received: a letter, and numerous papers

I got a letter from my friend Bob the other day. Bob gave up on blogs a little while ago, and I'll be removing the link to his in a moment. He doesn't want to spend time that way, because, in his view, it's not a very rewarding way to communicate. He wrote me a letter instead.

We've written a lot of letters to one another. For a while, I was a quite avid letter writer, sending missives out to him, to Bobo the Wandering Pallbearer, to my high school friend Anne, to my friend Nancy. I generally typed them on my old manual machines, for a long time on an early 60s Hermes 2000, pages and pages of stuff about my life as a grad student, but mainly trying to capture a mood and lived experience.

Compared to email, a letter is a very different thing, especially written out longhand in fountain pen (as Bob's was, in virtually the same nearly illegible hadnwriting he's had since we were kids). It's tangible. It has a feint smell to it. The very good paper it's written on has a definite feel, with an affective dimension. I'm writing him back, in my nearly illegible handwriting.

Partly this is contextual: Bob has been my friend for more than 30 years. We grew up together in Ohio, and when I moved away at 13, writing letters was the way to communicate. Regrettably, perhaps, I don't have any of those any more. A flood in Pittsburgh lost me several boxes of my writing, including about 1000 poems, a couple plays, a dozen or more journals, and almost all my letters. I stopped saving correspondence, and finally have become so much more comfortable with electronic versions of things that I don't particularly like printing out any of my own papers any more.

For one reason or another, for many people, email doesn't have the same feel to it. The medium, or the genre, or the format, or the phenomenon, feels quasi-personal, somewhat institutional. Everything in email looks like a memo.

Bobo and I turned that into a source of amusement, by way of using the memo format inappropriately. You wouldn't write email within an institutional context beginning with something like "Dear Unmitigated Bastard." At least, you wouldn't if you're a fan of employment. In any case, this carried forward a tradition of ironic mutual abuse that began in college and continued through grad school correspondence (and beyond).

I'm a fan of all of it. Each medium has its best uses, I suppose, and each medium has its own way of habituating language and expression. It's a great source of fun to be able to pick them up in turns, to undergo the different ways media shape language and thought, affect, address, tone, all of it.

I'm gonna keep blogging, too, I figure, though as blog this has little "bloggy" about it, and I definitely regard it as a publicly kept journal more than anything else.

As such, let me make one final personal note on the day, most of which I've spent grading final papers. That note is:
WAAAAAAAAH!

Why oh why oh why does grading hurt? I mean, these aren't terrible papers. There've only been a couple duds, which is a very low duddism rate. They've been fine, some even quite good, and a couple wonderful ones. Still, ow.

bird or bourbon attack?

I always make the same joke about this kind of thing, so perhaps if I put this stupid joke before public (more or less) scrutiny, I'll be free from the demon pun. The joke is, of course, that a bus driver in Connecticut reported being the victim of a wild turkey attack.

My favorite version of this lame pun was a gag signature to an email message to my pal Jim "The Most Optimistic Man in America" Williams, based on a Rolling Stones song: "Wild Turkeys? Couldn't drag me away!"

(The salutation/signature line gag has been a feature of our correspondence forever. I can't count the number of times I wrote to Jim for no reason other than to use a gag salutation or signature I'd come up with. The object of this game seems to be to generate complex multi-level allusive puns, or to abuse one another, which in some people's estimation amounts to the same thing. We do enjoy ourselves.)

fruit and music

As might be expected, the opinion pages of the Modesto Bee have been full of denials, rebuttals, confessions, challenges, and lamentations in response to the "news" from last week that Modesto (a.k.a. Motown, or in the very local parlance of the House About Town, Funkytown, or, especially in transit away from it, a place named by the phrase "No me Modesto") is the worst city to live in in the US.

So far, none that I've read (admittedly a random and unscientifically small sample) have mentioned the single most obvious thing Modesto has going for it: fruit. This is probably because you could live just about anywhere in California, including, say, Berkeley, Santa Barbara, Napa, Tiburon, Santa Cruz, etc., etc., and still get fantastic fruit. In that sense, fruit isn't a reason to live in Modesto.

