matching tracksuits

fun in threes, sometimes fours

Honest

Tuesday 18 January 2005

I recently told of an unexpected admission from students. "What to do!?" I ruminated.

"Why do you have to do anything at all?" my wife asked.

Because a teacher can't just give some assignment, take it up, reprimand the students on it, then let it float of into oblivion. In the end, I'll probably take the easy way out for myself: say, "I understand it this time, and won't make you redo it, nor will I give you failing grades for the work turned in." After all, less work for me.

But the desire for blood did rise again, the next lesson.

It's a tough class, in other words.

I've always had a strange relationship with "tough" classes. At some point, I usually storm back to the teachers' room saying, "I hate that class," and then a few days later say, "That's not just a bad class after all. I kind of like them, in fact." By their final year, I often find myself liking those classes, usually because we've fought our way to a sort of equilibrium.

But it's important to point out that the class does not represent the students. In a weird way that I never would have understood before being a teacher, a class is without a doubt much more than the sum of the students in it.

Some of the students in the class that so angered me are among my favorite students. (Yes, yes, teachers shouldn't have favorites, but we're only human.) Understand: they're not my favorite students because they're such hardworking angels. Indeed, often some of these favorites even contribute to the problem.

Classes simply have their own dynamic, independent of any given student in it. It's frustrating, precisely because it's somewhat uncontrollable.

There are checks and balances, but it remains out of the control of any one teacher.

It's not mob psychology, in other words.

The End of [Herbert Armstrong’s] World

Sunday 16 January 2005

The end of the world came for Herbert Armstrong nineteen years ago today.

He'd been predicting the end of the world for some time, starting back in the thirties. World War Two, he declared, would end with "the Second Coming of Christ!" It ended with the Iron Curtain, but never mind.

He then updated his prediction: 1975. He even wrote a "book," for lack of a better term, called 1975 in Prophecy. Once again, Jesus was late for his own party.

Armstrong, founder of the now-evangelical, then-cultic Worldwide Church of God, had a fondness for the number nineteen. It was somehow of some Biblical significance. "Nineteen-year time cycles" and such. So here it is, nineteen years after the end of his world, and we're still bumbling along.

The fact that Armstrong never got it right, and in fact failed in two predictions of Jesus' return (not to mention a host of other failed predictions), hasn't killed the hydra of Armstrongism. There are still true believers out there, waiting eagerly for the end of the world that's supposed to come any day now. Men like Roderick Meredith, Gerald Flurry, and David Pack make the most of them, convincing their followers ("sheep," as they like to call them) to donate thousands of dollars to their sects in return for a guarantee of personal safety when "the Tribulation" begins in "five to fifteen years."

The Philadelphia Church of God published a year ago its own thoughts about the legacy of Herbert Armstrong.

It's been "five to fifteen years" for forty years. Armstrong's been dead an entire "19-year time cycle." But cultic thinking and the need for security create a seeming perpetual motion machine out of Herbert Armstrong's teachings. The world is a better place without Armstrong, but his ignorance continue to haunt.

The question of just who Armstrong was used to haunt me a great deal. The question of identity was the question of sincerity. In other words, did he really believe his own heresy? In still other words, was he consciously fleecing his believers? This simple question -- was he a True Believer -- affects all other aspects of how we view him. It's makes it a question of either being an uneducated but sincere man who got caught up in his own growing power and wealth, or being callously manipulative and evil.

Everyone who's ever been affected by Armstrong and come to reject his heresy has to answer that question. I'm not sure I've worked out my own answer. I probably never will. Unfortunately, I'll probably never stop trying to work it out -- the obsession factor.

The legacy, if it can even be called that, of Armstrong is dying outside the circles of people who were directly affected by his heresy. Before he died, Armstrong managed to visit with all sorts of kings and dignitaries. Supporters say it's because he was such a great, noble man; critics charge that he bought these audiences.

At his death, letters of condolence from leaders around the world:

Teddy Kollek, mayor of Jerusalem at the time, wrote, “One could only be deeply impressed by his vast efforts to promote understanding and peace among peoples. His good deeds were felt in many corners of the world.” The mayor of Pasadena called him “a giant of a man.” The Israeli ambassador to the U.S. called him “an inspiring religious and public and educational personality.” The king of Thailand considered him a “close and valuable friend.” The king of Nepal said he was “dedicated to the cause of serving humanity.” (Philadelphia Trumpet)

"He was a great man," everyone in his church thought when he died, "And the whole world shares in our grief." The letters from leaders (even Reagan sent a letter) were proof of Armstrong's worldwide impact. They knew him; they met with him; they sought his advice -- the world reeled from the loss.

