Don't get no respect: back to school, wobbly-style

 I'm heading back to campus today to line up the last bit of what I need to do in order to teach on Thursday. Between the usual decline in course offerings and my separation from the local alternative dining and concert guide*, this winter, like most every, will be a tight one. I'm always on the look for more work, and I'm going to be diving into some projects and working on my poetry and fiction. I'm uncharacteristically prepared for the semester to begin, actually... primarily because I'm simplifying my teaching methods and focusing on what's really important in a writing class.

Practice.

People ask me all the time what I teach. When they're kind, or when they know I write poetry, they immediately ask if I teach creative writing**. I have to, for the sake of conversation, clarify that I teach academic writing***, tossing in some scholarly research methods and some interesting stories and little known history. I've been using Labor History the last few years as the subject matter for my Intermediate classes; I think it's important try and highlight little known facts of history that get overlooked in the narrative of manifest destiny.

This semester, I'm trying something a bit different because what I find in teaching labor history is that many of my students are incredibly disconnected from the events I wanted to talk about and the stories I wanted to tell.  I also found that in my attempts to ensure I was doing my job that I lost some the fundamental elements of my teaching style that made it fun and interesting.

One of the things I'm doing is simply changing research topics, for a while. My classes are going to be examining some events from local history: the 1855 Bloody Monday Election Riots, The 1937 Ohio River Flood, and river stories and myths. We're going to talk about how these narratives -- and the narratives of more current events -- impact ourselves as individuals, as a city, and as a larger culture.

So basically -- I'm going to tell stories, read and talk about essay drafts, and focus the important stuff.

And, you know, take attendance. Can't escape the all the tedium.

But I am grateful to have some kind of work
 _________________________
*The latest article of important was about how Louisvillians in their 20's move to Germantown, where the rent is cheap. You know... like they have for the past 20 years.
**I have written before about how the term "creative writing" annoys me because it implies that some kinds of writing isn't creative or part of a creative process.
*** Academic writing, apparently, has no creative process. Don't get me started.


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Baboon in the Bluegrass, Part 3: Morehead, Kentucky

NO. It's not a sexual request.

It's a city... well, more like a town... a town that will, undoubtedly, be swallowed by the monolithic beast that is Morehead State University (Curse it's name!) and become a plaza shopping and living pavilion... with oodles and oodles of parking, of course. (They really did bulldoze a park once, and put in a parking lot. Well, it was more like a grassy knoll. Ok... more like an abandoned field by the side of the road. But it WAS green space.)

The nice thing about being gone for so long (George and Laura and I decided that my last visit to the area was maybe 8 years ago.) is that there's hardly anyone around who might remember me. At least, no one hanging around on the street or in the coffee shop. This is to my advantage; I wanted to walk around, see what changed, and take things in without people asking How I Am or What am I Up To. I could walk around, be perceived as slightly creepy, take pictures with my cell phone, and slip back out of town again without raising too many eyebrows.

But where to begin? 

One of the problems I have in coming back here -- other than a the fairly good chance of running into some ghost of my old self -- is that when I think about the place, image in my mental map of the place is a bit dated... circa 1995 or 96. When I think about Morehead, I think about driving into town on KY-32 and seeing the mountains on fire the year there wasn't much rain, black smoke blocking out the sun for what seemed like an entire summer. I think about the year there was too much rain and the whole North end of town flooded -- including a house of Melissa's Theater Department friends who were too stoned to realize they needed to leave. That happened when I was in graduate school, around 2001... but it's still part of the elemental 1995 map.

There are houses gone that I expect to be gone, and houses gone that I expect to be there. Every single structure I lived in with my daughter's mother, Anna, is gone. It is as if our marriage -- brief and ridiculously dramatic as it was -- has been erased from the landscape. To be honest, I find it oddly comforting. The number of people who have any memory of that botched disaster of a relationship is shrinking. Even my daughter -- the only good to come out of my first marriage -- has no memory of her mother and I ever being together. For this, I am eternally grateful. Anna's parents are dead. Her grandparents are dead. My mother isn't, thank god.

But she has the courtesy not to bring up my early marriage as one in a catalog of mistakes I made In Spite Of Her Telling Me So.

Morehead has more parking lots than I remember. The Fuzzy Duck Coffee Shop, once located in what was once the back store room of Coffee Tree Books, which was located in a nominally interesting shopping center, is not located -- along with Coffee Tree Books -- in the building that was once the movie theater downtown.

(This was replaced by a six screen multi-plex out on the by-pass. More screens for more lousy movies. And really expensive popcorn. But the bubble gum under the seats is more fresh, at least.)

 It's theoretically more space. The coffee shop takes up what was once the concessions and lobby. The problem is, that it still looks like a movie theater, only with no popcorn, Ike&Mike's, or stale Reese's Pieces and over priced watered down pop. They do the whole coffee, soup and sandwiches thing, along with all the usual coffee boutique items... coffee mugs (though not ByBee Pottery... a travesty, as far as I'm concerned.) froo-froo coffee contraptions, French coffee presses, ground and whole bean coffee, and a plethora of teas.

"Well, you told me I have a plethora. And I just would like to know if you know what a plethora is. I would not like to think that a person would tell someone he has a plethora, and then find out that that person has NO IDEA what it means to have a plethora."

But if ever there was a town that needed a bar... it would be THIS one.

The problem, however -- at least according to conventional wisdom -- is that no bar in downtown has ever succeeded for very long.

Scratch that. No downtown bar has ever been ALLOWED to succeed for very long.