However, the fruit is gorgeous. We're two weeks into cherry season, a week into apricot season, and we've had strawberries for quite a while already. Peaches and plums are around the corner. We'll pick the first cherry tomatoes soon. We've already had pounds of lettuce and Swiss chard, all from the little piece of yard my loveliest has tended so - er, tenderly.

I have no point. I have two more class days left this semester, and I have no point. I'm out.

Also in the Bee this morning was a review of the Modesto Symphony chorus performances of Friday and Saturday nights. I went Saturday and enjoyed it tremendously, although, like the reviewer in the Bee (none other than CSU Stanislaus' own Stephen Thomas), I was bothered at first by the lousy acoustics in the hall, and also thought there was something fishy going on among the violins in Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. The Haydn Dm Mass was tumultuous, as its name implies. Good stuff.

Yesterday we found ourselves fruitlessly searching for a second-hand bicycle, but fruitfully finding fruit, of which I shall now consume.

pasta, music

On Sunday (I know; this is belated) I made a pasta dish:

1/2 pound pasta (shells in this case)
14 ounces cannelini beans (white kidney beans; I used canned, cuz)
14 ounces diced tomatoes (also canned, without salt)
4 leaves of Swiss chard
3 cloves of garlic
1/8 tsp or so crushed red pepper flakes
a few gratings of nutmeg
herbs of one's choice (basil, oregano, parsley)
2 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil, add garlic, then tomatoes and chard, salt (keeps the chard green), then other stuff except pasta. Boil pasta separately. Stick these together. If you like, add some grated parmesan or some crumbled feta or sump'n. 'sgood.

Music: Tonight we went to hear the CSU Stanislaus Chamber Singers, or as I refer to them in a jaunty mood, (chorus director) Daniel Afonso's Elite Republican Guard. They were, as always, impressive. Especially impressive were pieces by J. Aaron McDermid and Morten Lauridsen, both featuring generous helpings of dissonance. McDermid's was based on a religious-themed text by St. Ambrose, and knocked my socks off. The Lauridsen stuff was based on Italian poems about fiery passion, and featured a weirded-up minor chord, which Lauren thinks was weirded up by adding a second to it (thinking about this in guitar terms, to me, that means they added a ninth). I'm a sucker for dissonance, I am. Holy jumpin'.

funkytown worst of all

Apparently, a book detailing life and livability of a few hundred US cities has ranked Modesto last. The Modesto Bee article focuses on local reactions to the news, and of course Modestans interviewed by the Bee didn't see anything so terrible. Even the author of the book seemed to tell the Bee that the situation was not all that dire.

And really, if you take away the disgusting hot summer, the pollution, low level of educational achievement, minimal cultural scene, lack of good jobs, lack of affordable housing, poor urban planning, poor health care, high crime rate, lousy traffic, and the fact that despite all this thousands of people commute 2.5 hours each way to good jobs in the San Francisco Bay area (thus contributing to the pollution and lousy traffic), really, it's not too bad.

If you ask one of those commuters why he or she lives here, I imagine the likely answers are (1) the housing market, as inflated as it is, is more affordable than the Bay Area, and (2) it's a safer, more wholesome environment in which to raise kids. The latter of these rationales is easily understood, because it's entirely false. People who believe that are, simply, wrong. They do not want to know, and in many cases would flatly reject, the facts. As for the former rationale, it is certainly true that the housing market here has been better lately: a mere $289,000 can get you a 1100 square foot bungalow in some less desirable areas. So people who commute 5+ hours a day in order to buy a house are, clearly, more interested in achieving the American dream (to wit: mortgage) than in health, well-being, and so on.

To set the record straight on at least one point, there is no truth to the rumors that Modesto city planners intend to embark on a major urban renewal project involving razing all structures in the county.

wackiness, in the form of academic senate debate

I've had a fascinating day taking Lauren for a crown (for her tooth, not for giving airs of royalty), chasing down antibiotics for another tooth of hers, reading Intro to Philosophy response papers on W.E.B. DuBois (and contemplating what they mean pedagogically), and attending a rollicking Academic Senate meeting.

