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Notes from a Boy @ The Window

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Notes from a Boy @ The Window

Monthly Archives: July 2020

Having a Fake Ass ‘Mick Hucknall’ as a TA

23 Thursday Jul 2020

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, music, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, University of Pittsburgh, Youth

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Anti-Theism, Atheism, Bad Teaching Habits, Existential Philosophy, Karma, Mick Hucknall, Pitt, Simply Red, TA, Teaching and Learning, Teaching Assistant


Mick Hucknall of Simply Red, circa 1989. (https://pinterest.com via Rolling Stone)

I have talked quite extensively about the nature and evolution of my own teaching, about the best and worst teachers I remember from K-12, about my profs and their teaching (or lack thereof) more than a little bit while on this blog. But, outside of Paul Riggs, I have not written much about TAs and the good, bad, and ugly there. I haven’t really discussed my own times as a TA, except to point out the pushback I’d sometimes had to deal with from students, the emasculation I had to deal with from my professors who “supervised” me.

Trying to learn how to teach and evaluate students while taking grad-level courses and preparing for oral exams, writing dissertation proposals, doing conference presentations, writing the occasional publication, and serving as a gofer for professors working on their own projects is overwhelming. Add the personal and familial to it, and it’s a wonder than anyone who isn’t from a family with a net worth of at least half-a-mil still decides to earn an advanced degree and teaches along the way. And all for less than peanuts, not even close to a living wage.

All of this is context for my one-time TA from my Existential Philosophy course from Spring 1989 at the University of Pittsburgh. You see, he was the polar opposite of the professor who taught this course. The newly-minted PhD and assistant professor for Existential Philosophy (and soon to jump ship for Georgetown that year) was a dynamic, exciting, and insightful thinker in his mid-30s, one who could take the thickest philosophical text and break it down for even students who didn’t care about the philosophical at all. The sandy-blonde version of the lead singer for Simply Red, by comparison, was boring beyond belief, and could make even the most obvious interpretations of Nietzche, Kierkegaard, and Camus sound like some theoretical mathematics he barely understood and could hardly articulate. It made our required discussion sections on Thursday afternoons a form of torture.

Mr. Australian version of Mick Hucknall, though, also had an agenda, the kind that most progressives would call problematic in 2020. He reined it in somewhat most Thursdays, but on at least two of our days, he couldn’t control himself. It didn’t really matter what the topic was, but frequently the TA would turn the discussion toward anti-theism. This was more than just atheism. One can certainly not believe in God for themselves and still respect those who do. But anti-theism is more along the lines of a Christopher Hitchens or a Bill Maher, people who love to loathe higher-power worshippers, with bits of Islamophobia and racism thrown in.

An example of fake-ass Simply Red’s behavior, courtesy of Boy @ The Window

He spent discussion after discussion railing on Christians as “people who refuse to believe that God doesn’t exist.” One of our discussions was so anti-anything other than atheism that I found it just as bigoted as anything I’d heard from Hebrew-Israelites or out of a televangelist’s mouth, and said as much. I was ignored.

But it wasn’t just the ideological bent that was obvious in this discussion section. It was the racial component. Me and the other three Black students in the section — all three were Black women — were usually quiet when sandy blonde Mick Hucknall described religion as “nonsense.” But the White students who were anti-theists chimed in like they had been suppressed by the Roman Catholic Church’s Inquisition for the past 500 years.

One class in March was really awful. It was after the professor had lectured about Kierkegaard and the “teleological suspension of the ethical” in his consideration of Abraham’s moment of decision between obeying Yahweh and killing his five-year-old son Isaac or not. Right from the start of our 50 minutes, the TA went after religion like he literally hated worshippers. He referred to monotheists as “fools” and “crazy.” The White students talked about “not putting up with religious oppressors anymore” and being “tired of [us] flaunting our Christianity in their faces.” If it had been even a year later in my education, I probably would have gone directly to the professor or the Philosophy department about this very biased form of education occurring in this classroom.

I was so glad when I didn’t have to be in sandy-blonde-Simply-Red’s discussion section anymore. But that wasn’t the last time I saw him. For at least two years afterward, I’d see him on campus, usually outside Hillman Library or the Cathedral of Learning taking a drag on a cigarette, and he recognized me, but never said hello (thank God). But, after I began grad school at Pitt, the aging fake Mick Hucknall didn’t seem to recognize me at all.

