I know what you're thinking, two blogs this close together? What's TCH doing over there...isn't he supposed to be writing a dissertation and the rest of his time spent lecturing? To that I say, pah.
In that vein, I went out with my ole' buddy Jim this evenin' and saw a new flick, "New York, I Love You." Now, for those of you movie critic types (yes this would include any of you indie/townie-wannabes that we encountered before the film discussing the cinematic delights of God only knows what and the intricacy of plot and depth of character assignments, blah de blah blah blah) this film was decent. If you've seen "Paris, Je T'Aime," think of that only in NYC. But this is not a film review. Somehow I'm not yet full enough of, well, myself to become a film, food, or literary critic. Rather, its the impact the film had on me during my drive back to the flat.
After dropping Jim off, I starting wondering how it is that such a wonderfully diverse city like NYC and the tragic attacks it suffered on 9.11 have become so distorted by the neo-cons and military industrial complex and now, apparently, much of the so-called "left" that an escalation in a war on the other side of the globe seems necessary and prudent.
And then I got to rememberin'. True, Oby said he would quickly draw down troops and end the war in Iraq. So far, this seems to be the plan. And yet, when individuals like Barbara Boxer and myself had serious questions about why someone like "Give em' HellGates" would be left at Defense when we had all voted for change, Mr. Oby's line was quite pointed: Afghanistan was different and he trusted the Gates crew on defense policy. Afghanistan was not Iraq, so said (yes, past tense) he. See the following pieces for the predictions that the recently announced escalation was intended way back in the summer of 2008: salon and cnn .
The moral: we got what we voted for. There's no surprise here. Don't act shocked and awed. After all, what's one war traded in for another?
TCH
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Keeping the liberal faith
No apologies for the inattention to the blog. Life has had me running here and there to conferences, committee meetings, submitting chapters and grants and, yes, happily spending time with my woman and family here in Athens.
I blog today to get out the cloudiness that continually wracks my mind when things get quiet enough for me and Bob Dylan to consider things in the wind and God being on "our" side. Noting that this quiet time normally occurs late in the morning hours, I still believe my thoughts might be worth sharing. If you disagree, stop reading here and go back to watching the tube that blasts mindless non-information into your life so that you can refuse to face the realities surrounding humanity's collective existence. If you're still reading, I congratulate you on being either an extremely interested reader/friend or a blissfully unaware quasi-participant.
Over the past several months I have had the feeling that death is all around. Numerous folks (including myself) have had individuals taken from this life. Personally, about 5 months ago I eulogized a grandfather who was a shining example of humility and laughter, kindness and strength, intellect and wit. Only a few weeks after, two of my dearest friends lost grandparents and amidst all of that, the nation lost Edward M. Kennedy.
Now, of course, Kennedy's passing has been played up and down by talking heads (some only half-filled) and I do not desire to walk back down the road of EMK's legendary brothers, his family, or any of the scandals that haunted his self-acknowledged privileged life.
For months, thoughts of liberalism, the DNC, social justice, and equality have been swirling through my mind like donkeys kicking drunken elephants. Today, over lunch with a friend, I realized the connection that my life represents: I am the inheritor of a great american (hold on to your rocker) liberal tradition.
Like Kennedy, my grandfather was a Democrat of a different generation. However, as a man who returned from WWII to support the Dixiecrats in '48, he would live a life of dedication to faith, family, and hard work that placed him squarely in defense of President Clinton as well as avidly supporting President Obama's candidacy at the sunset of his life. I am proud of his journey that heralded choosing hope over hate and compassion over fear. And, that he let me tag along on the way.
So, even as the politically savvy thing to do these days is substitute "progressive" for "liberal" as if the term is inherently evil, or threatening, alarming, and/or offensive, I say, for most, reaffirm: My name is TCH and, yes, I am a liberal.
(In my best Palin voice): Why aren't cha?
TCH
I blog today to get out the cloudiness that continually wracks my mind when things get quiet enough for me and Bob Dylan to consider things in the wind and God being on "our" side. Noting that this quiet time normally occurs late in the morning hours, I still believe my thoughts might be worth sharing. If you disagree, stop reading here and go back to watching the tube that blasts mindless non-information into your life so that you can refuse to face the realities surrounding humanity's collective existence. If you're still reading, I congratulate you on being either an extremely interested reader/friend or a blissfully unaware quasi-participant.
Over the past several months I have had the feeling that death is all around. Numerous folks (including myself) have had individuals taken from this life. Personally, about 5 months ago I eulogized a grandfather who was a shining example of humility and laughter, kindness and strength, intellect and wit. Only a few weeks after, two of my dearest friends lost grandparents and amidst all of that, the nation lost Edward M. Kennedy.
Now, of course, Kennedy's passing has been played up and down by talking heads (some only half-filled) and I do not desire to walk back down the road of EMK's legendary brothers, his family, or any of the scandals that haunted his self-acknowledged privileged life.
For months, thoughts of liberalism, the DNC, social justice, and equality have been swirling through my mind like donkeys kicking drunken elephants. Today, over lunch with a friend, I realized the connection that my life represents: I am the inheritor of a great american (hold on to your rocker) liberal tradition.
Like Kennedy, my grandfather was a Democrat of a different generation. However, as a man who returned from WWII to support the Dixiecrats in '48, he would live a life of dedication to faith, family, and hard work that placed him squarely in defense of President Clinton as well as avidly supporting President Obama's candidacy at the sunset of his life. I am proud of his journey that heralded choosing hope over hate and compassion over fear. And, that he let me tag along on the way.
So, even as the politically savvy thing to do these days is substitute "progressive" for "liberal" as if the term is inherently evil, or threatening, alarming, and/or offensive, I say, for most, reaffirm: My name is TCH and, yes, I am a liberal.
(In my best Palin voice): Why aren't cha?
TCH
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Long time, no blogging: Life Events or "Lika rolain sto"
So it is not that I have limited things to say these days, rather, its that I haven't really slowed down long enough to get them on the blog. I'm back in Athens, getting settled back in to life as I knew it a year ago, sort of. I have just finished writing lectures for the course I'm teaching in the fall and am quite relieved to have that process, at least for the moment, done. I have moved all my stuff (including King Andrew) back to the house and LP and I are happily a block away from each other.
With all that said, two stories that should be shared. LP and I took a little journey over to Scotland in the early part of July for a mini-break and a conference presentation. The conference went quite well and LP and I got to experience our relationship in a foreign land: street maps, the intricacies of Edinburgh with Princes Street shut down, train tickets and short layovers as well as an angry French woman on the return flight who thought we tried to cheat her out of her seat, a bird we named Rupert, CapriSun on the window's overhang to get it cool, lots of walking, and, thankfully, no illnesses (so glad you made it, John) or explosions of small appliances. Overall, an excellent adventure and despite the above stresses we came back together and are going strong. Some of the hundreds of pictures are on Facebook, if you're interested.
Upon our return, a really good friend who was, sadly, unable to use her tickets to see Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan presented LP and I the opportunity to see these legends over in the ATL. LP, the day before the concert, discovered her new job would require some evening service and my good ole' buddy Jim graciously stepped in to her spot. There are plenty of things that could be said about this experience, but I will do my best to hold back. A quick summary will suffice for most of you, I think: journeyed over to Verizon Amph via the blue monster; grabbed a bite to eat at 5Seasons (pretty good white pizza); got to the concert at 5:50pm (it began at 5:30pm) and Willie was already on stage, where the warm-up act disappeared to, who knows?; Willie was great; bathroom break (Mellencamp was on); headlining...Bob Dylan, as this was the "Bob Dylan Show." The story would naturally climax here; and maybe it would have if I had seen Dylan 20, I'll even give him 5, years ago. The man we saw was a shadow of his former self, if that. I am NOT hating on Bob (so you people out there who were thinking...oh, just wait 'til I respond to this whipper snapper, don't, or do, I don't really care).
I am not the concert-goer who wants the cd performed exactly as was recorded; Willie didn't do it, and I loved it. The difference? I could tell that it was Willie Nelson performing. And don't give me the age and/or drugs argument...Willie is almost 10 years older than Bob and has had just as rough an on/off stage life. So what was my (and Jim's and over half the audiences' who left 2 songs in to Bob's set) problem? Bob showed up on stage, spoke his lyrics with words that were unintelligible even for Dylan, never once acknowledged the audience, played guitar on the opening song only, and blew the harmonica for maybe 30 seconds. I love Bob Dylan and am glad I got to see the man before he departs this world; I just wished a brighter image of the legend would have shown up.
Comments, as always, are welcome.
Cultivate peace.
TCH
With all that said, two stories that should be shared. LP and I took a little journey over to Scotland in the early part of July for a mini-break and a conference presentation. The conference went quite well and LP and I got to experience our relationship in a foreign land: street maps, the intricacies of Edinburgh with Princes Street shut down, train tickets and short layovers as well as an angry French woman on the return flight who thought we tried to cheat her out of her seat, a bird we named Rupert, CapriSun on the window's overhang to get it cool, lots of walking, and, thankfully, no illnesses (so glad you made it, John) or explosions of small appliances. Overall, an excellent adventure and despite the above stresses we came back together and are going strong. Some of the hundreds of pictures are on Facebook, if you're interested.
Upon our return, a really good friend who was, sadly, unable to use her tickets to see Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan presented LP and I the opportunity to see these legends over in the ATL. LP, the day before the concert, discovered her new job would require some evening service and my good ole' buddy Jim graciously stepped in to her spot. There are plenty of things that could be said about this experience, but I will do my best to hold back. A quick summary will suffice for most of you, I think: journeyed over to Verizon Amph via the blue monster; grabbed a bite to eat at 5Seasons (pretty good white pizza); got to the concert at 5:50pm (it began at 5:30pm) and Willie was already on stage, where the warm-up act disappeared to, who knows?; Willie was great; bathroom break (Mellencamp was on); headlining...Bob Dylan, as this was the "Bob Dylan Show." The story would naturally climax here; and maybe it would have if I had seen Dylan 20, I'll even give him 5, years ago. The man we saw was a shadow of his former self, if that. I am NOT hating on Bob (so you people out there who were thinking...oh, just wait 'til I respond to this whipper snapper, don't, or do, I don't really care).
I am not the concert-goer who wants the cd performed exactly as was recorded; Willie didn't do it, and I loved it. The difference? I could tell that it was Willie Nelson performing. And don't give me the age and/or drugs argument...Willie is almost 10 years older than Bob and has had just as rough an on/off stage life. So what was my (and Jim's and over half the audiences' who left 2 songs in to Bob's set) problem? Bob showed up on stage, spoke his lyrics with words that were unintelligible even for Dylan, never once acknowledged the audience, played guitar on the opening song only, and blew the harmonica for maybe 30 seconds. I love Bob Dylan and am glad I got to see the man before he departs this world; I just wished a brighter image of the legend would have shown up.
Comments, as always, are welcome.
Cultivate peace.
TCH
Monday, June 29, 2009
Fields Closed: Excuse Me?
Well hello there bloggers. I had an experience today that has motivated me to end the silence and return once more to the blog. You're glad, I know.
After a very, very long day behind my computer editing a review article, getting more reliable internet for the apt, and sending a variety of emails, LP and I decided to stretch our legs by playing a nice little game of frisbee. The two of us enjoy the game like many people our ages and often feel quite de-stressed after an hour or two of throwin' the ole' frisbee around. I particularly get a kick out of the occasional click of LP's ring on the disc when I hurl it at her, no less than 60mph.
Today's trip was especially needed. As I said, I had been working all day, LP had been mathin' it up today as well. So we headed to the IM fields where we discovered a sign that we had seen too many times before. It stated simply: "Fields Closed" and was accompanied by some yellow "do not cross" police tape. Given the fact that people were on other fields with similar signage/tapage, LP and I ventured down the hill and got our frisbee on. We were having a grand time when there came Mr. Regulation. Now, I'm not positive about this, but his attitude seemed to reveal him to be nothing short of a cranky, shifty-eyed Republican. Let me explain...
