To go back a bit, on 31 August 2017, Silvia Foster-Frau's "'Literary Bridge' Still Beating Heart of San Antonio" appeared in the online San Antonio Express-News as part of its series of articles commemorating San Antonio's tricentennial. The piece describes and narrates the history of a particular bridge across the San Antonio River, one currently in place on Johnson Street in San Antonio's King William neighborhood. Hailed as the "literary bridge" due to being noted in the works of O. Henry, Sidney Lanier, and Margaret Cousins, the bridge continues to attract attention from artists, tourists, and locals who value it for its ongoing ability to let people simply be.
What attracted me to the piece was its title, I admit; I am and remain a nerd about such things, and an article talking about a literary bridge called to me. Given the area I study, I'd not been aware of the literary associations of the bridge in question, though I've been on it any number of times; I used to spend a fair bit of time in and around downtown San Antonio, usually to my benefit if not to my wallet's, so I've crossed that bridge, having come to it more than once. And I was pleased to see the described associations with poets both noted and less so; there don't seem to me to be enough such, and I know I've not got the writerly heft to be able to make many more that people would actually see.
As I read, I also found myself in mind of how I might use the piece in the classroom. (Still do I think of such things, and often, despite my classroom work being a shrinking part of my daily life and income.) Foster-Frau offers an excellent example of a profile, a genre which I do not seldom teach; I find myself wishing I had had it in hand earlier in the session I'm currently teaching, as it would have done me some good. I also find myself hoping I'll be able to keep it in mind as I continue teaching--not for the current session, which is already well past the point at which offering a sample profile would be helpful, but for future sessions when I might actually teach the genre again. It's not likely, though; I've often had such hopes, or I seem to recall having them, but I don't remember that I enacted them regularly or often. It's not to my credit.
Thinking on such hopes, though, even if they have been unrealized far too much, does serve to remind me of one of the reasons I thought to be a teacher (at some level of teaching) for quite some time. I do much of what I do because I love it; I play my horn for the love of it, and I study literature for the joy of it. I had thought that by going into teaching I would be able to help others find their own loves of such things by my example, that I would be able to share my love of the thing with them and awaken a love of it in them in response. It's not always been the case that I've been able to do so, sometimes because of my failures; it's never often enough the case that it is so. Sometimes, though, it has been and is, and to be reminded of it by Foster-Frau's piece, however obliquely, is no small comfort.
Monday, December 10, 2018
Sunday, December 9, 2018
20181209.0430
On 5 December 2018, Liz Teitz's "Brightwood College Closure Leaves Students Scrambling" appeared in the online San Antonio Express-News. The article opens with a focus on a single student affected, detailing her initial response to the closure, before expanding to treat the national and San Antonio closures of the Education Corporation of America properties. Information about the corporation, including its loss of accreditation, follows before a return to the focal student, whose comments laud her direct classroom experience but bemoan the administrative and financial situation in which she has been left.
I've noted before, elsewhere if not in this webspace, that one of my few remaining links to academe is through a for-profit college where I continue to teach. It is not the first for-profit college at which I've taught, so it's not the first situation I've been in that I worry I'll end up out of work for something like happened to Brightwood. (Indeed, one of the for-profit schools at which I've taught has folded since I left it. The one where I work now seems to be on more stable footing for the moment; at the least, its accreditation is in order and appears to be secure, though a regular reaccreditation review is in progress at present.) I am concerned that some concern for short-term shareholder value will take precedence over what students need to succeed, that some reviewer with an axe to grind or a prejudice in place will seek out things that would be overlooked at other schools and, in so doing screw over students making the most of what may be their last chance and faculty who do what they can to help them do so.
For while it is the case that there are students who act as though they've paid for an A and there are faculty who phone in their work and hand-wave students through who ought not to pass (as if there are not such at traditional colleges!), it is also the case, and more often, that the people in the classrooms at for-profit colleges are there to do the work of teaching and learning. The students want to know more (if not always about every subject being taught), and the faculty want to teach them (if perhaps not always comfortably within prescribed assignment sequences). And I have long asserted that the students at for-profit schools are not less intelligent, less deserving of rigor and challenge, or less capable than those at more traditional institutions. My experience has been that they are not, but rather that the reverse is true.
So when a system of schools like Brightwood shuts down, even if for cause, my thought is not that some greedy fucker is getting his or her just deserts, but that there are students whose lives have been upended yet again and that there are faculty who whose ability to feed themselves and their families has been imperiled or undone. My thought is that I might well be next. And it is not a comforting thought.
