No Dark Sarcasm in Our Classroom

Crate Diving in Modern America

Today is my birthday, and to honor it, the US Supreme Court has effectively abolished the Department of Education. Now in the most immediate sense, this doesn’t hurt me, given that as an educator I am looking at retirement in the next couple of years. I won’t be trying to educate anyone else, and that seems to be what a majority of people in this country wants.

Not that they want me, personally, to retire, but given that I’ll be teaching a course in Queer Graphic Novel and likely another go-round in Film and American Culture — The Culture of Fear, it could be that more people than I know will celebrate their kids no longer being exposed to Fun Home or Paris Is Burning, or Searching For the Wrong-Eyed Jesus.

Maybe nothing will change when the D of E goes, but think about the overall message to our society. Education, apparently, ranks so low on the priority ladder of American life that we are not only suspicious of those with advanced degrees and the institutions conferring them; we’d also like to un-grant them out of existence, lower all ladders, and then we can be home-schooled by wrong-eyed parents who think they know what Jesus and Ben Franklin would do or want.

Not that Ben Franklin will become anyone’s scholastic model, because when they discover the, ahem, personal aspects of his life, some will likely want to dig him up and then draw and quarter him and erase him from whatever history books we have left.

Well, I just don’t know anymore. I got a fine public education in Alabama schools. Sometimes I had to look the other way after my fourth grade cheek was slapped by an Alabama history book that proclaimed that the slaves were happier, more well fed, and safer when they had white masters directing their every move (a text that Alabama legislators apparently want to reinstate). That the book didn’t include the phrase “and fornicating with their slave wives” is surely just an accident of birth.

Anyway, Alabama did some mighty strange things to me, which might explain why a History colleague and I are working on a book tentatively called The Religion of SEC Football. You might think it strange or funny, and if so, you’re just not from here, you Yankee savage.

Alabama also made me a liberal and possibly a Democratic Socialist. We’ll see. In any case, when some of us heard George Wallace cry into the January mists about segregation being our way of life, we knew that our education was going to take a leftward turn.

Thank god that I have open-minded and well-educated family and friends.

My friends and family and I also love good music. In fact, my brother is here with me, and he’s taking me crate-diving this afternoon. I’ll report on those finds later, but now, before the thought-control begins, I want to show off other gems I found recently.

There are so many forms of education too, so as we get going, let’s also remember this well-educated claim regarding an artist and an album entitled John Wesley Harding:

“Where once there was confusion, now there is peace. Dylan has paid his dues. He has discovered that the realization that life is not in vain can be attained only by an act of faith; only when one accepts the flow of life can he manifest the will to overcome the confusion and vanity which tear him apart” (Steven Goldberg, “Dylan and the Poetry of Salvation,” reprinted in Bob Dylan, The Early Years: A Retrospective, p. 375).

Hear Hear.

Onto the flow of my record-buying life.

Maybe you read somewhere here that last week, my friend Les and I saw Elvis Costello live at Greenville’s acoustically-perfect Peace Center. The next day when we went record shopping, I swear, someone must have either hated the show or figured that after the show, he/she wouldn’t need any more Elvis records, for there, not too far down in the dugout crate were:

Trust (Beat Records XXLPII, 1981) for $12. Great songs like “Clubland,” “Luxembourg,” and “From a Whisper to a Scream,” make this sort of an underrated Elvis record, but don’t tell producer Nick Lowe!

Get Happy! (Columbia JC36347, 1980), again for $12. Featuring “I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down,” which he played to a gospel peak last Monday. Also “B Movie,” “Secondary Modern” (LOVE IT), and “Black and White World,” among others. I’ve never owned a copy of this and the title says it all.

At another record shop, I also purchased Almost Blue (Columbia FC37562, 1981, and produced by Billy Sherrill) for $10. This one was recorded in Nashville, so surely you understand how I feel about it. Containing “A Good Year for the Roses,” “Too Far Gone,” “Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down,” and “Sweet Dreams,” among many more.

A couple of weeks back in a store down by the river in Asheville, I found Johnny Cash, Ride the Train (Columbia CL-1464, released on August 1, 1960) for $10. It’s in Very Good condition and is a concept album about…(and it don’t take no education to suss out) trains. I don’t know sometimes, Jerry, but whatever the reason someone decided to rid themselves of this prize, I thank ye kindly.

On the afore-mentioned Bob Dylan front, I reacquired Infidels (Columbia 1983) for another $12. Listening to “Jokerman” makes me think long and hard about what he means, but coupled with “Neighborhood Bully,” I think I got it. 42 years ago, and so much of the infidel still residing in our lives and former schools today.

And as a freebie for being a valued customer, my record store awarded me a copy of Jason & the Scorchers’ Lost & Found (EMI St-17153, 1985). I think I had many chances to see them live and to purchase this record. But here it is now, to school me into Nashville Alt/Punk-Country submission. Covering Leon Payne’s “Lost Highway” seems like either an obligation or an education, but I’ll take the latter any day, now.

And that’s all to report for this installment. My brother is making me an amaretto pound cake as we read/write. My dog wants to go out for a walk, but it’s 90 degrees and I’m trying to persuade him that we must wait till sunset at least. My children have sent me birthday wishes, and my wife is preparing Persian kabob for supper.

These are both entertaining and educational moments to savor. So put on a record — currently listening to Stage Fright myself— and enjoy what all you have and will continue to learn.