April 30: Nicer and Nicer and Nicer, Virtual Living, Computers

Zaphod is trying to do a complicated mathematical improbability problem . . .

"Bat's dos, I can't work it out."

"Well?"

Zaphod knocked his two heads together in irritation and gritted his teeth.

"Okay," he said.  "Computer!"

The voice circuits sprang to life again.

"Why, hello there!" they said (ticker tape, ticker tape).  "All I want to do is make your day nicer and nicer and nicer . . ."

"Yeah, well, shut up and work something out for me."

"Sure thing," chattered the computer," you want a probability forecast based on . . ."

"Improbability data, yeah."

"Okay," the computer continued.  "Here's an interesting little notion.  Did you realize that most people's lives are governed by telephone numbers?"

A pained look crawled across one of Zaphod's faces and on to the other one.

"Have you flipped?" he said.

"No, but you will when I tell you that . . ."

Trillian gasped.  She scrabbled at the buttons on the Improbability flight-path screen.

"Telephone number?" she said.  "Did that thing say telephone number?"

Numbers flashed up on the screen.

The computer had paused politely, but now it continued.

"What I was about to say was that . . ."

"Don't bother, please," said Trillian.

"Look, what is this?" said Zaphod.

"I don't know," said Trillian, "but those aliens--they're on the way up to the bridge with that wretched robot.  Can we pick them up on any monitor cameras?"

I have spent a lot of my life sitting in front of wretched computers, doing wretched computer work.  As an undergraduate in college, I spent the better part of five years taking programming and math classes, learning the ins and outs of a now practically extinct computer language called Turbo Pascal.  I can't begin to tell you how many thousand lines of code I wrote in that language.  As I was nearing the end of my undergraduate days, Turbo Pascal was already going the way of the stegosaurus. 

Of course, I've sat in front of computers for hours, writing papers and essays and short stories and poems during my graduate school days.  In my healthcare career, I've spent hours in front of computers, registering patients, typing up surgical schedules, entering billing charges, answering e-mails, completing online education.  And now, the future of college education:  online classes.  I've taught three online classes in my career at the university, interacting with my students virtually. 

Computers and smart phones have become as common as toilet paper in the modern world.  Everybody uses them.  People get up in the morning and immediately check their phones to see if anybody has liked their Facebook posts or sent them a text message.  The last thing people do at night is pretty much the same--check their Facebook posts and text messages again.  I guess you could call it virtual living.

I, myself, am sitting alone in my kitchen right now, typing this blog post, pretending to talk to all of my unseen and unknown blog friends out there.  It's a way of being a part of the world without being a part of the world, if you get what I mean.  Frankly, when I get home at night, after dealing with people all day, I find the solitude of a blinking, silent computer a little comforting.  Computers don't complain about grades or doctor's appointments.  They don't have feelings to hurt or respect.  Their only need is a power source.  Plug them in and forget about them, if you want.

As you can tell, I have a love/hate relationship with computers.  I've had this relationship since my undergraduate days.  At the moment, I would be in love with any computer that could grade and comment on stacks of student papers.  That is what is in store for me this evening, after I hit the "publish" tab on this post.  Lots of time with a red pen and dead trees. 

I know there are people out there at the moment perusing/skimming this blog post.  You may be reading it just a few minutes after I send it out into the world.  You may be reading it five years from now.  Ten years.  A hundred years.  Maybe you're doing research on my life for some reason.  Perhaps I won the Nobel Prize in Literature twenty years from now for my virtual literary contributions.  Perhaps all of my 4,413 current posts have been collected in volumes of books.  (Books were these objects that existed, containing words printed on bound pages of papers.  People read them.  Cherished them.)  Maybe, in the future, I'm an erstwhile Emily Dickinson, surrounded in mystery and questions, my blog posts dissected and reflected by admiring fans.

