top ten pop culture artifacts or events that don't appeal to me whatsoever

10. The Olympics. The events strike me as boring. Guys swimming laps? Teen-agers doing gymnastic routines? Really? I'm a big fan of both The Human Spirit and Wheaties, but I can't get into "the games."

9. Pink Floyd. I've never owned a Pink Floyd record. Even their fast songs seem too slow. I can't explain why I like The Who's Tommy but have no interest in this band's output.

8. TV shows about judges. Judge Judy. Judge Wopner. Judget Mathis. Yawn. It's hard to make small-claims cases matter to anybody other than 1) the person who's out the hundred bucks, and 2) my dad.

7. The Woodward Avenue Dream Cruise. This is a local pick. The annual weekend when baby boomers drive gas guzzling cars up and down the Detroit area's main north-south artery and fans set up lawn chairs on sidewalks and parking lots so their kids can breathe the fumes from as close to the road as possible. The "Cruise" is a great weekend for anybody who appreciates classic cars, littering, port-o-potties, oil company profits, and gridlocked traffic.

6. Nick Cave. This guy's critical acclaim makes The Sopranos look like a Pauly Shore vehicle and he's down right iconic among indie rock fans. He played at one of the Lollapalloozas I attended during college and, I swear, he sounded like a frog. A very sad frog. I don't have anything against melancholy in music per se, but, for me, Cave saps rock and roll of its adventure and sense of play.

5. Bright Eyes. A couple of years ago, my students couldn't stop talking about Bright Eyes. How does a teen-aged boy decide to perform rock music under the name "Bright Eyes"? I'd love to know the backstory. I appreciate his politics (he toured with the anti-Bush Vote for Change tour in 2004, which is how I came to see a Bright Eyes live performance) but, like Mr. Cave, Mr. Eyes takes himself way too seriously.

4. Hockey. This is *almost* a local pick. In Detroit, hockey's as popular as any of pro sports' big three. My five-paragraph essay about why hockey doesn't appeal to me would contain body paragraphs that address the following three ideas. First, I don't understand a lot of the rules (What beef, for instance, do the officials have with players who commit "icing"--which I think means hitting the puck too far down the ice--especially given that it's okay to hit players from the other team?). Which brings me to my second hypothetical body paragraph, I don't like to watch people fight. Third, those Red Wings flags that Detroiters fly from their car windows...way tacky. Postscript number one: my first two reasons could also fit in a five-paragraph essay about why rugby doesn't appeal to me. Postscript number two: from a Freudian point-of-view, my lack of affinity for fighting (and much of my political ideology) might originate in my grandma's insistence, circa 1978, that we call the card game "war" by the more benign name "steal-a-pile." Postscript number three: if you're going to doctor up the name of the game to exclude things that are bad, why condone stealing?! Postscript number four: I think car dealerships in Detroit affixed those Red Wings flags to all SUVs in the 1990s.

3. The Big Lebowski. --Insert sound effect of needle being abruptly pulled off a record-- What? How can you not love this movie? Dude, give it another shot. I love most Coen Brothers films (especially Blood Simple and Fargo), but the Lebowski movie totally and utterly eludes me. Including this choice feels risky. I mean, this is like a pop culture litmus test. Sorry, just being honest.

2. The 'His Dark Materials' trilogy. I know people who absolutely rave about these books and respond to my dislike of it with shock and awe. I couldn't get through the first installment. I love the Harry Potter books. I love most things that piss off conservative Catholics. But I don't dig on Golden Compass.

1. Divas who hit high notes simply because they can. I'm talking to you, Mariah Carey. I'm talking to you, every female singer who ever appeared on American Idol. Not every song needs to explore a half a dozen octaves. Aretha Franklin, Beyonce, Big Mama Thorton all have/had tremendous range and one of the reasons why all three equal awesome is that none feel/felt obligated to show that range constantly.

...so how about you? what would your top ten look like?

let us now praise famous men, part 2

Mercy, mercy me. Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is in jail. How bad-ass is Detroit? Our mayor is behind bars.

More remarkable than the arrest itself? The speed of the media response. The arrest was a few hours ago, and the Free Press website boasts the story itself, video of the arrest, six op-ed pieces by big name columnists calling for him to step down and/or calling on the governor to remove him from office, person-on-the-street reactions and numerous other side-bar pieces, Barack Obama's statement about the arrest (!), the obligatory "here's what the national media's saying" synthesis, a photo montage of past Kilpatrick scandals, full text of Kilpatrick's words in the courtroom, and various PDFs of official documents like the memo appointing a Kilpatrick staffer the acting mayor.

let us now praise famous men

Will any of my students--past, present, or future--every write anything as widely read as Gilbert Arenas' blog? For that matter, will I ever write anything that has half the circulation of said blog? Before he became "Agent Zero," Arenas was "Robin" to Jason Gardner's "Batman" at the University of Arizona. Fall, 1999. Freshmen guards. Proverbial big men on campus. And enrolled in a first-year composition course taught by yours truely.

Tucson media followed Arenas and Gardner closely because they made for great stories. Flashy California kid with a penchant for pissing off Lute Olson (Arenas) and quiet, tireless Indiana kid who averaged something like thirty-nine minutes of playing time per game (Gardner) who became inseperable on campus, young starters on a team full of stars-to-be. Loren Woods. Richard Jefferson. Luke Walton, who had to put up with "who's your daddy?" chants from opposing teams' student sections and "is your dad disappointed you aren't at UCLA?" questions from every journalist in pac-10 land. Future Globetrotter (and fan of old school Nikes and striped socks) Gene Edgerson, who got negative press (how could he not put the Wildcats first?!) for red-shirting so he could finish his education degree student-teaching at a local kindergarden. Extremely tall basketball player teaching five-year-olds. What a photo op. Guys destined for the NBA sat the bench on this team.

Arenas' popularity definitely trickled into the classroom. On the first day of school, I had to ask one of the young women in the class to wait until after classtime to get his autograph. And that was two months before the season even started. Sometimes I wonder if any of my former students will ever write a New York Times bestseller, or a manifesto that will change the course of human history, or a series of lucrative greeting cards. Maybe. In the meantime, one of those former students, Agent Zero, is last year's Weblog Awards winner for Best Celebrity Blog. Yep, he beat Rosie O'Donnell and that kid from Stand By Me and Star Trek. Congrats, Gilbert, on the b-ball prowess as well as the blogging prowess. But would a shout-out to the U of A composition program kill you?

blur

As always, summer is the blurriest season, the season with less routine and more aspirations. I'll write for how many hours per week? I'll read how many books and articles? My dad, an elementary school teacher, used to start bemoaning summer's quickness earlier and earlier each year. It's the middle of June, summer's almost over. I inherited some of those clockwatching tendencies. Not that the prospect of a new academic year doesn't excite me, it's just that I know I'll miss the bike riding, the digging in the garden, the chance to spend entire days working on research and writing at Caribou Coffee.

The inevitable "so you're off work until September?" conversations irritate me and I've got my answer ("well, teaching's only forty percent of my job...") all queued up. And I've done pretty well in the productivity department: wrote a book review for the WPA journal, finished work and sent off an article based on a 'revise and resubmit', organized last year's service learning data for coding, gave a paper at RSA, attended American Democracy Project seminar in Utah, put together a PowerPoint on service learning for fall writing program meeting, and started reading for a new project on empathy and teaching. BUT...truth be told, I do feel as if I become a part-time worker bee in the summer. I've volunteered with two different political campaigns. I've twice gone down to my folks' house for long weekends. I've played with the dogs and gardened and watched a bunch of netflix movies. Off work until September? To an extent, yes. Blurry summer, another reason to be thankful for a sweet job and a sweet life.

so far

The garden so far has yielded:

--Kohlrabi. One of my favorite veggies. Sliced and eaten raw, you can't beat it.
--Grape tomatoes. The full-sized are still green, but these tasty treats are turning red. So far we've eaten them in salad with...
--Cucumbers. I was starting to worry that the SPRAWLING vines were just going to sprawl. But today I picked four nice-sized 'cukes. Each time I eat a home-grown cucumber I swear I'll never buy one at the grocery store again.
--Berries. Thank you, former home-owner, for the awesome currants and rasberry bushes. Rasberries rarely even make it into the house, so I haven't cooked with them at all. Currants have made a nice mix-in for rice prepared with almonds and various herbs. I've also sauteed them with onions and greens. There are still loads of them out there too!
--Fresh Herbs. They've been good this year: cilantro, parsley, marjoram, mint, tarragon, thyme. Forgot to plant basil. Didya know that one cup of parsley has 100% of the daily recommended vitamins A and C? I had a bunch of barley in the cupboard and made a barley version of tabouli, using equal parts mint and parsley. Really good.

Favorite time of the year? Yes.

sublime jams

Ever experience a cultural event--a 'happening,' to borrow 60s lingo for a moment--so special that you know history is all around you? For those who believe that Detroit's musical heritage is something special, history happened last night.

At the annual Concert of Colors festival, storied record producer, performer, and multi-instrumentalist Don Was assembled what he called a Detroit Super Session, part old-time musical review (house band hosting a series of performers), part multi-act gig (think early 70s Detroit shows where some combination of Alice Cooper, the Stooges, MC5, Mitch Ryder, and Ted Nugent would share a bill), and part celebration of sonic and ethnic multiculturalism in Detroit.

I got to the Opera House early, brought some reading, and staked out a front-and-center seat. And the show didn't fail to bring together some of my favorite artists from the last forty years. Was played bass with the family punk band The Muldoons (hands down the best live act in Detroit right now), as the Muldoon brothers (9 and 14 years old) wailed through a version of "Chubby Bunny." The Was-led houseband hosted Mick Collins of the Dirtbombs, who sang a slow and soulful version of "Stop," during which I missed D'bombs bassist Ko's backing vocals and the loud and agressive stylings of the rest of the D'bombs but really appreciated Collins' voice (the guy's got some serious vocal chops). The houseband also backed The Sisters Lucas, Lola Morales, Mitch Ryder, and the poet John Sinclair of MC5 fame, feeding the excited audience some excellent Americana, soul, salsa, spoken word, and rock to chew on. One song per performer, no matter how legendary.

The houseband surrendered its spot for several performances. The reunited Black Merda--my favorite performance of the night--did a funky version of "Cynthy Ruth" and proved they're not just a great '60s band, not just "the first black rock band," not just a great psychedelic act, and not just a great Detroit act. They rock. Period. Was played bass with the Detrot Cobras on "As Long as I Have You," after which DC's guitarist took disposable-camera pictures of Was, John Sinclair, and herself posing with various musicians. Emblematic of the whole night's fun atmosphere. Black Bottom Collective brought its eight-piece fusion of hip hop, soul, and hard rock and clearly impressed the rock-and-roll-leaning crowd. And members of 70s punk outfit The Ramrods--another of the reunions--showed no "when in Rome..." decorum, Iggy-ing around the Opera House stage as if playing a cheap Cass Corridor pub.

I'm probably overlooking some of the acts. Not a weak link in the whole show. A great, great night for the city.

your old road is rapidly agin'

Jim Holley's editorial in today's Detroit Free Press invokes Bob Dylan's words, implicitly at least. Rev. Holley, a long-time civil rights leader, responds to Jesse Jackson's critique of Barack Obama by urging Jackson to "step back and let the new guard take control." Holley establishes his own credibility by connecting himself generationally and ideologically to Jackson: I'm one of you and I'm saying from the inside that WE need to defer. By way of justifying the step aside argument, Holley doesn't hesitate to point out the shortcomings of his own generation of activists:

The simple truth is that our generation -- my generation -- has not only failed to fulfill the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King, but we have also failed this younger generation. We gave them nothing, and yet it is a member of this generation that is coming closer to fulfilling King's dream than any one of us ever thought possible.

Holley cites current economic conditions as evidence of this failure and concludes that new tactics and a new message are necessary.

It's an interesting and compelling argument. The major weakness of the piece lies in the shaky, shifting nature of the "we" pronoun. Throughout the piece Holley vaguely invokes the first person plural. Sometimes "we" refers to black America. Elsewhere, "we" refers to a particular social movement--i.e., civil rights workers of the 60s. Sometimes "we" refers to activists in general.

The thing is, social movements work in concert with electoral politics. They represent two different realms of the democratic process as we know it, so the idea that a political candidate could somehow replace a social movement strikes me as odd. Obama has moved from one realm to the other, first working as a community organizer then as an elected official. Has he worked on similar issues in both realms? Absolutely. Lots of politicians have made seamless or nearly seamless transitions from non-profit sector or activist community to public sector or elected office.

But the fact remains, the worlds have different norms and different objectives, and present different rhetorical possibilities. I think some of Jackson's statements may not have been politically expedient or prudent. However, conceiving of Obama's candidacy as a replacement for activist work seems wrong-headed. In fact, given Obama's moderate platform, it seems potentially dangerous.

cooking continues

One of the great things about plentiful herbs: less reliance on salt. I made burgers out of ground lamb using just the meat, a huge handful of fresh marjoram, an egg, and fresh breadcrumbs. No salt. Good stuff. I topped the burgers with a pesto of sorts made from almonds, white vinegar, parsley, mint, and lemon balm. Once again, no salt needed.

On the recommendation of my dad, I sauteed some zucchini flowers. I dipped the beautiful orange and white petals in flour and then egg, and did them in a pan with a little olive oil. Subtle, fresh taste.