I've noted before, elsewhere if not in this webspace, that one of my few remaining links to academe is through a for-profit college where I continue to teach. It is not the first for-profit college at which I've taught, so it's not the first situation I've been in that I worry I'll end up out of work for something like happened to Brightwood. (Indeed, one of the for-profit schools at which I've taught has folded since I left it. The one where I work now seems to be on more stable footing for the moment; at the least, its accreditation is in order and appears to be secure, though a regular reaccreditation review is in progress at present.) I am concerned that some concern for short-term shareholder value will take precedence over what students need to succeed, that some reviewer with an axe to grind or a prejudice in place will seek out things that would be overlooked at other schools and, in so doing screw over students making the most of what may be their last chance and faculty who do what they can to help them do so.
For while it is the case that there are students who act as though they've paid for an A and there are faculty who phone in their work and hand-wave students through who ought not to pass (as if there are not such at traditional colleges!), it is also the case, and more often, that the people in the classrooms at for-profit colleges are there to do the work of teaching and learning. The students want to know more (if not always about every subject being taught), and the faculty want to teach them (if perhaps not always comfortably within prescribed assignment sequences). And I have long asserted that the students at for-profit schools are not less intelligent, less deserving of rigor and challenge, or less capable than those at more traditional institutions. My experience has been that they are not, but rather that the reverse is true.
So when a system of schools like Brightwood shuts down, even if for cause, my thought is not that some greedy fucker is getting his or her just deserts, but that there are students whose lives have been upended yet again and that there are faculty who whose ability to feed themselves and their families has been imperiled or undone. My thought is that I might well be next. And it is not a comforting thought.
Saturday, December 8, 2018
20181208.0430
On 4 December 2018, the editors of the San Antonio Express-News published "Confederate Plaque Should Come Down" in the online version of the newspaper. After articulating the thesis contained in the title, the piece offers history of the Children of the Confederacy Creed plaque installed in the Texas Capitol and lays out the case of its fundamental inaccuracy before noting legal authority for its removal. The piece goes on to note the context of the plaque's installation and calls for appropriate reinforcement of that context. It is not to erase history, per the editors, but to present it as accurately as possible--without venerating something that is, in essence, execrable.
The piece is not wrong. The plaque is factually inaccurate, reflecting warping ideas in response to civil rights movements that were long overdue; it should not be presented in a position that affords it ethos and what the editors rightly note is endorsement (not necessarily tacit) by the weight of the Lone Star State. It is also a monument to treason--because the Confederacy was treasonous, a fact which seems lost on the so-called patriots who decry kneeling at the "Star-Spangled Banner" while waving a flag that (supposedly) flew over the enemies of that banner and the republic for which it stands--and so should not be enshrined in a place of honor by a component part of that republic. And it and what it stands for, both the fact of the Confederacy inaccurately reported and the still-racist views that surrounded its installation, should be kept in mind--in a museum, where fuller context and accurate information can be provided for it; what has been done wrongly should be remembered that it not be repeated.
There will, of course, be some who will clamor against it, who fetishize the idea that the Civil War was not about slavery (it was, as the written words of the secessionist traitors themselves make clear) and that their own family histories of participation in it and in the organizations that spring from it are not tainted by that basis of action. And there will be others who recognize that the history of the United States itself is built upon the oppression and enslavement of peoples and treason--for what else was the Revolutionary War but treason against a duly constituted (by the standards of the time) government?--so that it makes sense for rebellious acts to be lauded. There will be still others who, recognizing the ongoing memorialization of the failures of Valley Forge, among others, point to the insistence upon loss for validation and will understand the continued emphasis on treasonous secessionist history (while pointing out the many ironies associated with those emphasizing it). And there will be some, meaning well but less informed than they ought to be, who will insist that "you can't change history" and that "history has to be remembered."
History is mutable; it is not what was, only what is written about it. It can be changed--and should be, as more and better information comes to light.
Nobody is proposing forgetting. There is no forgetting what is still being enforced, too often upon the lives and bodies of people of color. What is being proposed is that what is incorrect be corrected and that what is shameful be remembered as shame.
Maybe, if enough such things happen, we can pull our collective heads just a bit further out of our collective asses. But that's a slim hope, indeed.
The piece is not wrong. The plaque is factually inaccurate, reflecting warping ideas in response to civil rights movements that were long overdue; it should not be presented in a position that affords it ethos and what the editors rightly note is endorsement (not necessarily tacit) by the weight of the Lone Star State. It is also a monument to treason--because the Confederacy was treasonous, a fact which seems lost on the so-called patriots who decry kneeling at the "Star-Spangled Banner" while waving a flag that (supposedly) flew over the enemies of that banner and the republic for which it stands--and so should not be enshrined in a place of honor by a component part of that republic. And it and what it stands for, both the fact of the Confederacy inaccurately reported and the still-racist views that surrounded its installation, should be kept in mind--in a museum, where fuller context and accurate information can be provided for it; what has been done wrongly should be remembered that it not be repeated.
