20160331.0645

Yesterday, the student newspaper at the university where I currently teach published articles detailing the effects looming state budget cuts will have on staffing; the article appears here. I have noted that my visit to the institution is soon to end, so the effects will not apply to me, but a number of people whom I value will remain in place, or they will seek to do so, and they are likely to be affected by the coming changes; they remain of interest to me therefore. And I, perhaps overly affectively, read myself in the words the student paper has printed, given some of the specific statements made.

The paper notes that, for the English department (wherein I currently teach), a "two percent reduction plan could save at least $40,000 by cutting one temporary faculty position." I occupy such a position, making such a salary, and I have been told that mine will no longer be available to me. While other factors were cited to me as informing the decision to end my visit, I cannot escape the sensation that I am the first in a series of sacrifices, my blood the first spilled upon an altar where others will be offered up to sate the hunger of a lustful god. I have to wonder who will be pressed down into the red stain I will leave behind, since more cuts loom; the paper notes that "A five or eight percent cut [both of which have been proposed, given circumstances] could result in the loss of three or five temporary faculty positions respectively, which would save the department between $120 - $200 thousand [sic]." I will not be the only one to go, I think, and I know that many of my colleagues depend upon their positions, as I do but will not be able to do for long, to pay back the debts incurred in pursuing their educations and trying to make themselves good and useful members of society, as well as to feed and clothe their children. I know that many of them are at least as qualified to do their work as I am to do mine, holding terminal degrees and producing research and creative work of high quality while teaching in one term as many students as some higher-ranking faculty do in a year. And the classes that we teach are those most common to the college experience--indeed, some of the defining aspects of the college experience, underpinning the work students do later and perhaps being among the parts of their formal education upon which they look with joy and appreciation in the years to come.

There is, of course, a plan to address the staffing issues that such cuts would cause. The paper quotes the department's head as saying that some classes would see their sizes increase, while others would be consolidated into fewer sections (having much the same effect). Yet others would begin to be staffed by teaching assistants, which introduces some concerns. (I say this having taught as a teaching assistant--but I did so having already had teaching experience, which many of those who become teaching assistants do not when they begin their work. They are intelligent people, to be sure, but they are in large part less experienced than they might be and than they really ought to be to be assigned classes of their own.) The classes that they would be able to teach, by convention and by accreditation requirements, are those directed towards the least-experienced and least-prepared students, those who need the most oversight and attention of their own. Comments from other departments than English comment on the increased demands that would be placed upon assistants moved to the fronts of classrooms while taking full loads of their own. Even in mathematics, where there is often a definitive right answer and appropriate algorithm to apply, the assessment and instructional burden becomes onerous quickly, to the detriment of instruction; it will be far worse in the humanities, including English, where matters are much more provisional and much more fluid, and in which the explication of interpretation and understanding is the thing that must be reviewed. It already takes longer to assess a paper than a proof; it already takes far more effort. Demanding yet more of those who, less prepared to handle the burden, are asked to shoulder it will not work to the benefit of those most in need. The students, then, will be added to the sacrifices demanded by the lustful god; they will be left living, to be sure, but what kind of life they will be able to have is an open question.

I note that there has been no report of talk about reducing administrative bloat. There has been no talk of trimming athletics personnel. Hell, the school recently hired another coach (one whose previous-position salary, per USA Today (here), was more than $350,000--which would pay for, oh, close to nine of my positions--and I doubt that he has taken much of a pay cut, if any, to relocate). There has been no report of talk that anything other than instruction is to be cut. It should be clear, then, where the institution's focus lies--and it is not on ensuring that the classroom, the beating heart of the school, remains healthy. Instead, it is cut deeply and left to stain the altars of knowledge, consecrating them to the lustful god that is the root of all evil--and it is ultimately the children of this place that will suffer for it.

20160330.0601

I may have mentioned that the Mrs. and I are packing in anticipation of departing from Sherwood Cottage. As was the case some three years ago, my employment status is changing, but I do not expect the kind of reversal I had at that point to happen to me again here; I am not nearly so well protected in the workplace as I was, among others. I do, however, find myself once again in mind of what home means; I reflected on it to some extent in the lead-up to moving out of The City, and it seems to matter again as I make ready to move with my family once again--and although we know where we are going, at least in the short term after my visit here ends, the longer term is far less clear. (The ultimate end, of course, is certain, but leading off the day with the reaffirmation that we're all going to die seems a bit dark, even for my often dour persona.)

In earlier reflections on home, I noted the idea that home is, for me, a place where my interiority begins to be externalized. That is, the home reflects the inner selves of those who dwell in it. The more such indwellers there are, of course, the more mixture of reflections that occurs in the home--but living together tends to result in people influencing one another's inner selves to no small degree. The examples my wife, my daughter, and I provide attest thereto, if only anecdotally. I was changed greatly by the love the Mrs. and I share, and I continue to be changed by it; I believe she was and is, as well. Ms. 8 emerges from that love and from the common experience of her parents, as well as our genetic legacies (both the overt and the cultural, since there seems to be some indication of inherited memories, after a fashion). Both my wife and I continue to adjust to the ways in which Ms. 8 grows and develops, and she grows and develops at least partly in response to the circumstances the Mrs. and I create for her. Each of us alters who the others are, and Sherwood Cottage has reflected that reciprocal influence, as has emerged during the process of packing things up.