He came prissing down the hill (normally a character trait of angered liberals I have to admit) shouting simply this: "Uh, guys, the fields are closed. The sign is right there...and its roped off." Hmm, I thought, strange fellow. Guess we should go. Then while walking to the Blue Monster, LP and I noticed all the people on other fields that were clearly marked "closed." Ugh! Then, the electronic sign that gives field and cage hours of operation was flashing: "ALL FIELDS CLOSED" With that, I was off to find someone to whom I could voice my outrage. All LP could say was, "be nice" when we found the very same green shirted, blonde-headed BOY that had shouted at us earlier. And what was he doing? Watching a softball game on a field that was "closed"! He no doubt saw us coming...and braced himself (thinking, of course, what they told him at IM training...when confronted by individuals, hold your ground and blame someone else). I bid him hello and stated that I had a question. I pressed the young chap: if the sign out front said "ALL FIELDS CLOSED" why then were these people and about 50-75 others on other fields allowed to continue on when our frisbee time simply had to be cut short. His response was classic: "Well, I don't make the rules and your field was clearly closed and roped off and, uhh, the sign out front is managed by the guys that work during the day and I'm only here to enforce the rules..." I acknowledged that he was correct that the field we were on was in fact closed, but so were these. All I wanted was some justice, some equity, some fair play. I was clearly not going to get it from Brad the Republican Discriminating Regulator so I wished him a good night and we left.
Was this not an outrageous display of injustice? Who makes these rules? Who's with me? Sigh.
TCH
After a very, very long day behind my computer editing a review article, getting more reliable internet for the apt, and sending a variety of emails, LP and I decided to stretch our legs by playing a nice little game of frisbee. The two of us enjoy the game like many people our ages and often feel quite de-stressed after an hour or two of throwin' the ole' frisbee around. I particularly get a kick out of the occasional click of LP's ring on the disc when I hurl it at her, no less than 60mph.
Today's trip was especially needed. As I said, I had been working all day, LP had been mathin' it up today as well. So we headed to the IM fields where we discovered a sign that we had seen too many times before. It stated simply: "Fields Closed" and was accompanied by some yellow "do not cross" police tape. Given the fact that people were on other fields with similar signage/tapage, LP and I ventured down the hill and got our frisbee on. We were having a grand time when there came Mr. Regulation. Now, I'm not positive about this, but his attitude seemed to reveal him to be nothing short of a cranky, shifty-eyed Republican. Let me explain...
He came prissing down the hill (normally a character trait of angered liberals I have to admit) shouting simply this: "Uh, guys, the fields are closed. The sign is right there...and its roped off." Hmm, I thought, strange fellow. Guess we should go. Then while walking to the Blue Monster, LP and I noticed all the people on other fields that were clearly marked "closed." Ugh! Then, the electronic sign that gives field and cage hours of operation was flashing: "ALL FIELDS CLOSED" With that, I was off to find someone to whom I could voice my outrage. All LP could say was, "be nice" when we found the very same green shirted, blonde-headed BOY that had shouted at us earlier. And what was he doing? Watching a softball game on a field that was "closed"! He no doubt saw us coming...and braced himself (thinking, of course, what they told him at IM training...when confronted by individuals, hold your ground and blame someone else). I bid him hello and stated that I had a question. I pressed the young chap: if the sign out front said "ALL FIELDS CLOSED" why then were these people and about 50-75 others on other fields allowed to continue on when our frisbee time simply had to be cut short. His response was classic: "Well, I don't make the rules and your field was clearly closed and roped off and, uhh, the sign out front is managed by the guys that work during the day and I'm only here to enforce the rules..." I acknowledged that he was correct that the field we were on was in fact closed, but so were these. All I wanted was some justice, some equity, some fair play. I was clearly not going to get it from Brad the Republican Discriminating Regulator so I wished him a good night and we left.
Was this not an outrageous display of injustice? Who makes these rules? Who's with me? Sigh.
TCH
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
The Death of a Great Man
This past week one of the greatest men I've ever known died. Watching life leave his body, making funeral arrangements, offering his eulogy, and knowing that my life would never be quite the same without him was powerful and almost too much. And yet, life goes on for the living.
Thanks friends for the calls, texts, emails, thoughts, and prayers.
TCH
Thanks friends for the calls, texts, emails, thoughts, and prayers.
TCH
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Update on the Politics of/in Torture: Cheney vs Ali Soufan...and history.
Well, if you missed Dick Cheney's recent interview on Face the Nation, here's a great summation of what the former VP thinks on looking back on his days as co-president. I direct your attention to two arguments of the presiDick's:
1. As I alluded to a few weeks back, Cheney is still clinging to that same tired "We kept America safe" line. The former VP relies far too heavily on an increasingly weak counter-factual assertion that the Bush administration's enhanced terror techniques, those that "were not torture," made and kept Americans safe. Cheney even presses Bob Schieffer to think of the grilling (no pun, maybe) he would have received had the administration not gone forward with torture. Oh, Dick, you are as Limbaugh suggests, "the lone voice."
2. Enhanced torture worked well. Proof? No attacks post-9.11. And even if it didn't, Cheney continues to feel that defying the U.S. Constitution and refusing our commitments to international law and treaty obligations was needed and legal during "a time of war." Shockingly, Cheney boldly compared the administration's actions to those of Lincoln's suspension of habeaus corpus and FDR's WWII Japanese internment camps and concluded that the torture he and Condi, Rummy, GW, et. al., designed/approved were not nearly as severe as American war time precedents. When Schieffer rightly states that those actions by both Lincoln and FDR are viewed by historians and constitutional law experts as illegal, Cheney echoes the logic of his fellow Dick, Tricky that is: We took seriously our role to protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic...and that no one's civil liberties were being denied. Is anyone as outraged as I am by this defense of torture via the politics of fear and "safety"? Ever heard of human rights, Dick? Again, I don't care how many lives you say you saved. America, as a nation that prizes the rule of law, should not be engaged in torture... for any reason.
Given the testimony of former FBI agent Ali Soufan, a participant in the early interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, torture did NOT work as VP Cheney has proclaimed. Sorry no video has been posted yet (he testified before Congress this morning), but do read what Soufan had to say in a NYTimes op-ed, as well as this enlightening New Yorker profile by Lawrence Wright and an informative piece on Soufan's place inside an intelligence community hamstrung by the Bush administration's decisions that the U.S. should use torture. This last article can be found at the The Washington Independent.
Comment. Let me know what you think.
TCH
1. As I alluded to a few weeks back, Cheney is still clinging to that same tired "We kept America safe" line. The former VP relies far too heavily on an increasingly weak counter-factual assertion that the Bush administration's enhanced terror techniques, those that "were not torture," made and kept Americans safe. Cheney even presses Bob Schieffer to think of the grilling (no pun, maybe) he would have received had the administration not gone forward with torture. Oh, Dick, you are as Limbaugh suggests, "the lone voice."
2. Enhanced torture worked well. Proof? No attacks post-9.11. And even if it didn't, Cheney continues to feel that defying the U.S. Constitution and refusing our commitments to international law and treaty obligations was needed and legal during "a time of war." Shockingly, Cheney boldly compared the administration's actions to those of Lincoln's suspension of habeaus corpus and FDR's WWII Japanese internment camps and concluded that the torture he and Condi, Rummy, GW, et. al., designed/approved were not nearly as severe as American war time precedents. When Schieffer rightly states that those actions by both Lincoln and FDR are viewed by historians and constitutional law experts as illegal, Cheney echoes the logic of his fellow Dick, Tricky that is: We took seriously our role to protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic...and that no one's civil liberties were being denied. Is anyone as outraged as I am by this defense of torture via the politics of fear and "safety"? Ever heard of human rights, Dick? Again, I don't care how many lives you say you saved. America, as a nation that prizes the rule of law, should not be engaged in torture... for any reason.
Given the testimony of former FBI agent Ali Soufan, a participant in the early interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, torture did NOT work as VP Cheney has proclaimed. Sorry no video has been posted yet (he testified before Congress this morning), but do read what Soufan had to say in a NYTimes op-ed, as well as this enlightening New Yorker profile by Lawrence Wright and an informative piece on Soufan's place inside an intelligence community hamstrung by the Bush administration's decisions that the U.S. should use torture. This last article can be found at the The Washington Independent.
Comment. Let me know what you think.
TCH
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Politics of/in Torture
Dearest TCHblog faithful,
Although I am apologetic for the neglect over the past few weeks, a personal update will have to wait. Instead, a short and hopefully thought-provoking post for the current situation the US finds itself in. Despite the information distributed via Fix News and the not-so-accurate-talking heads of Cheney, Gingrich, Fleischer, Hannity, and the rest, I have one question: even if torture (if you consider waterboarding torture as the US did when the Khmer Rogue used it against countless Cambodians) produced "useful" information, is it worth it?
Am I the lone liberal who feels that it would be nice if the O admin could get the general approach to this situation better coordinated? Between the Pres, his Chief of Staff and "full court Press" Sec, Americans, at least on the Left, expect more than retreating from "torture" to "enhanced interrogation techniques." If someone could find the signs that ring: "America, the greatest nation in the world" I've got some non-torture water and we'll all HOPE they were designed with waterproof ink.
Where is the transparency in all this, Pres Oby? Please don't make me agree with Cheney ever again...let's see all the memos. I have little doubt that they will only demonstrate further what the past administration authorized was in fact torture and that no matter political affiliation, those involved should be prosecuted. Please pay no attention to the "publishing these memos only lets our enemies know our interrogation tactics" crowd. Unless I missed it, you put a stop to those tactics, right? Now, for Dick. It looks to this ole' boy that former VP-man is betting on the O admin not releasing the memos; thus, he can, as he always has, claim whatever he wants (namely, that he and Bushy defended America better than anyone else ever has and ever will) buttressed by his "Oh, I've seen it, I was there, believe me, believe me" mantra. Finally, why would Americans (people who say they believe in the rule of law) want AG Holder to hold-off on appointing an IC to prosecute ALL those involved in this mess?
Finally, can we agree that those directly involved in writing Bushy's legal memos to legalize illegal "tactics" should not be federal judges?
For weeks, Rachel Maddow's coverage of all of this has been excellent.
TCH
Although I am apologetic for the neglect over the past few weeks, a personal update will have to wait. Instead, a short and hopefully thought-provoking post for the current situation the US finds itself in. Despite the information distributed via Fix News and the not-so-accurate-talking heads of Cheney, Gingrich, Fleischer, Hannity, and the rest, I have one question: even if torture (if you consider waterboarding torture as the US did when the Khmer Rogue used it against countless Cambodians) produced "useful" information, is it worth it?
Am I the lone liberal who feels that it would be nice if the O admin could get the general approach to this situation better coordinated? Between the Pres, his Chief of Staff and "full court Press" Sec, Americans, at least on the Left, expect more than retreating from "torture" to "enhanced interrogation techniques." If someone could find the signs that ring: "America, the greatest nation in the world" I've got some non-torture water and we'll all HOPE they were designed with waterproof ink.
Where is the transparency in all this, Pres Oby? Please don't make me agree with Cheney ever again...let's see all the memos. I have little doubt that they will only demonstrate further what the past administration authorized was in fact torture and that no matter political affiliation, those involved should be prosecuted. Please pay no attention to the "publishing these memos only lets our enemies know our interrogation tactics" crowd. Unless I missed it, you put a stop to those tactics, right? Now, for Dick. It looks to this ole' boy that former VP-man is betting on the O admin not releasing the memos; thus, he can, as he always has, claim whatever he wants (namely, that he and Bushy defended America better than anyone else ever has and ever will) buttressed by his "Oh, I've seen it, I was there, believe me, believe me" mantra. Finally, why would Americans (people who say they believe in the rule of law) want AG Holder to hold-off on appointing an IC to prosecute ALL those involved in this mess?
Finally, can we agree that those directly involved in writing Bushy's legal memos to legalize illegal "tactics" should not be federal judges?
For weeks, Rachel Maddow's coverage of all of this has been excellent.
TCH
Friday, March 27, 2009
Perils of the Modern Lecture: Lessons Learned from Non/Miscommunication in the University Classroom
I have, thus far, on this blog, resisted posting any pseudo-academic writing as to not harass or coddle readers who, I hope, will get a great kick out of the following post. As much as it has something to say about the American college classroom, the post is equally a kind of social commentary that I have been brewing over for some weeks now. Those of you who have had coffee, lunch, or dinner with me lately (poor LP who chats with me daily) will no doubt read echoes of my ranting from portions of our conversations. Below is a version of the talk I gave this weekend concerning why the American university classroom is so non/dis/un-functioning. Agree, disagree, whatever. As always, comments are welcome.
__________________________
Ami Zusman contemplated the current status of American universities in a chapter in a 2005 anthology entitled American Higher Education in the 21st Century.
Zusman’s assessment: “The twenty first-century has brought with it profound challenges to the nature, values, and control of higher education in the United States. Societal expectations and public resources for higher education are undergoing fundamental shifts. Changes both within and outside the academy are altering its character—its students, faculty, governance, curriculum, functions, and very place in society.” Zusman concludes “…current changes are transforming higher education to an extent not seen since the end of World War II.”
(Zusman, “Challenges Facing Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century” in American Higher Education in the Twenty-first Century: Social, Political, and Economic Challenges, Philip G. Altbach, Robert Oliver Berdahl, Patricia J. Gumport, JHU Press, 2005).
This morning, I would like to consider three “lessons learned,” from my five years as a graduate teaching assistant at the University of G. that I believe might fit within this paradigm shift suggested by Zusman’s work.
Area One: “The brilliance of we academics”
The notion that humans communicate in a wide variety of ways is a “truth” that even the most strident post-modernist could agree with. In a number of different courses I have watched as out-going, and down-right-charming professors use their personal appeal to get students engaged in the course and its material. At the other end of the spectrum, I have observed the painful exhaustion of socially awkward academics suffering through their own lectures while over half the enrolled students drift from sleep to awake, from facebook to espn.com to tmz.com, you get the idea. I believe that this complex centers on communicative abilities; but should not be limited to one’s ability to construct a “cult of personality.” Rather, there is something that will always provide variety of classroom experiences simply because academics are human and will produce lectures or construct learning environments differently—not necessarily better or worse—just differently. The point, I believe, is that we should be attempting to communicate with our students in the best ways we personally can. With that said, I have developed some general points that (I hope) most professors already consider as they, consciously or subconsciously, develop pedagogical frameworks.
1. When we construct courses, particularly those at the introductory level, we should realize—that is , NOT blindly avoid—the fact our students are not our peers. They have not set through hours of graduate courses, seminars, colloquia, and conferences. More than likely, they have not read anywhere close to the amount of scholarship that we have—nor should they have. In introductory, and even capstone level courses, these are undergraduate students who we are guiding through processes of learning through which we began our own journeys some years back. Thus, we must struggle with a kind of conflict of interests, that is, striking the most delicate of balances as excellent professors: keeping in check our expertise and the drive that our graduate training/career aspirations inspire while NEVER allowing students to take in a semester of coursework unchallenged and non-stimulated.
2. This balance naturally requires that we assess early on our students’ familiarity with and/or interest in our courses. Unfortunately, the genuine interest of students in our topics, I believe, goes unnoticed by most professors simply because we do not take the time to listen to our students’ interests and make the connections so desperately needed; for example, at the beginning of every semester, I ask each student in my two-25 person breakout sections to introduce themselves and tell the class about their major. I know this sounds, to some, like a waste of time and I’m sure some students find it dull or even embarrassing, but as students introduce themselves I get a chance to show interest in their individuality by placing names with faces and also making the case that their major, be it art history, music, finance, math, or whatever has a connection with our course; so right there on the first day, I can see it, many students say to themselves: “Ok, I have to be here in this intro history course and spend my Friday afternoons with this strange guy, but at least he’s open to other things outside history.” This initial conversation also knocks down the level of intimidation that I was aiming at when entitling this section “the brilliance of we academics.” After a number of conversations with colleagues and former students, their number one point of agitation with professors was not grading irregularities, attendance policies, or even the lack of media in the classroom—-it was personal attitude. Too often, the expert at the front of the room lusts after the recognition of persons in the audience forgetting to fight the good fight to maintain professional/professor balance.
3. Whether with personal attitude or within our syllabi, it falls on us (like it or not) to make the course appealing to our students. Like my first-day conversation with students, we have to make the effort to connect our students’ likes and interests with the course as best we can. Will this always work?... of course not. But if we aren’t trying, I dare say that we aren’t reaching as many students as we might. In some ways, this gets us back to the idea of showmanship and personality types that I mentioned earlier, the general idea here is that we must force ourselves to interact and engage our students—if we don’t, given the power dynamics in most college classrooms, students will not make the effort and the learning environment will remain a flat and uninteresting space for both the lecturer and students. Granted, there are professors out there who… just… don’t… get the point; one, in particular, upon observing one of breakout sessions stated: “Chase, you shouldn’t have a classroom full of students who like you.” Of course, s/he also informed me that I was pressing the students too hard to think critically, was working too hard, and had extremely high expectations for my students. Again, sometimes it’s all about attitude.
4. A final note on our collective brilliance: I think we must be aware, as in the real estate business, pre-sub-mortgage crisis, of “location, location, location.” Please be sure to hear me when I say I am not advocating regionalism as a go-to guide for appropriate topics and approaches to learning. Quite the contrary. What I am advocating is acknowledging where you are in the world. Normally, in those first-day introductions, I ask students to include where they are from, if they feel comfortable doing so. But perhaps, a local example of this location awareness will provide greater clarity: when teaching the post-1865 U.S. History survey, students’ with differing racial/ethnic backgrounds receive information and interact with their peers in all sorts of ways—so much so that international students are often at a loss for understanding the kind of micro geo-politics that are unleashed when discussing black/white relations in southern society at a southern university. Given recent events, apparently topics concerning gender and sexuality also touch the nerves of at least a few Georgia state legislators and could be added to the “just be aware list.” So, is the solution to avoid such topics? Not at all. However, I think academics should be smart and sensitive to students who might have never questioned their socio-cultural frameworks, or worldviews, before and how such questioning can often result in anger, defensiveness, and/or hostility within the classroom.
Area Two: Intellectual Exhaustion: The greatest pox on the American classroom
There is, raging in lecture halls and seminar rooms across America a kind of intellectual exhaustion that has, in my opinion, resulted from professors’ and students’ inability to effectively connect or communicate with each other. Interestingly, as I’ve observed it, the timing of the exhaustion doesn’t usually run parallel for these two groups. Students, be they traditional freshmen aged 18-19 or non-traditional, say 40+, can gage whether the class is going to be worth the struggle and if they will, in fact, get anything out of the course by about week 3 or 4. Much of this is based on interaction with the professor and fellow students and, more crassly, whether they think they will ever need any of the skills to, and the phrase is an apt one, HOPE-fully pass the course. For professors, it’s a little longer: past the midterm and into, say, week 9 or 10 of a 15 week semester when s/he realizes, with mid-term in hand, that the students just aren’t getting it. So what to do—for professors, at least?
1. Professors have to be willing to meet students where they are when they arrive in the classroom. We have to, as I suggested earlier, be sensitive to who they are, but EQUALLY, we must be constantly pressing, at least in the humanities, and probably elsewhere, why they hold the worldviews they do. Helping students realize 1. That their notions of self, world, politics, relationships, and even their participation in socially constructing race, gender, and class have all been, well… just that… socially constructed. And 2. That the greatest goal of higher education is the discovering and (re)shaping of who we, as individuals, are… for and by ourselves. However, in this process we have to be willing to have our own worldviews questioned and defended as well. Often, it seems, academics are unwilling to engage because engagement might take too much effort and we might be unable to logically defend our own ill-formed notions of the world as we see it. I’ll return to this sort of double-standard in just a moment.
2. In this process of challenging intellectual exhaustion, we have to take on the epidemic I like to call: “of course, you’re right, sweet baby.” As a graduate student, we fight on the front lines of a culture war that lifts high this banner from the moment students enter pre-K programs until exiting secondary schools; thus, we inherit high school students who bring with them the notion that they are always correct and take personal offense when we dare to question this truth. The answer and reality is that “yes, one can be wrong” and we must be willing to inform students of this. If this strikes you as radical, hold on, because I'm not done yet. We must explain to students why we think they deserve a B minus and not an A+. A personal example comes to mind to illustrate the double-standard I mentioned before: After recently submitting a grant proposal, I received a rather bland and formulaic "we're sorry" email that offered little direction for improvement of what the review committee said was an unclear proposal. After several emails and a short, strange and stoic meeting, I was left with the dumbfounded feeling: “I really hope I’ve never made one of my students feel like this.” I really do not know how we can expect students to respect us as we wage war against this “always right” epidemic if we are unable to clearly explain their lack of clarity and concision in, say, essay assignments. It might take one or two meetings and several emails, but we owe it to our students to explain how they can make their writing better. This level of engagement could be extended further: Can we be bothered to write letters of recommendation for our students? Help them in graduate school searches? Engage in email dialogue to making sure that difficult concepts discussed during class were grasped by all students?
Area Three: Is technology on our side?
Although all sorts of commentators seem to be reconsidering whether social security will remain the notorious third rail in American politics under the Obama administration, the third rail in 21st century pedagogy is technology and its appropriateness in the classroom. From seasoned professionals to newly-minted PhDs the opinions are all over the boards: the ardent defenders of the “no-technology”school hold fast to the creed of no power-point, audio or visual clips, smart boards…nothing beyond the outstanding personality of the lecturer, a black board and stick of chalk (for some reason, many of these advocates seem to be anti-Expo markers, as well). At the other end of the spectrum, there are professors who can’t seem to get enough: everything is on the powerpoint slides, will be posted online before or after the lecture, there will be music greeting the students on arrival, movie clips and photos scattered throughout the lecture, and perhaps an intricately choreographed musical number put on by the TAs to bring the lecture to a close. Ok, maybe a little much on the musical, but you catch my drift. Two main points present themselves here:
1. Technology, I believe can provide great teaching tools. There is certainly something to be said for the engagement factor that movies, music, etc. can bring to the classroom. However, there are certain drawbacks: moving from one form to the other must be seamless, planned, and distraction-less; when TAs (or worse, students) have to repeatedly help the professor with the technology s/he should reconsider its usage. Students, no doubt, appreciate the attempts to be “modern” but when technology becomes distraction instead of aid, I think the classroom would be better off without it.
2. Unfortunately, many tech-savvy professors seem to believe that utilizing technology absolves them of several of the earlier points presented here today: namely, communication and connectivity. There is also the risk that we become so reliant on technology that several uncomfortable problems can occur: all lectures will be neatly guided by powerpoint (what if it fails, where does the lecture go?); students can easily print out the outlines and materials that are posted online (so why go to class?).
In some ways we end where we began, or somewhere close by… with balance. Technological advancements in the 21st century will continue to press college faculty to keep pace with where our students are headed. Podcasts and e-textbooks may well be the wave of the future that started yesterday, but we have to strike the balance between tech overload and underload just as much as we do between status as professional and professor. Does this mean tolerating some students reading Salon.com while you lecture? Maybe.
And yet, despite all the perils of the modern lecture, the oh-so-heavy burden falls on us to present students with intellectually stimulating as well as memorable classroom experiences. Again, the battle is ours for the fighting, and if they do read the NYTimes online once in a while, count it a bargained triumph for some level of success has occurred in your classroom; for if the next generation is to be our partners in facing the “profound challenges to the nature, values, and control of higher education” I would much rather have it, albeit selectively, reading the Times rather than engaging in the mindless miasma of twitter.com.
TCH
__________________________
Ami Zusman contemplated the current status of American universities in a chapter in a 2005 anthology entitled American Higher Education in the 21st Century.
