Someone With a Pen: Richard Grayson’s Diary

Tuesday, January 4, 2000

3:30 PM. I fell asleep at about 10:30 PM last night, but after a couple of hours of rest, I woke up with my mind racing, thinking about my life, my book, moving, my health, etc.

After listening to the first chapter of Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, I finally drifted off to dream about a map of the Tallahassee area which showed most of it as a series of lakes.

Sometimes I think I need these bouts of insomnia to work through the changes in my life. But on the on the other hand, the sleep deficit is distressing, particularly on evenings like tonight when I’ve got to teach a class.

Early this morning, I went to Eckerd Drugs, the post office and the ATM. Back at home, I exercised, showered and left for Nova.

At the office, I called the law library and made arrangements for a time for my Legal Research and Writing class to get a tour and a lecture two weeks from tonight.

Mostly I sat in the office and wrote long emails, replying to Tom, Richard Kostelanetz, Mikey, George Myers and others.

Alice needed help in printing out a section of a word processing document. She mentioned that on the New Year’s card Mom sent her, Mom had written: “Arizona is good. Florida is better.”

I’m not surprised Mom feels that way, but I think it’s mostly a matter of giving them all time to adjust. When I called Arizona, Mom said it was quite cold and windy.

Actually, for the last few days it’s been warmer in New York City than in Phoenix – while here it’s perfectly beautiful with blue skies and highs in the upper 70°s or low 80°s.

Dad said that yesterday’s test for the Census Bureau job was much harder than he’d expected: a standardized exam with verbal, quantitative and analytical questions he found confusing.

Back home at 12:30 PM, I went over the Legal Research and Writing text. I can see that I’m probably going to fall behind my own schedule as early as tonight.

While I could be better prepared, I expect few of my students will have read the assigned sections of the text the way they’re supposed to do in the evening classes.

The Legal Research and Writing class is supposed to be in the Sonken Building, which is used for classes at the K-12 University School during the day.

Les told me the seats in the room are not appropriate for adults and seem designed by orthopedic surgeons to create as many new patients for themselves as possible.

After reading most of the newspaper, I’m now going to lie down and close my eyes for 45 minutes to an hour, hoping I can get some energy back.

*

10:30 PM. My first class went fine, although the classroom is in the junior high (seventh grade) section of the University School, a miserable venue for a college class.

Most of the students I already know from my Civil and Political Rights class or other classes.

Apparently this course hasn’t been offered since it was canceled a year ago when Billie Jo Kaufman got sick after the class had only two sessions. (They should have asked me to step in back then.)

Anyway, I like most of the students, and after dealing with the introductory stuff, I showed them a particularly miserable example of legalese, which we tried to revise to plain English.

Then, after the break, I went over the first couple of chapters: an overview of the U.S. judicial system and a discussion of binding and statutory authority – which should be a review for most students.

Finally, they took the diagnostic test, choosing whether 100 words, phrases or punctuation from a sample legal memorandum were correct or incorrect.

The last person handed in her paper at about 9:20 PM. We’ll go over them in class next week.

After chatting with a few students, I went over to my office.

Earlier, I’d emailed Kate Gale, asking if Red Hen Press was aiming for a May or June publication date for the book.

“Your assumption is correct,” she wrote back. “We are working very hard.”

I suspect she’s totally lying and they haven’t done anything.

I guess I let my desire – my need – to get published overwhelm my instincts last summer when I signed the contract and gave Valentine Publishing Group $2500.

If Kate acted friendlier, I guess I’d have more faith in her, but I now don’t expect them to have the book out by June – which means that they’ll breach the contract.

I do expect they will eventually publish it, but they don’t really have any incentive to do so. Since I’m not in Los Angeles, it’s hard for me to see what’s going on.

I now feel quite foolish, especially all after all the work I’ve done in getting email and property addresses of people who I wanted to publicize the book to. I probably should have self-published.

Originally Kate told me she could have the book out by December. And in November she said they were typesetting it. She’s never once initiated contact with me, except through her intern Jenafer.

I don’t want to assume the worst yet, but Kate isn’t very reassuring in either her manner or her behavior.

