Virtual Bourgeois

Just An Analog Guy Trying to Upgrade For a Digital World

Blogging and Waiting

Posted by Gerald on May 8, 2008

There has been enough activity in my area that local TV has been showing continuous weather coverage.  Numerous severe thunderstorm warnings and tornado warning along with hail, heavy lightning, etc…

I’ve been in the strange position of having a major series of storms to the west moving north east and a big storm to the east going in the same direction.  Here there has been no rain, no noticeable wind, it has been quiet all night - so far.  Still, the whole region is under a tornado watch until 1:00 am, and this one is serious.  So I’m waiting and watching.

I’ve slept through a lot of this.  I haven’t left work any night this week until 6:30 at the earliest.  I’m mostly through my grading and expect to be done tomorrow sometime.

Best line from an essay so far has been one about “The Scrabble for Africa”.

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I’m Ready!

Posted by Gerald on May 5, 2008

Tomorrow is the NC primary and since I do not have an exam in the morning I’m going to go vote on the way to work.

For people from states that do not regularly schedule their primaries in May, you might not realize how exciting this is.  Someone is actually sort of paying attention to the vote here!  Sure, you almost forget our primary given the press coverage: “Tomorrow is the all important primary in Indiana!  They’re also voting in North Carolina…”  But still.

I actually got a robocall from Hillary yesterday and one from Bill, for Hillary, today.  The blinking light on my answering machine suggests I’ve got another one - maybe Barack?  People who live in cities and are inundated with these won’t get the novelty.  I live in a rural county that, I believe, last voted for a Democratic Presidential candidate when LBJ ran in 1964.  I’m used to robocalls for the local races, but I’ve NEVER gotten one here for a national race.

I spent much of the evening at the website for the NC Center for Voter Education.  I made my picks for President, Governor, and the person who Elizabeth Dole is going to defeat in November (my least favorite Senator - I preferred Helms, he at least had an honest commitment to this state) already.  My task was to figure out who I wanted for the Council of State posts (Labor Commissioner, State Auditor, etc…).

I started out with the NARAL and NCEA (the teacher’s non-union in our “right to work” paradise - affiliated with the much hated NEA) voter guides.  Then the Center for Voter Education website, which has a collection of podcast interviews with most of the candidates for state offices, including the non-partisan judicial posts.  I decided that to just reject those who didn’t interview out of hand.  If you can’t find time for this, you don’t have time for the job.  That got me through everything but our district court race and that sorted out through some judicious searching through on-line articles from our local papers.

So tomorrow morning I’ll head out for the polls armed with my list (written on the back of an Oxfam envelope) and go hit my polling place.  As usual, I’m sure the workers there will be surprised to see an actual breathing registered Democrat come in to vote.

I remember my father taking me in with him to vote sometime back in the 1972 election (he was a Nixon man to the bitter end).  Standing next to him in the old voting machine, he picked me up to let me press the lever for Nixon.  That moment had a sacred quality to my young mind that going to church never had.  I have had a certain sense of religion, but I once had faith in the United States of America.  As I grew up, I was more excited as a teenager about the prospect of voting than I was about driving.  I volunteered for my first political campaign when I was 16.  One of my teachers was running for county commissioner.  I got my first experience with cold calling, knocking on doors, and with angry people who didn’t want Wheel of Fortune interrupted and didn’t want to see me in any case - good experience for when I later worked as a bill collector in college.  He didn’t win, which some might take as proof of the divine.  I kept that excitement through college.  I loved election night.  I was a politics junkie.  That survived my switching ends of the political spectrum, a growing maturity in my understanding of my country, and even Bill Clinton’s decision that the sexualized needs of his ego were more important than his party, his presidency, or even the dignity of his office.

That all ended in 2000.  Bush the Younger was the first candidate I had opposed not just because I disagreed with him (as I had his father) but because I thought he would be bad for the country.  His smarmy self-satisfaction and total lack of engagement just seemed so clear to me.  Still, after Florida and the courts, I told myself that his victory wasn’t so bad.  The republic had weathered Civil War and the Great Depression, how bad could he be?

