Month: September 2002

A Working Man in My Prime

Van Morrison’s “Cleaning Windows” has always been one of my favorite Van Morrison songs, and Van Morrison may well be my favorite singer:

Oh, the smell of the bakery from across the street

Got in my nose

As we carried our ladders down the street

With the wrought-iron gate rows

I went home and listened to Jimmie Rodgers in my lunch-break

Bought five Woodbines at the shop on the corner

And went straight back to work.

Oh, Sam was up on top

And I was on the bottom with the v

We went for lemonade and Paris buns

At the shop and broke for tea

I collected from the lady

And I cleaned the fanlight inside-out

I was blowing saxophone on the weekend

In that down joint.

What’s my line?

I’m happy cleaning windows

Take my time

I’ll see you when my love grows

Baby don’t let it slide

I’m a working man in my prime

Cleaning windows (number a hundred and thirty-six)

I heard Leadbelly and Blind Lemon

On the street where I was born

Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee,

Muddy Waters singin’ “I’m A Rolling Stone”

I went home and read my Christmas Humphreys’ book on Zen

Curiosity killed the cat

Kerouac’s “Dharma Bums” and “On The Road”

What’s my line?

I’m happy cleaning windows

Take my time

I’ll see you when my love grows

Baby don’t let it slide

I’m a working man in my prime

Cleaning windows…

Until recently I was never entirely clear why I liked this song so much, but recent nostalgic lapses have helped to refresh my memory.

I put myself through college in the ‘60’s by doing janitorial work; I was “ a working man in my prime.” Occasionally that included washing windows, but the company also hired a professional window washer because I did such a pitiful job on them. Equipped with the latest high-tech cleaners and cleaning clothes, I spent hours cleaning the windows, only to find them smeared and streaked when I finished.

He, on the other hand, used a little ammonia in a bucket of water, a squeegee, and old newspapers to complete the job and came out with sparkling clean windows. How could I not admire his work? It was simple, required few supplies, and did the job to perfection.

More importantly, though, this self-educated black man could more than keep up with any of my discussions about what I was learning in college. He educated himself purely for his own edification. He had no desire to be anything other than what he was, a window washer. He was self-employed and totally independent. I didn’t realize then how special he was. I do now.

Looking back at those years, I suspect that, except for the wages, I had found the perfect job. I enjoyed working alone at night with no disruptions. If I did my job right, and I took pride in doing it right, no one ever told me what to do or when to do it. I set my own schedule and did things the way I wanted to do them. I spent most of the time while I was working thinking out papers that I was writing for my classes. (It doesn’t, after all, require great concentration to sweep and dust.) If I had realized that this would be the only time in my life when I would have this kind of freedom I would have enjoyed it more.

On the other hand, this was also the only time in my life, except for the last few years, that I had time to learn simply for the sake of learning. I didn’t yet have a career in mind and was simply learning what I wanted to learn. I was exploring modern poetry and philosophy in an attempt to find the meaning of life, an endeavor I too soon abandoned for making a living and supporting a family, but that, too, may be part of what the meaning of life is.

I was also beginning to listen to blues music, though I began with John Lee Hooker, Bobby Blue Bland and Ray Charles, not the earlier bluesmen mentioned in the song. They came later. And yes, I even read “Christmas Humphreys’ book on Zen,” though it took me another thirty five years to read Kerouac’sOn the Road.

It’s only looking back that I realize how much societal expectations determined what I was to do with my life and who I was to become.

Those Radical English Teachers

Sorry Jonathan, although I taught thirty years in a high school, earned a masters degree and ended up with over seven years of college, I really don’t have much insight into college faculties. I was far too self-absorbed in finding my own truth to be particularly worried about my professors’ school politics. But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t find Mark Krupnick’s article, “Why Are English Departments Still Fighting the Culture Wars?,” fascinating.

In truth, there was little in academia that attracted me to that life. After looking at the theses written by those seeking doctorates, I knew that I would never be willing to write the kind of paper that they were demanding when I was in college. I detest “trivia,” or anything else I don’t find relevant to my life, and was unwilling to devote two years of my life to studying something that I couldn’t see helping me lead a fuller life, and not even Yeats demanded that kind of devotion.