For those researchers out there, let me set the record straight about a few things.  I'm a poet.  Currently, I hold the position of Poet Laureate of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  (Yes, that was an actual thing back in the day.)  I've been married to my wife for almost 25 years.  My teenage daughter is about to graduate from high school in less than a month.  My ten-year-old son got into trouble on the school playground today with a group of boys, and he currently wants to become an elementary school dropout and embark on a lucrative career in computer gaming.  I'm a contingent professor at a university, which means I do all the work of full-time professors without the compensation or recognition or respect of my full-time colleagues.  And, at the moment, I'm feeling fairly overwhelmed by life and the world.

And now, Saint Marty has to respond to some important e-mails.

April 23: End of the School Year, "Pointe," Classic Saint Marty

I am tired.  I've been working all day, but, as usual, it feels as if I haven't accomplished anything at all.  Grading, planning, grading again.  It's almost the end of the school year, and I--a contingent professor working two full-time jobs--am entering the most difficult two weeks of the semester.  It's a tough time for full-timers.  It's doubly difficult for part-timers.

I'm not complaining.  I am simply tired.  That's all.  In two weeks' time, I will be at the point of near exhaustion, but I will be done and ready to go into summer hibernation.  Maybe do some poetry readings.  Work on some new poems.

Speaking of poems:



Pointe

by:  Martin Achatz

They're wrecked after a year,
each second my daughter spent
on her toes creased
into the wood box
with sweat and blister,
her first steps, panicked
lurches across the dance floor,
as if she were on the deck
of the Titanic as it listed,
snapped, sent her skidding
to the black Atlantic.
I wanted to save her
from gravity, have her grip
my fingers the way she did
as a baby, tethered to me
like a lifeboat, each move
an exercise in balance,
the ground beneath her feet
as unstable as lake ice
in May.  I still have her
first shoes, small, white
as bleached driftwood.
They're reminders of how
she once depended on me
to rescue her from each
drowning stumble.  The pink
slippers sit on her dresser now
along with stones she found
on the shores of Superior,
a wrist band for treading water
ten minutes longer than anyone
else at Bible camp last summer,
and medals, ribbons for ballet.
If I close my eyes, I see her,
mid-air or mid-water,
clumsy one-year-old,
graceful almost teen,
her limbs stretched
toward me or away,
wanting to be scooped up, saved,
or wanting to strike out
for swifter currents,
higher leaps,
deeper, bluer waters.



A couple years ago, I was closing in on the end of the school year, as well.  My sister was in a nursing home, and I was recovering from a low blood sugar:

April 13, 2015:  Visiting My Sister, Low Blood Sugar, "Ives" Dip

You'll pardon me if my thoughts seem a little disjointed or non-jointed this evening.  I just got my son to bed, and my blood sugar is hovering around 45 at the moment.  For those readers who are not diabetic or are unfamiliar with normal blood glucose levels, most non-diabetics have blood sugars between 70 and 110.  Hence, my slightly incoherent coherence right now.

I went to visit my sister in the nursing home this evening.  She was in good spirits, or she was faking it really well.  The latest news on her health front is that she will be going to Mayo Clinic for her parathyroid surgery.  The social worker at the nursing home is working on transportation (an ambulance) and insurance issues.

Frankly, I don't know how my sister can stand being in that place, not that she has a choice.  There are people in wheelchairs roaming the hallways, moaning and screaming.  My sister keeps her room door closed to discourage unwanted visitors.  The walls are painted cinder block, and the air is perfumed with the scents of urine and feces at times.

Which brings me to my Ives dip question:

Will my sister ever come home from the nursing home?

And the answer is:

". . . Just remember, if you don't take care of business, no one else will.  Do you really think God gives a shit?"

As a matter of fact, I DO think God gives a shit.  I have to.  I know that my sister isn't walking out of that place without some serious medical intervention, but I believe God IS watching out for her.  If He wasn't, she would already be dead.


Saint Marty's blood sugar is coming up.  He can actually focus on the computer screen now.

Good advice this evening...

October 12: Daughter's Chorus Concert, Clint Margrave, "Recap of Yesterday's Tenure-Track Job Interview in English"

I am missing my daughter's chorus concert this evening because I have to teach.  If I had tenure (translation:  job security/wasn't a contingent professor), I would be tempted to cancel tonight's class.  That is not an option.  So, instead, I am going to stop at Walmart on my way home and buy her some flowers.