Eight years later I’ve lost most of my remaining faith in democracy and in this country.  Still, for the first time in years I’m feeling an echo of that old excitement.

Maybe there is a chance.

Maybe.

Posted in Personal, politics | Tagged: | No Comments »

Damn Allergies

Posted by Gerald on May 4, 2008

I’m on day five of an allergy attack of epic proportions.  I’m told we’ve been setting pollen level records hereabouts.  This is definitely turning into one of the worst seasons I can remember out of forty-some years of this crap.

Tuesday night it just moved into my lungs and plugged them up.  I was dry coughing for the first two days.  As of Saturday the sinuses opened up and began draining down my throat.  Thanks to Mucinex D, I am doing better today, but I’m still snuffling a lot and coughing a bit and my eyes are so watery that I can’t really read or write much.

When I was diagnosed with this stuff as a kid, I was told that I could at least look forward to this easing in middle age.  Several eminent health professionals have offered me the same comfort since.

Damn liars.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

The Big Office Move

Posted by Gerald on April 27, 2008

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this here or not, but I had to move my office this week.  My new one is about a third smaller than the old one and still doesn’t have a window.

My department has shared a small suite of offices on a little isolated hallway at the front corner of the building.  I think this has enhanced a certain sense of group identity.  As I’ve mentioned before, we go to lunch together and socialize with each other outside of work to an extent that is very unusual compared to other departments in the college.

The new Vice-President is being moved into our office suite, as is the dean of our division and the director of Instructional Services and we are all being moved out.  There is a general shuffle going on so that, for the most part, the three departments in our division - we are all located on the lower floor of our building - will be roughly together.  Our department is sharing a hallway with the English department.

The moves started on Thursday as the offices some of us were moving into were being cleared out.  One of the people who was supposed to move is a notorious slacker and has a REALLY messy office.  We talked our Campus Resource Officer - the deputy sheriff who is on-campus all day - to get a blank eviction notice faxed over from his office.  He then served it on that instructor, evicting him from his office for “health code violations”.  The three other members of the department and I all moved on Friday.  It was supposed to take all day, but we were mostly done before lunch.  Our department chair and the remaining member of the department will move next week - supposedly Wednesday.  All-in-all the day was tiring and full of the irritations of moving (there was a bit of a flare of tempers between two of the others, but I wasn’t directly involved), but by the time it was done I had everything unpacked and ready to go for Monday.

We’re still pretty close to each other, but it feels oddly like we’ve been broken up.  We are used to just calling out to each other, sharing jokes, etc…  Our two newest members have been sharing an office this year, and have liked that.  Now they are in separate, but adjoining, offices.  Because no one wanted to inconvenience two of the senior instructors, my office is at the far end of the hallway from the other members of the department.  The other history instructor waked down to show me a book during the afternoon and said “This is unacceptable - you are just too far away.”  Actually, the current plan is that I’ll move down to the other end of the hall when one of the senior instructors retires (and she has a window!).

On the other hand, I’m now right next door to my friend Steve and right across from my friend Dana - thus I’m going to get lots more “guy time.”  Unfortunately, they weren’t in on Friday.  Because of that I left in the afternoon with a strange sense of loneliness and separation.

It is just funny to realize the things you come to rely on to get through the day.

Posted in Personal, work | No Comments »

Clinton Visit

Posted by Gerald on April 27, 2008

We found out early this week that Bill Clinton was going to visit the campus on Wednesday.  He was visiting four college campuses here in NC that day and we were the third.  I think these were billed as something else, but they were campaign stops for Hillary.  I’ve never seen a President - sitting or former - in person, so I decided to stick around for the event.

Everyone in my department stayed for the speech.  We brought out folding camp chairs (thanks for the loan, Steve!) and staked out spots at about 4pm, so I was very close to the front.  He was scheduled to get there at 6:45.  It was like we were waiting in line for concert tickets.  We were having a good time.  The crowd eventually grew to about 1100 (according to the Sheriff’s department).  They started playing white-folks political rock (”Little Pink Houses” etc…) to entertain the crowd.  The speakers were really loud up front.

