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.

2025 Readings 98

 Most of the 98 books I've read so far this year I've liked quiet a bit, and, of course, there are others that I was less impressed by. In the latter category would fall Baek Sehee's I Want to Die but I want to Eat Tteobokki. Last week I read a couple stories in the BBC about Baek Sehee's death, almost certainly a suicide. I had not read her book so I tracked it down. She certainly cut a sympathetic character in the book, which took the form of a series of conversations between her and her therapist. To me, the problem was one of the challenge of translating literary works across different cultures. My understanding is that in South Korea has still been frowned upon to discuss mental health issues, and, in this way, I believe her book is very important. However, since these topics have been a part of the Western literary and cinematic tradition for so long it's simply impossible for it to have the same impact. I'll doubtless revisit it down the road sometime.

Fame

 I guess I can go ahead and retire, as my fame will never reach a greater extent than this moment: one of my pictures was celebrated on the Adamant Co-op weekly email.

It was a nice career.

Calgary Stampeders Game

 And now the second half of the June CFL Trip of Excellence to Alberta. In an earlier posting I mentioned that Kevin and I were somewhat worried about the Thursday night, 19 June, game in Edmonton (as Edmonton is the most northern major city in the America, as they are proud of reminding everyone), but in the end the weather for that game was glorious. It didn't occur to us that the Saturday afternoon, 21 June, game in Calgary, three hours farther south, would be an issue. As it turns out, the game was played in the midst of something like a mini-hurricane, featuring temperatures in the low-40s, wind gusts over 40 miles an hour, and a consistent cold rain. Seriously, it was the coldest that I've ever been at a game, which is partially explainable by the fact that a game in Cincinnati in December insured that you were prepared for that much cold. I didn't take more pictures, or for that matter clap more, because it would have required digging my hands out of the layers of clothes I was buried under.

When we walked out of the car we were almost blown over, and after taking refuge in a Dairy Queen for an hour, we headed to the stadium. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I tell you that we were almost blown off the bridge.

The Stampeders rain slickers were a life saver.

The picture can't do justice to how miserable it was.

This would probably give you a better idea. The official photographer grabbed a picture of us at the same spot, which was later shown during halftime on the jumbotron. Sadly, my hands were too cold, and buried, for me to get my phone out in time to snap a picture of it.

Still, you have to hand it to the few devoted Calgary fans who showed up.

In between this game and Edmonton, you would have thought that not only did no one in Canada like the CFL, they also apparently didn't know that it existed. At least there was a legitimate excuse in this instance as the weather made staying home and watching the game on the couch to be a much better option.

The Stampeders lost to the woeful REDBLACKS, mainly because they clearly didn't want to be there, and the Ottawa squad was much more desperate for a win. Doing my CFL playoff calculations, I think this abysmal non-effort cost them a home playoff game.

Still, a good time was had by the Vermont contingent. That's now six of the nine stadiums visited, although following up with the Blue Bombers, Roughriders, and BC Lions is going to be a challenge from a home base in Sicily. Maybe I can knock off one or two next June before we move.