At least, that's the assertion of an old friend, Clark. Back in the day, Clark was one of those Those Guys. He played guitar. Girls liked him. Generally people thought he was something of a pretentious ass... but he was still likable too. Clark has been living in Morehead almost exclusively for the past 20 years. One of the things we sat and talked about -- in the newish location of the Fuzzy Duck/Coffee Tree Books was how much town had changed since the last time I was here. The new Wal-Mart. The new Public Library, which, while it's not in the middle of town anymore ... which is decidedly inconvienent if you don't have a car... is a much nicer, much bigger space.

The old library is being adapted into the new home of the Kentucky Center for Traditional Music, which now occupies a Main Street storefront location.

The new space will have class rooms, recording studios, and will generally be a  nicer space. 

The other advantage of the new space is that it won't be owned by this guy... the biggest, sleaziest slum lord in town.

The Dixie Grill... one of the downtown townie restaurants knowns as much for the oderiferious air as the cheap food, is now a hair salon. Main Street Records is now a bakery. One of the bars where I used to go for dime drafts on Thirsty Thursdays is now a church children's youth center. (I blame the Bapists.)  The other bar -- the one with multiple names and multiple owners -- is now a Thursday night Karaoke /Dance Club. (Not sure if the Soot Scootin' Boogie or the Macarena is still in vogue.

When I told Clark that I didn't know how I felt about the coffee shop residing in the lobby of the old movie theater he nodded, but said "It grows on you."

As we continued our conversation, he admitted to a certain ambivalence regarding his life in town. "I don't know," he said," whether I'm really stuck here or whether I stay out of a sense of obligation."

The obligation he meant was his the obligation he felt to his children. He has a son, who is 13, and a younger daughter. Both of his children are with different mothers. Both mothers still live in the area, and he has to see them on a regular basis. But he also seems to understand that a parent is more than provider, protector, soundboard, bank, and bed and board landlord. He also knows that maybe the best function a parent serves is an object lesson.

Clark told me a story about taking his son, at the time 12, with him on a road trip to a city. Clark, who's early drinking experience was made up of house parties and music gigs (with him on stage); he admitted that to not really ever having a bar experience until the Buffalo Wings and Things, took his son around to different bars in the city they were in. Clark sipped on drinks while his son took in the general atmosphere.

This is BW3's. It's too bright, too plastic, and costs too much.
Oh yeah, and the bartender, who looked 10, didn't know how to make a proper Bloody Mary.

This sorority girl and others like her,. who will probably be praying  for forgiveness on Sunday when they go to church, is one of the things that makes BW3's entirely too loud to be a place worth drinking in.

"He was loving it," Clark said. "And that was the point. I told him..." he paused briefly, as if he were gathering the words, or maybe thinking about his own life for split second. "I told him if he ever wanted to DO anything, that he needed to get out of here."

That pesky left foot is always late.

Morehead is the kind of place people go, stay for a specific but undetermined period of time, and then leave. It's like most college towns in that way. For that matter, it has always been a suitcase campus -- students would pack up and go back home for the weekend, and I saw nothing that made me think that had changed. It's easy to think it's almost planned out... that the university Board of Regents, the Chamber of Commerce, and the town council all got together with the cops and decided to make the town as unappealing to college age people as possible without being too overt about it.

There are other, less subtle but nonetheless accepted forms of creeping fascism. Yes, I call it fascism. When the corporate institutions intermingle interests with the political and financial life a community, the prevailing system becomes something like a a slightly more benevolent form of fascism. It may not be too intrusive, and certainly not enough to upset the too young to be paranoid college age kids who, by their silence, accept the rule of the regime.

Don't even get me started on what's wrong with this... I would like to point out, however, that tobacco money built the fucking campus. It's the #1 legal cash crop of the state. I'd also like to point out that there's a Taco Bell in the student center.

This is the entrance to what used to be  the English  Dept. Building. Now  it's the College of Business, which is kind enough to allow the English Department to say. See the sign? English Majors are people too!

This is one of the places we used to stand and smoke... before the  fast food financed fascists took over.

And this, dear readers, is where all the money really goes.

The new and updated Adrian Doran University  Center (ADUC) Your tuition and tax dollars at work.

There are still a few remnants of my past here, though. And some aren't even all that depressing.

The front door to 122 W. Second Street. The house I shared with  Jared, Bobby, Dave,and  sometimes, Eric. My primary function was to screw over the landlord, who charged per student rather than a lump sum of rent.

Douchebag apartments next door. They weren't there when I was  a student. Merely  pointing out that they're a blight. And Douchey.

I did more drinking than I can remember here. Really.  Pictures would  be appreciated. Really. Or... you know, forget it.

When I started here as a Sophmore, these two urinals was  a single long narrow trough. Keep your eyes on your own winkie, dammit.! God is watching.

I just think this is cute. Like those poor dumb kids are really going to find JOBS.

Oh, and see that diminutive bell tower behind the signs? Once upon a time, there was a tall, healthy, beautiful pine tree there, that had stood for as long as anyone remembered. It was cut down because someone with money wanted to put up a bell tower with her name on it.

 Did I mention diminutive? It's more like a vibrator for a hollowed out porn star. It plays show tunes sometimes, too.

[I need to extend my thanks to Paul V. Christensen, Mike Frazier, Brian Parsons, and Dixie Parsons for some welcome donations. Thanks to you, I've bought my train ticket from Ashland and expect to be in Norfolk on THURSDAY FEBRUARY 9th.

If you like what you read here, you can help by:

1. Passing the link around.
2. Graciously donating to the cause using the button on the right hand side of the screen;
3. Contact Catherine Sellers at Greyhound, 415-331-6049. Tell them you are asking about a sponsorship when the operator picks up. I write about them enough. They should be helping me help them. Right??

Thanks for reading.]