I could return an essay in 20-30 minutes if using pencil on
paper, and the students would struggle to read my not so bad handwriting.
The program TurnItIn.com allows me to leave typed feedback.
This feature is applauded. It takes me 45-70 minutes to return an essay on that
format. That is a great sadness.
Sometimes, not that I’m letting myself get too shook up by
this, I feel like I probably haven’t taught a thing since September. But I have
left many notes in many margins. Actually, that does make me want to collapse
on the floor and hug myself just a bit, but I think it’s a reality many
teachers must face here and there. I did not have such low esteem as a
bookseller, not as a coffee server either.
Let’s talk about beer labels.
Backwoods Bastard is an ale aged in oak bourbon barrels. I’m
finishing my last one from the four pack I bought last week. The copywriting on
the back of the bottle notes that one might taste a “scintilla of dark fruit”
in the Bastard.
Scintilla is a word I learned from Dr. MLK’s “Letter from a
Birmingham Jail,” which is probably the most convincing piece of rhetoric I’ve
ever read. “Scintillating” is how it appears in the Letter, at the very end. Use
of that word is an example of aureation, decorated
with gold.
A sense of hopelessness before typing the next paragraph. Shouldn’t you be grading instead of doing
anything else? A desire for another beer, too, but I finished the beer.
Onward.
B and I went to Salvation Army last Wednesday. I never miss
a chance to say Salivation Army, a
Nelson Algren joke, one he made after buying a piece of rope from the store to
use as a belt.
I also try to make sure to always criticize the group for
its shitty motto, “doing the most good.” Last time I gave them money I left a
note in the envelope: “If you change your slogan to something less
sanctimonious I’ll give you twice as much dough.”
But who would even read that note? A bottom level employee
who must think, Oh boy, another joker. So I understand it was petty of me. And
yet I do things like that—give unsolicited advice to charitable
organizations—and I see the note being written by my hand, feel the venomous
thought forming, and I know that it's a symptom of some subcutaneous anger or
sadness.
It’s like, as I said to my therapist a few hours before, I don’t even like God, so why am I so
beholden to him, and why am I so prayerful, and why this drowsy anger?
But that will take years and quantities of zines to answer.
So on with the anecdote.
We were walking into the Salvation Army when we saw the duck
standing in front of the automatic doors. A security guard was speaking to the
duck. “Go on, get outta here. I told you already.” The guard explained that
this duck was looking for a snack and had walked the floor earlier. “Of course
she flies away when the police come,” the guard said, and she rolled her eyes.
In response, the duck, a female mallard, opened her mouth
and let out a tiny hiss.