Zusman’s assessment: “The twenty first-century has brought with it profound challenges to the nature, values, and control of higher education in the United States. Societal expectations and public resources for higher education are undergoing fundamental shifts. Changes both within and outside the academy are altering its character—its students, faculty, governance, curriculum, functions, and very place in society.” Zusman concludes “…current changes are transforming higher education to an extent not seen since the end of World War II.”
(Zusman, “Challenges Facing Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century” in American Higher Education in the Twenty-first Century: Social, Political, and Economic Challenges, Philip G. Altbach, Robert Oliver Berdahl, Patricia J. Gumport, JHU Press, 2005).
This morning, I would like to consider three “lessons learned,” from my five years as a graduate teaching assistant at the University of G. that I believe might fit within this paradigm shift suggested by Zusman’s work.
Area One: “The brilliance of we academics”
The notion that humans communicate in a wide variety of ways is a “truth” that even the most strident post-modernist could agree with. In a number of different courses I have watched as out-going, and down-right-charming professors use their personal appeal to get students engaged in the course and its material. At the other end of the spectrum, I have observed the painful exhaustion of socially awkward academics suffering through their own lectures while over half the enrolled students drift from sleep to awake, from facebook to espn.com to tmz.com, you get the idea. I believe that this complex centers on communicative abilities; but should not be limited to one’s ability to construct a “cult of personality.” Rather, there is something that will always provide variety of classroom experiences simply because academics are human and will produce lectures or construct learning environments differently—not necessarily better or worse—just differently. The point, I believe, is that we should be attempting to communicate with our students in the best ways we personally can. With that said, I have developed some general points that (I hope) most professors already consider as they, consciously or subconsciously, develop pedagogical frameworks.
1. When we construct courses, particularly those at the introductory level, we should realize—that is , NOT blindly avoid—the fact our students are not our peers. They have not set through hours of graduate courses, seminars, colloquia, and conferences. More than likely, they have not read anywhere close to the amount of scholarship that we have—nor should they have. In introductory, and even capstone level courses, these are undergraduate students who we are guiding through processes of learning through which we began our own journeys some years back. Thus, we must struggle with a kind of conflict of interests, that is, striking the most delicate of balances as excellent professors: keeping in check our expertise and the drive that our graduate training/career aspirations inspire while NEVER allowing students to take in a semester of coursework unchallenged and non-stimulated.
2. This balance naturally requires that we assess early on our students’ familiarity with and/or interest in our courses. Unfortunately, the genuine interest of students in our topics, I believe, goes unnoticed by most professors simply because we do not take the time to listen to our students’ interests and make the connections so desperately needed; for example, at the beginning of every semester, I ask each student in my two-25 person breakout sections to introduce themselves and tell the class about their major. I know this sounds, to some, like a waste of time and I’m sure some students find it dull or even embarrassing, but as students introduce themselves I get a chance to show interest in their individuality by placing names with faces and also making the case that their major, be it art history, music, finance, math, or whatever has a connection with our course; so right there on the first day, I can see it, many students say to themselves: “Ok, I have to be here in this intro history course and spend my Friday afternoons with this strange guy, but at least he’s open to other things outside history.” This initial conversation also knocks down the level of intimidation that I was aiming at when entitling this section “the brilliance of we academics.” After a number of conversations with colleagues and former students, their number one point of agitation with professors was not grading irregularities, attendance policies, or even the lack of media in the classroom—-it was personal attitude. Too often, the expert at the front of the room lusts after the recognition of persons in the audience forgetting to fight the good fight to maintain professional/professor balance.
3. Whether with personal attitude or within our syllabi, it falls on us (like it or not) to make the course appealing to our students. Like my first-day conversation with students, we have to make the effort to connect our students’ likes and interests with the course as best we can. Will this always work?... of course not. But if we aren’t trying, I dare say that we aren’t reaching as many students as we might. In some ways, this gets us back to the idea of showmanship and personality types that I mentioned earlier, the general idea here is that we must force ourselves to interact and engage our students—if we don’t, given the power dynamics in most college classrooms, students will not make the effort and the learning environment will remain a flat and uninteresting space for both the lecturer and students. Granted, there are professors out there who… just… don’t… get the point; one, in particular, upon observing one of breakout sessions stated: “Chase, you shouldn’t have a classroom full of students who like you.” Of course, s/he also informed me that I was pressing the students too hard to think critically, was working too hard, and had extremely high expectations for my students. Again, sometimes it’s all about attitude.
4. A final note on our collective brilliance: I think we must be aware, as in the real estate business, pre-sub-mortgage crisis, of “location, location, location.” Please be sure to hear me when I say I am not advocating regionalism as a go-to guide for appropriate topics and approaches to learning. Quite the contrary. What I am advocating is acknowledging where you are in the world. Normally, in those first-day introductions, I ask students to include where they are from, if they feel comfortable doing so. But perhaps, a local example of this location awareness will provide greater clarity: when teaching the post-1865 U.S. History survey, students’ with differing racial/ethnic backgrounds receive information and interact with their peers in all sorts of ways—so much so that international students are often at a loss for understanding the kind of micro geo-politics that are unleashed when discussing black/white relations in southern society at a southern university. Given recent events, apparently topics concerning gender and sexuality also touch the nerves of at least a few Georgia state legislators and could be added to the “just be aware list.” So, is the solution to avoid such topics? Not at all. However, I think academics should be smart and sensitive to students who might have never questioned their socio-cultural frameworks, or worldviews, before and how such questioning can often result in anger, defensiveness, and/or hostility within the classroom.
Area Two: Intellectual Exhaustion: The greatest pox on the American classroom
There is, raging in lecture halls and seminar rooms across America a kind of intellectual exhaustion that has, in my opinion, resulted from professors’ and students’ inability to effectively connect or communicate with each other. Interestingly, as I’ve observed it, the timing of the exhaustion doesn’t usually run parallel for these two groups. Students, be they traditional freshmen aged 18-19 or non-traditional, say 40+, can gage whether the class is going to be worth the struggle and if they will, in fact, get anything out of the course by about week 3 or 4. Much of this is based on interaction with the professor and fellow students and, more crassly, whether they think they will ever need any of the skills to, and the phrase is an apt one, HOPE-fully pass the course. For professors, it’s a little longer: past the midterm and into, say, week 9 or 10 of a 15 week semester when s/he realizes, with mid-term in hand, that the students just aren’t getting it. So what to do—for professors, at least?
1. Professors have to be willing to meet students where they are when they arrive in the classroom. We have to, as I suggested earlier, be sensitive to who they are, but EQUALLY, we must be constantly pressing, at least in the humanities, and probably elsewhere, why they hold the worldviews they do. Helping students realize 1. That their notions of self, world, politics, relationships, and even their participation in socially constructing race, gender, and class have all been, well… just that… socially constructed. And 2. That the greatest goal of higher education is the discovering and (re)shaping of who we, as individuals, are… for and by ourselves. However, in this process we have to be willing to have our own worldviews questioned and defended as well. Often, it seems, academics are unwilling to engage because engagement might take too much effort and we might be unable to logically defend our own ill-formed notions of the world as we see it. I’ll return to this sort of double-standard in just a moment.
2. In this process of challenging intellectual exhaustion, we have to take on the epidemic I like to call: “of course, you’re right, sweet baby.” As a graduate student, we fight on the front lines of a culture war that lifts high this banner from the moment students enter pre-K programs until exiting secondary schools; thus, we inherit high school students who bring with them the notion that they are always correct and take personal offense when we dare to question this truth. The answer and reality is that “yes, one can be wrong” and we must be willing to inform students of this. If this strikes you as radical, hold on, because I'm not done yet. We must explain to students why we think they deserve a B minus and not an A+. A personal example comes to mind to illustrate the double-standard I mentioned before: After recently submitting a grant proposal, I received a rather bland and formulaic "we're sorry" email that offered little direction for improvement of what the review committee said was an unclear proposal. After several emails and a short, strange and stoic meeting, I was left with the dumbfounded feeling: “I really hope I’ve never made one of my students feel like this.” I really do not know how we can expect students to respect us as we wage war against this “always right” epidemic if we are unable to clearly explain their lack of clarity and concision in, say, essay assignments. It might take one or two meetings and several emails, but we owe it to our students to explain how they can make their writing better. This level of engagement could be extended further: Can we be bothered to write letters of recommendation for our students? Help them in graduate school searches? Engage in email dialogue to making sure that difficult concepts discussed during class were grasped by all students?
Area Three: Is technology on our side?
Although all sorts of commentators seem to be reconsidering whether social security will remain the notorious third rail in American politics under the Obama administration, the third rail in 21st century pedagogy is technology and its appropriateness in the classroom. From seasoned professionals to newly-minted PhDs the opinions are all over the boards: the ardent defenders of the “no-technology”school hold fast to the creed of no power-point, audio or visual clips, smart boards…nothing beyond the outstanding personality of the lecturer, a black board and stick of chalk (for some reason, many of these advocates seem to be anti-Expo markers, as well). At the other end of the spectrum, there are professors who can’t seem to get enough: everything is on the powerpoint slides, will be posted online before or after the lecture, there will be music greeting the students on arrival, movie clips and photos scattered throughout the lecture, and perhaps an intricately choreographed musical number put on by the TAs to bring the lecture to a close. Ok, maybe a little much on the musical, but you catch my drift. Two main points present themselves here:
1. Technology, I believe can provide great teaching tools. There is certainly something to be said for the engagement factor that movies, music, etc. can bring to the classroom. However, there are certain drawbacks: moving from one form to the other must be seamless, planned, and distraction-less; when TAs (or worse, students) have to repeatedly help the professor with the technology s/he should reconsider its usage. Students, no doubt, appreciate the attempts to be “modern” but when technology becomes distraction instead of aid, I think the classroom would be better off without it.
2. Unfortunately, many tech-savvy professors seem to believe that utilizing technology absolves them of several of the earlier points presented here today: namely, communication and connectivity. There is also the risk that we become so reliant on technology that several uncomfortable problems can occur: all lectures will be neatly guided by powerpoint (what if it fails, where does the lecture go?); students can easily print out the outlines and materials that are posted online (so why go to class?).
In some ways we end where we began, or somewhere close by… with balance. Technological advancements in the 21st century will continue to press college faculty to keep pace with where our students are headed. Podcasts and e-textbooks may well be the wave of the future that started yesterday, but we have to strike the balance between tech overload and underload just as much as we do between status as professional and professor. Does this mean tolerating some students reading Salon.com while you lecture? Maybe.
And yet, despite all the perils of the modern lecture, the oh-so-heavy burden falls on us to present students with intellectually stimulating as well as memorable classroom experiences. Again, the battle is ours for the fighting, and if they do read the NYTimes online once in a while, count it a bargained triumph for some level of success has occurred in your classroom; for if the next generation is to be our partners in facing the “profound challenges to the nature, values, and control of higher education” I would much rather have it, albeit selectively, reading the Times rather than engaging in the mindless miasma of twitter.com.
TCH
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Recent Events
Updates for those of you out there in the blogosphere:
1. Mardi Gras was a splendid little time that left me with a new appreciation for the phrase "Throw me something, Mister" and a host of new friends.
2. I miss Athens (actually, "my people" more than the city proper) more than I ever thought possible.
3. I am ready to play frisbee (and I mean, play hard) with a group of fellow enthusiasts and take in a whole UGA baseball game.
4. I read constantly and think that the on-going dissertation (both in my mind and on paper) will take the form of a screeching dinosaur that might well consume me and then regurgitate me before my committee who will collectively shake their heads in disapproval. Who wants to see dino puke?
5. I have returned to my running obsession and want to run another 10k and perhaps half marathon before next fall.
6. I am going to the beach, I've decided, sometime this summer and will do nothing but read and work on my tan, aka, skin cancer.
7. For the most part, I am happy and would love to hear from any of you followers as to what you all are up to.
TCH
1. Mardi Gras was a splendid little time that left me with a new appreciation for the phrase "Throw me something, Mister" and a host of new friends.
