20190617.0430

I have posted to this webspace on five previous years of 17 June: 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2018. The first of them, the 2013 piece that looks at Dave Neal's 17 June 2013 Inquirer piece "Tweet Hits the Oxford English Dictionary," seems particularly relevant at the moment. Neal's piece reports on the introduction of Tweet and several other words to the OED and the unusually early inclusion of Tweet. My response proceeds, if I recall correctly, from comments made by some people I knew in Stillwater, though it could be a response to others of more literary bent just as easily. And it is not a stance on which I have much softened in six years and across my overall departure from academe, if I have softened at all.
Language changes. New words come into being. Old words are repurposed. Some uses fall away. It is a natural thing as much as the succession of generations, and it is of no more or less moral import than that same succession. And while it is the case that people complain about "kids these days and their newfangled" whatever, it is also the case that people complain about the lingering of the old and their ossified expectations of how things should be. There are problems to both complaints, just as there are problems in the protestations that language should not change, that there was some point at which it was "right," and that all users since have somehow screwed things up.
There are several things I found and still find particularly irksome in such discussions. In many cases, the people making the comments are those whose own usage does not conform to the standards they imagine as in force when the language was "right," and while it is a fallacy to disregard the pot's words about the kettle's color, annoyance knows no logic--and to have people who demonstrate or confess that they do not know make pronouncements as if they do know provokes annoyance in abundance. And it is unfortunately common.
In some cases, some of the people I know who know that language changes, who indeed study the ways in which languages change, make such complaints, that language is being somehow degraded. Yet they do not conduct their business in the older languages that they claim are "better," or even in older forms of modern languages. They do not affect the patterns of decades past, or of centuries. Again, pot-and-kettle annoyance arises, compounded by knowing that they know better--and believing that they ought to act on that knowledge. Somebody damned well needs to.

20190428.0430

One more article that LinkedIN recommended for me was Randi Zuckerbert's 20 April 2019 "Celebrating 420 Is Not Equal for All." The short piece notes socioeconomic impacts of recent legalizations of marijuana in the United States before pivoting to the racial and ethnic biases that appear to underlie the benefits which currently accrue from the legalizations. Zuckerberg reminds readers that there are still people suffering from draconian laws that have been overturned, even as people markedly unlike them benefit from the changes to those laws.
Zuckerberg is, of course, entirely correct in noting the racial disparities in benefits from and incarcerations due to marijuana use, possession, and sales. They are and remain present, as do disparities in popular perception; too often, white folks who indulge in marijuana are regarded positively or benignly, while persons of color who do so are regarded as already-hardened criminals. And it is shameful that those elected to positions of power who currently have the authority to pardon or commute, and who do exercise those powers in cases where justice has been miscarried--and enforcing bad laws is such a miscarriage--do not do more to release those incarcerated who are guilty of things no longer illegal.
I have noted (here and here, for example) that I am in favor of legalization of marijuana. The economic benefits to the states that have done so are clear, and I am not aware of any increase in crime that offsets those gains to any substantial degree. I am certain that if there were, it would be trumpeted to the heavens by those whose interests are in forcing others into ways of life that arise from some source they do not even know, but have internalized uncritically such that they cannot conceive of alternatives except as being "unnatural." But I hear no such fanfares being played, and even my ears are not so bad as to miss such brassy braying as that; I can only conclude that the apocalyptic ends that many have said legalization would bring about are not occurring.
But for many, as Zuckerberg rightly points out, bad ends have already come about and are ongoing. She is right to remind us that things remain skewed, that many still suffer where others now take delight, and that the burden of that suffering is lopsided in strange ways that reflect poorly upon the nation where it is borne. There is still work to do--and every day demands some efforts upon it.

20190425.0430

Another of the many pieces LinkedIn has recommended to me is DeVry University's re-release of John Hanc's "Building a Career, One Academic Step at a Time." (I suppose I should note here that I am, as of this writing, contingent faculty at DeVry.) The piece describes "stackable credentials" as an interlocking system of two-year, four-year, and graduate degrees and of various certifications and continuing education units. Hanc focuses on extolling articulation agreements--that is, agreements that allow straight-across transfers of course credits--between community colleges and senior colleges and universities. A couple of student examples bracket the article, and a number of educational administrators are quoted as being in support of the idea, as well, helping the article to make its case.
There are some solid, salient points in the piece. Community colleges can offer students who have previously been academically underserved or who have been away from formal education for some time to re/acclimate themselves to general academic environments. They are also usually substantially less expensive than senior colleges and universities (though this is often at the price of having fewer facilities and less access to research apparatus), making them more accessible to socioeconomically disadvantaged populations. And it is the case that baccalaureate and higher education is not the best fit for many people--and no shame should accrue to that, although it does in too many cases.
At the same time, there are some issues with the piece. Perhaps the most glaring is that it appears to call for an extension of credentialing-mania; part of the problem that attaches itself to higher education in the United States at present is that it is seen as providing necessary credentials instead of a broader education. (I am aware of how fraught the term is. The discussion goes on in many places, carried out by people far more eloquent than I; it can be found easily.) Incorporating more sites of education more explicitly into such systems is likely to have the same effect on them as it has on prevailing educational standards, prompting the same kinds of things currently decried. And it will also likely drive up what are currently more manageable costs, so that access to educational opportunities currently in place will become more restricted yet.
There are other issues, as well. For one, part of the value in staying with an institution across a longer term is the opportunity for continuity. Even for non-traditional students, there is value in seeing familiar faces week to week and session to session. The longer engagement allows for the development of relationships that can help students transition out of the classroom successfully. Fragmenting curricula through "stackable credentials" disrupts that, serving to isolate students-turned-workers further from one another, and individuals are not as able to align for common goals and good as are already-existing groups. And, for another, the move to fragment curricula reads as another avenue of attack on humanistic study. While "writing" instruction--narrowly tailored to workplace genres such as resumes and HR reports--will doubtlessly remain in place, the broader liberal arts will likely fall away even more than they already are.
I do not need to speak here to the threat such poses.

