strength of his presentation the year before, and the possibilities of the topic, I accepted the proposal.
This time, however, the paper itself was never completed. When the professor sat down at the table in front of the room to give his 15-20 minute presentation, setting his wristwatch carefully in front of him, we could not know that he would launch a nearly 1 1/2 hour rambling, diffuse blather, which he was obviously making up as he went along, and which, to a large extent, consisted of a plot summary of The Tempest. The other participants were champing at the bit, and I—green as I was—didn’t have the nerve to simply interrupt him, or signal him that he had five minutes left. He was rude to his colleagues, and my mistake was a) to have accepted a proposal rather than a finished paper; and b) not to cut him off, even midsentence, so the other presenters could have their shot.
2. A similar thing happened at another academic conference, this time at a Society for Photographic Education meeting in Dallas, Texas. Again, I was the moderator. I believe the topic was language and photography, which was hot at the time. The section was to consist of two speakers, one from Cranbrook Art Academy, the other from the University of Washington; he was a well-known scholar/critic on theoretical issues in visual interpretation. The first, from Cranbrook, was to be a discussion based on visuals. The second, a more theoretical approach.
I had asked both of them to cover those areas, thinking that the combination would be very effective.
And it would have been. I should have seen danger ahead, however, when I noticed the Cranbrook speaker loading more than 100 slides into a tray. There is no way anyone can get 100 slides into a 15-20 minute presentation.
But that’s what he seemed determined to do. The Cranbrook speaker launched into a presentation that, in spite of repeated cut-off signals, took at least an hour and effectively crowded out the other speaker, who was left with time only for a brief summary of his point(s), which he did concisely, and the distribution of a well-selected bibliography related to the issue at hand.
Lessons: never accept a proposal when a completed paper is the basis of acceptance. Once the proposal is accepted, the speaker has no incentive to complete it. This U of M professor may also have felt that there was so little at stake in this regional conference that he needn’t worry about his presentation. Even if it stunk, which it did, it would appear on his bio as a “Paper Presented,” and he would get tenure/promotion credit. Crass opportunism.
The other lesson, related to both speakers, is: as a moderator, don’t hesitate to enforce the 20-minute rule. You have the authority, and the other presenters are looking to you. Get the hook, if you have to, and forcibly drag rude, inconsiderate colleagues offstage. You are entitled to punch them if necessary.
I suppose there will be other such manifestations of blind ego as these speakers, and the whole affair is history, but neither event blessed me with a sense of joy in the scholarly community, and both events still anger me on the very few occasions when I remember them. Maybe this blog will be cathartic.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Got'em by the Short Hairs
“Ha! Got’em by the short Hairs”
A boast by the CFO of Center for Creative Studies—I didn’t hear this directly. It was reported to me. But I could imagine him saying it, with his fist clenched, and a sense that he was saving the institution from financial collapse and disappearance into the abyss. His initials were J.C. (I’ll withhold his full name.) Interestingly, “J.C.” are also the initials of another not-so-very-unknown messianic figure.
CFO overstates his title—he was the school’s accountant. He handled all the financial transactions, and in that capacity he considered it his personal mission to be as tight-fisted as possible. “Scrooge” was a compliment. When I first arrived at CCS, in 1976, shortly after it had converted from a two-year certificate-granting institution to a bona-fide four-year degree-granting institution, he held sway. Outside the exercise of his professional responsibilities, he was a genuinely congenial and easy-going guy, but in his office, watch out! He had the cop’s “command and control” demeanour, and a bulldog’s stocky, solid build. He always wore a white or off-white dress shirt, no tie, sleeves rolled up to reveal muscular forearms—he might have anchored a bowling team in his off-hours. His wife, whom I met once, was unfailingly sweet and good-natured.
If I ran out of chalk in a classroom, I had to make a trip to his office (a building away) for more. On my first visit, I expected that he would give me at least a box of chalk—if not several—to keep in the department offices. This appeal must have happened before, though. He was prepared. He rummaged in his desk for a moment and produced two clean white sticks, admonishing me to use them sparingly. When I suggested that it was ridiculous for me to walk over to his office just for two sticks of chalk, I got the command and control glare.