There will, of course, be some who will clamor against it, who fetishize the idea that the Civil War was not about slavery (it was, as the written words of the secessionist traitors themselves make clear) and that their own family histories of participation in it and in the organizations that spring from it are not tainted by that basis of action. And there will be others who recognize that the history of the United States itself is built upon the oppression and enslavement of peoples and treason--for what else was the Revolutionary War but treason against a duly constituted (by the standards of the time) government?--so that it makes sense for rebellious acts to be lauded. There will be still others who, recognizing the ongoing memorialization of the failures of Valley Forge, among others, point to the insistence upon loss for validation and will understand the continued emphasis on treasonous secessionist history (while pointing out the many ironies associated with those emphasizing it). And there will be some, meaning well but less informed than they ought to be, who will insist that "you can't change history" and that "history has to be remembered."
History is mutable; it is not what was, only what is written about it. It can be changed--and should be, as more and better information comes to light.
Nobody is proposing forgetting. There is no forgetting what is still being enforced, too often upon the lives and bodies of people of color. What is being proposed is that what is incorrect be corrected and that what is shameful be remembered as shame.
Maybe, if enough such things happen, we can pull our collective heads just a bit further out of our collective asses. But that's a slim hope, indeed.
Friday, December 7, 2018
20181207.0430
On 1 December 2018, Allie Morris's "Fewer Than 600 Patients Get Medical Cannabis under Restrictive Texas Law" appeared in the online San Antonio Express-News. The article reports on the passage and present enforcement of the 2015 Texas Compassionate Use Act, which permits physicians to prescribe low-concentration cannabidiol to persons diagnosed with particular forms of epilepsy. At present, however, that permission is expressed minimally and unevenly, with the minimum legally allowable number of growers registered (of which one is not in operation) and few physicians registered to make such prescriptions. Additionally, the range of conditions allowing for the prescription is sharply circumscribed. Notably, the difficulty seems to stem from the state Senate and governor, whose opposition to the measure is on record; while there does seem to be popular support for expanding medical use, that is not translating into governmental leadership support.
Working at a substance abuse treatment facility as I do, I have what might be called a professional interest in the laws controlling various substances. No few of the clients my facility sees are referred to us because of issues with marijuana, for example, and there is some sense in which I am concerned about the expansion of legal use; many are referred to us due to criminal proceedings against them for their use of the drug, so opening up that use is like to reduce the number of people who will be sent to my facility for treatment. It is a non-profit organization, to be sure, but the lights still need to be kept on. (Even if it is legalized, though, as alcohol was, we would still get referrals, I think, but not as many.)
At the same time, those who are sent to us for marijuana only or primarily--because clients are not always penalized for all the things they do--seem generally better adjusted than those who are sent to us for other substances only or primarily. If the facility's purpose is to help people address diseases they have, and addiction is a disease, then a disease that is easier to treat and demonstrates fewer adverse symptoms is much less bad a thing to see come into the facility. This is not to say there are not problems--there are; marijuana is not wholly benign, despite its advocates' assertions--but they seem in my experience to be of much lesser scope than those associated with a number of other substances. Further, the research seems clear that medical marijuana has benefits for people in a number of situations; it can be misused, certainly, but most prescribed (and many over the counter) medicines can, as well. Nor am I ignorant of the racist underpinnings of the laws that criminalized marijuana in the first place, even if many are or claim to be.
There is more to think on in the piece, to be sure. Issues of enforcement ethics come to mind, as well as the slippery slope that threatens to open in any such discussion. That there are such things makes Morris's a good piece of reporting.
Working at a substance abuse treatment facility as I do, I have what might be called a professional interest in the laws controlling various substances. No few of the clients my facility sees are referred to us because of issues with marijuana, for example, and there is some sense in which I am concerned about the expansion of legal use; many are referred to us due to criminal proceedings against them for their use of the drug, so opening up that use is like to reduce the number of people who will be sent to my facility for treatment. It is a non-profit organization, to be sure, but the lights still need to be kept on. (Even if it is legalized, though, as alcohol was, we would still get referrals, I think, but not as many.)
At the same time, those who are sent to us for marijuana only or primarily--because clients are not always penalized for all the things they do--seem generally better adjusted than those who are sent to us for other substances only or primarily. If the facility's purpose is to help people address diseases they have, and addiction is a disease, then a disease that is easier to treat and demonstrates fewer adverse symptoms is much less bad a thing to see come into the facility. This is not to say there are not problems--there are; marijuana is not wholly benign, despite its advocates' assertions--but they seem in my experience to be of much lesser scope than those associated with a number of other substances. Further, the research seems clear that medical marijuana has benefits for people in a number of situations; it can be misused, certainly, but most prescribed (and many over the counter) medicines can, as well. Nor am I ignorant of the racist underpinnings of the laws that criminalized marijuana in the first place, even if many are or claim to be.
There is more to think on in the piece, to be sure. Issues of enforcement ethics come to mind, as well as the slippery slope that threatens to open in any such discussion. That there are such things makes Morris's a good piece of reporting.