And now? How many know of him? If I were to stand at a street corner and take a poll in downtown Manhattan, who would know whom I'm talking about?

Virtually none, I would imagine.

The day before

Friday 14 January 2005

The trouble with the day before is that no one knows he's experiencing a "day before" until it becomes the day after.

Nineteen years ago it was a "day before" for about 100,000 people.

It was the day before the end of one man's world.

Tomorrow, life starts again for thousands, but they don't know it. Tomorrow, everything changes for the select few, but no one knows it. The changes are so sudden that it's only in sum that they make any sense, make any difference.

God Holding His Breath on Borrowed Time

Thursday 13 January 2005

Until I noticed the reference to God being "blue."

Thus I left things hanging.

Many words in Polish have dual meanings. Nothing new there -- English is loaded with them, my students like to point out.

"Niebieski" in Polish is derived from the word "niebo," which is "sky" or "heaven." Immediately we get into trouble, because the sky is a physical, observable phenomenon, while heaven is, at best, theological conjecture.

With such a start, meanings can only slide into more silliness.

The ontological status of the meaning of "niebo" aside, it gets more confusing when we throw the adjectival form into the mix. As expected, "niebieski" means "heavenly."

However, "niebieski," as you first learn it in a Polish course, would be "blue."

Hence, whenever I'm in Mass and hear that we should now direct our prayers "do niebieskiego ojca," I can't help but conjure up images of blue deities even though I know the priest is just telling us to direct our prayers to our "heavenly father."

There are other slippery words in Polish.

"Pożyczyć" is undoubtedly my favorite. It means, "lend."

And "borrow."

[Short pause.]

Exactly.

At first, that seems like saying "xidhb" in some language means "black" and "white." "Lend" and "borrow" have such intrinsically different, though related, meanings that it's difficult to comprehend that a language exists that represents both ideas with the same word. But it's really not that different: lending and borrowing both involve a temporary transaction of a given object, with the implicit understanding of said article's eventual return.

What English throws into the mix is the ownership information. By using the word "borrow," I make it clear, without any context, that I am lacking something. By using the word "lend," though, I make it clear that I am the owner.

Ownership in "pożyczy" is, of course, differentiated; only it's done grammatically.

  • "pożyczyć‡ komuś›" is lend. "Komuś›" is the dative case for "ktoś›," which means "someone." And dative case, for those who don't know, is the case used in inflected languages to indicate the indirect article.
  • "pożyczyć od kogoś›" is borrow. "Od kogoś›" means "from someone," which makes the direction of the transaction (and hence ownership) clear.

Beginning students (and, to my dismay, students with some experience with English) often confuse these two English words, and come up with, "Can you borrow me your pen for a moment?" or "I can borrow you this or that."

More linguistic ambiguity:

  • The words for "lock," "zipper," and "castle" are all the same: zamek.
  • The words for "pigeon" and "dove" are the same, resulting in students coming up with an interesting construction: Pigeons of Peace.

But linguistic ambiguity is a two-way street, and soon I'll delve into the wild world of "things that mess with Polish students' heads."

Honesty

Wednesday 12 January 2005

Sometimes students stop me dead in my lesson, and I stand there, unable to think what to do next. I'm not talking about "stupid" questions, or even behavior problems. Rather, I'm referring to that tendency all students have to say or ask something that just makes you reflect.

The other day I was fed up with a class and its behavior -- not even putting forth the slightest effort in a group speaking activity.

Now, I know it's artificial. I realize when I give them a task to do in English, they could accomplish it immediately in Polish. But as I ask them, "What for?" Usually they cooperate. Sometimes they don't.

They other day, they didn't.

In retaliation (and that's really the right word, I think), I assigned them a lot of homework. Basically, they were to translate the entire text we were reading into Polish.

I got the expected response: a chorus of "Proszę pana!" ("Please, sir!") I stood firm, though, and refused to relent. "The whole thing," I told them.

