An Angry Man

Today I came face to face with a very angry student. Had others not been in the room, I am certain there would have been a scene. This student has always been somewhat strange, although he has never shown traces of violence or contempt as I saw today before. He was in my summer session Writing 1 class, and decided he might as well be in my Writing 2 class, particularly because he did quite well. He is an intelligent fellow, if a bit odd and eccentric, though he has a hard time sitting through a class without jumping up and leaving at least once or twice each day and not coming back for a while. He is part of the reason that that summer session was difficult to deal with for that very reason, and I have spoken to him about it.
But this semester, the problem has increased.
Early on in the semester, he expressed an interest in exploring the psychological effect of slavery on the slave (he would have rather focused on the master, but there isn't a lot written about that, which makes it a poor topic for a research project). I told him, as I told the rest of the class, that he needed to focus on a particular kind of slavery in a particular country and industry with ties to the U.S. . He didn't focus. When the peer review group and I told him he needed to do that back at paper 2, he ignored it, and failed the paper. Now we are at paper 4, a causal argument about the problem, and all this while, he has still refused to focus. We are now at an impasse. I have some suggestions, but I don't think he will be very amenable to them. He will still need to rewrite the definition completely, and begin researching a topic he has not looked at before quite late in the semester. I frankly don't think it is possible to pull off. I suppose I could have said something to him a few weeks ago, to make sure he was working on something, but I didn't. I figured he would have learned something from the experience with the second paper, but apparently not. Now I don't see how I will avoid having to deal with the scene when it inevitably comes.

Back Again

It's a lull in the semester, between papers, as I scramble to figure out what ought to be next. I find the students are not doing the research, but there's nothing much I can do about it except to tell them they need to do it. I have told them how the best they can. For some of them, the stuff has to be sought at a bigger library, for others, they don't know how to find it, what search terms to use, or don't recognize it when they've found it. There are many pitfalls along the way.
I find my mind drifting off to other things, such as a sonnet sequence about a sequence of yoga asanas for emotional stability that my teacher Denise has been doing in bits and pieces with us this past week. I got a call for submissions at Qarrtsiluni, an online journal where I have published before, that they are doing an issue on "health," and this may be just the ticket for that issue, if I can manage it. I've never been able to write about yoga somehow, though I do it every day. That part of me has been compartmentalized in a place other than the one where the poems come from, but perhaps I can manage it.

Withdrawal

I have been away a couple of days because my computer finally conked out and is in the shop. It will return to me a tabula rasa, so that I must put back all my software, and buy quite a bit of new stuff, such as Office. It's painful and horribly inconvenient. But the worst part was feeling as though I had lost an arm or something. I kept going to the computer table, but alas, no computer, no way to contact you folks or my students and tell you what was going on. I suppose I am much more dependent on the Internet than I knew. Perhaps one could even call it an addiction.
While the computer is gone I read a Ruth Rendell mystery, Monster in a Box, and am beginning another book a friend gave me for my birthday, Brother to Dragons Companion to Owls, a fantasy that is one of her favorites.

Language and Consciousness

I just got finished grading causal papers about Frederick Douglass. I asked students to choose a strategy of slavery or escaping from slavery that Douglass discusses in his Narrative, and to explore the mechanism by which it either turns a person into a slave or a slave into a full human being, according to Douglass. Reading many papers about literacy, I began to think, as I have occasionally in the past, about how a pre-verbal child is not fully conscious, and to wonder whether this is true of adults or older children who are not literate as well. Language is such an integral part of who human beings are, that perhaps without the ability to read, as well as to speak, we are not really capable of full consciousness. Think of Helen Keller. I am sure that is an iffy and perhaps dangerously politically incorrect hypothesis, but it would be interesting to investigate. At least the quality of consciousness is different in literate people than it is in ones who are not.

Torah Party

Last night a very large and jovial group assembled to talk and munch on the all too numerous goodies (including a freshly baked pumpkin banana bread, among other things!). We were discussing the last two books of Leviticus, Emor and B'Chukotai, extremely interesting and provocative portions.
Emor discusses the intricacies of the Jubilee year. I am sure all of you have heard of this idea before, the notion that every 50 years, income would be largely redistributed and the land would lie fallow. It is a sabbath of sabbaths, when all contracts are retracted, or the sellers get an opportunity to re-purchase all lands, etc. that they have sold in the previous 49 years. In fact, all contracts in the land of Israel would be temporary, as buying a home in Irvine entails purchasing rights to build on land, but not the ownership of the land itself. The price a person paid for something would be based on how many harvests they would hold this thing for. When the 50 years were up, the rights would revert to the previous owner, should that person wish to repurchase the thing.
Though it is a radical idea, very idealistic, there is some question whether and how it would work or if it were in fact ever put into play on a large scale. There are apparently Orthodox Jews in contemporary Israel who do act on it, but they are a small portion of the population. They live on specially designated frozen and canned food made just for these Jubilee years.
Shockingly, though Jewish indentured servants (debt slaves) had to be freed in these years (except for the women, who were sex slaves, and thus belonged permanently to their owners), all others who were held as slaves did not, even though the reason stated for this rule is a reminder of how God freed the Jewish slaves in Egypt, generally linked to the necessity of being conscious of how the stranger needs consideration. No one ever accused the tradition of being consistent or logical.
The second book was a gripping discussion of all the blessings that would ensue if the people followed the laws, and the many and detailed curses that would follow if they did not. I learned from this book that the ancient Hebrews raised forbidden animals, such as pigs, and sold them to outsiders in order to make money. Sometimes these animals would be given to the temple as pledges. Since no one in the community could eat them, they were probably sold and the proceeds went back to the Levites. Interesting.

claiming my loss

Today I spoke to the claims person at my auto insurance, and I realized just how little I could tell about the accident. I didn't know what side of their car hit my car. I didn't even look at their car, and couldn't remember what make it was. Luckily, they wrote that down for me when we exchanged information. I didn't see the collision, just heard it. But I am so bad at directions and especially backwards! I may get nothing because of that although it was definitely their fault. I was out there in the process of turn, sitting still so I could look out for cars and shift to Drive, but not moving at the moment. There is no way this is my fault or even no one's fault.

Birthday Blues

Here it is Monday afternoon. I had planned to go shopping this afternoon, but yesterday, when I took my mom to look for shoes (found them too!), as I was pulling out of a parking lot, actually stopped and about to shift into drive so I could drive out of the aisle in the lot toward the street, a big ass SUV hit me on the driver's side back, right over the wheel. The woman in the car (she wasn't driving) tried to call it a wash, saying we were both backing out at the same time. But I wasn't moving when they hit me. They just plain weren't looking. I was there, as large as life. Their car sustained no damage, of course, only little bitty me did. They were moving, after all, and I wasn't, and their Acura was so much bigger than my car is. So here I am sitting in the house waiting for the claims adjuster to call. I may just leave. It should wait till they reach that guy and look at the car, and they have to come down here from Long Beach. What a drag! Thought I'd get it done right away, but that isn't going to happen.
No one was hurt, and I can still drive the car. It's just a huge drag.