Thursday, December 6, 2018
20181206.0430
On 2 December 208, Craig Riley's "Put 'None of the Above' on the Ballot" appeared in the online San Antonio Express-News. In the article, Riley responds to Express-News reporting about the proportion of party-affiliated and -unaffiliated and suggests that a "None of the above" option should be added to general electoral ballots. Riley then expands upon the idea, noting problems with it intermixed with benefits; he also remarks upon his increasing dissatisfaction with the higher-level races. Ultimately, the author notes the unlikelihood of his idea coming to fruition--it is not directly achievable, and elected officials are not apt to make changes that imperil their reelection--but it is an entertaining idea, at least.
It's not the first time I've seen such an idea; I recall reading it before, though I cannot recall where at this point. It would, as the author asserts, allow ballots to reflect the opinions of those who cast them; many of those who do not vote likely don't because they find none of the options on the ballot desirable or palatable. (I know many are prevented from voting by other circumstances; I do not cast aspersion on those people. But I also believe in 1) voting against people and 2) damage mitigation when that is the available option. So there are those towards whom I am not sanguine.) But that's part of the rub, as well; there are already mechanisms for parties to select preferable candidates and for those who dislike all of them on the ballot to make their dislike known. The notion that a "None of the above" option would prompt better candidate selection thus rings as relatively naïve; losing election after election has not prompted selecting better candidates as it is, so losing another way is not like to, either.
It will remain thus as long as people are voting based on party rather than person or platform--and even after, like as not. As long as people align in such ways, chiefly based on party but not seldom based upon a cult of opprobrium, they will find any candidate acceptable as long as that candidate is not that other asshole; they will find any candidate acceptable as long as the party approves him or her--because s/he's not the other party's candidate. The 2016 election showed it abundantly; the 2018 elections were much the same, if perhaps slightly less vitriolic. (Perhaps. Slightly.)
But Riley's concluding statement is spot-on. There is a lot of room for things to change for the better. That laws--even the highest--can be amended is an acknowledgement that change may be needed, that things are not yet as they ought to be. And while the ability to change necessarily means there is an ability for things to get worse--and they can always get worse; never challenge the universe for how, as it will oblige--there is always the chance that things will go otherwise and improve. It may not be a big chance, given human nature; if offered stupidity, most people will engage in it. But it is still a chance.
It's not the first time I've seen such an idea; I recall reading it before, though I cannot recall where at this point. It would, as the author asserts, allow ballots to reflect the opinions of those who cast them; many of those who do not vote likely don't because they find none of the options on the ballot desirable or palatable. (I know many are prevented from voting by other circumstances; I do not cast aspersion on those people. But I also believe in 1) voting against people and 2) damage mitigation when that is the available option. So there are those towards whom I am not sanguine.) But that's part of the rub, as well; there are already mechanisms for parties to select preferable candidates and for those who dislike all of them on the ballot to make their dislike known. The notion that a "None of the above" option would prompt better candidate selection thus rings as relatively naïve; losing election after election has not prompted selecting better candidates as it is, so losing another way is not like to, either.
It will remain thus as long as people are voting based on party rather than person or platform--and even after, like as not. As long as people align in such ways, chiefly based on party but not seldom based upon a cult of opprobrium, they will find any candidate acceptable as long as that candidate is not that other asshole; they will find any candidate acceptable as long as the party approves him or her--because s/he's not the other party's candidate. The 2016 election showed it abundantly; the 2018 elections were much the same, if perhaps slightly less vitriolic. (Perhaps. Slightly.)
But Riley's concluding statement is spot-on. There is a lot of room for things to change for the better. That laws--even the highest--can be amended is an acknowledgement that change may be needed, that things are not yet as they ought to be. And while the ability to change necessarily means there is an ability for things to get worse--and they can always get worse; never challenge the universe for how, as it will oblige--there is always the chance that things will go otherwise and improve. It may not be a big chance, given human nature; if offered stupidity, most people will engage in it. But it is still a chance.
Wednesday, December 5, 2018
20181205.0430
On 1 December 2018, Larry Hufford's "Democracy's Dark Side Triggers Fear among Young Adults" appeared in the online San Antonio Express-News. In the article, Hufford, Chair of the Department of International Relations at St. Mary's University, argues that the current political situation in the United States has even the most eminent youth afraid for themselves and for their society. He notes a need to develop a society in which people can feel safe with one another, noting that the honors students he teaches fear any number of things that they see in their daily lives and presented in major media and pointing out through them that there are deep undercurrents of anxiety and uncertainty about the future, even in those to whom people look for hopeful future. Hufford comments that developing healthy relationships is necessary to enacting the kinds of social change that will help to allay the kinds of fears gnawing in the breast, and he lays out a loose method for doing so. He concludes with a call to action on behalf of those who are now young and who are yet to be.
