Reservations for Ten

Daughter #2 turned fifteen recently.  We had a special dinner; family and long-time friends in attendance.  As the old-guy for this portion of the tribe, I’m at the head of the table.  At the other end are the four girls, my own two and with each, a friend.  I still think of them as girls and I still think of them as mine.

It’s been a blessing, a privilege, and a responsibility to watch them grow this past decade and a half, but I need to stop kidding myself.  They live in that terrible land of not-child and not-adult, and are no more mine than when I belonged to no one, at that age.

At their end of the table they do not know life is hard.  Nor do I wish it to fall upon them suddenly.  My remaining tasks are to ease them forward and slow them down, because I know they are in such a hurry to arrive.

There was a moment of clarity – a quiet realization in the midst of the meal.  I think of those who have passed on and how not that long ago we would have had a table for twelve.  And how, next year, everything will again be changed.

Within months, the oldest friend will be away at college.  Then, next summer, my oldest will take her turn.  Then too, the young ones will be driving.  For them, this is old-time’s sake, though they don’t realize it yet.  They will be their own, and on their own very soon.

The years have rolled along rather quickly.  I have no reason to suspect things to slow down.

Group Work Trifecta

My students hate group work.  Ha ha ha…  That's why I, hee hee hee… assign group projects.  And not just any group project, <tears down cheeks / clutching belly> but group writing-projects requiring research.  I have to move on, my sides are aching.  Chuckle, chuckle…

It is wonderful to hear the wailing, the gnashing of teeth, the lamentations, and to see my reflection in the gall-filled eyes of those imposed upon to interact with other human beings, outside of class, on homework.

What follows are three common complaints about group work. 

We all have different schedules and it's hard getting together outside of class.  I know.  If only someone, someday, would invent a device allowing people to communicate over long distances at any time of the day.  If only someone would create a way to send other people documents in almost real-time.  And, this is far-fetched, but wouldn’t it be really Kurzweil if we could send images and talkin’ moving-pictures to one another?  I hear tell there’s a thing called a telephone built on a network of wires.  Maybe the invento-ologists could play off of that and come up with something.  Until then there’s always smoke signals, or maybe just rhythmically beat on hollow logs in the forest and hope the other team members will hear.

(Insert name here) didn’t do anything.  Yep, (insert name here) was a real turd on this one.  I wonder where (insert name here) learned to be like that?  I mean, what organization out there just passes people up the academic ladder, even when they don’t do their fair share?  And, speaking of victimization, wouldn’t it be nice if there were a way to break the cycle of abuse?  I mean, what might a group of three people do to help their fourth group member understand how laziness is no longer going to fly?  Might have to talk to (insert name here) and let that person know you know they aren’t doing anything.  And I, as much as the next person, want everyone to like me and to be very popular and to never, ever, never, hurt anybody’s widdle bitty feewings.  If that means sacrificing a grade, so be it.  Because, heck, after this class, me and (insert name here) are going to be best buds.  Maybe we can even sit together when we have to retake this class.

It’s not fair we get the same grade.  Remember the Titanic?  Everybody on the Titanic received the same grade.  Remember the Little Big Horn?  Everybody in the Seventh Cavalry received the same grade.  Remember Border’s Books?  Everybody at Border’s received the same grade.  Please write a 5,000 word personal-reflection essay on the role of fairness and reality.

Two Poems

Here are two poems - thinky thinky - enjoy...

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A promise leaves me, I leave myself

Our words do little,
as morning haze or hills do little
but hide the birds that sing
and tell of things we cannot see.

A marsh of swans,
flourishing wings in the mud-nest
to rise and ride the air
and so extend and hold the sky.

But the loon?  He will have fishes
so dunks his head every day.

 

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Explaining to Anne Frank about the Students at Roosevelt

Either no one told them about the war or they never cared.

They admit to nothing and hold up well under interrogation.

They have seen the movie and thought it dull.

They are very good at hiding.

You might like one or two of them.

Rendering Unto Caesar

This here is probably going to lose me some points with some of my fundamentalist buddies, non-associated culture warriors, and those Conservatives who just know that if only we could pass such and such a law, or revoke such and such a law, then everything in the world would be just right.  I offer the following balm:

Try not to measure expectations against reality.  Doing so limits one's options.*

Also, this involves some of that Bible stuff.  I'll take it easy on the chapter and verse.  Look that up as homework.

 

Consider, reading it literally, Adam and Eve had one rule and a couple of jobs.  Life doesn't get easier than that.  The rule was to stay away from that one tree.  That God-given rule did not draw them closer to God.  They couldn't keep it and were kicked out of the garden.

Now consider free will:  in the Bible, can you find a single instance of God forcing someone to do something?  The only person I can think of is Jonah, and even then, it was Jonah who came back at the last minute.  Or, can you find a single instance of Jesus forcing anyone to do something?  I mean, Saul/Paul was thrown from the horse and blinded for a time.  But even then, Paul followed.  No one tied a chain around his neck and dragged him to Damascus.

