tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-61637282012-01-16T12:42:48.685-05:00I started a blog on my faculty page http://sharepoint.emcc.edu/faculty/jgoldfine/default.htm That's got all the bells and whistles, but who's to say the server won't wipe everything out the way it did not so long ago? Blogger, for now, is my backup. Later....? Email: johngoldfine@mainelywired.netjohngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.comBlogger1141100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-5777214766571289212011-06-13T16:06:00.001-04:002011-06-13T16:09:55.604-04:00

Apr. 30. English is the Department of brooders. We brood over our existence, its purpose and meaning in the academic universe. We are right to brood! We know that a hundred years ago, colleges did not offer courses in literature, except literature in dead languages. Students who wanted to read Keats or Shakespeare or Dickens did so on their own out of love, not for college credit. Nor did

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-4453565823225234782010-08-17T07:39:00.000-04:002010-08-17T07:42:23.842-04:00

Aug. 6, 2010. Beyond yes and no, beyond training, beyond good dog/bad dog, beyond treats and choke collars.... The five dogs and I have arrived at such a strange place. The other day we were exploring a new path and they charged ahead 20 or 30 yards, but I decided we had to turn around. I said, very softly, 'Let's go back,' and then I turned and walked away without waiting or watching (if one

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-61238165002639671092009-12-27T18:05:00.001-05:002009-12-27T18:09:22.013-05:00

Dec. 25. Traditions are what you do, over and over. Our traditional Christmas has very little to do with Santa, Jesus, mangers, gift wrap, mistletoe, holly, little drummer boys. In the holiday season, my missus goes to nursing homes and churches and sings. I grade papers, and when that is done, I fire up my chainsaw, kill trees, and when I get tired of that, walk my dogs. Then Christmas Day, a

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-76072022659368651772009-05-08T22:36:00.001-04:002009-05-08T22:37:56.532-04:00

May 5. When do you have to worry? When people start reassuring you about something you never before had even dreamed of considering a problem. "Don't worry, John. That spinach you ate last night wasn't infected with flu--trust us, we're sure." "Don't worry, John. There aren't any three-foot rats living in your attic. How could there be?" "Don't worry, John. Your new reading glasses won't

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-14231004471304145242008-11-13T22:36:00.000-05:002008-11-13T22:38:06.220-05:00

John Goldfine's Web PageThis personal Web page is not an official Eastern Maine Community College Web page. The school does not publish this page: it is a distributor only and does not assume any responsibility for its contents--contents which, unless specifically copyrighted to someone else, are all Copyright (c) 2006 by John Goldfine, whose picture (and Scooter's!) is just below. This web

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-19100097800421472152008-08-01T15:18:00.000-04:002008-08-01T15:19:06.589-04:00

Being a man among man, a regular guy, the fourth on any golf round, the point man in the platoon has never been my thing, as I'm sure you've guessed by now. My best friends have almost always been women. So, when I got to Iceland and found that there were eleven guests on the tour and ten of them were women, I was not worried. Perhaps the chief guide, Stefan, thought I might be overwhelmed or

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-75959012748064735372008-04-28T13:24:00.000-04:002008-04-28T13:25:35.176-04:00

Apr. 27. Yesterday was the anti-school day, a day like Christmas or Easter or Independence Day that could not possibly ever have any school stuff in it. Not going to be too many days like that ever: mid-sixties, cloud-free, bug-free, pollen-free, snow-free, low humidity, pleasantly breezy. No days like that for the snowbirds in Florida! Here's how I spent yesterday: * made breakfast (black

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-48925191144521203422007-10-21T22:02:00.000-04:002007-10-21T22:08:32.688-04:00

Oct. 17. Transportation issues loom large.... Why is it that two lanes are sufficient to carry traffic at 70 mph, but when those two lanes are reduced to one, the traffic does not move along at 35 mph? Or even 20 mph. Or even 10 mph.... Anyone who regularly drives on I-95 south of Hogan Rd knows these are not just-wonderin' types of questions, but vital matters occupying thousands of Maine

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-19868456825706290442007-03-08T17:02:00.000-05:002007-03-08T17:07:33.415-05:00

March 1. I couldn't face the gym yesterday: my ratty unwashed clothes were part of it. Rushing to the locker, to the weights, to the shower, to class, all in less than an hour was part. Part was the difficulty of concentrating on weights, a necessity, when my mind was distracted by immediate worries and anxieties. And then there was the glorious wind-free sun tempting me away from Johnston Gym

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1163629734512256682006-11-15T17:25:00.000-05:002006-11-15T17:28:54.593-05:00

Nov. 15. Our plan for you: work straight through for 6, 7, 8 hours without anything but a 20 minute food break!  Is this the Soviet Union, some cruel prison, a sweatshop in the bad old days, a war zone, an obsessive-compulsive fantasy? Nope, it's what the Important People, Elementary Education Style, have in mind for elementary school in the future. No more recess! Today's BDN tells us recess is

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1155913932699095622006-08-18T11:11:00.000-04:002006-08-18T11:12:12.716-04:00

hey n--send me an email addie

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1155817195625779942006-08-17T08:12:00.000-04:002006-08-17T08:19:55.686-04:00

Aug 16. "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. " That quotation is not me being rowdy--that's Big Will Shakespeare talking, folks. I listened to a lawyer do his thing today, on my behalf. I couldn't help admiring his slickness; after all, I was paying for it. But there's something disconcerting to the average joe when the lawyer does what they call 'arguing in the alternative.'

