| September'99 | . |
This Journal |
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I was trolling around for a title when this came to mind. It's the name of a very grim, actually funny tale by Poe. People don't usually connect Poe with humor, but he did have some talent for a fairly dark brand of it. "Never Bet the Devil Your Head", a great one-liner. (I remember that Todd Russ back in Joliet got a lot of mileage out of it for a week or so.) Still, it has nothing to do with today... I hope. Bob pretty much summed up my day by describing his own. "I wasn't on the roller-coaster; I was on the merry-go-round today." This was the kind of generic, grind-it-out school day that gets us through the year, that turns September into December into April. Not a bad day at all. It began with the sophomores and a little bit of Cotton Mather and Salem witchery. We pitied poor Martha Carrier who got a bum deal just because she was an abrasive neighbor. should we launch into "The Crucible"? They all want to see the movie; I'd rather just work with the play and, besides, I haven't yet figured how to sign out a tv/vcr and then get it onto the chairlift and down the stairs. (Yes, a wheelchair lift. My room might be the only "downstairs" academic class in the building, which is mostly one flat structure. I'm on the same lower level as the cafeteria, gym, and auditorium.) So I don't know about "The Crucible". Thr freshman classes are wrapping up a mini-unit on Animals in Poetry. I hope to kill it off tomorrow by firming up their drafts of a very brief contrast essay. This will give me a certain sense of the work we need to do with their writing. After this, I'm not sure what's next. I'm not thrilled by the short story selection in the textbook. (Isn't it time to retire "The Scarlet Ibis" and 'The Most Dangerous Game"?) Maybe "Romeo and Juliet"; more likely "The Miracle Worker". I think there's some kind of evolutionary progression from poetry to drama, as from first things to second things. Short stories, novels, non-fiction are fairly modern creatures. We had a pleasant New Teachers Meeting after school. I'm still saying to myself, "Imagine that - me, a new teacher." What a kick. We never had New Teacher Meetings when I was actually a new teacher twenty-some years ago. I got my schedule, walked into the classroom, and that was pretty much it. Sink or swim, first grade report in October. So there have been some advances over the years. That first year can be hell if you don't find any support. Enough of this. The jog: somebody tidied up the track, fewer obstacles. Just me, Dom, and some fella on the far side constructing a tiny brick shed for an unknown purpose. As I ran I could feel the sunheat rising from the surface into the cool evening air, and I remembered that we had the air-conditioning on today. If I hadn't gotten out to jog, I would have spent the whole day indoors. No sunset at all tonight. It just got dark. |
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The child thinks of growing old as an almost obscene
calamity, which for some mysterious reason will never happen
to itself. All who have passed the age of thirty are joyless
grotesques, endlessly fussing about things of no importance and
staying alive without, so far as the child can see, having anything
to live for. Only child life is real life. |
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