20190424.0430

I read yet another piece LinkedIn recommended for me: Michelle Gibbings's 14 April 2019 "The Upside of Bad Days." The piece is a fairly shallow rehash of traditional advice: shit happens, and you can either complain or do something about it.
A couple of points come to mind to discuss in relation to the article. It is important, certainly, to move ahead with things when possible, despite the events of a day going bad (though what Gibbings calls "going bad" and what I might call it differ; missing a meeting or losing a document is an annoyance, while having a house flood or having to take a sick child to the hospital on her birthday because she has pneumonia is a bad day). Wallowing in the annoyance does not help, and it does, as Gibbings usefully notes (in one of the few instances of her doing so in the article), tend to drag others down. Even amid it, things need doing, and not getting them done will only serve to make things worse than they already are, to increase the annoyance or make for a really bad day, after all.
More important, to my mind, is a tendency of which Gibbings seems representative. I've sat through a number of motivational talks, and I've read a number of pieces by motivational speakers. Every one of them has seemed insipid to me--and, worse, convinced of its own profundity. I know that the presentations have to believe their own hype; it's simple marketing, and they are in the business of selling themselves and their "services," as I probably ought to be. And I know I am not likely among the intended primary audiences for such things (which bespeaks yet another area in which social media platforms' algorithms need refinement); I do not think such presentations are actually looking at people who have read as I have read and who have had the time to sit and think about that reading--and how it reflects and fails to reflect those parts of life that can be observed from a good spot for reading--as I have had. So it should not be a surprise that they do not much register with me, that they come across as more annoyance, if not outright insult, than inspiration.
Then again, I do find myself writing about such things. I am using them as springboards for my own productivity, insofar as I can call the effort spent putting words into this webspace productive. So perhaps I am not so immune to them as I might like to think myself...

20190423.0430

To continue on with articles LinkedIN recommends for me, I read Robert Glazer's 15 April 2019 piece "What I Learned about Potential from a Day Spent in Prison." The article reflects on Glazer having spent time volunteering at a maximum-security prison and drawing lessons from it, notably the relative normalcy of those incarcerated and the systemic failure to decrease and rehabilitate prison populations. Glazer pivots at the end of the piece to the thought that, if those in some of the most deliberately repressive circumstances can work for meaningful change in themselves, those not in such situations can do much more.
There are problems with the piece, of course. The misery-tourism aspect of the thing attracts attention and grates; it moves towards a white-savior mentality that was a bad idea when it arose and which should be long discarded from its longer history of use as means of abuse and abnegation. That it only moves towards and does not overtly adopt such a mentality is occasioned by the lack of notice paid to the tendency of prison populations to be overwhelmingly people of color; while some concerns of demography are noted, those that work so strongly on populations that become incarcerated are omitted from the piece entirely, which is something else that writers now had damned well ought to know better than to do.
That said, the article does do well to point some things out. For all that carceral research holds that prison populations have long been fluid, people in the United States tend to think of inmates and former inmates as a people apart, rather than as simply another part of the body politic to which any might belong. Glazer seems to work to reassert that the people in prison are people, having the same potential (which can be read as a gloss on "inherent dignity") as any others. Glazer does attract attention to the socioeconomic bias in the criminal justice system, pointing out that one of the major differences between his own demographic and those of the inmates is that he and those like him had access to more robust systems of legal support than those imprisoned; an inmate arrested at age eight is highlighted as a particularly prominent example of someone suffering due to a lack of such a support system. And Glazer also points out the systemic problems that exacerbate crime; harsh sentences do not serve their purported deterrent functions, but only to overcrowd prisons. (He does not address root causes of this, though, which is a weakness.)
At the end, while Glazer raises some good points, he does not seem to go far enough. If he is representative of the platform, it seems there is a damned lot more work to do. I can only shoulder so much of it, myself...

