speaking of orange...

For those of you who enjoyed KnitWit's link to the Somerville Gates, here is an amazing news story about the unbelievable amount of fame that the satirical Gates generated for their creator:
Tiny Takeoff On Christo Proves Gateway to Glory

The itty-bitty gates are apparently going to end up in museums etc. Unbelievable!

Ah, it's 8:30. I am officially irredeemably late, since I was supposed to leave now. Time to go get in the shower. What the hell is wrong with me??? (Don't answer that)

es mi media naranja

according to my Spanish "phrase-a-day" calendar (conveniently located in my bathroom), "es mi media naranja" means "she's my other half."

literally, of course, it translates to "she's my half an orange." for some reason I find this utterly delightful.

unless "premier" now means "most overrated"

"Access Hollywood" called Leonardo di Caprio "the premier actor of his generation." Sorry, but despite his "overexposure," I still think Jude Law merits that title, and would even if he were a complete dog.

Best actress = Cate Blanchett, hands down.

I didn't see most of the films that were nominated or won, but I did think Cate deserved to win for Aviator. And did anyone else think it was kind of nice NOT to have one film "sweep" the various categories? Or did that just mean there weren't any really good films this year?

Now I really want to see "Hotel Rwanda" but I bet mi media naranja will NOT want to!

Are you HAPpy?

On the afore-mentioned trip to Avol's, I also picked up a self-help book that, unlike the ones discussed in Kaminer's book (see below), appears to be a genuine program of self-help--in this case, for getting control of anxiety.

Anyway, I was interested/amused in this list of characteristics that are often related to anxiety, or in the book's jargon, "High Anxiety Personality" (HAP) traits:

• high level of creativity or imagination (immediately imagine the worst)
  
• rigid thinking
  
• excessive need for approval
  
• extremely high expectations of self (expect self to accomplish things not expected of others)
  
• perfectionism (combination of high expectations, tendency to evaluate self with all-or-nothing thinking; tendency to focus on small flaws or errors instead of overall progress)
  
• excessive need to be in control
  
• suppression of some or all negative feelings
  
• tendency to ignore the body's physical needs
  

Aside from the fact that this describes many of us very well, I can't help noticing that these are traits that the school system (including the university system) encourages and nurtures--especially rigidity, need for approval, & perfectionism.

I'll probably post more about this on MadTeach, but lately I've been thinking a lot about the psychological side of school. I started out with the institutional aspects and the history that spawned them. Over time I struggled to figure out how to be a positive cog in a negative machine, to oversimplify dramatically. Again in shorthand, my conclusion was that I have to help students learn how to defend themselves and not let the machine get to them (see my MadTeach post on survival skills).

So since then I've been trying to figure out how people become internally motivated, what contexts allow and foster curiosity and hard work and learning. I definitely have a lot more to say about this & I'll put it on MadTeach soon. The short version is that reducing anxiety is a HUGE part of this, and that massive anxiety is one of the biggest problems students face in class all the time.

So this book is going to help me with my anxiety, and at the same time, help me learn to help students.

One of the incredibly cool things about learning to teach is that in order to be a good teacher, I have to heal myself, and the things I most need to do to heal myself, will be the things that make me a good teacher. I love this. It feels so right, to go back and forth between "how can I reduce my anxiety" and "how can I reduce the anxiety in the classroom," and to see so clearly that it would be absolutely impossible to do the latter without the former. There's some quote from Emerson or Mark Twain or someone, to the effect that you can't truly help others without helping yourself, and I think that's so true. I'm not sure if I'm making sense but anyway, I am happy.

(HAPpy too, at times, but ever less so).

too long gone

i haven't visited Katy and Ang's blog in way too long (since February 9th, apparently, from what I remember reading before).

If you haven't either (which is unlikely since recent surveys point to the high probability that you are Ang) you should check out Katy's adorable vaction photos. Hey, Ang, post that story about patriarchy and soy milk.

Oh, and, Ang, quickening your vibrato? You're giving me shivers of delight, but I think you're talking about some singing thing.

Ah show tunes... I love many show tunes, especially (of course) the unbearably corny show tunes about impossible dreams etc., e.g. "do you hear the people sing" and "somewhere there's a place for us." (My corny friends & I started the crowd singing "to dream the impossible dream" when marching on washington for gay rights in 1993 (that was back when people only marched on Washington every other year or so, and marches merited the front covers of every major daily paper. now people march on washington every time they have a hangnail, or so it seems to me). uhhhhh.... Where was I?

