2025 Readings 103

 I talked recently about pre-purchasing a Craig Johnson Longmire novel, First Frost, and then forgetting about it so long that not only was it published, but another one came out as well. Return to Sender. Last night I finished the latter. I liked it, although it seems that he's lost touch with his main characters a bit. When discussing First Frost, I suggested that when he sets the story someplace other than Wyoming the beautiful balance and authenticity of the stories seems to fall apart. On the one hand Return to Sender is closer to home, but it still felt like he was struggling to bring everything together. I'm happy I read it, and I'll purchase and read whatever he puts out, but he seems to be struggling to both find new things to say while still remaining true to his characters. Return to Sender starts out pretty true to his earlier stories, but then jumps the shark pretty dramatically, and the last third felt like he was padding out to reach an acceptable page limit. Beloved characters such as Vic or Henry disappeared altogether in this one. Maybe next year I'll cycle back and reread them from the beginning. If you are a Longmire fan, obviously, you need to read Return to Sender, if you're new to the series definitely don't start here, because you probably won't read another one (which would be a pity).

34

 And here's number 34, although, as I've stated recently, this number is getting ready to either jump up by about fifty percent or maybe drop down rather dramatically. 

Here's a great picture of George Reed and his family. Reed played for the Saskatchewan Roughriders for all thirteen years of his career, and is on the short list for greatest CFL running back of all-time. He finished with over 16,000 yard, averaging 5.0 yards a carry. Even in his last year he rushed for over 1400 yards, so he had an almost unmatched (if not actually unmatched) career. While born in Mississippi, he died a few years ago in Regina, so he clearly made Canada his home.

2025 Readings 102

 In this year of reading I've mentioned those books which somehow existed parallel to me, sometimes for decades, that I somehow never got around to reading. That is, there are those books that you seem to have always known about, and sometimes even considered reading, but somehow never got around to it for any number of reasons. Yesterday I finished one of those books: Frank Herbert's Dune.  Why had I never read Dune?  I'm not actually a big science fiction reader, so it's not that strange all things considered. However, I know that at various times over the last four decades I've owned at least one copy of Dune, which stared at me forlornly from a bookcase while I ignored it, before it somehow disappeared, shrapnel from some relationship breakup.  Recently my son encouraged me to give it a look, although in this case a listen, as he sung the praises of an audiobook version he had just finished. We were having lunch at the Langdon Street Pub, and I think I looked it up on the spot and purchased it. I liked it a lot, both the recording and the story itself. The Islamic/Arabic subtext, both its role in the novels and its disappearance in the films, was something I had heard about, but I was still surprised by the number of instances that these concepts shaped the text. These ranged from borrowing a book title from Ibn Khaldun to concepts such as jihad. I was somewhat disappointed in his portrayal of jihad, because he definitely falls back upon the idea of the "lesser jihad" while mainly ignoring the more idea of the "greater jihad." That is, he made greater use of the concept of jihad as conquest while ignoring the much more essential aspect of the internal personal struggle to do the right thing. Still, it made for a very interesting reading, and made me more than a bit appalled that the film versions always duck it altogether and rely upon stereotypical portrayals of Arabs. The religion he creates is a combination of Islam and Buddhism, which, as I've discussed in other places on this blog, I don't actually find that strange of a concept. Anyway, I enjoyed Dune, and have already uploaded Dune Messiah, the second volume. I can't imagine that I'll make my way through all six of the Dune novels that Herbert himself wrote, let alone the mountain of related books that his son produced, but I'm looking forward to at least one more.

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.