Freaking Sinuses

Hopefully my sinuses might be clearing up.  I have a lot of work to do this weekend (that I’d like to have been doing for the last two days) and I’m going to join some folks for a matinee of “The Dark Knight” tomorrow.  The ability to sit upright without pain would be nice.  I am doing better than I was for the last few days, though.

Feels Like the First Time

I’ve probably gotten a plagiarized paper once per semester - and usually more than once - ever since I started teaching.  Still, each time I feel exactly the same sense of surprise, disappointment, betrayal, and anger.  The disappointment comes from the ongoing realization that many of my students share this culture’s lack of concern about honesty, let alone honor.  The betrayal comes from the realization that something I think is important just isn’t to most of them.  The anger comes from the evidence that these kids think I’m a fucking idiot.  I actually do know what it means when I see dozens of embedded hyperlinks to Encarta or Wikipedia articles in a supposedly “original” essay.  I’m even likely to notice when a student who has shown at best mediocre language skills is suddenly using words like “zeitgeist”.

It is the surprise I don’t understand.  This is not new.  I’ve gotten plagiarized work more times than I can count and I seem to get more per semester with each passing year.  I know it is coming, yet somehow I’m always surprised - and then disappointed, betrayed, and angry.

A Khan’s Gotta Do…

I just got back from seeing “Mongol.”  This is a historical epic by a Mongolian film maker (with support from, among others, the Kazakhstan Ministry of Information and Culture - Insert Borat joke here) about Temujin, or “Genghis Khan”.  The film is big and sprawling and feature beautiful shots of the Asian steppes.  The performances were good and the film didn’t raise any immediate flags for me on the accuracy front (not that I’m an expert).

Still, it fell a bit flat for me.

The film strongly emphasized the love story between Temujin and his first wife Borte.  The film really opens with their betrothal as children then follows his trials as a youngster, then their marriage.  After this we see them separated - she gets kidnapped and he rescues her, then he gets captured and she rescues him.  “Nothing will keep him from her.”  After she rescues him we see kindly loving Temujin playing with the kids and then announcing he has to leave to go unite the Mongol people.  Cut to him with a huge army fighting an old friend with an even bigger army.  That victory leads to a final narration about how his career was just beginning.

Here is my problem; nowhere do we really get any sense of WHY he developed this mission of uniting the Mongols save a vague reference to how they are fighting too much.  We also never get a sense of what it was about this man that would make him into a true world conqueror - good or bad.  We get no sense of vision from him in the story, we get no sense of driving ambition, we don’t even get a good sense of him as a superior tactician.

I suppose this movie is decent fur costume drama, but it doesn’t give any insight into what made Temujin who he was.  I’m not sorry I saw the film, but I can’t say I thought it did a good job as either biography or history.

Loafing

I had to go in to the office for two meetings yesterday and the first was at 8 am.  Those amongst my readers who have experienced being around me in the morning will probably agree that it isn’t my best time.  In any case, I was asked to serve on a search committee for a new admin post at the college, someone who will coordinate the various teacher education things we do (Early Child care, lateral entry, accreditation, etc…).  I also went to a meeting of a committee examining our attendance policy and related issues.  Both were productive.  Both also featured our newly hired VP, who I am very favorably impressed with so far.

In any case, having had a busy day of unpaid service to the college (I’m on a nine-month contract and I’m paid like an adjunct for my summer courses), I decided to take today off.  Also, I’m in the midst of one of my perennial summer bouts of insomnia and so I didn’t get to sleep until almost 3 am.

Various thoughts:

I’ve always respected John McCain, but this manufactured offense concerning Clark’s comments is reprehensible.  Besides, I’m sorry, but the fact he was a POW does not make him any more of a foreign policy expert than anyone else.

My good friend Steve over at Semeiotikos wrote a personal eulogy for George Carlin.  I’ve been thinking about Carlin too.  On Saturday, HBO showed Carlin’s 1977 concert special - which I remember watching back when HBO was new.  I hadn’t realized until watching that how Carlin’s humor fit into my own developing interest in language and rhetoric.  In recent years I’ve looked back to realize that my interest in rhetoric didn’t begin in Iowa, but crystallized there.  It’s root go all the way back to my childhood and my father’s love of wordplay.  Carlin’s humor - so linguistic in its themes - was another step on the road.  Later that night I saw some stand-ups on Comedy Central doing shock humor (”tee hee, he said “cum”").  The contrast with Carlin was strong.  He used those “seven words” to discuss American morality and hypocrisy.  These later folks are frequently foul-mouthed just for its own sake - and that is the very definition of “vulgar”.

Don Davis died.  If you ever watched science fiction on TV, you’ve probably seen Davis.  He was a regular for most of the run of Stargate SG-1, he played a supporting character on Twin Peaks, he played Agent Scully’s father in the X-Files episode “Beyond the Sea” (one of the best ever), and a lot more.  Frankly, if it was shot in Vancouver in the last 20 or so years, he was probably on it.  I thought he was one of those actors like Gene Hackman.  Not everything he was in was good, but he was always good in everything I saw him do.  I don’t care for the whole celebrity thing.  I have no personal connection to this man or knowledge of him as a human being.  I wouldn’t presume to mourn him, but I will miss his work.

My department chair is supposed to have her baby tomorrow.  She and her husband are in my thoughts a bit.  Everything has gone fine and should tomorrow.  I suggested waiting for Friday.  My thought was that it can’t do a kid’s self-esteem any damage to have parades and fireworks on their birthday.  You don’t have to tell them it isn’t all for them.

If I don’t post before then, let me wish you all an enjoyable Change-of-Ruling-Elites Day!

A Public Resolution

I’ve really slacked off on the blog posts in recent months.  I think writing this is good for me - I won’t speak for any of you - and I want to re-dedicate myself to it.  My plan is to post something at least every other day.  I’m hoping putting this out here will help me keep to this resolution.  We’ll see…

Commencement Day

Today is commencement in my corner of academia.  I just finished running a lint roller over my robe and hood.  A colleague volunteered to iron the stuff for me (I’m afraid to take it home - I have a long-haired blonde dog and carpeting.)  In addition to robe and hood and silly hat I’ve decided to wear my honor cords from Phi Alph Theta.  Strictly this is a violation of the rules, but I never got to wear them during my actual commencement (long story) and my colleague is wearing hers, so I’m going for it.

Unlike usual, I’m not just going to be sitting with my colleagues at this one.  Since I’m Senate president this year, I’ve got to lead the faculty in then go up on the podium.  I’m going to call the proceedings to order, recognize our faculty and staff excellence award winners, present the candidates for graduation (for each degree or certificate I wait until all their names are called and then get up and “present” them to the college president who then confers the degree), and then I lead the faculty out.

While I’m happy for our graduates, I am not looking forward to taking part in the ceremony.  I can’t wait until this is over.

Meanwhile, we are (mostly) all here at work but since grades are already in nobody is really doing much except visiting.  I generally like this day.  Everything is relaxed and most everyone is in a good mood.  We have to start gearing up for summer soon, but today is not that day.

Damn Allergies

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.

Conference

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.

Clarke is Dead

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.

Caudillo

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.

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