2:50pm – Actual published start-time of class. He’s not here yet. So, on the syllabus today it says that we’ll be talking about The American Revolution, but given that we’re about three sections behind where the syllabus says we should be, I think I’ll take that with a grain of salt.
Also, there’s something wrong with this table. It’s making my laptop sit crooked, so I have to press the heels of my hands on the keyboard area to make it behave and not wiggle like the lopsided table at a bar.
2:55pm – he just came in completely bundled up in his usual outerwear and announced “I hope you’re all enjoying this beautiful weather.” It looks like he just walked in from Alaska.
He does not have our tests. Is anybody surprised? Also, he just found somebody’s cigarette butt right here on the floor in the classroom (WTF?) and put it in his back pocket. That’s terrifying. It wasn’t even his.
Now I guess we’re going to talk about the Oscars. He just said “Did your people win last night?” What people? Do we as Americans now own stakes in Oscar nominees? He has just informed us that Brits have one-act plays in the pubs in England instead of live music. How perfectly fascinating. He’s demonstrating a stutter in his description of The King’s Speech. For two minutes now. He suggests that everyone should travel to “wherever” because it “broadens your persona.” Except Mexico. He says don’t go there.
Well, he almost started class. Now he’s talking about when he lived in London (apparently when he saw the one-act plays in the pubs) and he once knew a “Shakespeare dude.” Insert Australian accent here. Apparently, said “Shakespeare dude” liked to flit betwixt pub and playhouse, drinking pints in between cues. Them’s the actions of a drunkard right there.
3:04pm – He’s promising us a “broader perspective on the passage of time” and claims that Early American History = “Ancient History.” He still hasn’t defined what it is we’re going to talk about today. But he’s giving us clues. The American Revolution is not to be covered today, sadly. I figured as much.
3:06pm – Topic still shrouded in mystery. He just asked a guy in the front row, presumably as an aside, for the “email number for hot dates.” Since we have yet to “gress,” does this count as a digression?
3:09pm - He just wrote on the board “Moral Economy, Mercantile Capitalism, Imperialism.” The sad part is, he seems to get stuck on these three ideas repeatedly and he doesn’t appear to be able to do more than describe them.
Apparently we are definitely talking about Moral Economy at the very least.
I’m a little irritated that I came in to class today. The main reason I did is because I wanted my test back. Now that I’m not getting it back today, it makes me want to go home.
He’s claiming that people in early America had the right to pay the “just price” or exercise taxation populaire. I’m going to have to check that one to see if it’s true. More examples of Moral Economy: sumptuary laws, which he explains thusly: “If I’m a peasant, I’m prohibited to walk down the streets of Philadelphia or Boston or London or Paris with a sword on my belt, because swords are a mark of the aristocracy.” He just used transvestites as another example of sumptuary law. Was this a rampant problem in Colonial America?
Charavari. What the hell is Charavari? Oh, it’s like Twelfth Night. He just sang the theme to The Jeffersons. Apparently, the Jeffersons wouldn’t have been accepted in Colonial America. Not only because they were black, but because they were upwardly mobile.
He just pronounced New Orleans “New Or-LON.”
We have just spent the better part of six minutes giving repetitive examples of charavari. Which is apparently pronounced “chah-ruh-varry.” Which sounds like a type of beans or something.
I’m actually kind of proud of him. We’ve made it about 14 minutes without a digression.
I just gave him an example he was asking for so that he would move on.
Aha! 3:22pm – Digression #1! He’s contradicting himself with regards to the sumptuary law declaration. Apparently hierarchical society *wasn’t* actually a law. It was just a tradition. He’s incorrectly equating marriage contracts and marriage licenses. Digression within a digression! He wants to talk about Homer. Of The Iliad, not Homer Simpson. He just declared categorically that Homer existed and all his stories were true. I’m sure that the world of ancient literature owes this man a great boon.
3:25pm – Digression is over, theoretically. Oh wait – not so much. He wants to shoot a rabbit and a deer on his land. Or wrestle them to the ground. I’m not sure.
He keeps advancing this theory that there was a common land system in Britain in the 16th and 17th centuries. He claims that there were these great swaths of land that the nobles and landowners just let the peasants use for free, as it was in their best interest to make sure their people weren’t starving and with an eye to be proactive against revolution. I’m pretty sure that’s not how it went. He keeps referencing something called the “Enclosure Movement.” He says that the peasants just woke up one morning and there was a huge metal fence surrounding this previously free land because nobles suddenly decided to grow crops and raise sheep for wool – both to export.
We’re only about forty minutes in to a 1 ½ hour class, and I’m pretty much done. Why did I come to class today again? Oh yeah. The test that he didn’t give back.
He just spelled “tobacco” – “tabacco.”
Digression #2 – his girlfriend reads nutritional labels. He does not.
Cacao = “cacoa.”
Apparently, cotton wasn’t that big a deal until after the American Revolution. I think that would be news to the slaves of the time. Ditto indigo.
Digression #3 – his friends think salt is bad for you.
All of the cash crops of the 16th and 17th centuries were apparently addictive, stimulating appetite suppressants. This, he suggests, was on purpose, to create demand for their supply. I’m thinking probably not, given the fact that the science didn’t exist at the time to even make that idea occur to the farmers. For the love of God, *germs* weren’t even discovered until the 19th century.
HE JUST CLAIMED THAT BY THE TIME OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, EVERY WORKING CLASS FAMILY HAD TOBACCO AND CHOCOLATE AT THE READY. It was a normal, everyday staple in both Britain and America. They’d just throw chocolate bars in with their lunches on the daily.
This is actually getting disheartening, just how far off he is. It’s a really good thing he doesn’t check attendance, because I can only stomach this about once a week.
Did you know that Gandhi wore serapes? I wonder if he had a sombrero, too. And maybe some maracas. At the very least, castanets. Also, he liked to flip off the British when nobody was looking. Gandhi sounds like a pretty cool dude. Not as much about all that peace shit as I thought.
So far, we have not talked about a single actual event in this class. We’ve talked about culture and generalities, but not a single actual historical event.
There are thirteen minutes left in this class. Three people have left already. I wish I was one of them.
Digression #4: I honestly can’t figure out where we’re going here. He’s talking about guilds and just randomly yelling “The British are coming! The British are coming!” But we’re not talking about the American Revolution yet. Is it because Paul Revere was a silversmith? What does that have to do with boots? He has just repeated the exact same three sentences twice in a row. It’s like the record skipped and restarted.
“And now with the few minutes remaining to us: The Poor.” We have six minutes to cover an immense global issue.
After that, he trails off to a mumble and then announces “I’ll see you Wednesday!!” That’s probably true, given that he still has my test to hold over me. But next Monday? Maybe not. Maybe I’ll make my attendance to this class a weekly thing on Wednesdays: the only day I have another class after this one. While I'm intensely curious about what he's going to come up with next, I'm far less keen on torturing myself twice weekly.
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