The academic department had no typewriter. The secretarial staff in the main office had, I believe, just started converting from manuals to IBM Selectrics. I asked about getting a typewriter for our department and, several days later, was given a Smith-Corona portable electric typewriter purchased at K-Mart. We used that for several years. We may have gotten a second one later. It took a couple of years of typing out letters and memos on what was essentially a student’s dorm-room typewriter, with its only marginally professional look, to be qualified for a Selectric.
I was told that he locked the sugar (for the staff coffee machine) in the safe when he went home at the end of the day to make sure no one stole it or used more than their fair share.
On several occasions, impatient with this regime, I purchased some office supplies on my own and asked to be reimbursed. The sum total of my purchases over several occasions could not have come to more than $60 (in a school with a $3 or $4 million dollar budget. In variably, though, he was furious that I had purchased something without using the school’s tax i.d. so I could avoid the sales tax. He read me the riot act until I told him to go ahead and take the sales tax out of my salary—we were talking about less than $2.
He gradually had to give up his iron-fisted control with the arrival of a new administration that took us from the era of the ditto machine to actual copy machines like other organizations had had for decades. We knew the modern world had arrived when the Academic Studies Department was finally allocated a small desktop computer to use for word processing.
Eventually he retired, and I understand that he, his wife and friends drove their giant recreational vehicles around the country to places like Lake Powell, where they enjoyed the camping life. He had, honestly, been a good steward of the institution’s finances, and an okay guy when I wasn’t asking for money, so I was glad to hear that he was happy.
And, truth be told, he did influence me: even in our current, more environmentally-conscious times, institutions use reams and reams of paper, almost always only on one side, sometimes only for a couple of lines of information (even now, with inter- and intra- departmental e-mail). CCS was no different; it just went through trees at a lower rate than a big institution like Wayne State.
Asking myself, what would J.C. do, I decided that I would collect this barely-used paper and recycle it, making notes for class discussion and lecture, printing meeting agendas, etc., etc. One day, I told the dean I had such a collection, and it was increasing at an alarming rate—I couldn’t write notes, memos, agendas fast enough. He laughed and gave me the J.C. prize for the day. There was no medal, no plaque, no document (we had to save money, after all). In fact, there was nothing—it was a joke in passing. But I did get a special frisson at having deserved such merit. J.C., wherever he was, cruising highways and byways, probably smiled with satisfaction at his enduring legacy.
A boast by the CFO of Center for Creative Studies—I didn’t hear this directly. It was reported to me. But I could imagine him saying it, with his fist clenched, and a sense that he was saving the institution from financial collapse and disappearance into the abyss. His initials were J.C. (I’ll withhold his full name.) Interestingly, “J.C.” are also the initials of another not-so-very-unknown messianic figure.
CFO overstates his title—he was the school’s accountant. He handled all the financial transactions, and in that capacity he considered it his personal mission to be as tight-fisted as possible. “Scrooge” was a compliment. When I first arrived at CCS, in 1976, shortly after it had converted from a two-year certificate-granting institution to a bona-fide four-year degree-granting institution, he held sway. Outside the exercise of his professional responsibilities, he was a genuinely congenial and easy-going guy, but in his office, watch out! He had the cop’s “command and control” demeanour, and a bulldog’s stocky, solid build. He always wore a white or off-white dress shirt, no tie, sleeves rolled up to reveal muscular forearms—he might have anchored a bowling team in his off-hours. His wife, whom I met once, was unfailingly sweet and good-natured.
If I ran out of chalk in a classroom, I had to make a trip to his office (a building away) for more. On my first visit, I expected that he would give me at least a box of chalk—if not several—to keep in the department offices. This appeal must have happened before, though. He was prepared. He rummaged in his desk for a moment and produced two clean white sticks, admonishing me to use them sparingly. When I suggested that it was ridiculous for me to walk over to his office just for two sticks of chalk, I got the command and control glare.