Well, what’s the worst thing that could happen? That they don’t publish the book – at which point, I can publish it myself because they’ve breached the contract.

I think I should let Kate know that they agreed to publish the book within ten months of receipt of my check, which was dated June 14; the funds were debited when the check was cashed on June 21.

Maybe now I should just concentrate on the iUniverse reprinting of With Hitler in New York – that will probably appear before The Silicon Valley Diet, given the fast world of books-on-demand. (Of course, iUniverse also hasn’t contacted me since I sent them my information for a second time.)

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Thursday, January 6, 2000

8 PM. Even though my lower back went out a bit and my teeth are starting to ache from the 2½ hours of dental work I had this morning, I feel 1000% better than I did yesterday when I felt totally depressed.

The eight hours of solid sleep last night helped make me feel sane, but even last evening I did things to try to relax and center myself: I did fifteen minutes of yoga to a video, laughed at episodes of Fawlty Towers and Seinfeld (one of the few I’d never seen before), and took two Triavil.

This morning I still felt a bit depressed, but that faded as the day went on. And when I went to the office at 5:30 PM, I had wonderful news on the voicemail: Crescent Dragonwagon phoned to tell I’d be one of the first residents of the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow, the former inn, in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, in the Ozarks.

She said the panelists were impressed by my work and told me how she once bought an I Brake for Delmore Schwartz bumper sticker for her father, the Hollywood biographer Maurice Zolotow, who had gone to the University of Wisconsin with Delmore, and he drove with it on his car for the rest of his life.

(Crescent’s mother, the children’s book editor, Charlotte Zolotow, died just recently.)

I phoned back but had to leave a message.

So right now it looks as though I’ll be in Eureka Springs for at least part of June and July. It sounds like paradise to me: a cozy inn in a resort town of artists and eccentrics. And I’m excited that it’s in a part of the country I’ve never been in.

I had planned to send out an application to an artists’ colony in Contra Costa County, but now I’m not going to apply for another place. I think Dairy Hollow sounds like more fun than Ragdale and Yaddo because Crescent and her husband, the author Ned Shank, seem like great people I could be friends with.

Going to Arkansas would complicate my getting settled in Tallahassee, but I’ll make it happen. I called Mom, who said I could have my mail forwarded to Apache Junction while I’m between addresses in Florida. (These days Mom and I are on really good terms.)

Anyway, I’ve been seeing this year as a parallel to the difficult transition year of 1980, and the highlight of that year for me was spending June at MacDowell. Maybe Dairy Hollow can serve the same function this summer. It feels right, just as FAMU feels right for now.

Now, Red Hen Press didn’t feel so right, but I’ve decided to just forget about it for a while – whatever happens, the $2500 is gone – and not contact Kate Gale again until the deadline date of April. I’ll just go about my life.

The great thing about being 48 is that I’ve survived so much that I can deal with setbacks more easily than I could when I was younger.

All the stories in The Silicon Valley Diet collection are or will soon be out there in magazines, anthologies and webzines. While I hope the book gets published, I know the stories are still good, and I can live without the book coming out if I have to.

Tomorrow I’ll deal with the Nova students I turned away when I was so stressed out yesterday. I told Rahel to come see me tomorrow, that when I saw her yesterday I was rushing to deal with a family emergency.

Maybe she can explain the duplicate research papers. The whole situation is my fault: if I’d confronted Rahel and the other student last term, I would have gotten to bottom of it.

Well, live and learn. That should be my motto.

(The motto of Eureka Springs is “Where the Misfits Fit.”)

At the dentist’s office this morning, I came alive, joking with Dr. Canale and the technician even as I underwent the pain of the procedure to prepare the crown.

The most pain, of course, was the $477 bill – but I paid it on a credit card, and that’s that. The crown should be ready in two weeks, and then I’ll be through with dental work for the present.

After quick trips to the grocery store and public library, I came home, had lunch, and then spent a couple of hours at Barnes & Noble with iced tea and the Times.

I ran into Gary Kay, who’s now full-time at BCC-South and who also adjuncts at Nova. (He thinks Larry Brandt either is an alcoholic or – more likely – has Alzheimer’s.)