20190422.0430

Yet another piece LinkedIn presented to me is Bernard Marr's 14 April 2019 "How Robots, IoT, and Artificial Intelligence Are Changing How Humans Have Sex." In the article, Marr points out several avenues of current development in the further integration of technology into sex--internet-enabled sex toys, sexbots, and virtual-reality pornography--before moving into consideration of legal issues surrounding such advancement and policy questions that begin to move towards broader social questions. Marr stops short of offering any judgments on the matter, simply noting trends and current developments before noting that things are changing; how they will continue to change and what responses will be appropriate are not yet clear.
I confess to a certain degree of titillation in the piece; although sex sells and various forms of sex work are continually substantial parts of human endeavor and economies, they do not appear to be often discussed on such platforms as LinkedIN. There remains a large degree of prudishness about business in the United States--and US norms still exercise outsized influence on broader discourses--that prevents even such cursory and sober discussions of related issues as Marr's from popping up often. And because there is such a taboo in place, violations of it--even those as innocuous as Marr's article--attract attention, particularly from those so salacious as I am.
Something towards which Marr gestures, and which does need some consideration, is that the increasing integration of technology into sex will further decouple sex from intimacy. The two are certainly not identical--intimacy extends beyond sex, and sex beyond intimacy, in myriad ways--though there is a strong association between them, as well as cultural preferences for their conjoining. Further disassociating them from one another--and, again, making sex more a mechanistic thing is like to do that, if not certain--will have effects on the very nature of family, which is largely defined by consanguinity and privileged sexual relationships. Realigning such things will not be done without struggle--which is not a reason not to do them, but it is folly to deny that such struggles will occur, and that many will be resistant to making changes. Many of us define ourselves in some or large part through familial terms, even those of us who are in the purportedly fragmentary family structures ascribed to and almost necessitate by the demands of work in the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
Comments on the article suggest that quite a bit of work is needed. What should be discussion of the potential business and legal impacts such changes would make--which would be appropriate to the platform, despite the protestations of some that such content is unfitting--is instead too much judgment of others' sexual preferences. In this, as in much else, what an adult does in private, in his or her own home, with inanimate objects belonging to him or her, is nobody else's concern, and while expressing that such may not be to personal taste is one thing, trying to condemn it overall is quite another--and ultimately fruitless, as the fact that all laws are violated attests.

20190421.0430

Another article that LinkedIN recommended for me is Shradha Sharma's 14 April 2019 "In the Business World, Can Nice People Finish First?" In the article, Sharma frames the question of the title in terms of general observations of reported business attitudes before moving to address the question through two embedded video interviews and comments about them. The interviewees are used as case studies to assert that putative "nice people" can succeed in business; Sharma ends up asserting that a focus on what is good in a businessperson by that businessperson, rather than looking at what others do who succeed, results in not only business success, but also more authentic existence.
I do not know that my experience accords with what Sharma proposes. Too often, those who will take the time to aid others end up screwed over; yes, they may develop and enjoy a reputation for reliable honesty, but they also end up giving more of themselves than they end up taking in. And when they do say "no" in the interest of self-care, their reputations erode, leaving them without so much of a good name and not much of the money they had hoped to earn or otherwise acquire.
When the principle is to bring in money, that having money and increasing the amount of money had is good, that doing so faster is better, being nice does not suggest itself as a viable option. And two anecdotal attestations that another way is desirable do little to offset my own anecdote--or the ample attestation that those who act from greed succeed when the goal is bringing in more money.
This is not to say that I like to see it be that way. I have generally been one who gives, who helps, hence the lines of work I have been and am in now. And I appreciate the things I have and the people I have in my life because I have acted as I have. But that does not blind me to the fact that I spent a lot of money and lost out on bringing in more as I trained to do the work I had wanted to do to help others, and I am not blind to the fact that I will never make a lot of money doing the kind of non-profit work that I currently do. That I believe I have made the right decisions for the games I have been playing does not mean I am unaware that they are the wrong decisions for the games others play, nor yet that the other games attract far more prestige than those I do.
It is the case, to be sure, that I am not doing what I'm doing in the interest of fame. But that does not mean I'd be averse to being a bit better known--or a bit better remunerated. There are a number of things it would make easier, and I do not think the difficulties that might arise offset that greater ease.

20190414.0430

Another article that LinkedIN recommended I read is Adam Grant's 8 April 2019 "The Office without A**holes" (the asterisks are in the article; I have no scruple about such words). The piece is a transcript of a podcast that talks about assholes at work--who and what they are--and their negative effects on the workplace, as demonstrated by formal study. Grant also relates methods for diffusing the kind of jackassery described in the piece, including affording employees greater agency and developing company cultures that tolerate absence rather than obnoxious conduct from performing people. That does not mean that nobody should ever feel upset or offended, but there are differences between putting across hard-to-hear ideas and using them, or other interactions, as chances to vent institutional authority.
It should be obvious why I was attracted to the article at first. My writing, here and in other places, does not seldom revel in the opportunity to use words deemed impolite, as witness the papers on bullshit I've delivered at major conferences and the occasional entry into this webspace with the "NSFW" tag. In them, as in Grant's article, the juxtaposition of the "naughty" word with "professional" or "intellectual" spaces amuses--or so it is hoped. (Some folks never do get past themselves about it, and it is possible that I occasionally go a little further with my jokes than ought to happen.) And, indeed, I was reminded as I read of others' works on bullshit, namely James Fredal's 2011 College English piece, "Rhetoric and Bullshit," with which I've done much.
Such is not all I take from the article, however. As I reflect on it, I am perhaps most aware of how grateful I am that my workplace--small as it is--is generally free from assholery. There are, of course, bad days, as there will be with any group of people; even my family, whom I love, sometimes vexes me in such ways. All it takes is inattention to what is going on, really, and few or none of us can attend to every utterance with the care and concern needed to avoid being an asshole altogether. (It occurs to me, too, where the metaphor of calling people assholes fails. Yes, things unpleasant to the senses emerge from them, but without the expulsion, death would soon follow--and not a nice one.) But on the whole, things are good here. It's one of the many reasons I'm not looking forward to being on the job market again--and, again, I do not anticipate needing to be, but I'll not let myself be caught unprepared for it if I am.
I've been among assholes, I've worked for assholes, I've been an asshole. (Ask my students.) It is nice to be away from them, even for a little while. For still must I go out into the world...