Prof. Hufford is not wrong to note that there is much fear underlying the daily actions of the kinds of student he teaches; I was that kind of student, though not in his classes or at his institution, but I recall some of what I felt then. (I was in class when 9-11 happened, and I walked out of the classroom into a world of many fears; I should have been more aware of them before, but I was forced into that awareness then.) I remember being afraid for myself and my place in the world, and as I learned more, I grew more worried and more afraid, for I learned more and more of the shaky, sordid foundations of much that I saw others around me holding dear. And, in many cases, I reacted with anger to that fear, lashing out at those near me and shaking my fist at the heavens that the world is as it is and not as it ought to be.
In some ways, that anger has not left me, though I am far better now than I was then at directing it towards what deserves to have anger aimed at it. There is much that merits anger, to be sure, and it inheres in many of the students' fears that Prof. Hufford relates. But I think he is perhaps overly naïve to think that building healthy relationships with those who enact such things as the students fear is possible. I think he is perhaps too hopeful for the spirit of humanity, at least within the scope of any lifetime. Perhaps across generations, such a change might arise as he calls for, and such changes are worth working toward, but I do not think him wise to think that such must be the first response to the way the world is now.
There is much that deserves anger. There is much that must be corrected, some that must be excised, before the work of building up can be done. No sound structure can be made on shaky foundations, after all, lest it topple and, in its fall, work to more ruin than had been eased by its building. Prof. Hufford does less well than he might not to speak more to that than he does; it is a necessary thing if the better world he envisions his students making can ever come to be.
Prof. Hufford is not wrong to note that there is much fear underlying the daily actions of the kinds of student he teaches; I was that kind of student, though not in his classes or at his institution, but I recall some of what I felt then. (I was in class when 9-11 happened, and I walked out of the classroom into a world of many fears; I should have been more aware of them before, but I was forced into that awareness then.) I remember being afraid for myself and my place in the world, and as I learned more, I grew more worried and more afraid, for I learned more and more of the shaky, sordid foundations of much that I saw others around me holding dear. And, in many cases, I reacted with anger to that fear, lashing out at those near me and shaking my fist at the heavens that the world is as it is and not as it ought to be.
In some ways, that anger has not left me, though I am far better now than I was then at directing it towards what deserves to have anger aimed at it. There is much that merits anger, to be sure, and it inheres in many of the students' fears that Prof. Hufford relates. But I think he is perhaps overly naïve to think that building healthy relationships with those who enact such things as the students fear is possible. I think he is perhaps too hopeful for the spirit of humanity, at least within the scope of any lifetime. Perhaps across generations, such a change might arise as he calls for, and such changes are worth working toward, but I do not think him wise to think that such must be the first response to the way the world is now.
There is much that deserves anger. There is much that must be corrected, some that must be excised, before the work of building up can be done. No sound structure can be made on shaky foundations, after all, lest it topple and, in its fall, work to more ruin than had been eased by its building. Prof. Hufford does less well than he might not to speak more to that than he does; it is a necessary thing if the better world he envisions his students making can ever come to be.
Tuesday, December 4, 2018
20181204.0430
For as much as I have expressed appreciation for the San Antonio Express-News over the past few days' posts, and as much as I am like to in the days to come, it is not always the case that the news boasts something that lends itself to the kind of writing I do here. I am interested in what happens in the city where my brother lives and where I do some of the work I do, but not always in a way that allows me to put my pen to paper or fingers to keys about it. I have to wonder if it is some failing in me that I am not able to do so, that I am not always apt to summon up the kind of engagement and involvement that lets me plow through a piece of writing (and my speed at doing so is returning, for which I am thankful; it had been a concern), form an opinion of it, and express that opinion in a few hundred words of what I hope is coherent prose. (I'm getting my speed back at doing that, too, which also pleases.) Indeed, I fear that it is so.
It is a minor thing, I know, that I cannot find something in the paper about which to write for this entry. Most folks do not do so for anything they find in the newspaper, so it is some success that I have done so at all, and I've done so repeatedly. And I've done a fair bit of other writing, besides, so not necessarily having the kind of project I want to have at this moment is not necessarily a failure; the real problem would be if I were not writing at all, or if I were not writing enough. Except that I am still sufficiently mired in the mindset of academe that I think of the writing I do in terms of ongoing projects to be completed--and the common refrain of "you should be writing" that besets scholars in all fields continues to ring in my ears, the discordant strain repeating in a braying cacophony that I cannot shut out, even now. I have work to do, specific work, and I am not doing it. I can't get myself in a headspace to do it, like trying to paint without brushes or build without hammer and saw. It's bad enough that I'm mixing metaphors and similes, throwing them together raggedly and without concern for how they work.