Due to delays at the earlier stops, Clinton didn’t arrive until about 9 pm.  Because of the crowd, we were all on our feet for the last three hours.  Before he got there, Hillary’s NC coordinator showed up to do a pep rally.  Since I’m supporting Obama I felt like a bit of an outsider there.  On the other hand, my high school pep rallies were not that much different.  I just don’t seem to respond to the whole group emotion thing very well even at the best of times.  After finishing a hard day of work and then sitting outside for four hours, I wasn’t in a great mood anyway.

One thing that really struck me during the pep rally was watching several of the intelligent and independent-minded women I work with being reduced to whooping contestants on The Price is Right by the “cheerleader” (as I thought of him) when he said “… and nobody tells a North Carolina woman to just sit down and shut up!”  Yeah, and “this is easily the most rocking town our band will visit on this tour!”  I’m sorry, but blatant ham-fisted pandering is blatant ham-fisted pandering, no matter the cause.

Cheerleader also had everyone send a text-message (”NC”) to a campaign phone number and then picked three of those who did to come up on stage and stay to meet Clinton, get an autograph, and ask a question.  Shortly before this, Cheerleader had been - well - cheer leading.  “Gimme an ‘H’”,  Gimme an ‘I”", etc… and then “Who is going to be the next President of the United States!?!”  I used my somewhat above average lung-power to reply “Barak Obama!!!”.  People around me had a variety of reactions.  My colleagues just thought it was funny, as did the guy behind me.  He had been ribbing me in a friendly manner and asking me to give him a t-shirt if I caught one (Cheerleader was tossing them around - and deliberately snubbed the five-year-old son of one of my colleagues who was standing up front.)  When the texting was done, the guy asked me what I wanted to ask Clinton.  He was somewhat taken aback when I responded “I want to ask him if he is deliberately trying to sabotage his wife’s campaign or if he just went insane sometime around the South Carolina primary?”  Actually, I’d like to ask him how he slept at night after having his State Department dick around for three months while 900,000 Rwandans were being killed, but that would probably have been rude.

In other words, I was feeling a bit cranky by the time Clinton arrived.  I was really thinking less about what he might say than about how long he’d take to say it.

While waiting for him to come out no less than four people came up to me to ask me to squat down so they would be able to see.  I’m in my mid-40’s and my knees aren’t what they used to be, still I tried.  I was really cramping up after about 30 minutes (and i felt that for two days), so I selfishly stood back up.  I’m a bastard.

Clinton gave a pretty familiar speech - Hillary’s experience, some specific policy points, things were better back when he was President, taking credit for economic developments during his administration that he had no control over, etc…  He did it well, about a “B-” speech for him, but then it was his third of the day and he still had one to go.  I’ve been hearing forever about how magnetic he is in person and the people around me were feeling it.  There were tears, screaming, etc…  I didn’t feel it.  I just heard a decently delivered political speech from a capable politician.  When he was done he worked the line.  If I had cared to use my size to my advantage, I could have gotten a handshake, but I wasn’t that much of a bastard.  Other people around me were less restrained, though.  Four of my colleagues moved right up to the front before the speech even started, so they got pictures taken with Clinton and got him to sign a bunch of things.  I didn’t bring anything to get autographed, but I don’t really get very attached to that sort of thing.

Also, frankly, I’m kind of ambivalent about Clinton.  He was a better President than Bush the elder and far better than Bush the Younger, but that’s about it.  Also, I really feel he betrayed both the Democratic Party and the public trust in the Lewinsky thing.  Maybe personal sexual behavior shouldn’t matter, but the fact is that it does and he knew that going in.

Anyhow, I didn’t get home until about 10:30.  The next day we all sort of felt like we had been at a rock concert - leg strain, slight tinnitus, and a sort of feeling of disassociation.

This wasn’t one of those experiences that really affected me deeply, but I think I’d be kicking myself if I hadn’t gone.