As they were filing into the classroom the next day, I could sense something was up. Then one lad stomped in, flopped down in his chair, and gave me a glare. He violently opened his book bag, jerked his materials out, and slammed them on the desk.

He's a theatrical boy, this lad (we'll call him Maciej), and so I regularly would have paid no heed. But the general atmosphere in the class was, as I said, strange, so I had my guard up.

Roll checked, then my usual line: "Show me the homework," in the silly way that Cuba Gooding, Jr. did, sort of, in Jerry Maguire. And so they start pulling out a typed translation -- a first, to be honest.

They started handing it in, and it hit: it's the same paper, photocopied twenty times.

"Michał, do you have your homework?" I ask one boy.

"No," he said. Another in the back piped up, "He didn't have the twenty groszy for copying."

Shock -- here they are, admitting it.

"What?"

"Yes, we copied it all, sir," replied Boy in the Back Row.

Then Agata began to explain, "See, sir, we had a big test in math today, and we didn't have any time to do the English homework. So Maciej typed it into the computer, ran it through a translator, and we all photocopied it."

I glanced down at the work. "It's the product of a computer translation, that's for sure," I thought

"We have homework in English every day," Agata continued. "We don't have many grades in math, and this was very important."

"Maciej, how long did it take you to do this?" I asked.

"Two hours," he grumbled.

"And the math test?"

"Pała," he replied. I probably don't need to translate that.

So where did it leave me?

The facts were simple:

  1. It was an unreasonable assignment, given in wrath, so to speak, rather than from some pedagogical motivation.
  2. They were honest about it.
  3. Their reason for not doing the assignment was fairly compelling.
  4. It didn't seem fair to punish them, or even get angry.

I simply stood there, thinking, "What to do? What to do?" I wanted to be fair, but I also had to save face. With some classes, face and authority are equivocal for a high school teacher, so I had to strike a balance.

Frying Mr. Teddy

Tuesday 11 January 2005

Recently I mentioned the absurdity of the “Freedom Fries” wave sweeping across Patriotic Probably-Mostly-Republican America. Language is a living thing, and we can’t read current politics into a word’s etymology, I argued.

An amusing example of this in Polish: the word “pan.”

In modern usage, it has the meaning of “mister,” as in, “Mr. S” being “Pan S.” “Mrs.” is “Pani,” and on a side not, I know from an Indian friend that “pani” is Hindi for “water.”

Linguistic webs aside, “pan” would also be translated to French as “vous,” or to German as “Sie.” So when speaking to a stranger in Polish, you speak to them in third person singular out of respect. (Unless you live in the mountains down south and are speaking a dialect, and then it’s like French: second person plural.)

Armed with only this knowledge and some elementary Polish, you’ll be in for an amusing surprise when you go to Mass, because you’ll hear God referred to as “Pan Bóg.”

“Mr. God?” was my first surprised reaction.

More digging.

“Pan” also, and originally, means something like “master,” in the sort of 18th-century, English manor sense. So the patriotic Mickiewicz poem Pan Tadeusz wouldn’t be translated, as a Pole joked with me, “Mr. Teddy,” but rather, “Master Tad” (Source).

And so now “Pan Bóg” makes since: it’s simply “Lord,” or even “the Lord God.” When I learned all this, I stopped snickering under my breath whenever I rarely attended Mass with a friend.

Until I noticed the reference to God being “blue.”

Venerable Southern Institute

Monday 10 January 2005

Willful Expose mentioned recently that bastion of liberal education, Bob Jones University.

Ah, Bob Jones, where interracial dating was only recently permitted.

Well, Willful pointed out a lot of the absurdities of the regulations there. Some of my favorites:

  • Residence hall students may not watch videos above a G rating when visiting homes in town and may not attend movie theaters.
  • Contemporary Christian music is not permitted (e.g., Michael W. Smith, Stephen Curtis Chapman, WOW Worship, and so forth).
  • [Men's] sideburns should not extend past the middle of the ear. Men are expected to remain clean-shaven.
  • All wireless access to the Internet is forbidden since all Internet use must go through the University's filtered access.

Basically, as Willful pointed out, a barbed-wire fence.