Gary and I chatted for about 25 minutes, a pleasant interruption in my day. I still need to finish reading the chapter I’m going over tomorrow, but I can also do that in the morning or if I can’t sleep later tonight.

I probably need to rearrange my schedule and do more work earlier in the day and read the newspaper later.

I got a call from Drew Norris, the recruiter at St. Thomas Law School, and so I invited him to speak to my Legal Research and Writing class on Tuesday.

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Friday, January 7, 2000

9 PM. This afternoon I had a nice talk with Crescent Dragonwagon. She sounds like a character, but quite smart and stable (which is how I like to think about myself).

My residency at Dairy Hollow is scheduled for July 13 and is to last four weeks. My first choice of dates, it turns out, worked out quite well, given that I have to move at the end of May.

I should still have time in May, while I’m living here, or in June, when I hope to be in my new apartment in Tallahassee, to make a trip to New York or California or Arizona – or to all of those places.

I’m not crazy about this term’s later-to-bed, later-to-rise schedule, but eventually I’ll adjust to it. This morning I woke up around 7:15 AM, but instead of trying to get out early, I stayed around the house and didn’t take a shower until 10:30 AM, after I’d finished going over Chapter 1 of the Introduction to Law text.

Of course, I didn’t get through the whole chapter in class today. The course is proceeding slowly. I did give a sample quiz to establish that I expect the students to do the reading although this quiz couldn’t count because some of the students weren’t able to get the text until more copies arrived at the bookstore later this afternoon.

I kept the class for the entire time, which isn’t a problem. I realize that they’re feeling overwhelmed by all the new terminology and concepts, so it’s better for me to go slowly and deeply, pausing to make certain that they’re understanding what’s going on.

I also have come to realize that, compared to my students, my knowledge of the law is vast enough so that I don’t have to worry about running out of things to say.

Rahel, who had sworn that she was innocent of plagiarism, brought her original Drown essay and I could see that she had revised her first draft, so I agreed to change her grade.

She couldn’t explain why the other student, Kashmini, had handed in the same paper except that she, Rahel, usually prints out two copies in the lab and perhaps Kashmini had taken Rahel’s second copy by accident. I suppose it’s possible and told her to tell Kashmini to see me.

Well, that’s settled for now. It’s my own fault for not taking care of the situation in December.

After class, I chatted for a long time with Nathaniel, a student who’s returned to school after thirteen years as a juvenile detention officer.

I emailed overdue letters to Patrick and to Teresa. Earlier this week I’d heard from Sat Darshan and got a Happy New Year greeting from Gianni, to whom I replied with the news about FAMU.

David McNaron came into my office and we ended up talking for 35 minutes. He’s an intelligent guy who came to South Florida twenty years ago to go for his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Miami. He began working for Nova as I did, through the B.P.M. program, but now, even as a full-time Liberal Arts professor, he would like to leave.

Of course, the academic job market in philosophy is nearly nonexistent, and efforts to find non-academic jobs haven’t gotten him any offers. I told David all my best adjunct horror stories as entertainingly as I could, and we had a good time. By 5 PM, when I left the office, I was feeling tired.

Last night I talked to Kerry in San Francisco, saying that I didn’t plan to apply to any other colonies this year. But I was interested in hearing about some of the places she’s stayed at. She didn’t apply to Dairy Hollow because of the community service requirement – which is a plus to me – and that the place sounded “a bit flaky.”

Crescent told me that Eureka Springs has lots of gay people and artists, and even WT Pfefferle mentioned that he thought the town was beautiful.

Kerry applied to Yaddo for the summer, as I did, without about as much hope of getting in. But she goes to colonies to work hard without interruption and I go more for vacations and socializing – although somehow I manage to write while I’m there. After all, I’ve published tons more than Kerry has.

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Monday, January 10, 2000

8 PM. Last evening I watched TV and then got into bed early; I slept deeply and awoke to the news at 6 AM that AOL had bought Time Warner.

This is an incredible media merger, but I am sure there are more to come as the big online companies marry non-Internet media giants.

I’m still adjusting to teaching at noon. Although I haven’t been getting to school until about 11:30 AM, there seems to be less time in the day – while at the same time, paradoxically, my day seems longer.