I’m still supporting Obama.

Posted in Personal | Tagged: | 3 Comments »

Removing the “Guy Time” Post

Posted by Gerald on April 20, 2008

Some have argued that rational thought makes us human, others that it is the capacity to feel love, or to use tools, or to exist in a world of meaning.  All of these have some validity.  However, I’d like to make another contribution to that list.

The desire, need, and ability to occasionally edit makes us human.

For the first time in the year - roughly - that I’ve been writing this blog, I’ve decided to remove a post.  I removed “Guy Time” because after reading Bridgett’s comment I started to realize that it was a bad piece of writing.  It didn’t really capture the events I was relating or my ideas about them so much as the generally foul mood I was in as I wrote the post.  The foul mood was mostly a result of a bad night’s sleep combined with hay fever and an end-of-the-semester case of ennui.

In the post I tried to tell about something that was actually quite funny at the time.  As I’ve mentioned before, all of my colleagues in the social science department are women.  One of those women had a birthday this week.  We are a pretty tight group and we always do departmental lunches to celebrate such things.

The location for this lunch was suddenly changed on Friday morning to “Miss Rose’s Tea Room” - and not at the request, or even with the knowledge of, the guest of honor.  I began theatrically, and loudly, complaining about this as an assault on my manhood.  My colleagues found this hysterical, so it became the running joke of the morning.

I work with a group of strong and confident women who trust me enough to be pretty open and relaxed around me.  They also constantly rib me about this stuff - everything from talking about how “Gerald’s gone to his ‘happy place’” when the conversation turns to birth complication horror stories to calling me the “pimp daddy” of the department and referring to “Gerald and his Ho’s”

Just as an aside: I NEVER say any of the stuff about “pimps” and “ho’s”.  To this I attribute the continuing good will of my co-workers and, indeed, my ongoing survival.  A little lesson to some of my white male brethren who might not have figured this out - history being what it has been, there are some jokes we do not get to make.

Pressing onward with the story - we went to lunch.  The venue was very “Steel Magnolias” and the owner laughed loudly when she heard me tell the others that I might forgive them eventually for bringing me here.  That got a solid laugh, but I judged that at that point the joke was wearing out, so I just dropped it.  Lunch was fine, if a bit pricey.

Afterwards we went back to campus and immediately into our division’s annual program review session - powerpoints, enrollment levels, what did we accomplish this year, what should we do next year, etc…  It was in the course of this that the grandmother of the division, an elderly English instructor with the kind of wicked sense of humor you only develop by successfully living a life, inadvertently referred to the “history ladies”.  Almost immediately she caught that and started to offer an apology.  I had immediately crossed gazes with Allison, my history colleague, and we were both already snickering since this fit so well into the morning’s jokes.  Even those who didn’t know about that caught the minor faux pas and the room started erupting in laughter.  I loudly protested, “See - ONE trip to the tea room and look what happens!!!”  Everyone laughed and then we finished the meeting.

As one would expect, I kept hearing about this all afternoon.  I think that was where the trouble began.

I was tired and increasingly uncomfortable (sinus headache) as the day went on.  With each mention by someone who wasn’t there, what had been funny started to seem irritating.  Still, I knew it was just me feeling out of sorts, so I dutifully chuckled and kept my mouth shut.  Right up until the blog post, when what started as a story turned into a rant.

In the course of that rant, I said something about the culture wanting me to be ashamed of being male.  Bridgett rightly called me on this, asking if I really thought there was an “attack on maleness” in the dominant culture.  I don’t.  What I was thinking about at that moment was the nearly universal depiction of men in sitcoms as horny sports-obsessed morons and how that doesn’t fit me, my late father, or any of my male friends.  Still, I don’t really see an attack on “maleness” there.  If anything, this probably serves to excuse bad behavior as a kind of cultural reinforcement of “boy will be boys.”