20190410.0430

One of the articles LinkedIN has pointed out to me in recent days is Kate Bolick's 5 April 2019 "Everything That's Wrong about the Myth of the 'Dumb Hairdresser.'" In the article, Bolick explicates the trope of the title, the "Dumb Hairdresser," before arguing that it does not manifest as much in reality as might be thought. She states the initial argument after laying out the excellent job prospects for hair-cutters, citing US Bureau of Labor Statistics figures to note both the high job growth in the field and the reasonably decent wage range as she does so. Bolick then pivots to listing professional stereotypes before railing against that applied to stylists. Said railing takes the form of interrogating and dispensing with the patriarchal underpinnings of the stigma against hair-cutters--indeed, against most nurturing work--and examining, if briefly, the sociocultural circumstances that valorize collegiate study--and in STEM fields--above all else. She then focuses on anecdotes from LeMoine that accentuate the value of skilled tonsorial artisans, ending on a laudatory message well worth hearing.
As I read the article, I am put in mind once again of Mark Edmundson's piece that I have cited so many times in this webspace as I have. Even in the first instance of it, nearly nine years ago (and it is strange to think that I have been at this for so long), I find myself opposed to the proposition that the work of the hands is somehow of less dignity and nobility than that of the mind. And I think I feel that more deeply now that my work is less of the mind, even running to cutting hair daily, if not quite for the same reasons that LeMoine and the others Bolick discusses do. There is a great difference between working to make people feel better about the ways they look and clipping a few strands to see what chemicals have been present in the body that built them. Even in that work, though, I find myself working with the work of those who cut hair more normally, trying not to alter or interfere with the work they have done as I do mine. I know that many people's self-concept inheres in their appearance to a great degree, and I know that many of the people I see in my regular work already have enough struggles; I try not to add to them.
I also find myself considering Bolick's comments about the patriarchal overtones that have accrued to tonsorial work. For me--anymore; I know matters differed in my youth, given how much of an ass I was as a kid--getting a haircut is an experience of pampering and vulnerability. I get my ears lowered, as the saying is, and I get my beard trimmed--and I generally get a brief massage and a hot towel treatment, as well. In each, I make myself less able to see, and I put myself into the hands of another whom I do not necessarily know, hands which I know hold blades close to parts of me that would not interact well with them. I know that I am not alone in doing so. I also know that I am not alone in worrying about physical safety, and I have to wonder how many others prefer to have women cut their hair because they perceive women as less likely to enact violence upon them. I do not know if the idea changes anything or how much, but I think it has to be present in the minds of some. Unfortunate as that is...

20190405.0430

One of the articles recommended for reading in my LinkedIN feed as I sat down to write this is Seth Borenstein's AP article "No AI in Humor: R2-D2 Walks into a Bar, Doesn't Get the Joke." The central idea is that humor is one of the most human of qualities, and that it depends on context--which artificial intelligence in its current state fails to comprehend. A number of technologists are quoted about the matter, noting the limitations on artificial intelligence despite its rapid advancement. Some warnings about the possible emergence of humor among artificial intelligences are also voiced. In all, the article does a decent job of presenting the present state of affairs and offering reassurance that at least some fields of human endeavor are likely immune to takeover by thinking machines--for now.
Of particular interest to me is a comment related from Columbia University's Allison Bishop: "computer learning looks for patterns, but comedy thrives on things hovering close to a pattern and veering off just a bit to be funny and edgy." To my mind, the comment echoes the words of another person from Columbia U; I am reminded of Asimov's comments about humor. There is no shortage of ideas about what makes something funny; that voiced by Asimov in his Treasury of Humor requires that a pattern be established and subverted. That is, there has to be some kind of pattern set up so that it can be deviated from--with the deviation offering the potential for humor. The simple deviation is not enough, of course; experience tells that it has to take certain forms and adopt particular content based on multiple prevailing contexts. How many jokes fall flat with one audience, only to have another rolling on the floor?
I have too much experience with such things to be comfortable recounting it. I want to be funny, to have people laughing because I want them to do so, not because they find me an object of scorn. But I think I try too hard at it; I certainly overextend in many of my attempts at humor, making connections that go farther than can be comfortable traversed or inserting a joke into a situation that does not admit of it. And it is because I do not take enough stock of context, focusing on the putative joke to the exclusion of its surroundings--not that the joke is necessarily good enough to merit that focus. So I wonder if the issue is not as much in the artificial intelligence as in other kinds altogether, kinds that are not necessarily accessible even to the "natural" intellect of a great many people.
Even if it is not, I suppose I have to face the fact that I am not good at being funny, even if I do often elicit laughter, and even if I can recognize being funny when I see it. I suppose it's like writing good stories in that; I can find them, and I can make sense of them, but I generally do not do well trying to make them happen. Clearly not, or I'd've sold more of them than I have yet done...

20190303.0430

In the past, I have done a fair bit of summary and response in my online writing--not only in this webspace, but in others I have maintained and currently maintain. Sources have ranged across CCC, College English, Profession, the New York Times, the San Antonio Express-News, and others, some of which I no longer read with anything approaching regularity. And I have benefited from doing the reading and thinking about the reading that are needed to write summary-and-response pieces; I have had to keep more abreast of things to do so than I would otherwise be likely to do, and that has helped me to be more engaged with the world around me, even as it has annoyed me greatly at times (because the world is not as I would have it be, and for reasons I tend to think bad).
I am not doing that exercise this month, at least not consistently in this webspace, although I may well return to it. It is, after all, good for me. But thinking on it does lead me to think about the reading that I no longer do. I've let quite a bit of reading go along the way, which is something that is strange for me to consider despite the fact of my doing it. I have always prided myself on my ability to read both quickly and deeply, and I have long worked--successfully--to incorporate what I read into what I do. But much of what I used to do, I do no longer, or do so little of that it makes no sense for me to maintain the subscriptions that facilitated my reading. Thus, I have let go of a number of my professional journal subscriptions, and I am rarely in the kind of library that would let me get around that lack with any real skill.
Oddly, however, I feel that I am doing more useful work with my reading and writing now than I did when I was doing more such reading. What I note seems to be taken more seriously, and I feel I am writing that kind of writing with greater skill and nuance than was formerly the case. And it seems I am doing more writing, overall, whether in this webspace or in others, or in my personal journals, or for other projects entirely. It would seem that I was getting in my way with what I was doing to try to get my way; I no longer do as much of that, so I am not as much in my own way, and more gets done. It's a good thing, although it is still strange for me to think on.
I had thought that my identity would be as one thing, one particular thing that it has not been allowed to be. But after being pushed aside from that thing, I seem to be doing more to approach that thing than I had done before. It is a paradox, perhaps, but not one that I think I will work to puzzle out so much as to enjoy.

20181231.0430

On 26 December 2018, the editors of the San Antonio Express-News released "Never, Ever a Good Reason for Shutdown" in the online version of the newspaper. The article lays blame for the shutdown at the end of 2018 squarely at the feet of the occupant of the White House at the time, explicating why it does so. Congress seems able to reach an agreement on funding, and support for many administrative policies is waning against the increasing number of administration scandals and rapidity of personnel turnover at the highest levels, but a single sticking-point from the person who holds the veto pen keeps anything from moving forward. As it does, hundreds of thousands of federal employees are left scrambling for funds just as demands for them increase sharply. The piece closes with pointed remarks calling for the federal government to resume its operations and for the head of the administration to relent.
Unfortunately, said head is not likely to relent for reasons that are amply attested elsewhere, and in far clearer and more vociferous terms than I am ready to deploy. No, said head might be said to have its head embedded somewhere else, even up to the shoulders, and all such people are oblivious to reason and the sweet smell of anything other than their own colons. And the editors of the Express-News are in position to know that the rhythmic chants of "Build that wall" still ring out, drowning word of other perfidies in their cacophonous refrains, even in their own city, even among people whose families straddle a border that jumped them in days gone by, even among people who depend on the services provided by federal employees and who are those employees. Perhaps they seem less loud in the Alamo City proper than they do not far outside it because there are other voices braying out their own discordant tunes, but the rumblings that sound in the Texas Hill Country are in a different key altogether.
I am fortunate that my family has not been much affected by the 2018-end shutdown. Though my father is a federal employee, his agency had already been funded for some time. Though my mother works with the IRS, she does not work for them. And though I deal with Medicaid in the work that I do, and though the agency for which I work receives funds from federal departments, directly and vicariously, the flow of money into it has not abated. (I could wish for more, of course, but that's true in the best of times.) But I know that others are far less fortunate; they are far more reliant on income and access to resources that are now imperiled. Many of them will also continue to laud the administration's head, despite that person acting in ways that harm them. For the editors are correct; it is but one person who has held things up, so it is upon one person alone that blame rests--and should rest. Because that person is supposed to be in charge, and that person eagerly seeks credit for what goes well; blame for what goes badly accrues there, as well, or it damned well should.

20181230.0430

On 26 December 2018, Albert Baca's "Remove Marijuana from Schedule I Drug List" appeared in the online San Antonio Express-News. The article responds to an earlier opinion piece on the subject of marijuana's legal status. After noting a bit of the history of marijuana's criminalization, Baca focuses on the promise of medical marijuana and notes that some relaxation of overly strict criminal codes must occur if useful research into that promise is to be conducted. Given the recent passage of the First Step Act, Baca notes, now would be a good time to take such a measure.
I have written about such things before (here, for example), and the comments I have made in other places remain relevant. In general, I favor legalization of both medical and recreational marijuana, though I am not likely to use either. (Being among the many who bought health insurance that could not be used and so since opted out of having it, I am not in a position to visit a physician to get a prescription, and my experiences in graduate school tell me that cannabis is not my substance of choice. Caffeine takes that role.) Baca's position is therefore somewhat short of what I would see, though I think his is likely to come about before mine--even if mine is almost inevitable. (I say almost because, well, humanity might manage to get itself dead by then, which would render the issue moot.) And it is not as if I think Baca is wrong; I am generally in favor of more study, deeper investigation, though I am also aware that calls for more study are often used as catspaws for delaying actions that need to be taken.
I know, too, that there will be many who oppose relaxing restrictions on marijuana--or any substance. Many of them will view such measures as reflecting a decline in prevailing standards of decency. And they will be wrong; a loosening of restrictions does not mean a loosening of decency when standards that have been in place are themselves, in many cases, indecent. And standards that have been used to curtail human understanding and to enact systemic racism across decades are decidedly indecent. Disproportionate and unbalanced enforcement is indecent. The wholesale warehousing of populations already traumatized by the experience and legacy of trafficking is indecent. Rarely do such things get decried by the people who otherwise bemoan a lack of decency among the general public, such that I have to wonder if they even know what the word means, unless they think it is "what I want to see everybody else do."
There are enough people who seem to think it does, certainly, and more than enough. (Even one is too many.) Many of the problems of the world can be ascribed to their words and deeds, yet they still say and do much and are heard and followed all too gladly. As the year comes to a close and another promises to open, it does not look like that will change--though perhaps the change for which Baca calls may happen.