It was interesting that as I got older and made more steps to my PhD, his run toward his own must’ve stalled. The last time I saw him at Pitt was in 1998. I overheard him complaining to another grad student about his committee still not ready to declare him done with his dissertation. As burned out as I was from my own dissertation process, at least I was already done.

At that moment, I thought about saying, Ain’t karma a bitch? But I didn’t, mostly because I didn’t see the point. The golden rule of “do unto others as you would have others do unto you” applies to the just and the unjust, the believers, the non-believers, and even the anti-believers. Or, to quote Simply Red, “I, oh I, oh I, I’m gonna do the right thing.” Still, a bemused smile did make its way on my face, because he was such a terrible instructor, and likely one who had traumatized hundreds of students over the years.

Death and Debt

11 Saturday Jul 2020

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Mount Vernon New York, New York City, race, Youth

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Death, Debt, Life, Life Decisions, Sarai, Sarai Washington, Student Loans


Sarai & Noah, November 2003. (Donald Earl Collins).

My post today will be short. Today marks a full decade since the Sunday morning my youngest brother Eri called me, waking me up with the news that my only sister Sarai had died overnight at Mount Vernon Hospital. It was due to complications from sickle cell anemia, the disease that denies the body sufficient oxygen for carrying out it functions, ever debilitating and ever more painful as one grows older with it, as anyone with the disease can attest. Too many blood transfusions, too many invasive procedures, not enough healing. Sarai Adar Washington, who did live, and did try her damnedest to live her life her way, died at 27 years young.

Yes, I love her, and miss her still. There isn’t a week that goes by where I don’t think about her and the life that she didn’t get to have, the life that she did live, and how my life was affected by her existing. It causes me, Sarai’s older brother — one 13-plus-years older than her when my mother gave birth to her, one at one point argued for abortion to save us and her the anguish of the disease — to let out the occasional tear or feel a sense of loss. I can only imagine how much deeper the loss is for my mom, of course, and for my three younger brothers, who truly grew up with her. My only solace today is that Sarai isn’t here to try to survive the pandemic, because she most surely would not have made it if she had contracted COVID-19.

On the other end is the week that reminds me of one of the worst best decisions I have ever made. To take out the first $2,625 of what would be over $41,000 in loans between July 1987 and October 1996. I paid out the principal of my loans at least three years ago. But Sallie Mae (and PHEAA and Marine Midland Bank before that) set the interest rates back when those rates were much higher. Eight percent on a series of loans taken out between 24 and 33 years ago would be incalculable to a 17-year-old in July 1987. But as a 50-year-old, it translates to debt peonage, more than double the actual loans themselves. Except that I know that one way or another, this debt will go away, if only because I will stop living this life, eventually.

The proverbial “they” say the only two constants in life are death and taxes. No, there are at least three constants — death, debt, and taxes. Maybe in my death I can finally see my sister again, and see my debt and taxes burn in the fiery pit in the event horizon of a black hole.

When the Black Rapture-Seeker in Your Life is a #45 Fan…

07 Tuesday Jul 2020

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, earth, wind & fire, Pop Culture, Religion

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-isms, End-of-the World Predictions, Eschatology, Family, Millennialism, Policies, Self-Fulfilling Prophecies


Depiction of the Rapture, Evangelical-style, n.d. (Benjamin Hass via https://shutterstock.com).

What does anyone do when a loved one reveals themselves as a #45 fanboy or fangirl? This sounds like a question only White people have to answer, or one in which only a handful of Black folks must deal. Otherwise, the short answer is to kick them to the curb. “These people aren’t your friends,” after all, at least, that’s what your friends will tell you if and when this situation occurs. But one cannot simply drag family and cut them off when they do the American equivalent of “Sieg Heil!” in support of Donald J. Trump. 

I discovered that one family member has done exactly that. They didn’t vote in 2016, because they could not bring themselves to vote for Hillary. They supported the Muslim Ban in 2017, saw nothing wrong with another round of tax cuts for the wealthy and for trillion-dollar corporations, and favored closing the southern border to keep out “them Spanish people.” Of course, this loved one also calls those who are LGBTQIA+ “faggots,” “dykes,” and “things” like they’re the Cylons from Battlestar Galactica (2003-2009 edition).

