Someone With a Pen: Richard Grayson’s Diary

Wednesday, February 24, 1999

9 PM. I’m bleary-eyed after a day that began at 4:30 AM. Unable to escape back to my dreams, I listened to NPR and exercised, then had breakfast at 6 AM and was out of the house earlier than usual.

I picked up three copies of the Sun-Sentinel from the newspaper rack at a nearby condo. Lourdes Rodriguez-Florido’s story, “Two writers from Davie get $5,000 grants,” was actually better than I expected.

Published on the front page of the Southwest Community Closeup section, it mostly focused on me and segued to Michael McKeever in the last graph before it jumped to page 5.

The article says embarrassingly nice things about me, including that I’m unpretentious “for such a successful writer.”

Patrick supplied an undeservedly kind quote, and the reporter was accurate about my jobs and everything I told her, including the fibs – that I was 48 already, that I teach business law as well as writing and literature – which I wanted to see in print.

(Naturally, when Dad saw the reference to my age, he called me a moron. “You’re not 48 till June 4.” but that’s his age problem not mine.)

I’ve got the article in front of me, but I can’t really stand to read it again. She left out a lot, of course. I don’t seem to be able to out myself in print for anything.

Anyway, Lourdes did a fine job, and it’s a nice little calling card. Of course, it’s not as wide-ranging as my ego craves – but I’m better off with that.

It’s weird how I’m this odd combination of egotistical and modest. Lourdes made a big deal of how, when asked if I wanted my stories returned, I said she could just throw them away. Hey, they are only stories and books, not people or pets.

In the morning class, I played the video of “The People and the Land” and a little of “A Day in the Life” episodes from PBS’s United States of Poetry.

While I didn’t expect the class to get it totally, afterwards the only one who spoke was Jason, the doesn’t-know-he’s-gay kid with the turgid formal prose style: “Those aren’t poets. Poets are people like Shakespeare and the old-time British writers I studied in high school.”

I tried not to show how pissed his comment made me and said that those guys in their time were like the poets in the video and we can’t write nineteenth-century poetry in the twenty-first century. But then I just let them go, as the class time was up anyway.

I changed Chris’s grade on his last paper to a B+, but he was still bothered: “I’ve always gotten A’s. What can I do to write better?” I tried to explain that I thought he was doing fine with a B+, that I only got B’s in the first three writing classes I took in college.

I’ve always figured that I grade high – but when I don’t give anyone less than a B, it’s apparently still not high enough for today’s students. It sort of makes me not want to teach anymore.

Lynn Wolf came by with a bagel and said I should go out to the department office, that Ben had brought bagels, and when I did, Ben said, “Just the person I want to see.”

He said embarrassingly flattering things about me and said that next year, a legal studies professor was leaving unexpectedly and he wanted me to take over his courses. (He had told me this before, but he forgot – just as he’d forgotten that I told him I was going to Maryland “for a fellowship”.)

I told him I couldn’t teach adjunct courses next year, that the only way I could do it was with a temporary full-time job. Ben said he would try to see if the Dean would approve a one-year visiting professor deal and he’d get back to me.

“You could just walk into this job,” he told me.

I did mention the article and he looked at it and Santa and Maria came over, and then I felt embarrassed at my own bragging and left.

I really am all set to go to journalism school in Maryland, so I almost wish this sudden opportunity hadn’t arisen, mostly because if it doesn’t come through – and chances are it won’t – Maryland and J-school will feel like a kind of second-best experience.

And I almost wish this choice weren’t given to me because I do want to leave Florida. But I could probably still go to the University of Maryland this summer and take 12 credits and start up again in a year.

I assume the full-time salary has to be over $30,000 for eight courses. Well, I now put myself in the universe’s hands. Life has a way of changing our plans, and I can go with the flow – to pile one cliché atop another.

At 5:30 PM, I went back to Nova and gave my Organizational Communications final and returned the papers I graded this morning. While the class was working on their exam, I graded the Thursday and Friday night classes’ papers.

I came home after 8 PM, in time to do what I rarely do, which is watch TV: I like Dawson’s Creek, the WB high school series.

So I did manage to accomplish more than I figured the past couple of days. Today I got a much-needed haircut – my hair actually seems to be growing faster as I age – and yesterday I took three pairs of pants in to be altered.  (They won’t be ready till March 16 because the Taylor has to go to London to stay with her daughter after the daughter’s baby is born.)

I’m surprised I’m not more tired. Well, my eyelids are a bit heavy, but during the day I had that lack-of-sleep middle-of-forehead headache, and that is now gone.

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Thursday, February 25, 1999

9:30 PM. I woke at 5 AM but managed to doze off for a little while an hour later.

It was 9:45 AM when I left the house to go to downtown Fort Lauderdale, where I picked up that videos and audiotapes for this weekend’s American Literature class.

There’s a great PBS Voices and Visions program on Whitman that can make him come alive in a way I probably couldn’t by myself. I also found videos on Dickinson, Thoreau and Twain and audiotapes of “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” and “The Yellow Wallpaper,” which I’ll play parts of.

On the Web at the library, I discovered to my delight that my column accusing Dan Quayle of being a closet compassionate conservative was running in today’s Boca Raton News. Shallow guy that I am, having another column in the paper after that article about me yesterday really gave me a lift.

Patrick wrote that he hasn’t seen the Sun-Sentinel article yet. He said that Gary Kay told him that Larry Brandt has beginning Alzheimer’s – so that could certainly account for his extreme disorganization and forgetfulness. I don’t know if Gary is right, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Larry keeps calling me to teach courses I’m not qualified for.

I now understand why I’m so valuable:

I now understand why I’m so valuable: I heard from Dawn in last night’s class, who works at the BPM program office, that Larry has a lot of trouble finding adjuncts. If the stories I’ve heard are true, some of the instructors that Larry does manage to hire sound very irresponsible.

This afternoon I went to hand in my grades for the Wednesday night class (four A’s and one A-) and there were three new women in the office. They’d never had a teacher turn in grades before. Would you believe that I had to show them what procedures their predecessors followed?

Anyway, getting back to Patrick: He’s troubled by budget problems at Broward Community College. The new vice president wants to appoint a non-teaching publications person who would take over P’an Ku from Patrick as well as run the college newspaper and yearbook.

The administration wants all those publications to be self-sustaining, which sounds impossible to me. Naturally, Patrick doesn’t want to give up interacting with his P’an Ku staff, the best he’s ever assembled for the literary magazine.

At Vicki’s request, Dan Wakefield came in to read and talk at BCC’s South Campus. Patrick was impressed by him and hadn’t realized he taught at FIU. I told Patrick that Wakefield blurbed me after we both taught at a writers’ conference at Winthrop College in 1982.

On the news, I heard one of the new trustees that Governor Bush appointed to the BCC Board of Trustees was Levi Williams, who is a fellow class of 1994 graduate of UF law school. I remember sitting behind him in Evidence class.

I assume the connection is through State Rep. Chris Smith, another classmate, who endorsed Bush last year after McKay won his runoff. That was actually pretty sleazy for a black Democrat, but a bunch of the black students in my section seemed to be real Reagan-lovers.

Sat Darshan emailed, wondering what had happened to me. She asked when I’m leaving Florida and when my parents and Jonathan are moving to Arizona.

I could answer the first question but not the second. Mom just keeps putting out these dumb flyers in the box she set up in front of the house. I’m certain they’ll be here next summer and possibly through the fall.

One reason I don’t want to return to South Florida in August is because I expect my family will still be around. It would be much nicer to live here if they weren’t.

Sat Darshan said she’s so busy that the days blend into one another – but Kiran is very cute and affable for an infant.

I left for Boca at 4:30 PM, stopping off to get the paper with my column and to have a baked potato at Wendy’s.

While my seven Organizational Communications students took the exam, I finished reading the Times. This Boca group at Rexall Sundown was the nicest, most intelligent class I’ve had; It was a pleasure to go to Boca and teach them every week.

Actually, the Wednesday night class was also pretty good. Some of the weekend students are bright, but others have such poor skills that they really need remedial work.

I got out early enough to drive down to the BCC-South Library to try to get yet another video, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, but someone had put it on reserve.

Before returning home, I stopped off at Nova to make copies of my column. In the mailbox were my scores from last terms teacher evaluation.

They were better than most adjuncts’, but I was annoyed with one student’s comment that I was boring and needed to improve my teaching skills. It makes me angry even though I got some nice compliments as well.

Anyway, I won’t be disappointed if I end up spending next year at the University of Maryland journalism school rather than teaching. Right now I’m a little sick of teaching and tired of dealing with students.

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Friday, February 26, 1999

6 PM. Since I have the videos on Whitman and the other writers, I haven’t done that much preparation for tonight’s class. If the TV and VCR don’t work, I guess it will be a lot shorter class. I’ve already graded their papers.

This morning I woke up at 5 AM and was out of the house around 7 AM to xerox some sample critical essays for tonight’s class.

Only about half of my 8 AM students showed up because some went home early for spring break, but I had an okay session: not great but tolerably good.

Downstairs, I handed in my grades for the Boca class and filled out a mileage reimbursement form.

In the computer lab I saw emails from Patrick and Sat Darshan but I’ll wait to respond. I went to Barnes & Noble for biscotti and iced tea and to read the main section of the New York Times.

Home at 11 AM, I did some clerical work and listened to the Diane Rehm Show on NPR. She had an interesting discussion of how today’s young people are more than one-third nonwhite and how this will change America.

In my opinion, it can be only for the good, especially with all the multiracial people who can get us beyond thinking of black and white.

While it may make some white Americans anxious to know that eventually they will not be in the majority and black Americans may be anxious that Hispanics will soon surpass them in numbers, I am looking forward to the changes – not that I expect to live long enough to see all the beneficial effects.

Yes, I suppose something will be lost, too, but that’s what life is: change. Okay, I can get off my soapbox now.

