Memory
Flipping through your grandma’s fading frayed,
you find a photo that does not
seem as happy as the feeling you thought
you were had by when it was being taken,
but then an outtake behind it falls out
and breathes new life into the connection
you remember feeling at the time, kinda`like
discovering essays your mom wrote 40 years ago
filled with promises that can outlive her death.
Worry at the Department Meeting
for Alissa Quart
Since the forced online-ification of Covid,
many of my colleagues have been
won over by the advantages
of asynchronous on-line teaching.
I applaud their adaptability, but I miss
the conversations we used to have
in our offices between classes.
Back in the classroom, Fernando
laments the classes he wants are only online.
Mahiru writes about the advantages of in-person.
Everyone in the class agrees, but we’re
a biased demographic learning community.
There is no talk yet
of eliminating synchronous in-person classes
but I feel a fear triggered, an anger
tempted, an urgency to defend the oral mode
against encroaching disembodying reactive
logocentric ocularcentric modes of production
on this ancient Ohlone wetland
real estate developers are salivating over.
Still, I try to wear it lightly.
Besides that buzzword horse
the techies rode in on,
work from the comfort of your own home
makes a glaring unquestioned descriptive presumption
that cannot be taken for granted in this learning community—
Chris bio, url, foto, and foto credit (if needed) tk