how cool … my book covers in one place … it adds up to … undeniable proof … of … what?

tell me in comments, please

i’ve had occassion today to wonder why i blog the way i do … well … how is that?

i blog doubly … here and over there at plainer … my reasons for plainer should be self-evident … i am a mad bad poet … pretending … a drummit …

blogging here at two (which used to be one which had been this journal blug begat by this journal) however makes some wonder … how can i mix the personal and the professional as i do? am i not opening myself up to some kind of trouble? to which i might reply …

do i not open myself up to some kind of trouble by getting out of bed each morning … wouldn’t i open myself to trouble by not getting out of bed in the morning?

i’ve been constructing a kind of online vaguery for the past six years … amused by what can happen here … still … i keep at it … pushing up little poses of me over time …

what fear … that any moment might bring catastrophe … as some do … what fear that the wrong thing might be typed and disseminated … and that wrongness blossom out … to some kind of bleeding … or less … some kind of corporate unhappiness that might require one to be … silent … nosiy no more … harmlessly messy no more … a punishing world … as only the corporate can be

sorry … i dint mean to slip into that puzzling place … where i try to say and not say simultaneously … but this question seems to drive me there … why mix the personal and the professional … i don’t know … i always have … and my mother (hi mom!) taught me well to give no offense … and that turns out to be my most precious goal … because i want nothing more or less than your most complete love or affection … but if you have some bit of scorn i’ll take that too … because i do most secretly deserve it … just as you fear you must also … deserve it … probably … but i know you’re busy elsewhere and not even thinking about reading here …

i will write here about the things that come to me … before during or after the process of writing here … it pleases me … and i mean no harm … you have nothing to fear … not here … but letting it go is difficult because it’s been such a pal for so long … that fear of whatever you fear … but not here …

am i slipping back to indirection … this is a rough draft … a first draft … a discovery draft … as many blog posts are … finding what one thinks by thinking it by writing it out into a tiny part of the world’s mind … risking sight i guess

you need a really fast connection for this … i’ve only looked at a bit of the site, but am intrigued … art is cool … it wakes up my brain & other parts

I do not and have never blogged anonymously, and I do not appreciate the implication that I have. Teachers should be openly writing about their practice in order to learn and to educate the public on their work. To hide behind a pseudonym is usually license for taking liberties with the truth, and I will never do so.

amen, brother …

bud is responding to this article

i was happy to receive a quick response yesterday to my inquiry about the editorial manipulation of franklin’s passage in our american literature textbook … my correspondent was candid in noting that the company had used conservative guidelines … that by removing the word “venery” (and the entire definition of “chastity”) from the text, they were sparing teachers the uncomfortable task of having to speak the word “sex” to their classes … i’m informed that the book’s editors have been asked (and intend) to reinstate franklin’s words in future printings of the text … since their omission now causes more awkwardness than their inclusion …

actually … that last part doesn’t quite express my position, since i never felt that awkwardness … in fact, as you might guess, i relished the approach of that moment in class when a student would ask, “why isn’t anything written there?” … one of those transparent moments … one of those man-behind-the-curtain moments … when we can see how fragile is the human word … how easily bent broken scratched destroyed … for whatever reason … for whoever’s purposes …