In her original post, she failed to mention one regulation that best shows BJU's southern mentality:

All weapons must be turned in for storage. Trigger locks are required for pistols. Fireworks are not permitted on campus. (Source) Guns are as intregal to the southern mentality as grits. While it's completely "rational" to forbid dates without chaperones, trampling on Second Amendment rights is just out of the question. Why, there's no amendment regardin' the holdin' a hands, but son, we gotta God given right -- right, I say -- to keep an' bear arms.

The south is, after all, where you're most likely to see gun racks and to have students miss school on the opening day of some given hunting season. So while parents are not likely to raise hell -- Godly, Christian hell, but hell nonetheless -- about little Jamie not being allowed to access the internet with his wireless modem, they just might when Bubba Jones says, "Now, ya'll gotta leave them there Colts and Winchesters at home, y'hear?"

Dziennik

Monday 10 January 2005

Each class has one. All teachers are responsible for keeping it up to date. Students have a right to look at it at just about any time. And the Ministry of Education can cause a lot of headaches if it doesn’t like what it sees in it.

So what is this mysterious thing called a dziennik?

I’m tempted to say it’s a direct consequence of The Fall, God’s punishment for all evil on earth, or other such silliness, but I’ll simply say that it’s one of the most annoying things about teaching in Poland.

“Dziennik” is Polish for “journal,” and The Dziennik (imagine a Charlton Heston-esque booming voice saying that) is the grade book for each class. It is the record of the entire class for the entire year, and keeping it up to date is the biggest headache I know of. All grades for all classes (biology, English, physics) are in this marvel of modern stupidity as well as the personal information of each student, and in addition, attendance is marked in one portion.

The most irritating and annoying part of it is the slots for lesson topics. For each lesson, I must write the topic in a special little slot. Now this doesn’t seem like much, but it can be an incredible pain in the ass. Teachers take the dziennik to class, and it is always bouncing through the school–one never really knows where it is. So you forget to write your topics one day.

Then that one day becomes two. Then three. Four. A week.

Then comes the fun.

The Polish equivalent of the homeroom teacher comes and points out all the slots where you forgot to write the topic, and you’re supposed to get out your notebook, look up that day, and write the appropriate topic.

Of course I write all my topics in English, so the obvious struck me long ago: “Only [Basia] (the other English teacher) knows enough English to understand what I’m writing in here. I can write anything I want.” So that’s what I started doing.

After that, topics included, “General Chaos and an Attempt to Keep Them Interested Forty-Five Minutes” and “Stuff.” Song lyrics can provide good topics: “Looking for someone, I guess . . .” or “Looking Over that Silly Four-Leaf Clove.” I suppose it’s immature, but we’re all allowed to be childish every now and then, right?

Mind, I didn’t do this regularly–just when I’d forgotten to write the topic or (more likely) the dziennik wasn’t available at the time.

Some years ago, when I did this more often, the other English teacher finally saw me doing it, and she asked me to stop. “I’ll be the one who gets in trouble,” she protested. At that time I didn’t speak much Polish, really, and she was the go-between.

Reasonably enough, she didn’t want to get yelled at.

I toned it down a bit, something like “Present Continuous in Questions and Cow Tipping.”–a combination of the two.

In theory, she explained, someone from the Ministry of Education might know enough English to understand what I wrote, and then the stuff would hit the fan.

I thought to myself, “If the Ministry of Education doesn’t have anything better to do than to sit and read every single topic in some little village’s school’s dziennik, then I think whoever was reading it might appreciate the humor.” But I said nothing. And wrote for my topic that day, “Telephone Vocabulary and Other Silliness.”

Metablogging

Saturday 08 January 2005

CW Fisher wrote about the proliferation of “I” in blogs, then amended those thoughts with one of the best pieces I’ve read about blogging. In a comment, Isaac: wrote,

Fascinating stuff… this whole blog phenom just hasn’t straightened itself out yet, so who knows what kind of writing to call it? And remember – rules for writing should increase accessibility and help convey messages; not serve as prescriptive left-over remnants of the past.

Isaac is right – this is an entirely new form of writing. It’s certainly spawned its fair share of vocabulary. Blog, blogger, blogging, blogosphere, blog rolling and many others have in a short period of time gone from oblivion to cliche. I hate all those words – they sound almost obscene, but I’m too lazy to go about re-inventing vocabulary.

I’m new to the web log scene, and before then, I’d never even really read that many of them. I started writing online because a friend bought me the domain name and, already having a web site, I had to so something with it. I’m not new to daily writing, though, as I’ve kept a journal for over twelve years, amassing close to two million words in that time.

Yet blogging is not journaling.

Nor, as Isaac implied, is it like any other form of writing.

Privacy issues and instant, world-wide accessibility aside, there is one thing about blogging that makes it different from almost all other forms of writing. It’s the activity I’m engaged in right now – metablogging. Blogging about blogging.

Since I’ve been exploring the blog world, I’ve found that we tend to write an amazing amount about what we and others are doing to the blogosphere. Of course it is a world of pundits musing, rambling, ranting, and a host of other blog-clichés about anything from seeing Star Wars trailers online to grieving the loss of a wife, but what I see more often than anything else is blogging about blogging.

The blogging world is a giant printer cable swallowing its own tail, very often publishing about publishing.

How boring.

He says in self-indictment.

So why do we all do it? We’re all enamored with this new technology we’re creating–writing about blogging is standing before a mirror. It’s preening. And it’s the one thing all bloggers have in common. That’s why the post I’ve written on blog-related topics have gotten the most comments. Not everyone cares about Poland or religion (my two favorite topics, truth be told), but most people who bump through care about blogging.

Yet this is somewhat logical, this metablogging, because blogs cannot exist in a vacuum. How many blogs, after all, are there which have no links to other blogs? Before the advent of Blog Explosion and similar sites, blogging was a more organic activity. Manually inserting links, then blog rolling was how everyone kept track of blogs, and how everyone else discovered new ones. Blog Explosion tends to make it a bit more commercial, especially given the fact that we can buy credits. This explains why we see “Pro-Life Blogs” appear time and time again on Blog Explosion. Throw together a banner and we all can have our cyber billboards.

Yet despite Blog Explosion and similar tools, checking out your favorite blogs’ links is still the best way to find interesting reading, and so we’re all still dependent on each other, which goes some way in explaining why we love to blog about blogging.

The question of why we blog about blogging is overshadowed by the larger, more blog-existential question: Why do we even keep a blog at all? If you’re reading this, chances are you keep a blog. Why? Most people blog like they live: without thinking.

I’m not well-read on blogs (probably never will be–there’s too much crap out there), but among all those I’ve ready, only once have I found an expression of the philosophy behind the blogging, an answer to the question, “Why am I doing this?”

Fr. Thomas Dowd, keeper of the blog Waiting in Joyful Hope writes that the philosophy behind his blog is simple:

One item, once per day, inspired by something that happened that day. [. . .] Sometimes my blog will have a direct reflection on my day, other times it will seem to be a more “theoretical” reflection, but I can guarantee that it is (almost) always inspired by something from that day.

A philosophy – why I’m doing this. It’s a great idea. When I ask myself, I’ve no answer.

Because I got the domain name? Hardly a reason.

I must come up with some better reason to continue.

Pour Marketing

Thursday 06 January 2005

The front of the shirt reads, “ghotic,” written in a font befitting the dust jacket of an Anne Rice novel. Down the sleeves and on the back there is a stupefying message, intended, I’m sure, to be mystifying or even dreadful and chilling:

This shirt, found at outdoor markets around southern Poland, is all the rage at the moment. It seems that at least thirty percent of the girls at school have one.

It seems strange that manufacturers want to incorporate “cool” foreign languages into their design, but “cool” text with such idiotic mistakes defeats the purpose. Why not just put gibberish on shirts if comprehensible meaning has no value? Why not put some squiggles and dots and call it Arabic? Or go to a Chinese language website and pick some of the characters at random?

This is the story of our times, when style consistently trumps content. Image is everything. First impressions are almost always visible, and pop culture is always dictating in which form the initial impressions should be in order to be considered “good.” Or even “cool.” That explains why so many of my female students wear clothes that bare their midriffs even when there’s a half meter of snow on the ground, and pluck their eyebrows within a millimeter of extinction. Chinese culture crippled its women with foot binding; Polish culture freezes them and has them running around with nonsense written on their clothes.

Ginger Snaps

Thursday 06 January 2005

Despite the stereotypical relationship prevelant in Western culture, I get on very well with my mother-in-law. She’s a retired Russian teacher who gardens during the summer and crochettes through winter — fresh veggies, beautiful flowers, and handmade Christmas tree ornaments.