I got a letter from Professor Patrick Meanor of the English Department at SUNY Oneonta. He wrote me in 1991 about a volume for the Dictionary of Literary Biography called American Short Story Writers Since World War II.  The scholar assigned to write an essay on me retired, and so I never got in that volume; I remember looking at it the University of Florida library and being disappointed.

But Professor Meanor wants to include me in the next edition to be published in December 2000 and wanted to know if I could suggest someone to do the essay.

My first thought was Tom Whalen, who enjoys writing criticism and knows my fiction better than anyone, so I called Professor Meanor and gave him Tom’s NOCCA address and phone number.

The professor remembered that I was about to go to law school when he last contacted me, and I told him how everything had turned out.

At 2 PM, I went back to Nova to pick up my paycheck – and it was a shock. Getting the checks biweekly means that adjuncts can be paid on the alternate Friday following the last class session instead of waiting for the next 15th of the month.

But they treated the $3,500 as if I’d earned it all in two weeks and so they took out so much in taxes that I netted only $2,427. Last December I grossed a similar amount, but then my check was over $350 more.

Well, I’ll get it back in my 2000 refund – but of course I now owe the IRS a fortune for 1999. So that was a big disappointment. Oh well.

Gianni called while I was dozing off at 4:45 PM – six hours later in Madrid time.

He’s been very busy. In January he started getting very bad panic attacks. First he thought he was going insane or having a heart attack. He went to the emergency room (“Thank God, it wasn’t like an American ER; healthcare is like the gold standard here”) and wore a heart monitor the way Grandma Ethel had once done for a day or two.

(In the office of the doctor, Alejandro pointed out all the other patients, who were elderly, and said, “Do you see anyone here who looks like you?”)

Nothing was wrong with his heart, so they put him on an antidepressant as well as a tranquilizer and are monitoring his serotonin levels. I told him that it takes time for antidepressants to kick in, but Gianni says the medicine is already working:  he sleeps ten hours a night and has begun to feel better.

I’m obviously one person who’s a maven about panic attacks even if my worst times were (exactly) thirty years ago, so I could empathize.

Gianni is giving English lessons to people in Alejandro’s company, including the CEO, and he’s taking 19 credits at the university and doing other things besides.

For example, he’s learning French from a group – I forget what he called it – and he thinks he’ll be completely fluent in Spanish soon. The internship with the Commerce Department at the U.S. embassy in Madrid seems too good to turn down, so he probably won’t end up going to summer school in Paris and spending August in Maryland as he had planned.

At one point in our conversation Gianni had to search for a word, and he said it sometimes happens to him when he can’t immediately figure out the English equivalent of a Spanish term. But overall, he said, he is happy.

Still, the panic attacks must be a sign of stress – and of course the attacks themselves put great stress on someone. We agreed that you feel totally spent and completely drained of energy after a bad panic attack.

I advised him that the antidepressants might cause him to gain weight, but in Gianni’s case that could only be a blessing.

It was wonderful to hear his voice again, but I wish I could have hugged him. I could hear him light a cigarette, and I almost – almost – miss Gianni’s smoking. I’m glad we’re still friends.

Earlier today I felt relaxed, but right now I don’t feel that much like teaching tonight.

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Saturday, February 27, 1999

6 PM. I got home an hour ago after the last student handed in her midterm essay in the Survey of American Literature class. Our sessions last evening and this afternoon went very well, so I’m pleased.

My strategy of using portions of video and audiotapes to augment the lecture and discussion seems to have worked, and I was able to tie in the work of Dickinson, Thoreau, Whitman, Stowe, Twain and Gilman to each other and to cultural and historical changes in nineteenth century America. I’ve always been pretty good at seeing the big picture.

Some of my 35 students are quite intelligent and perceptive while others have poor writing and analytical skills, but the class as a whole is manageable. They are a less rowdy a group than the similarly large Coral Springs class last fall.

But now I have two sets of papers from students to grade in the next two weeks, and I’d better get them done by next weekend before work for my other courses kick in.

In the two hours I gave them to write, I was able to grade the (mostly excellent) Monday night papers on The Crying of Lot 49 and Slaughterhouse-Five, freeing me of that obligation.

In the remaining time, I read the Norton Anthology sections on the periods 1914-1945 and post-1945.

Looking at their definition of modernist work in the material on American literature between the world wars, I can’t imagine why anyone would think that my own fiction is post-modernist. My stories have all the attributes of classic (or high) modernism as spelled out by the Norton Anthology editors.

That’s why when it says in the newspaper that I do away with all literary conventions, I know that they’re talking to a public that has never absorbed modernist fiction from 70 years ago.

It was 10:30 PM when I arrived home last night, but in contrast to two weeks ago, I slept well and could lie in bed till nearly 9:30 AM.

Also, I was well-prepared for today’s class and didn’t have to stress myself by reading new material – though I did benefit from printing out the transcript of an NPR Talk of the Nation Book Club of the Air discussion on Uncle Tom’s Cabin that I listened to in late January of last year.

It’s just getting dark now at 6:20 PM and it’s still not yet night. In nine weeks I’ll be in New York – hurray!

(Yes, cheering is childish – but whoever said that I wasn’t childish?)