The part of Krupnick’s article that rings truest for the high school English departments I served with was that the

archetypal English-department academic, in contrast to academics in other fields, is involved in a quest to know himself or herself and arrive at a more intimate relationship with the good, the true, and the real.

Certainly this was true for myself. It’s the reason I switched from physics to English literature, and, later, the reason I quit my job as a caseworker to become an English teacher. It’s even the reason I continue to focus on this web page while most of my friends turn to other endeavors. And though I wouldn’t attest to it, it strikes me as true for most of the English teachers I have known.

It has often crossed my mind that if I could have actually believed in something that I would have become a minister or a monk. However, having been unable to find any religious organization I could really subscribe to, I have ended up believing that the method and means of seeking truth is ultimately what is most sacred. In that sense, I would also agree with Krupnick that

the role of moral tutor in the United States has fallen to professors of English nearly as much as to the clergy. For the first 60 years or so of the last century, college English teachers were in a better position than pastors and priests — in our mass democracy of recent immigrants — to refine the manners and morals of the immigrants’ progeny. Far from reinforcing old values, professors helped their students to separate from their parents and transcend the past. Professors of English began to derive a sense of their specialness by enabling students to rise above the materialistic values of their uneducated parents, who were striving to establish themselves in the New World.

Judging from some recent articles I’ve read, the Pacific Northwest appears to be less “religious” than most of the nation, but I think fully half of my students got very little “moral education” other than that they got in their English classes. I used to laugh at patrons who argued that schools should just teach “reading, writing and arithmetic” and leave moral education to the home.

What did they want us to have students read, manuals on installing computer programs? It’s impossible to teach American Literature, or contemporary literature, or British literature without teaching “values.” It might not be the values those patrons wanted us to teach, but it was the values that had come to dominate modern literary thought.

Personally, I never felt it was my job to push any one value over the others. Rather, it was my job to teach students how to use their minds to evaluate other’s ideas, to seek their own truth. I tried hard not to indoctrinate my students with my own beliefs. I would even avoid letting students know whether I personally liked an author or not. I always wrote essay questions that could be answered “correctly” in two totally different ways and gave an “A” to the best answer on both sides of the issue.

I suspect that’s there’s more than a little truth in Krupnick’s assertion that

But it’s more illuminating to see Professor X’s attitude in terms of a shared disposition among literary academics, who tend to stake their professional and personal identities on their readings — their evaluations and interpretations — of texts.

Interpretation of the text is, after all, the ultimate Rosetta Stone of all literary interpretation and literary theories. Luckily, most of the authors are dead so they can’t contradict our interpretations 😉 And if they are alive, we can argue, as it has been many times, that once the works are out that they stand on their own and the author may subconsciously include ideas that even he isn’t aware of.

I can speak for no one but myself in relationship to Krupnick’s argument that English teachers are offended more than most professors by opposing theories:

But do English professors identify themselves with their theories and methods more than do their colleagues in, say, history or economics? I think so. Professor X detested the department’s "radicals" because Professor X regarded literature and a proper approach to it as the key to truth and reality.

So English professors tend to experience alternative approaches to the truth as they see it as a personal affront, and cause for counterattack. The personal truly is political.

One of the particularly bright teachers, or one who at least saw himself as particularly bright, and who just happened to be a fellow INTP, argued that style was the most important aspect of writing, much more important than content. After once admitting that I liked Lawrence Durrell’s “Alexandria Quartet,” he used that admission to argue that Durrell was a much greater writer than Thomas Hardy because his style was so vastly superior. Although I was the first to admit that Hardy’s style is a bit plodding and dated, needless to say, I was having nothing of this argument. For me, the insights into human nature and into the human condition are far more important than the writing style. In fact, I would go so far as to argue that the best style is translucent, that the “story,” which, of course, is not the same as the plot, is all the reader should see.

Unfortunately, our relationship was never the same after this confrontation. I had a difficult time seeing this teacher in the same light that I’d seen him before our argument. Of course, I’ve also read that this is one of the dangers of being an INTP, so perhaps my reaction has more to do with that than with being an English teacher.