2. I miss Athens (actually, "my people" more than the city proper) more than I ever thought possible.
3. I am ready to play frisbee (and I mean, play hard) with a group of fellow enthusiasts and take in a whole UGA baseball game.
4. I read constantly and think that the on-going dissertation (both in my mind and on paper) will take the form of a screeching dinosaur that might well consume me and then regurgitate me before my committee who will collectively shake their heads in disapproval. Who wants to see dino puke?
5. I have returned to my running obsession and want to run another 10k and perhaps half marathon before next fall.
6. I am going to the beach, I've decided, sometime this summer and will do nothing but read and work on my tan, aka, skin cancer.
7. For the most part, I am happy and would love to hear from any of you followers as to what you all are up to.
TCH
Friday, December 5, 2008
A quick little holiday story.
Last night, LP and I planned a great evening out: dinner at the Last Resort and then off to a grand holiday concert. Preface to the dinner... I had heard that there would be a Christmas parade in downtown (Clayton Street to be exact) and that it would begin at 5pm. Ok. Fine. We'll just grab dinner at 6 or 6:10, something like that, because surely all the parade craziness will be over by then. I mean what's the big deal, a few wagons and big trucks with frat guys and Santa on top, come on. When I turned onto Clayton, there was an officer standing outside his car with the lights on, but we both thought, hum, must be the after-parade-crowd-control-cop. Fast forward: after a great dinner we come out of lr to find people on both sides of the street marking what looks to be a parade route. It was 7:04pm, and the concert was scheduled to begin at 8pm, sharp.
We had no options...get in the car and drive, down Clayton, hoping no officer would stop us. It was as if we were the grand marshals (and I ain't talkin' about Tommy and John). We were riding along in the center lane as the huge crowds had already starting taking over the right and left lanes...cruising along, waving to the crowds, listening to a Charlie Brown Christmas cd, what a time! All was great, almost surreal, but all I could think was: please don't give me a ticket, please don't give me a ticket. When we got to the end of the street (it is a one way street, we had NO other option!) a great big bear of a man stood squarely in the the right-turn lane shaking his head left to right. I was puzzled, what does he mean, "no"? I briskly shook my head up and down as LP said ok, ok, hurry it up, no need to get in a fight with this guy.
At the end of our personal holiday parade, we both laughed and I thought: this has to make it on the blog. So if any of you yahoo readers out there thought you saw LP and I riding along in my non-US made sedan, you were right! And if anyone from Athens City council is reading this, you can schedule us again next year as the main attraction; I mean TCH and LP as warm up...I think most people left after we passed by.
Happy Holidays, people.
TCH
We had no options...get in the car and drive, down Clayton, hoping no officer would stop us. It was as if we were the grand marshals (and I ain't talkin' about Tommy and John). We were riding along in the center lane as the huge crowds had already starting taking over the right and left lanes...cruising along, waving to the crowds, listening to a Charlie Brown Christmas cd, what a time! All was great, almost surreal, but all I could think was: please don't give me a ticket, please don't give me a ticket. When we got to the end of the street (it is a one way street, we had NO other option!) a great big bear of a man stood squarely in the the right-turn lane shaking his head left to right. I was puzzled, what does he mean, "no"? I briskly shook my head up and down as LP said ok, ok, hurry it up, no need to get in a fight with this guy.
At the end of our personal holiday parade, we both laughed and I thought: this has to make it on the blog. So if any of you yahoo readers out there thought you saw LP and I riding along in my non-US made sedan, you were right! And if anyone from Athens City council is reading this, you can schedule us again next year as the main attraction; I mean TCH and LP as warm up...I think most people left after we passed by.
Happy Holidays, people.
TCH
Monday, December 1, 2008
P.S. Where have all my followers gone?
I know I haven't been blogging much lately, but come on gang; where's the follower love? Thanks to that clever friend who will always be #1 follower on this blog (he may well be the only follower ever for this blog).
TCH
TCH
An arm full of books equals a street full of looks...
After a delightful lunch with a colleague today at one of our favorite haunts here in Athens, I made my way to the third, fourth, and finally fifth floor of the main library. Collecting a variety books that will all (hopefully) be (somewhat) helpful in the ongoing dissertation, I then descended to the line of patrons trying to get their books checked out (side note: I was reminded of what the long lings used to look like at BestBuy and Target during this time of year before the Bushcession hit).
As many of you know, I have a thing for books; I cannot get enough of them. Now I know that this disease paralyzes a number of graduate students early on in their careers and develops into a chronic illness that persists until death; however, my illness began as an undergraduate who preferred to purchase his outside readings rather than fight for them at the university and/or public library. Well, as a graduate student I have had to give up on purchasing every item that I have read or would like to read...I don't have that much space or money right now but am determined to one day catch up. So I retrieved my approximately 26 books from the main library, checked them out, and was faced with a decision of not-so-epic proportions: should I try to find a great friend with office space to stash the books until I can go get my car OR dare to put my life at risk and take the monstrous buses here at UGA OR take it like a woman or man and hike back to my house on south campus? Well, being the scarf-wearing man that I am, I opted for the walk. "Forced into" may be the more accurate descriptors. No friend to be found and I really don't care for those buses, so, off I went with a brave spirit about me, and 7 books in hand, 6 in a bag over the shoulder, and 13 inside a pair of Kroger's plastic bags.
Unlike what you might be thinking, the roughly 1.2 mile (I'm guessing here) trek went rather smoothly: no plastic bag rips or dropped books from the arms. Let me add that it started snowing on the way...I felt like I was the personification of the whole "walked both ways to school, up hill, in the snow..." Well, what peaked my interest, and thus the blog entry, was the looks, stares, and smirks I received from fellow sidewalk-walkers. I passed probably 20 or so people on my way back to my house and almost every one of them (if not all) checked the stack of books and then checked my face as if to be gauging the level of my sanity. By the time I got half the way here, I knew I would blog about this! What is wrong with these people, I pondered, have you never seen someone carrying books in the freezing cold weather? Then it struck me. These people may be startled by the fact that someone actually reads...what a novelty! Someone actually goes to the library, not to buy a coffee or take a gameday piss or try to pick up some woman with the lamo line: hey what cha' readin' that there buuk fer?
You might think that I am being way too bookish/snobbish or perhaps a bit too judgmental of my non-reading, goofish-grinning, sidewalk-walkers. A final example to help prove my point: my last encounter was with a group of three younger gentlemen. One, as he saw me approaching, decided to utter the most brilliant statement to dribble from human lips: "well look at all those books." His compatriots weren't equally remarkable in their assessments. The second of the three commentators, replied, "yeah." Not to be outdone, the third, and most insightful of this motley crew offered me a new expression that I can't wait to try out at my next dinner party: "hey bro, where's your elevator." My elevator? What? What has an elevator got to do with this situation, I wondered. With no real reply that seemed to make sense (what was I going to say, "at home?"), I simply shrugged as best I could and made my way to the house.
Once home, I settled in for a nice cup of white tea after placing my holiday wreath outside while having to control my inner struggle as to whether or not it gives off too much of a bourgeois appearance. It stays, I decided, but tomorrow I'll take an extra bag with me to the library so my excess of books doesn't draw attention or more questions about the location of my elevator.
TCH
As many of you know, I have a thing for books; I cannot get enough of them. Now I know that this disease paralyzes a number of graduate students early on in their careers and develops into a chronic illness that persists until death; however, my illness began as an undergraduate who preferred to purchase his outside readings rather than fight for them at the university and/or public library. Well, as a graduate student I have had to give up on purchasing every item that I have read or would like to read...I don't have that much space or money right now but am determined to one day catch up. So I retrieved my approximately 26 books from the main library, checked them out, and was faced with a decision of not-so-epic proportions: should I try to find a great friend with office space to stash the books until I can go get my car OR dare to put my life at risk and take the monstrous buses here at UGA OR take it like a woman or man and hike back to my house on south campus? Well, being the scarf-wearing man that I am, I opted for the walk. "Forced into" may be the more accurate descriptors. No friend to be found and I really don't care for those buses, so, off I went with a brave spirit about me, and 7 books in hand, 6 in a bag over the shoulder, and 13 inside a pair of Kroger's plastic bags.
Unlike what you might be thinking, the roughly 1.2 mile (I'm guessing here) trek went rather smoothly: no plastic bag rips or dropped books from the arms. Let me add that it started snowing on the way...I felt like I was the personification of the whole "walked both ways to school, up hill, in the snow..." Well, what peaked my interest, and thus the blog entry, was the looks, stares, and smirks I received from fellow sidewalk-walkers. I passed probably 20 or so people on my way back to my house and almost every one of them (if not all) checked the stack of books and then checked my face as if to be gauging the level of my sanity. By the time I got half the way here, I knew I would blog about this! What is wrong with these people, I pondered, have you never seen someone carrying books in the freezing cold weather? Then it struck me. These people may be startled by the fact that someone actually reads...what a novelty! Someone actually goes to the library, not to buy a coffee or take a gameday piss or try to pick up some woman with the lamo line: hey what cha' readin' that there buuk fer?
You might think that I am being way too bookish/snobbish or perhaps a bit too judgmental of my non-reading, goofish-grinning, sidewalk-walkers. A final example to help prove my point: my last encounter was with a group of three younger gentlemen. One, as he saw me approaching, decided to utter the most brilliant statement to dribble from human lips: "well look at all those books." His compatriots weren't equally remarkable in their assessments. The second of the three commentators, replied, "yeah." Not to be outdone, the third, and most insightful of this motley crew offered me a new expression that I can't wait to try out at my next dinner party: "hey bro, where's your elevator." My elevator? What? What has an elevator got to do with this situation, I wondered. With no real reply that seemed to make sense (what was I going to say, "at home?"), I simply shrugged as best I could and made my way to the house.
Once home, I settled in for a nice cup of white tea after placing my holiday wreath outside while having to control my inner struggle as to whether or not it gives off too much of a bourgeois appearance. It stays, I decided, but tomorrow I'll take an extra bag with me to the library so my excess of books doesn't draw attention or more questions about the location of my elevator.
TCH
Friday, October 3, 2008
Some thoughts on this Palin character...
"My friends,"
After last night's Biden-Palin debate, I thought I'd post some thoughts about Palin and what I believe to be one of the most bizarre and dangerous candidacies in American history.
Truly, Ms. Palin did a good job last night. But come on, a good job for this candidate is an illustration of the ability not to "umm" and "ah" herself into a continuous circular statement about moose pies and bridges to mavericks, etc. If you haven't taken a look at the Couric interview, start here! Warning: you may need a drink to handle the fact that this person might become the next VP of the US.
A couple of points to consider:
1. Is it just me or does the fact that the only person that Ms. Palin tells us she has consulted about foreign policy is Henry Kissinger scare you? Kissinger, "American Diplomat": Vietnam anyone? Laos? Cambodia? Watergate? Hum... And all that talk about Joe looking to the past? What of Palin's foreign policy credentials being bolstered by a couple conversations with Dr. Kissinger? The Vietnam-Iraq comparisons are too easy at this point. Come on people, think.
2. "The line is drill, baby, drill..." Did you catch it? In this one line Palin has found an expression that allows her to continue to ignore the causes of global warming (the actions of man and womankind? 'watcha mean by that Gwen?') and front her "energy expertise." Drill, baby, drill? Are you kidding me with this stuff? Insert 10 years for actual fuel supplies to kick in and Palin's eye roll.
3. 'The VP's office is one that the constitution should grant more power' and it should be 'more flexible': Although not direct quotes (they're close), I'm pretty sure that she sides with Cheney on this one; who knows? She never really answered the question. This is where the danger part comes in. I hope that most Americans are waking up to the fact that though they might like Ms. Palin and her folkish attempts at being a populist, she is NOT prepared to serve as this nation's VP, or President for that matter. After last night, I even question what the Alaskans were thinking when they elected this character.
TCH
After last night's Biden-Palin debate, I thought I'd post some thoughts about Palin and what I believe to be one of the most bizarre and dangerous candidacies in American history.
Truly, Ms. Palin did a good job last night. But come on, a good job for this candidate is an illustration of the ability not to "umm" and "ah" herself into a continuous circular statement about moose pies and bridges to mavericks, etc. If you haven't taken a look at the Couric interview, start here! Warning: you may need a drink to handle the fact that this person might become the next VP of the US.
A couple of points to consider:
1. Is it just me or does the fact that the only person that Ms. Palin tells us she has consulted about foreign policy is Henry Kissinger scare you? Kissinger, "American Diplomat": Vietnam anyone? Laos? Cambodia? Watergate? Hum... And all that talk about Joe looking to the past? What of Palin's foreign policy credentials being bolstered by a couple conversations with Dr. Kissinger? The Vietnam-Iraq comparisons are too easy at this point. Come on people, think.
2. "The line is drill, baby, drill..." Did you catch it? In this one line Palin has found an expression that allows her to continue to ignore the causes of global warming (the actions of man and womankind? 'watcha mean by that Gwen?') and front her "energy expertise." Drill, baby, drill? Are you kidding me with this stuff? Insert 10 years for actual fuel supplies to kick in and Palin's eye roll.
3. 'The VP's office is one that the constitution should grant more power' and it should be 'more flexible': Although not direct quotes (they're close), I'm pretty sure that she sides with Cheney on this one; who knows? She never really answered the question. This is where the danger part comes in. I hope that most Americans are waking up to the fact that though they might like Ms. Palin and her folkish attempts at being a populist, she is NOT prepared to serve as this nation's VP, or President for that matter. After last night, I even question what the Alaskans were thinking when they elected this character.
TCH
Saturday, August 30, 2008
We drank O's Kool-aid
Well my people, nobody pass out, I am back to the blog! After taking a number of weeks off, I have returned with a refreshed outlook, my ever acerbic wit, plenty of short and tall tales, and all kinds of news to catch up on. We'll take a few points, one at a time to warm back up and avoid exhausting ourselves:
1. For TCHinsiders:
The personal life is great (and I do mean great) and for those in the spin-room, the official status is "excited." Things could not be better with that special someone. The summer saw the two of us meeting each other's fams, making a grand wedding appearance, playing a lot of frisbee (she's rather good, I sadly am not), attending her graduation, and spending time on the phone confessing how much we miss each other. Times are good, people... besides the fact that I am 350+ miles away from Athens, all my friends, and the life that I have come to know for the past 4 years.
2. Oh, mr. doctoral man:
My professional life is charging ahead with prospectus defense done and over with and I am now dissertating (which I should be doing right now, but you people wanted an update...am I right?)
3. A political manifesto, aka, my take on the Obamapalooza:
My political life was (emphasis on the past tense) like a world-turned-upside-down. With the disarray of a Clinton-less D. ticket and the slap in the face that was the Biden choice...ugh...what was I and the other 18 million to do with ourselves going into the convention? And then, there came Ted, Michelle, Hillary (the all-star), Bill, Joe, Al, and finally, Barack. What a line-up! Was it just me or did other die-hard Dems just get completely weepy over the return of Bill to a Democratic stage? What a great past-to-present moment. For those historically minded out there, did we not just witness history in the making my friends? "My friends..." that reminds me of the darker side of the story which I'll turn to shortly. The DNC pulled this convention off without a hitch and Hillary's appearance on the floor to hand the nomination to Barack via a vote of acclamation...classic. Overall, I was extremely pleased despite the fact that I still believe that Hillary was a stronger choice for Pres or V.Pres; but, you know there's always the Supreme Court.
4. The darker side of things:
What is the deal with Johnny? I get the heroic stuff and love of America (sort of), but come on America. Do we really want grandpa as President of the United States of America? I watch his speeches and town hall meetings and oddly enough this does seem to be one of those rare moments when the Obama team's rhetoric holds true: this is "more of the same." Johnny Mac's crew realized a few months back that Oby was on to something with CHANGE and HOPE and now, surprisingly, Johnny-boy is on board too. And yet, I wonder if the fear-mongering, flag-waving, U-S-A shouting tactics of the Bushites will triumph yet again? I certainly hope not; all that shouting might leave a man of Mac's age needing a change and Cindy's delicate and petite, aka elite, arms are out of service.
As I personally reflect over the past 8 years: from the "war" in/on Iraq to the failure in Afghanistan to Gitmo to Abu Ghraib to warrant-less wiretaps to the Scooter Libby saga to Cheney's hunting accident to Katrina to "every child left behind" to a failing infrastructure to rising tuition costs but lower taxes for the wealthiest of Americans to rising gas prices and an economy teetering on complete failure...I agree with Biden, I don't think America can stand four more years of this insanity and, frankly, bullshit. Furthermore, I don't think I could handle Mac's "Well, my friends..." Mr. Senator, I am NOT your friend. Nor, do I think I can take the constant and unyielding bolstering of Madam Alaska's commander-and-chief status; did you know that as governor, she commanded the Alaskan national guard? OK! Now, let's ask ourselves: what does the Alaskan national guard do that needs to be "commanded"? Count fish? Shovel snow? And finally, for those Johnny Mac people (some, friends of mine perhaps who are reading this now) please don't insult women and other Clintonistas by thinking that by adding Ms. Alaska to the ticket we will blindly come over to the dark side. We didn't support Clinton solely because she was a woman; rather, because her ideology and platforms matched our own. In those areas, firmly outside the realm of female character traits, Ms. Snowplow is no Madam Pants-suit.
P.S. Didn't you guys watch the DNC's grand event? The Clintonistas drank the Obama Kool-aid; there's plenty to go around if ya'll get thirsty.
TCH
1. For TCHinsiders:
The personal life is great (and I do mean great) and for those in the spin-room, the official status is "excited." Things could not be better with that special someone. The summer saw the two of us meeting each other's fams, making a grand wedding appearance, playing a lot of frisbee (she's rather good, I sadly am not), attending her graduation, and spending time on the phone confessing how much we miss each other. Times are good, people... besides the fact that I am 350+ miles away from Athens, all my friends, and the life that I have come to know for the past 4 years.
2. Oh, mr. doctoral man:
My professional life is charging ahead with prospectus defense done and over with and I am now dissertating (which I should be doing right now, but you people wanted an update...am I right?)
3. A political manifesto, aka, my take on the Obamapalooza:
My political life was (emphasis on the past tense) like a world-turned-upside-down. With the disarray of a Clinton-less D. ticket and the slap in the face that was the Biden choice...ugh...what was I and the other 18 million to do with ourselves going into the convention? And then, there came Ted, Michelle, Hillary (the all-star), Bill, Joe, Al, and finally, Barack. What a line-up! Was it just me or did other die-hard Dems just get completely weepy over the return of Bill to a Democratic stage? What a great past-to-present moment. For those historically minded out there, did we not just witness history in the making my friends? "My friends..." that reminds me of the darker side of the story which I'll turn to shortly. The DNC pulled this convention off without a hitch and Hillary's appearance on the floor to hand the nomination to Barack via a vote of acclamation...classic. Overall, I was extremely pleased despite the fact that I still believe that Hillary was a stronger choice for Pres or V.Pres; but, you know there's always the Supreme Court.
4. The darker side of things:
What is the deal with Johnny? I get the heroic stuff and love of America (sort of), but come on America. Do we really want grandpa as President of the United States of America? I watch his speeches and town hall meetings and oddly enough this does seem to be one of those rare moments when the Obama team's rhetoric holds true: this is "more of the same." Johnny Mac's crew realized a few months back that Oby was on to something with CHANGE and HOPE and now, surprisingly, Johnny-boy is on board too. And yet, I wonder if the fear-mongering, flag-waving, U-S-A shouting tactics of the Bushites will triumph yet again? I certainly hope not; all that shouting might leave a man of Mac's age needing a change and Cindy's delicate and petite, aka elite, arms are out of service.
As I personally reflect over the past 8 years: from the "war" in/on Iraq to the failure in Afghanistan to Gitmo to Abu Ghraib to warrant-less wiretaps to the Scooter Libby saga to Cheney's hunting accident to Katrina to "every child left behind" to a failing infrastructure to rising tuition costs but lower taxes for the wealthiest of Americans to rising gas prices and an economy teetering on complete failure...I agree with Biden, I don't think America can stand four more years of this insanity and, frankly, bullshit. Furthermore, I don't think I could handle Mac's "Well, my friends..." Mr. Senator, I am NOT your friend. Nor, do I think I can take the constant and unyielding bolstering of Madam Alaska's commander-and-chief status; did you know that as governor, she commanded the Alaskan national guard? OK! Now, let's ask ourselves: what does the Alaskan national guard do that needs to be "commanded"? Count fish? Shovel snow? And finally, for those Johnny Mac people (some, friends of mine perhaps who are reading this now) please don't insult women and other Clintonistas by thinking that by adding Ms. Alaska to the ticket we will blindly come over to the dark side. We didn't support Clinton solely because she was a woman; rather, because her ideology and platforms matched our own. In those areas, firmly outside the realm of female character traits, Ms. Snowplow is no Madam Pants-suit.
P.S. Didn't you guys watch the DNC's grand event? The Clintonistas drank the Obama Kool-aid; there's plenty to go around if ya'll get thirsty.
TCH
Sunday, June 22, 2008
southern burning: life lessons from a trip home
I am not for sure whether getting an annual sunburn to initiate summer is in fact a southern cultural tradition but it is one that this southerner would like to shake. Yes, I am recovering from my annual self-inflicted sunburn and am not liking it one bit. Why it is that this seems to happen every year at about this time is beyond me. I like to think I am a rational person and intelligent enough to throw on some sunscreen to keep this from happening; but, no, didn't do it and now I am suffering through sleepless nights with the sensation that my skin may in fact peel off of my body leaving only muscle and bone.
With all that said, it was a 3:30 am this morning, awake from the sunburn blues, that I thought, "what other lessons has this trip home presented me with?" Here are a couple that you all can take or leave as you wish:
1. There ARE things that are more important than others and we all need to realize what those are in our own lives. Personally, I think throwing around a baseball and frisbee with my family (events that I'll cherish always) is ranked higher, by far, over finishing up whatever books I had scheduled for the day...
2. I need to step back more often, be still, and consider how blessed I am. Not that everything in life is great; but, come on TCH, its pretty good.
3. Absence really can make the heart grow fonder. Enough said.
TCH
With all that said, it was a 3:30 am this morning, awake from the sunburn blues, that I thought, "what other lessons has this trip home presented me with?" Here are a couple that you all can take or leave as you wish:
1. There ARE things that are more important than others and we all need to realize what those are in our own lives. Personally, I think throwing around a baseball and frisbee with my family (events that I'll cherish always) is ranked higher, by far, over finishing up whatever books I had scheduled for the day...
2. I need to step back more often, be still, and consider how blessed I am. Not that everything in life is great; but, come on TCH, its pretty good.
3. Absence really can make the heart grow fonder. Enough said.
TCH
Monday, June 16, 2008
The fall can hurt when you're cruising an emotional high...
Over the past several months, I have seen several emotional highs: passing comps, taking a life-altering trip to Guatemala, submitting a couple of pieces for publication, and working on a new relationship. Many of these "highs" have had counterpart "lows": not getting enough professional work accomplished, seeing a publication rejected, and ending a relationship. As a good friend, and several "life philosophers" have been all to ready to advise: its not so much about the fall, but the getting up that counts. Recently, I have been feeling a sense of real personal peace with my attempts to get back up when life has knocked me down. Thanks, Tom Petty. I find myself smiling for no apparent reason as I run along my paths here in Athens, attempting to make peace when the waitress is about and hour-and-a-half late with my party's food order, and thinking that there is some truth to the fact that life can and often does seem to matter a lot more when you have someone with whom you want to share the mundane and often stupid things that happen to make up our everyday existence.