Speaking of Paul, he wrote the letter to the Romans.  Paul was a Roman citizen.  He could have written that letter to a Roman politician.  He could have petitioned Rome to pass stricter, more God-pleasing laws.  And if a culture could have used that, Rome could have.  They had everything we're working so hard to have.  But Paul did not.  But who did he write the letter of Romans to?  If memory serves, he wrote his letters to churches.  All his letters, stressing behavior modifications, were to people who already believed.  To those who did not believe, Paul spoke about salvation and not behavior modification.

Now go back to the Old Testament.  Not always, but quite often, the Levites (the Priest/leadership tribe) were either lazy, corrupt, or busy trying to integrate other religions into what Israel was supposed to be.  In the New Testament, the Scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees (Libertarians, Democrats, and Republicans - that's a joke, k??) were in religious control, under the civic and military umbrella of the Romans.  We know what they were like.  Even in scripture, politics and faith do not walk well together.  And never mind a little thing called the Inquisition, nor the fact that every other Protestant denomination conducted persecutions.

What I'm saying is that controlling a government is not going to draw people closer to God.  How much sense does it make to expect people who do not believe in Christ to understand why one law is better than another law or why one set of standards is better than another?  There is a time-tested reason why horses pull carts.

It's kind of a human thing that we LOVE telling other people what to do.  Ths can be observed in playgrounds and in nursing homes.  Things are the way they are today in our socio-political landscape (always wanted to use that phrase in an essay) as a direct result of the politification (I just made that up) of faith.  Believers are more worried about controlling the masses than they are about reaching out to the masses with the primary message of the New Testament.  They have been for some while, and now we're here.  In some ways, I suppose, it is easier to be politically minded than it is to be gospel minded.  It's somehow more secure to work in the framework that we've built than the framework that we read of in the Bible.

How to turn things around?  Stop being like the believers at Ephesus while John was stationed at Patmos.

For my last trick - I will now run the risk of contradicting everything I just said.  Believers have the right and duty to speak their minds and be involved and write letters and petition and protest and attend meetings and vote and run for office and so on and so forth.  Just don't expect those who do not believe to agree, change their minds, or draw closer to God because a particular law was passed or thwarted. 

*Original Andy Decker proverb.

Reaching Out

Here's me being satirical on someone else's blog:

http://adjunct.chronicle.com/memo-from-the-desk-of-the-director-of-adjunct-development/

The blog is part of a larger project concerned with Adjunct employment at colleges and universities across the country.  It's called the Adjunct Project and would be a good thing not just for adjuncts to read, but for anyone in college or sending a kid to college.  Did you know, for example, the majority (like over 75%) of instructors at colleges are NOT full time and that adjuncts make a fraction (like, about a third) of what full time employees make?  Yet tuition costs go up yearly.  Things that make you go hmmmmm.....

Anyway, thanks Josh for accepting my satire.

I Do the Cooking

I do the cooking around here.  I'm talking evening meals and not lunch or breakfast.  We're one of those weird families that try to eat a meal together every day.  That was a conscious decision my wife and I made early on.  Me cooking wasn't the plan; it was just one of those things that happens in a marriage.  You know how it goes.

Those early years, that multiple-megaton blast of responsibility no newlywed is ready for, the heft and pull of the yoke, the schedule scratching along like a Richter-scale needle in a 1970s earthquake movie.  I found myself home in the afternoons with the time, so I cooked.  We shared the duty for a while.  I think the tipping point was the day I came home to a chicken in a pot, boiling on the stove.  That's what we had, boiled chicken; the moment of discovery, right there…  Bless her heart, she tried.

I don't mind.  Most days I enjoy it.  Cooking, done right, takes the worried mind to another place.  It's an escape.  That, and every time I burn or cut or mangle some of my flesh, I garner further evidence.  "Look there," I say to whichever daughter silly enough to enter the kitchen at such times.  "I bled for you again!  Now go clean the cat box!"

I remember this one concoction from the early days - rice and whatever, with onions and hot-pepper powder, smothered in a bar-b-q sauce, baked at 375 until it looked ready.  It was better than it sounds.  The meals were simple then, unassuming, starchy, and cheap (funny how we're pulling back in that direction- good thing there's no inflation or we'd be in some real trouble).

Time moved on and so did my skills.  I got skills now.  Don't believe me? Come over for dinner.  About three Thanksgivings ago I did the meal - eighteen people and some change.  Spaghetti for fourteen teens, with salad, sides, and deserts?  No prob.  Intimate for two?  How about lobster bisque, sautéed thin-cut pork chops with lightly glazed onion and caper glaze, followed by a crème brule' with just a hint of lemon?  Don't like lemon?  I do chocolate too.  Oh how I love my butane kitchen torch!  Just let me know a day in advance, I'll fix you something good.

A personal favorite is an early-summer Cajun deal:  a shrimp-sausage jambalaya (has to have a deep-brown roux base or it's not jambalaya), hush-puppies, fruit bowl to cut the heat, and various other oddments that holler at me from the cookbook, with homemade heath-espresso ice cream for dessert.  I can lose myself if the meal is involved enough.  The kitchen is hot, the water's boiling, I've lost the skin on one of my fingers, and have little red marks on my arms from the grease.  In that moment I am Hephaestus at the forge, and all is well in the world.  Machinery, blades, steam, and open flame - what's not to like?