Considering that every teacher in my English teacher who took the Meyers-Briggs test was an “I” and that three out of the four INTP’s on campus were in the English Department, Krupnick might want to explore that relationship rather than the fact that they just share a common interest in literature.

Bushanomics

I’m not fond of people who fill up my mailbox by forwarding jokes, so I don’t often link to humorous entries, but this “cartoon” found on Doug’s Dynamic Drivel is too good to miss, though I don’t really believe this war is about economics.

That might actually make sense. I’m afraid that this is truly a holy war to finally rid the world of evil once and for all. I was not happy when one of the major news channels labeled their coverage of recent events The War On Iraq. It truly makes one wonder if there is anything that can be done to avert it, if all protest is futile.

Just Call Me a Sentimental Liberal

My first reaction when reading Jonathan’s response to my response on “sentimentality” was to assure him that I, too, hold many “depressing” novels in high regard. After all, I switched from being a physics major at the University of Washington to a literature major after being swept away by Thomas Hardy’s melancholic view of the world my senior year in high school. In some weird, romantic way I felt that Hardy offered more hope of finding the ultimate truths that lay at the heart of this puzzling universe than the alchemy of modern science.
As my comment on his site began to exceed the length of his entry, I decided that my own blog was probably the most appropriate place for a reply, especially since I still haven’t finished that great romantic novel of the 20th century, Catch-22.
I must admit I’m a little surprised by my own actions in defending the word and by my reaction to be labeled a “sentimentalist” after defending the word. I have enough college to realize that being “cynical,” or at least “ objective” is cool, so one side of me doesn’t want to be classified as being overly sentimental.
However, reassured by Jeff’s analysis of the word and after giving it more thought, it seems to me that the only problem with “sentimentality” is not recognizing it as such. To me, occasionally indulging in sentimentality is a part of being a healthy person.
Personally, I worry about friends who aren’t sentimental about their childhood, their children’s childhood, or their grandchildren. You’re supposed to be sentimental about these things, for God’s sake. Does anyone really think you’re supposed to be totally objective about your children? And grandchildren? You’d have to be a real Scrooge not to occasionally indulge the temptation to spoil grandchildren, wouldn’t you?
On the other hand, I’m all too aware some people’s childhoods are so bleak that there is nothing to be sentimental about. But I worry most about friends like this for it’s difficult to ever totally recover from the damage done in those years. One of my favorite students had been sexually abused by her father, and years later she seemed incapable of finding a man who would do anything but mistreat her. It was almost as if she was doomed to forever confirm her vision of abusive men. Unfortunately, she is but one of many whose lives have been forever besmirched by a miserable childhood or abusive parents. This is, in fact, my greatest worry about all the children being indoctrinated with hatred in Israel and Palestine. I wonder if they will ever be able to transcend their hatred and find anything like a lasting peace.
I find it preferable to see the world through rosy glasses rather than condemning myself to a life of misery. Of course, it’s probably wise, and certainly necessary, to realize when you’re indulging in sentimentality. For instance, there may well be few things less dangerous than a parent who comes into a parent conference thinking her child can do no wrong. Parents who lack any objectivity are more likely to end up damaging their child than helping him when faced with unpleasant realities.
On the other hand, parents who used to come into parent conferences bad-mouthing their child’s behavior always pissed me off far more than those who mistakenly stood up for everything their child did. It often didn’t take more than a moment to realize what the child’s real problem was and to realize how difficult it was going to be for that child to overcome the negative emotions his parents instilled in him.
The real tragedy of such situations is that once a person denies the possibility that they are a good person and that they can do good things, there is little likelihood that they will do those things. Far better to error on the side of optimism and the belief that you can change the world if you try.
I don’t mind being called a romantic and a liberal, and I guess I don’t mind being called “sentimental,” because ultimately I still believe in the ability of humans to transcend their lot in life and to create a world where all people have the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” though I’m pragmatist enough to realize we haven’t yet found the means of insuring those rights here in America, much less in the world, and cynic enough to distrust those who wrap their own agenda in these words.