Raining Cats and Dogma

I always like to receive email that begins this way:

Professor Claycomb-

Did you receive our letter of acceptance we sent on August 16, 2006?

Although the traditional three months hadn't wuite yet passed, I recently emailed one of the journals I had submitted some of my summer work to about the status of my article, since I was hoping to be able to report on it for my annual report (which I turned in on Monday--next time, I guess)....

A little late, certainly, but nice news as it is...

Posted by at 3:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

About this time last year, fresh on the heels of teaching (with limited effectiveness) Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey," I officially declared him "my nemesis." And then I taught him again. And then Dr. Crazy posted this lovely excerpt from that very poem as part of Poetry Friday.

Now, today, I got a little comic mileage from depicting the little deluded world in which I am a literary superhero, and Wordsworth, bald and be-caped, tries to thwart me at every turn. I believe students find this stance occasionally reassuring (If the professor finds him difficult, it's ok if I do to!).

But the dirty little truth is: God, he's good. And that "Tintern Abbey"? Gooorgeouuus! Even as someone who loves the city, and finds a greater affinity with Wilde's aesthetics of artificiality, I've got to admit, the poetry is beautiful, the thinking about natural beauty as a gateway to the sublime (which seems to me to run counter to much conventional thinking that sought to demarcate the beautiful from the sublime), the notion of recollection of nature as a calming, restoring force....It's rich, it's lovely, it's relevant, it's politically engaged, it's idealistic.

So while in class, I will conitnue to hold up Wordsworth as this hard guy who buries pronoun antecedents 8 lines back, I now have to admit, in that same class, that doing the work of reading is pretty damn rewarding. And I challange anyone who's ever enjoyed a national park or even a little walk in the woods, to tell me he's on the wrong track.

Posted by at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Oso Raro is thinking hard (and in fabulous style!) about the tap dance that is teaching. Take a few minutes and read this.

Posted by at 8:45 AM | Permalink

A number of folks have been taking the opportunity offered by the start of the new year to do some "New Year's Resolutions."

And while on actual New Year's, I'm not much of a resolutions kind of guy, prefering to revel in the possibilities of newness rather than the expectations, I feel like this year it's important for me to set some up: because in the second year on the tenure track, I am not burdened by pure newness, but must be aware of setting bad habits. How I conduct myself this year I think may end up saying a lot about how I conduct myself for a long time. So those goals:

Research

• General goal: Clear off the smaller projects that are keeping me away from the larger projects:


• Getting both articles on parody ready to be published


• Getting book reviews ready to go


• Getting the MLA paper written by 12/1 deadline


• Cleaning up this paper for publication in the online proceedings


• Doing work on the larger projects that will make next summer more productive for getting those closer to publication


• Apply for a Senate Research Grant


• Draft a book proposal to shop around at MLA

Teaching:

• get to a comfort level with the graduate class, and in the spring with the theatre tour class, where I feel like I am teaching the students material without totally and completely holding their hands...


• Keep the level of the teaching high in my Brit II classes, even though by next May, they will be in danger of becoming virtually rote

Service:

• Stay on top of the work for the two major committees I'm on this Fall.


• Say no to something, especially if I'm not interested in it. This one is going to be very very hard for me to do.

Personal

• Do all of the above without completely sacrificing the healthy exercise habits I've developed for the first time in my adult life


• Refuse to use the above to excuse myself from doing my share of the housework, childcare, or decision-making


• Avoid at all costs begrudging my children the time and attention they demand, as if the above were more important than they are


• Sleep and eat as well as possible

I am, frankly, anxious about the load I've taken on for myself this year (primarily this fall), and anxious about the toll it will take on me and my life outside of school. I'll try to check back in later on in the semester to see if I'm doing any good at any of these, but I'm most worried about the last category. Wish me luck.

Posted by at 2:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Last night I took a (smaller than expected) group to Pittsburgh to see the Pittburgh Irish and Classical Theatre's prodution of Samuel Beckett's Endgame. This is Beckett's centennial, and PICT is doing a festival of productions and readings of ALL of BEckett's plays.

The review linked above tends towards hyperbole, and it is generally a good production, though I find one major choice--the choice to actually set the play in a theatre. The audience seats were scaffolded in the backstage fly space, and we looked onto the stage, and then through onto what are normally the house seats, which we draped with drop cloths and clutter to give something of an abandoned feel. Hamm, the central character, then, became something of a faded old actor, something of a post-apocalyptic Norma Desmond, which gave the character a grandiosity that I find pressed to find anywhere in any of Beckett's work.

But the play did a fantastic job of exploiting the play's comic timing, and as anyone who knows Godot knows, Beckett is frequently trafficking in the bleakest of comedy, made all the more funny by its absurdity (Theatre of the Absurd, anyone?). Anyway, there was a sort of anxious chuckle that made its way across the theatre more than once.

Of course I was also nervous about the trip up to the theatre, with 5 of my students in the minivan, but by and large that turned out well, with lively conversation (we spent a lot of time trying to define what a hipster was) marking the way up and the way back.

