As my students are preparing their term papers, I explain they have to do foundational research. One example I give is of a student who proposed amending a law about Puerto Rico, except she didn’t look up how to do that, and instead spent a page explaining how the Constitution gets amended…

Another example I share is how a student argued UCD should have a mental health awareness day. She hadn’t Googled, so she didn’t know UCD has a whole month, much more than she was asking for. This student was present for those discussions.

Topic proposal day: UC Davis should allow X.

My comment: It already does. Here’s a link to the form.

Thesis workshop day: Student: UC Davis should allow X.

Me: Ummm, we already do, as I explained already. You could argue for a modification, but you can’t argue they should allow something they already allow.

Full paper workshop day: Student: UC Davis should allow X.

Me: Last warning: as I’ve noted twice now, they already do. This thesis won’t work.

Finished essay: Student: UC Davis should allow X.

Me: [checks this box in the essay rubric]: The student may not have done the fundamental research for the paper, leading to inaccurate statements. In other words, the paper may, intentionally or not, provide misinformation.

Yesterday was the birthday (1882) of John Holland, my great-great-grandfather. Although we never met, we were briefly alive at the same time.

John’s daughter, Bessie, helped raise me when I lived with my grandparents. Her house was across the dirt road from theirs. I ran back and forth across that road all day, and I got to have her in my life into my twenties. She got to be a great-great grandmother for several years.

One of my favorite paintings my Grand(Daddy) did is of John, his grandfather. In January, when we discovered a cache of hidden works, Daddy’s preparatory drawing of the painting was among them. It was one of the pieces I was able to get in our family raffle.

The artist working at the local frame store helped me choose the absolute best frame, one that brought out both the silver and the brown in the original. The finished work is in a place of honor, directly across the room from me as I type this (the picture below is from before I hung it).

Times Donna Apidone said I made her day in March, but I forgot to put it in that blog: 1

New Recipes Tried: 11 (Summer Chicken and Pepper Stew; Roasted Salmon with Peas and Radishes; Air Fryer Hasselback Potatoes; Open-faced Tuna Melt Sandwiches; Chicken Mayo with Parmesan; Meyer Lemon Poppyseed Cake; Skillet Gnocchi with Miso Butter and Asparagus; London Broil; Yamitsuki Cabbage; Bang Bang Chicken and Potatoes; Pasta Aglio e Olio)

Months-long cravings for Lemon Meringue pie satiated: 6

Stand-up performances with my students, in which I floated a new catch phrase: 1

Migraines: 3

Plays: 2 (Dr. Strangelove; Mrs. Krishnan’s Party)

Catch ups with friends: 5

Childhood crushes who died: 1 (Val Kilmer)

New classes met: 2

Learning a former student has inspirational quotes on her walls and a couple are by me: 1

Movies: 7 (Willow; The Penguin Lessons (which, being about a totalitarian government disappearing people, was terrifyingly relevant); Tombstone; The Ballad of Wallis Island; Sinners; G20; The Room Next Door)

Wine shipments picked up all at once: 4

Times I saw Paula Poundstone and she briefly talked to me after asking if anyone in the audience was of Finnish Heritage: 1

Percentage of students who didn’t know why a base on Mars would be called the Bowie Station: 90%

Paintings/drawings by (Grand)Daddy that came home from the frame store: 4

Last seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale started / me being quoted in a news story about it: 1

Meetings about AI use in writing classrooms: 1

Upper Division Comp Exam Scoring Sessions: 1

Toe surgeries scheduled: 1

Back lumbar nerve ablations scheduled: 1

Pasta parties: 1

Panic attacks: 5

Times I was googling the ISBN of one of my books and the AI generator said I was a “public figure”: 1

Books finished: 4 (The Tainted Cup; Everything is Tuberculosis; Elder Race; Stories of Your Life and Others)

Times I complained to a new marriage therapist (after our last therapist fired my hubby) that hubby wasn’t good at communicating with me because he texted me serious stuff but then wouldn’t ever, ever take a phone call about it: 1

Times I got a text message from hubby, two minutes before the second therapy was supposed to happen, saying he wanted a divorce: 1

Times he talked to me on the phone this month: 0

Divorces I am happy to grant, as soon as possible: 1

Mass shootings in my current city: 1

Mass shootings at my alma mater in FL: 1

What I’m listening to and reading: The New Yorker; Discover; The Smithsonian Magazine; National Geographic; Morning Edition; All Things Considered; Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me; This American Life; Savage Lovecast; New Music Friday; The Moth; American History Tellers; American Scandal; Fresh Air; This is History; Working it Out; Levar Burton Reads; Asimov’s; Sidedoor; Pretend; Behind the Bastards

What I’m watching: Doctor Who; Seth Meyers; John Oliver; The Daily Show; The Pitt; The Handmaid’s Tale; Abbot Elementary; Hacks; Call the Midwife; Yellow Jackets; The Simpsons; The Residence; Leverage: Redemption; The Last of Us; Lower Decks.

I want nuance and details and postmodern shifting perspectives in this story, but I’m too close to it now.

My marriage has been rocky for a year, and my ex and I were both considering whether it would go on. Although I usually share too much information, I wasn’t talking about this with my wide friend circle for a few reasons. First, I hoped, really hoped, that ex and I could move past it. I feared that if I shared what we were fighting about, too many people would be mad at him. I also didn’t want to shame him, and I was ashamed of getting myself into this situation, by going back on my vow not to marry and not to live with a partner.

Here’s the too brief story.

Ex moved to CA from Nevada to be with me. He was supposed to get his own place, but, finding it expensive, he ended up with me. He promised if living together didn’t work, he would move out and we’d still stay together.

