Humor

Have you ever performed on stage or given a speech?

Daily writing prompt
Have you ever performed on stage or given a speech?
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Have you ever performed on stage or given a speech?
I began teaching in 1966 and continued until 2009. In those 43 years of academia, I performed on stage almost every day and gave speeches at least once or twice per class. I began as a top down teacher – I had all the knowledge, and I shared it with the individuals in the class room who had oh-so-much-less knowledge than me.

One morning, later in my career, I looked at myself when I was shaving. I looked deep into my own eyes and asked myself the vital question – “What are you teaching?” I looked at myself, razor in had. My mind was as blank as the look on my face, covered as it was with shaving soap. Then I awoke to a new world – I was not teaching a subject, I was teaching people, real, live human beings who were searching for knowledge, real knowledge, not just book knowledge.

Up until that point I had looked upon teaching in the same way as most of my colleagues did, filling empty heads with knowledge. As one of my old professors, in my first university back in the UK, once told us, after a senate house lunch swilled down with expensive sherry – “Knowledge is that which passes from my notes to your notes without ever passing through anybody’s head.”

That was the day I got down off the stage. I stopped giving speeches – aka lectures – and I asked the people in my class what they wanted to know. The answers surprised me. That was the day I began my teaching career, my real career, teaching people to become better learners, self-teachers, and hence better people. I stopped teaching my subject, and started teaching my students. I taught them how to teach themselves, how to assess the teaching material they were using, how to express themselves verbally and in writing, how to think critically for themselves, how to question everything, including me.

In short, I no longer taught them. I introduced them to Chaos Theory, how to teach themselves, how to assess their own work, how to develop the skills necessary for life-long learning, and how to love the pursuit of knowledge, for its own sake and for their own self-development.

The day I made that decision, I left the stage, retired as an actor and a speech maker, and became a teacher, a real, live teacher, of real, live human beings. It was one of the best days of my life. When I meet my former students, I realize that the stones I cast that day are still rippling round the universal pond of knowledge. Long may those ripples continue to enrich the world of teaching and learning.

What could you do less of?

Daily writing prompt
What could you do less of?
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What could you do less of?
I shall deliberately misinterpret that prompt / question and answer it my way. I could do less of listening to stupid adverts, repeated ad nauseam, sometimes with gimmicky tunes – one to two lines maximum – again and again, all day, every day. Surf the channels to escape an ad, and what do you get? A synchronized set up where almost every channel is blasting out the same, or similar, ads at the same time. Have you noticed that when you leave the TV room, and retreat to the kitchen to get some limited peace, the ads follow you because the volume is turned up at ad time so you just can’t escape.

I remember my grandfather, back in the sixties, with the advent of ITV in Wales – the Independent TV channel that used ads – sitting before the TV set, his foot up before the screen and his fingers in his ears so he would not be able to see or hear those ads. Alas, once heard, seldom forgotten, and I can still sing most of those meaningless jingles heard back in my childhood. How it I hate when I go shopping in the supermarket and shoppers tunelessly whistle a TV ad as they shuffle along behind their carts. Alas, ad free programming, all too often, is either expensive or non-existent.

And what about those telephone calls when they put you on hold until the next agent is free to attend to you? I won’t mention names, because I don’t want to get sued, but I guess we have all had the same experience. I had a ninety minute online wait one day, with horrible music, an exhortation to stay on the line so I wouldn’t lose my place in the queue aka line-up, and a 90 second ad that glorified the joys of the company’s product, repeated once every five minutes. I suffered through that ad 18 times on that one call alone. Another local firm gave me the similar treatment, except that it was a one minute ad, repeated once every ninety seconds. I suffered through 10 repetitions in a wait of 15 minutes, got fed up, and hung up the phone.

Look at the peaceful scene above. That’s the view from my bedroom window in Island View. Even the crows are absent, and the early morning silence, like the sun, is golden. Two birds with one stone – a morning person or an evening person? A morning person with dawns like this, but an evening person when a sunset like this one miraculously occurs.

My Knapsack

My Knapsack

Throughout my childhood,
I carried a knapsack on my back.
Into it I stuffed my darkest secrets.
Along with all my dirty washing
they filled every cranny and nook.

Words of hate, carved into my life-slate,
shuffled and cut, but unchanged,
unchangeable, remained engraved
on the tombstone I took from above
 the hole I dug to bury the casket
in which I hid the shards of my heart.

On a rainy day, when push came
to shove, I left my childhood home
to wander the world, alone, on my own.

I walked to the station, boarded a train
and never went back home again.

At journey’s end, I left my knapsack
and its contents in the luggage rack.
I never want to see them again.

