New Year's Eve

Well, it's the end of the year, time for everyone to assess, make resolutions, talk about how their lives have changed and how 9.11 has made them a better person, and get sappy and melancholy over lost opportunities. Me, I'm no different, but I'll spare you the self-pity or martyr pie.

New Orleans went very well. It looks like I'll get an on-campus interview at a place that looks much better than I originally thought it would. This time next year I could be on the beach. I got to spend a lot of time with Steve and his clan, and the J-man and his clan. We hit the Audubon Zoo (taking the St. Charles Trolley right past where I used to live) and the Aquarium. We also hit the River Walk and the French Market. I enjoyed it all, even if the walking was a bit much for my soon-to-be-opped knee. The food was great. Steve's sister Sally has been in the city for about 6 years now, so we were able to hit some great local spots out of the Quarter or the Market District. It was nice to be with someone in the know. Steve's parents were also there, and we made a great large group.

I stayed in the hotel that was built on the spot where the book A Conferederacy of Dunces starts. Since it's one of the funniest things I've ever read (and one of my faves), I really appreciated the statue of Ignatius Reilly they had on the sidewalk on Canal Street and the shop window they had featuring his pyloric valve. Excellent -- a good tribute that was witty in its own right. However, the hotel (the Chateau Sonesta) was outrageous. I can't believe that people would pay $475 per night for nothing more than a large boxy room with a small television and carpet that was wet. I got it for $130 per night, and it was way too much even at that price. However, I was right in the Quarter, on Canal, two blocks from Bourbon, and pretty centrally located. I also hit a used book store a few blocks away for a couple more books of poetry, which go nicely with my coup of about 5 Harry Crews novels for 3 bucks each in Pittsburgh. Man, people don't know what they're doing.

For Corey

OK, It's been a long time since I've updated this blog, but here goes. Right now I should be on a plane for New Orleans, where I'm interviewing for positions at other institutions. I should be, but am instead at home, doing this, because Northwest Airlines cancelled the flight and could only get me out later today. Seven hours later today. This is, of course, after I was at the airport at 5 am, even before their damn ticket counter was open. And get this -- even though I haven't even been anywhere -- they lost my damn luggage. Now how the hell can you do that?

I figure that I'm still "in play" at 16 other schools. Of course, all those won't pan out, but I think I can get at least four or five interviews. We'll see. I'm also trying to circumvent the whole offer-counteroffer process by writing directly to the Provost, telling him that I need to make more money. EKU has actually come though for me, though. They're boosting my salary by a whopping $671 dollars per year. This puts me at close to 78% of what a comparable associate professor would make at our benchmark institutions. And for this, of course, I'm grateful, because the EKU way is to look out for me. They talk about their commitment to faculty retention, but they've got nothing but an insult to show for it.

Actually, the EKU way seems to be to do everything for the cheapest possible price. Well, they can't get me that way any longer. I'll keep on doing this, looking for work at another place, until either EKU comes up with the cash or I end up somewhere else. I have the feeling that EKU will not offer me anything different than what they already have, so I'll probably be posting here from somewhere else come September.

Hey, tomorrow is my birthday. I am officially old. I've been unofficially old for years, but this one cements it.

The Grind Goes On

Just in case you haven't heard this story yet from me: I awoke two nights ago to my wife standing on the bed screaming hystetically that there was a man behind the door to the attic. Talk about scaring the piss out of me. Next thing I remember I'm in front of that door with a bat in my hands and she's screaming at 911 on the phone. The cops show up, go over the house completely, and of course there's nobody up there. But we need to sleep with the lights on anyway, or rather, she needs to sleep with the lights on, because now I'm so pumped with adrenaline that I can't sleep for the rest of the night.

Honestly, I have never been so scared in my life as I was at that moment. Even now, just recalling that image to mind, I get goosebumps and start to sweat profusely. I think I'm still scared by it all, still startled by strange noises and movements. Damn.

Amanda's family believes that I should be armed -- that a gun would take care of all of this. I doubt it -- I know I'd still be spooked by every little noise and would probably end up shooting the damn dog.

Chicago Bound

I'm off to the windy city in a couple hours, leaving at 4:00 am for a panel that will present later today, at about 2:00 pm. By that time I'm sure that we won't even be checked in to the hotel (the last time at the Plamer House, we spent four hours in the lobby). Of course, the last time I was at the Palmer House was the first time Amanda and I took one another seriously. Weird.