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1145730561723301902006-04-22T14:25:00.000-04:002006-04-22T14:29:21.753-04:00

April 21. Great Moments in Personal Self-Awareness.Coming in this morning on the Kennebec Road, I saw a red car approaching, a ragtop, a convertible--with the top down. Good heavens, I thought, and Jiminy Freeping Cricket, as well--it's about 40 degrees out and that idiot driving must be freezing his mukkalooeys off. Ba-da-dum.... I looked down only to notice a motorcycle gas tank between my

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1141652408673401802006-03-06T08:36:00.000-05:002006-03-06T08:40:08.693-05:00

Usually, I work on my website at school and only transfer the posts weeks later. Today, the webserver at school is down--actually, it's been down all weekend. Actually, no one would know that it is down right this second if I hadn't walked into IT office at 8:30 Monday morning and asked what was up. They were clueless.Apparently, I'm the only person who gives a rat's ass--but I have my whole

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1141421871975508772006-03-03T16:34:00.000-05:002006-03-03T16:37:51.996-05:00

March 3. Bleahhh.Sometimes 'bleahhh' is as good as it's going to get. This is the first day of the semester that I can say I failed to meet my own expectations in class. It was nothing outrageous--no screaming frothing fit of rage, no slashing attack on some hapless student, no smashing sluggish computers into permanently open windows--nothing dramatic. Just an inability to get the motor

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1137260738469240842006-01-14T12:39:00.000-05:002006-01-14T12:45:38.490-05:00

Jan 13. I knew all vacation that the day would come when I'd have to get to work again--sometimes I can work effectively and happily over vacation, but this vacation was not really one of those times. In fact, it wasn't until I was sitting bored, dopey, and grumpy in Rangeley today at our session devoted to planning for the future that I found myself escaping all the blather and bloviation by

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1133827598598784332005-12-05T19:02:00.000-05:002005-12-05T19:06:38.623-05:00

Nov. 30. Risky conversation of the day #1 (wherein students discover teachers were once young and eager to do what the young do....) Talking to a student this morning about rotten relationships, and I say, "Well, sometimes people do meet and hit it off. My missus and I have been an item since 1963."Another student, the very sharp JF, looks over and says, "I was born in 1988. My father was born

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1131244568202020802005-11-05T21:29:00.000-05:002005-11-06T06:21:27.646-05:00

And what a month. Easy come, easy go, but I was pretty excited there for a bit. Anyway, here's a month of posts on a lot of things.Nov. 4. Google, the great settler of bar-arguments.Not that we were in a bar.Sharp student SG remarked the other day, during a discussion of Portuguese cooking, that she had been born in the Azores. I said that the world was largely open to a woman of talent and drive

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1128382193499801702005-10-03T19:25:00.000-04:002005-10-03T19:29:53.510-04:00

Oct. 3. I got my first bite at Anonymous B. today. Posts 1-13 are just me and a few people jive-talking. Item 14 is a genuine cry of anger--and a genuine cry of hope too. If the student had utterly despaired of being heard, the post would never have been written.Check it out.After I read the post I found myself talking to people differently: I tried to be more exact, I think, and was

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1127520570617835552005-09-23T20:05:00.000-04:002005-09-23T20:09:30.626-04:00

Sept. 23. 'Fool' is usually an insult, but when I saw the slick graf about working in the woods that slick-writing student TR was putting on the screen, I knew I had a writin' fool on my hands. A writin' fool is someone who bulls ahead onto the page without fear of failure; he flings the words down like they were his toys, not his tormentors; and where they fall, they don't just lie there--they

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1126482357838417512005-09-11T19:43:00.000-04:002005-09-11T19:45:57.846-04:00

Sept. 11. 101 students are writing sketches of their 'worst teacher' this weekend, and a lot of these revolve around issues of respect: teachers disrespecting students, teachers angry that students refuse to respect them.Many teachers work off the military model, in which you may hate the guts of the person wearing it, but you darn well salute the stars or bars or whatever on the officer's

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1126116561705061002005-09-07T14:07:00.000-04:002005-09-07T14:11:20.710-04:00

August 29. Summer reading: 'Jerry Engels' by Thomas Rogers.“…love was a kind of possession. A lover was possessed. He was driven and ridden and goaded by desires he could not resist. That he did not want to resist. Lovers welcomed love, and let it take over and guide their action. They enjoyed being possessed by love. Their prayer, if they had one, was for love to possess them yet more fully.

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1124929807938907992005-08-24T20:24:00.000-04:002005-08-24T20:30:07.953-04:00

August 24. A lot of my students carry pocket knives, either for work or just as a useful accessory. That’s okay—I do too.Once I had a student who hinted fairly broadly that he was never very far from his 1911 Colt .45. He’d look significantly toward his bookbag. Well, all I ever saw him take from it was his books.Weapons are on my mind because this afternoon I bought the November issue of

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1123806294749187712005-08-11T20:16:00.000-04:002005-08-11T20:26:15.463-04:00

Aug. 10. At least once every semester I have an unpleasant phone conversation with some student's parent:Parent: Mr. Goldfine? I'm Mrs. Smith, Johnny's mother. You have him in your College Composition class. Now he's always been an A student, and he says he's been doing great in all his other classes, but he just got this warning notice thing from you. What's going on here?Me: I'm sorry, very

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1122329744621828142005-07-25T18:11:00.000-04:002005-07-25T18:15:44.636-04:00