Comment:
“Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag, and smile, smile, smile.” My maternal grandfather used to sing me this song from WWI. “While you’ve a Lucifer to light you fag, smile, boys, that’s the style.” I wonder how many people now remember what a Lucifer is, let alone a ‘fag’, in that sense of the word. It has, of course, morphed into many other meanings, some of them not necessarily pleasant. I remember my grandfather, standing in the kitchen, before the coal fire, and saying “I remember when Wills’ Woodbines were a penny a packet.” Wills’ is still with us, but may not be for much longer. I can’t remember when I last saw a Woodbine. I certainly never smoked one, in fact, I never ever smoked at all. But as for that kit bag aka knapsack aka backpack aka rucksack, well, put all your troubles in it, tie them up tight, and take it somewhere safe where you can leave it and forget about it, and then start life again. “Good-bye old friend, I am on the mend. And that’s the end.”

As for the painting, by my good friend Moo, that shows The Fall – Pre-Lapsarian / Post-Lapsarian – when all the devils, demons, and black angels were tumbled out of Paradise and abandoned to the depths below, where, alas, they still roam. So, if you meet any of them along the way, shove them in that old kit bag and get rid of them too. You’ll feel much better afterwards.

The Banks of the Seine

Banks of the Seine

Gnawing at the carcass of an old song,
my mind, a mindless dog, chasing its tail,
turning in circles, snapping at the fragment
of its own flesh, flag-flourished before it,
tournons, tournons, tournons toujours,
as Apollinaire phrased it, on a day
when I went dogless, walking on a mind-leash
before the Parisian bouquinistes who sold,
along the banks of the Seine, such tempting
merchandise, and me, hands in pockets,
penniless, tempted beyond measure,
by words, set out on pages, wondrous,
pages that, hands free, I turned, and turned,
plucking words, here and there, like a sparrow,
or a pigeon, picks at the crumbs thrown away
by pitying tramps, kings, fallen from chariots,
as Eluard wrote, and me, a pauper among riches,
an Oliver Twist, rising from my trance, hands out,
pleading, “Please, sir, can I have some more?”

Comment:
This is a fusion / confusion, if you like, of The Kingston Trio’s song – The Seine – with a quote each from Guillaume Apollinaire – Alcools – and Paul Eluard – Il ne m’est Paris que d’Elsa, and Francisco de Quevedo’s – El Buscon – and a tip of the old chapeau nouveau to R. S. Thomas and Charles Dickens. Fools rush in, I am afraid, where angels fear to tread. Go on. Rush right in. Sort it all out. I double-dog dare you – and thank you for that one, Jude.

What is one thing you would change about yourself?

Daily writing prompt
What is one thing you would change about yourself?
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What is the one thing you would change about yourself?

Only one thing? I remember a story about a boy who boarded in a monastery school, and there, like the monks, they all changed their dirty habits once a week. So, is a dirty habit a thing? Probably is, if its a brown, sackcloth habit, tightened around the waist with a white cord by a man wearing open-toed sandals and no socks. So, there we go, once a week, on Wednesdays, like those monks, I also change my dirty habits. I also change my shoes, my socks, my shirts, my sweaters, my jeans.

More important, as I grow older, I have permitted myself to change my mind as often as I like. So, yes, I also change my mind, and not just on Wednesdays. And I really do change it when, like my habits, it gets dirty. “Oooh, you’ve got a dirty mind, you have.” “Well, so I do. Never mind, I’ll just go and change it.”

“What did Big Ben say to the Leaning Tower of Pizza?” – I’ve got the time, if you’ve got the inclination.
“How many ears did Davy Crocket have?” – Three – a left ear, a right ear, and a wild front ear.
“What’s yellow and deadly?” – Shark infested custard.
“What’s black and deadly?” – A crow in a tree with an AK47.
“When is a door not a door?” – When it’s a jar.
“What time is it Eccles?” – “It’s eight o’clock.” “Here, how do you know it’s eight o’clock?” “I’ve got it written down on a piece of paper.” “What do you do if it’s not eight o’clock?” “I don’t look at the paper.”
“Ding-a-ling” – That’s my ear ringing. I’ll just pick it up and answer it.
“What’s the first sign of madness?” – Hairs in the palm of your hand. “What’s the second sign of madness?” – Looking for them.

So what is one thing I would change about myself? Possibly the absolute necessity to tell awfully bad jokes. Easy to say – I’ll probably keep adding to these as I remember more of them. Take care – you have been warned.

“How many – men – does it take to change a light bulb?” – Five. One to hold the bulb and four to turn the ladder. Jokes like these can be good or bad. Good because they are occasionally funny. Bad, because it so easy to insert an adjective before – men – and to turn the joke into something more devious and not necessarily very pleasant.

“And that is the end of the gnus,” said the lion on BBC television, as he licked his paws. “Enough, no more. It is not as sweet now, nor as sour, as it was before. Pass the chow mean, please.”