I've been on the Cow State Santa Claus academic senate since - geez, since spring of 2000, I think. First I was the philosophy department senator, and, since the institution of the academic senate lecturer rep a couple years ago, I've been the lecturer senator. For a brief time, my life pretty much revolved around academic senate, as sad a comment as that is about my life at that time. I still really enjoy it, because I like policy arguments and the flow of discussion surrounding them, and because I want to be as much a part of the university as I can - full citizenship, as it were, even though in the minds of many around there I'm "only a lecturer."

Today we had second readings on the last resolutions of the academic year, and ran headlong into serious controversy about student attendance in classes. Right now, our university attendance policy is vague, to say the least. Reportedly, there have been difficulties, especially for student athletes, who have had faculty be completely unwilling to accomodate them when they have to miss classes for games. I don't know how widespread the problem is, and I've always been open to accomodating any student with what I regard as a legitimate absence, but since there is no policy about this, students have no recourse when faculty aren't willing to be accomodating.

It's a complex issue, and ultimately I jumped on a motion to refer the whole thing to the educational policies committee. The faculty at senate had too many questions about the rewritten policy we were considering, and even if they weren't all well-founded, or sometimes based on confused readings, it seemed like faculty wouldn't buy into the policy if we passed this one. A bunch of students came to the meeting, and I know they were disappointed with what happened, but I think it's for the best. An unclear or toothless policy wouldn't have helped them, and a policy the faculty regard as suspect or illegitimate wouldn't have helped them either.

The meeting threatened to get very nasty and personal, but the speaker of the faculty averted that. Lauren and I came home in a somewhat heated mood over it, and we hashed it out for a while. It annoys her when I defend the faculty privilege/right of making their own academic and pedagogical decisions, including classroom policies. Her argument is that this doesn't recognize students' academic rights, but I counter that with regard to pedagogy, students don't have rights. It's funny, because I don't know if I seriously believe that. I say things as though I have complete confidence in my beliefs, but there aren't many that aren't negotiable, especially about these kinds of things. I think more than anything I look for reasonably practicable principles, even if these are at some basic level arbitrarily determined - if we erect some concept, even if it's incomplete, not sufficiently inclusive, etc., we have at least something to continue arguing about. It's folly to think any of these concepts, principles, policies, or anything else will reach a final form or fit all instances. But you won't notice the instances until you've picked a background to contrast them with.

That's the essence of rational argument, isn't it?

alienation

Aside from being a relatively crappy sci-fi series, alienation is also an important concept in Marx's critique of capitalism in the early manuscripts. It's also an important part of my Intro to Philosophy class, at least today. (It's also an important part of a complete breakfast, but that's as may be.)

I mention it because Marx is a challenge to teach. Over the years, I've taught this passage from the 1844 Manuscripts 2.7 million times, give or take, and just about every time, there's a handful of students who dismiss his analysis out of hand. They tend to make one of two arguments that I find baseless.

One is that since the Soviet Union collapsed, we know that communism failed, therefore Marx was wrong. That could be true, if communism had actually been practiced in the USSR, and if communism "failing" meant that Marx's account of alienation was wrong. The first premise is false, the second begs the question.

The other dismissal is based on a rejection of Marx's implicit account of human nature. The argument is that Marx assumes (falsely) that human beings are naturally cooperative rather than naturally competitive; that is, that the basic tenet of capitalist and proto-capitalist political economy, the naturalness of acquisitiveness and Hobbes' war of all against all, are the true state of nature. This is much trickier, but I think dismissing Marx on this basis overrates the significance of the objection. Even if Marx has too optimistic a view of human cooperation, this argument ultimately fails as a dismissal of the account of alienation. For one thing, in that period Marx's fundamental theory of human nature focused on our being creative, consuming beings who are social. He attacks the presumption in capitalist political economy that greed and competition are natural, but he does not claim that we are naturally either greedy or altruistic. In any case, it's probably not a valid objection to the main line of the analysis of alienation.

My problem in class today will be compounded by the fact that the course is nominally about the good life, and here's Marx telling us about alienation. It's a sort of negative of the good life, and I'll have to not only explain alienation but try to tease out how it points to what the good life does consist of.

I'll probably end up talking about cooking.

happy landings

I'm less neurotic than other people I know. I'm not afraid of heights. I'm not xenophobic, nor claustrophobic. I do not fear abandonment or machines. When a plane is flying low over a highway, however, I do often contemplate that it could suddenly, either in an emergency or because the pilot chooses that precise moment to snap, land in front of me. So I'm pleased to report not having been on Highway 4 when a plane landed there yesterday.

The wonderfully ironic background to the story is as follows.

It was a traffic reporter's plane.
The reason it was flying over Highway 4 is because, over the weekend, a tanker truck hauling gasoline burned and caused a major interchange between Interstates 80 and 580 to collapse - an interchange used by hundreds of thousands of commuters daily, all of whom now have to find ways around it, "ways," I should hasten to add, with fewer than the 5 lanes in and out of town offered by 580.

In other news, now crystal meth comes in delicious fruity flavors!

Let me randomly add that Lancelot's tests indicate a probable kidney infection, and he's on antibiotics. Prognosis is good.

sick cat

Over the weekend Christina and Guerin came over for dinner, and Christina mentioned that Lancelot seemed much skinnier than she last saw him, which would have been about a month ago. He's had a bad few weeks, going from being a very pukey cat (he's always been) to being probably among the top 10 pukiest cats in town. I called the vet first thing this morning and we got him in later in the morning. They drew blood, examined him, and gave him some subcutaneous fluids. Of course, I was thinking back to the summer of 2001, when Morgan died of sudden liver failure (it was suspected at least), after a couple weeks of doing her brave best. I was crushed. Morgan was a wonderful cat.

Lancelot is a wonderful cat in his own right, and in the last couple of years, now that he's an only cat, he's come into his own. Still, I'm horrified that he'll turn out to be very sick. We find out tomorrow morning. He's nearly 15, for crying out loud.

Anyway, he's nowhere near as sick as Morgan was, and as happens, the subcute fluids have helped him feel better this afternoon.

So it was certainly a great boon to my mood to read the following on the package of the new sponge-scrubby thing we picked up at Target (punctuation and grammar uncorrected from the package copy; emphasis in the original):

"nothing beats the feeling of clean. when everything is bright and sparkly. when your life is spotless and the possibilities are endless. and just for a moment - sigh - everything is perfect. until it's time to clean again."

Target has commodified my dishwashing.

not allowed

Since the NHL playoffs are ongoing, a couple further entries to the list of those banned from the house from the hockey world:

* Mark Messier. Though he's retired and 46, he's still not someone I'd like to run into in a dark alley, or a well-lit alley, and especially not in my living room. Lauren frequently notes that, even in a neat well-pressed suit, he looks like he is going to eat your face.

* Darcy Tucker. I love watching Darcy Tucker play, because he gets a shark-eyed look and becomes quite clearly insane. He fights, he scores goals, he wreaks havoc.

the "Virginia Tech shooting"

Lots of people have said lots of things about the "Virginia Tech shooting." Even calling it that says something pertinent about why lots of people have said lots of things about it. It's turned into a media event - or maybe is practically from the start a media event. But it's not the media's fault.

Adam Felber put it better than I could.

What above all I have to say about it is that I'm terribly terribly glad we don't watch TV news.

abstinence makes the heart grow faithfuller

The breaking news is that abstinence education abjectly fails to decrease either teen sex or risky teen sex. The reason this is breaking news has nothing to do with the study results that draw this conclusion, because that would be the foregone conclusion of people thinking rationally about these problems. The real news here is that America is experiencing a crisis of faith!

If we would only believe hard enough, abstinence education would work, global warming would be "junk science," and Iraq would be taking strides toward stability and peace. Despite the continuous increase in our work productivity (i.e., profitability), it seems that Americans are losing ground in faith productivity. That's what this nation really needs: not more faith-based initiatives (where the bulk of the $120 million spent on abstinence education went), but a Federal Faith Initiative. Faith itself must be restored through a concerted government program before any of these programs can reach fruition. F.D.R. had his New Deal. The Bush Administration should pursue something like this, a New something or other - New... New... well, they'll think of something; they're good with names.

