Lead Pencil Blues

I'm amused to find two of my abiding interests -- blues and stationery supplies -- brought together in the following lyric of graphitic dysfunction. Blues lyrics are rich in double-entendres -- elevators, jellyrolls, lemons, pincushions, poodles, snakes, switchboards, and wieners, but Johnnie Temple's "Lead Pencil Blues" and Bo Carter's "My Pencil Won't Write No More" are the only blues lyrics I'm aware of that focus on the mighty (or not so mighty) pencil. I've transcribed the lyric of "Lead Pencil Blues" from the recording.

Spoken: Lord have mercy --
I wanna write a letter so bad I don't know what to do

I laid down last night, couldn't eat a bite
The woman I love don't treat me right
Lead in my pencil, baby it's done gone bad
And it's the worst old feelin' baby, that I've
    ever had

I woke up this mornin', my baby says she
    mighty mad
Cause the lead in my pencil, it's done gone
    bad
Lead in my pencil, baby it's done gone bad
And that's the worst old feelin' that I've
    ever had

My baby told me this mornin', she's feelin'
    mighty blue
Lead in my pencil just wouldn't do
And she said "Been ready all night --
Lead in your pencil daddy, just wouldn't write"
Lead in my pencil, baby it just won't write
And it's the worst old feelin' baby, that I've
    ever had

My baby says she goin' to quit me
I'll tell you for this reason why
Lead in my pencil gone bye-bye
Laid down last night, couldn't help but cry
Wanted to write so bad, I was about to die
Lead in my pencil, baby it's done gone bad
And it's the worst old feeling baby, that I've
    ever had

Johnnie Temple, "Lead Pencil Blues" (1935). Available on Back to the Crossroads: The Roots of Robert Johnson (Yazoo).

Canon-formation

On the left, Ted Berrigan's The Morning Line (Santa Barbara: Am Here Books/Immediate Editions, 1982), 26 pages, photocopied and stapled, published in an edition of 250 copies and 15 signed copies. Note the now-rusting staples. The Morning Line is the last book that appeared in the poet's lifetime.

On the right, The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), edited by Alice Notley with Anselm Berrigan and Edmund Berrigan, x + 749 pages.

The volume on the right is now on sale for $29.95, 40% off, direct from the publisher.

» The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan
(from the University of California Press)

Models for education

Education theorists have given us two broad caricatures of teaching -- "the sage on the stage" and "the guide on the side." If you know anything about current education, you know that the first is bad, the second good. Yes, the reasoning, like caricatures themselves, is reductive.

The first caricature transforms the classroom into a performance venue, the professor strutting and fretting his or her 50 minutes, all eyes and ears attending to a glamorous genius. On this account, any presentation of genuine scholarship and intellectual accomplishment is mere preening: "Who does he think he is? A sage?!" The second caricature imagines a classroom full of highly-motivated, self-directed students, in need of just an occasional correction in steering. This caricature assumes a much greater degree of student interest in "group-work" and the like than is often (or usually?) the case. For many students, "group-work," games, and other "activities" are welcome respites from more difficult work; other students see such stuff as infuriatingly condescending.

These caricatures of "sage" and "guide" have little to do with what can really happen in a college class. They erase the possibility of a professor who talks (or professes, as a professor is supposed to do) and leads a discussion -- orchestrating in real time, imperfectly of course, a multi-voiced improvisation on a theme. To my mind, that's the most wonderful sort of class, one whose shape is unpredictable, sometimes awkward, sometimes delightful, and never to be repeated.

Wireless or wireless-less

In light of recent news items about college students messaging and playing online poker during lectures, it didn't seem to me that there could be much debate among academics about the inappropriateness of wireless connectivity in classrooms. But On Campus, published by the American Federation of Teachers, has two profs debating this question in its March 2006 issue.

Dennis Adams, who teaches "decision and information sciences" -- i.e., he's a computer guy, not a technophobe -- argues against laptops in classrooms, pointing out that students who have been raised in a culture of ever-diminishing attention-spans need to learn how to focus. Rudy McDaniel, who teaches "English and digital media" -- i.e., he's also a computer guy, not a technophobe -- argues for the usefulness of laptops and suggests ways to deal with students who are idly surfing. One such strategy:

The next time you spot students with glazed eyes peering into a laptop during your lecture, consider a new approach: Ask them to find an online example of a topic you’re discussing and share it with the class. Repeat as necessary with new offenders. That "distracting laptop in class" problem might just take care of itself.

I started daydreaming today about how such a strategy might work out. Imagine a class devoted to Book Four of Virgil's Aeneid, the episode of Dido's passion and death. What would count as an online "example" of that "topic"? Unrequited love? Devotion to duty? Royal suicide? Roman marriage customs? (Aeneas notes that he never held the torches of a bridegroom, never really married Dido.) The role of Mercury in Roman mythology? Sword wounds? A map of Carthage? An MP3 of "When I am laid in earth" from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas? An MP3 of the pop singer Dido?

I wonder too how quickly a student with glazed eyes would be able to think up a suitable "example of a topic." And were a student to begin searching for one of these possibilties, what would be the point? What are the other students supposed to be doing while the search is underway? And if class simply goes on while the searcher searches (still out of it!), won't the sharing of the discovery make for yet another interruption of forward movement?

Now imagine this sort of interruption occurring with two or three students, perhaps with arguments and protestations of innocence. Allow two or three minutes for the necessary details of identifying each perp, assigning the task, and hearing a brief report. In a 50-minute class, these scattered minutes would eat up roughly 10% to 20% of the available time. I'd hate to be a student intent upon following and learning from a lecture or discussion while my prof's attention repeatedly shifts from the work at hand to students whose minds are elsewhere.

A truth that bears repeating: Technology makes it possible to do things, not necessary to do them. It's possible to type a shopping list into a cellphone, but pencil and paper are simpler and more efficient. And it's possible to watch tv while driving, but it's not a good idea. It's, uhh, distracting, just like a wireless connection in a classroom.

» Should wireless laptops be banned from the classroom?
(from On Campus)

Under Odysseus

From a Trojan War blog written by Eurylochus, one of Odysseus' men:

More drama.

Polites told me that there was some kind of blow-out today between Achilles and Agamemnon. Rumor has it that it was over some girl.

I have a hard time believing that this is true. To be honest, I can’t imagine any girl torn between those two. Agamemnon might be Commander-in-Chief, but there is no kind way to describe his looks. On the other hand, Achilles has to fight the girls off. I swear to Zeus, it looks like a goddamned holiday parade when the guy goes to pick up his laundry.

» Under Odysseus (link via kottke.org)

Powders, pencils, mountains, cigars

The particular thing, whether it be four pinches of four divers white powders cleverly compounded to cure surely, safely, pleasantly a painful twitching of the eyelids or say a pencil sharpened at one end, dwarfs the imagination, makes logic a butterfly, offers a finality that sends us spinning through space, a fixity the mind could climb forever, a revolving mountain, a complexity with a surface of glass; the gist of poetry. D. C. al fin.

William Carlos Williams, Kora in Hell: Improvisations (1920)

But I mean, the main thing, André, is, why do we require a trip to Mount Everest in order to be able to perceive one moment of reality? Is Mount Everest more real than New York? Isn't New York real? I mean, I think if you could become fully aware of what existed in the cigar store next door to this restaurant, it would blow your brains out. I mean, isn't there just as much reality to be preceived in a cigar store as there is on Mount Everest?

Wallace Shawn and André Gregory, screenplay for My Dinner with André (1981) (words spoken by Shawn)

"Caring for Your Introvert"

Do you know someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to parties and then needs the rest of the day to recuperate? Who growls or scowls or grunts or winces when accosted with pleasantries by people who are just trying to be nice?

If so, do you tell this person he is "too serious," or ask if he is okay? Regard him as aloof, arrogant, rude? Redouble your efforts to draw him out?

If you answered yes to these questions, chances are that you have an introvert on your hands -- and that you aren't caring for him properly.

Jonathan Rauch's "Caring for Your Introvert" is the most popular piece on the website for the The Atlantic Monthly.

» Caring for Your Introvert

» Introverts of the World, Unite! A conversation with Jonathan Rauch

(Links via kottke.org)

Camille Paglia on academia

The humanities have destroyed themselves over the past thirty years. They were at a height of prestige, along with poetry, when I was in college in the 1960s and in graduate school at Yale from the late 60s to the early 70s. And step by step, through this intoxication with European jargon and a shallow politicization of discourse, the humanities have imploded. You have downsizing of humanities departments and classics departments nationwide. There's hardly a campus you can name where the most exciting things that are happening on campus are coming from the humanities departments. It really is a disaster. . . . What happens when you have the humanities overrun by a certain kind of careerist who really doesn't espouse anything, stands for nothing but a kind of chic nihilism and a certain kind of pretentious discourse. I think that the entire profession is indeed in withdrawal at the present moment.

» Camille Paglia Takes on Academia
(radio interview, 5.7MB MP3, from Open Source)

Droppin' Hamiltons

Behold: the new ten-dollar bill. To me, it looks like a GeoCities page. Yikes!

Say what?

Neil Holloway, Microsoft president for Europe, Middle East and Africa, promising a Microsoft search engine that will be superior to Google:

The quality of our search and the relevance of our search from a solution perspective to the consumer will be more relevant.

Relevance that will be "more relevant"? "[F]rom a solution perspective to the consumer"?

Microsoft Word's grammar checker finds nothing wrong with Mr. Holloway's sentence.

» Microsoft says better than Google soon (from Reuters)