I think that, like a lot of men with my level of education and set of beliefs about gender, I am sometimes caught between being comfortable enough with WHO I am but somewhat ambivalent about what it means to be WHAT I am.  Call it white male liberal guilt if you are feeling dismissive.  I’ve learned there is patriarchy and, wittingly or not, I’ve benefited from it.  I’ve learned there is a racial hierarchy and, wittingly or not, I’ve benefited from it.  I cannot divorce myself from the historical context any more than anyone else can.  That is what I am.  Integrating that awareness into who I am and being able to live with the result is an ongoing issue for me, and I’d be willing to bet I’m not alone in that.

So, in a supreme moment of “crotchetiness” I got into the written equivalent of that point in a verbal argument where you stop trying to be reasonable and you just start venting.  My purpose in writing this blog is mostly selfish.  It is a modernist journal.  When inspired to write, I write.  Then I do minor copy-editing and I hit “publish”.  This is as close as I get to an act of spontaneous creativity.  I had to think all night before pulling the “Guy Time” post because it seems to violate that.  On the other hand, I’ve not written another post that I looked at later and really felt didn’t represent me, even my flaws, in an accurate way.  It was intellectually sloppy.  I don’t think that is me.

So I pulled it and I’m still not sure I did the right thing.

Posted in Personal, thoughts | Tagged: , , | 8 Comments »

Conference

Posted by Gerald on March 30, 2008

I just got back from a conference of local community colleges.  It was pretty small, but had some really good sessions concerning assessment at the individual course, program, and college level.  Half of the sessions dealt with assessment in some fashion and the other half seemed to center on our student’s culture.  There were sessions dealing with the rise of the helicopter parent.  If you do not recognize the term, count yourself lucky.  The day before I left I had gotten a long phone call from the mother of one of my advisees who wanted to discuss what “they” had decided that “they” were going to take - and no, she is not enrolled in any classes herself.  There was also a good session on “the millennials.”  Most of these tend to just talk about differences - this one focused on learning needs and adaptive strategies.

We ended with a final session on change.  The presenter was more entertaining than informative, but that was okay.  He then felt it necessary to subject us to a powerpoint he had done for some students years before on the guard unit at the tomb of the unknown soldier.  It ran the entire length of Lee Greenwood’s overplayed paean to mindless patriotism “God Bless the USA”.  By then I was ready to leave. 

Assessment has been the center of big conversations for us of late - how do we assess student progress in a way that we can demonstrate to accrediting bodies and to the government?  The Spellings Report really showed the future.  We are coming to the end of the time when those agencies are going to continue to nod at us and say “Yes, oh wise ones, your assurance that students are doing well by your criteria is enough for us.  Have a few more billion dollars.”

Some other stuff I learned:

Out of the total amount this state spends on education, K through 20, the entire community college system here gets 8%.  Out of this we have to find money for preparatory needs for 44% of our students.

In terms of faculty pay for community colleges, we rank 41st in the nation (the current president of our system has been fighting this for years - we used to be 47th.)  This despite the fact that our system is generally regarded as very good - enough that we get sitting Presidents (Clinton and Bush the Younger) and Presidential candidates (Hillary once and Barak twice) who come to our community colleges to talk about how swell they are.

The conference was held on the coast, so I got to go out for a couple of very good seafood dinners.  I also spent a fair amount of time drinking beer in the evenings with my associate dean - which was both pleasant and informative.

I also got to spend just a couple of hours sitting looking out at the bay with my window open.  I read a book and watched seabirds and a couple of dolphins while I enjoyed the breeze.

I think that might have been enough to get me through the rest of the semester.

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Clarke is Dead

Posted by Gerald on March 18, 2008

Arthur C. Clarke has died.

 Clarke was an early favorite of mine.  I loved his novels, but I thought he was at his best as a short story author.  I still remember the closing of his “Nine Billion Names of God” as giving me one of the creepiest and most awe-inspiring moments I had as a young reader.

 I always liked his work best when he allowed his humanism to come before his science.  He had an optimism about human potential in spite of his awareness of human weaknesses.  I always saw a similarity there between his view of humanity and its future and Carl Sagan’s.  Both of those men taught me to admire science and to see the beauty that is so often hidden by the jargon.  Both gave me an example of how one could be realistic about the human condition and fervent in calling for change without ever giving in to despair and cynicism.

