November 1: Echolalia, Contingent Faculty, Why I Teach

It was difficult for Rumfoord to take Billy seriously, since Rumfoord had so long considered Billy a repulsive non-person who would be much better off dead.  Now, with Billy speaking clearly and to the point, Rumfoord's ears wanted to treat the words as a foreign language that was not worth learning.  "What did he say?" said Rumfoord.

Lily had to serve as an interpreter.  "He said he was there," she explained.

"He was where?"

"I don't know," said Lily.  "Where were you?" she asked Billy.

"Dresden," said Billy.

"Dresden," Lily told Rumfoord.  

"He's simply echoing things we say," said Rumfoord.

"Oh," said Lily.

"He's got echolalia now."

"Oh."

Rumfoord continues to dismiss Billy, even though Billy is speaking clearly and answering questions correctly.  Rumfoord, again, doesn't want to be proven wrong, about Billy or Dresden.  Therefore, in his mind, Rumfoord turns Billy into a human tape recorder--repeating words and phrases that are said to him.  And Billy becomes non-human again.

I know a thing or two about being dismissed.  Having worked as an adjunct and contingent professor in an English Department at a university for over two decades, I have gotten quite used to being a non-entity.  I'm viewed by a lot of my colleagues as "part-time" and "temporary."  That is a commonly held belief among tenured faculty and department heads.  Of course, the fact that I have been teaching in the English Department now longer than most of the tenured professors sort of negates that assertion.

Another commonly held belief by tenured faculty is that contingents have no investment in the future of the university or the community, as a whole.  My counterargument:  I chose to stay in this area and raise my family.  I choose every semester to teach classes for less than half the salary of a full-time professor because I love being in the classroom and firmly believe in the mission of higher education.  I think that I'm making the world a better place, one student at a time.  That is why I teach.

Even graduate students seem to prescribe to the same attitudes as full-timers when it comes to contingent faculty.  I have encountered grad students who think they are smarter, more talented, and more entitled than contingents.  However, grad students are suffering from echolalia, parroting back the words, ideas, and actions of their tenured teachers.

So, you see, I am sort of like Billy Pilgrim in my position at the university.  And many of my colleagues come off as Rumfoord--dismissive and demeaning.

Tonight, Saint Marty is grateful for his students.

August 29: Bonfire, Julianna Baggott, "Discussing Sorrow with Jesus"

I just returned from a bonfire.  Actually, it was a really small fire, but it was billed as a bonfire.  A colleague from the English Department hosted a gathering of grad students and faculty at her home.  Lots of drinking imported beer.  Lots of smoking cigarettes.  Lots of talking about bullshit irony in Juneau, Alaska.

I made an appearance, only to be seen, to have my name known or remembered by people.  It was important to do this.  It's the only way I can be a presence in the English Department.  The smoke and smokers nearly killed me.  I was coughing like Mimi at the end of La boheme.  I'm still coughing as I type this post.

Being sick makes me contemplate a lot of things.  Tonight, however, all I'm thinking about is going to bed.  However, I have a great poem to share.  It's about suffering and sacrifice.  It's about pain and healing.  It's about birth and death.

Saint Marty needs to take some cold medicine now.

Discussing Sorrow with Jesus

by:  Julianna Baggott

The blood blurs his vision
                   so he's always winking
like a diner waitress, eye-teared
by her cigarette's smoke,
                    and I ask to take his hat
--thorns, really==but no, he says, I'm fine.
It's so like him,
               to suffer openly,
and I tell him,
               It's too much,
the way your whittled shape
                    still dangles
from gold chains and rearview mirrors
tangled in wedding garters,
                     hung forever
on the back wall of Verbitski's fish shop.
You said that we would forget
                    the sorrow
after your resurrection, like a woman forgets labor
once the child is born.
               But we haven't forgotten.
And it's a poor metaphor,
because women do not forget
                    our bodies ripped open,
the knowledge that life simply passes through,
that the child isn't born
                    but taken
and we had thought it a gift.
No, each time, a woman resigns herself to joy,
like choosing
          the bruised and bitten fruit
because the bin is almost empty.
But I've gone too far, he's embarrassed now,
slouching, arms crossed
               to hide the wound
in his side, his hands' nail holesl
and legs crossed to cover
                    his soft penis.
Tired now,
          he lies down on the sofa.
Only to rest his eyes, he says,
and I cover him
               with a white sheet
that I know he will stain as he sleeps
                         like a young girl
who bleeds without knowing, and I watch as the blood inches
like brilliant red night-crawling spores,
covering the white until it is not his body,
                         but his image,
a perfect blood-stiffened cast of our Lord
and beneath it his shallow breathing.

Shroud of Turin