The academic department had no typewriter. The secretarial staff in the main office had, I believe, just started converting from manuals to IBM Selectrics. I asked about getting a typewriter for our department and, several days later, was given a Smith-Corona portable electric typewriter purchased at K-Mart. We used that for several years. We may have gotten a second one later. It took a couple of years of typing out letters and memos on what was essentially a student’s dorm-room typewriter, with its only marginally professional look, to be qualified for a Selectric.
I was told that he locked the sugar (for the staff coffee machine) in the safe when he went home at the end of the day to make sure no one stole it or used more than their fair share.
On several occasions, impatient with this regime, I purchased some office supplies on my own and asked to be reimbursed. The sum total of my purchases over several occasions could not have come to more than $60 (in a school with a $3 or $4 million dollar budget. In variably, though, he was furious that I had purchased something without using the school’s tax i.d. so I could avoid the sales tax. He read me the riot act until I told him to go ahead and take the sales tax out of my salary—we were talking about less than $2.
He gradually had to give up his iron-fisted control with the arrival of a new administration that took us from the era of the ditto machine to actual copy machines like other organizations had had for decades. We knew the modern world had arrived when the Academic Studies Department was finally allocated a small desktop computer to use for word processing.
Eventually he retired, and I understand that he, his wife and friends drove their giant recreational vehicles around the country to places like Lake Powell, where they enjoyed the camping life. He had, honestly, been a good steward of the institution’s finances, and an okay guy when I wasn’t asking for money, so I was glad to hear that he was happy.
And, truth be told, he did influence me: even in our current, more environmentally-conscious times, institutions use reams and reams of paper, almost always only on one side, sometimes only for a couple of lines of information (even now, with inter- and intra- departmental e-mail). CCS was no different; it just went through trees at a lower rate than a big institution like Wayne State.
Asking myself, what would J.C. do, I decided that I would collect this barely-used paper and recycle it, making notes for class discussion and lecture, printing meeting agendas, etc., etc. One day, I told the dean I had such a collection, and it was increasing at an alarming rate—I couldn’t write notes, memos, agendas fast enough. He laughed and gave me the J.C. prize for the day. There was no medal, no plaque, no document (we had to save money, after all). In fact, there was nothing—it was a joke in passing. But I did get a special frisson at having deserved such merit. J.C., wherever he was, cruising highways and byways, probably smiled with satisfaction at his enduring legacy.
Monday, April 20, 2009
The Higher Math
This item goes into the file: "Discretionary Logic."
Here's a tip. I just figured it out myself.
According to semiotics, an "equals" sign (=) means "equals." Okay. No problem.
It doesn't matter what numbers or letters are before or after it. "Equals" means "equals." Duh.
Obviously, Einstein realized this. I mean, think about it: e=mc(squared). Hahahaha. What a kidder. He just made that up out of nothing.
The really cool thing is this: after he made it up out of whole cloth, probably in a dream after drinking something revelatory, the universe began behaving that way. That's why the atom bomb was possible. Simple cause/effect. Anyone will tell you that that equation led to the atom bomb. Ergo . . .
The "equals" sign is as valuable in the modern world as "if" was for Touchstone.
Here's a tip. I just figured it out myself.
According to semiotics, an "equals" sign (=) means "equals." Okay. No problem.
It doesn't matter what numbers or letters are before or after it. "Equals" means "equals." Duh.
Obviously, Einstein realized this. I mean, think about it: e=mc(squared). Hahahaha. What a kidder. He just made that up out of nothing.
The really cool thing is this: after he made it up out of whole cloth, probably in a dream after drinking something revelatory, the universe began behaving that way. That's why the atom bomb was possible. Simple cause/effect. Anyone will tell you that that equation led to the atom bomb. Ergo . . .
The "equals" sign is as valuable in the modern world as "if" was for Touchstone.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Foreign Cars in the Motor City
Those dark and snowy nights and those frigid early mornings.
For ten years or so, I commuted from southern California to Detroit to teach at Center for Creative Studies (now called College for Creative Studies).
During good weather, this was not much of a problem. I kept an old Toyota Celica hatchback parked in various out-of-the way locations near the airport (mostly at a hotel I could get a shuttle to). The feat was to start up the car after its days of inactivity, sometimes over a winter break, which could be as long as a month.
During the seasons of snow and deep darkness, when I would arrive either very early in the morning (after a redeye flight), or late at night (after a noon or later departure from LA), and there could be a foot or more of snow on the ground, I was always anxious about the car. Would it be there? Would it start? What a relief to see it, even with snow mounded on and around it. Every time I turned the key in the ignition and it fired up, I patted the dashboard in gratitude and promised to treat the car to a good dinner in Greektown. That, of course, meant treating myself and my daughter while the car bided its time nearby, but that’s okay. The monumental dependability of that car deserved its reward.
Like my VW van—the car I drove cross-country from Berkeley to Detroit, and which I had sold several years earlier to a young woman about to embark on her own cross-country odyssey to Colorado for college, this Toyota, over the years, showed more and more signs of wear, especially from rust. I caught on to a technique of using special ignition spray—where, early in the morning, or in the dead of night—whenever I arrived and made it through the snow to the car, waiting patiently under its layer of snow—I’d open the hood, expose the carburetor, and spray this stuff in, and the car would start up, deserving another good dinner. I just had to remember to always keep a can of that starter in the car (and hope the weather wouldn’t be so frigid that I couldn’t turn the key in the door lock).
Eventually, the hotel tightened up its parking surveillance so I couldn’t just leave the car in the lot, and I had to unload the car. A CCS student bought it for $350 to use around campus, and I started renting vehicles every other week. It was more costly, but it was also a relief—no more wondering whether I would have a ride that weekend, or whether the car would start, or whether it would have been towed away somewhere. Renting a car wasn’t as colorful, or as exotic, but it was much less potentially treacherous. I hated to join the ranks of ordinary long-distance commuter monotony in that small way, but at the same time, it made life a little easier and left my mind free for the more important things—seeing my daughter and teaching my classes.
I probably don’t need to make an issue of this but I will: I had two Volkswagen vans, and then I had Toyotas. This in Detroit, and during the years when a group of drunken thugs beat a Chinese man to death, mistaking him for Japanese and wanting to take out their anger and frustration that the Japanese were so far outstripping American automakers in sales and product quality. We are now in a near-recession, American automakers have lost some 30-40% of sales, but foreign carmakers are holding their own. This current situation reaches back at least twenty-five years. I owe some debt of gratitude to Toyota, who made a car that withstood years, weather and semi-neglect, and kept running.
For ten years or so, I commuted from southern California to Detroit to teach at Center for Creative Studies (now called College for Creative Studies).
During good weather, this was not much of a problem. I kept an old Toyota Celica hatchback parked in various out-of-the way locations near the airport (mostly at a hotel I could get a shuttle to). The feat was to start up the car after its days of inactivity, sometimes over a winter break, which could be as long as a month.
During the seasons of snow and deep darkness, when I would arrive either very early in the morning (after a redeye flight), or late at night (after a noon or later departure from LA), and there could be a foot or more of snow on the ground, I was always anxious about the car. Would it be there? Would it start? What a relief to see it, even with snow mounded on and around it. Every time I turned the key in the ignition and it fired up, I patted the dashboard in gratitude and promised to treat the car to a good dinner in Greektown. That, of course, meant treating myself and my daughter while the car bided its time nearby, but that’s okay. The monumental dependability of that car deserved its reward.
Like my VW van—the car I drove cross-country from Berkeley to Detroit, and which I had sold several years earlier to a young woman about to embark on her own cross-country odyssey to Colorado for college, this Toyota, over the years, showed more and more signs of wear, especially from rust. I caught on to a technique of using special ignition spray—where, early in the morning, or in the dead of night—whenever I arrived and made it through the snow to the car, waiting patiently under its layer of snow—I’d open the hood, expose the carburetor, and spray this stuff in, and the car would start up, deserving another good dinner. I just had to remember to always keep a can of that starter in the car (and hope the weather wouldn’t be so frigid that I couldn’t turn the key in the door lock).