I take some hope from one of the known features of the newspaper: there'll be another one tomorrow. Another sheaf of paper printed with words and pictures that describe the state of affairs in the Alamo City will arrive on my driveway; its pixelated counterpart will enter my email inbox. I'll have a chance to scour it again and, with luck, find something upon which I can build my own thoughts before putting them where at least a few others can see it and, perhaps, build up their own.
It is a minor thing, I know, that I cannot find something in the paper about which to write for this entry. Most folks do not do so for anything they find in the newspaper, so it is some success that I have done so at all, and I've done so repeatedly. And I've done a fair bit of other writing, besides, so not necessarily having the kind of project I want to have at this moment is not necessarily a failure; the real problem would be if I were not writing at all, or if I were not writing enough. Except that I am still sufficiently mired in the mindset of academe that I think of the writing I do in terms of ongoing projects to be completed--and the common refrain of "you should be writing" that besets scholars in all fields continues to ring in my ears, the discordant strain repeating in a braying cacophony that I cannot shut out, even now. I have work to do, specific work, and I am not doing it. I can't get myself in a headspace to do it, like trying to paint without brushes or build without hammer and saw. It's bad enough that I'm mixing metaphors and similes, throwing them together raggedly and without concern for how they work.
I take some hope from one of the known features of the newspaper: there'll be another one tomorrow. Another sheaf of paper printed with words and pictures that describe the state of affairs in the Alamo City will arrive on my driveway; its pixelated counterpart will enter my email inbox. I'll have a chance to scour it again and, with luck, find something upon which I can build my own thoughts before putting them where at least a few others can see it and, perhaps, build up their own.
Monday, December 3, 2018
20181203.0430
On 13 November 2018, Chuck Blount's "Barrel Cooking Brings It All Back to the Basics" appeared in the online San Antonio Express-News. In effect, the article is a reasonably favorable product review of Noah Glanville's Pit Barrel Cooker. In it, Blount discusses Glanville's background and the form of the cooker being assessed. Blount also narrates his own experience with it, determining that it is an excellent rib-cooker, a passable chicken-cooker, and a less-than-impressive brisket smoker; something of a bulleted list of features, positive and negative, concludes the piece.
The piece attracted my attention for the simple reason of being about smoking meat, something in which I have some small interest and less practice than I ought. Admittedly, I'm not in the market for a new smoker at present (though I know the day is coming when I will have to be; I've had my current rig since I lived in The City, and after several moves and more years, it's beginning to show its age), but it is always good to learn about other ways of doing things. If nothing else, it makes for good conversation later on, particularly for me, concerned about performed masculinity as I am. Nerd that I am, I am aware that "real" manhood is not something I'm prone to displaying--yet I'm still immersed enough in the prevailing culture that I'm worried about being manly. Grilling is one thing validated by social expectations of manhood--and not only in the Texas Hill Country--that I do well; I tend to attend to it therefore.
Further, as I read the article, I found it to be a useful example of the kinds of things the students I still have are asked to do; product reviews and profiles are very much in line with the writing their curricula oblige, and I always appreciate having real-world, professional examples to supplement those I already write for them. The tone of the piece is conversational without being overly familiar; the reading level is easily accessible. There is some assumption of familiarity with terms and concepts, true, but those reading profiles and product reviews are generally not ignorant of the areas of inquiry they investigate by doing so, and grilling and smoking are such embedded parts of the local culture--with "local" spanning most or all of the state, certainly in popular conceit--that some prior understanding of them is likely in place with all readers. It would make for an interesting bit of audience analysis, too...I wonder if I will remember it when the time comes to find samples for my students to look at again. I rather hope so; it's a good piece for it.
I should not wonder to find such things in the main San Antonio newspaper. I should, however, look for more of them in the days to come as my subscription continues. They're the kinds of things I find useful in several parts of my life, and I'd not have stumbled across Blount's example of them had I not taken the paper I do.
The piece attracted my attention for the simple reason of being about smoking meat, something in which I have some small interest and less practice than I ought. Admittedly, I'm not in the market for a new smoker at present (though I know the day is coming when I will have to be; I've had my current rig since I lived in The City, and after several moves and more years, it's beginning to show its age), but it is always good to learn about other ways of doing things. If nothing else, it makes for good conversation later on, particularly for me, concerned about performed masculinity as I am. Nerd that I am, I am aware that "real" manhood is not something I'm prone to displaying--yet I'm still immersed enough in the prevailing culture that I'm worried about being manly. Grilling is one thing validated by social expectations of manhood--and not only in the Texas Hill Country--that I do well; I tend to attend to it therefore.
Further, as I read the article, I found it to be a useful example of the kinds of things the students I still have are asked to do; product reviews and profiles are very much in line with the writing their curricula oblige, and I always appreciate having real-world, professional examples to supplement those I already write for them. The tone of the piece is conversational without being overly familiar; the reading level is easily accessible. There is some assumption of familiarity with terms and concepts, true, but those reading profiles and product reviews are generally not ignorant of the areas of inquiry they investigate by doing so, and grilling and smoking are such embedded parts of the local culture--with "local" spanning most or all of the state, certainly in popular conceit--that some prior understanding of them is likely in place with all readers. It would make for an interesting bit of audience analysis, too...I wonder if I will remember it when the time comes to find samples for my students to look at again. I rather hope so; it's a good piece for it.