And there will be plenty to talk about in class on Wednesday when it's time to discuss this play.

Posted by at 8:50 AM | Permalink

Wednesday evening was the first class of the graduate seminar, and while it went well enough, it hardly felt like an overwhelming success. The first part of the class went fine, but our discussion of Godot meandered, and never really took off.

I do think I felt a little underprepared, although I'm not sure that more preparation would have helped. What really felt like the big problem for me was that I had no comfortable persona to adopt...I don't want to treat graduate students, many of whom, as teachers, are my colleagues in 100 and 200-level courses, the same way I handle myself with undergrads, an audience with which I am now very comfortable. On the other hand, there is a power differential that is highlighted in this classroom that I cannot ignore. That, and I really do have things to teach them.

So one of the myriad ways this new dilemma has been dominating my thinking over the past 36 hours ('cause you know I've been obsessing about this ever since class ended) has been to figure out the timeless question: to sit or not to sit.

Yup, I've never taught sitting down before.

Now, nowhere in the discussions I've had about what differentiates a readings class from a seminar have I heard, "Well, in a seminar you sit down," and yet I've never been in or heard of a seminar where the professor stood, a choice common in 600-level classes.

This, for me, is an important issue, though. If I stand, I really center the classroom focus on me, and one goal in a seminar is ideally to become progressively less more invisible in the discussion over the semester. But in a class about theatre and performance, I as much as anyone should understand the value of the body in creating a performance, and how I "style" my body affects me as much as it affects the students and the overall dynamic. I believe that I become a less energized thinker by sitting down in the classroom (and this room is hardly a gem anyway). So in addition to obsessing about what secondary reading I can be doing, and how I can structure the discussion to have a bit more drive, I'm also considering: Should I change my seat? Should I sit on the table? Should I pace? Can I use the board?

It's like after 8 years of teaching, I'm starting from scratch.

technorati tag: teaching-carnival

Posted by at 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

We are encouraged, as part of our file, to include any slip of paper that documents anything, including those notes from students saying thanks... I printed a couple of these off, including one with the Subject line "Nothing Special."

So the header line at the very top of a document that I am putting in my official file?

RYAN CLAYCOMB: NOTHING SPECIAL

Yeah, that's a message I want for everyone to see as they're reviewing my file...

Posted by at 3:16 PM | Permalink

ADM over at Blogenspiel notes that the beginning of the academic year is a time for reflecting on how productive we've been--over the summer, over the past year--and to set new goals for ourselves. I read her post as I am finishing up the last touches on my "Reynolds report," the annual behemoth which asks for a narrative and documentation of everything we've accomplished in research, teaching, and service in the past year. These are tied to raises and tenure, so I've been giving it plenty of time, thought and energy. So some stock-taking ensues herein:

So I had these lofty goals for the summer, and in May I was doing great. June I did well, and July, I was on track until about the 10th, when I went to GW for the Symposium. In that span I:
*Revised and resubmitted an article that I'm waiting to hear about.
*Submitted an abstract for an already written article that got accepted
*Wrote and submitted a performance review that got accepted
*Wrote and presented a paper that will likely be published as is, and expanded into something longer for the Anti-Disciplinarity collection.
*Read a bunch of new plays and designed my first graduate syllabus
*Read the primary texts for the PhD qualifying exam that I'll be a reader for (Well, except Jane Eyre, but I've read it a bunch of times already).

OK, not bad. Here's what I didn't do that I had hoped to do on top of these things:
*Write a book review that is due September 30.
*Expand a conference paper presented in February into a draft of a book chapter.
*Begin work on rewriting the book intro (that one was a pipe dream, but still)
*Start a second book review.

Sounds unrealistic even as I"m typing it, but still, I knew it was unrealistic back then, and so I think I can cut myself the slack.

The kicker is this fall. Forunately, I'm only teaching 2 classes: Brit II and the Postwar Brit Drama seminar. But I've got to write:
September 30: First Book review Due. Also the abstract due date for the anti-disciplinarity collection, which will reqire attention.
October 31: Revision of Parody article (the one accepted back in May) due
December 1: MLA paper due to organizer
December 28: At MLA, I was hoping to shop around a book proposal, so that's on the table. There's also a grant I want to apply for, which requires the application this fall, I think. egads!

So my writing has to be pretty constant over the semester. Now add to that the service requirements, since i'm on the Committee that reads those behemoth files, and I've just been asked to be on a search committee (which may nullify my ability to shop my book proposal around...)I have also volunteered for a Dean's Committee, but I may not get chosen to do that. Now that I've volunteered, I hope I get passed over...

So 2006 has been a busy year, and it looks like the fall will be the busiest time yet. Here's hoping that 2007 is just a little less packed, so that maybe, just maybe, I can do some work on that book...

Posted by at 9:21 PM | Permalink

So today I am wearing:
* a lightweight grey/black houndstooth suit
* a lavender windowpane broadcloth shirt
* A tasteful matching tie
* these silver cufflinks ( aphd graduation gifty and my traditional first-day wear)
* black dress shoes.

