June 26: Contingent Professor, Economic Injustice, Classic Saint Marty

Sunday.  12:56 p.m.  85 degrees outside.  Cranky daughter just got out of bed.

I have some work to do today for the online class I'm teaching.  It starts tomorrow, and I think I'm pretty much ready.  I just have some small details to finish up.  A quiz to post.  Lecture notes to work on for next week.  I am feeling much more confident than I was last week at this time.

Which gets me thinking about being a contingent professor at the university.  For the work that I have done/am doing for this class, a full-time professor would be getting paid about four times as much as I am being paid.  I have a terminal degree. I have been teaching at the university longer than most of the full-time, tenure-track/tenured professors in my department.  And the full-timers rule the roost.

Sorry if I'm sounding a little like Bernie Sanders, but it is true that there is a great deal of injustice in the world.  In the academic world, too.

Two years ago, I was saying the same thing:

June 27, 2014:  Going Home, Elitist Intellectuals, Once Upon a Toad

"Charlotte," said Wilbur.  "We're all going home today.  The Fair is almost over.  Won't it be wonderful to be back home in the barn cellar again with the sheep and the geese?  Aren't you anxious to get home?"

E. B. White loved the life he led as a child.  He loved the summers he spent in a cabin on a lake with his family.  He loved the horses his father owned.  Later, he loved his life in farm country.  The barns.  Cows.  Chickens.  The spiders and geese.  In fact, White made a career for himself writing about everything he cherished from his youth.  He was constantly going home.

I have been an adjunct instructor at a university for going on 20 years.  That's a long time.  I've seen professors come and go.  Retire.  Die.  I've taught through the administrations of about five or six English Department Heads and six University Presidents.  I have never been offered more than a one-semester contract.  At the end of each semester, I'm not sure if I'll be teaching one class, two classes, or no classes the next term.  It's a tenuous existence at best.

One of the reasons I've never been offered something more permanent is because of a bias that exists in academia.  The English Department is full of professors who think they're better teachers and scholars because they've studied in such exotic locations as Indiana or Texas or Canada.  They went on a Holy Grail quest for a tenured position at a university and lucked out.  They've made sacrifices for their careers.

These elitist intellectuals are of the opinion that their sacrifices have somehow made them worthier of their privileged lives than others.  They look down on the likes of me, who elected to stay put, raise a family, and pursue an academic career closer to home.  I've sat through department meetings where contingents and adjuncts were treated like inferior children by tenured colleagues.

I think it does take a lot of courage to leave home and pursue a career wherever the academic winds blow.  I admire my colleagues.  They're smart, talented people.  However, I also think it takes a lot of courage to stay home, get married, have children, and roll the academic dice.  In fact, it may take more courage because there are more obstacles in the way of success, not the least of which are the opinions of elitist intellectuals.

Sorry for the rant, folks.  It's something about which I've been thinking quite a bit this summer.  I had to get it off my chest.

Once upon a time, a toad lived in a swamp in the middle of the woods.  The swamp was his home.  The toad was born there, grew up there.  He spent his days sitting on the same rotten log where his father sat his whole life (until a rather cranky snake came along and ate his father).

One day, a lizard from the other side of the forest moved into the swamp.  The lizard said to the toad, "Don't you ever get bored of sitting on this log, eating the same kinds of bugs, day after day?"

The toad just blinked at the lizard.

The lizard cleared his throat.  "I think life is too short to fritter away.  A life without change and adventure isn't a real life.  It's a wasted life."

The toad just blinked at the lizard

The lizard licked his eyes.  "Are you hearing what I'm saying?  You don't deserve this log or this swamp.  You can't appreciate it the way I can."

The toad just blinked at the lizard.

"I deserve this swamp more than you," the lizard said, "because I've been to other places.  I'm worldly and smart."

The toad just blinked at the lizard.

"And, furthermore--" the lizard continued.

Just then, the cranky snake came by and swallowed the lizard.

The toad just blinked.

Moral of the story:  don't fuck with a cranky snake.

And Saint Marty lived happily ever after.

Something like this...

November 20: Deep in the Dung, E. B. White, Low Self Esteem

So Charlotte sang a lullaby, while crickets chirped in the grass and the barn grew dark.  This was the song she sang.

"Sleep, sleep, my love, my only,
Deep, deep, in the dung and the dark;
Be not afraid and be not lonely!
This is the hour when frogs and thrushes
Praise the world from the woods and the rushes.
Rest from care, my one and only,
Deep in the dung and the dark!"

I have always loved this passage.  The lullaby is so beautifully melancholy.  I can almost hear Charlotte singing it in a minor key, softly as dusk falls in the Zuckerman barn.  It captures the whole tone of the book.  An elegy to the power of love and friendship.

E. B. White is an incredible writer.  Not only is his prose fantastic, but his poetry is also pretty damn good, as well.  Over this past year of Charlotte's Web, I've been confronted by that fact over and over.  The book is genius in its simplicity.  Yet, there are moments like the one above, where White weaves in a complex, emotional depth.

When I read great authors like E. B. White, it makes me want to write.  Then, when I start writing, I kind of go into a tailspin of despair because I am not E. B. White or Robert Frost or William Faulkner.  It becomes an exercise in low self-esteem.

I'm going to be working on my Christmas essay again when I'm done with this post.  I am still struggling with it.  I can't seem to find the right voice.  I'm not sure what I'm looking for, but I'll know it when I find it.  It will just feel right.  I'm hoping tonight will be the night.

Wish Saint Marty luck.

A good affirmation

March 1: Calm Before the Calm, Pizza, Charlotte's Lullaby, New Cartoon

It's been a very peaceful day.  I've done nothing important since I woke up this morning.  I shoveled my driveway before going to McDonald's with my family for breakfast.  I sat by the window at McDonald's and watched the sun climb into the sky, making all the snow and ice shine like marble.  It's still cold as the North Pole outside.  And I mean that literally.  I saw on the local news that the temperature at the North Pole was -31 degrees Fahrenheit.  That's just about where we were yesterday morning.  All we're missing is the penguins.

Still, my car started this morning.  No dead battery.  Maybe things are looking up.  There's hardly any wind today, and Winter Storm Titan is staying south of the Upper Peninsula.  The only thing we have to deal with for the next couple of days is the damn cold.  On Monday, we're supposed to get up to almost 11 degrees.  So, basically, it's the calm before the calm today.

In a little while, I'll be heading to church for the Saturday night mass.  Then, it's pizza.  I don't have any lesson planning to do this weekend.  Spring break.  I plan on reading Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch this week.  My big worry for the next seven days:  getting the brakes on my wife's car fixed.  It will happen.  I have faith.  Too bad I can't pay the mechanic with prayer.

I have a poem for you this afternoon from Charlotte's Web.  It's the lullaby that Charlotte sings to Wilbur one evening.  It's a beautiful little poem.  E. B. White was even a good poet.

Saint Marty hates him.

"Sleep, sleep, my love, my only,
Deep, deep, in the dung and the dark;
Be not afraid and be not lonely!
This is the hour when frogs and thrushes
Praise the world from the woods and the rushes.
Rest from care, my one and only,
Deep in the dung and the dark!"

 Confessions of Saint Marty

January 1: "Charlotte's Web," Year of the Runt, Happy New Year

Small and weak

"Well," said her mother, "one of the pigs is a runt.  It's very small and weak, and it will never amount to anything.  So your father has decided to do away with it."

Wilbur the pig does not have a very auspicious start in Charlotte's Web.  As E. B. White writes, Wilbur is a runt, small and weak.  None of the adults on the farm expect him to survive.  As Fern's mother says, "...it will never amount to anything."  Wilbur is a victim of low expectations.

Welcome to the Year of the Runt.  In 2014, I will be focusing on E. B. White's little book about the friendship between a pig and a spider.  It ranked number ten on Entertainment Weekly's greatest novels of all time.  That's pretty good for a story about a runt.

I sort of felt like Wilbur for most of the year 2013.  People didn't seem to expect a whole hell of a lot out of me.  I always thought I was a really valuable employee.  Hard-working, dedicated, loyal.  I thought I was a pretty good church organist.  Dependable, a little talented, adaptable.  I thought I was a gifted poet/writer.

Well, my hours were cut at work.  The church gave my organist job to somebody else.  And I lost no less than three poetry competitions I entered.  I am the runt of the litter.  I need to find a spider to spin a few webs for me.  Maybe something like "Some Poet" or "Wonderful Musician" or "Will Play Organ for Food."

I'm not going to write about any worries tonight.  That's not a great way to start out a new year.  I will cling to the idea of hope and happiness.  The year 2013 is in my rear view mirror, and I give thanks for that fact.  Wilbur started his life as a worry.  A mouth that couldn't be fed.  Through love, Wilbur manages to live and thrive.  He becomes something extraordinary.

This year, through love, I will accomplish extraordinary things.  I have to believe that.

Saint Marty wishes all his disciples a blessed and happy new year.

December 12: Book for Next Year

Well, it's time for me to start thinking about next year's book.

If you have been reading Saint Marty for any length of time, you know that, for the past two years, I have picked a novel and written about it for 365 days, starting on January 1.  Two years ago, it was Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, which was a lovely stroll down a happy street.  This year, it was The Catcher in the Rye, which has been a long hike down a mountain path on a moonless night.

I have two books in mind for next year.  This year, the magazine Entertainment Weekly published a list of the top 100 novels of all time.  In the top ten were Willa Cather's My Antonia, a book I first read as a high school sophomore, and E. B. White's Charlotte's Web, which I first read when I was seven or eight years old.  I love both of these novels.  They remind me of my childhood, of really happy times.  I don't need another Catcher next year.  I need something more uplifting.

I'm torn.  I love both Cather's book and White's, and I can't make up my mind.  I'm leaning toward Charlotte's Web, because it's such a simple story of love and friendship.  My memory of the story of My Antonia is a little fuzzier.  I recall it's a love story set on the prairie.  A young boy falls in love with an immigrant girl.  That's all I got.

What do you think?  Which one should I pick?

Drop Saint Marty a comment and let me know your thoughts.

This...

 
or this...

August 1: Once More to the Lake

I am not E. B. White, and this post is not about taking my young son to a cabin on a lake.  No, as much as I love White's essay about feeling the cold fingers of death in the nether regions, this post is about something a little less literary, a little more pedestrian.  This post is about an interview I have to do this evening.

I was contacted a couple of days ago by the filmmaker doing the PBS documentary on U. P. writers.  She wants to interview me again.  That's kind of flattering.  So, I'm headed down to Lake Superior tonight to get on camera.  I'll probably end up on the cutting room floor.  (Actually, everything is digital now, so I'll probably end up in the trash box of some computer, waiting for someone to delete me.)  Maybe I'll be able to come up with something eloquent and witty to say.  Maybe I'll just point at the waves of Lake Superior and say, "Pretty."  We'll see.

Saint Marty has to remember to check his fly before the filming begins.

E. B. White with his fly zipped