That's one of the most difficult things about being a contingent professor--the constant worry about job performance and evaluation.  If I really mess up one semester, I will not get a contract for the next semester.  Period.  So I don't cancel class.  Ever.  Even on those Upper Peninsula days when the wind is howling at 50 miles per hour and the snow is coming down thick and sideways, I still show up, ready to teach.  Because that's what contingents do.

I'm not complaining.  I have chosen this life, this position.  I love what I do.  However, sometimes, I dream of something a little better.  That's what tonight's poem from Rattle is all about:  dreaming of something better.

Now, if you will excuse Saint Marty, he has to start writing his Nobel Prize lecture.

Recap of Yesterday's Tenure-Track
Job Interview in English

by:  Clint Margrave

They asked me for an adjective
to describe myself as a teacher
and I gave them a noun.

They asked me to roleplay
a situation in which I told a student
she would need to retake the class
and I ended up giving
her a second chance.

Then I asked if the water bottle
provided for me
had vodka in it.

Then I referred to the hiring committee
which consisted entirely of women
as "you guys."

October 11: Adjuncts, Anna M. Evans, "The Adjunct's Villanelle"

I know some of my disciples have been missing the poems I usually post.  This time, I decided against choosing a Poet of the Week.  Instead, I've been reading the fall issue of the poetry journal Rattle, which featured poems by and about adjuncts.  You know, those underpaid "part-time" instructors on college campuses across the country.

I am a contingent professor.  Have been for twenty-some years.  The poems in this issue of Rattle really spoke to me on a very deep level.  They made me sad.  Made me angry.  Made me laugh.  Therefore, I have decided to share a few of my favorites from the issue.

I type this post right now in my university office.  In less than a half hour, I will walk down the hall, into a classroom, and spend the next three-and-a-half hours trying to get a group of young people excited about writing and research.  First year composition.  It's not an easy gig, and there are some tenured faculty who get paid a great deal more money than me to teach the same class.  That's what being a contingent is all about.

In two days' time, when my name is announced in Stockholm by the Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, I'm hoping to become the first contingent professor to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Certainly, that would qualify Saint Marty to teach at least a class in mythology.

The Adjunct's Villanelle

by:  Anna M. Evans

You just come in and teach, then you can go,
she says, distracted by her tenure file.
I wish someone would tell my students so.

From there I leave to meet with one who's slow
to understand the work.  It takes a while
to teach him what he needs.  Then, I can go.

Another text:  the fetus didn't grow.
She's on bed rest for weeks.  Can I compile
the work she'll miss?  I can, and tell her so.

Two student emails wait:  one's in a show
and really wants me there.  Good kid.  I smile
and write back saying I'll be thrilled to go.

The second wants a reference.  Just say no,
I'm told.  I could, but cannot reconcile
this with the student I remember.  So,

The one whose mom died doesn't need to know
my story, how I have to swallow bile
when I hear how I come, and teach, and go.
I don't.  I wish someone would tell them so.

August 12: Nightwork, Computer Issues, Beginnings

The tomcat that used to wake me is dead; he was long since grist for an earthworm's casting, and is now the clear sap of a Pittsburgh sycamore, or the honeydew of aphids sucked from that sycamore's high twigs and sprayed in sticky drops on a stranger's car.  A steer across the road stumbles into the creek to drink; he blinks; he laps; a floating leaf in the current catches against his hock and wrenches away.  The giant water bug I saw is dead, long dead, and its moist gut and rigid casing are both, like the empty skin of the frog it sucked, dissolved, spread, still spreading right now, in the steer's capillaries, in the windblown smatter of clouds overhead, in the Sargasso Sea.  The mockingbird that dropped furled from a roof . . . but this is not time to count my dead.  That is nightwork.  The dead are staring, underground, their sleeping heels in the air.

It is springtime at Tinker Creek, and, in this paragraph, Dillard reflects on the process of life, death, rebirth.  Her tomcat, a giant water bug, a fallen mockingbird--all become "grist" for worms, calling to mind the song we all used to sing as children:

The worms crawl in. 
The worms crawl out. 
In and out of the dead man's mouth.

Death's a strange preoccupation for the season of buds and blossoms, and Dillard admits it eventually.  She says that spring is "not time to count my dead."  She turns her attention, instead, to trees and water.  Renewal.

Closing in on the middle of August, I have begun to think seriously about autumn.  Next week, I need to pull together the syllabi for the classes that I'm teaching this fall.  And then, in another week, the semester begins.  So, I am thinking of endings tonight.  And beginnings.  This is, as Dillard points out, nightwork.

My apologies for my absence last night.  My seven-year-old son decided to attempt to download an online game yesterday afternoon.  Instead, he managed to download a virus onto my laptop, making it impossible for me to do any blogging last night.  Instead, I watched Michael Phelps, who is competing in his last Olympics, win another gold medal.

Obviously, my computer issues have been resolved, after having the hard drive wiped clean and re-imaged.  (I have no idea what that means, but my laptop is running at warp speed again.)  It is once again night time.  I find myself weary after a long week of work.  This weekend, I plan to do nothing.  I will read and rest.  After last weekend's marathon of grading, I've earned that, I think.  Think of it as my gold medal.

Like Dillard, I'm trying to avoid thoughts of endings.  That's difficult for me.  I'm a poet.  Darkness is kind of my thing.  Today had the feel of fall.  Misty and cool.  Dusk comes much earlier now.  A month ago, the sun was still in the sky at ten o'clock.  Tonight, it disappeared by nine-thirty.  And one week from today will mark the year anniversary of my sister's death.  Endings.

Life doesn't always turn out the way that you expect, obviously.  For instance, I just watched Michael Phelps swim.  He did not win the gold medal.  Instead, he tied for silver.  A month ago, I thought that I was going to be teaching two film classes this fall.  Instead, I'm teaching a film class and a freshman composition class.  Six months ago, I was working in a cardiology office and thought that I was going to be working there a long time.  Instead, I'm back at my old job and loving it.  Over a year ago, I decided to apply for a promotion a the university.  This September, my title will be Full Contingent Professor instead of Contingent Assistant Professor.  Beginnings.

Saint Marty is battling his poetic instincts tonight, focusing on the light instead of . . . well, you know.

Embracing laughter and light . . .

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...

April 24: Rainy Sunday, Laptops, Classic Saint Marty

Rainy Sunday.

I just got done with church a little while ago, and now I'm settling down to a day's work of grading and reading.  Lots and lots of grading and reading.  If that was all I had to do this week, I'd be in good shape.  However, because I'm a contingent professor (a temporary, 23-year employee of the university), I also have a full-time job to worry about.  I've said it before:  if I were a tenured full-timer, I don't know what I'd do with all of the extra time I'd have.

My 15-year-old daughter is currently breathing down my neck because I am using my laptop.  It is the only computer in our household, and she wants to play Minecraft with her friends.  I can feel her stare drilling into the back of my head as I sit typing this post.  She is also sighing a lot.

The sad thing is that my day isn't going to get much better after I'm done blogging.  I will be moving from one pile of papers/exams to another.  For the next week, that will be my life.  I'm not complaining.  I love teaching, and I love my daughter.  They both drive me a little crazy sometimes.  That's all.

Three years ago, I was preoccupied with my daughter, as well:

April 25, 2013:  Your Prayers, My Daughter, Last Night

"Well.  Go to sleep.  Give Mother a kiss.  Did you say your prayers?"

Holden's mother appears for a very short time at the end of The Catcher in the Rye.  She's tucking Holden's little sister, Phoebe, in for the night.  Even though, earlier in the novel, Holden says his parents aren't religious at all, Holden's mother asks Phoebe, "Did you say your prayers?"  It's a casual question, like "Did you do your homework?" or "Did you brush your teeth?"  Yet, it highlights a spirituality in the Caulfield home that Holden denies earlier.


Last night, I was pretty tired.  Alright, I was friggin' exhausted.  I was trying to make it through American Idol, and I simply couldn't do it.  I surrendered to sleep at around 9:30 p.m.  Some time later, my twelve-year-old daughter came bouncing into my bedroom and jumped into bed beside me, snuggling into my armpit.

