Trump syllabus

The U.S.’s presidential election is just around the corner. Trumpie has been lavishing us with the spectacle of himself. But I believe that he’ll lose, and that Clinton will maintain a “business as usual” regime for at least four more years.

The academic folks at The Chronicle of Higher Education also believe that Trump will lose. Though the election is yet to be held, they’re treating Trumpie as a seminar topic – as a puzzle to be leisurely studied – rather than as a plague to be dealt with. They’ve recruited some of their all-stars to write a “syllabus” in order to “explore the phenomenon that is Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.” The items on the syllabus include utopian and dystopian writings (Plato’s Republic; Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here; Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America); very, very old historical writing (Thucydides); thinly-disguised, fictional portraits of real-life demagogues (Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men); and exposés of how Trump rose to prominence. A lot of these items are for lulling one into a comfortable sleep in front of the fire, not for lifting one’s ass up by lighting a fire (under it). Well, that’s to be expected, I guess. Professors would have everyone just sit and read.

Last night there was a debate between Clinton and Trump, but I didn’t watch it – it began at 9:00pm or some such hour when schoolworkers ought to be in bed. The truth is, though, I love to watch Trumpie in the debates. I read that last night he had a good line about a “400-lb. guy lying in his bed.” Brilliant. If only Clinton would talk like that. … No, it wasn’t because I listened to any of the debates that I decided that Trump was incompetent. My mind was made up by a short documentary from 2009 – an entry in ESPN’s 30 for 30 series, on Netflix – Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL?

Not that the CHE would’ve asked me, but that movie is what I would have put on my Trump syllabus.

Basically, Trump is the guy who shows up at the playground and insists on everyone playing according to his schedule and rules, at his house, and with his toys; and who gets enough suckers to join him so that he is able to ruin the game for everyone. Trust me, sports lovers: you don’t want this guy calling the shots. Watch Small Potatoes – which was broadcast years before Trumpie decided to run for the presidency – and you’ll want to stop whatever you’re doing and go stand in line for the next month, so that you can be sure to have a place at the polling station to vote against Donald Trump.

Quiz

The grammar quizzes that I write have been getting more and more ridiculous. This week’s quiz questions were about Condorito. Here is an excerpt (with the blanks already filled in):

Don Cuasi and doña Treme write a letter to their daughter, Yayita, to warn her about her rakish boyfriend. We’ve always been proud of you, daughter, they say; we expect that you haven’t hidden anything from us; we don’t believe that you’ve dissimulated. But we fear that Condorito has been playing us all for fools. Though he’s promised to lift weights every night, that lousy bird hasn’t been eating an adequate dosage of protein (meanwhile, every week, he has smoked). His arms have been turning thinner and weaker. We don’t believe that he’s been trying to do any exercise. … Love, Your Parents.

This passage is very strange, says Mary.

Well, that’s what happens when one must work from a very puny vocabulary list.

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For the second time since she moved in with us, Ziva is “in heat.” With one arm, she drags herself all over the carpet. Jasper is sometimes responsive to this, sometimes not, but never (so far as we can tell) *consummately* responsive. … Fortunately, Karin has scheduled an operation for Ziva, to take place a few weeks from now.

A conspicuous tear

A quick note to say that last week I was extremely busy teaching Spanish.

My favorite quiz answer so far: “A Melanie le gusta jugar el hammer y shotput.”

I wrote it on the board. “What’s wrong with this sentence?” I asked.

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At the college library, whilst I was talking to a student who’d come to my office hours, I leaned forward in my armchair to write on a piece of paper, and my pants loudly tore open from the back to the very front. I wasn’t super pleased about it. It must have been terrible for my poor student. … However, I carried on like a pro, teaching about syllabic stress. I wonder how well my student was able to concentrate on that lesson.

Let me record that of all the people with whom I’ve discussed this so far, Stephen has been the nicest. “I’m sorry that that happened, John-Paul,” he said.

The pale horse

First, my skin-spot. Is it a malignant cancer?

I don’t know. The doctor never looked at it. When I went in for my checkup, I was told that my health insurance was not acceptable.

“But when I made my appointment,” I told the receptionist, “I said that I had insurance from _____, and I asked if there was any way that it might not be accepted, and you assured me that it would be accepted since it was _____ insurance.”

“What you have,” she blandly replied, “is not _____ insurance but _____ _____ insurance” (the extra blank doesn’t denote a different insurance company; rather, it indicates that the coverage is funded by the state). “And although we do take _____ insurance, we don’t accept _____ _____ insurance. Did you not know this?”

No, I hadn’t known it, though I’d tried to ask her about it when I made the appointment.

Long story short, I’ll have to make an appointment to be seen by a different doctor. (I feel obliged to continue trying not to die, so young, of cancer.)