Mom was my first teacher.  She didn't know it, but I was paying attention.  I saw her use a recipe maybe a dozen times.  Otherwise, she knew what she was doing.  Others have helped along the way.  There have been classes by people educated about such things.  I learned some good tricks from them and was introduced to new recipes.  And, as usual, the best teacher is experience - always is.

It's not all glorious.  Some days at the grocery store I know exactly what I want.  Dinner plans come to me as in a vision.  I can almost smell the end-result, and so I slide the silver cart through the tides of old women and other grizzled home-cooks to the ingredient locations, led by the memorized floor-plans that shine like a magic map.

Sometimes it isn't easy.  I'm managing three other palates on a regular basis.  Me?  I'll eat whatever.  But the audience is a different matter.  I have two pickies and a one not-so-picky to contend with.  And they're picky over different things.  Nor do I claim to bat a thousand.  No one does.  I sometimes only manage to make edible dinners - they just don't taste like much but at least I tried.

Many days the magic is not there.  I stand beneath the piped-music, staring at the red-wall of for-sale snack crackers, without a clue.  Annoyed people move around me.  On these days I gather necessities first.  Dog-food, detergents, tampons (yes, I'm that confident in my masculinity), maybe a new round of toothbrushes because that's the kind of guy I am.  I draw on my experiences, cast about the refrigerated ether, and gather what I may.  But, by golly, dinner is made.

This is my parable of the writer.  Learn as you go.  No one starts out truly knowing what they are doing.  Some days, inspiration shines like a new Kroger card.  Some days, it's just a putty-colored tub of crap.  You know it and so does everyone else at the table.  At least the dogs are always thankful.  But you keep going, day after day.  The new writer learns.  There's a world to explore.  And if it sucks the first time, make it again just to be sure.

After a while, a level of confidence arrives.  I think that's when the fears and the recipes stop being as important as they once were.  You try new combinations, go less by exact measurement and more by what feels right (or maybe smells).  Then, if you feel like sharing, you know other people are going to like it too.

Commodious Accommodation

Dear Suzy;

As my work group’s designated Value Added College Adjunct Nomenclature Trainer, I feel you will have the knowledge and expertise to help with the following question.

My question is, “How I may do my part to help make sure the students are having a successful and hygienic restroom experience?”

I realize the majority of the students do just fine.  But, every day, there is some splashing on the rims, floors, and walls adjacent to the toilets and urinals.  Some just can’t seem to hit the spot, if you know what I mean.  What can I do to help these young men have a better chance of reaching their goals?

Sincerely; 

Carl Everguy

Adjunct Restroom Hygiene Facilitator

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Dear Carl;

I commend your concern for our at-risk students and appreciate your forthright and ‘take responsibility’ proactivity regarding the issue.  As you know, changing generations mean changing priorities and different norms of behavior from the past.  I appreciate your willingness to go the extra mile for the young people who simply experience life differently than the ‘old pedagogical order’.  It is important for us to change so that they do not have to.  Without your attitude, many might fall between the cracks.  And at the end of the day, filling cracks is what is important.

My Six-Sigma research team reinforces your initial diagnosis.  A majority of students know about and successfully utilize restroom equipment every day.  It is, however, a sad commentary on our culture that some just assume everyone will respond similarly when confronted with what may be an unfamiliar experience.  As you know, our students represent a vast diversity of economic, learning, sexual, and ethno-orientations.  I don’t have to tell you how the Anglo-centric stances of the past may not be suitable for everyone.   A few suggestions are in order.

First, your task-group of RHFs may want to post instructional signs above the toilets and urinals.  I would use graphics with a limited amount of text to account for those who are reading-challenged.  Focus on recommended ranges, stances, and other proper techniques.

Another option might be to install wider urine acceptance units to help facilitate the spectrum of aiming diversities.  If you choose to pursue this option you need to fill out the following state-mandated forms:  porcelain_enlargement_request.doc, RHF_work_load_enlargement.doc, business_case_funding.doc, workplace_at_risk.doc, ethno_facili_blab.doc, and OSHA_form_184_restrooms_a12_99x.doc.

Finally, our sister college in Connecticut is implementing a new program in the form of Diversity Restroom Facilitators.  This adjunct work-enhancement opportunity enables the volunteers adopting the new work-load to be eligible for a .025% increase in their pay, bringing their rate of compensation up to nearly 27.8% of their full-time counterparts.  The dif personnel, as they are referred to, assist the students in achieving their unique goals.  This can be in the form of personal coaching or, as necessity dictates, the holding of the gender-specific waste water discharge appendage, at least for the initial stages of the program, until they can learn to do it for themselves.

I hope you and your fellow RHFers give serious consideration to the last option, as I am very excited about the possibilities.

Again, I so very much appreciate your desire to help our college meet the unique challenges presented by the student body.  After all, isn’t that what the college experience is all about?

Regards;

Suzy Busibodi

V.A.C.A.N.T. Committee Representative