it was a big day in that i played shryock, a place i consider to be one of the best acoustically in southern illinois. i told one guy what i thought and he said, actually you should check out the varsity theater, but i haven't had a chance to go there, don't know what that place is like. let's just say, it's old, it's ornate, it's huge, and, in this case, it was full of 8 and 9 year olds who were a pretty tough audience; it was hard to keep their attention. we played lots of animal songs and kid songs, and they liked them, but they weren't always concentrating. that's the way 8 and 9 year olds are.

spent some time reading about the titanic, and that was partly because of a flip comment i'd made on my facebook about "synching" their computers (or sinking)...nobody got it, really, though my wife pointed out i should not have spelled it with an h...sync?
ok. the syncing of the titanic. whatever. the national geographic is all about cameron's trip down there and his obsession with what they can find, gathering algae down there in the north atlantic. and it pointed out the irony of a collision between slow, clear, timeless ice, and the biggest, best boat of its time, turning up, cracking in two, and shooting to the bottom. wow.

my obsession with almutanabbi (below) was brought on by reading a student's work, cleaning out the weblogs, and the student mentioned that he had a weakness for sucking up to political power and in fact, he'd been political as a youth, led a rebellion, spent time in prison, but then tried to stick by the powerful as they would support him and protect him. didn't work, completely, though, because he was killed by one of their enemies; he'd used the power of his poetry and his sharp way with words to protect those in power and had made someone very angry, presumably. such was life in iraq and the middle east in what, 950. around that time in america a huge city was rising up in cahokia on the east bank of the mississippi river at st. louis, they'd build a temple to the sun, colonized the area, hauled in corn and deer from miles around, sent their boats up and down the rivers as far as canada, montana, the gulf, north carolina.

at one point i read about these two tennis players who'd both survived the titanic, but they were men, so they were embarrassed about it, as men were supposed to let the women and children go first, and somehow they got into lifeboats anyway, and the world shamed them, upon surviving and being male. both went on to play tennis, even against each other, but were unable to talk about the experience, really, and didn't.

i'm teaching i fly, i flew, i think, i thought, i tell, i told in grammar class, memorize all these past irregular verbs, because we have this quiz where you have to know them. and in the quiz you have to tell a few lies, with is ok with most people. did she buy the red or the blue dress, she bought the blue dress; if they know bought they win, the rest doesn't really matter. and this one african guy is ok with this down to about number six, which is did you break your arm or your leg? and he can't answer it, not because he doesn't know the form broke but just because he can't bring himself to write it. it goes against his grain, against his superstition. i invite him to write about breaking something else and he does. it's not about the truth, i say, it's just about the grammar, yet, i don't quite believe it. at one point my other class is writing a letter (learning how to write a letter) and get to the point about writing sincerely, and i realize, this is a problem, since it's not sincerely at all, it in fact is a made-up letter. no problem, it's just an assignment, it's just, can you do it, make one, use english properly. i've had trouble using drama, in the same way. some people just basically don't want to pretend.

at the soccer fields one day a car comes over the sleeping policeman bump in the road, and its entire front end falls off, maybe i've told this story, but a little while later, two police cars go by, and a woman says, oh, we're playing cahokia in baseball. as if that explains the police. maybe this cahokia baseball team does what, has retractable cleats? whatever it is, takes two police cars.

the lesson i get from almutanabbi: you can sell out, you can go commercial, but don't hang too close to the politicians, or you'll die. and it doesn't matter, iran, iraq, egypt, those are just kind of details, details of the times. the powerful come and they go, they can be sunk by the merest of coincidence, a bit of clear white cold ice with an edge on it. it's alignment in general that did him in, probably, though that may have been necessary for a poet of his time. more later about this guy, if i ever get time to read about it.