Eh toi! Eh toi là-bas! Mardi Gras!
Axé.
February 7, 2010
Oh When the Saints / Go Swinging In
Saints! “Oh, what a beautiful audience there is swinging with us!” Axé, New Orleans, Axé.
Axé.
February 7, 2010
Fats Domino: Jambalaya
Professor Zero: Are there any questions?
Class: Who dat? Who dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints?
I am posting this song patriotically, for the Saints. But if they win tonight I will post versions of “When the Saints Go Marching In” all week.
Axé.
February 6, 2010
Wild Tchoupitoulas
It is the weekend, so we must sing. I sing that it is Carnival time, and that for Carnival, I want to see Indians!
Axé.
February 3, 2010
Reading for Pleasure Wednesday: ON THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS and OTHER PEOPLES’ SKIN
I had not read anything new at all last Wednesday and so did not post, but now I have read two books, one good and one bad.
The bad one, Other Peoples’ Skin, a collection of four novellas by four people, is morally uplifting but as writing, it is about at the level of airplane reading. I read it because my youngest brother likes it and because I sometimes like to read airplane literature when I am tired.
The more interesting of the novellas are the middle two. The first and the last read like romance novels — full of food and clothes porn — and are very wooden to boot. This is not good writing.
The most ridiculous novella is the last. It takes place at a university in Detroit where the coffee is hazelnut, the pillows are red satin, and the students’ thighs are “buttery” in terms of color and skin softness.
Then I read On the Genealogy of Morals. This book has been on my list since Jennifer recommended it last spring as an explanation of and antidote to Reeducation. It is that, most startlingly and accurately so. It also seems to have been closely read by Vallejo, who lifted quite a few phrases from it and put them into poems.
All in all, On the Genealogy of Morals is a most revealing book, much moreso than I have attempted to indicate here. I recommend it highly and will comment in greater detail anon.
Axé.
February 2, 2010
My Definitive Heel
Hasta el día en que vuelva, de esta piedra
nacerá mi talón definitivo,
con su juego de crímenes, su yedra,
su obstinación dramática, su olivo.
Hasta el día en que vuelva, prosiguiendo,
con franca rectitud de cojo amargo,
de pozo en pozo, mi periplo, entiendo
que el hombre ha de ser bueno, sin embargo.
Hasta el día en que vuelva y hasta que ande
el animal que soy, entre sus jueces,
nuestro bravo meñique será grande,
digno, infinito dedo entre los dedos.
–C.V.
Axé.
February 1, 2010
Academic Mondays: Funny and Friendly?
This semester I am not teaching any foreign language courses and it is wonderful. Last semester on Facebook, I completed the quiz “What kind of elementary school teacher are you?” with the result Funny and Friendly.
You are a very funny and friendly teacher. You like to make your classroom a fun place to be. Childhood is supposed to be fun and you believe school should be no different. Children will not learn if they don’t want to be there.
You incorporate humor into your lessons. Students smile and laugh in your classroom. You love to have them work with partners or in groups so they can help each other and talk about what they are learning. Students love being in your classroom because they have such a good time, they don’t even realize how much they are learning.
Sometimes your classroom might get a little loud because of all the fun that’s going on, but you know that they are truly learning and let them continue on.
This is true even though I don’t actually like group projects or playing games in class. It is why I was a good T.A. of foreign languages to students who had not already had the spirit beaten out of them by nuns or No Child Left Behind. I am, however, a terrible professor of the same subject for people who just want preparation for tests based on mechanics, rewards for spelling right, and punishment for spelling wrong.
I am worse yet for consumer-style students who believe the language should behave as they wish it to do, or who want to choose which parts of it they are willing to learn and which parts they prefer not to know. I find it terribly humiliating to have to “negotiate professionally” with attitudes like these. That is why I so dislike being a professor.
I feel so sorry for the students, realizing how mistreated they have been, and how much pain they have been taught to reinflict upon themselves. I am horrified to see that they have spent their entire lives so far chained to a desk and a mechanics workbook, with someone ready to hit them for the slightest misstep.
I had a student from Other State Regional University last year who said: “Why do Louisiana students not realize that it is all right to take a risk and try something new, even if you make a mistake? Do people here not realize that that is the fastest way to learn? If I try to stretch myself to my limits with the advanced questions and make a mistake, will it hurt my grade in your class? It would not have at Other State Regional University, but having seen how people react here, I just wanted to make sure.”
I am funny and friendly but it is probably far too late to have fun and friendliness work on people from here. I have tried that and they do not take it seriously. Next year I intend to be more severe. Louisiana is allegedly the happiest state in the Union but I think [that is because] it is masochistic.
Axé.
January 31, 2010
Don Carnaval
It is the weekend, so we must sing! I sing that the Mardi Gras riders are on their way.
The Mardi Gras riders are on their way here. They come from everywhere, but mostly from Grand Mamou. Will you receive this gang of Mardi Gras riders? Will you receive this gang of great drinkers?
The Mardi Gras riders are on their way. They come from everywhere, but especially from Grand Mamou. On Ash Wednesday will be great sacrificers and penitents.
Axé.
January 28, 2010
Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn died last night at 7:12 PM, EST.
Unable to face the State of the Union address, I was grading quizzes. One defined Romanticism as “a literary movement which arose in Germany in the late eighteenth century and then spread elsewhere and which, in contradistinction to Classicism, values imperfection and seeks darkness.”
Axé.