So ok, I look nice, I think. I do not think, on the first day of classes, I look freakishly overdressed...I am not, for example, wearing (as my colleague's son believed) a tuxedo. But EVERYONE has commented on my attire. And I have yet to see anyone in my department wear a suit.

This is not an enculturation thing I'll bend to easily. I think it's important to dress for class, especiially early on, for reasons both personal and pedagogical:
1. I am a professional, and I think that every once in a while, my clothing should reflect that.

2. I take my classes very seriously, and (given my fairly informal in-class persona) I think that dressing seriosuly helps send students that message. Do I think you send that message by wearing jeans? No, not necessarily. I however will wear jeans later...when I know that I'm not joking around about the task in front of us.

3. This is a costume for me. When I acted (badly) I found that one of the single most helpful components of the rehearsal process was getting into costume, into the body of the person I was performing. So even if I'm not totally mentally prepared to begin the semester, the suit is a mnemonic, if you will, a device to help me remember what my body feels like in front of the classroom, how I'll move, how I'll breathe.

4. I have some nice clothes and I like to wear them. How often does one really get to wear the TIffany cufflinks, anyway?

5. Our society and our profession often holds women to unreasonable standards of dress, and so in a small way, not dressing in jeans at least acknowleges that clothing is part of how we make judgments about people, justifiably or no, and this is a small way to not play into the double standard...I can't change the double standard, but I can choose not to reinforce it.

So I look a little out-of-place, but no one will ever mistake me for someone who doesn't care, and given the choice, I will usually choose to be taken as a professional at what I do. Because I am a professional.

And I'll be even more out-of-place next week...when I'm still wearing a suit. 'Cause dammit, I got 'em, and I wanna wear 'em.

technorati tag: teaching-carnival

Posted by at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Every year on Move-in day, I think of those first pages of DeLillo's White Noise where the protagonist, Jack Gladney, sets up camp with a folding chair and a cooler of beer to watch the parents move their kids in, to be part of something...

Well it's Jack Gladney weekend here in Morgantown, and In between cursing the spike in traffic in this recently-small-town-now-small-city, I'm thinking about not only what these students and parents are taking part in, but what I'll be part of as the year gears up.

I don't need to say that I've got a lot of values wrapped up in the institution of the University--I've only been looking forward to it or participating in it for most of my post-pubescent life. And instead of doing some self-affirming paean to academe and its pleasures, I want to think a bit: how does this life make me a worse person.

I think first of all, I am far more anxious--the whole impostor syndrome thing--but after less than a year here a few friends/colleagues had noted sarcastically that "no, you're not anxious about anything..." But anxious is anxious.

What is far more troubling is how judgmental I have become...Not judgmental in the "You're a bad person if you smoke" kind of way, but simply willing to make judgments about people--How smart they are, how much taste they have, how socially adept they'll be. Having the authority to assign grades makes it really hard not to come home and NOT say, "You're doing really well with your eating skills today, Lilah." Or "You can do better than that, Collin." This is what I have to work against--it is my job to make judgments about intellectual work, but it is neither my responsibility nor my privilege to judge those around me. This is something I hope to work on this year: being less judgmental.

Even about the stupid drivers that have suddenly overrun my path to the local *$s...

Posted by at 10:54 PM | Permalink

Floating around the web is this nifty little meme. The idea is to go to this site , which generates random quotable quotes, which you then scroll through until you find five that really work for you.

He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.
--Douglas Adams

If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
--Mark Twain

We only do well the things we like doing.
--Colette

Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.
--Anne Frank

Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?
--Henry Ward Beecher

Posted by at 8:32 PM | Permalink

The day is finally here! TOP NOVELIST reveals the winner and, well, not winners of its 2006 rip-off of the emmy-award winning blahblahblah. Please welcome back our judges, Literary B-lister Norman Poulenc, and aliased all-around conniver, "Marge Schottenheimer"

Norman Poulenc: Ah, I love to hear my name!

"Marge Schottenheimer": And I shall be glad to never hear it again... Let's get on with it...

Contestants, as you recall, the challenge asked you to riff on Hamlet, and riff you did...

Suzanne, your entry exhibited all the sparkle and wit of your previous work...Not that I thought any of your workhad much sparkle, but "real" readers in the "real" world seemed to like you work, so we can only assume they found your final entry charming, featuring an appropriately morose prince.

Lucy, your work has lacked the heat that we felt you promised, but your final entry? Hubba hubba. Although we aren't necessarily sure that any version of Hamlet should costume him in a purple leotard...

Perry? Your work was late, but as usual, brilliant (or as brilliant as mock mystery pastiche gets)...We were captivated by the fate of Prosciutto, and the liberties you took with the tale, while potentially offensive to Italian Americans, seem in keeping with the entire genre...

And so, the winner of the 2006 TOP NOVELIST competittion is...

Perry!

Why? cruel, cruel fate...