Eventually, the hotel tightened up its parking surveillance so I couldn’t just leave the car in the lot, and I had to unload the car. A CCS student bought it for $350 to use around campus, and I started renting vehicles every other week. It was more costly, but it was also a relief—no more wondering whether I would have a ride that weekend, or whether the car would start, or whether it would have been towed away somewhere. Renting a car wasn’t as colorful, or as exotic, but it was much less potentially treacherous. I hated to join the ranks of ordinary long-distance commuter monotony in that small way, but at the same time, it made life a little easier and left my mind free for the more important things—seeing my daughter and teaching my classes.
I probably don’t need to make an issue of this but I will: I had two Volkswagen vans, and then I had Toyotas. This in Detroit, and during the years when a group of drunken thugs beat a Chinese man to death, mistaking him for Japanese and wanting to take out their anger and frustration that the Japanese were so far outstripping American automakers in sales and product quality. We are now in a near-recession, American automakers have lost some 30-40% of sales, but foreign carmakers are holding their own. This current situation reaches back at least twenty-five years. I owe some debt of gratitude to Toyota, who made a car that withstood years, weather and semi-neglect, and kept running.
The Van in All of Us
VW van story: thinking of Arthur’s Days
I finally got a VW van of my own in 1968. Red and white. The perfect vehicle for—what? Obviously, carrying drums and vibes. But also, “just looking the part”—ready for the road trip, which I was soon to make, off to Detroit and my first teaching job—at Wayne State University, the last place a Berkeley hippie wanna-be with a VW van would fit in. (And, in the long run, I didn’t.)
But there I was, and I continued to drive that van during throughout my years at WSU, and into my years at Center for Creative Studies. This was a van from California—no rust, perfect exterior. But the years in Detroit began to take their toll. My first big snowstorm, which I learned from a gas station attendant was an honest-to-gosh blizzard, and the car ploughed right through it, no problems, carrying me to my destination, my apartment off East Jefferson, two bedrooms, one converted into a darkroom, the other painted dark maroon, a block away from a genuinely dilapidated and perhaps dangerous neighborhood. (I had scavenged my kitchen table from the apartment building basement, where someone else had abandoned it. My bed, from a thrift store, sat on the floor and doubled as a couch. This was my first time really on my own, and I brought with me the mindset of the penurious grad student who had spent his last three months living in a frat house bedroom with books and lps piled on the floor awaiting transport to their next destination.)
But six years or so later, my classic VW van was showing signs of wear: rust, a rebuilt engine (there’s another story—throwing a rod in Canada, on the way to Toronto, leaving it at the repairman’s shop in a small Canadian town), heater working best during the summer, air conditioning not working at all. In fact, the car was a virtual sauna during the hot and humid summers—I don’t remember being able to turn the heater off.
I was going to have to do something, replace the van eventually, but I drove it and drove it, not wanting to give it up any more than I could give up my beard and long hair.
Finally, one dark, cold, stormy, sleety January night, Mother Nature forced my hand. I was on my way to teach a WSU extension course at the Canfield Center—not far from WSU, but through a pretty dicey neighborhood. The rain was icy, gathering in large puddles in the potholes that made the streets like minefields. I went through an intersection. I slowed, but not enough: dirty water splashed up through the rusted floor into the cab, drenching my pants and shoes. I was chilled in class.
At that point, I knew I had to give up the car. I went out and bought my first Toyota Tercel—I didn’t see the point of a van any longer—and wound up selling the van for $300 to a girl taking off for University of Colorado. Her dad and brother came over to check it out, since they were going to have to fix it up for her, and they wound up driving it away. I bade it sadly good-bye, but she was thrilled and told me, as she drove out, “You’ve made me really happy.”
So, the tradition continued—I had made my first road trip coming east in that car. She made her first road trip in the opposite direction. Just like Kerouac, back and forth across the country--only he was usually hitchhiking.
I finally got a VW van of my own in 1968. Red and white. The perfect vehicle for—what? Obviously, carrying drums and vibes. But also, “just looking the part”—ready for the road trip, which I was soon to make, off to Detroit and my first teaching job—at Wayne State University, the last place a Berkeley hippie wanna-be with a VW van would fit in. (And, in the long run, I didn’t.)