The millions poured into new federal government projects for Compassion and so forth, and earmarked for groups who proclaim a particular religious outlook (and/or who happen to have supported President Bush's campaign in 2000) have produced very little clear success. This is clearly because of the faith productivity lag. After all, how could abstinence education have overcome the fact that an estimated 90% of the target population has intercourse, unless enough of us believed that "just say no" would work? The Administration can lead the way, by refuting studies that deny the effectiveness of abstinence education and reaffirming their conviction that abstinence is the way to teach safe sex.

Speaking of "just say no," consider how badly the War on Drugs is going. If only we all got together and believed drugs would go away, clearly they would, and we would win the War without firing another shot.

As for so-called global warming, in this case it's obvious that once the rapture comes, climate change won't be an issue, so I suppose we needn't worry about believing it's junk science any more. This is good, because we'll need to concentrate our faith productivity on those areas where we can make a real difference: sex and drugs.

staying put for a bit?

We got back from LA in plenty of time for my loveliest to get to choir rehearsal. It was an unpleasant drive up the Crankster Freeway, the seasonal northerly wind gusting across the road and apparently pushing slower-moving SUVs with drivers talking on cell phones over into the left lane. I lost count of how many times I was cut off by someone in a large vehicle, or a semi rig, by the time we got to Earlimart (which is the halfway point, and also the name of an indie alt band.

So I'm more or less officially sick of driving up and down the Moose-forsaken central valley. On the other hand, I have developed a sudden and demanding craving for Yosemite, and also for letting a couple hours drift by while I watch ocean waves. Back in the car!

collective action

The tentative agreement between CFA and CSU is good news. It's good news, obviously, for faculty: we're tentatively getting raises we deserve, and tentatively won't have to go on strike. It's good news for the CSU administration, because a strike by faculty would be embarassing, especially given how much political pressure and scrutiny they're under. It's good news for students, because classes won't be interrupted, and because CFA didn't accept the ridiculous offer the CSU made, which was contingent upon CFA not speaking against student fee increases. CFA remains able to advocate for students and the good of the university.

Someone on the Lecturers Council conference call last night ut the matter well: this is good news not only for us, but for a public that has become more and more disaffected, been treated to ever-increasing exploitation and disenfranchisement by hierarchical power. The good news is: collective action works.

tentative agreement

CFA announced today that it reached a tentative agreement with CSU on a new contract. More on that later. It's latish, I'm still recovering from the road trip to Arizona and back, and I've got a lot of pent-up job-action-related energies, anxieties, and so forth that I suddenly don't know what to do with. So I'm going to take a chance on relaxation and sleep.

The CFA website reference page for the tentative agreement info, I've just noticed, is called "settlement.html." I wrote a tune by that name, that I haven't written a lyric for yet, but which I think will include the line "set everything on fire and split the ashes," or words to that effect. The song, it should be noted (no pun intended) has nothing to do with collective bargaining. It should also be noted that the lyric line I've just quoted has nothing to do with the terms of the tentative agreement.

The agreement looks, on the whole, like a CFA slam dunk. But much more. And more on that, too, later. (Think: musings on the power of collective action.)

brief update to the "no entry" list

As of last night, the list of people not allowed in the house has expanded by three:

* Kurt Russell
* Melanie Griffith

Both of them are very nearly terminally noxious to my loveliest. I confess to a higher threshold of tolerance for the Griffith, by which I mean I could probably permit her to use the bathroom on an emergency basis, if the only alternative was to have her avail herself of the mock orange bush in front of our place. Also, possibly, if lives were at stake, but I'm not entirely sure I want to be held to that.

* Quentin Tarrentino

Like some others on the list, I think this just makes good sense. I don't think he's necessarily a violent person, but that's not really the point. I believe he has an unhealthy fixation on - well, on lots of things it's unhealthy to be fixated on.

predilections

I have four somewhat strange predilections relevant this morning.