Of the last seven times we’ve talked on the phone, six times we have argued. The arguments have varied from disagreements over the meaning of a particular piece of scripture to rifts over televangelists and their misogynistic, homophobic, and Apocalyptic messages. Recently, this person has gone after Gov. Andrew Cuomo and others for their uneven responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, but has refused to lay any blame Trump’s way. Another relative confirmed that this person had planned to vote for 45 in November. What a shame and a pitiful!

I honestly do not understand how anyone American Black in 2020 could think well enough of Trump to defend his three years’ worth of wannabe autocratic rule and mini-calamities. It makes no sense for any Black man, Black woman, or transgender Black person to spend time and effort voting for this disaster of a human being. Except if one is committed fully to patriarchy, to vanity, and to seeing the end of the world Revelations-style. Wanting the Rapture to come so badly as to ignore blatant systemic racism, misogynoir, and rampant discrimination against anyone not rich, hetero-, White, and male. As much as I love this family member, I do not like their politics and their worldview. By comparison, I might as well be Pollyanna.

In the post-Western world to come, millennialism should be among the first things its leaders should ban from public debate and discussion. Too many people believing in and attempting to bring on the Apocalypse because they think their God or gods will usher in a more perfect world with a more perfect humanity. As a Christian myself, it was always weird to see people so desirous of a new world order that they were willing to see billions of others die in order to see it through. Now, with a family member who has committed themselves ever increasingly to this future, I could stop talking with them. But what good would that do? This is more than a hearts-and-minds issue. This is about hearts and minds pushing policies that will bring the world the self-fulfilling prophecy of Revelations.

So, hell yeah, banning millennialism and end-of-the-world prophecies meant to spur others to push humanity and all life on the planet into actual doom would be a good thing. Because so many of us are the descendants of people who had to live through the Apocalypse, their version anyway. Indigenous people in the Western Hemisphere, in the Arctic, in Oceania, and in Australia who died at rates up to 90 percent upon first contact with disease-carrying Europeans between 1492 and 1900. The 12 million Africans kidnapped into Western-Hemispheric-slavery between 1503 and 1888. The European Jews the Nazis murdered between 1933 and 1945. For these groups and in those times, this was the end of the world, the world that they knew, the lives they hoped to have. If one has already survived an Apocalypse (small “a” or big “A”), or has known so many who haven’t, why would a prediction of a larger Apocalypse coming from people who couldn’t care less about your ass ever matter?

For those who are in the Apocalypse-as-self-fulfilling-prophecy business, their goal is to reshape the world in their own fascist, patriarchal, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, nationalistic, and capitalistic image. It’s certainly not about God’s image or the vision of anyone’s gods.

As for this family member, all I can do now is limit my already limited conversations with them. They’ve had their bags packed for the Rapture since the 1980s. I love them, but I definitely do not like them. I can only hope that they recognize that the Apocalypse in any form is never something someone should wish for themselves, or something to wish upon the world. In what remains of their time in this life, or perhaps, in their next life.

Boy @ The Window: A Memoir

Boy @ The Window: A Memoir

Places to Buy/Download Boy @ The Window

There's a few ways in which you can read excerpts of, borrow and/or purchase and download Boy @ The Window. There's the trade paperback edition of Boy @ The Window, available for purchase via Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Window-Donald-Earl-Collins/dp/0989256138/

There's also a Kindle edition on Amazon.com. The enhanced edition can be read only with Kindle Fire, an iPad or a full-color tablet. The links to the enhanced edition through Apple's iBookstore and the Barnes & Noble NOOK edition are below. The link to the Amazon Kindle version is also immediately below:

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Boy @ The Window on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-The-Window-Memoir-ebook/dp/B00CD95FBU/

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Boy @ The Window on Apple's iBookstore: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/boy-the-window/id643768275?ls=1

Barnes & Noble (bn.com) logo, June 26, 2013. (http://www.logotypes101.com).

Boy @ The Window on Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/boy-the-window-donald-earl-collins/1115182183?ean=2940016741567

You can also add, read and review Boy @ The Window on Goodreads.com. Just click on the button below:

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