June 12: Gold Hamilton, Nature Essay, Juggling Fairy Tale, Michael Mlekoday, "Self Portrait, Downtown"

Roaming through the aisles, Ives had picked up some half-dozen ties and wallets for certain male friends, a scarf for his brother, and a nice French hat for his sister Kate.  That year he had decided on buying Robert a good watch and prevailed upon an overwhelmed saleswoman to pull some twenty watches out of a case, before he settled on a black-banded gold Hamilton with Roman numerals, suitable, Ives had thought, for a young man headed to a seminary.

Ives never gives that watch to Robert.  Within a couple of hours, Ives will be standing on a sidewalk in front of a church, staring down at the pavement, into the shocked expression of his murdered son.  Ives' life is on a collision course with tragedy.  A sledgehammer of change.

This past month, I have been amazed how quickly the trajectory of life can veer in an unexpected direction.  I thought this summer was going to be calm, easy.  I would have time to write, read, clean out my attic.  Yet, in the space of a few weeks, my summer has been completely transformed.  I now am putting myself in debt for another five years to put a new roof on my house.  I don't even know what's wrong with my car, and I still have a huge hole in my kitchen ceiling.

I know you're all probably tired of hearing about these subjects.  Sorry.  These are things I fall asleep and wake up thinking about.  I'm actually thinking that I need to get another part-time job or sell some organs to raise a few extra dollars.  All this worry is exhausting.

I finished writing my nature essay a couple of days ago.  Put it in an envelope and mailed it yesterday to the contest.  It's over and done.  And the best I can say about the essay is that it's done.  It's not great.  In fact, I considered not submitting it at all.  I've just been so preoccupied this past month that I didn't devote as much energy to my writing.  The result was an essay that's alright.  Not great.  Certainly not worth $250.

It feels like I'm very scattered.  My life is in fragments at the moment.  I haven't been able to concentrate.  Perhaps, after I find out what's wrong with my car and the roofers are stripping my house of shingles, I'll be able to carve out a little peace of mind.  Not right now, though.

Once upon a time, a juggler named Freego lived in a small village on the shores of a beautiful lake.  Freego was the worst juggler that had ever lived.  He could only juggle one ball at a time because he lacked concentration.  He would stand in the village square and throw his ball in the air over and over.  Nobody stopped to watch Freego's act.

One day, Freego decided he needed to learn how to juggle two balls.  All day and all night, he practiced at home.  He threw balls, caught balls, dropped balls.  After many months, Freego thought it was time to unveil his new, improved juggling act.

He went to the village square and called out, "Watch the Great Freego defy the laws of gravity!"

A crowd gathered as Freego took his balls out of his pocket.  He took a deep breath and tossed his balls in the air.  One ball flew into the face of the village baker.  The other ball fell into the village well.

The crowd slowly dispersed, and Freego went home, humiliated.

Moral of the story:  don't play with your balls in public.

And Saint Marty lived happily ever after.

Self Portrait, Downtown

by:  Michael Mlekoday

We left because we were lost and broken.
The sun rode us like donkeys.  Our hooves
turned colors in the dust.  Shush, you said,
every time I dropped a mirror and it broke
into song.  It's the only way I could see
myself in fragments, which I think is how
the earliest surgeons studied before cutting.
Where were we going?  Maybe the woods,
maybe Detroit.  There's a way in which
the thick skin of air in the woods hangs
like sweat in the inner city.  I've mistaken
drops of air conditioner exhaust for rain
while leaning against apartment brick,
watching a fistfight bloom in mid-July,
the highway humming in the distance
like the time you kicked a hive and smiled.
I lied.  We didn't really leave, and broken
is just another way of saying we left shards
and splinters of ourselves everywhere,
like kids trying to leave a trail back home.
We're still here, right here, and here,
this debris makes the street glitter like a river.

Nope.  Not me.

June 2: Classic Saint Marty Sunday, Saint Marcarius, New Cartoon

Welcome back to Saint Marty World.  I hope you're enjoying your day.  While the weather is cold (38 degrees the last time I checked), it's still Sunday.  No work.  Time with family.  Dinner at my parents' house.   Yes, I'm facing the back-to-work blues tonight, but, at the moment, I'm totally living in denial.

It is Classic Saint Marty Sunday.  I've chosen a post from the first season of Saint Marty.  This episode originally aired on March 10, 2010.  It was near the end of the winter semester at the university.  I was a little overwhelmed.  I'm sure anybody who's taught composition will sympathize.

The initial posting received over two hundred views.

Saint Marty hopes you enjoy it.  Try the Saint Joan of Arc French fries at Saint Marty Castle on your way out of the park..

First, let me apologize for not posting for the last couple of days. My entry today will partly explain my absence. The other part of my explanation was that Blog.com was down for maintenance until 7 p.m. yesterday, so I couldn't type in what I had. Please note and accept my mea culpa. Now, on with the show....

Any English teacher who tells you he or she enjoys correcting student papers/poems/stories is lying. I've been in the business for nearly 20 years, and I can tell you in all honesty that I would rather have an enema than comment on student writing (at least it's quicker and the sense of violation only lingers a short while). At this time in the semester, I'm pretty much a grading machine. It seems right now like I'm lugging around 50 pounds of essays about dead grandmothers and/or first sexual experiences. (They're not good sex stories, either. These are college freshmen and sophomores we're talking about. It's over in about 30 seconds, which is more than I can say for the papers.) By the end of a day of grading, I feel like I've just sat through a weekend marathon of Dora the Explorer. (Can you say it with me? Sick grandma, phone call, funeral! Sick grandma, phone call, funeral!! Sick grandma, phone call, funeraaaaaal!!! Excelente!)

If it sounds like I'm whining, it's because I am. I know me complaining about having to grade papers is like a urologist complaining about the smell of pee. It just comes with the territory. And don't misunderstand me: I love teaching. It's the evaluating that I'm not a big fan of.

Every once in a while, I get a student whose work is so good it hurts. Literally. When I read good writing, whether it's from an 18-year-old from Felch, Michigan, or William Faulkner, I experience pangs of envy that pound in my temples. I've already admitted in an earlier blog that one of my many character flaws is jealousy, so this confession should come as no shock. I can't stand reading writers who are better than me. (It doesn't happen very often, but it happens.) When that writer is one of my students, it's both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that I get to read amazing work (and make biting comments that will shake the writer's confidence a little); the curse is that everything else submitted by other students in the class reads like bad J. D. Salinger knockoffs--all moron, nothing that makes you want to call up the author when you're done.

This semester, I have a few really good students who will end up getting A's in my classes, but I don't have any student who humbles me as a teacher and writer, who I simply can't make any better. Thus, at the moment, sitting down with a stack of 25 papers is like hunting with a shotgun: sometimes an essay is a direct hit, but, most of the time, essays are scattered randomly from good to mediocre to lousy. Pretty jaded, I know.

I am sorely in need of a summer recharge. This always happens around this time in the winter term. Right after spring recess, I lose my compass point, to borrow a bad metaphor from Mr. Holland's Opus. I start questioning my abilities as a teacher because every day I face a classroom full of people who are suffering from the same malaise (call it I-don't-give-a-shit-itis). I don't usually teach in the summer sessions, so I get a break to restore my enthusiasm.

The bad thing about this condition is that when I read about a saint now, it makes me feel even more apathetic and lazy because most saints do things like stop famines, cure cancers, build schools and basilicas. I'm just happy if I remember to floss and wear matching socks. Marcarius is a good example. A fourth century bishop, he helped write the Creed at the Council of Nicaea (you know, the prayer that sort of tells all Christians what to believe). He found the actual cross Christ was crucified on in Jerusalem, and then built the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. He also did things like battle heresies and convert hundreds/thousands of people. Like I said, sometimes saints (who all have type-A personalities) just make me tired.

I'm sorry this blog isn't more inspiring or wise. You're probably thinking, I waited two days for this?! It's hard to find inspiration when you're buried in papers. I can't even see my way to a witty, smart ass conclusion to this reflection. If I were grading this posting, I'd probably give it about a B-. Grammatically, there's nothing wrong with it, but it's narrative voice is superficial and a little annoying. I don't even like me, which is never a good sign.

So, I turn back to my dead grandma essays and pick up my red pen. Time to share my suffering.

Confessions of Saint Marty

May 26: Classic Saint Marty Sunday, Saint Margaret of Cartona, New Cartoon

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