I got into a fight with Google Drive and lost. Namely, I was prepping and got to the assignment wherein my students write a proposal for their project. In fact, I got to the part of the assignment where I say, “I’m going to take you on a step-by-step brainstorming exercise to help you decide which medium to use for your adaptation:”

Imagine my surprise when there was nothing below that where the step-by-step exercise should be. Just a big blank. A very big blank. And I was surprised because I had embedded the slideshow in Canvas.

No big, I thought. I’ll just go into the source code and find the link and then try that. Then, I got this really fun error message:

Yep, that’s right.

Sorry, the file you have requested does not exist.

Make sure that you have the correct URL and the file exists.

Now, I know the file exists, but Google Drive, apparently, decided to purge it for some reason. Because I can’t find it when I search my desktop, my Drive folder, nothing. Following the troubleshooting tips don’t work. Now, the last time I used the presentation was as recently as 2022. Yet, I have slides OLDER THAN THAT on my Google Drive but not this specific one that I used in more than one class.

Picture me screaming into the void several times (aka every single time I tried a new search/troubleshooting method).

Eventually, I gave up and decided I need to recreate the lecture but, of course, I can’t remember exactly what was on it because, you know, it had been auto-running since I decided to EMBED IT INTO CANVAS.

I always knew the cloud wasn’t to be trusted.

But I’m also confused because I have my Drive set to back up to my computer which it seems to have done FOR EVERY OTHER GOOGLE DOC/SLIDESHOW.

Anyway.

Google Drive notwithstanding. I had a good night. A friend invited me to see Body and Soul with Live Score, starring Paul Robeson and written/directed by Oscar Micheaux, a film from 1925. Description from the website in case it goes away:

One of the only surviving Oscar Micheaux films, with Paul Robeson in his first screen role, this chilling tale of an ex-con posing as a minister as he steals, gambles, and boozes his way to ruin is essential viewing for all true cinephiles.

The live score was improvised by the musicians, and they were excellent at matching the vibe. It probably would have been a lot harder to watch without the music since it is a silent film. The movie was also brilliantly constructed because at the beginning of the film, Michaeaux uses Negro dialect for the characters’ speech but subtly switches so that about midway through, the characters are using literary English. In silent films, the characters speak and then usually a slide or two pops up to show what one is saying to the other. So at the beginning of the movie one of the characters says something like, “I’se gwan t’ duh store fo’ sommuh dat dere co’n” but in the middle one character calls someone a “contemptible cur!” The early speech/writing was clearly for the benefit of/to appeal to white moviegoers, and I wonder how many of them noticed the shift in character speech by the end. It’s also brilliant because seeing the Negro dialect typed out shows how difficult it is to write in that style, which I bet white moviegoers also didn’t realize or think about,

Also, the movie definitely could have been written today as we still see/hear stories of people reporting abuse by members of the clergy and not being believed.

(Sidenote: I couldn’t remember the term “Negro dialect” or the name of Paul Laurence Dunbar who I was going to refer to as an example EXCEPT when I first typed Paul Robeson’s name above after “starring,” I accidentally wrote Paul Laurence Dunbar so my subconscious knew. Tell me you were an English major without telling me you were an English major, basically.)

I woke up today feeling like myself, so I think (hope) my blue mood is over.

Today’s post title feels like it could be for a Mom episode.