Far From The Tree (you should read it!)

Andrew Solomon, Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity

With meandering chapters--part storytelling, part literature review--on dwarfism, deafness, down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, musical prodigies, transgender, and more, Solomon's book is a long and AMBITIOUS (understatement) look at children who possess some profound difference. Solomon includes hundreds and hundreds of short, journalistic narratives about families and how they cope and love and thrive, or not. Solomon concludes that "difficult love is no less a thing than easy love" but also tells the truth about tragedies. What unites all these sometimes wildly different chapters is the experience of "horizontal identity"--markers that are often not shared between parents and children and thus create a family dynamic of difference. But this isn't just a book about families, it's about how the entire culture wrestles with difference, materially and psychologically and all points between.

x-listed from my goodreads page

Word!

This one goes out to Detroit's Archbishop Vigneron who doesn't think I should "present myself" for communion, the folks at the Thomas More Law Center, and other religious supporters (many named here) of Michigan's hateful and homophobic attorney general Bill Schuette.

Solomon

Andrew Solomon has written two great books that taught me a great deal about the wounded world in which we live and the wounded bodies we inhabit too. The Noonday Demon is "an atlas of depression" and Far From the Tree an epic collection of narrative and lit review about children and parents with "horizontal identities" from one another (including chapters about transgender children, autistic children, etc, etc--each chapter focuses on some type of significant difference and the familial experiences that result). He's an amazing writer, to be sure.

Nicole shared this TED talk to me in which Solomon sums up some key ideas from Far From the Tree but with a more personal bent, drawing on his own stories of being a bullied, gay kid growing up. Trauma is part of our narratives, he says. His point, I think, is that we all need to get busy "assigning meaning to those experiences." He calls this process "forging meaning" and it's a process wherein we don't assimilate to the bullshit world but rather establish go out and transform--by sharing joy, by changing what needs to be changed, and by being visibly different when that is who we are and that's what the world needs to see.

West Wing

I steal lines from The West Wing all the time: "It's like a meeting of the 'there but for the grace of God go I' club." And: "Education's the silver bullet." The DVDs of all seven seasons are definite comfort food for me. It's always been, for me anyway, a fantasy about the most earnest, literate, liberal workaholics you'll never meet.

Since becoming a writing program director I find myself quoting the show more and more (usually to myself). On the need to have professional development sessions that are purely intellectual and free of discussion of campus politics: "No palace intrigue" (echoing President Martin Sheen's desire to silence a political debate with the fist lady until they first exchange pleasantries). A few months ago on facebook I observed, "Directing a writing program is like that episode of West Wing where Martin Sheen tells the chief of staff 'I wake up energized in the morning but I never go to bed that way' and then they argue about who is holding whom back from being radical and then they totally have a bromance moment with each other and then sweeping music plays."

Of course the show could also be pretty sanctimonious at times. By literally stranding school children in the White House during a lockdown and having the characters take turns lecturing them, the post-9/11 episode pretty much made explicit what the show thought of its own mission, audience, and righteousness. And Nicole and I always make fun of the "Look at these women" conversation from Season 1, where three white guys marvel at the women (mostly their secretaries) working in the white house despite growing up in "a world that tells women to sit down and shut up."

Despite leaning a bit to heavy on Season 2, this list from today's AVCLUB is great. Ten representative episodes that show what a great drama was The West Wing. These ten episodes will have you quoting Martin Sheen, no doubt. Of course the show often mocked the notion of fandom, especially internet fandom, which puts an ironic spin on a list like this. Once the characters mocked a White House temp worker wearing a "Star Trek" lapel pin; Josh Lyman (who on various occasions during the show's run is harassed by online fans who are invariably portrayed as fools) patiently schools her: "Tell me if any of this sounds familiar to you: Let's list our favorite episodes...That's not being a fan. That's having a fetish." The West Wing-ers would disdain the AVCLUB.

Mad Men

Mad Men can devastate viewers. For all its accolades, the show really is a wonderfully written soap opera: all sex and secrets and pathos and marriages falling apart, more or less focused on good-looking people at a cool workplace. Characters give babies up for adoption, keep their sexual orientations secret, cheat on their spouses, connive, commit suicide, reveal shadow identities, and drink too much. It's General Hospital written by MFAs. Next Sunday Roger Sterling may hatch a plan to freeze all of New York City. In the last episode Dick Whitman may wake in an army barracks in Korea, circa 1952, having dreamt the whole thing.