20181229.0430

On 21 December 2018, John Eubanks's "That Time of the Year for 'Word of the Year'" appeared in the online San Antonio Express-News. The article relates its author's musings on competing word of the year contenders from various dictionaries of more and less repute. Dictionary.com, the OED, Collins, and Merriam-Webster are reported upon, with Eubanks's own contention following. An exhortation to align to prescriptive grammar standards ends the piece, deviating from the thrust of the rest of the piece and annoying in its reiteration of resistance to changes in language that are as being bad. (It should be no secret at this point that I chafe at seeing such things.)
Eubanks is correct that it is the time of year for such reflection. The ends of things prompt backward looks, and I am not immune to the impulse to do so. Indeed, in my private journals, I do so, though rarely in the kind of formal fashion to which I am trained. ("Rarely," though, means it has happened, and there are scrawled citations even in my personal journals, referring a putative reader back to earlier volumes in them. Because I am a nerd, and of one of the higher orders of nerdiness.) But whether I will be doing so in this webspace is still an open question. I do not know that it would be welcome here, or that I have enough on which to look back with analysis that would matter in any way. Not that a non-monetized blog with a dedicated but small readership matters in any major way.
Then again, given what else is in Eubanks's article, not mattering doesn't much matter. (I'm not necessarily pleased with the piece, if it's not obvious.) Eubanks's own contribution to the discussion reads to me as pallid, a brief note that ought to have received more attention than it does; the OED speaks for itself, but Eubanks's comments could only be had from him. And I am somewhat struck by the choices of dictionaries used and the relative eminence accorded to each; the OED is a better piece of work than Merriam-Webster or Collins, and Dictionary.com is a feeble competitor against them, despite it being given pride of place. (It is not an issue of online access so much as thinness and lack of interest in its materials; I'd love to have seen Urban Dictionary represented.)
What do I know, though? I've not done what I've needed to do to be able to weigh in on a word of the year, though I imagine I could go back over the work I've done in this webspace and look for the significant word I've used most in it. (I make the comment knowing that "a" or "the" will be the overall winner.) I've not done it yet, though I think that stupid might be a contender, given some of my other work. Others, less fortunate, likely are, as well. But I'll not plumb that particular depth; I worry about what I would dredge up. Others can sift through that silt, if they wish, and find what there is of value in it.

20181228.0430

On 25 December 2018, Fareed Zakaria's "Everywhere, A Growing Backlash to Populism" appeared in the online San Antonio Express-News. The article opens with a focus on French president Emmanuel Macron's political trajectory, initially a symbol of hope but currently (as of this writing) facing falling poll numbers and the Yellow Vest protests decrying some of the reforms he has sought to push through. Macron is used as a case study for a first-blush pessimism Zakaria proceeds to explicate and undermine. Despite the ongoing populist, nationalist fervor that has hold on much of the West, broadly defined, there is quite a bit of pushback against reactionary ideas and measures; political developments across Europe and in the United States are referenced as examples. Zakaria ends with a call against despair, noting that work is yet to be done but that it can be done to effect.
As I read the article, I have to consider where Zakaria writes from. He is not here, so far as I know; I somehow doubt that the Texas Hill Country is much on his itinerary, unless perhaps it is Austin--but Austin is barely geographically in the Hill Country and even less so, culturally. From here, at least, things do not look like Zakaria describes; if anything, the reactionary rhetoric is more emphatic here now than earlier in the year, the attitudes it reflects more deeply entrenched despite the provision of data. It matters less that a thing is true than that the right person says it, and the right person looks more like me than I am comfortable with. But my discomfort is nothing against the danger others face, here and elsewhere, because those who spout such stupidity as they do are increasingly emboldened.
And why would they not be? This place is something of a stronghold for them, though the foundations for such things are not so solid as they might be pretended to be; there is only so much limestone will support, after all, and it is not for nothing that so many come to the Hill Country to find healing. But if they do, it is because they need it, and an injury once incurred can be renewed far more easily than might be hoped. Perhaps it is the fear of that that spurs so much retrenchment here, so much clinging to thoughts of guns and glory, even or especially by those who ought to know better than they give evidence of doing.
Such an implication, if voiced more plainly to particular people, would prompt more pushback than is currently in place, and if those hands are so few as Zakaria would have us hope, still do they feel heavy for those upon whom they are laid. I may not be among them, and I hope not to be, but I know that too many others are who ought not to be--and that there will likely be more as phantom fears intensify. There always are, and then things come that are rightly feared, to the loss of us all.

