Talk the Walk

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“You should be on the radio,” was what was said. What was heard by my 16-year-old ego was, “You shouldn’t be on TV.”

The compliment was first given to me when I was a kid, when my voice suddenly and without the typical teenager’s pitch shifts and volume wobbles—the “Peter’s voice is changing, this week on a very special episode of ‘The Brady Bunch'”-type changes—deepened and thickened to its present baritone/bass.
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Teach Your Children

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

I taught freshman composition at two upstate New York colleges in the early 1990s for five years. My last class met for its final session at the conclusion of the fall 1995 semester, just over two decades ago now.

From the start of that school term, 20 autumns ago, I knew that this was going to be my last semester teaching or attempting to teach or even correctly referring to myself as a “teacher”; thus, of course, two of the three classes that semester were two of the best groups of students I had yet worked with, and they almost made me regret my decision to retire at age 27. Almost.

The decision never was mine to make, however; I was not a good teacher, and I am grateful that I learned this on the sooner side of “sooner or later.” I am, perhaps, an entertaining lecturer but I am an even better student; as a 20-something freshman composition instructor, I must have been execrable. It’s too bad that I had barely made even the faintest start in what eventually became my pose as a long-suffering anything by the time it was all over.
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A Reading for Ashraf Fayadh

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

At his retrial in November 2015, the court not only found him guilty a second time but decided to change his sentence from flogging to death by beheading. The poet Ashraf Fayadh, a stateless Palestinian born in Saudi Arabia, was arrested in January 2014 and charged with apostasy, with renouncing his religion. His poetry was put on trial. His life is at risk.

When a court appoints itself as a literary critic, both the judicial system it is a part of and literature are diminished.

Today, writers around the world are focusing attention on Ashraf Fayadh’s story: according to The Guardian, 122 events in 44 countries are being held in which Fayadh’s work will be read. It is being organized by the “International literature festival Berlin.”

Consider this column, with my recording down below, one more event.
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