I like her a lot.

She’s not very technologically savvy, though. We all love her, but — bless her sweet Polish heart — she just doesn’t feel comfortable with much of anything electronic.

My in-laws got their first microwave oven a couple of years ago (?!). It’s a little, basic job, with a manual timer egg-timer type mechanism and limited settings.

I could sense disaster in the offing.

One evening, my not-yet-then-wife and I were sitting upstairs when I caught a whiff of something burning. “Something happened down in the kitchen,” I thought, expecting the faint odor to disappear rather quickly. Instead, it grew stronger. We headed downstairs to see what was going on.

In the kitchen, on a stool in front of the microwave, sat my dear not-yet-then-mother-in-law, fretting and wringing her hands.

“Oh dear! Oh no!” she was muttering.

Seems she’d wanted to warm up some ginger-snaps for a snack and, not knowing how long it would take, set the egg-timer microwave to something like three minutes.

She didn’t know she could just turn it back to zero to turn it off.

She didn’t know she could just open the door to turn it off.

She didn’t know she could, in a worst-case scenario, unplug the microwave.

So she sat there, watching the ginger-snaps slowly carbonize, worrying herself silly about how much smoke was in the kitchen and promising herself never again to use the microwave.

Hel

Wednesday 05 January 2005

New Year’s Break

Saturday 01 January 2005

I’m in Hel now. That’s not a comment on my current state, but my geographical reality.

Back in a few days.

Oh, all the best for the new year.

Overnight Train to Hel

Thursday 30 December 2004

Names

Wednesday 29 December 2004

My name is Gary. My parents told me that when they first saw me, they just knew I was "Gary."

There are lots of Garys out there.

  • Gary Kasparov
  • Gary Sinise
  • Gary Moore
  • Gary Oldman
  • Gary Cherone
  • Gary Glitter
  • Gary Busey
  • Gary, Indiana
  • Gary, West Virginia
  • Gary, Minnesota
  • Gary, South Dakota

So apparently it's a popular name.

Nonetheless, I used to hate that name, particularly in junior high. I also hated my hair cut then, as well. Not man-ish enough. I wanted a Ted Danson do.

What was I thinking?

Changing my hair turned out to be easier than changing my name, which didn't happen until college. Fresh start, new faces -- I can be anyone I want. Armed with that knowledge, I tried going by my middle name: Lawrence.

It lasted a couple of weeks.

I've often wondered at stage names. Do Sting's close friends call him "Sting" or "Gordon?" Is Bono "Bono" to his wife, or just plain Paul? Does Adam Ant's mother still call him "Stuart?" When Eric Clapton was working with Babyface, did they call each other "Clapp" and "Kenneth?" Would Lauren Bacall be as famous as "Betty Joan Perske?" If you call Erykah Badu "Erica Wright," does she answer? "Full list of stage names.

The trouble was, I could never remember who I was.

Someone would call my name and I would continue walking, oblivious to the fact that someone was trying to get my attention.

Names seem to merge with your self, and it's difficult to separate "you" from your name.

The only reason I could start going by "Lawrence" was because no one knew me at college as "Gary." It would have been difficult to convince everyone in high school to call me "Lawrence," for I'd always been "Gary" to them.

Imagine calling the color white "blue" for the some arbitrary reason -- it wouldn't work, because white's, well, "white."

When I gave up on the "Lawrence" nonsense, a few people persisted in calling me "Lawrence" for a little while. That in turn made for a stupid situation, because I had to explain:

  1. that I'd always been called Gary;
  2. that I only switched to "Lawrence" at college;
  3. that I'd not been able to get used to it; and,
  4. that I'd decided to go back to my "original" name.

"Why'd you want to change in the first place?"

If I'd known what my name sounds like in Polish, and that I'd end up spending years here, I probably would have stuck to the Lawrence. "Garnek" is Polish for "pot" (the kind you cook in, not the kind you smoke), and so when you say, "I'll wash the dishes," you of course use the plural form: garnki. Or you can use the diminutive form, which sounds like...

When my wife introduced me to her grandmother, granny's reaction to my name is, "No, really -- what's his name." After all, what how would you react to being told your granddaughter is dating "Pots?"

Still, I'm glad I stuck with "Gary." It at least lets me make jokes after lunch.