20181227.0430

On 22 December 2018, the editors of the San Antonio Express-News placed "Fight against Substance Abuse Can't Wait" in the online version of the newspaper. The piece identifies one of the difficulties facing the Texas Legislature in its upcoming session: funding substance abuse treatment. It also makes the case that the challenge must be met and defeated, laying out what is reported as necessary to address mounting substance abuse issues in Texas. Figures regarding the impacts of drug abuse on the state follow, and the article closes with a call to action that it is hoped will be heard and answered by those able to do so.
The issue is one in which I am interested, to be sure. As I've noted before, my day-job is at a substance abuse treatment facility; soon enough, I will be moving into administering it. The facility receives no small amount of its funding from the state; it contracts with the Department of State Health Services and the Department of Family Protective Services to provide outpatient substance abuse treatment for people who are identified as having such problems. Changes to funding levels therefore directly affect what my facility can do and whether or not I can make a living in a line of work for which I did not train but in which I find myself. Of course I am interested in them.
And it is not only for such selfish reasons that I attend to such matters. In the job I have now, I work the front desk at the substance abuse treatment facility. When people call in looking for answers and help, I am the one who talks to them first; I am the one who hears their stories. When they come in to register for treatment, I am the one who works with them to get them through the forms. When they sit for appointments, I am the one who sees them on their ways, the one who listens to them while they wait for their counselors to help those in front of them. I am not a counselor, to be sure, but I still see and hear much of what they do; I see and hear what the illness of addiction does to people. I see them when they need help and have not yet gotten it. It is no easy thing to see, and additional support for getting people the help they need--and that others need them to get, because there are always others affected than the ones who are addicted--is therefore welcome.
I know that many will rail against such things, claiming that the people who are in such trouble got themselves into it and should get themselves out of it--or suffer and die. But they are wrong to do so. While it is true that some get themselves into trouble, they pay for it in ways I cannot describe here. And there are many who had no idea they had a problem until the moment that they began to have the problem. We see a fair number of people who didn't drink until they could by law, and when they tried, they found suddenly that they could not stop; we see many others who are offered things that they accept because their doctors tell them to, or because they are told that it will let them work just that much harder, that much longer, and then they are caught. Society as a whole suffers when people leave it in such ways, when they are barred from returning to it; it benefits from reclaiming such people as have erred and seek to atone. And it is for such reasons that the editors are once again correct; more needs to be done to ease the burden of substance abuse, and what the Legislature can do to that end, it damned well should.

20181226.0430

On 20 December 2018, SM Chavey's "70-Year-Old Kerrville Business to Close Its Doors Next Week" appeared in the online San Antonio Express-News. The article reports on the impending closure of Melody Corner, a music store in Kerrville. The store's history is glossed, including its strangely eminent current and former customer list, which has ranged to Bob Dylan and David Robinson. Owner-operator Stan Morris's lament over the slow death of small-town music stores receives attention, as well, and while the article closes on a laudatory note, quoting approving patrons of the store, the impression cannot be escaped that such praise is too little, too late.
I make such comments from a sense of guilt about the matter. For I have known Stan since I was some four years old, when my late great uncle was playing with him (Stan is a guitarist and sound-man in addition to having run Melody Corner these decades). When I was an adolescent band-nerd, Stan was my go-to source for saxophone and clarinet reeds, and when I returned to the Texas Hill Country and to playing my grandfather's bari this summer, I returned to his shop to buy the reeds I needed to make it start to sing again. But I do not play my horn as much as I should, so I do not go through reeds as quickly as might be expected, and so I did not often find my way back to Melody Corner to trade funds for goods and help Stan stay in business just a little longer.
It is a shame, too, for good things happened at the store that I've rarely seen in other places. For but one example, the last time I went in to get reeds--the Saturday following Thanksgiving--I had my wife and daughter with me. They elected to pop into the store with me, since they'd never done so, and my Mrs. had heard me talk about Stan and his shop any number of times, almost always glowingly. When we went in, we found something of a jam session in progress; Stan and a couple of other people whom I probably ought to have recognized and didn't were sitting on stools in a circle, strumming and singing along. As Ms. 8 looked on, a smile on her face and wonder in her eyes, they sang to her--no clarion call, perhaps, but not the less sweet for being as it was.
Such things were not uncommon at Melody Corner, perhaps not a daily occurrence, but not so infrequent as to be rare. The store and the man who runs--ran--it were very much parts of the musical community of Kerrville and its surrounding area, a musical community that perhaps does not attract much attention to itself as itself, but still boasts some surprising talent. (The keyboard player for the Juantanamos hails from Kerrville, for example, and Robert Earl Keen lives there, among others.) While it may seem a small thing for a small music store in a small town to close after seventy years, to those of us who have been there, who have gone back time and again (though not so much as we ought to have done), it is not of small moment--and its like will likely not come again.

20181225.0430

On 20 December 2018, Madison Iszler's "Dodging Dogs, San Antonio Mail Carriers Deliver the Holiday Goods" appeared in the online San Antonio Express-News. The article portrays the labors of postal workers during the winter holidays, focusing on the experience of a long-time worker in San Antonio's North Side. The joys and challenges of the work receive attention, with engagement in communities being the key example of the former and dogs the latter; San Antonio is evidently among the worst cities in the United States for dogs attacking postal carriers. In all, however, the work of the US Postal Service is presented favorably, both as a rewarding endeavor and as done by good people.
Iszler's article is another I hope to remember when I teach profile-writing again, because it is a useful example of such work. There is a clear central idea carried forward in the piece, as well as testimonial and other information to support that idea. Too, while that information is clearly made to connect to the central idea, motions to do so are not heavy-handed; they are clear without being obtrusive. It is something a great many writers would do well to emulate, including a great many who are praised for their ostensible subtlety. (I am not unaware of the irony of my criticism of others' work. I'd be in a better position had I more of my own work, and done well, in publication where it might have been rejected.)
The article is also good in that it looks at working folks with no small esteem. The emphasis on the workers' integration with the communities they serve, their constancy and connectedness, serves as a useful reminder that it is through the labors of such people that society functions. If there is to be a good civil society, it is because of such people and the institutions they collectively constitute. This is not to say that there are not bad postal workers--there are, just as there are bad people of all professions (and some might say more in some than others)--or that the US Postal Service does not have its problems--it does, as do all institutions (and some might say more than others). It is, however, to say that it seems to be more to the good than the ill, at least as it is now (I am not enough up on its history to speak to more of that), and an article that highlights its good qualities is a welcome thing.
And I suppose I would be remiss if I did not make any mention of the holiday being celebrated today across much of the world. Though this little piece is written into a buffer, drafted in advance of its publication, I know that the today of its release is one that finds a great many people occupied with other things, some of which I will share. I do not share all of them, to be sure; it has not been as a narrative persona wholly distinct from my actual self that I have written my hymns against the stupid god. But for those who find joy in this day, I hope they find it in abundance.