Perry's Prize is an unsigned, remaindered copy of Give my Regrets to Broadway, a Chet Gecko Mystery--For those who aren't aware, young master Gecko is the best lizard detective at Emerson Hicky Elementary, starring in a production of Omelet, the Prince of Denver. Perry will find the award in his mailbox sometime in the next year or so...

Also, Perry seems to have taken fullest advantage of this contest, having proposed to Lucy on Friday morning. Congrats, guys! May your lives together be better than your writing...

So that about wraps it up. sadly, the producers have decided not to renew TOP NOVELIST for another season, so enjoy what you've you got. This is Norman Poulenc and "Marge Schottenheimer" signing off.

Posted by at 2:51 PM | Permalink

If only I wrote as many words for my research as I have here....

Just over three years ago, I started with this post. I am happy to report that dave e, my first commenter, still reads.

Coming up for post #300? TOP NOVELIST Final Results!

Posted by at 7:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This.

and many other items from Northern Sun's socially-conscious selections...

Posted by at 10:23 AM | Permalink

My syllabi are done, some photocopies are made, my course readings are scanned in, converted to .pdf, and burned to CD. For my Brit II class, I am prepared: this is my third semester in a row teaching this class, and I've been teaching 200-level lit classes for, what, 6, 7 years now?

This is one way in which my graduate program prepared me very well for the profession: we taught, and we taught plenty. The 2-1 load was slightly more than the mLA recommended 1-2, but I never taught more than one prep as a GTA, and I got to teach my own courses: Comp (with an established curriculum), Intro to drama, Shakespeare, and Lit by Women. I knew how to design syllabi, run discussions, pace a lesson plan, grade arguments about literature, handle plagiarism, etc. These were all things I could talk about cogently by the time I was on the market, and it meant that I came off as a professional future colleague, and not simply a recent grad student.

What was important about this experience is that it all came with a mentoring program. Now my understanding was that some of the 200-level mentors were more laissez-faire about the process, but my mentors were hands-on without being micro-managers. I got plenty of praise for good, challenging pedagogy, and careful guidance on some of my weaker teaching skills (paper assignments that are clear without being prescriptive remain a challenge for me).

Last semester, another Asst. Prof and I started an informal working group for Brit II wchich 2 graduate students were also teaching...This mentoring relationship is something I'm interested in giving back to, and last semester, it worked out great. At some level, mentoring is as important a component of our professional educations as the tradiaitonal teaching, and mentoring programs really should be fostered at every level: grad-student-to-grad-student, faculty-to-grad-student, and faculty-to-faculty (the faculty working groups we had at GW remain an important influence on my teaching).

Graduate Teaching is another story altogether. As I approached my first 101, or my first section of Shakespeare, I felt confident that I knew how to teach those students (and not just that material. Now, with my first seminar starting in less than a week, I feel totally prepared to deal with the material (why wouldn't I?), but teaching those students seems another question altogether, and one where the only answers I have are models from my own graduate education, many of which are examples by negation--Don't do what he did in this seminar, Don't treat students like she did, etc.

Not only do I think we need more sustained discussion about what makes a strong graduate pedagogy, we need to include graduate students, who are in many respects apprentice teachers, in the conversation, as the subjects of that classroom experience and as future teachers in that experience. I'm missing that, and I only hope that my other instincts will pull me through.

technorati tag: teaching-carnival

Posted by at 9:21 AM | Permalink

It's West VIrginia Writer's Week here at Raining Cats and Dogma, which only means one thing: the finals of TOP NOVELIST (and the last week before classes resume). Our remaining contestants are Perry, mystery writer extraordinaire; Lucy, the retired dentist-turned-erotic-provocatrix; and Suzanne, purveyor of trendy (and marketable) chick-lit.

The challenge was to rewrite a scene from Hamlet with panache and personal style, and the results are in. Readers: check out the results in the posts below, and make your comments on their execution. Our judges, semi-acclaimed fictional writer Norman Poulenc and all around unnamed conniver "Marge Schottenheimer" will reveal their picks, with audience input of course, in the next few days.

To re-cap the games thus far: You can find links to all of the challenges and their results in the sidebar. Two of our finalists have distinguished themselves with their death-grips on the leaderboard, with Perry and Lucy owning or sharing wins in rounds 2, 3 , 4, 5, 7 & 8. Can one of them continue their domination? Suzanne, who did not win a challenge, nonetheless came through unscathed, and her dashing Jarod Jeffries IV was a fan favorite. Like Jay McCarroll on the first season of Project Runway, Suzanne could find herself claiming only one winner's spot: the one that counts.

And what does that win count for? Not much actually. Maybe a nice bookmark, or some pencils. We're pretty cheap around here these days, 9-month salaries being what they are.

Enjoy!

Posted by at 8:02 PM | Permalink

Hey there! I've chosen to do an interpretation of Act I Scene 2. Enjoy!

