So many people speak of the wonders of Interlibrary Loan and I do understand them, but nothing can substitute a library full of actual books.

I just read an article to which I would not have had access had it not been for the Internet — but which could not have been written with only Interlibrary Loan and an Internet connection.

I know what you will say: summers are the time to gather these materials. I do not have the right kind of personality for that degree of resignation.

Axé.

Following the suggestion of a reader, we will now have an open thread each Monday on a current academic keyword (e.g. “excellence”) or on other topics of very broad interest to academics.

Today’s question is: what did you not learn in graduate school that you most wish you had? My answers are: how to teach English literacy skills at the primary and early secondary levels (not just the late secondary and early college levels), and how to design (and not just use / imitate / borrow) programs, exercises, and testing programs in beginning foreign languages.

Of course, I would never have registered in a graduate program that emphasized those things.

Axé.

It is winter, and key limes are thick on the branches. Garlic is blooming, and soon there will be bright kumquats. Picking oranges, seeing how the tree branches had bent under their weight, I realized that the globes on Christmas trees represent fruit.

Every winter we quote from the Archpriest of Hita. This year we will quote in English, from the Willis translation, stanzas 317-320.

“You, Love, are the innkeeper and the lodging house of sloth; you never want a man to do any good works; as soon as you see him idle, you give him a life of torment; it begins in sin and ends in sorrow.

“Of all the good that you preach, you yourself perform nothing; you delude everybody with your fair words; you want what the wolf wanted of the fox: you common-law barristers, listen to a worthwhile fable.”

Axé.

It is of course Friday, so we should be wearing white, and it is the weekend, so we should sing. I sing that I used to be surprised at what was happening. Then I was shocked, and then angry. After that I was sad, and then I was ashamed for a long time. Next I became anxious, and now my most important emotion is rage.

If I composed a song it would be about myself and my colleague. I do not know what the title could be. It might be something like The Ballad of Leo and the Fire-Girl. In it we would ask how long, how long? How much longer must we continue to defer the development of ourselves and our students to the ravings of each new Blackguard?

Axé.

Now we have discussed the Quixote, about which I do not always think, and I have decided to read it again.  I learned as well that tuition at Brooklyn College in the late forties was $3.75 per semester.

Axé.

It is the weekend, and I should be singing;  but I am out of songs at the moment except for C.V.’s poem to be read and sung. I sing that the idea that you should somehow rise above an abusive workplace and produce is a malevolent and false truism. Of improvements made recently at work and at home I sing. I sing of long roads upon which one must still set out.

I sing that the weather is pleasant, and that I have finished painting the garage.  I sing that materials for painting the garage cost $200, and I that I will therefore not buy the clogs above at this time. I sing that I will still buy perfume. I sing of patio doors with prairie grilles, of sealing exterior windows and doors, of repainting sills.

I sing of rebuilding steps and putting up a fence. I sing of rewiring. I sing of a house appraised at $71,000 and bought for $66,900, and now appraised at $111,000. Of finally deciding what to do about the worn-out vinyl floors I sing.

Axé.

Ses purs ongles très-haut dédiant leur onyx,
L’Angoisse, ce minuit, soutient, lampadophore,
Maint rêve vespéral brûlé par le Phénix
Que ne recueille pas de cinéraire amphore

Sur les crédences, au salon vide: nul ptyx,
Aboli bibelot d’inanité sonore,
(Car le Maître est allé puiser des pleurs au Styx
Avec ce seul objet dont le Néant s’honore.)

Mais proche la croisée au nord vacante, un or
Agonise selon peut-être le décor
Des licornes ruant du feu contre une nixe,

Elle, défunte nue en le miroir, encor
Que, dans l’oubli fermé par le cadre, se fixe
De scintillations sitôt le septuor.

–S. M.

Axé.

I am told that La Reina del Sur is a good novel but I find it artificial and rather stressful so far. There is a movie of it which could be better, and there is a corrido of it by Los Tigres del Norte which is worse — at least if you watch the video that comes with it.

Is my reaction to this novel so lackluster because I am already surrounded with people who resemble its characters, and do not find it relaxing that they are also in my book? I had a student react this way to a novel once, one that was well reviewed at the time.

Axé.

If during graduate school you lost a TAship at your institution; if you have now tried everyone’s patience here; if you are now being allowed to take certain classes so you can earn a professional qualification in another field; please do not address the professor who is kindly but painedly showing you how to register and directing you to other faculty’s classes as “my dear.”

Axé.

I have not been posting very much because I no longer have reliable Internet to the house, and will not until April. I am not reading the news very much because the 60% budget cut higher education in this state is to absorb by 2012, is antithetical to my good mood. Work is going well, although there is too much of it, and I do not want to think of what may soon happen to us. I believe I shall play classical music. You will recognize this beautiful Mozart concerto.

Axé.