Probably it’s that I don’t have enough time to do last-minute preparations for class like xeroxing, especially when students come by to see me, as Chris Villano and Matt Shelby did today – Chris to pick up an assignment and Matt to drop off an LSAC law school recommendation letter request.

I didn’t give a quiz today in Intro to Legal Studies, but I should have. I called on four students in a row to give me the facts of Cruzan and they couldn’t because they hadn’t done the reading. I’ve always let that slide before, but when we’re doing cases it’s annoying. I’ll spring a quiz on Wednesday.

Otherwise, I didn’t get as far as I would have liked, but I did discuss how to brief a case and we got through three cases.

I’ll have to speed up now that they’re getting the hang of legal terminology – or at least a few of them are. I can see that some of them are going to be left behind pretty soon without some extra help from me.

This term’s classes take a lot of energy, and I guess I had more of it when I taught at 8:20 AM last fall. Of course, I also played tapes then, and in Core Studies I had handouts and movies and often let the class out early.

I got the results of the first 8-week term evaluations, and they were so good that I’m going to keep them for future job-hunting.

I didn’t calculate my average score, but a glance told me it was a lot higher than that of most professors (who as a group scored lower than the adjuncts). And the comments were good, too.

I emailed that guy Mal in Tallahassee, saying he was right about the problem of no time limit to guide you on email. “I didn’t realize you were joking when you asked those questions,” I said.

Of course, I don’t actually think he was joking, but that seems to be a nice way to get out of answering all his questions – and then I just said he should call me to arrange a meeting when he’s in Miami. If I don’t hear from him again, fine.

There may be areas of my life where I’m too needy – but needing a boyfriend isn’t one of them.

Teresa wrote from her new desk. P.J. wanted his old desk back, so they bought a new one for Teresa at IKEA and Paul put it together.

“We’ve thrown out so many papers and other junk,” Teresa said, “that I’m not used to everything being so neat.”

She spent yesterday in Manhattan with Celeste and John, and the day was so beautiful that after dinner they walked from Orchard Street to Union Square, Later, Celeste and John came back to Locust Valley for dinner with her and Paul.

Her parents are having a hard time dealing with the computer and AOL, Teresa reports, and she told me I could come for a two-week visit this summer.

I also got brief emails from Alice, Vish (I suspect he can’t type very well and that’s why it’s hard for us to communicate), and Jaime, who was sick with stomach flu yesterday.

Sat Darshan had Kiran at work with her today. Tomorrow the cast is coming off, so she’s staying home from work. After that, Kiran is going to stay with Nirankar while Sat Darshan is working. I guess she’s decided it wasn’t safe at the old babysitter’s.

I read my Nexis clips, resubscribed to daily emails from the Miami Herald and San Jose Mercury-News, and looked up a couple of addresses on Lexis ASSETS library and on Yahoo’s People Search.

Les Lindley came in to check on his old office. While he’s adjuncting for the winter, they’ve given him a new little office, one of those made from the former Women’s Resource Institute headquarters.

Home at 3:45 PM, I read the paper, listened to All Things Considered, wrote out checks for all this month’s credit card and student loan payments, had dinner, did fifteen minutes of yoga and went out to Whole Foods Market to buy produce and frozen dinners.

(Actually, most nights I just eat a veggie wrap that costs only $1.78 a dinner.)

Jonathan called me after he got a denial of unemployment benefits based on the fact that he wasn’t laid off in Florida. It’s pretty final, I told him, but he can try an appeal.

I didn’t tell him that not receiving Unemployment is probably for the best, that he needs to be out working. Staying home would just make him more non-functional, but it’s not my place to say that.

Igor just called. He had a great time in New York City over the holidays.

While he was there, he worked with an on-demand printer from upstate on The Rush-Ins Reader, an anthology that Igor designed himself.

The printer turned around Igor’s PDF file into 50 copies of books in four days – in time for the Rush-Ins’ reading at a club in downtown Manhattan.

Igor also spent time with Richard Kostelanetz and Samuel R. Delaney, and they went to and participated in the annual New Year’s marathon 50-hour reading of Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans, listening to Bruce Andrews and many others.