I should not wonder to find such things in the main San Antonio newspaper. I should, however, look for more of them in the days to come as my subscription continues. They're the kinds of things I find useful in several parts of my life, and I'd not have stumbled across Blount's example of them had I not taken the paper I do.
Sunday, December 2, 2018
20181202.0430
Going back a bit, on 8 August 2017, "Bemoan the Loss of Cursive Writing," by Alfredo Torres, Jr., appeared in the online San Antonio Express-News. In the article, Torres decries the decline in instruction and skill in cursive writing. Five paragraphs lauding calligraphic handwriting lead into a discussion of the circumstances obliging the decline in public school instruction in cursive and the insufficiency of instruction where it still occurs. Torres likens a decline in valuation of cursive to a decline in valuation of formal rules of usage and laments what he sees as a looming disconnection of future readers from past documents.
I have a number of issues with the short opinion piece. I've written about similar comments before, so some of what I might say has already been said; many of the same issues will still apply, so I'll not repeat them. Also, the slippery slope fallacy the article deploys grates. And, for a historian not to remember that 1) language changes (cildas þissum dægum mid geora wane namas declinunge); 2) even those "taught right" have trouble reading the script of earlier periods (I find myself wondering how Torres would handle Carolingian minuscule, for instance, or insular uncial, or even the typeface Caxton uses in printing Malory), so that the issue of people not being able to read the writings of the past is already a concern, not necessarily like to become more of one; and 3) most people, even in the putative "golden age of penmanship," did not write well--when they could write at all--grates. Such things ring of the very kind of sloppy thinking Torres decries as a result of sloppy writing and writing instruction.
This is not to say I do not value cursive writing, as such. Torres describes it as an art, and he is not wrong to do so; he is also not wrong to say that arts should be valued. A well executed pen-hand is a thing of beauty, whatever is written in it. (Yes, even hate speech; how pretty are some of the most poisonous plants and animals in existence, or some of the most destructive storms that have raged across the face of the world? But then, I do occupy positions of privilege...) But none of us who are or purport to be scholars, particularly scholars of the past, should pretend that even in a supposed golden age that a greater percentage of people cared about what we care about than is true now, or that the people of the past, had they access to the same conveniences that we do, would not avail themselves thereof every bit as quickly as we. Nor yet ought we to pass on as sacrosanct the things of the past for no better reason than that they are the things of the past; they may be of value, but they are of value not because they're how things have been done before, but for other reasons--and not all will share those reasons, certainly not enough to bring them above the concerns of the current moment or the demands of making it to the next one to come.
I have a number of issues with the short opinion piece. I've written about similar comments before, so some of what I might say has already been said; many of the same issues will still apply, so I'll not repeat them. Also, the slippery slope fallacy the article deploys grates. And, for a historian not to remember that 1) language changes (cildas þissum dægum mid geora wane namas declinunge); 2) even those "taught right" have trouble reading the script of earlier periods (I find myself wondering how Torres would handle Carolingian minuscule, for instance, or insular uncial, or even the typeface Caxton uses in printing Malory), so that the issue of people not being able to read the writings of the past is already a concern, not necessarily like to become more of one; and 3) most people, even in the putative "golden age of penmanship," did not write well--when they could write at all--grates. Such things ring of the very kind of sloppy thinking Torres decries as a result of sloppy writing and writing instruction.
This is not to say I do not value cursive writing, as such. Torres describes it as an art, and he is not wrong to do so; he is also not wrong to say that arts should be valued. A well executed pen-hand is a thing of beauty, whatever is written in it. (Yes, even hate speech; how pretty are some of the most poisonous plants and animals in existence, or some of the most destructive storms that have raged across the face of the world? But then, I do occupy positions of privilege...) But none of us who are or purport to be scholars, particularly scholars of the past, should pretend that even in a supposed golden age that a greater percentage of people cared about what we care about than is true now, or that the people of the past, had they access to the same conveniences that we do, would not avail themselves thereof every bit as quickly as we. Nor yet ought we to pass on as sacrosanct the things of the past for no better reason than that they are the things of the past; they may be of value, but they are of value not because they're how things have been done before, but for other reasons--and not all will share those reasons, certainly not enough to bring them above the concerns of the current moment or the demands of making it to the next one to come.
