35

 I don't know why I'm continuing in this countdown since my spring schedule has been destroyed, and thus I'll have to start over again, but, as I've pointed out earlier, if nothing else we can always learn more about the CFL Anyway, if my schedule had not been destroyed I'd have 35 total days that I have to be on campus at Champlain until my retirement.

And number 35 is a very worthy selection: Tyrone Jones of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. He won two Grey Cups with the Bombers, and is still the franchise's all-time sacks leader.

2025 Readings 101

 This morning I finished the latest book in our Unofficial Book Club, Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future. For some reason we started off with science fiction novels (I'm not certain exactly why) and we could never seem to quite get away from them. The Ministry for the Future is described as a "science fiction nonfiction novel." Truthfully, while it had some nice moments, mainly related to cool science things I didn't no anything about, I didn't like this book at all. It was as if Robinson wanted to tell, briefly, about a number of tangible science things that we could actually do to save the planet, he decided to do it through a poorly laid out story - which mean, at least in my opinion, that neither the story or the science really worked. Essentially, neither path was ever able to gather any momentum before you popped back to the other lane again. The question I kept coming back to was one of will: why don't we have the will to make these changes? In the book so much of the change was brought about by sheer desperation, either because of profound ecological degradation or a global depression or ecological terrorism, all of which raised interesting points but which Robinson never followed through with in any meaningful fashion. It received some great reviews, but then I think there are books that are sort of negative review proof (as in, the topic is simply not something that a reviewer feels he/she should attack), and ecological degradation is definitely one of them. I'm going to pass the book on to some of my science geek friends, who may enjoy it a lot more than I did.

36

Now, following out the system I laid out the other day, I'll go ahead and post a CFL player who wore number 36, signifying the number of days that I should have left at Champlain before my retirement. Sadly, the key word in that sentence is, as I feared, is should. Because of comically (although there's nothing funny about it) my carefully sculpted spring schedule has been destroyed and is in the process of being put back together again. The result would be that my last semester would be marked by a terrible schedule and tiny classes. The key word in that sentence is would, because I told my coordinator to reach out to the provost in regards to buying me out of the end of my contract. This is only partially because a change in my schedule would require me to start looking up CFL players with numbers in the 50s and maybe even 60s. Mainly, paying me a healthy salary (even if I could use it) to teach a minimal amount of students while taking money away from adjuncts just seems like a foolish use of resources.

Despite the dour note above, we should celebrate the great Dave Ridgway (known as the "Robokicker"), a Hall of Fame Kicker for the Saskatchewan Roughriders. He holds the CFL records for most field goals in a regular season (59) and consecutive field goals (28) in a regular season.

Not Getting It Right

 I was talking to my friend Chuck the other day in between classes and I shared one of those strange realizations that I've had recently as I countdown my final year. When you're a teacher (or, more broadly anyone, I guess) and you're facing down retirement, you have these moments when you walk out of class and realize that you'll never teach that subject or film or chapter from Crime and Punishment again - and that you still didn't get it right. If you're a sincere and dedicated teacher - or you have more than your fair share of pride or ego - you always think that with a few tweaks you'll hit the bullseye next time. Like most teachers I write up notes to myself, not at the end of every entire class, but after each individual class period, with things that went right and wrong, and proposed changes for next year, hoping that next year everything will come together brilliantly at long last. Because of the nature of Champlain I suppose the chances of us ever getting it right are fairly inconsequential, mainly because our curriculum in the Core is interdisciplinary and seems to be torn apart and rebuilt every five years or so. Essentially, I don't have thirty-five straight opportunities to get that lecture on the Persians right (although it was already really good when I stopped teaching world civilization). Still, you would think that five times through would be enough for you to get it all sorted out. Of course, that's not the way it works, because teaching is not a one way street. Every course, and every class period for that matter, is organic: who are the students who signed up for that sections, and which ones showed up that day (did one of the two bright kids take the day off? did three of the ten who shouldn't actually be in college take the day off? how does that impact the chemistry?). For some time now I've believed that if you have four classes in a semester you normally have one you really like, two you can abide, and one that is borderline painful to meet. You never want your bad class to be the last one you meet with that week, because then you go into the weekend believing that you're actually a lousy teacher. Following that logic, I hope my last class in the spring is a great one, so that I don't go into retirement convinced that I had spent four decades as a lousy teacher. Maybe on that last day I'll do the roll, take a quick read of that day's chemical makeup of the room, and just send them home if I think they'll ruin my retirement.