What are your two favorite things to wear?

Daily writing prompt
What are your two favorite things to wear?
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What are your two favorite things to wear?

What a strange question. I suppose it merits a strange answer. And the answer is – it depends. You see – I live in Atlantic Canada. Here we have several sayings. One from the Bay of Fundy is – “You don’t like this weather? Hang around five minutes. It will change.”

I had the snow blower prepped for winter a week or so ago. So, what are my two favorite things to wear when snow blowing? Only two? Hat, scarf, water-proof / wind-proof coat, thick gloves, scarf, warm socks, boots that keep out the water and the cold and that have soles that grip into the snow. You mean I have to choose two things from that lot? I just checked the calendar – it’s not April the First, you know.

In summer, when the Fundy Fog rolls in from the sea and wraps scarves of salty mist around the trees, and it becomes so cold, so damp, and so chilly so quickly – what are my two favorite things to wear? I guess you can double-check the list above and eliminate an item or two. But I wouldn’t chuck out too many.

And what about cross-country skiing? As the weather changes, and as you warm up, you need several layers of removable clothing that can be taken off, when you warm up, and placed back on when you hit the shade between the trees and you start to cool down. But only two items? What are you doing to me? And what about the wind-chill factor?

Once, when I walked the picket-line at -35C, we had all been pre-emptively locked out from my former place of employment, we were visited by Flying Pickets from the Northern Part of Canada. They had a saying: “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.” You notice they didn’t say anything about two items of clothing. I wonder why not?

So there you have it. Be prepared, I say. It always depends. And remember: “Never mind the weather / As long as we’re together.” Perhaps those two items might just be you and me! But then, we’re not clothing, are we? Not unless we are just rag dolls.

The Seeker

The Seeker

Weaver of words, I wander my weary way
across a field of snow, careful as I go
not to slip and fall into the depths that wait below.

I know them of old, those man-trap mine-shafts
where darkness dwells, hand in hand with despair.
I know only too well the weight of coal dust,
fine and thin, polluting lungs with unfiltered air.

How long will I have the courage and strength
to survive so deep beneath the surface
and to explore those depths at greater length?

Who would now, willingly, plunge, or dig
and delve so deep into the mines underground?
Ony the searcher, the seeker who knows that
in dark pits wondrous gems can still be found.

Comment:
I don’t really know why, but my thoughts are now appearing (more or less) in rhyme and often in sonnets. Well, Milton Acorn’s Jack Pine Sonnets, straggly and wild, like the Jack Pines of Canada’s East Coast. Sometimes I think that this is a new format for me. And then I realize it’s where I started so long ago – a rhyming poet. “In my beginning is my end.” I have indeed returned to my roots. But now they are Jack Pine roots, well settled here in this wonderful Maritime Province of New Brunswick, amid Jack Pine, rock, and winter snow.

Doubts

Doubts

At midnight,
when that dark owl calls,
I sip a bitter wine.

The thoughts I think
are not my thoughts,
how could they ever
be mine?

And yet they are
the thoughts I think,
and round and round
they twine.

They wrap me in
a thousand threads
and none of them
are mine.

Whose are they then,
these thoughts I think?
They do not come from me.

And yet they make me
double think
this person that is me,
and who I am,
and what I am,
and where I’m going to be.

Comment:
I guess that’s what happens when you finish your bottled sunshine (sol embotellado) before going to bed. The painting and the poem match up nicely though, ribbons of dark thought streaming through an empty head. Guessing and double-guessing, thinking and double-thinking, doubting and finding yourself inside that great cloud of unknowing in which you rarely know where you are going. Still, if you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there. Pen-y-Bont, anyone? Or Abertawe, Cas Newydd, Llandeilo, Caerfili, Rhiwbina, Treorci, Trebanog …

Fake News!

Fake News!

A long time ago, wrapped in the stifling chrysalis of academia, a friend of mine tried to flutter her wings by making a joke at a very serious conference. She was delivering a paper on one of my favorite Spanish poets, in which she examined the sundry variants of a sonnet that the poet first wrote in 1603, then re-wrote in 1613, revised again in 1627-28, and revised a couple more times before its final revision in 1643, about two years before his death (1645).

At the end of her paper, she was caught off-balance when faced by an apparently serious question from the audience “Did the poet make any more revisions after 1645?” In an effort at humor, she replied, “Well, actually, no. But when they were carrying his body to the church for the funeral, he popped his head out of the coffin and proclaimed in a loud voice ‘Hell, no, I won’t go. I haven’t finished revising the poem yet.’”