I also like lots of other ridiculously corny show tunes like, well, of course, "sunrise, sunset," "memories" (cats) and "music of the night" from phantom of the opera (dahhhn... dun dun dun dun DUNNNNN.... dun dun dun dun DUNNNN, yes, I know it's incredibly trite) and actually I think I like every single song from les miz. Didn't like "cats" all that much otherwise tho. Probably the dumbest song I love--which I do actually have on my iPod at this minute (shh, don't tell anyone)--is "I know my heart will go on". I better stop before I'm a complete laughingstock...perhaps I'm just trying to create ersatz intimacy through shared confession?




Best show I saw in NY:
Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk.

(or as some white guy said at some cocktail party, "what's that show called, you know, 'bring in the sound, bring in the music?'"

Savion Glover (at right) is a god or at least a minor deity, as I think was mentioned in Ang's post too...



last comment: Ang, these kinds of things are so easily misinterpreted; maybe you wanna give the guy another chance? course I could be wrong, i'm just saying.

i'm dysfunctional, you're dysfunctional

i love Avol's!!!!* I hope they get another cafe back in there, and staff it with sane, stable people instead of the wacked-out religious zombies that used to work at the cafe. Hey, does the Strand** have a cafe yet?

Today I picked up an armload of books and thoroughly enjoyed a few chapters of "i'm dysfunctional, you're dysfunctional," Wendy Kaminer's examination of the 12-step movement and its spread in the 1990s into the general population in the form of the whole "we're all codependent" fad. I'm sure I would have been utterly outraged by this book about, oh, ten years ago. Not that it's perfect, but it's certainly interesting. I thought I'd share a few gems with y'all here.

On the ersatz intimacy of mutual confession:

"Watching strangers on television, even responding to them from a studio audience, we're disengaged--voyeurs collaborating with exhibitionists in rituals of sham community. Never have so many known so much about people for whom they cared so little."

On the degeneration of feminism into self-help:

"Feminists did say that the personal was political, but... they didn't mean that getting to know yourself was sufficient political action. Consciousness-raising was supposed to inspire activism. Feminism is [about] women talking, but it not [about] women only talking and not [about] women talking only about themselves... "

I love this! But the best point she makes, which was why I bought the book (I've come to realize that yes, I really can learn all I need to know from many books by perusing them for ten minutes in the store), relates to the evangelical revivalist roots of the twelve-step programs, which are the same roots that produced the cult-like religious organization to which my parents (and most of their family & friends) devoted a large portion of their lives.

"The [12-step] tradition has always been covertly authoritarian and conformist, relying as it does on a mystique of expertise, encouraging people to look outside themselves for standardized instructions on how to be... Demanding self-surrender, the recovery movement is essentially religious, not psychotherapeutic...Imagine the slogan of recovery--admit that you're powerless and submit--as a political slogan, and what is wrong with this movement becomes clear. That is hardly a slogan for a participatory democracy."

This is a useful insight, to me, because my parents were essentially operating under an ideology that DID try to make this into a political slogan. The ease of coexistence between this ideology and fascism makes more sense than ever, and the uneasiness with which I hear stories of what essentially amounts to union-busting is also illuminated. But I'm getting political again, so I'll stop now. Thanks to my loyal reader for sticking by me, ;-) and I hope your cold is getting better!

---

* Avol's is a fabulous and relatively enormous used bookstore, for those of you who aren't lucky enough to live nearby!
** The Strand a fabulous and really, really, really enormous used bookstore, for those of you who aren't lucky enough to live nearby!

sick of politics?

then how 'bout some emotional crap?

I felt so optimistic this morning. I did my exercises and walked and instead of turning on the escapist crap (TV or DVDs), i breathed and mused and made notes about the various projects I have to work on. At around 10:30 I came upstairs all ready to start my day and get a lot done. It's 3:47 and I have to leave in an hour. Did I get anything done?

the thing is I really *want* to work on these projects. I am excited about them in varying degrees--really I am.

it's like there's a pessimist and an optimist at war in my head.

Optimist: I'm going to be a teacher and an organizer and finish my schoolwork and find a job and help plan the activist summer school, and it's all so exciting!

Pessimist: Yeah, right. You're just going to fail and be miserable, so let's just cut to the chase and get started on that right now. After all, this way it hurts the same amount and takes less effort.

Something or other that I read recently said that I should listen to this voice I've termed "the pessimist," that it may have valuable information for me. Another thing I read recently said that I should listen but not believe it.

In therapy I've been working on noticing the moment when I make the decision to get off track. Of course if I could do that I wouldn't get off track. In the Buddhist lectures I've been attending weekly, the lecturer calls it "going unconscious." She says it just takes practice to notice when it happens, and then you just sit with the uncomfortable feelings (anxiety, for me) that you are tempted to evade, and breathe deeply until the feelings pass. *sigh*

It feels like it doesn't matter what I do because this "pessimist in my head" seems to have complete power over my actions. It's sneaky. I thought I was just sitting down quickly to read one email, but that was hours and hours ago. Wha...? Wha' happen'?

This all sounds silly, but I'm emboldened by Katy's posts about her endless hours of playing computer games, and I know other people have somewhat similar problems.... Oh, did I mention my hand has been hurting lately and that typing makes it worse? Gee, let's type for a whole day without typing the stuff I really need to type! Yeah!!

sleeping (or at least emailing) with the enemy

the tough thing of course, about the train of thought in the four posts below, is that once we start blaming people, we wind up realizing that we are judging/blaming people we know well and love dearly.

it's not logical to judge in the abstract and not-judge in the particular.

Non-logical trains of thought:
"Investment bankers are the cogs in the machinery of imperialism that kills millions of people and destroys the planet; at the same time, my cousin is an investment banker and I am not going to judge his actions."
"Soldiers are the weapon responsible for killing; at the same time, I know lots of soldiers, including my Dad and another cousin, but I am not judging their actions."

...but maybe logic isn't the most important thing in the world?

ward churchill

First, check out this transcript of Ward Churchill's appearance on Democracy Now!

It's a short, sweet summary that explains it all for you, in case you were wondering. (It also includes some ludicrous discussion on "The O'Reilly Factor" between the host & the governor of Colorado).

Political nitty-gritty aside, apparently there are some claims that Ward Churchill is not a "real" Indian! For all you sociologists and Soc 134 students out there, herewith some thoughts on that topic...

Exhibit A: an interesting and thoughtful take on Churchill's ethnicity, views, and academic freedom from Indian Country Today ("The Nations' Leading Native American News Source").

Exhibit B: On the lefty website "Znet," here's a, well, lefty take on the identity question, featuring the "race and ethnicity are taxonomic artifacts" argument, and calling anyone who disagrees (what else?) a racist.

My take: it seems to me that the Zmag article smacks of putatively "color-blind" imperialism, while the Indian Country Today article makes some really good points.

This all reminds me of a recent discussion at Wasabi, about a pattern where the dominant group says that identity is infinitely fluid & self-defined, while non-dominant groups see things very differently, and often perceive the dominant group's "it's all fluid" attitude as an attempt to colonize and dominate ALL space (including spaces that dominated groups have fought hard to create for themselves) .......

What do you think?

And....supposing for a moment that we accept the premise that Churchill is a respectable scholar in every way except for a fraudulent "Indian" identity.... what does that mean for his scholarhsip?

My first reaction: he's taking that job away from a "real" Indian
My second reaction: he wouldn't be the first prof to be a complete nutcase and still do good work in his field.

Well, so, what do you think already? If you don't comment, I'll just laugh at you and call you a chicken.

immaculate genocide

If you followed the link to Churchill's Democracy Now! appearance, you'll have learned (or been reminded) about Hannah Arendt's description of Eichmann:

[Arendt] had gone to the Eichmann trial to confront the epitome of evil in her mind and expected to encounter something monstrous, and what she encountered instead was this nondescript little man, a bureaucrat, a technocrat, a guy who ... performed the technical functions that made the holocaust possible.... He was a good family man, in his way. He was loved by his children, participated in civic activities, was in essence the good German. ... he was every man, and that was what was truly horrifying to her in the end. That was a controversial thesis because ... she had breached the wall and brought the lessons of how Nazism actually functioned, the modernity of it, home and visited it upon everyone, calling for, then, personal accountability, responsibility, to the taking of responsibility for the outcome of the performance of one's functions.

In his book, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens (available locally at Rainbow Bookstore Co-op!), Churchill also talks about how quickly people rush to blame the over-arching structural issues (capitalism, imperialism) for the evils that they undoubtedly produce, yet try to excuse all the individual humans who participate, of any wrongdoing (he terms this "immaculate genocide").