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I’m re-reading Agatha Christie’s novel The Pale Horse, in which the victims sicken and die – apparently because of the cultivation, in them, of a “death wish” – while, miles away, their murderers safely wait. This will be the first Christie novel I’ve read three times. While its gloom is most appealing, it also tosses out such light barbs as this one:

We all went to church, and listened respectfully to Mr. Dane Calthrop’s scholarly sermon on a text taken from Isaiah which seemed to deal less with religion than with Persian history. …

Indeed, this morning, Karin & I hear such a sermon. (Our pastor has resigned, and, while the Search Committee deliberates, we are preached to by volunteers.) The text is from the book of Joshua. The story is the crossing of the River Jordan. What were the four difficulties of crossing the Jordan?

• First, the river’s width: one mile.
• Second, its depth. How deep was it? (“One mile!” Karin whispers.) Twelve feet.
• Third, the mud. Even if the Israelites had been able to touch the bottom, twelve feet down, they would’ve sunk knee-deep into the mud. (My brother David would’ve liked this sermon.)
• Fourth, the current. (Behold a photo of our visiting preacher, leading a church tour at the River Jordan. Look at that awful current.)

All of this, on PowerPoint. We also are given a handout with blanks to fill in and biblical text to underline. “I want you to underline every time the word ‘ark’ is printed!” says the visiting preacher. There are five iterations on the handout; and elsewhere in Joshua, the word ‘ark’ is written sixteen times. Doubtless it’s an important word.

The lesson: However impossible your own situation appears to be, God is able to lead you through it, as he was able to lead the Israelites across the River Jordan.

I want to cry out: Yes, yes, we know this; we knew it when Moses crossed the Red Sea. But when are we going to talk about the genocide? Isn’t that what’s at the troubling heart of the book of Joshua? Isn’t that what we believers must come to terms with? That, and the Israelites’ constant betrayal of God – even as, with his help, they triumph?

Dreading

Ecuador and Peru will play in Lima tonight, at nine- or ten-something. You can look it up. I’m trying not to think about it. I’ll probably watch it, though, and I’ll fall further behind in my sleeping. … What’s good is, tomorrow I won’t need to wake up very early; I’ll miss the beginning of work to go to the doctor; it’s time for my shoulder-spot to be examined (I’m trying not to think about that, either).

Karin got a job promotion, to Assistant Manager. Neither of us is very pleased about it. She will now work in Collections, which means that she’ll be calling people and yelling at them to pay their debts.

A turn for the worse?

Typical:

The kitties are in another room, entangled together in a fierce struggle, emitting hideous sounds. … Panting, Jasper staggers out to us. He settles into his favorite laundry basket. I get up to search for Ziva, to make sure that she hasn’t been killed.

Probably she’s fine, says Karin. Jasper hasn’t got any blood on him.

(True enough.)

Ziva cautiously emerges. I advise her: Remain on the other side of the room, little Ziva.

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On Thursday night, the kitties fight for control over Jasper’s laundry basket. Let’s bring out a different basket for Ziva, I suggest to Karin. But when we do put Ziva into a different basket, Jasper climbs into it; they fight even more alarmingly in the tinier space.

My feelings on this particular night are raw already, due to Ecuador’s defeat against Brazil …

and due, also, to my having taught poorly the previous day’s lesson of Spanish. …

(Why don’t the kitties give me a break? Why don’t they just be nice to each other?)

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In the small hours, Ziva crawls all over my body, rests her side against my nose and mouth so that I can’t breathe. The little dear is smothering me.

Jasper, who never used to do this, imitates his sister. It’s worse when he does it. He’s heavier, and he has longer fur.

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At Bethel, waiting to teach, I sit, haggard, in the empty classroom, my feet up on the desk. A student comes into the room.

I’ve been talking to the other students, he says. We all have a lot of sympathy for you.

Oh yes?

I mean, he says, what you’re trying to do – teaching a foreign language – it must be really, really hard.

What exactly are you saying?

Just that we have a lot of sympathy for you.

OK.

The other students file in.

Before I re-teach the previous lesson, I say, I want to thank you for your sympathy. But know that things aren’t all that bad for me. I have three jobs, and two of them are going very well. What’s bothering me more is that Ecuador lost last night against Brazil. We’d been playing better than Brazil these last five years. With this defeat, my world came crashing down a little. Now, the lesson.

I re-teach it. This time the students follow what I’m trying to say. They leave more satisfied. In the afternoon, six of them come to my office hours. As long as they keep doing this, the class should go all right.

Ziva and Jasper continue to fight, but, I now notice, the fighting has a distinctly playful quality. Karin shoots this precious video of them: