20141105.0625

Yesterday, after I came home from voting, I read Michael Mark Cohen's 12 October 2014 Medium.com article "Douchebag: The White Racial Slur We've All Been Waiting For." In it, Cohen argues that the term "douchebag" serves many of the same functions as racial epithets--only applied to the typically unmarked position of privilege occupied by white, heterosexual men of the upper and middle classes in the United States. To do so, he provides and explicates examples of usage, including historical attestations, and links the lot to the more commonly understood epithets that still get bandied about. While the argument is not likely to gain cultural traction, it is composed well and convincing as a loose description of the deployment of the word "douchebag" as a slur.

Something that might tighten the fit of the description to the term would be a larger study. It is true that Cohen does not pretend to be comprehensive or even expansive in the work that informs his article; he situates it in discussions from classes he has taught and some reading in earlier popular culture, and it is published in an easily accessible format, so it is not to be expected that the piece will display the same level of rigor that should attend on more formal academic treatments. But such a treatment would be welcome; having the more thoroughly researched historical context and the more representative surveys of usage that such a treatment would entail would do much to illuminate the phenomenon.

That illumination would serve to highlight more of the intertwined class and race stratification and tension that continues to pervade the US (and likely will increasingly do so in the wake of the 2014 elections). It would offer some answer to those few who are unconvinced that academic study can be relevant but are not solidly set in the notion that it cannot be relevant; in showing what people do and how what people do works, it would necessarily open the way for some kind of corrective to the problems it would necessarily identify. (Admittedly, this would only be for those who are willing to accept the results as valid and who see their own complicity in the problem, which is far too small a set of people.) And that has value.

Also of value in the piece is what it shows about the worth of the physical classroom. The underlying impetus of the article comes from a classroom event the author describes. Such an event cannot occur through the mediation of a computer screen, whether in the pseudo-synchronous environment of ongoing chat or the asynchronous (and far more common online classroom) environment of message boards; it can only come through the direct, face-to-face interaction of teacher and student. Although the specific event in question may be small, it is representative, and it is of small advances that growth in knowledge is made. More such explorations need to happen, far more now than in the past, and it is in the physical classroom that they occur. That Cohen's article points to such a thing is perhaps the best point, among many good ones, it makes.

20141104.0617

Yes, I will be voting today.

No, I am not at the polling place...yet. It does not open until 7, and it is raining; I figure I'll have a cup of coffee before I try to get over to vote. And since I am sitting down anyway...

I will not be making the same mistake as happened last year around this time. This time, at least, I am not helping so much to perpetuate practices of governance with which I disagree and which I find in many cases to be reprehensible. If they continue, it will be above and despite my specific and explicit objection.

I remember comments from some four years ago, and I am not happy with how things happened. They have worked against me and not always with much intermediation; my layoff was occasioned in no small part by the contraction of funding available to the least advantaged college students to be found. The bastards have voted against me, and this time, I will be returning the favor.

I will therefore be voting today. I will very much be voting today. While it may not "matter" that I do, for I share some of the doubts of my colleagues that things will change for the better rather than remain in the willfully ignorant rut into which they have fallen, and I know that my tacit complicity in atrocity will continue maugre my head because I continue to participate in systems that perpetuate oppression and reinforce the social stratification that facilitates it, it is at least something I can do to try to make things a little bit better.

And, again, when things falter and fail, I will at least have the small and petty satisfaction of being able to say with all honesty "I told you so."

20141103.0600

Unusually, I woke from a dream this morning.

In it, my wife and I were flying somewhere, and I had forgotten something. I left the secured area at our connecting airport, rented a car, and drove to where I knew I could get it--the town in which I grew up, which I reached in the dark and rain of a Friday evening. I drove by the county courthouse and saw preparations underway for an event I know goes on many months' last Saturdays, and I ended up parking the car and slogging ahead on foot. The event operators called out to me, and I ignored them, pressing on, until I saw sheriff's deputies arrive. Then I ran back to the car I had rented, which the event operators were having the deputies search; I made to intervene and was grabbed by a stereotypical caricature of a cop--in uniform with mirrored sunglasses and a moustache modeled after those of Tom Selleck and Sam Elliott. Then I woke--three minutes before my alarm was set to go off.

I will not again belabor the point of the oddness of my recalling that I dream or what I dream. And I will not seek to explicate today's dream, at least not today. (I rather suspect that it indicates a boundedness to my life and perceptions that I am uncomfortable approaching.) What I will do instead is note that the dream and its oddity point up the intrusions of the absurd into perception. Were I to include such a passage as narration in the main text of a story rather than framing it as events dreamt, I would be derided (and rightly so) as throwing together words in random sequence, as imposing nonsense upon a story. I might be lauded for working to connect the disjunction of insanity to sanity, but only by few, and those quietly. (I might note, now that I think on it, that the geography of the dream does not correspond with the geography of the events; I was not flying through either of the airports that can be reached easily from my childhood home.) It violates rules of sense and customs of narration that have grown up for centuries, and while adherence to tradition is not itself necessarily a promise of quality, it does lend itself to attracting the attention necessary to prove quality.

It is the kind of thing I have been having to discuss with students in my literature class: what makes literature good? Mostly, I have been fighting against the student tendency towards surface-level relativism, the conceit that "Literature is what you make of it" used as a way to excuse a failure to engage with text on its terms and wrestle meaning from it. There is some truth in the base assertion, of course; as art, literature will work variously on various people. But that does not mean that it is not to be examined--and that does not mean that the examinations which yield less-than-optimal results should be ignored. Nor does it mean that the matter is closed...

20141102.0912

She was a good dog.

That is all.

20141101.0743

I normally do not do this. I normally post a piece of some 500 words. This ought to count for two, then.

Ms. 8 in an entirely appropriate costume ought to be enough.

20141031.0727

Insert typical Halloween message here.

One of the things that has come along with fatherhood is a reconsideration of how the holidays can work and ought to work. (It is something I have mentioned before.) Since today is a holiday, and it is one I mark, I find myself considering those things once again.

Ms. 8 has a costume; she will, fittingly enough, dress as an octopus. Her step-grandmother and mother made the costume for her, and I have seen her in it (but not yet today); she is remarkably cute, and I do not normally register cute or see it as a good thing. For my daughter, though...

Aside from that, though, I am not thinking any new thoughts. I am rehashing ideas I have already had, and I am not finding in them any more comfort than I did before. I am finding no resolution in them. I can, though, take some comfort in the idea that I am at least not appropriating other cultures in my daughter's costumery (and I will not be costuming myself; I am a bit old and curmudgeonly for such things anymore, and Ms. 8 will not know whether I do or not). While I may be participating in appropriation by engaging even as much as I am (although the argument could be made that I am a participant in the successor cultures to those being appropriated, which would mitigate the error of appropriation), I am at least not making mock of the more overtly and directly oppressed in doing so; if I err, the error is less than it could be. It may not be a thing to celebrate, but there is at least less mourning to attend upon it.

In other news, today was payday, which means that today was also bill-pay day. The pain of the latter cancels out the joy of the former, as it happens. I am caught up on expenses for the month, though; I get to have a car and a house, at least until December begins, and the lights will stay on a little longer. The increasingly autumnal weather, though, will be driving up utility costs soon, however much my wife and I weatherize Sherwood Cottage. (We have a better idea of how to do it this year than last, however, and thankfully.) More work will be in order, I think--if I can find it. (More freelancing will start tomorrow, which will help in the short term, but freelancing is not a thing on which I can depend, even if I have increasingly been doing so.)

Work on finding work and on The Work continues. I sent out applications yesterday and am poised to do another couple today (if I do not get bogged down in other things), and I posted a piece to Travels in Genre and Medievalism yesterday, too. It is a hopeful sign, I think, a reminder that I am still able to do the things I am called to do. If I could find a way to make a bit better a living off of them, though, I would not be averse to it.

20141030.0730

Things continue to return to whatever degree of normalcy they have at Sherwood Cottage. My lovely wife took care of much of the laundry that had accrued around our trip to the Texas Hill Country; while we were able to wash clothes there, we wore clothes during and after doing so, and Ms. 8 goes through her wardrobe rapidly. Too, the linens needed changing. I am slowly getting caught up on the grading that grew up in my absence and since my return, although it continues to swell up, as well; I have one set of exercises to assess from last week, then reports from three classes, a paper from the fourth, and on Monday, I will have papers coming in from the other three again. So I continue to be busy, as I think I have noted on occasion before.

The search for a more permanent position continues, as well. I think I have noted once or twice that, while my current job is not a bad one, it is bounded, and because it is bounded (although re-hiring seems to happen a fair bit), I cannot rest assured of its continuation. I am thus obliged to seek out positions that do offer me something like that assurance, jobs that are not strictly limited by term and which I can therefore expect to continue in for many years so long as I do a decent job or better at them. It is not too much to ask, I think, that after twelve years in college and approaching sixteen in the normal labor force that I would want to find a job to do that I can remain at and do for some time; it is not as if I am asking for a handout, after all.

I am familiar with the litany of responses. "Start your own business," for one, despite the fact that most new businesses fail, and fail spectacularly, in short order (and I cannot risk Ms. 8 for my failure), and despite the fact that I do not have 1) the capital to handle the startup costs involved in starting up a business, 2) the skillset to actually manage business affairs, and 3) enough understanding of people and their needs and desires to find something that I am equipped to do that they want to have done. "Start at the bottom and work your way up" is another, despite the fact that there is almost no possibility of promotion from "the bottom" (when has a fry-cook or a janitor become a fast-food CEO--or even middle management?) and despite the fact that I have already been at the bottom so that a return would be a downward step (if not, perhaps, a large one)--and, again, I am not willing to risk Ms. 8 on such a thing. "You're better off than many" is yet another, and it is true, but does that mean that I ought not to look for more and better? Ought I to be content with the way things are because others are not so fortunate as I have been?

Ought any of us?

20141029.0713

A year ago, I was musing on the weather at Sherwood Cottage. It seems appropriate to return to the subject now, for it is far more fall-like today than it was then. Then, it was in the 60s and rainy; now, it is in the upper 30s and clear. It may make it into the mid 70s--and it probably will--but that is a far cry from even a couple of days ago, when the temperature was far higher; it seemed that summer relinquished its hold upon this place where cowboys came home to defeat only reluctantly this time around. (If it has indeed let go; it may yet reach out again.) But today seems another day to stay inside and write.

I will not be so fortunate as to focus upon doing so today. Work continues, as it ever does, and the work that pays the bills preempts The Work that does as much as anything short of Ms. 8 to fulfill me; I have my classes to teach today. I already know what lessons I mean to offer, and I know that there will be others presented which I do not intend, for there always are. Still, I would rather plug away at the projects I have taken on than upon marking papers for return (of which I have sets from last week and from this, with another coming in today; I shall at least not want for things to occupy my time). Yet I cannot, not in good conscience. The bills must be paid.

With the end of this month and the beginning of the next approaching, I am considering upcoming events. I have every intention of voting on Tuesday, and I made sure my voter registration was in place so that I can do so. (The card is sitting on my desk even now.) I will not repeat last year's adventure, though; that is not going to happen, as I noted. And I will almost certainly not be doing National Novel Writing Month...again. There are too many other things going on for me to take on another project at the moment, even if it is one in which I am interested. (Someday, dammit.) But I will be working on other things...somehow.

For now, though, those "other things" are the work I do on behalf of my classes and my students. Many are ungrateful, looking askance on my efforts even though they have asked me to conduct them (college is voluntary, and in this part of the world, better-paying work is available than most of what college prepares students to face--if at the potential cost of having arms ripped off by juggernauts of machines). But there are a few who appear to give a damn, who seem actually to have some understanding of what goes into putting things together for them; I have to believe that they are worth the time and energy expended on their behalf. The alternative, of course, is not to be borne.

20141028.0716

I am, by training, a specialist in English literature, particularly the literature of the late medieval period (say, 1300-1485 CE). When I contribute to human knowledge and understanding, I do so in that area, typically by looking at how what was written then is read and rewritten now. Yet when I am in the classroom, I am typically not positioned to be able to work with that material; more often than not, I am teaching writing. I have a fair bit of applied knowledge in that regard, certainly, having written much and read far more, but I do not have the kind of theoretical framework I really *ought* to have to do as well with that work as I feel I ought to do. (I read extensively to correct for that, but there is something to be found in formal instruction that I cannot pick up from my independent studies, a sense of security in the knowledge and practice that I have when talking about Arthur but not so much about ways to put words onto pages.)

In recent terms, I have taught a fair bit of technical writing, and it looks very much like I will be doing more of it in the upcoming term. The work is not difficult, really; I teach in a fairly rigorously structured program, and I have enough experience in it to allow me to do passably well in most cases. (It also helps me with my freelance work, and my freelance work helps with it.) And I am able to learn a great many things from the work my students do, which I appreciate. (I have noted something like this, I think.) Even so, it is not what I thought I would be teaching with degrees focused in literature, and it would seem to be a far cry, indeed, from the writings of the late medieval period (except for the occasional combat manual or discussion of tactics, which occasionally come up in my classes as examples for examination). As such, I feel something of a disjunction between what I ought to do and what I ought to do, if that makes any sense.

I have the hope that my broader teaching experience will help me land one of the teaching-heavy positions that is advertised; there are a fair number, and some of them are even full-time continuing spots greatly to be desired. Alternately, I hold out the hope that I may be able to parlay the experience of teaching technical writing into finding work as a technical writer, for I am aware that I may not be able to make a life in academia. I may need to find work elsewhere, and the years I have spent in the classroom may vitiate against my landing a "real" job--unless I can make the argument that between my work in technical writing (in the classroom and in freelancing) and other writing, I have a set of skills that is worth paying for and a body of experience that suits me to jobs in civil service or the private sector. But Shaw's adage is widely held to be true, and the fight against it is not at all an easy one to conduct, despite all efforts...

20141027.0718

A thought has nagged at me for some time.

There is an association of writers and writerly activities such as the study and teaching of language and literature with cat ownership--if "ownership" is the right term to use with pets, generally, and cats in particular. I suffer from it ("suffer" because of the, ahem, "commentaries" they leave). So do many others who write or who are engaged with writing. And I have to wonder why it is so. For cats are notoriously independent and all too uncaring, doing such things as knocking over plates or eating underwear (as happens to one colleague), or pissing on carpets or books (the last particularly grievous to those who, like me, study writing). They do not come when called, they act dismissively in many cases (the three with which I live are somewhat exceptional, as visitors have noted). In short, they treat the writer and scholar as the rest of the world tends to treat the writer and scholar--and the writer and scholar complains of how the rest of the world acts.

Why, then, the association with cats?

I admit that the idea is not terribly well-formed in my mind. Part of me wants to put together a paper, which may or may not be serious, on the depiction of cats in association with writers and scholars; I am sure that there is material to consider. Pangur Bán is one example, certainly, and there are doubtlessly others to examine. That part of me, though, may merely be my scholarly bent coming to the fore; always, I want to do the work of putting together a paper, even though I have many others to which I need to attend already and insufficient time to attend to them all. It makes me something of a caricature of a scholar that with each encounter I think first of "How can I make that a paper?" rather than some other kind of engagement that many would suggest is more fulfilling than the purportedly distant and abstract, rarefied and perhaps reified treatment offered by an academic paper of whatever length. And they may well be right who would say such things.

The point is getting lost.

Perhaps it is the kind of topic that I could suggest to those students in my literature classes who search for topics on which to write, the treatment of cats in association with scholarship. Such a tactic is one I have seen deployed in classes I have taken; one of my own professors flatly admitted to me that he uses one assignment he gives his graduate students as a way to stay current in the scholarship in his field. It is something I do with my own students, albeit with less success, undergraduates being what they are. Still, if I want to tease out what is going on in anything that resembles a prevailing association of writers/scholars and cats, it is a thing I ought to consider. For if and when I see sufficient to support the idea that there *is* an association in popular culture, then I can work to plumb what it means that the association is present. It will help me to understand better, even if I never do write the paper that suggests itself...