Saturday, December 1, 2018
20181201.0430
To return to an idea I broached in yesterday's post, I think I will set out to read and write summaries of pieces from the San Antonio Express-News, to which my wife and I subscribe. As I've noted, my wife and I take the paper for our continued edification, and I regard it as a way to stay connected to a community of which I am tangentially part; I did my undergrad in San Antonio, and I've worked in the city since 2016, if mostly on a part-time basis. My brother and his family live there, as well. As such, I've got something of a stake in what goes on the Alamo City; reading its newspaper makes sense for me to do, and engaging its materials overtly helps me do a better job of doing that.
On 17 November 2018, the editors of the San Antonio Express-News published "If Frank Wing Is a 'Dungeon,' Why Does Bexar Keep People There?" in the online version of the newspaper as part of its Unequal Justice series. In the article, the editors question why the Frank D. Wing Municipal Court Building seems continuously used to house inmates for longer than the 18-hour stay they are supposed to have while awaiting magistration. The piece opens with a description of the facility before explicating the dire situation of those who find themselves housed overlong in it, especially the many facing mental health problems. Potential legal problems--lack of adequate hygiene facilities and too-public meetings between the accused and counsel--are noted, as is the background of using the facility as a holding space for those awaiting court proceedings. The editors note that attention to the issue has caused an at-least temporary easing of the problem, but that even with such attention, difficulties remain; a few comments on what a better situation might look like follow before the article closes with an uncomfortable question: "Why is it so hard for the city and county to work together on this" issue of fixing the magistration system?
In truth, it's a good question. The two local governments largely overlap; much or most of Bexar County is San Antonio, anyway, and while there are certainly political and interpersonal concerns to negotiate, the two governments, city and county, appear to my eye to be inextricably intertwined. San Antonio does much well; it certainly has a sense of quiet pride in its identity and its institutions, so it would make sense that it would want all of those things to be better than they are. And it knows they need to be; if attention to the issue has improved it, it can only be because the way things were absent that attention were agreed to be other than they ought to be.
The matter does appear to be as the authors identify it; those who are likely to be held are among the more vulnerable populations, suffering from mental health issues or poverty or both. They would seem to be like those with whom I work in my day job, people who have erred, certainly, but who in most cases err from ignorance or desperation and who, given a way out, take it and cling to it tightly. They are not, in many cases or most, bad people, and while those who have done wrong should atone for that wrong, mistreating them when they are not yet proven to have done that wrong only reinforces their desperation. If they are to be treated badly regardless of what they do or do not do, regardless of what they are told is the way things are and ought to be, then they have little or no incentive to act otherwise than they wish. If they are to be treated in ways the abridge even those protections that those who treat them so claim to have in place, if they are, in effect, to be lied to, why would they trust that things could be otherwise? And, ultimately, why are we, collectively, content to have those whom we employ lie--and to be made liars thereby?
On 17 November 2018, the editors of the San Antonio Express-News published "If Frank Wing Is a 'Dungeon,' Why Does Bexar Keep People There?" in the online version of the newspaper as part of its Unequal Justice series. In the article, the editors question why the Frank D. Wing Municipal Court Building seems continuously used to house inmates for longer than the 18-hour stay they are supposed to have while awaiting magistration. The piece opens with a description of the facility before explicating the dire situation of those who find themselves housed overlong in it, especially the many facing mental health problems. Potential legal problems--lack of adequate hygiene facilities and too-public meetings between the accused and counsel--are noted, as is the background of using the facility as a holding space for those awaiting court proceedings. The editors note that attention to the issue has caused an at-least temporary easing of the problem, but that even with such attention, difficulties remain; a few comments on what a better situation might look like follow before the article closes with an uncomfortable question: "Why is it so hard for the city and county to work together on this" issue of fixing the magistration system?
In truth, it's a good question. The two local governments largely overlap; much or most of Bexar County is San Antonio, anyway, and while there are certainly political and interpersonal concerns to negotiate, the two governments, city and county, appear to my eye to be inextricably intertwined. San Antonio does much well; it certainly has a sense of quiet pride in its identity and its institutions, so it would make sense that it would want all of those things to be better than they are. And it knows they need to be; if attention to the issue has improved it, it can only be because the way things were absent that attention were agreed to be other than they ought to be.
The matter does appear to be as the authors identify it; those who are likely to be held are among the more vulnerable populations, suffering from mental health issues or poverty or both. They would seem to be like those with whom I work in my day job, people who have erred, certainly, but who in most cases err from ignorance or desperation and who, given a way out, take it and cling to it tightly. They are not, in many cases or most, bad people, and while those who have done wrong should atone for that wrong, mistreating them when they are not yet proven to have done that wrong only reinforces their desperation. If they are to be treated badly regardless of what they do or do not do, regardless of what they are told is the way things are and ought to be, then they have little or no incentive to act otherwise than they wish. If they are to be treated in ways the abridge even those protections that those who treat them so claim to have in place, if they are, in effect, to be lied to, why would they trust that things could be otherwise? And, ultimately, why are we, collectively, content to have those whom we employ lie--and to be made liars thereby?
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