Just how much it had done so becomes clearer with every box packed and stacked and made ready to load for a long drive away. Each one limits my ability to do things at the house; in a way, each packed box limits my ability to express and enact who and what I am, effectively limiting who and what I am. That it does so suggests how much of myself I have allowed to seep out of me and into the place--and I had not meant to allow it to happen. I had thought that the visit soon to end would not have lasted as long as it has, that I would find some more stable situation in short order and move on with my family years before now. I was wrong, of course, and I still do not have a stable situation set up (despite my work to that end). I have grown into this place, and leaving it as I will is far from a comfortable process because of it.

20160329.0739

There is always more to do and little time to do it,
So it's tempting to go through bellowing, "Oh, screw it!"
Crying out against the work never does much good;
It makes the crier look the jerk, avoiding that which should
Be done to better serve the world, to lift the lot of others,
Yelling, if not lying curled abed, as is the druthers
Of many. Who can blame them, though, who seek to stay in dream?
In sleep is comfort found, we know, and in the sleep we seem
To leave the world confronting us and other worlds to find.
But still the work-need faces us and to our tasks us binds.

20160328.0623

I have stood at the Center of the Universe
A cloud of carbon steel degrading overlooking
As my voice reverberated
Oddly

I have seen the attempt to reconcile
Where a green wood was burned down
And many died from the flames
Not only of that burning

There
I walked a healing way
And I am not sure it did me any good
But I still worry
That to walk it backwards
Would have a deleterious effect
Particularly if it is efficacious
Moving forward

Throughout
I listened
As I was able
To a story being told
And I would like to read the memoir
If it is ever written

20160327.0923

404.
File not found.

This is not the text you're looking for.
You can go about your business.
Move along.

As one textbook puts it:
Perhaps I should be alone now.
Or
Get the fuck outta here.

Seriously,
The book so says.
It makes more sense in context.
Everything does.

20160326.0731

Work continues, of course. As noted yesterday, my father-in-law and stepmother-in-law are here at Sherwood Cottage to help with the preparations for the Mrs. and I to end our sojourn on the wind-swept plains. They managed to get quite a bit done while I was not looking, which I suppose comes off as some kind of example of unearned privilege but which I am certain was offered simply as an expression of familial love. Once I got home from the regular job, I did my part, tending further to the books that we had had secreted away. Many of them will be donated off; they will do somebody some good somewhere and somewhen, but we will not be carrying them with us anymore. We have enough other things to take with us when we leave, and if I have not even thought about books read idly years ago, I do not need to have them in hand. Perhaps in that theoretical day far off when I have a library, I shall return to such things, but this is not that time.

Packing away box after box after box after box of books reminds me of arguments in favor of electronic texts. To be sure, I make use of such things; the freelance work of writing up treatments of novels (currently in abeyance, which is not wholly to my pleasure, but there is little I can do to pull in orders when they are not being offered) has relied largely upon electronic books, and I do keep a few volumes wholly for my own interest on an e-reader my wife got for me as a present some years back. Packing boxes of books to move once again confirms for me the convenience of the e-book, that I can more easily carry it about and read it at my leisure, and that I can adjust many paratextual features easily so that I have an easier time of the reading. (I tend to prefer a darker background and lighter text on a screen. I suppose I show my age in that; "computing" still reads as something that "should" be colored text on black, and in a simpler font, to boot.)

I am not opposed to e-books in principle. I do not find them as amenable to my purposes as printed texts, however. There is the aesthetic component, of course; there is something pleasant about having walls lined with books, and there is a certain impression created by having them. I also still page through printed books more quickly than I do electronic documents, turning faster than I can scroll. It is easier for me to scan for things when I do not recall my search terms exactly--which happens more commonly than I care to have. And marginalia show up better in penciled or inked comments in the namesake margins and between lines than in highlights that hide and demand precise pressures blunt and insensate fingers cannot always provide. Thinking on such things reminds me of why I get to pack and move boxes as work continues. If nothing else, though, I can use the exercise, and we have enough weight to move around in print...

20160325.0614

I ask again, "Where were you when the Dark Tower fell and the Ring-Bearers were praised with great praise?" Where were you when the world changed and a new Age began?

Wherever I was then, I find myself now in Sherwood Cottage, where my father-in-law and stepmother-in-law (it's complicated) have come to help us with a few things. My (extended) visit to this place where cowboys stand as the wind comes sweeping down the plain is soon to end, and while the Mrs. and I have been packing for the return trip--although whither we shall "return" is not entirely certain--there are some other things that will not be packed. In wind and water, the weather has made of some of our sundry supplies a mess, and that mess must be cleaned. Doing so takes equipment that I do not have--but my father-in-law does, hence the trip over. That, and Ms. 8, who is the focus of more visits...