Trudy frowned as she entered the great room. She had a lovely home, she had gorgeous clothes, she was the vice president of a major cosmetics company, founded by her late husband, and she had a dashing, if difficult, son. She knew that her friends – if she had friends – would think that she was a woman who had it all. Even if she was a widow. Even though her husband had died so suddenly, in the prime of life, just when they were about to enter the best years of their lives together.

It was only months ago that Hank, her first husband and Hamlet’s father, died. He’d had a physical just the year before and the doctor had said that he had the body of a man in his 20s. Well, what did doctors know anyway? Clearly. A heart attack, they said, no way to predict it. Stress. And then the unbelievable pain, and nothing she could do. And her son – Hamlet, she’d called him, thinking that it was unusual and so literary, and of course Hank had gone along, when she’d explained that she couldn’t very well call a baby “Hank,” even though of course his parents had, and that “Hamlet” would be unique and yet they would know and Hamlet would know that he was really named after his father – her son, a sophomore at Wittenberg, had taken his father’s death so badly. It’s like he was a different boy. Before – well, before he’d played lacrosse, and he was popular, and he listened to the Dave Mathews Band and 50 Cent, and he wore Lacoste polo shirts…. And now? Now
he had quit the lacrosse team, he’d taken a leave from school, he was wearing black – and only black – and he was listening to music that he called “gothic” because, he said, this music “expresses” what he is “feeling.”

“Trudy, come here and sit beside me,” said Claude, patting the cream leather sofa.

Claude was handsome, five years younger than Hank would have been, five years older than Trudy. After Hank had died, Trudy had felt so lost. And when they read the will, and she had learned that Hank had chosen to leave H&T Cosmetics to Claude and not to her, the woman who had stood by his side for the past 25 years and who had helped him to build it from the ground up, she decided that she would do what she had to do not to lose what was left of her life. And Claude was handsome, enough, and he was willing to do what she wanted. He was willing to make her Vice President, which Hank had never done, and he comforted her. And so she married him.

“Darling, how are you today? How are things at the office?” Trudy asked, stroking Claude’s hair.

“Fine, fine. But we need to talk to Hamlet. What’s going on with him? Why is he always moping around?”

“Well, Claude, the death of his father hit him hard….”

At that moment, Hamlet skulked into the great room. Standing about 6’4” tall, and very skinny, he wore big, black Doc Martens and an Evanescence T-shirt and jeans. His face was set into a practiced scowl. “So, you’re having the, ‘What are we going to do about Hamlet?” conversation again, huh? It must suck for you Uncle Claude that I’m such a pain in your ass.”

“I’m not saying that, Hamlet, I’m just saying that I don’t understand why you’re so unhappy --”

“Hamlet, I understand that you’re unhappy, but life has to move forward. Your father wouldn’t want you to stop living out of grief for him. He’d want you to live. Maybe if you just stopped wearing those depressing clothes….”

“Oh, that’s rich, mother. If I just dress happier then I’ll stop feeling like shit? Oh yeah, that’s the problem. I’m wearing black and that makes me unhappy. Can’t have anything to do with the fact that my father’s dead, can it? Oh no, that can’t be it. Not at all.”

“Hamlet,” said Claude softly, “your mother and I are not saying that you shouldn’t mourn your father. But at a certain point, you need to be a man about this. You need to stop wallowing and get on with the rest of your life.”

“Well, I want to do that, Uncle Claude. I want to go back to Wittenberg. You and mother are the ones who don’t want that to happen.”

“Hamlet, I just think it’s too soon!” Trudy cried. “I don’t want you to jeopardize your future because you go back too soon and then get bad grades! This sort of thing can change the course of your life!”

“Sort of like marrying your dead husband’s brother, huh? Right, Mom? You know a lot about those sorts of decisions, don’t you, those life-changing ones?

Posted by at 8:00 PM | Permalink

Ophelia paces quietly in Hamlet’s bedchambers while impatiently anticipating his arrival. Hamlet wanders into his bedroom expecting to find Ophelia waiting for him. He wanders in, preoccupied with the news from his father’s ghost and the driving need to avenge his father’s death.

“Hamlet!” she says as she turns and falls into his arms. “I’m so glad to see you.” Hamlet kisses Ophelia passionately and begins to lift her green velvet frock. They move quietly to the four-poster bed and tumble into the cushions in a fit of giggles and delight. As Hamlet lazily caresses Ophelia’s creamy white skin, he apprises her of his father’s untimely death and instructions from his father’s ghost to confront Claudius.

“The mere thought of avenging my father sets my loins afire.” Hamlet declares. Ophelia caresses his solid erection and slowly begins to disrobe. “Let me quell your heat my dear Hamlet” she purrs. Hamlet buries his face in her milky breasts and caresses each with the flick of his tongue. In mere moments, Hamlet has pulled off his purple leotard and is perched atop Ophelia. The blending of flesh and tongues blinds them both with passion and hunger.