37

 As I approach retirement I guess it's not particularly surprising how many of my posts reflect that coming event. The other day I calculated how many days I'm required to be on campus before I retire. This is not the number of days that I'll actually be on campus, simply the minimum number of days that I'm required to be on campus. It's actually pretty easy to calculate because I stack all my classes on Monday and Thursday, which also inevitably leads to two days during Finals Week. Now, with the math sorted out, that works out to 37 more days before I shut it down in May. It doesn't seem like many days, and it certainly doesn't reflect the amount of time and days that I devote to teaching, which is essentially every day, but it's an interesting way to think about it. To celebrate this countdown, and remind my colleagues that their time suffering under the Scudderite junta are coming to an end, I'm posting a picture of a CFL player with the corresponding number of my door before I head out to my 4:00 film class (knowing that I won't be coming back to my office after class). So, yesterday at 3:45 I took off to prepare to show Pale Flower in my Japanese Film Noir class, and taped this picture to my door. On Thursday I'll go ahead and taped up a picture of number 36, and on and on. Now, what might mess up this brilliant scheme is that my spring numbers are so unbelievably bad, as Champlain clumsily tries to not go out of business, there's talk that my beautifully constructed schedule might be torn apart and put back together again, and then I'll suddenly have to recalculate and start looking for numbers in the 60s. Or maybe Champlain will just throw their hands up and buyout my last semester, in which case I'll have to start looking for players wearing the number 7.

I should probably give credit to the player as well, not simply to celebrate the moment but also because I'll doubtless want to know the name in the years to come (and, well, we can always be a better CFL fan). This is Wesley Sutton from our hometown Montreal Alouettes.

2025 Readings 100

 Just as I went through a Julian Barnes phase in this year of reading (both revisiting books I had loved before and exploring new ones), I suspect I'm going to finish out the year in a Martin Amis phase. A couple weeks ago I finished a reread of London Fields, and a couple days ago I read, for the first time, Night Train. Amis was such an interesting and brilliant and complicated writer. London Field was, among many other things, almost a parody of a roman noir. Night Train was, for all intents and purposes, a roman noir, and if Amis wanted to he could have easily taken that approach in his career. It read like a deeper James Ellroy, literally that level of dark and fucked up. Highly recommended. 

2025 Readings 99

 I don't really think of myself as someone who routinely reads detective novels, but there are some exceptions. I'm sure over the years I've read all the Sherlock Holmes short stores and novel several times, although I suppose that's true of most folks. I may also be a James Ellroy completest, including multiple readings of the L.A. Quartet (The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz), American Tabloid, and My Dark Places. Oddly, I'd also have to add to that Craig Johnson's Longmire series, which I suspect, like many people, I first encountered on Netflix. The novels are very different than the series, and, as might be imagined, better (although the casting of the Australian actor Robert Taylor was a great choice). Yesterday I finished First Frost, which I believe is the 20th in the series. If you're familiar with the Longmire series, you know he's a sheriff in a small town in Wyoming, supported by a cast of characters who run throughout the entire series (again, the TV series had different supporting characters, and some of the casting of the characters from the novels was a bit iffy - although Lou Diamond Phillips as Henry Standing Bear turned out to be an inspired choice). I remember travelling on a bus through the scrubby desert of Jordan while reading one of the earlier Longmire novels, and as I passed in and out of consciousness I started to believe that I was in Wyoming. The series is not great, but it's definitely entertaining and I'm always happy when I return to it. The one thing I would add is that it works when they're actually set in Wyoming. There's one where Walt goes down to Mexico and another when he's in Philadelphia and this last one which is a flashback a period before he and Henry go to Vietnam (don't try and sort out the timeline, especially on the TV series), and they never quite work out as cleanly as the ones where the action occurs in Wyoming. There's sort of an internal logic, a mood, in the Wyoming stories that are never captured in the stories outside of  Absaroka County. It's not that the non-Absaroka County stories are bad (and I completely understand why Johnson occasionally tries to mix things up), rather, they just feel a little unnatural and forced. Having said all that, I'm looking forward to reading the next one, and carrying out a massive reread once retirement hits.