Indeed, when my father-in-law and stepmother-in-law arrived yesterday evening, Ms. 8 ran to greet them, exclaiming her names for them in her clear toddler voice, a smile stretching her face. It was good to see, not only for them. (I would be jealous, save that I know she calls after me when I leave the house while she is awake--she is often still asleep when I head off to work--and she is as delighted to see me return, running to me and exclaiming her name for me with a smile stretching her face and her arms stretching to embrace me, although they do not reach as far around as they someday will.) It did take a while to get her to go to sleep, given the excitement of the arrival, but she was smiling and happy, youthfully ebullient, and so longer hours are well worth giving to her; we benefit from the happiness dynamo that is my daughter. (I do still wonder where it comes from with her; she certainly did not inherit it from her father.)

Although family is here, and it is here to help, work continues. Three of the four classes I teach meet today; they have one assignment due and another to distribute. The latter is one of the odd quirks of my classroom practice, something I tend to use to pilot new ideas for later deployment; this semester, it is instead being put to the service of institutional research and my personal development. But the question students will answer for it is one suggested by one of their peers and voted on by the classes; a plurality of students chose the prompt I will be putting to them. It should be an easy and entertaining thing for them, although I imagine that there will be complaints. There always are, even when I do the thing they have explicitly asked that I do. (Being contingent faculty, I have been motivated to...accommodate them. It has not worked as well as could be hoped, and in ways other than I rail against.) Handling the frustration that results therefrom is made easier by family, but I could stand to be praised with great praise now and again...

20160324.0703

They ask
To be told
What is expected of them

I tell them
I lay out
In detail
What they are supposed to have

They complain
Too many words
Too-hard words
Too-hard tasks
And boring

What I want to say:
Get out.
I gave what you asked
And you complain of it
So
Get out.
There is nothing for you here.
This is a place of learning
And you
Clearly
Do
Not
Want
To
Learn.
Get out.
I have other students
Students who
Do
Want to learn
And they deserve the attention
You do not care to have
But seem to want to keep from others

And those of you
Who act thus
While professing
A desire to teach
You
Specifically
You
Are part of the fucking problem
It is people like you
Who make easy the arguments
Against teachers
I want to know where you
"Teach"
So that I never send my daughter there

What I say:
You asked to be told.
I told you.
It takes many words
And if you do not understand them
Why do you not ask
Me
Or look them up?
And if the task is hard
That is all the more opportunity for you
To get better
If there is no challenge
There is no reason to improve
And do you really think
You do as well
As you need to
Already?
You can get better
We all need to
And it is not always easy
Or entertaining
And whoever told you it would be
Lied

Practice is boring
Yes
But what practice permits
Is not

Now, your assignment is this...

20160323.0617

Work continues, as ever it must. Although freelance work seems to have dried up for the time being--I have gotten no new write-up orders, and my tutee, citing ongoing research dilemmas, has suspended lessons indefinitely--I remain occupied with a great many things. I continue to develop materials for my classes, which are approaching their final exercises; there are only a few things left to ask the students to do. Additionally, I have a fair bit of grading coming in today; three of my four classes have an update to an older assignment due, while the fourth has a review version of an upcoming assignment due. The latter will be assessed before the former, as it is more urgent. And there is a larger assignment coming in on Friday. As such, I will be quite busy over the next few days; it is likely to my benefit in the short term that I have not got freelance work waiting for me to do at the moment. I will still miss the money, however.

As work continues, so does my ongoing battle against nostalgia. I find myself looking back on things and inserting iterations of l'espirit d'escalier into my memory, making myself seem better in recollection than I was in real life. It is a dangerous thing, partly because any emendation to the recollection of events moves (further) away from the truth (and I write "further" because what we remember is not the same thing as what actually happened, given the limits of our perceptive and mnemonic abilities as well as the biases that inform and proceed from both), and partly because the (inadvertent?) misrepresentation, I come to prize more highly--and inaccurately--things that were not of use at the time. (This is not the same as realizing later that something annoying was actually helpful. The problem is that I think it happy when it was not, which is wholly separate from whether or not it was good for me.) It does much to make me long for a time that never was, and while I indulge readily in escapism, I do not think it helps me to escape to imagine what was a prison as something other than one; retreating to an earlier cell is still retreating to a cell, rather than being freedom or release.

That I am stretching a metaphor, I know. I often do. Sometimes, as I have noted, I do so to amuse myself. Sometimes, I do it to force a different kind of consideration than I might otherwise permit. The latter is more the case than the former above. I do well to recall the past, that I might learn therefrom; as a medievalist even yet, I have much to do with what has gone before. But there is a difference between learning from the past and returning to it. My personal past is not the kind of thing I want to have happen again; I am in some senses lucky to have gotten out of it as well as I did. The work to keep myself out of it, no less than the work that pays the bills, continues.

20160322.0717

It was a good enough day

Yes
I went back to work
And no
I did not want to
But
On the way to the office
Walking
I found twenty dollars
Lying on the side of the road
Not in front of someone's house

I took it as a good sign
And because I need the money

The rest of it went as expected
So there is not much about which to comment
But finding that twenty dollars made some difference
Not to the overall situation
Which will take
Far
More
Than
Twenty
Dollars
To fix
But to the day's approach

It was a far better attitude adjustment
Than others I could name