July 25. Reason # 354 To Be a Teacher. I’m not very good with my hands. Picking up a tool is always in adventure. Any of my students who’ve seen me type have seen my worst typing (under pressure, I don’t improve), but, honestly, the tool of tools for a writing teacher, the keyboard, is yet one more tool among many that I’m not so hot with, even at my best and with no pressure.And my hands

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1121505193533182702005-07-16T04:29:00.000-04:002005-07-16T05:14:26.606-04:00

I´ve been with a couple of teachers for the past week and am so very glad now to be out of their sight and hearing--what a sorry bunch we imparters of knowledge can be.One of the teachers was a compulsive lecturer, an obvious professional hazard. It was worth five minutes of your life to ask this fellow a simple question. He genuinely knew his stuff and wanted nothing more than to share it around

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1120825791646048292005-07-08T08:25:00.000-04:002005-07-08T08:29:51.660-04:00

July 8. When Scoot sees me pick up sunglasses, pull on boots, or, worst of all, grab car keys, he gets pretty anxious. He deals with the anxiety by snapping up a squeak toy and squeaking the bejeepers out of it. Of course, if I proceed to misbehave and drive off without him, when I do come home, he’s justifiably angry and deals with that by attacking his little sister and making her squeak.In

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1120419792391013032005-07-03T15:41:00.000-04:002005-07-03T15:43:12.396-04:00

June 29. Summer Reading."When a fresh-faced guy in a Chevy offered him a lift, Parker told him to go to hell. The guy said, 'Screw you, buddy,' yanked his Chevy back into the stream of traffic, and roared on down to the tollbooths. Parker spat in the right-hand lane, lit his last cigarette, and walked across the George Washington Bridge."The first three sentences of a book by Richard Stark

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1119962171292228052005-06-28T08:33:00.000-04:002005-06-28T08:36:11.296-04:00

June 26. Hot day today and even hotter yesterday. It would probably be a bad idea if any of my future students, who will depend on me for insight and good sense, knew that an older gentleman decided to go on a three mile run yesterday, at 3pm, just at the height of the heat.Was there an ozone alert? If I feel like someone's just clipped me in the pit of my stomach and I just can't get my

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1119534316206791952005-06-23T08:56:00.000-04:002005-06-23T22:11:34.866-04:00

June 23. One of the very Important People at work is always on my case about testing: "How can you claim to have taught them what you say you will teach them if you don't test them afterwards to find out what they have learned?"That sounds so obviously true that the Important Person doesn't wait for an answer or listen if s/he's forced to sit there while an answer comes wafting h/h way. Nowadays

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1119060750469727662005-06-17T22:07:00.000-04:002005-06-17T22:15:36.186-04:00

June 17. Some of my students think I'm a speed reader; I look at an essay for three seconds and I know exactly what I want to say to the student: 'You're not in it with the details only you could write; you're using 'you' as a crutch and it's making it impossible for you to get into your own writing and picture the scene and show it to the reader; it's generic; it needs the XX [I use the

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1118746569580709242005-06-14T06:50:00.000-04:002005-06-14T06:56:09.583-04:00

What every teacher wants: to be an Illuminator, to bring light into the dark corners. I had my own Illuminator last night, but, don't worry, this blog is not about to make startling sexual revelations....I sat up, 3:30 am; bedroom filled with light, for just a second--usually, this guy comes around at about 9 pm and in August, but there he was with his 99trillion watt light, looking for deer. A

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1118685436532782842005-06-13T13:54:00.000-04:002005-06-13T13:57:16.543-04:00

June 13. The preacherman from up in Monroe showed yesterday, the way he does every six months or so to leave some Bible tracts and to take my soul's temperature. He said, "You're a good man, but not good enough. You have to go to Hell...."I fed him his line: "Unless?""Unless you repent."In my opinion he was wrong on both counts: I'm not a good man--I've been a bad man. And repentance is not going

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1117967834083839062005-06-05T06:35:00.000-04:002005-06-05T06:37:14.093-04:00

June 5. If I knew then what I know now, I'd never have voted to legalize slots.... Got to Bass Park an hour before post time last night for some of their cold beer, excellent fries, and adequate cheeseburgers only to find that Penn National tore out the grill in its lust for more slot machine space. Those were good fries!Which is how vegetarian missus and I came to be in the Main St. McDonalds.

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1117467597823474612005-05-30T11:37:00.000-04:002005-05-30T11:42:34.753-04:00

May 30. Student meltdown. Would I be happy if an already-good student suddenly kicked it into overdrive--offering to rewrite every assignment, asking for advice about writing beyond teacher advice, coming up with new wrinkles on my old assignments? Well, yeah, sure.But what if that student started emailing me fifteen times a day with new writing, phoning with questions late at night, arriving

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1117284454408421672005-05-28T08:42:00.000-04:002005-05-28T08:47:34.416-04:00

May 28. Some of my readers don't know about the EMCC discussion board. Check it out sometime. Here's my contribution to it for today:Deceased Student Policy Revisited:Today's BDN has an article about SAD 49 in Fairfield. The family of a student who died in January with enough credits to graduate wanted his sister to accept his diploma at the graduation ceremony. Doesn't sound like there

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1116150259298000552005-05-15T05:40:00.000-04:002005-05-15T05:44:19.303-04:00

May 14. John Fitzsimmons' speech to the morning graduating group seemed perfunctory at best. He got tangled up for a moment confusing the first two things he wanted students to leave with: appreciation and aspiration, or something like that. All those words run together in graduation speeches, and he was well along before he realized he had switched things around, another way of saying they