But there I was, and I continued to drive that van during throughout my years at WSU, and into my years at Center for Creative Studies. This was a van from California—no rust, perfect exterior. But the years in Detroit began to take their toll. My first big snowstorm, which I learned from a gas station attendant was an honest-to-gosh blizzard, and the car ploughed right through it, no problems, carrying me to my destination, my apartment off East Jefferson, two bedrooms, one converted into a darkroom, the other painted dark maroon, a block away from a genuinely dilapidated and perhaps dangerous neighborhood. (I had scavenged my kitchen table from the apartment building basement, where someone else had abandoned it. My bed, from a thrift store, sat on the floor and doubled as a couch. This was my first time really on my own, and I brought with me the mindset of the penurious grad student who had spent his last three months living in a frat house bedroom with books and lps piled on the floor awaiting transport to their next destination.)
But six years or so later, my classic VW van was showing signs of wear: rust, a rebuilt engine (there’s another story—throwing a rod in Canada, on the way to Toronto, leaving it at the repairman’s shop in a small Canadian town), heater working best during the summer, air conditioning not working at all. In fact, the car was a virtual sauna during the hot and humid summers—I don’t remember being able to turn the heater off.
I was going to have to do something, replace the van eventually, but I drove it and drove it, not wanting to give it up any more than I could give up my beard and long hair.
Finally, one dark, cold, stormy, sleety January night, Mother Nature forced my hand. I was on my way to teach a WSU extension course at the Canfield Center—not far from WSU, but through a pretty dicey neighborhood. The rain was icy, gathering in large puddles in the potholes that made the streets like minefields. I went through an intersection. I slowed, but not enough: dirty water splashed up through the rusted floor into the cab, drenching my pants and shoes. I was chilled in class.
At that point, I knew I had to give up the car. I went out and bought my first Toyota Tercel—I didn’t see the point of a van any longer—and wound up selling the van for $300 to a girl taking off for University of Colorado. Her dad and brother came over to check it out, since they were going to have to fix it up for her, and they wound up driving it away. I bade it sadly good-bye, but she was thrilled and told me, as she drove out, “You’ve made me really happy.”
So, the tradition continued—I had made my first road trip coming east in that car. She made her first road trip in the opposite direction. Just like Kerouac, back and forth across the country--only he was usually hitchhiking.
Copernicus Redux
We’ve known since the beginning of the scientific revolution that the large features of the universe (moon, planets) move in orderly and predictable paths. The Biblical story of Joshua notwithstanding, the sun does not slow its orbit (a mistake in the thinking of Biblical writers) to allow anyone a chance to slaughter more enemies, and the moon, which actually has an orbital path, does not ordinarily swerve for any known reason.
However, I can personally testify, on the basis of my own eyewitness experience, to a distinct aberration in the moon’s celestial motion on the first night of a Bible as Literature class several years ago.
This was an introductory meeting, in a basement classroom—i.e., below ground level. The windows looked out upon the bushes. I was explaining the whats, whys, and wherefores of the class when I noticed a movement outside one of the windows. Some passerby, in a moment of idle whimsy, dropped his pants and exposed his white anterior globes to the class. Their rapt attention was entirely fixed on me, of course, but one or two happened to catch the same glimpse I did.
Then the moon, as it always does, after its brief appearance, disappeared once again into the night and left us to light our way by intellect alone.
However, I can personally testify, on the basis of my own eyewitness experience, to a distinct aberration in the moon’s celestial motion on the first night of a Bible as Literature class several years ago.
This was an introductory meeting, in a basement classroom—i.e., below ground level. The windows looked out upon the bushes. I was explaining the whats, whys, and wherefores of the class when I noticed a movement outside one of the windows. Some passerby, in a moment of idle whimsy, dropped his pants and exposed his white anterior globes to the class. Their rapt attention was entirely fixed on me, of course, but one or two happened to catch the same glimpse I did.
Then the moon, as it always does, after its brief appearance, disappeared once again into the night and left us to light our way by intellect alone.
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