At Home

So here I am in Hobart. This past weekend I went to Harvard-Yale. I'm glad I went, but the third time was old hat. The lack of portapotties was especially annoying. I'll spare you the specifics on how I remedied the problem. Most of you probably know, but that doesn't mean I need to get into specifics.

Baby Huey's family came to town and treated us to some meals and good company. It was really great to see them.

Went to Chicago and the Art Institute yesterday. What a wonderful museum it is. Plus it's humongous and particularly weird, because it doesn't focus on one portion of art history. It combines modern, early modern, renaissance, medieval, and ancient art all under one roof. Of course, it's known for its collection of paintings from the impressionists on. I hadn't been there in a while and rediscovered some really great stuff. Plus, I spotted a Ribera from about thirty feet away. I'm awesome.

I got a B- on a paper I wrote on the Civil Rights Movement. I hate to sound like a whiny smartypants, but in case you don't know, B- is really bad in a school that generally gives a gentleman's B. If I can indulge my nerdy side for a second, I'm going to vent. I've already talked to several people about this who agree that this is ridiculous. Especially for a paper that was only a weeklong assignment, 8 pages, and given in the same week that I had to read 360 pages for this class. Plus, I really worked hard on this paper and thought it was really good. All the quibbles were stylistic, and in some cases, I was actually right (in terms of whether to use that or which). Anyway, papers shouldn't be graded on style, but rather on the ideas and arguments presented in them, which the grader said were very good. Plus, my thesis advisor, Johnny Mac just told me a week before I wrote this thing that my writing style was good and entertaining. Cheeky, if you will.

Another thing that gets on my nerves in this class is when we'll be reading a passage, but when the word "nigger" comes up, the instructor will start to paraphrase the quote after she had already begun reading word for word. Aren't we past that? Obviously we're not allowed to say nigger in day to day conversation, but I think we're allowed to read it when we're quoting? Especially when the story we're reading, that she picked out, is called, in fact, "An Artificial Nigger." Plus, she thinks I use the word black too much. I'm sorry, but I'm not comfortable with using African-American. If I'm talking about black/white relations, I'm going to say black and white, not African-American/white relations. And if I'm going to say African-American in a paper, then I'm going to be consistent and use it throughout, and in response to this, I'm also going to use Euro-American or Anglo-American to refer to whites. I'm not comfortable using hyphenates for some people and not for others. If I'm going to qualify Americanness, I'm going to qualify it for everyone. And if I'm not, then I'm going to use words like black, white, latino, etc.

Oh, and this is the Southern class, so chances are my Athens paper is going to be less than favorably reviewed. Adding to the stress is Beulah's insistence that I "get it right." Oh, this isn't going to end well.