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1115987647815133352005-05-13T08:31:00.000-04:002005-05-13T09:12:55.013-04:00

May 13. Friday the 13th. Last day of classes--it's 7:48 and faithful & serious students JW and KF are here working away on something or other, just as they have been all semester. JW wants to print her fall schedule. No problem! KF is reading my blog and I'm saving as I go and telling him to update his screen. Live-blogging for an audience of one!This morning early I was reading this about an

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1115823445861471342005-05-11T10:54:00.000-04:002005-05-11T10:58:44.093-04:00

May 10. At the end of the Fall 2004 semester, I was really whupped. Because there was no attendance policy and only a very few deadlines, I got an avalanche of work at the end of the semester from the less serious students. Most of the work was tossed off at the last second, most of it showed that it was tossed off by the writer's conspicuous lack of thought or interest.That's when I hate this

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1115490438917436782005-05-07T14:24:00.000-04:002005-05-07T14:27:18.926-04:00

May 7. All my students have blogs. What can they write in their blogs? Well, nothing that would get them in trouble with the law, I hope. Nothing treasonous, nothing to aid, abet, or plan a crime. On the other hand, I have students write 'offensive' stuff all the time. Is it okay on your blog to say you think men are all testosterone-crazed animals or that all women are estrogen-buzzed

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1114903235973663732005-04-30T19:17:00.000-04:002005-04-30T19:26:52.806-04:00

April 30. For years when students give me unstapled papers and apologize, I tell them that, unless the demon 18-wheeler on I-95 takes me out, their paper will arrive safely in Swanville even without a staple. There I will attach to their writing an official Pine Tree State staple, which the governor supplies me ten-thousand at a time.I did not have a run-in with the demon 18-wheeler, but this

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1114515507496681052005-04-26T07:34:00.000-04:002005-04-26T07:38:27.503-04:00

April 26. Looking back at yesterday, it was pretty good in class from my POV. I define 'good' as reacting to papers and people in a way that uses my best instincts and not just my teacher autopilot. One student gave me a particularly nice piece of work--a true essay, which I've always defined as taking an idea for a walk around the block. Five grafs, but five unique and individual grafs,

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1113301086095999852005-04-12T06:15:00.000-04:002005-04-12T06:18:06.096-04:00

April 11. What can you do with someone whose mind has been so messed up they feel hopeless?Occasionally, I have students whose writing wounds are as visible as the tattoo on my arm--and about as attractive. Some teacher convinced them they were too dumb to write and they believed it (god knows why--because in the great human parade, teachers as a group are not all that bright), but even though

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1112825775315356552005-04-06T18:14:00.000-04:002005-04-06T18:16:15.316-04:00

April 6. Vacation life is not school life.What a day! My bud Deb in LA never gets days like this--days when after six months of winter, Mother Nature says, "Okay, I'm gonna stop teasing and let it be spring, for a day or two anyway. Enjoy the sun!" Out in LA they don't have what we would call seasons--it's hot and dry, then it's cooler and sometimes it rains. That's it. They don't get the

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1112359217621888232005-04-01T07:39:00.000-05:002005-04-01T07:40:17.623-05:00

March 30. Blogger problems have cleared my welders and pipefitters out of the Acadia Lab a little early today, but not before they'd impressed me with their research savvy.Of course, research really belongs to teachers. Civilians can't hope to do it until they are taught it and taken a test to assure they have mastered the components going into determining competency. Everyone knows that.But,

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1112093692552828772005-03-29T05:53:00.000-05:002005-03-29T05:54:52.553-05:00

March 28. "I thought it didn't matter if I don't come to class."Grrrrr! These words make my heart sink as I realize the chasm between their speaker and me, and I hear them all the time. I heard them today, and I just spent a half-hour telling my missus how awful they make me feel, and even though I've run my mouth to her, I still feel awful.You need to keep venting, she says. So, okay, here

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1111769692212776132005-03-25T11:53:00.000-05:002005-03-25T11:54:52.213-05:00

March 25. Students GC and DL, sitting next to me in a lightly-attended Friday class, want to know how long I've been a pencil necked geek... I mean, a teacher. Umm, lessee--thirty-three years, man and boy, not counting the half-year I subbed all around.Then they wondered about getting mad--it's been a long time since I got very mad at students. Fifteen years maybe? I get annoyed when I'm

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1111582072806744152005-03-23T07:46:00.000-05:002005-03-23T07:47:52.806-05:00

March 23. I always encourage students to write small, write close to home, write from observation. As students will, they resist. If I ask a student to write about what she sees as she walks down the street, she's likely to give me this: "The beautiful birds singing in the leafy trees, the little kids in shorts screaming on the jungle gym, the hiss of the lawn sprinklers...." And, I'm like,

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1111016725729272022005-03-16T18:43:00.000-05:002005-03-16T18:45:25.730-05:00

March 16. 10:46. The exact midpoint of the semester was 46 minutes ago. This should have been been a triumphal class! But there I was talking to a student about weightlifting when student ML says, "YOU [meaning me] go to the gym? You!!!" Oh man, what I have to put up with! Okay,, I'm no longer the super stud with 24 inch biceps! But do I have to suffer this student abuse!ML tries to make it

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1110835360153635852005-03-14T16:21:00.000-05:002005-03-14T16:22:40.160-05:00

March 13. I started reading student blogs at 6:30 this morning and by a few minutes before 7, I was hating life.I read an essay--this was my comment:"I try to discourage these type of generic, interchangeable essays that have nothing at all of the writer in them. They always have a certain air of competence, but no heart at all. Try again, please--put XX [not the student's real initials] in the

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1110628478832257602005-03-12T06:52:00.000-05:002005-03-12T06:54:38.836-05:00

March 11. Acadia Writing Lab had to wait over four months to get its new wheely chairs--but only two for the first wheely chair casualty.I noticed on one chair today that the adjustment knob that lets the back go up and down has been removed and the plastic backing has come loose and is flapping in the breeze. I like to keep this web page a zero tolerance zone where we forbid all violence, even

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1110375508374610612005-03-09T08:36:00.000-05:002005-03-09T08:41:13.303-05:00

March 9. Outstanding work-ethic on student KP! Here it is a few minutes past 8 am on a day no one should be out and about, but EMCC has classes, and my first period class has ONE student--and what a student he is, the best writer here today (sadly, also the worst.)We're sitting here side-by-side. He's writing a classification paper about the nuns he knew back in the day at St. Anne's: the violent

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1110191115757793312005-03-07T05:24:00.000-05:002005-03-07T05:25:15.760-05:00

March 5. 5:30 am, up with bad dreams--dreamed I was fired and had to go to work in a high school.I've written my opinion of high schools right into my syllabus, but in my dream the comparison wasn't exactly between high school and jail. I was sort of a Nazi Gestapo torturer, trying to extract information from brave freedom-fighters, my students. And their job was to resist as long as possible,

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1109898976301107842005-03-03T20:15:00.000-05:002005-03-07T05:37:48.440-05:00

March 3. Not sure why my blogging has slacked off lately. I'm not particularly depressed...or, oh ueah, wait a sec....I do get depressed sometimes about classes--feeling like everything would collapse, no one would write a word, people would just wait to fail or whatever--if I wasn't there pushing every second.Sometimes it's almost like a job. That's depressing. Maybe it's bleeding into

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1108122761828965752005-02-11T06:50:00.000-05:002005-02-11T06:52:41.836-05:00

Feb. 11. No school! Mixed feelings!I sure as heck don't want to be out motoring this morning. I have students who--in the intervals when their licenses have been restored to them by the state-- feel that, as a matter of driving pride, they should be able to drive 60, no matter the external conditions or posted speed limit. (That's their definition of being a good driver: using superior

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1107804257290990582005-02-07T14:20:00.000-05:002005-02-07T14:26:16.893-05:00

Feb. 6. In sickness and in health, I teach. My boss made me go home once ( I was drooling blood and spit on a second-grader's papers...four wisdom teeth extracted and a hit of Percodan has that effect.) Once I was puking, crying my migraine felt so bad, and shaking with fever--I cancelled my afternoon classes that day. Otherwise, I'm the teaching warrior. I go and I show. The bronchitis I've

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1107397726984211662005-02-02T21:26:00.000-05:002005-02-02T21:28:46.983-05:00

Feb. 2. Sometimes I'll be in a good mood and catch sight of myself in the mirror--scowling, glowering, glaring, looking majorly upset, pissed, enraged, and loaded for bear. That's just how I look and how I've always looked, even when I was a little kid. Even when good stuff is happening! And even botox wouldn't take those scowl lines off my puss. When bad stuff is happening, when I really

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1107013827257168952005-01-29T10:48:00.000-05:002005-03-07T05:54:38.600-05:00

Jan 27. This is the second semester I've used blogs in class and I'm really liking it. Student writing is spiffier, and there's more pride all around.One thing that's weirding me out right now is how many of my students must have been told to never talk to strangers--because they sure set up their public lives in the cagiest possible manner.There are those unimaginative types who have email

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1106447925138673252005-01-22T21:37:00.000-05:002005-01-22T21:38:45.136-05:00

Jan. 22. Length does too count! I read a piece years ago about how computers, CAD, and so on have caused machinists to lose certain old-time skills, intuitive, eyeballing ways of dealing with machines and metal that took ages to learn and really made someone a master. Of course, computers, like a lot of machines, give back in consistent results what they take away in craftsmanship, experience,

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1105960667387701812005-01-17T06:14:00.000-05:002005-01-17T06:17:47.386-05:00

Jan. 16. The best skater on Swan Lake! Strong wind straight down out of the north. Ice was pretty good--some smooth stuff, plenty of small bumps, but no major cracks, heaves, snowmo trax, rifts, pressure ridges. From the dam, along the east side, past the cliff, angling west over toward Moore's Shores. Two or three icefishermen. No trucks, no snowmos. No other skaters. I could hear the

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1103665450503936082004-12-21T16:42:00.000-05:002004-12-21T16:44:10.503-05:00

Dec. 17. Cold turkey, not a pretty sight. My missus smirking at me: "What are you going to do?" Darn, I don't know. She's used to seeing me at all hours of the day and many of the night hunched over the keyboard (no ergonomic set-up around here!), reading student blogs and tapping out responses and comments. It's been pretty much automatic since late August: sit down, check my email, check

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1102476115466843272004-12-07T22:17:00.000-05:002004-12-07T22:21:55.466-05:00

Dec. 7. I see in today's BDN that President Bush hosted a children's holiday party at the White House. Emcc.edu/faculty/jgoldfine--in its constant search to stay ahead of the news--forecast last March 2 the seating conditions for the 120 second and third graders. Alas for these community college customers of the future, by the time they get here the current chairs in the Acadia WL will

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1101473719739395422004-11-26T07:51:00.000-05:002004-11-26T08:00:14.680-05:00

Nov. 23. Recent EMCC harassment language sent to all faculty, staff, students: "Some of the signs to look for in your classroom include students ...making sexually explicit remarks to or about others, crude and vulgar language or jokes...." I had a student the other day talking about how gross it was that her grandfather was still buying condoms. She thought he might be 75. I had to ask: "So,

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1100115628870634372004-11-10T14:37:00.000-05:002004-11-10T14:40:28.870-05:00

Nov. 10. Daily ATM Report, Maine Hall Unit: Unit seems to be functioning adequately. Not that I dared use it after hearing from my favorite admin that her new sweater with its charge of static electricity not only fried it the other day, but shut down power throughout Bangor's East side. Thanks, but no thanks, I got my dough at Dysart's in Hampden, where as a bonus I can break one of my stiff

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1098825830697647302004-10-26T17:21:00.000-04:002004-10-26T17:29:35.336-04:00

Oct. 26. The fly who loved me. I was reading some contrast essays to my classes yesterday--old essays, ones printed on a dot-matrix printer, a technology my younger students might not be familiar with (check your attic!)--when a fly began dive-bombing me. It went on for two periods! The classes politely listened, politely watched as I continued on, but no students were themselves personally

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1097097172247985812004-10-06T17:10:00.000-04:002004-10-06T17:38:04.720-04:00

Oct. 6. Horror. Anger. Confusion. I'm upset, still upset, really upset, and these are some of the components of that upset. I'd been working on showing google.com features to my nine o'clock class on the bigscreen computer. Then I wandered around talking to people about their work. Then I walked outside for a break. At my ten o'clock, when I brought the screen up to do the google thing, I

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1096673338272346822004-10-01T19:27:00.000-04:002004-10-01T19:28:58.273-04:00

Sept.29. I read an article once about bad drivers and how we should react to their mistakes by sending a prayer after them, a prayer that they get home safely and learn to do better, just as we should learn to do better too--a prayer, instead of a curse, because none of us is perfect, and we all have our stupid and selfish moments behind the wheel. This morning, alas, a prayer was not on my

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1096131528650648852004-09-25T13:57:00.000-04:002004-09-27T05:31:25.603-04:00

Sept. 22. It's a week shy of what would have been the 46th birthday of Maine writer, journalist, and teacher Tory Brotherhood Haiss. Tory was the first person I ever knew with a word processor--this would have been in the mid-eighties. A word processor was not a typewriter nor was it a computer--it was a little bit of both. You could see your words in a tiny LCD display, even save them, and print

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1095727375300888242004-09-20T20:16:00.000-04:002004-09-20T20:42:55.300-04:00

Usually this website is just a back-up of www.emcc.edu/faculty/jgoldfine. Today I'm going to post something here that won't show there--why I'm not sure. The campus seems unusually edgy (or am I just projecting?) and I don't quite have the courage to put this on sharepoint or the other website and deal with the fallout. Maybe I'm getting soft. Maybe this post is just too mean-spirited and

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1095637932872402452004-09-19T19:49:00.000-04:002004-09-19T19:52:12.873-04:00

Sept. 19. The wind was whipping down Pitcher Pond toward Ducktrap, not enough for whitecaps though, and, despite nervous noises from someone I first met 41 years ago this month, I launched the rowing canoe. Scoot jumped in without hesitation; he's always ready to head out. Chloe dithered a little, couldn't quite pull the trigger and found herself left on shore, racing along the beach with her

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1094859778959197572004-09-10T19:41:00.000-04:002004-09-10T19:48:00.253-04:00

Sept. 9. If you read my blog much, you'll already guess I talk to my dogs quite a bit. I try to keep it practical, though I do spend a lot of time telling them how good they are, how beautiful, and how Mumma hates them so they better be nicer to me than to her if they want any supper! (When I say that, they always raise an eyebrow and say, "Yeah, right!, Daddy!" Once I clearly heard Scoot say, "

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1094252992970942822004-09-03T19:05:00.000-04:002004-09-03T19:09:52.970-04:00

I read it all, enjoy some, admire a little. Once in a very great while my socks get knocked off. September 3. This is what I call a corker and a keeper. The conventional teacher advice is to consider the audience, and that's a fine default setting, but sometimes that advice gets in the way. This writer has paid her audience the huge compliment of ignoring it and turning inward to her

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1094150219408347762004-09-02T14:35:00.000-04:002004-09-02T14:40:16.023-04:00

September 2. I've been bustin' butt getting student blogs under way, collecting email and blog addies, lining them all up in the right folders, stamping out brushfires, emailing and talking to confused students (it's mostly new to me too!), and, oh yeah, somewhere in there thinking about actually teaching students something as early as tomorrow! My 162 students have prompts they are responding to

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1093657242533755862004-08-27T21:37:00.000-04:002004-08-27T21:40:42.533-04:00

Aug. 27. Half-day of faculty development today where various administrators told us things. Things like they are interested in quality instruction, things like Maine has economic problems, things like diversity is good for all of us, things like the college hasn't got much money for publicity so word-of-mouth is important, things like communication is good so that people find out each other's

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1092235260022191872004-08-11T10:38:00.000-04:002004-08-11T10:41:00.023-04:00

August 10. Still have watches on my mind, but, first: will I have everything all planned out on August 30 or will I be improvising? Teachers aren't supposed to admit this--do the words 'lesson plans' mean anything to anyone outside education?--but, since most of the content of the two courses I'm teaching is all-new, I better be improvising. The alternative is like pushing a piece of wet

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1091302762996037572004-07-31T15:36:00.000-04:002004-07-31T15:39:22.996-04:00

July 31. Front page article in today's BDN about UM profs, unhappy with the UM chancellor's reorganization plans asking for 'shared governance.' The article has some amusing quotations. One I like from the ever-egregious Vice-chancellor, Elsa Nunez, praises the faculty proposal for "empower[ing] faculty"--you have to love the educationese buzzwords--but then turns around and says the

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1090956354379583122004-07-27T15:23:00.000-04:002004-07-27T15:25:54.380-04:00

July 27.  My first piece of online stuff for my online 162.  If only I was as assiduous a journal-writer as I misleadingly hint I might be! July 27.  I helped found an alternative school back in the late 70s.  Why?  In a nutshell: follow this permanent link. July 24.  Too long between posts to be respectable, and I can hardly claim press of business as an excuse as I swing into the last

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1090059372543261152004-07-17T06:13:00.000-04:002004-07-17T06:22:17.560-04:00

July 17.  My first first-day-of-school anxiety dream last night.  Quite a bit earlier in the summer than usual, perhaps because I'll be teaching new syllabuses in the fall and expect a lot of conflict with administration on several fronts. Of course, teachers have anxiety dreams about school, children!  Didn't you know?  They're the mirror image of the student anxiety dreams.  Students worry

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1089918809403784582004-07-15T15:12:00.000-04:002004-07-15T15:15:36.963-04:00

July 15. I try to be a writing warrior: to let nothing interfere with my writing--not anger, not sadness, not distress, not depression, not loud mental conversations with myself that have neither end nor point. Even when one wants to crawl into a hole and be silent, one writes. Even when writing has failed, all that one can do for succor is write. You will understand that my sympathy for

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1087660936034755562004-07-09T12:01:00.000-04:002004-07-09T18:56:21.336-04:00

June 20. The missus has to warn me when our son or daughter come to visit: 'Don't weird the kids [she means their S.O's] out with dog stuff.' It takes me a few beats to figure out what she's talking about. Is it weird to get down on the floor and eat a cracker over the dog's supper before he's allowed to eat himself? It is? Hmm, oh yeah, that's right--it is! But no one would think it was

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1089293844688932002004-07-08T09:37:00.000-04:002004-07-08T15:05:18.450-04:00

A quotation from Robert Brustein in the July 5 & 12 New Republic: Avenue Q...purports to be about the human encounters in a multicultural neighborhood...[T]his means lessons in in the fact that American society includes people of every sexual inclination, ethnic identity, and political persuasion, and isn' t that wonderful and inspiring and irritating all at the same time? It's not diversity

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1088969785724712672004-07-04T15:35:00.000-04:002004-07-04T15:36:25.723-04:00

July 4. Fourth of July Brooks Field Day Five-Mile Race--my best time ever: toured the course in 36:45! (Too bad the year that happened was 1989. Today I did it in 48:44....) Nice if the plantar fasciitis, the twinge in my right knee, the arthritis here and there, the extra ten pounds I'm carrying, the general wear-and-tear of the past fifteen years all dropped off like magic and allowed me

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1088543702586747712004-06-29T17:14:00.000-04:002004-06-29T17:18:36.133-04:00

June 29. Tory Haiss was a writing warrior and would not have been daunted by any assignment: Not cancer, not mutilation, not death, not sadness, not leaving forever the things and people she loved--and she'd have woven through her words a thread of poetry, a metaphor, an echo or hint of something even larger. Actually, in the years before she died she wrote about all these things in just the

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1087759861350194882004-06-20T15:29:00.000-04:002004-06-20T15:39:08.530-04:00

June 20. In this post I intend to draw a comparison between learning to ride a horse and writing. [That sentence is an example of 'the announcement.' English teachers--and I am certainly one--hate announcements in student writing, but just as student writing has its certain fads--one semester everyone will be using quotation marks to emphasize words and the next the big new solecism will be

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1087349886174425762004-06-15T21:37:00.000-04:002004-06-19T12:03:04.053-04:00

June 15. Today is just two weeks short of the first anniversary of the death of Maine writer, teacher, journalist Tory Haiss. I met Tory in August of 1984 when we were both starting our time at Penobscot Job Corps. Job Corps is the world's fastest and toughest test-site for teachers. One finds one's right stuff--or not--almost immediately. Although I'd taught for 12 years before Job Corps, I

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1086999102289038082004-06-11T20:09:00.000-04:002004-06-19T12:04:37.960-04:00

June 11. My first assignment most semesters is this one: I know that on this assignment everyone feels pressure to make a good impression--in other words, to knock my socks off. But don't worry about perfection, okay? The perfect is the enemy of the good. Give each paragraph no more than 20 minutes or so max, then call it good, and move right on. This is a preliminary writing sample--I

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1086351868075274912004-06-04T08:23:00.000-04:002004-06-29T14:00:45.006-04:00

June 3. The library service EMCC recently subscribed to just found an article from a September 2001 Boston Globe magazine, which I've been trying to run down for over two years. Maine author Tory Haiss wrote about visiting Mt Washington in winter, wrote about her despair at her own physical condition and at the recent death of a friend, used the mountain as a poetic wedge to open and explore

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1086011303306437432004-05-31T09:46:00.000-04:002004-05-31T09:48:23.306-04:00

May 30. The difference between school jeans and barn jeans is time: in time all school jeans are demoted--when they get a bit tattered, a shade too pale, permanently saggy in the knees. How it happened I don't know, but I've been wearing a pair of school jeans for three days now--and school's been out two weeks. As I look down, I can see flour, dark spots of what must be either gear or

