judy prince wrote:
> Ken, you are an awesome genius with all those details and references!
> You must be a professor (oh, strike that, I'm not feeling all that
> happy about professors today but I need to get over that because the
> last one I had was as wonderful as you are).
>
> U Rock!
I Rock? That's a country in Southern Asia, I'm afraid.
The last time someone called me an _awesome genius_, they were carrying
a gun for protection:-), and as for Professor--let's not go there. If
there is one unhealed wound in me, like Amfortas in Parsifal, that's the
one. HOWever...this is just some version of common sense, by which I
mean name-calling like you endured is not on the map of acceptable
behavior. Some of us can be too nice. I once sent work to an
individual on the West Coast named (swearing' to God) Lily Pond--no frog
in sight--who promptly wrote back, shredding me as unmusical, arhythmic,
etc. What I might say now is different from what I said fifteen years
ago. Fifteen years ago I sat still for this like a schoolboy who'd been
paddled by the priest. Now I'd probably tell her where to go and how to
get there. For starts.
This is ONE person who went at you. No matter. Nobody is obligated to
accept having their integrity flushed down the crapper. I don't care
who they are. No grade is worth that, and no job either. I remember
reading a book years ago where they interviewed released prisoners of
war from Korea. One of them talked about how he grew up, in the
"backwoods" somewhere down south. His father or grandfather said "If
someone calls you a sonofabitch, laugh at him because anyone can see
you're not a dog. If someone calls you a liar, try to kill him because
anyone can look at you and see you're not a liar." Maybe a little
hardscrabble there, but you get the idea: you don't have to take that.
I suspect there are other people who teach writing who are not
insensitive martinets.
ken
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