My most recent stupid event: Running along, as most of you know I do, I cross Baxter (in a break of insanely busy traffic) and assume the nice sidewalk pace I had set before crossing. It was just a great afternoon for running. I had just finished reading a book that I had been putting off reading because I had to submit a review for it the next day or so and I had just finished laughing (out loud) about a very funny scene in the Charlie Brown Christmas movie when Sally writes a letter to Mary Christmas (a.k.a. Mrs Clause) praising her for her feminist leanings and keeping her surname. As I resumed pace, it happened: my right shoe gets hung in an expanded left shoe lace hoop and down I go. In my own words that particular members of my family find quite funny, "I just went down." Clearly not my first fall, there's a popularized saying about it for a goat's sake, I knew how to handle it although this fall was rather abrupt and unexpected. Left knee catches the full force (still swollen, not broken, I think) hands catch the rest of the momentum as I roll of to the side and into a fraternity house's side lawn. Well, there you have it: the fall can hurt when you're cruising an emotional high.
Thankfully, I learned the lesson a couple of years back that we humans are just that: human. We HAVE to laugh at ourselves because if we don't, we risk allowing that weakness to define and conquer us when those extremely evil people (you know em') discover that fear. Well there I was sitting on me duff (no bleeding) and yet as proof of this emerging new mindset I thought to myself, you know, this could have been much worse. What if I had tripped up in the street only to meet the front of a Dodge Durango or, more likely in this town, some extremely hefty RangeRover with an equally hefty-footed driver? Maybe a little less severe but still painful, what if I had stabbed my keys through my hand? I picked myself up, hobbled home, reflecting on the lesson learned: sometimes you cut your losses, other times you throw away the overstretched shoestrings.
Surprisingly, the emotional high has not disappeared. For those who have experienced the past week/few months with me (friends scattered from here to various places in AL to Memphis to the UK to the Grand Canyon and Dallas/Fort Worth) you know I think I've found something. Not that happiness is to be discovered only in another person and then, that's it, problems solved. For me its all about interaction, change, and just being still long enough to know who you are, who she is, and who you are together. Point in case: we've laughed over my fall on Baxter (only after she said, "hey are you ok? really, are you ok?") and I realized that it is that deep connection that sort just happens when you aren't paying attention that binds two people together; that makes you sit back in awe; and, sometimes, loose your breath...at least for me anyway. So even when the fall from an emotional high can be quite painful, the good thing about connecting with the person that aided the creation of the high (if you are as fortunate as I've been lately) is that they'll be there to recreate it with as simple a question as, "hey, how's your leg today?"
TCH
My most recent stupid event: Running along, as most of you know I do, I cross Baxter (in a break of insanely busy traffic) and assume the nice sidewalk pace I had set before crossing. It was just a great afternoon for running. I had just finished reading a book that I had been putting off reading because I had to submit a review for it the next day or so and I had just finished laughing (out loud) about a very funny scene in the Charlie Brown Christmas movie when Sally writes a letter to Mary Christmas (a.k.a. Mrs Clause) praising her for her feminist leanings and keeping her surname. As I resumed pace, it happened: my right shoe gets hung in an expanded left shoe lace hoop and down I go. In my own words that particular members of my family find quite funny, "I just went down." Clearly not my first fall, there's a popularized saying about it for a goat's sake, I knew how to handle it although this fall was rather abrupt and unexpected. Left knee catches the full force (still swollen, not broken, I think) hands catch the rest of the momentum as I roll of to the side and into a fraternity house's side lawn. Well, there you have it: the fall can hurt when you're cruising an emotional high.
Thankfully, I learned the lesson a couple of years back that we humans are just that: human. We HAVE to laugh at ourselves because if we don't, we risk allowing that weakness to define and conquer us when those extremely evil people (you know em') discover that fear. Well there I was sitting on me duff (no bleeding) and yet as proof of this emerging new mindset I thought to myself, you know, this could have been much worse. What if I had tripped up in the street only to meet the front of a Dodge Durango or, more likely in this town, some extremely hefty RangeRover with an equally hefty-footed driver? Maybe a little less severe but still painful, what if I had stabbed my keys through my hand? I picked myself up, hobbled home, reflecting on the lesson learned: sometimes you cut your losses, other times you throw away the overstretched shoestrings.
Surprisingly, the emotional high has not disappeared. For those who have experienced the past week/few months with me (friends scattered from here to various places in AL to Memphis to the UK to the Grand Canyon and Dallas/Fort Worth) you know I think I've found something. Not that happiness is to be discovered only in another person and then, that's it, problems solved. For me its all about interaction, change, and just being still long enough to know who you are, who she is, and who you are together. Point in case: we've laughed over my fall on Baxter (only after she said, "hey are you ok? really, are you ok?") and I realized that it is that deep connection that sort just happens when you aren't paying attention that binds two people together; that makes you sit back in awe; and, sometimes, loose your breath...at least for me anyway. So even when the fall from an emotional high can be quite painful, the good thing about connecting with the person that aided the creation of the high (if you are as fortunate as I've been lately) is that they'll be there to recreate it with as simple a question as, "hey, how's your leg today?"
TCH
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Running to Run
So there's been some talk, low-level chatter as the CIA types might have it, about the silence on my blog. Well, in the words of one of my favorite SNL skits by Jimmy Fallon let me say: "And we're back!"
I've been running almost everyday this past week and a half. With the move to the new place and adjustments all around in both my professional and personal lives, running has been my escape. Not that running hasn't always been the place to get away, collect my thoughts, and come back into my life with renewed spirit, energy, and enough sweat to intimidate Mohamed Ali and Mia Ham. Nonetheless, over the past couple of days, I've found myself excited about my late afternoon runs; that is, save yesterday's which almost killed me: I failed to consider a heat index of well over 100 degrees...not good.
When I started running, oh some years back, I never thought that it would be as great a kind of release that it has turned into. Never, did I ever, believe I would run in a competitive race which I did at the end of this past May. My first 10K went well. I finished the race; I was pleased; my always-supportive-family cheered; we left the race with a new t-shirt and some unripe bananas; we all felt good.
Now for the metaphorical analysis. When running today, I paused (the heat index had dropped but so had my energy level by about 40 minutes in and the approaching thunderstorm was roaring like angry Clintonistas with a score to settle) and thought to myself how fortunate I am to be where I am in life. I had coffee this morning with a friend who, like myself, counts herself lucky to be where she is at this moment in life. We mutually acknowledged the kind of inherent cultural privileges that benefited both of us on our journeys (I think we could both include some other items as well like hard work, grit, and determination but as historians we often like to 'get after' one topic at a time then pivot to others later: I'll update you all if/when we do so), but my point is that unlike a lot of individuals I see around me in the world, I consider myself lucky to be where I am and, just as importantly, to be able and willing to reflect on the intricacies and complications of the journey that got me here. Please don't misread me here bloggers, I'm not so wrapped up in the vanity of success. When I talk about "the journey" I proudly include failures, successes, and the 'draws' that combine to make up my life experiences. Whether I kept to the trodden path or struck out, as I am often known to do, on Frost's "road less traveled", I am thankful that I have (more often than not, I hope) kept the faith and been true to who I am; never wavering for smiles from the crowd, pandering for compliments, or selling out to get ahead.
As a fellow runner felt compelled to reveal to me during the 10K: "Isn't running to run great, but there's also something to be said for the perseverance necessary for the finish." At the time, all I could think was, "leave me alone while I try to survive this bloody race!" Now, in retrospect, I think she couldn't have been more dead on about that race, or the race of life.
TCH
I've been running almost everyday this past week and a half. With the move to the new place and adjustments all around in both my professional and personal lives, running has been my escape. Not that running hasn't always been the place to get away, collect my thoughts, and come back into my life with renewed spirit, energy, and enough sweat to intimidate Mohamed Ali and Mia Ham. Nonetheless, over the past couple of days, I've found myself excited about my late afternoon runs; that is, save yesterday's which almost killed me: I failed to consider a heat index of well over 100 degrees...not good.
When I started running, oh some years back, I never thought that it would be as great a kind of release that it has turned into. Never, did I ever, believe I would run in a competitive race which I did at the end of this past May. My first 10K went well. I finished the race; I was pleased; my always-supportive-family cheered; we left the race with a new t-shirt and some unripe bananas; we all felt good.
Now for the metaphorical analysis. When running today, I paused (the heat index had dropped but so had my energy level by about 40 minutes in and the approaching thunderstorm was roaring like angry Clintonistas with a score to settle) and thought to myself how fortunate I am to be where I am in life. I had coffee this morning with a friend who, like myself, counts herself lucky to be where she is at this moment in life. We mutually acknowledged the kind of inherent cultural privileges that benefited both of us on our journeys (I think we could both include some other items as well like hard work, grit, and determination but as historians we often like to 'get after' one topic at a time then pivot to others later: I'll update you all if/when we do so), but my point is that unlike a lot of individuals I see around me in the world, I consider myself lucky to be where I am and, just as importantly, to be able and willing to reflect on the intricacies and complications of the journey that got me here. Please don't misread me here bloggers, I'm not so wrapped up in the vanity of success. When I talk about "the journey" I proudly include failures, successes, and the 'draws' that combine to make up my life experiences. Whether I kept to the trodden path or struck out, as I am often known to do, on Frost's "road less traveled", I am thankful that I have (more often than not, I hope) kept the faith and been true to who I am; never wavering for smiles from the crowd, pandering for compliments, or selling out to get ahead.
As a fellow runner felt compelled to reveal to me during the 10K: "Isn't running to run great, but there's also something to be said for the perseverance necessary for the finish." At the time, all I could think was, "leave me alone while I try to survive this bloody race!" Now, in retrospect, I think she couldn't have been more dead on about that race, or the race of life.
TCH
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Suspended suspense and the absurdities of routine living
Its been about a week and life has continued trucking along. I'm moving places in two days and the words "truck," "tape," and "boxes" have become standards for most conversations over the past couple days so if they reappear here an inordinate amount of times, please be kind in reply posting. Yet, I'm reminded of my blogging motto: "I do not blog to bore;" so, I'll refrain from the mundane sorts of happenings save two: I ran out of tape today knowing that it was going to happen but continuing to tape up boxes from Chase's Frozen Food Packaging (no lie) while also semi-purposefully constructing what I now refer to as my "islands of boxes" in various locations throughout my house and, in doing so, creating a maze of sorts for both myself and my dog.
Its my dog, Andrew Jackson ("Andy" if he likes you or "King Andrew" if you get in his way politically or spatially whichever the case may be), and my life as a pet owner/father that this blog is about, sort of. Suffice it to say, the dog is historically named because he is historically minded. Anyway, my life with Andy, from day one, has been one of sorted adventures; we've seen holiday parties turn ugly, one dangerous battle with intestinal worms (his, not mine, thank you very much) relationships come, relationships go, comprehensive exams, and many long and sleepy Sunday afternoons. However, our shenanigans might find their best summation in our long once-a-week constitutionals. This week was no different from the oddities that always seem to befall the two of us and left me with namely two thoughts: I truly believe that God has never matched up a better pair of beings and that sometimes routines can become routinely absurd, yet necessary.
As we were driving along, Andy, ever the observant passenger, noticed that road construction would obstruct our normal driving route (he and I are equally creatures of habit and so we were both a little thrown off by these inconsiderate bumblers whose main purpose in life, at that moment at least, seemed to be to destroy the flow of a perfectly good Thursday afternoon drive) but we recovered like pros. Andy and I have been together for two years now; we've got this walk think down. Or so we like to think. Upon arriving in our parking spot, Andy and I exited the vehicle equally excited about embarking on frequented paths through North Campus and eagerly anticipating new faces, both human and other, that awaited us. As we walked along, we sniffed the enticing fragrances that always seem to find us on our walks. About thirty minutes in, as usual, we made our way to two portions of campus that have become Andy's most special places. One locale, Andy finds quite relaxing for a "bm" as one older southern women I know calls it...for those MTVers out there, "bm" equals "poop job". Now, you might be saying to yourself, TCH, what is this about pooping and where are you going with this...hang in there!