One is for mopey alternative music. I tend lately to rely on the very unevenly reliable All Music Guide to connect with music I haven't knowingly heard before. Following links from a band I like, say, Wilco, I end up finding bands somebody responsible for content on AMG thinks is "similar" or "influenced by," follow those links, and follow the links from there, until I end up with somebody really quite unlike the original band in most respects, say, [smog]. It's a game we could call Six Degrees of Michael Stipe if we were in a particularly jaunty mood, which, this morning, we're not.

Anyway, I found Grogshow through this method. I love me some Grogshow, I do. And through Grogshow to Winterpills, who are also pretty cool.

This music is not only a basic element to the soundtrack of my misspent youth, but also still musically potent to me, inasmuch as what I'm playing these days is often like acoustic 12-string folkized mopey alternative. I think so, at least. Finally, a label for my stuff!

Two is for conflict, especially of the fighting-the-good-fight variety. The CSU agreed to use the Fact-Finders Report as a "template" for 10 further days of bargaining to try to reach agreement with CFA on a new contract. Now, what could they do in 10 days that they couldn't have done in the last 23 months is not clear. And the Fact Finders Report includes not only the statement by the neutral third-party fact finder, but also CFA and CSU representatives. So agreeing to use the report as a template could mean that CSU is willing to continue to make their same tired baseless arguments as to why the $1.2 billion reserve they've built up can't be diminished by $100 million over 4 years to reach a settlement on faculty salaries.

This is a conflict I can feel really good about, because I have tremendous faith that CFA is right and CSU is wrong. In that respect, this conflict is rather like how I feel when the Pittsburgh Penguins play the Philadelphia Flyers. Whatever else I may or may not know about the world, I can say with certainty that the Flyers are wrong.

Which brings us to the third predilection, which is for playoff hockey. The NHL playoffs begin in two weeks, and for the first time since 2001, my beloved Penguins are going to be in them. They clinched last night by beating the Washington Capitals 4-3. Since January, no team has been better than the Pens, and their best players remain a core group that are all 24 or younger, which suggests that they're going to be at least this good for a long time.

The fourth? Extremely long road trips.

strike vote resuits!

CFA announced today that 94% of members voted to approve job action in our ongoing fight for a fair contract.

It can't be easy being one of those CSU administrators or trustees who continues to assert that only a small faction of faculty are upset about the CSU's contract offer, or that students won't be adversely affected by yet another fee increase, or that the CSU is on firm footing, but is underfunded, but has an excellent bond rating because of reserve funds equalling more than one third of the $2.5 billion annual budget, yet doesn't have enough money to spend $100 million over four years to fund faculty salary increases. At some point, the sheer number of contradictions you assert and try to think are true must get overwhelming. This is beyond a question of guilty conscience now. I am seriously concerned about the continued mental health of these administrators and trustees. Something's gotta give somewhere, don't it?

Proceed with caution in Long Beach, folks. Psychotic breaks are not pretty.

new recording

Last Monday I recorded an electric lead to a tune I've written for one of Lauren's mom's cats. I've been playing with the recording, moved the lead and rhythm parts around a bit, adjusted their tone, and posted it. I like it. It's named after my favorite way to greet said cat, which is Hey Stella!

busy weekend of entertaining

Today we foraged for the stuff for a couple evenings' fun. Tomorrow night: Val for dinner, which will be on the opulent side, because it's been a while. Saturday: St. Patrick's Day traditional dinner, this year featuring Christina and Guerin as our special guest stars.

Menu for Friday:

Portabella mushroom ravioli
Kohlrabi greens ravioli
(both prepared by Lauren, the kohlrabi from the pot on the patio, in a tomato sauce I made this afternoon)
Rack of lamb in a modified Perigueux sauce (truffles, demi-glace, madeira, Grand Marnier, butter)
Mashed blue potatoes
Salad from lettuces and snow pea pods grown in the back yard
Strawberry tart (without so much rat in it)

Menu for Saturday:

Guinness
Corned beef, boiled
Cabbage, boiled
Potatoes, boiled
Mushrooms, boiled
Irish whisky, either in Irish coffee (steamy, though not boiled) or straight, no chaser (hard-boiled)

Menu for Sunday:

Alka-seltzer
Coffee
Something light, like maybe a carrot