Leaving aside the question (for the moment) of which individuals are fact responsible for the evils perpetrated by our government and its proxies, I was struck by the parallel between this and something else that I read recently... I will make it a separate post.

universal soldier...

continued... re "immaculate genocide"...

over the weekend I read a very interesting publication-- I had a paper copy but you can read it online--"Traveling Soldier." It's a bunch of folks in Vietnam -- whoa -- that was a typo! in Iraq, I mean -- talking about their disillusionment and anger etc.

The thing that bothered me was that they're sitting there saying stuff about how the war is just for the ruling class to get richer, has nothing to do with security or 9/11 or anything else, etc. etc., and one guy who helped flatten Fallujah says he had hoped never to have to fire his gun, etc etc....

...and after a point I started thinking, well, if you know all this, then why are you still firing your damn gun? at Iraqis anyway?

It started to really bother me how they were talking about "counting down the days til they go home" and all this other stuff just like you would at any other job.

I have been accustomed to portraying them as victims, cannon fodder, dupes of the ruling class, etc. Maybe this has been overly simplistic.

If it's not the soldier's fault that he shoots people, whose fault is it?

What is the appropriate analysis of the soldier's role, vis a vis his working class or poverty status within the dominant imperialist power? And what is the appropriate response to that analysis?

You all probably know this song but here it is anyway... now that this post is long I will make it a separate post... whew!

without him all this killing can't go on

self portrait by Buffy Sainte-Marie


UNIVERSAL SOLDIER by Buffy Sainte-Marie, © Caleb Music-ASCAP
I wrote "Universal Soldier" in the basement of The Purple Onion coffee house in Toronto in the early sixties. It's about individual responsibility for war and how the old feudal thinking kills us all. Donovan had a hit with it in 1965.

He's five feet two and he's six feet four
He fights with missiles and with spears
He's all of 31 and he's only 17
He's been a soldier for a thousand years

He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an athiest, a Jain,
a Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew
and he knows he shouldn't kill
and he knows he always will
kill you for me my friend and me for you

And he's fighting for Canada,
he's fighting for France,
he's fighting for the USA,
and he's fighting for the Russians
and he's fighting for Japan,
and he thinks we'll put an end to war this way

And he's fighting for Democracy
and fighting for the Reds
He says it's for the peace of all
He's the one who must decide
who's to live and who's to die
and he never sees the writing on the walls

But without him how would Hitler have
condemned him at Dachau
Without him Caesar would have stood alone
He's the one who gives his body
as a weapon to a war
and without him all this killing can't go on

He's the universal soldier and he
really is to blame
His orders come from far away no more
They come from him, and you, and me
and brothers can't you see
this is not the way we put an end to war.

Hey, is this why they (supposedly, I've heard it contested) spat on the vets who came back from Iraq, I mean Vietnam? That never made sense to me before.

Well, what do you think? Thoughts? Ideas? Angry vitriolic tirades?

cleaning makes me cranky

my hands are all red and cracked. guess they really mean that, when they tell you to wear gloves when using bleach.

the grout around the tub was toooo disgusting. so I pulled it off. something tells me that's a bad idea. but it was icky, and impossible to clean, and it was barely hanging on by a thread anyway....

i hafta...

go to new york this weekend.

and look for a job (not in new york) this spring.

my head hurts.

unexpurgated

Apparently a white cop shot a Black kid at Memorial with a taser (for "resisting arrest," although the arrest warrant turned out to be a clerical error), and the police chief won't apologize.

I posted to Madteach about this (you can read my post & find a link to more information here), but decided to delete part of the post, which then set off a whole train of thought... Although it's unlikely that anyone will ever read MadTeach, I have to think about what would happen if a lot of people started reading it...I admit I have a fantasy of being linked from Rethinking Schools and other radical lefty teachers and blogs... But if that happened, could I really be anonymous? Two possible results... (a) I would start to be a lot more self-conscious about what I posted, (b) if I said something "controversial" in a thoughtless moment, and it were taken out of context, it could wreck my career. Hmmm. What should I do? I can't decide. I could either (a) abandon the plan to make MadTeach more public (which I was going to do by getting it all set up then emailing all my teacher friends to check it out) or (b) try to be a lot more anonymous about it (plan a, except instead of saying "check out my blog" I say "check out this blog I found!" and refuse to tell if it's me when asked), or... any other options?

Here's what I pulled from the post. I was concerned that people wouldn't get the irony in the first part, and I was concerned about people jumping down my throat for posting the second part without any Research or Data or whatever to back myself up....