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1085240229184122332004-05-22T11:36:00.000-04:002004-05-22T11:37:09.183-04:00

May 22. Hundreds of concerned emcc.edu/faculty/jgoldfine readers have flooded my email and phone with concerns that the end of the semester would spell the end of my blogging. Calm yourselves, people. Emcc.edu/faculty/jgoldfine will not leave you in the lurch. Here, in a whirlwind, are some munchies: * On teaching, from www.erinoconnor.org: "...the life of the teacher is in many ways a

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1084820464912507992004-05-17T15:00:00.000-04:002004-05-17T15:01:04.913-04:00

May 16. Graduation Day yesterday. It's a time for joy and a time for tears, A time we'll treasure through the years; We'll remember al-ways Grad-u-a-tion day. Copyright (c) 1956 by Noel Sherman and Joe Sherman The missus claims the only version of that song she has ever heard is the one I sing, and I never sing it straight. Of course, it's a majorly sappy song, but it's a majorly sappy day

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1083792481059067492004-05-05T17:28:00.000-04:002004-05-17T15:02:09.073-04:00

May 3. I just met a colleague in the washroom. He glanced at me in the mirror and said, "Celebrate diversity, hey, John?" I just smiled, but I do have a lecturette, which basically amounts to: there is a distinction between 'diversity' and 'celebrating diversity.' I suspect some of my colleagues think I'm a bigot who's decided to come out of the closet now that diversity training is on the

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1081900231209846242004-04-13T19:50:00.000-04:002004-04-13T19:54:26.340-04:00

April 12. Why do people ever bother to talk about the big things (sex, politics, religion)? We know we're not going to change anyone's mind. How often have you heard people discussing homosexuality, or President Bush, or the doctrine of the holy trinity and one person says at the end of the discussion: "Wow! Your arguments are very good. Since I have no answers to them, you win the debate,

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1080123819796319592004-03-24T05:23:00.000-05:002004-03-24T05:27:07.123-05:00

Mar. 23. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry reading the article in today's BDN about the UMS delaying a long-awaited report, so that it could "develop a vision...for people to view before the strategic plan." Working in the Maine Community College System, I'm not unfamiliar with admins who like nothing better than to write fancy stuff to "...increase effectiveness and efficiency of...

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1079645444806130982004-03-18T16:30:00.000-05:002004-03-18T16:39:22.950-05:00

Mar. 18. I've been poking around in www.ratemyprofessors.com. Kind of a morbid fascination looking at colleagues' ratings (the Boss is hot, the students say, and gets the good ratings she thoroughly deserves.) Also, from other campuses, checking on friends, former friends, old girlfriends, acquaintances, Jennifer Finney Boylan, names I recognize, and so on. Morbid is defined as: a "

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1078872520465662262004-03-09T17:48:00.000-05:002004-03-09T17:51:47.513-05:00

Mar. 9. Ace former EMCC student Patsy Husson (currently knocking their socks off over at Husson's nursing department--Patsy was a first-class pickup for them and a first-class loss for us!) has a fine, fine genealogy paper in my 101/sample isearch folder. It's the first one in there, and that isn't by accident. When I had a couple of students doing genealogy isearches this semester, I asked

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1078517179150199322004-03-05T15:06:00.000-05:002004-03-05T15:09:21.153-05:00

Mar. 5. Yesterday I started a conversation with a student about an isearch by saying that there are two things the internet can get people to pay for: porn and genealogy info. Well, the student isn't doing an isearch on porn, though it's a perfectly fine topic. I felt like a bit of a fool--okay, a major fool--when the student pointed out to me that I wasn't talking to the student working on

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1077502028716115702004-02-22T21:07:00.000-05:002004-02-22T21:09:54.576-05:00

Feb. 21 I did a class survey just before break and spent an hour yesterday typing the comments up for students to see. The document is saved here and is also available on the menu over there on the left. After 17 years at EM, it was no surprise that there were many compliments on my laid-back easygoing style and also many complaints about my fuzziness on assignments and due dates. That's

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1076553586826245122004-02-11T21:39:00.000-05:002004-02-11T21:42:17.093-05:00

Feb. 11. A student asked today if I talk to my dogs. Do I talk to my dogs????!!! Does a bear live in the woods? There was an obituary in today's BDN, fellow named James Camber. The obit photo showed him sitting with his dog in his arms, a white toy poodle named Fritz, who will, I know, miss Mr. Camber immensely. I showed my student a picture of my two half-maltis, one on my shoulder and the

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1075808065931106282004-02-03T06:34:00.000-05:002004-02-03T06:54:11.496-05:00

Feb. 3. Know thyself. The admins think a battery of objective scoreable tests are needed to place and evaluate people, but a single short writing sample is enough to tell a decent English teacher whether a person is a "good writer" or, at least, a good student writer. This isn't prejudging or unfair. It's real judging. I don't need a fancy oil painting to see if you have much art ability--a

johngoldfinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322562737172405323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6163728.post-1075384873575610862004-01-29T09:01:00.000-05:002004-02-03T06:56:15.436-05:00

Jan. 29. Writing--embarrassing and useless waste of time or Satanic torment? The colleagues and I were debating this very question the other day. Each of us is asked many times a semester why writing is a part of the currriculum at all--"I'm never going to use it as a carpenter/welder/nurse/computer wizard/machinist/fill in your vocational goal." I'm sympathetic. The official answer is that

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