But back to the devastation. Throughout the show's run, some of the greatest, soapiest scenes have been those that left viewers with personal and existential sadness. Sally Draper's mom says something shitty and cruel to her. Sally sees something her young eyes shouldn't see. Sal Romano loses his job to a homophobic world even though he's about the only legitimately nice guy in the whole agency. Devastation. Sal and Sally are fan favorites, but what about protagonists like Peggy? This past week Peggy--who regularly embodies the receiving end of '60s sexism--experienced the usual workplace disempowerment. She's asked to let the guys in the office present the ideas she took the lead on creating (they'll have the authority, Peggy's told, and she can interject with the emotion). Visibly bothered, Peggy is comforted by the co-worker who fathered a baby with her years prior on his office couch: "She's as good as any woman in this business."

But this week, something more. Agency at the agency. While Sinatra's "My Way" plays on the office radio, Peggy's mentor Don encourages her to rewrite the Burger Chef pitch as she sees fit, even though the client already likes the safe pitch the agency's already floated. Peggy decided to take a risk and write the better ad campaign, the one that's inside her. Then they go eat burgers. And it's beautiful. And it doesn't look like something you ever saw on General Hospital.

This Week

Quiet Sunday night in my basement office: Tigers on the radio beating the Red Sox 3-1 in the fourth inning, catching up on a few emails, going over the work that needs to get done this week. Tomorrow's a placement essay day on campus--that will be the bulk of the day but will probably rough up a Winter '15 schedule too. Tuesday and Friday will be writing days at home, likely divided between the paper I'm writing for the WPA Conference about the "transcultural" basic writing curriculum we're piloting, and the intro I'm working on for the chapter our "Beirut-Dearborn research team" is writing. Wednesday and Thursday are office days on campus--focused on working on the writing program's annual report and the proposal for our revised curriculum. But tonight, go Tigers!

Inspiration

Smokey getting ideas for the blog.

Lu & Horner

During grad school at Arizona, Lu & Horner's Representing the 'Other': Basic Writers & The Teaching of Basic Writing made an impression. I can recall the book being taught in multiple seminars. It was a text we talked about in the hallways (ditto Crowley's Composition in the University...the "abolition" debate!). I have an enormous binder of study notes I used while prepping for comprehensive exams around 2000 or so and, going back, reading the pages devoted to Lu & Horner, I notice that I say little about mulitlingualism, though it's a central concern of Representing the 'Other.' My notes mostly focus on what Lu & Horner say about the history of the field (the always "newness" of the CUNY story), Min-Zhan Lu's sharp critique of 90s multiculturalism which she folds into a 'teaching essay' about style, and how basic writing could become a "border country" for the most productive, radical work in the field.

But I only have the sparest notes about what the two have to say about language use. At the time I was gearing up to write a dissertation about the history of first-year comp at two-year colleges, so their insights about marginalized narratives were of most interest to me, so that's part of it. But even the blurb on the back of the book (1999) emphasizes the book's implications for discussions of "mainstreaming" basic writers and developing "contact zone" pedagogies in writing programs. Not multilingualism.

I went back and re-read Representing the 'Other' last week and the book is still tremendously useful and tremendously forceful. And also a reminder of the scholarship that's been produced in the years since--especially everything that Lu and Horner themselves have written SINCE 1999, most of which builds in so many ways on Representing the 'Other.' Their more recent work is invariably more multidisciplinary--Horner's "Relocating Basic Writing," their collaborative "Logic of Listening to Global Englishes," Lu's "Metaphors Matter," and lots more too. All these draw on second-language writing, applied linguistics, etc, etc. And of course they deal with multilingualism even more explicitly than the work in Representing the 'Other,' stressing code-meshing and like concepts as both theoretical and teaching constructs. It's likely a lot more difficult to neglect this aspect of their analysis, now that language difference is (happily) in the foreground of their work. And the field. And our institutions.

Our writing program is in the midst of revising our curriculum, including a hard (and I hope creative) reboot of how we "do" basic writing in light of growing multilingual populations on campus. We piloted a code-meshing curriculum this past term and we're piloting more sections next Fall (details will be presented at the WPA conference in two months--stay tuned!). We're tentatively proposing a Studio Model for 2015. Exciting stuff. And it feels like what I've wanted to do for twenty years (teaching "basic writing" during the second semester of my master's program made me fall in love with the field). And so in addition to all the new things I've been reading--especially about Studio, but also Canagarajah, Matsuda, and others for insights on language and code--I'm going back and re-reading basic writing's greatest hits from graduate school and revisiting those yellowing notes from my comprehensive exams. I regret not taking a second language acquisition theory class and second-language writing pedagogy class while at Arizona. They had a great program but I guess I made the mistake of seeing a sharp dividing line between fields. Things are changing.

On Record

Today I had a workshop in Ann Arbor. So, naturally, I wandered over to Encore Records, a fine place to browse through stacks & stacks of old vinyl. Here's what I added to my collection:

Malcolm McLaren, Duck Rock (1983).

English Beat, What Is Beat? (1983).

Tim Finn, Escapade (1983).


     Bessie Smith, Any Woman's Blues (compilation from 1976)

Tressel

My hometown college named a beloved former football coach its new president and virtually the entire community is celebrating. I got a master's in literature at Youngstown State during the '90s and have much love for how the University anchored Youngstown during its decades-long slide. YSU employed lots of local residents, provided cultural opportunities, maintained an open-admissions policy, and educated loads of first-generation college students and persons of color. Coach Jim Tressel, before he went on to massive success--and eventually was forced to step down for ethics and rules violations--at Ohio State--coached football at YSU and won championships, giving people in a sometimes sad city something to be proud of.

Now barred from coaching until 2017 because of those violations, Tressel's been named YSU President. People love him and because of that he can likely raise lots and lots of money. He won near-universal--hyperbolic--support from local politicians, op-ed writers, unions, and, community leaders. But here's the thing: he's not an academic. He doesn't have any experience with academic fields of study. He doesn't know how knowledge is constructed. He's got, I imagine, a Reader's Digest version of academic culture, and I'm not sure that's enough when making tough decisions about, for example, balancing STEM and professional school needs with liberal and humanistic needs (as YSU is currently trying to do). Anybody who made this point was dismissed by the Youngstown press as being elitist and their arguments were reduced ("some stuffy types critique Tressel for not having a PhD..."). I hope I'm wrong and that this lack of perspective doesn't stop Tressel from being a great president, because YSU has clearly declined in the twenty years since I was a student: declining enrollments, massive decrease in support from the state, increased reliance on adjunct labor, and they need great leadership.

But there's something more than Tressel's inexperience and lack of academic qualifications. Youngstown has a reputation for corruption. We've (I say "we" as someone born and raised in Youngstown but, admittedly, as someone who hasn't lived there in decades) been a punchline since I was a little boy there. The crooked politicians, the mobsters running everything from city hall to vending machines, Jim Traficant. Organized, institutional wrongdoing--Youngstown tends to accept these things as local quirks, as things that are funny. "Ha, that's Youngstown for you." It's hard not to see the embrace of Tressel and the absence of conversation about his rules violations at Ohio State as another example of Youngstown's *affinity* for all things crooked. The same community that elected Jim Traficant over and over again and laughed off (and took gifts from and gave communion to) people they knew were murderous mafiosos has now embraced another individual known for institutional wrongdoing. And once again the justification seems to be the same: cult of personality, good fellow, and potential to turn a buck ("great fundraiser").

UPDATE:
I wrote this blog this morning. In the afternoon, Youngstown's mayor was indicted, along with the county auditor and city attorney. One commenter under this story wrote, "Perhaps the valley 'movers and shakers' can get him appointed as VP at YSU."

what is news?

At least the folks at TMZ are honest about who they are.

In a desperate ploy for ratings, Anderson Cooper interviewed the racist owner (soon to be ex-owner) of the L.A. Clippers and got him to say outrageous, racist things. Rubberneckers tuned in and watched him say outrageous, racist things. We got to speculate on his weird sex life. We got to hear him call out Magic Johnson for having HIV. (At least according to reports. I didn't actually see the spectacle.)

Just because you can get wealthy 18-35 people to watch doesn't mean it's "newsworthy." Jeez, exercise some judgment. A crazy racist guy saying crazy stuff isn't news. I'm not completely sure why it's even entertaining.

Remember when the Sex Pistols infamously went on the British version of The Today Show and the host egged them on to say something outrageous until they swore? That was a noteworthy Warholian moment but it wasn't a how-to moment in the history of broadcast journalism.

gay marriage trial in Michigan

Sadly, a coalition of Christian ministers continues to lobby against gay marriage in Michigan, appealing to the African-American community by framing the matter as a voter suppression issue. In 2004 voters struck down a marriage equality constitutional amendment. Now a lesbian couple's lawsuit against the state has finally come to trial in federal court in Detroit; they're suing for the right to adopt each other's kids in a case whose decision could affect the state's public policy regarding both adoption rights and gay marriage rights.

One of the interesting pieces of the puzzle has been the state's defense of its discriminatory policy. Here is a link to a brief the state's attorney general filed explaining that it's in the state's best interest to continue defining marriage as being between a man and a woman because the state has an interest in protecting procreation and the state has a prerogative to regulate sexual relations. Please keep in mind that the attorney general campaigned for office with support of the tea party based on "small government" ideology. And he thinks the state should be in the business of regulating sexual relationships. More alarming, perhaps, is the odd claim that the state benefits more from marriages that involve procreation.

My marriage has produced no children. My wife and I own a home, pay lots of taxes (happily) that support one of the best school districts in the state of Michigan, and don't have any kids that use the aforementioned resources. Isn't the state making out pretty good on the deal? I would make the argument that the state benefits quite a bit from my marriage--especially from that monetary perspective. This is just anecdotal, but if it weren't for my marriage, I probably wouldn't own a home--and definitely wouldn't own the home that I *do* own.

Re-Entry

Settling back into any kind of routine after international travel is tough. Yesterday I cleaned my office which is a sure sign I didn't want to grade those papers. I mean it was the first time I cleaned my office since I became director of the writing program two years ago. Went through a good portion of a bottle of Fantastic. Recycled a lot of paper. Washed some coffee mugs that had gotten gross. The place is looking good if I do say so. Also got various projects organized, submitted a bunch of paperwork, started getting organized for 4Cs coming up in a few weeks, caught up on emails and facebook, and generally pulled my head out of Paris mode into Writing Program mode. Today: get those papers graded. Thank God it's Spring Break. Knock wood, my migraine meds have been doing their thing very, very effectively. I can imagine sanity and a routine in my near future. Let's see.

Paris!

I look around my office on this frigid Michigan morning and see visual reminders of lovely Lebanon--the maps, paintings, and posters that cover my walls, the little tea set, the handbill from a lecture I gave at AUB. And two days back from France it's Lebanon at the heart of my memories of Paris too. At the Writing Research Across Borders (WRAB) Conference, our Beirut-Dearborn research team gave a symposium on the collaborative work our students have done--interviewing each other via skype and writing one another's literacy narratives--and we had a good time reconnecting in person: making plans for an article and our next teaching link-up next Fall, but also going out for paella in Paris and just spending time laughing. There's nothing like forgetting everything else for just a moment (or for just a week) and being thankful that people on the other side of the world came into my life.

It took forty years to get to Paris. I'm jealous of the easy and cheap metro and the comfortable "Winter" weather there. Sunday Mass at St. Sulpice with its enormous pipe organ, followed by a quiet espresso outside of church at a little cafe, was a highlight. So were the catacombs (Nicole wasn't a fan...so I guess thanks to my family for letting me watch inappropriate horror films as a little kid, thereby numbing me to how creepy a vast underground necropolis is!), the coffee, and the macaroons. French food? The baked goods are amazing but the "plates"...pretty good, but not as good as Thai, Indian, Middle-Eastern, and the like. I tried snails, that was a first, and a really frothy French omelette was also interesting. Paella (Spanish food in Paris--why not?) with the Beirut crew was the tastiest non-sweet food. Nicole and I walked and metroed like crazy and saw much of the city but we saved the Louvre for next time so that we have a good reason for there to be a next time.

Gina Patterson visited our Writing Center consultants on Friday to give a great workshop on LGBTQ issues and concerns and there's so much to say about the insights she shared. Let me, for now, just share two useful pics that have been on my mind. Thanks for sharing these Gina.

And another:

Catching up on Honors 220

A few weeks back I mentioned I had a section of honors rhetoric and writing 2, my first time teaching in our honors sequence. Technically proficient and accustomed to high performance at school, the students produce largely error-free prose (though a few need attention when it comes to the conventions of working with print sources). Semester-long student projects focus on the rhetorical analysis of any current debate happening in the public sphere and what students are struggling with is the difference between writing about what rhetors argue and writing about how rhetors argue. Our course text--the funny and engaging Words Like Loaded Pistols--is helping quite a bit and we're in the process of walking through various schemas and heuristics for critiquing an argument. It's fun, and we've managed to use the Richard Sherman "thug" conversation and an exchange in feminist zines about the ethos of selfies as examples we keep returning to as new tropes and terms become part of our collective repertoire. But we're also in that phase of the term where I've complicated things significantly but the complication hasn't yet benefitted student thinking and writing. I've found that there's a period where students adjust to new ways of thinking and writing, when concepts are still clicking, when they're still figuring out how to make this process their own...when the writing looks clunky. Luckily, I think I'm at the point where the students more or less trust me. And I just know that in a few weeks, as they become even more conversant about their respective areas of inquiry, as they become even more comfortable with course concepts (what is a commonplace and how does it circulate?), their writing will be at a higher level. Which is to say: I trust them too.

Kickin' the bucket

Last week the Metro Times published a fun list of 100 Things All Detroiters Should Do Before They Die. Some items were a bit predictable, like watching the Tigers at Comerica Park, but a few reminded me of places I've somehow never gone: Baker's Lounge (the famous, old lounge right down Livernois from my church), the Motown Museum, and a pizza place called Loui's in Hazel Park. What? A pizza place I've never visisted despite having lived here from 1992-1996 and 2005-2014?! Shock and shame.

Loui's, I quickly learned, was started by a French guy who worked at Buddy's for many years before going solo. It shows. The Buddy's part, not the French part. Like Buddy's, Loui's boasts deep-dish, square pies with a unique blend of tangy cheeses. Upon hearing about Loui's, Nicole agreed to pick up a large mushroom and green pepper on her way home from her office--she works on the east side so it was sorta kinda on her way--and I'd meet her at home after work. Predictably, I didn't get home from campus as early as I'd hoped and the pie was already cooling by the time I got home. That's on me.

It was very good anyway, almost indistinguishable from Buddy's (and I'm a big Buddy's fan). If anything, the sauce was sweeter, a better compliment to that unique mix of cheese that up until now I thought only Buddy's used. Nicole had sampled a slice while the pie was still hot--I would have been disappointed if she didn't--and she insists it's definitely got a leg up on Buddy's. She also reports that the 70s decor in the place is pretty terrific. So we're totally dining in next time (soon). Thanks, Metro Times. Next up: Baker's and the Motown Museum.

back on migraine meds

In 2009-2010, I was on generic depacote to treat severe migraines. The meds knocked out the migraines, for the most part, but also resulted in some substantial weight gain and my neurologist slowly weaned me off. I spent a few years with sporadic migraines. My time in Sharjah and even moreso Lebanon was largely migraine-free. I had a prescription painkiller that I took when one came on that was particularly severe but until a few months ago, it was nothing like the summer of 2009, a most miserable period of time, when I clearly recall wishing to bang my head against the sidewalk to take my mind off the incessant throbbing and pulsing in my temples and forehead.

A few months ago, the migraines grew more frequent and changed a bit, coming on more often in the middle of the night, strong enough to wake me up, strong enough that Nicole made an appointment at the neurologist and got the necessary referral from our family doc. I don't experience many other symptoms, like the light and noise sensitivity and nausea that many migraine-sufferers feel. I get occasional dizziness which seems largely disconnected from the headaches and continue to experience partial atrophy of my palate, which the doctors maintain has a neurological basis--likely the same anomaly causing the migraines--but not one they can pin down (no tumor, thank goodness).

Anyway, the neurologist decided the severity and frequency warrant a return to meds, this time generic topamax instead, which doesn't have the weight gain side effect. It's going to take about a month to ease up to full dosage but in the five days since I started I've had two migraines (about on par) though the more recent one was of much less severity. Probably too soon to be connected to the meds but I'll take it. I'm not crazy about the idea of being on drugs at my tender age, but the prospect of sleeping all night without a migraine, night after night, couldn't be more appealing.

typical me

Hey, running a writing program ain't all bad. You get to influence classroom practice, have loads of conversations about teaching, and use the noxious abbreviation "ad-min."

Today, a day with a budget meeting in the dean's office on my schedule, just happens to be the day I wear two different socks. I mean, who notices socks? Not a big deal. But I knew. The meeting went pretty well, nobody to my knowledge realized my error, but STILL. I'm such a wannbe perfectionist, it just never quite works out that way.

threeplay

Three sublime songs to cure whatever you've got.