Anyway, herewith the expurgated portion:

---

"We weren't trying to arrest you, kid, just terrorize your community some more... we thought it'd been too long since we busted some Black ass."

I guess this is a chance for the new police chief (left) to show that he can beat up on Black kids just as well as any white guy. Is it my imagination, or is there a pattern here? I mean, I get the feeling that any new Black police officer (senator, whatever) has to prove that he's not going to go against the prevailing racism of his environment in any fundamental sense. Once he's done that, the white cops (senators, whatever) will let him do his job. Otherwise he's toast.

---

Thoughts? comments? Oh, and vote on my poll, already!!! You're making me feel like you don't want me to go away!

send birdfarm away...

What should I do with my summer? I have been considering a number of options, since Loopy will be occupied with her prelim studies; I recently noticed a unifying theme among my potential choices. See if you can spot it!





Didja vote? Well vote already!

myers briggs

funny, i'm fairly certain I used to be an ENFP (champion) but I have become an INFP (healer) in my old age. :-) I used to be much more extroverted than I am now--always loved a crowd, loved being the center of attention, felt happiest when my calendar was absolutely packed with social engagements--nothing better than to have dinner with a different friend every night of the week and finish up with some exciting weekend plans with as many people as possible. You can still see me acting like this sometimes, e.g. when out to dinner with a group of people, but the difference is that even though this is fun, I get tired and want to retreat. Although it may still seem that I blather on a lot, I keep a lot more in my head than I used to. I am more comfortable this way--previously it was like I needed someone's approval, like I needed to share all my thoughts with someone (anyone really), because otherwise I almost felt I didn't exist at all. So I'm not saying anything about INFPs and ENFPs in general, but for me personally, the process of changing from one to the other was a process of calming down and growing up, and I like it!

If you want to see what you are, check out the test here.

the sound of music, my favorite thing

finally found the lyrics for my favorite song... here they are, excerpted, for your reading pleasure (let me know if you want the CD)... I listen to this song over & over, it never gets old. i used to listen to it in the morning before arriving at school, a nice revolutionary shot in the arm to prepare me to face the day.

nowadays I can also be found listening to my new fave CD, a Buddhist nun lecturing on "from fear to fearlessness"--how's that for a contrast! but actually it all goes together...

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

"Heaven Tonight"
by The Coup (from the album "Party Music")

Chorus:
Preacher man wanna save my soul
Don't nobody wanna save my life
People we done lost control
Let's make heaven tonite
[repeat]

I got faith in the people and they power to fight
We gon make the struggle blossom
Like a flower to light
I know that we could take power tonight
Make 'em cower from might
And get emergency clearance from the tower for flight

I ain't sittin in your pews 'less you helpin' me resist and refuse
Show me a list of your views
If you really love me
Help me tear this muthafucka up
Consider this my tithe for the offer cup

[Chorus]

I used to think about infinity
And how my memory is fi'nta be
Invisibly slim in that vicinity
And though the stars are magnificent
Whisky and the midnight sky can make you feel insignificant

The revolution in this tune and verse
Is a bid for my love to touch the universe
Strugglin' over wages and funds
Let the movement get contagious and run
Through the end when it's gauges and guns
And if we win in the ages to come
We'll have a chapter where the history pages are from

They won't never know our name or face
But feel our soul in free food they taste
Feel our passion when they heat they house
When they got power on the streets
And the police don't beat 'em about

Let's make health care centers on every block
Let's give everybody homes and a garden plot
Let's give all the schools books
Ten kids a class
And give 'em truth for their pencils and pads
Retail clerk - "love ballads" where you place this song
Let's make heaven right here
Just in case they wrong

[Chorus]

here comes your nineteenth...

...bag of recycling. Yes, tonight I bit the bullet and put out the garbage & recycling...one of the joys of being a homeowner...and one of the joys of being a slacker homeowner is that I put out the garbage & recycling so rarely (especially in the winter when the garbage is frozen and doesn't smell) that there is a LOT of it to put out. Actually, very little garbage (makes you realize how awesome it is that our municipality recycles ALL plastic and paper!), but a lot of recycling. By the looks of it, we haven't taken out the paper recycling since, oh, around Thanksgiving. I hauled nineteen bags a quarter mile to the non-curb, and I was too ashamed to bring the other 8 or 10 (what would the garbage collectors THINK???). I'd go back down & take a picture but I'm too tired and hungry.

n-n-n-n-nineteen...nineteen...