Ophelia spreads her creamy thighs and Hamlet buries his spear in her velvet softness. A small moan escapes her lips and the promise of their future lies await in her heart. Hamlet begins to thrust hard and fast, racing toward climax. Abruptly, he jumps up and pumps his fist in the air. “I have a solution!” he shouts. Ophelia, still dazed from lovemaking and jarred by the intense disconnection before she has had a chance to reach her peak looks at him with an emptiness in her eyes.

Hamlet turns to Ophelia and tells her to get dressed. Confused, she complies and begins to pick up the pieces of her garb from around the room. “You should go join a convent.” he says. “But Hamlet” she implores, frantically waving her lace undergarments “what about our future together? What about marriage?” “There will be none of that. I plan to ban marriages altogether.” he tells her. “But you are mad!” she cries. “MAD! Mad? You think I am Mad…” he says as he stalks out of the room, leaving Ophelia alone and broken.

Posted by at 7:59 PM | Permalink

“É pazz’!” Don Claudio’s fingertips smote his forehead for emphasis.

The young men across the desk didn’t say anything. The tall one just shifted his weight again, back from his left foot to his right; and the fat one gazed placidly back at him across the desk.

Don Claudio felt his frustration growing. He’d felt a certain satisfaction in saying the words, and wished for a moment that the fat one hadn’t been standing between his desk and the mirror on the back of the door; he’d have liked to have seen himself, and felt sure that the effect would have been admirable. But these two goombahs just stood there, staring at him blankly. As if they thought he’d sneezed, but they couldn’t even be bothered to bless him.

“Pazz’!” he said again. “Pazzesco! Crazy!” Maybe a dim light of understanding in the fat one’s eyes. “He’s out of his goddamn mind, and it’s just a matter of time before he does something to embarrass me, and to embarrass this family.”

Claudio paused. The two seemed to understand that the Don regarded this as a bad thing, but were going to need some help to understand why he was telling them about it. Had his brother Vito had this much trouble, Claudio wondered? Was there some trick he’d known that had enabled him to make goons like these two race to fulfill his every wish? Often to the jealous Claudio it had appeared that Vito hadn’t even had to speak; he’d just nod his head in a certain way, or lift a finger, and off they would scurry. That power was what Claudio had coveted; he’d never doubted that it would be his with Vito out of the way. How could it be otherwise? Power like that didn’t just disappear, did it?

“All right, listen to me.” He pulled a letter out of the top drawer of the desk and leaned forward over it. “I need you to follow my instructions very carefully. I want Prosciutto to pay my respects to Don Bretagna in Jersey City, and to discuss with him a number of matters related to our transportation enterprise. I would like you two to accompany him.”

“You got it, boss,” said the tall one. He ran his hand through his hair and turned to leave, like a kid when the school bell went off.

“I’m not done yet, you stupid mook.” He tapped the paper. “I want you to take this letter to Don Bretagna. I want you to see with your own eyes,” pointing to his eyes, “that he reads this letter. He will give you a bottle of wine that will indicate that he has understood my message, and you will bring that back to me. Do you understand?”

The fat one nodded. “Absolutely, Don Claudio. You’re a busy man; you got a lot of things on your mind, and all these people in this here beautiful house to take care of, and you want us to pick you up this bottle of wine so’s you don’t got to go out and buy it yourself. We certainly do appreciate your trust in us to gift us with this most important task.” He was picking up steam as he talked, as if his great bulk were rolling downhill. “And we want you to know that your faith will be rewarded by us with the successful and discrete completion of this job what we have been discussing.”

He waited a moment to make sure his confident speech had been well received, then turned and walked out of the room. His companion nudged him approvingly on the way out. Claudio rested his elbows on the desk and let his head sink into his hands.

He wasn’t deep into his reverie when he heard the quiet yet insistent knock on the door, and the practiced cough always accompanied it. Claudio didn’t look up; he felt he didn’t have the strength to discuss anything with his consigliere.

“I see your busy. I just thought you should know that the man I had tailing Prosciutto has informed me that he’s heading for Gisella’s loft downtown. I’ve already wired the place with the best surveillance equipment money can buy, but I’m heading over there just to make sure everything goes smoothly. You’ve got nothing to worry about there.”

Claudio nodded. “Thank you, Polonius. This family owes you a great deal.” He hoped the man would leave. He stayed in the doorway, and almost certainly started to speak again; but finally he left. Claudio sighed deeply. Well, it was out of his hands now, wasn’t it? The letter would be delivered, Bretagna would take care of Prosciutto, and Gisella would never be the wiser. When he looked at it that way, it all seemed tidy enough. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe things would be better if he’d never bumped off Vito in the first place.

But it was no good sitting around here and brooding. After another deep sigh, he got up, draped a coat over his shoulders, and walked downstairs. He waved off the men lounging around the front door as they started to accompany him; he didn’t need more of these useless goons following him around. Maybe a walk by himself would clear his head.

Claudio didn’t notice the late-model black Mercedes parked on a side street facing the house; or if he did, he didn’t pay it any attention. The driver noticed him, though. And he couldn’t believe his luck.