Later today, of course, I'll be exhausted and non-functioning (I think I may have SERIOUSLY reinjured my left knee -- it feels like there's a pound of meniscus in the joint again. Maybe I can shake it out (that's incredibly optimistic), or maybe I can avoid any long walks (I've got to lead a tour of the Chicago Art Institute on Friday -- we'll see how that goes).

It'll be good to get away for a couple days. I need the break from EKU, because my tech writing classes have been driving me nuts. I've had to do so much serious mothering, and the products have been god, but not great. It was different when I did these online, because there was no room for mothering or extending deadlines or basically cleaning up code after everything was supposedly done. Now, f-t-f, it's a whole new world.

Don't get me wrong; they're great classes, with good students who are trying hard. But they're lacing a certain rigor, and that may be because we're seeing one another and they know they can get over. Oh well, live and learn.

Amanda's Birthday

Sometimes I think I'm just damn lucky to have met a woman like this, one who is willing to put up with my 40-year-old bullshit and my 11-year-old intelligence. At other times I think other things, but I'm trying to get a handle on that, and not take this woman for granted. In celebration of her 24 years, we're off to brunch then the mall, where she'll participate in that great consumer venture called "buying clothes for work." She's doing great at her job, and it looks like Scott County will want her full-time after her practicum and internship are finished. That would be OK with me, if she can hack the commutte, and if we stay in KY.

Speaking of that, I was at the office until midnight last night (yes, on a Saturday night) getting the envelopes right for 20 job applications. That's not a lot, but they're all in places where Amanda would like to live, so we'll see what happens. My letters of recommendation are on their way, and I'm hoping for at least one offer, just to get a counteroffer from EKU. But the Dean did say that I shouldn't bluff on this, so I'm not. If I get an offer somewhere else and nothing from here, I'm gone, to sunnier climes and lighter teaching loads, and at least 10% more money. Sweet.

Governor's Scholars

So it looks like I'll be the Campus Director for the Governor's Scholars Program at EKU this summer. The job is interesting, the challenge is great, the money is sweet, and maybe I can carve out some time to spend with the students. It'll be nice to be with the best students in Kentucky.

There are some downsides to this, one being that I'll have to live in a dorm on campus for seven weeks. Should be interesting.

On the classes front, my tech writing classes have finsihed their sites. Here they are:

EKU Science Learning Resource Center

Business Communications Primer

This is good work. It's not brilliant, but it's nice.

OK, off to a rehearsal dinner tonight, then a wedding tomorrow.

Crash and Burn

That's what happend to the old handmade computer I was working on. I turned it on on Friday and it smelled like gunpowder. Turns out, according to Wendell the god, that the power supply fried all the drives. They were in such bad shape that Wendell wanted to save them for their neat effects. He thinks it might be the electricity in the house. He brought over an oscilloscope tonight and we spent a couple hours checking te lines. I'll be calling the electrician tomorrow. And getting a UPS. And making sure I back shit up,

Now the black beast is gone, replaced by a Sony VAIO that I paid way too much for. But I was dealing with a wife who lost most of her thesis, in CompUSA at 9:00 on Saturday night. I knew I was getting gouged, but I had to do it. 1.5k for a 1.7 gig with 128 of the new 800mhz RDRAM, cdrw, dvd, 80 gig hd, 32 megs on an nvidia Geforce 2 card, firewire, and all the other standard crap. This one better last for a while.

Wendell thinks he may be able to salvage some data from the old disk, but I'm not holding my breath. Of course, if anyone can do it, it's him. He's been more than very good to us. In the meantime, we're retyping a lot of stuff, and I'm redownloading plenty. Oh well.

When Classes Go Wrong

No, it's not as bad as when animals go crazy, or milk goes sour, or anything that would make a good reality-tv special, but this is a nasty thing. Today, for instance, teaching my intro to tech writing class, it just blew up in front of me. The leader of the group doing group work didn't show up; her minions knew very little about the project. She knows barely more, but enough to screw up the template they were working from so badly that I had no idea what she was up to. After an intervention by the University's web administrator, I finally just packed it in and told them that they just had to get me their files in .txt format and that I would do the rest.

Crash. Burn. Die on the way to the hospital.

My normal classes, where I just do my schtick, don't go bad like this. It's only the ones that are project-based that have this potential. Of course, when they work they're great. But this time, this one certainly is in a slow-motion explosion.

The job hunt has come around now -- the MLA list is finally in the department, and I'll make copies of it tomorrow. I've got my letters of recommendation lined up, some decent places to apply to, and perhaps a chance to do the same job for a living wage somewhere else.

OK, off to download more mp3s (I'm thinking of Mellencamp -- doing the whole thing if I can get the damn cd burner to roll).

ThinkGeek and Nashville

I'm headed for Nashville tomorrow for a meeting of the board of trustees of The Cooperative Center for Study Abroad. Two fun-filled days meeting about currency exchange rates, international investments, and course proposals. Actualy, I kind of like it, but I'm amazed that everyone there is SO into international travel. I mean, this is life for many people. I like it, and I love to teach overseas, butI've got other things to do, too. Right now I'm putting up five international courses from EKU this year, so I'm working pretty hard on cordinating things and getting flyers done, stuff like that.

The first things I've smiled at in a long time are two shirts: ThinkGeek :: No, I will not fix your computer and ThinkGeek :: STFU Tshirt. I could use both of these. Amanda says I should wear the first one to work every day. Maybe.

One last thing -- Promotion and Tenure applications are due on Monday. I know what I'm doing Sunday.

Wendell's Got a Girlfirend

So after seeing "Serendipity," an OK flick, with my lovely bride, we headed to Hastings to get her a "greeting gift" for a friend that she's having lunch with tomorrow. She picked up a 20 buck copy of The Lord of the Rings, and I got myself Ben Folds' newest, Rockin the Suburbs. While we were in there, we saw one of my favorite students, Wendell Wilson, with his roomie Sam and some woman who may or may not have been his girlfriend. I was very excited.

I think I spend too much time worrying about the lives of my students. Will Wendell get a girlfriend? Does Keri understand this? Is Corinne tired all the time because of something bad at home? Is Byron dating? I am constantly wondering, worrying about students, partly in a paternalistic way and partly out of curiosity. I want to spare them the mistakes I've made, and want a view into their lives. I guess it's harder growing up now, or so I'm told, but I really think the fundamental issues are still the same. Am I a decent person? What will or won't I do? Can I make a life for myself like this? Who's more important, me or my friends?

Yeah yeah, it's almost 2:30 and time to go to bed -- no more worries for tonight, just a wife and a dog and two cats and life again in the morning.

Writing with Nothing to Say

I guess this is what separates the real "need to write" writers from the rest of us who do this when we have to, or when we have something to say. Rigth now, I've got nothing to say, but i'm making that the issue for a little riff, which is so pomo I just want to puke about it. I feel like I've been slimed by Seinfeld, the king of irony. A quick google search reveals that "nothing to say" is a pet phrase of songwriting hacks who turn to the internet to see their tab (kind of like the people who turn to blogs to see their writing, no?). If that search didn't give me diabetes, I'm safe to start mainlining straight sugar now.

The debate last night went fine. I took the role of the raving anarchist, and it was fun. One debater, the chair of philosophy, asked the other, a government prof, where I was getting my sources, at www.anarchistsrus.com? It was a great dig, and so true -- most of my work on this was done on the web. Of course, the first question we got was how to address these issues so lightly in the face of the 9/11 attacks. We all dropped the masks and spoke, eloquently, I think, about the nature of government. We all cautioned against the knee-jerk violent response and the runaway power mongering going on now. Remember what Benjamin Franklin said: "Those who would sacrifice liberty for safety deserve neither."

I'm still deep into grading avoidance on this set of comp papers. I'll get them done by Tuesday, but midterm grades are due ont he system tomorrow. typical, to require the grades a week in advance of when they're needed, so that we can't give an accurate assessment of a student's progress. But hey, this is supposed to retain students. Of course, no one is really interested in retainign faculty, which is why I'll be somewhere else by this time next year.

Avoiding Work

It's an easy thing to do, this avoiding work. With the web, and the novels I need to get through, it's very easy not to write or grade. In fact, I'm skipping both of those even as I write now. I have a debate to do on the nature of government this Wednesday night. I need to distribute my opening remarks by tomorrow morning to the other participants. I'm deep into avoiding that right now. I've also got two stacks of papers that need grading by Tuesday -- maybe I'll get one of them done by then. I also have to do a midterm exam for my online class and put it up by Wednesday.

To this mix add the fact that Amanda has been out of town all weekend and that I spent yesterday coaching the Academic Team at a tournament. Yeah, I guess I'll be working late tonight.

So I'm reading Naipaul's A Bend in the River. I need to do so because it's one of the works chosen to test the masters students on this year. Once again, I feel like Jim Dixon in Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim, because I've not read something I should have. His description in that book of the ultimate English professor game, "Humiliation," is brilliant. A group of "literary" people gather, and one person calls out a title of a book that she has not read. She scores one point for every person in the group who HAS read that work. That's it; it's very simple. However, the psychology behind it is brilliant. Obviously, you will score the most points with "classics," works that you think everyone else has read. So you need to profess your ignorance of some of the stalwarts of Western literature. In short, to win you must humiliate yourself. Of course, with my lack of desire to read Melville, Dickens, Eliot, Hardy, or any other 19th-century overdrawn crap, I guess I can usually clean up on that game.

anyway, here are some links you might like:

Overcoming Procrastination
The UIUC Counseling Center has this nice little page explaining why we do this and what we can do to stop. I think I'll read it tomorrow.

V. S. Naipaul: An Overview
George Landow, one of the gods of lit on the web, has done this site as part of his poco work.

Kingsley Amis
A nice primer for the man and his son (Martin), by Books and Writers, a site I've trusted for a while now.

Applying for Jobs

I think I whine quite a bit about money. At least, that's what people tell me. It's galling, however, to know that it will be another two years before I make what the average college graduate makes in these United States. By that time I'll have had six years in here, been promoted and tenured, and still not be making what the average BA will be making (of course, by then their average salary will be higher, so I probably won't be making it then, either).

There are places that actually pay a livable wage to those who teach. I'll be applying at places like Cal State Sacramento, Murray State here in Kentucky, The College of Charleston, among others, this year.

I was so frustrated that I wrote to ms. mentor, who writes a column for The Chronicle of Higher Education. She answered me in today's column. Yes, it's a nasty little business, full of deceit and trickery and the willingness to disupt your life so that you can live decently.

Kentucky's new state program is called Education Pays. Given the data they've collected, they seem to be right. Education does pay, just not for educators.

Hell of a Speechwriter

The boy is a doofus, who always looks too damn smug, who doesn't have two brain cells to rub together, even when it's his day to use the family gray matter (Jeb gets in on MWF, W gets it TR, but all weekend, because, after all, he's the prez). But he's got a hell of a speechwriter, and he knows how to deliver a line. He hit all the spots he needed to hit, emphasizing tolerance twice (twice daily might be what we need).

Now what? I'd like to think that we're out of harm's way, but I can't convince myself of that. Instead, I think we're in for more attacks, not necessarily from the air. We've been hit in the solar plexus of the military-industrial complex, and at the nerve center of international finance. I think entertainment is up next; these are the cultural artifacts that the Great Satan exports, and the things we're hated for.

Duck and cover, kids, we're in for a long fight.

Like Bookends

I heard from some old friends this week. Doug Rice I've mentioned before. He's the guy that's going to hook me up in Sacramento. Actually, he's the guy who speaks highly of the place and makes me want to go there. But I also heard this week from Kathryn Rummel, a friend from UNC who's now at California Polytechnic State U, in San Luis Obispo. It's gorgeous out there. She's got a great job, but I feel a bit sorry for her, out there by herself. Oh, I know she's got plenty of friends out there and she's not only respected but liked in her department, but it still must be tough, a Kentucky girl out there on the left coast.

Kathryn and I never knew each other well at UNC. We were chatting aquaintances, people who would pass in the halls and say a few polite meaningless words (I am sure that I was wearing the motley, not her). and then I came here, minutes from her parents' place in Lexington, and she went there, thousands of miles away from here. We stayed in touch by email, and I can remember communicating with her on a level that went far beyond what our friendship warranted, because it was so easy to be honest and hurt and lost and confused and lonely when it was only me and the computer. There was no need to get defensive, no need to rationalize, no need to raise my hackles over some unintended slight, no need to do anything except imagine her and Sukie, her dog, in a great many-windowed apartment near the beach, walking in the sand every day. And so I did.

Lately we had slipped out of touch. It was probably my fault, although I don't know why. I still think of her often, and how different her life must be. It will be nice if I can maintain this opened door. I'm not good at a distance (it's why I think ultimately distance ed will fail -- it will take two to six percent of our students, and that's it -- faculty are better face-to-face), but maybe I can try harder.

Exhausted

It's been a hell of a week. I know, nothing like what people in NY are experiencing (buona fortuna, Tom Cultice and all my friends at Mannes College of Music, the Jesuits at Xavier, and all the help and hearts of Bailey House), but still tiring for me.

Tomorrow I go to spend the day teaching an appropriate topic, Workplace Violence. Needless to say, I've got my case study lined up. I do this a few times a semester, for NAILM and for EKU's Community and Workforce Education. I got to be good at this when I worked at UNC Hospitals and had to develop policies dealing with this issue. I ended up doing this schtick at plenty of places.

There's more to do and more to grade, so I'm off.

Avoiding Grading

Is there a better grading avoidance device than a terrorist attack? It's just minutes after the World Trade Towers and Pentagon bombings and I've got almost 30 comp papers to grade. I'd rather watch the news sites crash than grade. Hell, I'd rather do anything than grade (well, almost anything).

How about these links:

Terrorism -- Intelligence Threats Assessments
This is a link site to all the docs needed to become an expert on terrorism.

The Anarchist Cookbook and The Terrorist Handbook
They're both here at this weirdpier site.

The Pentagon
Makes you all warm and fuzzy for the arms merchants.

How Does It Feel?
This may be what the rest of the world is saying to the U.S. right now.

Feeling Puny

I made a great blogging mistake today -- I looked at other blogs. Man, I thought I was hip, I thought I was up on the design, I thought because I tweaked the html in this template that I was hot shit. Well, I learned just how puny I am this afternoon. There are some awesome sites out there, with witty, interesting people writing incredible stuff. I saw a lot of sites, and they all looked better, linked better, and created something more interesting than this.

So maybe I've got it all wrong. I read some articles that suggested that blogs should be annotated lists of sites. Well then why the hell am I writing this prose? Where are my pix? How about my unusual and thought-provoking links? The details of the fascinating and envy-provoking life I live? The fun city I live in and my drunken wanderings through it?

Man, I got nothing.

And to top it all off, I graded my online class for most of the day and spent the rest of the time trying to copy a cd with a new miniCDRW that hangs at 2:37 of every cd. Now I've got some nice new coasters, and one data cd that I did manage to burn.

Anyhow, you want links, here are some links. They're not trendy, they're not particularly cool, they're just there to make you think:

Path to Peace
History of Northern Ireland peace process and ongoing negotiations from ireland.com. Just plain sad.

Company
The U.S. Jesuits put out this mag. Show me someone doing work as important.

Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)
You think life is tough for you? Check this out.

Jimmie Spheeris: A Memorial Gallery
This guy was awesome; I've got some of his vinyl, and he still rocks.

Grading on Saturdays

This has got to be the worst thing about being a teacher. Grading is bad enough: reading papers where I know I'm spending more time on them than the author did, noting and correcting the same gradeschool-level mistakes over and over again, writing comment after comment in the recognition that, for many students, the transfer of knowledge from one assignment to another is a dicey proposition. And to do this all on Saturday? Miserable.

I got into this dodge because I told myself that I was sacrificing money for time, that I was never going to make any decent cash, but that I would have more time for the rest of my life (let me tell you about what professors of English get paid -- in my fifth year, after being promoted early to Associate Professor, I still can't make what starting English ass't profs makes at our benchmark institutions -- I'm still at least one year away from 40K). Well, it just doesn't work that way. This semester I've cut way down on my work time, which means that I'm putting in 40 hours of work instead of my usual 60. And what do I have to show for it? Nothing but debt and the recognition that next year, people will be hired in above me (or above someone in the department, a truly despicable thing). It's no wonder I'm looking for a new position.

I ran into (well, it was an electronic "ran into") someone I went to grad school at Duquesne with. He's at Cal State at Sacramento, where I'll be applying. Doug Rice does work that I don't understand, and I understand and appreciate lit for a living. But hey, he's in the Acker vein, and he's pissed off Senators Helms and Ashcroft, so he must be doing something right. I think about him in that big Teaching Assistant office at Duquesne, holding court, being loud, and generally tossing out offhand comments that could rule your life if you thought about them (they did for me). And I think of those straightlaced, buttoned-down, incredibly Catholic people we shared an office with, and I just laugh. Do a google search on Doug Rice and read a few of the reviews of Blood of Mugwump and A Good Cuntboy Is Hard To Find. It may not show you where literature is going, but it will open your eyes to the possibilities.

Doug, it was good to rediscover you after so many years. I trust you are well and still ranting. I'm happy your voice is recognized and celebrated.

Weighty Things?

Are these things really supposed to be weighty? I mean, I guess I just don't understand the audience here. Am I writing with a bunch of shoegazers who will only read these things as testaments to their melancholia? Am I writing with technogeeks whose acronymic language is even more filled with nonsense than my own? Am I writing with Salinger wannabes who details the minutiae of their angst-ridden lives? I'm not sure. And I guess the fact that I mentioned these three groups demonstrates that I must possess a bit of each of them myself. Oh well.

Anyhow, today I saw those teacher evals on collegeclub. They were exactly what I expected. No, there weren't any about me, but those about the people I knew were accurate, as far as I can tell. Of course, those who post such reviews usually have an ax to grind, so everything should be taken with a grain of salt.

I need to spend more time looking up info on the Ardoyne school protests. I was on ireland.com the other day reading about it and got sick thinking about the bombing of children -- this must be how people of good conscience felt during the 60s when people were bombing churches in the South. But I also got homesick for the place -- I know I've only been there a few times, but it's a much better, much friendlier, much more intelligent place than I've been living in here. Today they announced that the protest wasn't violent yesterday: "There was a peaceful but noisy protest outside Holy Cross yesterday as around 100 Catholic schoolgirls and their parents walked to the main school gates. Around 200 Protestant residents blew whistles, sounded air horns and banged bin lids as they passed. The chairman of the school's board of governors, Father Aidan Troy, said he was relieved. "We can live with whistles. They are better than pipe bombs," he said."

So what is it? Such a violent place, where pipebombs are diplomatic tools and keeping track of the splinter groups that wish to continue the violence could be a full-time job. And then there's the ROI, where you can be a world away from the violence and think you'll never see it again. Yeats had it right, it's filled with a terrible beauty, which calls to me and repulses me at the same time.

Rhythm

I guess the trick for blogging, as for any other writing, is rhythm. So now, even when I don't feel like it, I'll write a bit as I recover from reading student responses to questions I posed on Wordsworth and Coleridge. My students this semester are an interesting lot. My advanced tech writing class is small, with good students, willing to work hard and put int he time to learn something. My beginning tech writing class is a bit more scattered. There are some excellent people there, and some who are dreading learning with me, because I require more work that the other tech writing classes do. The comp class is finally getting into the swing of things; like most intro writing classes, they're a bit shy, always trying to get over and get out of work, but, when pressed, will step up, for the most part.

I'm trying to see if my classes are rated in CollegeClub.com, but there's something wrong with the javascript, so I really can't tell. There was an article in the Eastern Progress, the school newspaper, about sites where students grade their profs. To be honest, I welcome such a thing. I'd like to see us be held as accountable as we hold our students. I know that there are many ways that we can influence student evaluations of us (I've personally witnessed such things as bringing cookies in on the day evaluations are completed, telling students what to write on their evaluations, and even ripping up any bad evals). We need to remember that we owe something not just to out colleagues, but to our students as well. We owe them quality teaching and respect for their endeavors. I know plenty of people who have one or the other of these, and I know a rare few, the best professors I can recall, who have both.

Why blog?

Because I teach this stuff, and I'm still trying to figure out how to write, or what I do when I write.
Because maybe I can see myself get better as I do it.
Because, as I've told many, I don't have a creative bone in my body (my use of this turn of phrase should prove my point), so maybe I can hone something creative here, or at least peer over the fence.
Because it's another form I may need to know.
Because there's just me and the screen.
Because the cats and dog are asleep and my wife isn't home yet.