"Daddy?" she said.

I jumped and, without opening my eyes, said, "What, sweetie?"

"Are you going to say prayers with me?"

I sort of grunted.  I sleep with a mask on to blot out light.  I could smell her hair, which was still wet from her shower.  She uses a cherry blossom shampoo.

"Please, Daddy," she said.  "You can say short prayers."

I've prayed with my daughter or for my daughter or over my daughter every day since her birth.  We have developed a fairly complicated prayer routine, praying for family and friends, sick people, cousins, and teachers.  We even pray for her pediatrician.  Then we sing "Hush, Little Baby" three times to her.  We finish it off with the "be-attitudes," starting "Be a good girl for Jesus, Mary, Joseph, you guardian angel, the king and queen angels, the duke and duchess angels, knight angels and worker angels..."  The angel list goes on, developed in detail since my daughter was a toddler.  It takes a good five to seven minutes if the prayer routine is performed in full.

I didn't have the energy for all the prayers last night, so I said short prayers, which is a truncated version of the standard prayers.  General blessings for everybody.  "Hush, Little Baby" once.  And then the be-attitudes, skipping some of the lesser angels.

This morning, I read that little snippet of dialogue from Holden's mother, and I realized how blessed I am to have a daughter who wants to pray with me.  My daughter can't go to sleep until we've gone through some ritual of blessing for the people in her life.  She reminds me how important daily prayer is.  It's not like brushing teeth for her.  It's a completion thing.  Her day isn't over until she has a few words with God.

This post may seem sentimental.  I don't care.  I'm proud of the fact that I have a prayerful, caring daughter.

It's one of Saint Marty's greatest blessings.

I didn't say my daughter was perfect...

September 22: Gold Watch, Promotion, Tomas Transtromer, "Kyrie," Adventures of Stickman

On December 29, 1982, there had been a big party in the boardroom, and it was attended by many of the old-timers like Ives himself--Crane, Silverman, Schamberg--and Mr. Mannis, having survived his third open heart operation, made a speech.  They had given Ives a watch--a gold Swiss pocket watch from the 1920s, engraved with his name on the back (to go into a drawer along with the watch he had intended to give to his son long ago at Christmas)--and a plaque.

Ives retires.  After many years at an advertising agency, he is given his gold watch and plaque, thanking him for his decades of faithful service.  Ives started out at the bottom and worked his way up, drawing by drawing, account by account, promotion after promotion.  He is respected and beloved by all of his colleagues and coworkers..

Tomorrow afternoon, I am meeting with the head of the English Department to discuss a promotion.  For the past 17 years, I have held the rank of Contingent Assistant Professor.  I want (and think I deserve) the title of Contingent Professor, which is a jump of two ranks.  After almost 20 years of teaching and a few thousand students, I am hoping that my boss will support my decision.

I am not a person who feels comfortable tooting his own horn.  It's just not something at which I excel.  In my posts, I may sound incredibly confident and self-assured.  I'm not.  I've said it before, and I will probably say it with my dying breath:  I think that I could have done better.  I could have been a better son.  A better brother.  Better husband and father.  A better teacher and writer.  Basically, I could have been a better person every day of my life.

That doesn't mean that I'm Rasputin or Donald Trump.  That means that I've made mistakes, and I acknowledge them.  That doesn't mean I don't deserve that promotion (or a Pulitzer Prize or a MacArthur Genius Grant).  It means that I'm human, with tons of flaws.

Contingent Professor Saint Marty.  Sounds pretty good.

By the way, Tomas Transtromer isn't perfect, either, although he has a Nobel Prize hanging on his wall.

Kyrie

by;  Tomas Transtromer

Sometimes my life opened its eyes in the dark.
A feeling as if crowds drew through the street
in blindness and anxiety on the way towards a miracle,
while I invisibly remain standing.

As the child falls asleep in terror
listening to the heart's heavy tread.
Slowly, slowly until morning puts its rays in the locks
and the doors of darkness open.

Adventures of STICKMAN