Prosciutto had been sitting at the wheel, brooding and watching the shadows of the various henchmen and advisors move back and forth across the lit-up windows, ever since he’d left the screening of his friends’ student film in the Don’s house earlier that night. His left hand held the wheel at the eleven o’clock position, and his right rested on the gleaming Sig Sauer on the passenger seat. The gun had been at the heart of his stormy thoughts during most of the hour he’d spent in the car; the gun, and the man who now walked alone and unsuspecting down the street in front of him.

Scarcely daring to breath, Prosciutto started the car and let it ease forward. He turned onto the main road and coasted along in the slow lane. His uncle Claudio was a block ahead, walking briskly, his head down. Prosciutto checked the mirrors; traffic was light, almost non-existent. He fingered the controls to lower the passenger side window, thinking.

It would be so easy: a drive-by, as the gang-bangers called it. The squeal of tires, a couple quick rounds through the open window, and it was all done. But of course, it wouldn’t stop there. They were outside the house, in the middle of town. There would be an investigation, no matter how quickly he or Polonius acted to dissuade the DA. And could he even count on Polonius to cooperate? His mind spun as the implications came to him. The other capos; surely they wouldn’t go along with it. And the cops; there would be millions in bribes to get a case like this dropped.

More than that, though, there was no art to it. It wasn’t right to put the family’s business on display like that. It wasn’t how Claudio had done it, Prosciutto thought grimly; he’d taken care of his business ruthlessly, coldly, quietly. The great Don Vito, the protector, the father of so many, had never had a chance. Claudio deserved the same fate.

The engine revved and the big black car pulled into the fast lane and sped past. Claudio barely noticed, and the feeling of impending doom that hung over him lessened not at all.

Posted by at 7:58 PM | Permalink

Well, mostly. They probably both need a good proofread, but generally, I'm happy with them. I initially had three syllabi to design: Brit Lit II, Intro to Drama, and the Grad Seminar. In some ways, I was most excited to do the drama syllabus, because it's been four years since I taught the course that I'd hoped would be my bread-and-butter course for my career, and after looking at anthologies this spring, I thought I had a pretty kick-ass colelction of plays and secondary readings to put together. But that class didn't make enrollment, and so I'm back to two courses for the semester (I know, I know).

That means I'll teach three in the Spring, including two more sections of Brit II, making a total of 6 sections in two years. So that's been my bread-and-butter course. I'm ok with that I guess, and it comes with the appointment. Plus, I'm pretty happy with this syllabus, too. I've trimmed off some of the fat, and given a few things a little more room to breathe in the semester (including Wordsworth).

But perhaps most importantly, I've tried to take the advice of my readers in designing my grad seminar. I do think I've loaded up a bit on the secondary reading, but the primary reading of two plays a week is the core, and very do-able. So the syllabus is written, the texts are all ready to be turned into an electronic coursepacket, and I've sent out an inaugural email to the class. Weird note: two of my students this semester were among the grad students who took me to lunch during my on-campus two years ago. I wonder at the end of the semester those impressions will have changed...

Anyway, there's still work to be done before the end of the week--a date with a scanner and a copy amchine still loom....

Posted by at 3:40 PM | Permalink

The semester's beginning soon, and with all of the regular semester prep (office cleaning, syllabus designing, photocopying, etc.) somes one of my favorite pre-autumn rituals: the annual wardrobe purge and re-organization. Yes, it's that time when I whittle down my collection of clothes from ridiculous to merely too much. For the Goodwill pile (and occasionally trashcan this season:
* 9 neckties (leaving only 28 that I absolutely love).
* 3 sportcoats (at least one of which pre-dates my relationship with Ann, making it almost 10 years old)
* 2 button-down shirts
* 3 pairs of dress pants
* 2 pairs of jeans (though I couldn't part with my decade-old black jeans--the last pair I wore to wait tables in the mid-90s).

I am pleased to report that in some ways, this is less than I thought I'd be purging. This time last year, I tried on some stuff, and said "If this still doesn't fit me next fall, I'm getting rid of it." Among these pieces were my wonderful black DKNY suit that, when I bought it, looked fabulous on me (if I do say so myself). I figured that if a year of really increased exercise didn't make these fit, they were never going to fit again.

Funny thing is, I've gained five pounds since last summer, but all but one of those items (a 33-inch-waist pair of khaki linen pants) made the cut--which means that although I've put on weight, I've lost at least an inch in the waist. So while the trimming-down of the wardrobe wasn't as drastic as I'd expected, the trimming down of my gut was better than I'd expected! And now there's far less excuse to go clothes shopping, which is, honestly, a good thing.

Posted by at 8:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I can tell it’s August, because I’m starting to yearn for autumn, and the things of the fall that I love. Last night, for example, we made a pizza with sage and butternut squash, a classic combo for our fall repertoire.

A big sign for me, though, is the music I listen to. Specifically, I pulled out R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People last night. The album is hardly an original choice for a beloved disc (it’s the stalwart on my desert-island collection), but it signifies a very specific sensation for me, and when I pull it out, I know that I’m waiting for school to start.