20181224.0430

On 19 December 2018, Terrance L. Green's "Districts Should Rethink Closing Schools" appeared in the online San Antonio Express-News. The article reports, in summary, Green's findings about the effects of closing schools. Highlighted are the negative effects school closures have on students' academic outcomes (when the opposite is intended), the community-destabilizing effects of school closures (particularly for majority-minority neighborhoods), and the long-term cost overruns that occur as schools close (despite short-term gains). In the end, Green calls on administrators to keep the welfare of students, particularly those coming from traditionally underserved communities, in mind as they make school closure decisions--and not just the immediate monetary goals.
Some of the same comments I made about Christopher Brown's kindergarten piece apply to Green's piece, as well. While the topic Green treats, or the approach taken to that topic, seems to work better than Brown's in terms of functioning as a survey, I still find myself wanting more detail. (Where Green makes comments about research showing things, I want to see at least a link to that research, for example.) And I understand that decisions are ultimately made by others than have to endure their consequences, especially over longer periods of time; it is not administrators in school district central offices who suffer from others' children being further away from their homes, after all, nor yet is it legislators whose systems of funding and "oversight" contribute to the circumstances in which schools might find themselves facing closure and the communities connected to those schools displacement.
As with the Brown piece, however, Green's piece is spot on. There are times when schools need to be closed, certainly; most of them have to do with the physical facilities being unusable. And, particularly at the elementary level, schools should be where the students are, so relocating campuses based on shifting enrollment makes some sense--but there's a difference between relocation and closure. Shuttering them, consolidating operations and taking away community focal points, does serve to de-identify people and to re-divide communities that have developed more or less organically and are more authentic, potentially more supportive than otherwise would be the case. Doing so for money says to the families that the schools had served that they are less important than lucre--which is not a message most enjoy hearing. In effect, it says to people that the schools do not care about them; is it any wonder that the people will retort that they do not care for the schools? How could they not do so? Yet even that reaction--sensible and natural as it has every indication of being--is one that is decried.
I begin to understand why so many of the students I have had, and at every school where I have taught, have subscribed to conspiracy theories. There are no few instances when it seems that certain groups are, in fact, out to get others, that shadowy cabals orchestrate events to their advantage--and it seems more so for those who more often serve as the sacrificial pawns in the obscure chess game being played...

20181223.0430

On 18 December 2018, Liz Teitz's "Closed College's Stranded Students Have Plenty of San Antonio Company" appeared in the online San Antonio Express-News. Opening with one affected student's story, the article reports on the recent deaccreditation and closure of Education Corporation of America schools, as well as other for-profit school closures and the difficulties students affected by those closures face as they try to balance discharging debts incurred and transfer of credits to other, hopefully more stable institutions. Other affected students' stories and comments illuminate the situation that many others face, and the article closes on a comment about the relative value of a potentially thwarted education.
The piece follows up on earlier comments Teitz made and which I discuss here. As I look back at the earlier piece and the current, I notice that the students quoted are all identified as female, and while it is likely as a function of the curricula taught at the now-lapsed Brightwood College, which seemed to focus on the feminized field of nursing, it is at odds with my experience teaching at for-profit schools. Those I've taught at have been more populated by male students than female, at least so far as I can tell, and I've taught in the putative service courses of the English composition sequence for the most part; those courses, per Timothy Carens's "Serpents in the Garden," serve as a microcosm for the schools as a whole, since they are among the few universally required courses (and the students at for-profit colleges are not typically those who have AP, CLEP, or dual-credit work to exempt them from sitting for them), so if I have perhaps one or two female students in a class of ten, then I have to expect that the enrollment in the school at large is similar.
But whether or not the reporting matches my experience, there is an implication in it, namely that it is largely women who are affected by the closures of for-profit colleges. And that has implications in turn. For for-profit colleges are typically attended by those who are obliged to defer their education--people like my mother, who is a graduate of such a school (long) after having attempted a degree while in the US Navy. She was, for several reasons that I'll not go into, obliged to set aside her education on her initial attempt and to defer a second attempt for what ended up being decades until she finally did find her way to a for-profit school, where she thrived. Conversations with my students suggest that the same is true for them; they had had to set aside their educations for some time, their reasons varying but their own. They have been and are members of less privileged populations, obliged to make choices that conduce to their further and ongoing de-privileging, and the malfeasance of the schools of last resort to which they turn serves only to keep them where they have been and where they are trying to leave.
When "the way you're supposed to do it" doesn't work, and through no fault of your own, you ought not to be blamed for looking for other ways. We are fortunate that more do not think to take more drastic measures than they have.