He hated that my son, a graduate student, still lives here. Aside from rent being expensive, it’s been helpful, since I’m disabled in a few ways and since it’s allowed me to drop everything and live in other countries for months at a time, something I couldn’t do otherwise, because of our many special needs cats.

We did family therapy. Our therapist rejected ex’s theory that my closeness with my son was wrong and somehow damaging (ex is fully estranged from most of his family members, including his daughter). She said we needed to work on our relationship, our marital communication. I definitely had things to work on too: I have trouble being vulnerable, and living with partners dampens my libido, for example.

Then, a year ago, ex had a drunken, rage-driven meltdown about my son. Rage is his word, and it’s accurate. It was emotionally abusive and controlling. That’s when I should have kicked him out. However, he was having a cancer scare and had just been fired, unjustly. My son volunteered to be the one to go, since ex was sick. We started looking for places. I hated myself, and it triggered my PTSD, specifically to being attacked by one of my mother’s partners, drunkenly screaming that there wasn’t space in her life for both of us.

Ex became fully disabled and admitted that we needed my son to stay, so we asked him to. I simply couldn’t cover the bills on my own.

A couple of months later, ex needed to stop drinking for a medical procedure but couldn’t. Finding out he was an alcoholic somehow made him slide immediately into one+ bottles of whiskey per day 24-hour blind drunkenness.

In a rare sober moment in January, he suddenly asked my son for a move out date over text. My son alerting me led to the ex telling him he was kicked out, and then days of raging at me. I wasn’t allowed to talk, since I was 100% wrong.

He got so drunk that he was in danger of alcohol poisoning and then went into withdrawal when he stopped drinking for a few hours. That’s when he accepted he needed to go to rehab.

Now, he’s been in and out twice. He insists that our problems are 100% about my son. I maintain that they’re about communication, and that I can’t stay in the marriage if, instead of communication, he has rage tantrums. I didn’t let him come home after rehab, because what happened in January was so awful. I thought it was likely we would get divorced–what I needed was to trust that he would stop being controlling and stop projecting everything onto my kid.

In the meantime, our therapist recently fired him, due to his insistence that my son and my relationship with my son were the problems.

He found another therapist, and it was one minute before a session with her last Monday (over Zoom) that he texted me that he couldn’t be my husband if my son was in my life at all.

His story will be very different, but this is mine.

An old pic of Dante and I on the quad at Florida State:

I got my first three degrees at FSU. It’s where I taught my first class and knew I would be a teacher for life. It’s where I co-founded a comedy sketch troupe. It’s where I played an epic prank on a Beckett scholar. It’s where I went through my first divorce. It’s where I created my Simpsons class. It’s where I worked as full-time staff between undergrad and grad school. It’s where my students insisted on calling me “Master,” while tittering, after I explained that “Prof.” and “Dr.” were yet the right words and that they should just say “Karma.” It’s where I took my mom to her first frat party. It’s where, in a poly sci class, I asked a question about Tibet and the other students didn’t know what Tibet even was and the teacher cried out in exasperation, “So the ACTRESS is the only one who follows world affairs?!?” It’s where I thought I was alone on the fourth floor of the library and a friend reached his hand through the stacks to grab me and I screamed bloody murder and no one came to check, which was concerning. It’s where I fell into and out of love a few times. It’s where I had some awful teachers, some meh ones, and some amazing one, all of whom informed the teacher I’ve become. It will be a part of me forever.

A couple of years ago, when my PCP (A) took a leave of absence, Doctor B was listed as my PCP. I never saw him.

I changed to Doctor C when Doctor A retired.

All insurance cards keep coming with Doctor B’s name on it.

This week, my insurance company sent me a letter that my insurance card didn’t have the right doctor’s name on it. You have Doctor D, it said, but her name is actually E.

I went into the insurance portal today, which claims I have never selected a PCP.

The Great Gatsby was published 100 years ago today.

While it was a flop at first, it captured its era well. I’m not talking about jazz, but about the nativist, racist rhetoric it critiques through Tom Buchanan’s portrayal. In 1925, the KKK had a massive parade in D.C., and Tom is exactly who would have participated (and likely made his employees go too).

(I’m not claiming the most successful book of the year or author was racist, but it’s ironic that the best selling book of 1925 was Gentlemen Prefer Blondes…)

Whenever I think of The Great Gatsby, though, I remember reading it for Eighth Grade English. Staring at the book cover one day, I noticed that eyes had naked female forms.

When I alerted the teacher to my discovery, he panicked a bit, asking us to not tell our parents. In our puritanical town, he could have gotten into a lot of trouble.

In 1988, in the full flush of my puberty, I saw Val Kilmer in Willow.

My crush on him was immense. When my (now ex-) step-father got yet another black Great Dane, he named him Martigan, hoping to kinder my affection.

I was a nerd, and Real Genius spoke to me.

Loneliness + boredom + my (now ex-) step-father’s record collection made me a Doors fan.

When I live in Oxford in the summers, I trace Simon Templar’s steps from The Saint.

Goodnight, my sun, my moon, my starlit sky.

If you’re right about tariffs, you shouldn’t need to lie that they’re taxes paid by other countries.

If you’re right about abortion, you shouldn’t need to lie that liberals abort babies up to a year after they’re born.

If you’re right about immigrants, you shouldn’t need to lie that they’re eating our pets.

If you’re right about woke schools, you shouldn’t need to lie that they’re giving children sex change operations during recess.

If you’re right about science spending, you shouldn’t need to lie that we’re making transgender mice.

If you’re right about social security, you shouldn’t need to lie that dead people are getting payments.

If you’re right about the need for even more voting security, you shouldn’t need to lie about massive fraud.

If you’re right about foreign policy, you shouldn’t need to lie about which country started a war.