This off-hand academic pseudo-joke was greeted with a babble of excited voices and an elderly fellow scholar clapped his hands, exclaimed “Wonderful!” and, in the ensuing silence, asked her what documentary evidence she had for this astonishing revelation, hitherto unknown to the academic world. If she was off-balance before, she was clearly reeling at this stage: a punch-drunk amateur academic swaying before the hypnotic fists of Dr. Muhamad Ali. She smiled sweetly, said she would produce the proper evidence at the appropriate time, and left the podium.

Later, sharing drinky-poos with the some fellow scholars, I listened to her as she made excuses for her strange sense of humor and I smiled as she explained the situation to them. They were not amused. “You, madam, are an acknowledged expert in your field,” one of them told her. “Your fellow academics trust you and believe you when you make such statements. You must be very careful about what you say.”

Fake news, indeed!

Now I must make an apology on my own behalf. Alas, if you read one of the blog items I posted recently, you might be puzzled by the Gazunda tree. I am forced to admit there is no such thing, to the best of my knowledge, as a Gazunda tree, not in the main square in Oaxaca, nor anywhere else in the world. Of course, when it rains people have been known to go under certain trees to use them as an umbrella and thus to take shelter from the rain, but this is the full extent of the origin of the name: the tourist or the golfer or the walker or whatever goes under (say it fast — Gazunda) the tree when it rains. There is nothing more to the Gazunda tree than that little joke.

And this brings us to a really serious series of questions: how do we know things are true? How do we establish the truth of a statement? Why do we believe some people and not others, some facts and not others? How do we choose between a series of alternate truths all of them presented as factual realities when, in actual fact, not all of them are true? This leads us on to the basic foundations on which our knowledge is built: how do we distinguish between scientifically established facts, and hearsay, and gossip if we are ignorant of basic scientific knowledge and principles?

To this we must add the triple increases that threaten us. These are (1) the increase in the availability of real scientific knowledge that bombards us every day with fresh facts and new information; (2) the increase in sources of information and the easy access to those sources; (3) the fact that many of these sources, far too many in my opinion, present us with a fictional or heavily biased version of a pseudo- or alternate truth. And yes, in light of telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, we are indeed entitled to question the existence and indeed the very meaning of these words: truth and alternate truths.

Such questioning is present in the writings of some of the early-modern philosophers. This is exemplified in the following passage that comes, I think, from René Descartes:

“There is no earth, no heaven, no extended body, no magnitude, no place and that nonetheless I perceive these things and they seem good to me. And this is the most harrowing possibility of all, that our world is commanded by a deity who deceives humanity and we cannot avoid being misled for there may be systematic deception and then all is lost. And even the most reliable information is dubious, for we may be faced with an evil genius who is deceiving us and then there can be no reassurance in the foundations of our knowledge.”

“There can be no reassurance in the foundations of our knowledge.” These are chilling words and present us with the unfortunate fact that unless we ourselves, each one of us, to the best of our abilities search out the absolute truth about all we hear, say, and do, we are indeed lost and we must wander in the dark with no light to guide us. ‘A sad life this, when beneath the axe, we have no time to check our facts.’ 

What is good about having a pet?

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What is good about having a pet?
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What is good about having a pet?

Good heavens – what a strange question. Here in New Brunswick – Nouveau Brunswick, Canada’s only bilingual province, I guess it depends on whether you are Anglophone or Francophone. Nothing like a nice, healthy ‘pet’, if you are a Francophone, though you have to be wary, very wary, of them at my advancing age. And nothing like some ‘pets de ma soeur‘ for breakfast, with a nice cafe au lait, unless you would rather ‘un bon bin de beans‘.

On the other hand, if you are Anglophone, then the term takes on a different series of meanings, doesn’t it, my pet, I ask my wife. Happily, she neither woofs, nor woofs her cookies in reply. And if this is all double-Dutch to you, don’t worry. It’s all tied up with discourse analysis and the meaning of meaning. Don’t be so mean! What do you mean by that?

I suppose we are all talking about cats and dogs, and budgerigars – not budgie smugglers – and other two and four-legged friends, along with sliding ones, like baby boa-constrictors, that can – like pythons in Florida, grow to an enormous size. Such an enormous size, in fact, that you end up being the pet when the monster rules, and your flush your once-a-baby, now a problem, alligator down the New York toilet to grow even bigger and become a danger to the men and women who patrol the subterranean sewage systems.

And don’t forget Julius Caesar, the pet parrot who told the burglar, in an Irish accent, that “Jaysuss” was watching him” as the burglar tried to burgle the house. Alas, Julius Caesar failed to warn the house-breaker that Jaysuss was in fact a huge, pet Rottweiler that was standing – we stand on guard for thee – right behind the unfortunate man. Who needs a burglar alarm and an AI system, when you have two or three pet, and not petits, Rotties patrolling the house 24/7? Mind you, I wouldn’t call them pets, those Rotten Rotties, though they may cause them in certain people, and very generous ones at that.