The other place Andy truly enjoys is an area that most colleges and universities would call "the quad"; I've been here four years, the general description goes something like, "that green space, no, no, not that green space, the one up around Old College and the Arch, you know that elongated track between the main library and Broad Street." Well, no matter what you call it, Andy loves it for primarily one reason: the squirrels (a.k.a. Henry Clay). Andy loves to bark and growl at each one he meets, although never quite able to get to them before they scramble up the huge trees. All of this is part of a normal walk that concludes with me calming Andy down, strolling on through my department for a little water, and then both making our way to the car and on home.
Why let you all in on such a special time shared between father and dog? I think these moments of ritual, these weekly events that might appear to always contain the same possibilities and predictable outcomes provide each of us with the opportunity to live life to the full(est) that we might make it. Eternal optimism running unrestrained from the guy that has just now finished packing up his life into approximately thirty boxes? Perhaps. But, for me, life is all about the suspense that we create in our own minds when we awake and realize that there are forty-five more exams to grade before noon and its already 10 o'clock. Please don't misunderstand me, I'm not advocating some sort of personalized 24/7 stress testing that would no doubt land us all in therapy or on some sort of prescription meds.
Rather, this is a message of hope. I'm trying it out on loan from the Obama people. Our routines present themselves as life...but, blog buddies, I don't think we should allow them to mask themselves as life. I know, as well as the next person, how easy that trap is to fall into. But if we take the routines to be life as we know it, then how do we cope with the extremes of emotional experiences like births, weddings (sometimes), that first kiss, that first glance? Or, better yet, how do we control our exasperation when faced, as a friend was this past week, with the trauma of watching a pregnant colleague suffer a brain aneurysm and die, with child, in front of you? Life is what we make of it, while we are distracting ourselves with absurd, but granted, necessary routines. As another good friend often reminds my gang of 6: "This ain't no dress rehearsal, I intend to have some fun, so where is it, and when does it begin?" Good points all, but I believe that that could be what life is: first realizing that the rehearsal is the show (preferably before you get into the 2nd or, worse, 3rd act) and then, coming to grips with the fact that you are on stage and that the routine that you both love and hate is the script that you are daily editing.
If my life over the past few months has anything to say to this, there might be some truth in that annoying statement: "good things come to those who wait"...or at least to those who are able to distract themselves with routine while noting the suspense of "real" life. The caveat: we must be equally ready to enjoy the shattering of our constructed routined realities when fellow playwrights choose to revise their scripts and/or our pets discover new "bm" locales.
TCH
Its my dog, Andrew Jackson ("Andy" if he likes you or "King Andrew" if you get in his way politically or spatially whichever the case may be), and my life as a pet owner/father that this blog is about, sort of. Suffice it to say, the dog is historically named because he is historically minded. Anyway, my life with Andy, from day one, has been one of sorted adventures; we've seen holiday parties turn ugly, one dangerous battle with intestinal worms (his, not mine, thank you very much) relationships come, relationships go, comprehensive exams, and many long and sleepy Sunday afternoons. However, our shenanigans might find their best summation in our long once-a-week constitutionals. This week was no different from the oddities that always seem to befall the two of us and left me with namely two thoughts: I truly believe that God has never matched up a better pair of beings and that sometimes routines can become routinely absurd, yet necessary.
As we were driving along, Andy, ever the observant passenger, noticed that road construction would obstruct our normal driving route (he and I are equally creatures of habit and so we were both a little thrown off by these inconsiderate bumblers whose main purpose in life, at that moment at least, seemed to be to destroy the flow of a perfectly good Thursday afternoon drive) but we recovered like pros. Andy and I have been together for two years now; we've got this walk think down. Or so we like to think. Upon arriving in our parking spot, Andy and I exited the vehicle equally excited about embarking on frequented paths through North Campus and eagerly anticipating new faces, both human and other, that awaited us. As we walked along, we sniffed the enticing fragrances that always seem to find us on our walks. About thirty minutes in, as usual, we made our way to two portions of campus that have become Andy's most special places. One locale, Andy finds quite relaxing for a "bm" as one older southern women I know calls it...for those MTVers out there, "bm" equals "poop job". Now, you might be saying to yourself, TCH, what is this about pooping and where are you going with this...hang in there!
The other place Andy truly enjoys is an area that most colleges and universities would call "the quad"; I've been here four years, the general description goes something like, "that green space, no, no, not that green space, the one up around Old College and the Arch, you know that elongated track between the main library and Broad Street." Well, no matter what you call it, Andy loves it for primarily one reason: the squirrels (a.k.a. Henry Clay). Andy loves to bark and growl at each one he meets, although never quite able to get to them before they scramble up the huge trees. All of this is part of a normal walk that concludes with me calming Andy down, strolling on through my department for a little water, and then both making our way to the car and on home.
Why let you all in on such a special time shared between father and dog? I think these moments of ritual, these weekly events that might appear to always contain the same possibilities and predictable outcomes provide each of us with the opportunity to live life to the full(est) that we might make it. Eternal optimism running unrestrained from the guy that has just now finished packing up his life into approximately thirty boxes? Perhaps. But, for me, life is all about the suspense that we create in our own minds when we awake and realize that there are forty-five more exams to grade before noon and its already 10 o'clock. Please don't misunderstand me, I'm not advocating some sort of personalized 24/7 stress testing that would no doubt land us all in therapy or on some sort of prescription meds.
Rather, this is a message of hope. I'm trying it out on loan from the Obama people. Our routines present themselves as life...but, blog buddies, I don't think we should allow them to mask themselves as life. I know, as well as the next person, how easy that trap is to fall into. But if we take the routines to be life as we know it, then how do we cope with the extremes of emotional experiences like births, weddings (sometimes), that first kiss, that first glance? Or, better yet, how do we control our exasperation when faced, as a friend was this past week, with the trauma of watching a pregnant colleague suffer a brain aneurysm and die, with child, in front of you? Life is what we make of it, while we are distracting ourselves with absurd, but granted, necessary routines. As another good friend often reminds my gang of 6: "This ain't no dress rehearsal, I intend to have some fun, so where is it, and when does it begin?" Good points all, but I believe that that could be what life is: first realizing that the rehearsal is the show (preferably before you get into the 2nd or, worse, 3rd act) and then, coming to grips with the fact that you are on stage and that the routine that you both love and hate is the script that you are daily editing.
If my life over the past few months has anything to say to this, there might be some truth in that annoying statement: "good things come to those who wait"...or at least to those who are able to distract themselves with routine while noting the suspense of "real" life. The caveat: we must be equally ready to enjoy the shattering of our constructed routined realities when fellow playwrights choose to revise their scripts and/or our pets discover new "bm" locales.
TCH
Friday, May 23, 2008
Indigestion: What a couple of Coronas, some fish tacos, and defending Hillary might get you.
Well, folks, away we go into the world of TCH. Last night, I joined two good friends for dinner at one of our local haunts here in Athens. We had a splendid time: great drinks (despite the beer snobbery of one in the cohort who proudly admits he has a non-problem problem), great food, and plenty of delightful conversation until we skidded uncontrollably into the subject of Democratic politics.
Now, those of you who know me know that I am a proud Hillary Clinton supporter. Granted things for the Bill and Hillary duo (the Billarys as some have taken to calling them) have seemingly turned sour these past few weeks, I still support her as my candidate of choice among my party's potential nominees as did voters in NY, NJ, OH, PA, CA, TX, and FL. As one colleague asserted just yesterday: "She may be a thug...but she's your thug." Maybe. Anyway, back to last night. As we hashed out the differences and likelihoods of the Obama and Clinton health care plans and their respective stances on the war in Iraq and funding for higher education, I realized that the liberal commitments that motivate my allegiance to Hillary Clinton's candidacy is only shallowly perceived by many Obama 'liberals' as something akin to political insanity. This may, in part, be due to the Clintonistas' sheer confusion as to how this has happened to our party. Nonetheless, I found myself arguing that Clinton is indeed the candidate for my party because she will be able to build the necessary coalitions to win in November. I went on, floundering, she is more than capable to take this country in the right direction and, furthermore (returning to more solid line of argument) it seems very short-sighted of Americans, and we political junkies, to say that America should come to grips with the racial baggage that continues to plague this nation at every turn while leaving any challenge to the problems that imbalanced gender dynamics and sexism continue to create or permit for a future election, maybe, if need be. At this point, my Obama supporting comrades (I now think I am the lone voice still backing the Clintons in Athens; might I add that that number looked like it might drop to zero from the expressions on many on-lookers faces during our "discussion") assured me that there would be room under the Obama "hope" umbrella for me once I saw the light and decided to come along on the "change" bandwagon. Have we learned nothing from the big crowds, banners, and empty, yet full, rhetoric of eight (count them Nader supporters) eight Bush years?
From there, I (never the defensive type) confirmed the Obama camp's worst fear: that there may be enough discontent within the Billary crowd, particularly if Senator O doesn't at least extend the offer for special VP status for the NY Senator, to force many working class whites, middling class rural lifetime Dems, and a few members of the academic intelligentsia to abandon the party, at least for 2008, and risk further fracturing a fragile coalition that the DNC has been trying to hold/put back together since LBJ. Suggestions like a third party run for Clinton or even sitting this one out, of course among the die hard Obamites, seems ludicrous. "How dare you not support Obama!? Especially over Johnny Mac!" Whether the media pundits notice it or not, as they and the backroom dealers (a.k.a, disloyal and wavering superdelegates) combine efforts to force Hillary and Bill off stage right, their unobstructed attention and the questions this will no doubt bring for Senator Obama may leave them and my fellow Democrats with indigestion without even sampling the fish tacos.
TCH
Now, those of you who know me know that I am a proud Hillary Clinton supporter. Granted things for the Bill and Hillary duo (the Billarys as some have taken to calling them) have seemingly turned sour these past few weeks, I still support her as my candidate of choice among my party's potential nominees as did voters in NY, NJ, OH, PA, CA, TX, and FL. As one colleague asserted just yesterday: "She may be a thug...but she's your thug." Maybe. Anyway, back to last night. As we hashed out the differences and likelihoods of the Obama and Clinton health care plans and their respective stances on the war in Iraq and funding for higher education, I realized that the liberal commitments that motivate my allegiance to Hillary Clinton's candidacy is only shallowly perceived by many Obama 'liberals' as something akin to political insanity. This may, in part, be due to the Clintonistas' sheer confusion as to how this has happened to our party. Nonetheless, I found myself arguing that Clinton is indeed the candidate for my party because she will be able to build the necessary coalitions to win in November. I went on, floundering, she is more than capable to take this country in the right direction and, furthermore (returning to more solid line of argument) it seems very short-sighted of Americans, and we political junkies, to say that America should come to grips with the racial baggage that continues to plague this nation at every turn while leaving any challenge to the problems that imbalanced gender dynamics and sexism continue to create or permit for a future election, maybe, if need be. At this point, my Obama supporting comrades (I now think I am the lone voice still backing the Clintons in Athens; might I add that that number looked like it might drop to zero from the expressions on many on-lookers faces during our "discussion") assured me that there would be room under the Obama "hope" umbrella for me once I saw the light and decided to come along on the "change" bandwagon. Have we learned nothing from the big crowds, banners, and empty, yet full, rhetoric of eight (count them Nader supporters) eight Bush years?
From there, I (never the defensive type) confirmed the Obama camp's worst fear: that there may be enough discontent within the Billary crowd, particularly if Senator O doesn't at least extend the offer for special VP status for the NY Senator, to force many working class whites, middling class rural lifetime Dems, and a few members of the academic intelligentsia to abandon the party, at least for 2008, and risk further fracturing a fragile coalition that the DNC has been trying to hold/put back together since LBJ. Suggestions like a third party run for Clinton or even sitting this one out, of course among the die hard Obamites, seems ludicrous. "How dare you not support Obama!? Especially over Johnny Mac!" Whether the media pundits notice it or not, as they and the backroom dealers (a.k.a, disloyal and wavering superdelegates) combine efforts to force Hillary and Bill off stage right, their unobstructed attention and the questions this will no doubt bring for Senator Obama may leave them and my fellow Democrats with indigestion without even sampling the fish tacos.
TCH
Thursday, May 22, 2008
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