I think Clarke made us all a bit more for his having been here, and we are all going to be a bit less for his leaving.  If he finds a journey beyond this one, I hope he enjoys the exploration.

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Caudillo

Posted by Gerald on March 9, 2008

If you aren’t familiar with this term, it comes out of South American politics.  It indicates an authoritarian ruler.  The reason I’m bringing this up is that the caudillo usually presented himself as the great man on a white horse who comes to save the day.

Which brings me to the race for President.

Whether Republican or Democrat, man or woman, white or black, our Presidential candidates - and not just in this election cycle - have a whiff of the caudillo about them.  They are going to bring change, or experience, or whatever, to cure the nation’s ills.  Their respective followers and detractors - including me - play the game as well by lionizing or demonizing them by turns.

Isn’t this all a bit anti-democratic?

The reality is that the President, however bad, is never the source of the nation’s ills and however good, is never its savior.  The land and the President are not one, nor should they be.  The major power of the modern Presidency is the ability to motivate people and to focus attention.  To my mind, this was FDR’s great discovery.  The most effective President’s since him have known and used this.  That isn’t about leading or deciding - it is about inspiring.  The problem is that the same fact also makes the Presidency an easy focus for the national mood.  We had a world trade boom in the 1990s that translated into good economic times here at home - for some.  Bill Clinton had precisely nothing to do with that, but is still claiming credit for it.  As much as I hate the current guy and his policies, the current economic woes here have little to do with him.

I’m not trying to suggest the Presidency is meaningless.  As the last eight years have shown, an unengaged President surrounded by self-serving careerists and manipulators can make a bad situation much worse.  On the other hand, wise policies and an engaged President can help extract the maximum benefit out of good situations and can make sure that more people benefit from them.  I’m arguing that the person in that center seat doesn’t so much call the tune as help keep the orchestra on tempo.

As lousy a President as I believe Ralph Nader would be, I absolutely agree with him about one thing.  The Presidential elections are no longer democratic, if indeed they ever were.  I disagree with him about the cause.  I don’t think this is about big whatever or special whosits.

It is about us.

We have created a system through action and through passivity that leaves power in other hands.  We the People want to elect Big Daddy or Big Momma to deal with all the hard stuff so we don’t have to think about that.  It is an absolutely natural thing for people to want to just be left alone to live their lives, the problem is that doing so abrogates the basic responsibilities of free people to determine their own destinies.  We want to be free - but what we usually mean by that is that we want to be free from care and woe.  That is the freedom of childhood.

Ultimately I don’t believe our freedoms are taken away.  We give them up.  We keep looking to “them” to solve the problems - whether the “free market” or God or Science or John/Barak/Hillary/Ralph.  Then we get upset when “they” fail.  The problem is the only solution has always been us.  We are our greatest enemy and only hope.

But still, we are going to remain focused on the speeches and the cheering.  We’ll all pick our person on a horse… and we’ll keep waiting for them to save us.

WordPress.com Political Blogger Alliance

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Shaky

Posted by Gerald on March 2, 2008

While returning from a lunch date this afternoon I lost control of my car as I avoided another car on I-85.  I’m still not sure how this happened, given that I’m not a real speed demon and my tires and all are in great shape.  I know some times all it takes is the wrong angle on the wrong piece of asphalt, but still - that stuff is supposed to happen to someone else.  My best guess is that I’m still getting used to how much lighter this Camry is compared to every other car I’ve ever driven.  It doesn’t seem to slow much when I take my foot off the accelerator, which is what I did to no effect when the car started to fishtail.

Luckily the cars around me were mostly past by the time my fishtailing became a full-on skid.  There was a large break in the traffic which allowed me to get going again before anyone else came up.  I pulled over and checked, but there was no damage (there was never an impact, and everything else seems fine) so I drove home.  What I think has me feeling retroactively shaky is how easily this could have gone much worse.

I think it might be time for a glass of wine… or so.

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »