Class? Class?

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

I taught freshman composition at two upstate New York colleges in the early 1990s. My last class met for its final session at the conclusion of the fall 1995 semester, two decades ago, right about … 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; of course, two of the three classes that had my name on the syllabus 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; 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 my now well-established pose as a long-suffering anything by the time it was all over.
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Help End Beheadings: Updated

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Update, October 13, 2015: The £5.9 million contract between the Justice Ministry of the United Kingdom and its counterpart in Saudi Arabia, written about here two weeks ago, will be scrapped, according to British news sources.
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Saudi Youths Sentenced to Die: Updated 10/12

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

What is known is that as of today, October 12, ‪Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, a 20-year-old Saudi sentenced to death by beheading, has not been beheaded. His body has not been crucified and then displayed, which is the second horrifying part of his sentence. Because corporal and capital sentences in Saudi Arabia are usually implemented on Fridays—after public prayers—dread accompanies the approach of each Friday for friends and family of those sentenced, and then with the confirmation from Ali’s family that his odious sentence was not carried out, a tense non-relief follows. But he is not the only under-age prisoner in Saudi Arabia who has been sentenced to death by beheading.

The European Saudi Organization for Human Rights (ESOHR) has been publicizing three stories: Ali al-Nimr’s and those of Dawood Hussain Almarhoon and Abedallah al-Zaher. All three were arrested before they were 18 years of age, all three have been held in prison since the arrests (each young man was arrested in 2012), and all three have been almost certainly tortured.

As of Saturday, Ali and the other teenagers were moved to the Saudi capital. No advance notice was given to their families, who learned about it after the fact. What this means or portends is not clear.

Ali’s father is quoted in tonight’s Guardian online as saying, “I’m very worried now because they’ve moved my son to a prison in Riyadh and he is in solitary confinement. I expect that this can only mean bad news and I fear he could be executed at any moment. Dawoud al-Marhoon also faces the same fate as my son, but so do six others. So in total there are eight young men who have been sentenced to death. My son is completely innocent.”
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