In the fall of 1992, I was a freshman in college, and had (later than many) just discovered REM the year before with Out of Time, which was all over the radio and MTV. They were my new favorite band, and when Kip on our floor had purchased the new album, and raved about it, I soon followed suit.

I listened to it a few times and loved, especially “Nightswimming” (I had yet to realize how many people would have similar experience of that album and song). About midway into the semester, my roommate Danny and I had a paper due on the same day, and our friend Lex from the floor was in the same class as me. He brought his portable Mac down (at that point it was one of the cream colored boxes that Mac made famous), and the three of us set up shop in the room to write our papers.

We started around 10:00pm and I put in R.E.M. on Danny’s stereo, and hit repeat. Danny and Lex were mostly hip hop fans, but as middle class white kids in the early 90s could also claim citizenship in the Alternative Nation. R.E.M. was totally up their alley. While working on these papers, we also tried to decipher the lyrics to “Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite” and practically every other song on the album. We worked on our respective papers, side by side, for 8 hours that night, pounding Mountain Dews and Tootsie Rolls (I was obsessed with them for a short period). I crashed at 6, when my paper was done, and got a little more than four hours of sleep before my first class that day (Understanding Mass Media). That night remains one of the best memories of my college experience.

Fall’s not here yet, but something’s in the air that tells me that it’s time to pull out the R.E.M. playlists again, and maybe, just for old time’s sake, drink a Mountain Dew while writing.

Posted by at 8:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

File this one under “Scary Incidents with Children,” only this time, under the subheading, “Ultimately Funny.”

It’s after dinner last night, and I’m sitting on the sofa talking to our guests, while the kids are playing, and Ann is sweeping the floor. Collin announces that he’s going to pee, and Ann asks me if I can go help him. I head back to our bathroom, where he has gone, and there he is standing, at the edge of the carpeting: “I’m peeing.”

And there it is straight out of a slapstick routine. I pick him up under his arms, take one step onto the bathroom tile and [insert sound effect here] my feet slide dramatically into the air, while my torso comes thudding to the ground.

Of course, I also have Collin in my hands, and as I’m falling, I’m worried about keeping him above me and not under me. I was terrified immediately that I had fallen on him, breaking his little legs or worse.

He was fine, crying and scared, with a bump here and there, but fine.

I meanwhile am sprawled on the bathroom floor, laid out, mind you, in a trailing puddle of pee, and also scared. Ann rescued us from our heap of startled, soaked, selves, and got Collin cleaned up while I assessed my own damage (a couple of bruises, including a bit of a nasty one on my elbow), and then washed up myself.

I had a moment or two of almost cathartic crying—processing, I guess, the fear that had briefly passed through my head that I almost really hurt my son. But by the time I was out of the shower, he was laughing and playing again, and all was well.

In retrospect, I am inclined to describe it as comedy, but in the moment...well, I won’t belabor the point...I was scared.

Posted by at 10:27 AM | Permalink

Fallingwater Portrait
Originally uploaded by Ryan Claycomb.

Posted by at 10:11 AM | Permalink

I have recently been asked to review a book that is right up my alley (so much so, that I'm not sure how I didn't ever see the call for the conference it was based on).

Good news: In reading the introduction, I realized that I was actually cited.
Bad news: My friend Dave found that my name in the index and a footnote is misspelled...

Does that last fact make it into the review, d'ya think? Nahhh, but the thought's crossed my mind.

Posted by at 8:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

OK, so before I blog about how lovely the actual vacation with the kids and their grandparents was, I do have to say that 11 straight days of pretty much all kids all the time, Ann and I were both looking forward to them getting back to daycare today. We kept them home yesterday to help them reset their sleep schedules, and generally acclimate themselves to being back home.

But we were all getting a bit snappish with one another, and by dinnertime the prospect of bedtime a couple of hours later was the light at the end of the tunnel. Near the end of dinner, the kids were working on some grapes while we started to futz around the kitchen.

That sound. It's terrible.

Lilah, choking. Scared. It probably didn't take more than a couple of seconds for us to get to her, pull her out of her booster seat and pound her on the back unsuccessfully, before I dug the grape out of her throat (I think the term "Sweeping the mouth" is appropriate). I'm sure the technique I actually used was awful and dangerous, but the grape came out, and Lilah sat in my lap screaming for another five minutes.

I'd never been so happy to hear her scream like that in my life.

She was laughing and running around the house within in ten, fifteen minutes, and by the time bedtime happened, she was back to being just a little cranky and tired of mommy and daddy as she had been before hand. Infact, as I tried to get her to lie still while I put on her after-bath lotion, she kicked me in the throat...It felt like an odd bit of enforced empathy--I wonder sitll whether her throat hurts a little from my fingers.

They got out of the car today at school, and were eager for me to go so they could play with their friends. Yesterday I would've siad I was glad to them be at school so I could have some time without them. Now I'm also glad their at school because it means we aren't someplace much worse.

Posted by at 1:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)