Detroit's been hot and humid this week. High 80s, mostly. Lots of working in the garden, bike riding (Nicole and I got new mountain bikes and we're having a ball), and reading out in the backyard. Oh, and at church I helped out in the "community garden" (an urban gardening site--completely organic) building a gazebo yesterday. Kind of like an Amish barnraising. I know when the schoolyear kicks in, virtually all my exercise comes in the rec center on campus, so I'm committed to taking advantage of the outdoors in the next two months.

follow-up

This is a kind of a Part II to yesterday's post about what's happening in the garden...or, rather, in the kitchen. I made tea with lemon balm leaves last night. Very relaxing. I boiled a little saucepan of water and dropped in about half a dozen leaves to steep for five minutes or so. I stirred in about a tablespoon of honey from my sister's hives and, voila, a nice evening beverage.

Today, I was hungry for a healthy late lunch. I had gotten up early, biked to Caribou (about a thirty minute trek), spent the morning and early afternoon writing at the coffee shop, and biked back home. Sweaty and tired. So inspired by that Mario Batali escarole recipe, I sauteed: a couple handfuls of romaine lettuce, half a diced onion, and a handful of currants in some olive oil. I sprinked some crushed red pepper and stirred in a tablespoon or so of Anna's honey. Most excellent.

If anyone has more suggestions for good things to do with currants or lemon balm, leave me a comment!

garden

The yard's starting to produce some tasty things. The eggplant and zucchini plants are getting big and my mouth's watering already, but in the meantime our rasberry bushes runneth over with berries. Excellent. In the herb department, both the mint and parsley seem to be in their prime, so the last few days have seen salads with equal parts lettuce, mint, and parsley.

The currant bushes also have loads of fruit right now and I'm wondering what to do. I'm not a big fan of jams and jellies. Any suggestions? This escarole with honey and currants sounds nice and, well, you can't go wrong with Mario Batali.

How about lemon balm? The previous owners of our house must have loved the stuff, because we've got beds full of it. Any suggestions re: cooking with lemon balm? Tonight I think I'm going to try to make some tea. And--once again, thanks Sgr. Batali--Mario suggests making a pesto with half lemon balm leaves and half mint (which we've got boatloads of).

on headwounds and pasta fasool

I capped off a travel-packed May and June with a trip to Cleveland's Little Italy. My parents, my sister and her kids, and I hit the road for the great Mama Santo's, one of the two or three coolest restaurants I've ever experienced. Pizza? It's great there. Pasta? Some of the best you'll eat. Atmosphere? Right on Mayfield Road, which is lined with bakeries, gelato bars, shops with balconied upstairs apartments where old Italian couples always seem to be sitting. I almost did my Ph.D. at Case Western Reserve just so I could live in one of those apartments and walk to school.

So on this recent trip we're cruising Mayfield's side streets looking for a place to park. Out of a little garage walks a little old man named Frank, wearing the requisite undershirt, looking disoriented, and covered with blood. I mean covered. My sister and I hopped out of the car. Anna got Frank to sit down on his stoop and I called 9-1-1. He had a massive headwound. I'm told headwounds sometimes look worse than they are due to the amount of blood that's usually involoved. I guess Frank was in that category. The white undershirt--saturated by this point--certainly contributed to this visual intensity of the whole scene.

Anna did a good job of keeping Frank still and calmly got some pertinent info. E.G., he had fallen and hit his head. Useful to know there's not an ax murderer hanging out in the nearby garage. I handled the ridiculous barrage of questions from the emergency operator. From what height did he fall? Are you kidding me? Do you have a different ambulance that you dispatch for people who fall from the third rung of a stepladder vs. the second rung? Just send the ambulance!

My dad, in what had to have been his most resourcesful moment EVER, suddenly walked up to Frank's stoop WITH A NURSE. Yeah, we were close to University Hospital, but, still, pretty miraculous that a nurse happened to be walking by and my dad happened to find her. She cleaned his wound with gauze packets that I unwrapped for her ("your hands are really shaking, honey," I remember her saying to me), which helped a lot, except for the fact that when she sopped up enough blood, you could see the guy's skull. No joke. Frank's elderly wife came outside and kind of freaked out. Anna chilled her out and got her to bring a clean shirt, which helped a lot and made the scene seem less grisly. The nurse assured us that Frank was fine. Sigh. Thank God.

The ambulance finally showed up and by then my mom had found a parking space so we walked to Mama Santo's. Hey, crisis situation or not, you gotta eat, right? Leave it to nieces and nephews to find the humor in moving from medical-emergency-involving-copious-amounts-of-blood to a lunch-involving-copious-amounts-of-red-sauce. What's the coolest thing about Mama's? The menu has a whole pasta fasool section. That's "pasta e fagioli" if you're fancy pants. My dialect-reared grandparents always called it "pasta fasool." You can get your pasta fasool with white beans, kidney beans, or a host of other legumes. I got mine with peas. Delicious, especially with lots of black pepper. They use a thin sauce for their pasta fasool so it's like a cross between a soup dish and a pasta dish. You can opt for ditalini, but the best pasta choice is the broken up spaghetti pieces. My dad says both his grandmas made it that way, with the spags broken into four or five small lengths.

is it happening for ya'll?

I loved the unabashedly zany THE HAPPENING. This is the kind of movie I would have dug on, hard, when I was twelve, and the type of movie for which I still have so much affection. Blood and gore ("M. Night Shyamalan's first R-rated feature," proclaim the commercials). Dread. Post-apocalyptic speculation. Heavy-handed themes, drawn from Major Issues of the Day. THE HAPPENING is as good and bad as The Blob or any movie whose title contains the words "I was a teenage..."

Where to begin? Definitely with the dialogue, which I'll try to re-create from memory. Female lead to mystery man with whom she may have had an affair: "Dude, get over it. It was just tiramisu. Stop acting crazy." Religious zealot: "You eyeing my lemon beverage?" Random survivor of apocalypse to other survivors: "You guys like hot dogs?" Marky Mark: "Why am I talking to a plastic plant?" Never has a b-movie offered so many delicious rhetorical questions.

One of the plot points that raises silliness to a state of zen is when the high school teachers react to the massive catastrophe using their discipline-specific worldviews. The math teacher calculates the probability of a second catastrophe. The science teacher (he of Funky Bunch fame) tries to make sense of the chaos by identifying variables. I was waiting for the language arts teacher to drop some allusions to dystopic fiction.

I also loved the quick and ill-fated devolution of the two middle-class adolescent boys into thuggish behavior. Spencer Breslin puffs out his little chest and says "We've got a hungry little girl out here, bitch!" (another stand-out piece of dialogue, by the way). Several survivors won't share their refuge and these two young suburbanites go all Tupac. And wind up dead. It's an instant, cheesy, allegorical moment: see how important it is to stay civilized. But also a moment where the perennially coveted demographic--teen boys--can sip their Dr. Peppers, grab a handful of buttery popcorn, and nod approvingly at the machismo.

In terms of both plot and tone, the film reminded me of two of my favorite Stephen King novels. First, The Stand, that masterpiece of roundly drawn yet familiar archetypes reacting to the apocalypse. Second, the ultra-violent Cell, King's more recent look at disaster on a grand scale, this time brought on by signals from cell phone towers. Those are two books that revel in genre and seem to drip with affinity for their inspirations. Two books that I love.

Let me say a few things about THE HAPPENING as post 9/11 art. I'm not giving anything away by mentioning that early on the film shows a bunch of New Yorkers jumping from a building to their deaths. This is the scene featured most heavily in the film's trailers, and it's striking and memorable. We see the scene from the perspective of an earnest construction worker (a blue-collar hero) below. What follows is ninety minutes of dread. As I've emphasized, it's campy dread. But dread nonetheless. There's a kind of sadness that permeates THE HAPPENING, from the couple whose marriage is on the rocks, to the best friend character who goes off on a quest for his woman but deep-down knows she's probably dead, to that supporting character's little girl who realizes her parents have most certainly died horrific deaths. Just like the 50s b-movies whose paranoid stance refracted cold war mentalities, THE HAPPENING plods toward its eventuality.

Roger Ebert's somewhat over-the-top review says: "For some time the thought has been gathering at the back of my mind that we are in the final act [of Earth's existence]." Ebert's referring, of course, to the film's environmental themes, but I must admit having similar thoughts on the way home from the multiplex, not about the environment but about the more general pessimism of our own age. Our safety is threatened. We must band together against evil. The world has changed. Raising such concerns is one more example of how THE HAPPENING, in so many ways, is wonderfully and provocatively awful. So far, it's the best (worst) movie of the summer. Then again, I haven't seen THE STRANGERS yet.

seriously?

Distressing story in the New York Times. In "Beloved Characters as Reimagined for the 21st Century," the Times reports on toy companies making over '80s semi-icons like Strawberry Shortcake. Obviously, the companies wish to make some nostalgia dough from people my age who are having kids. Fine. Sure, characters evolve to fit the sensibilities of new decades. Warner Bros. famously began to de-emphasize the racist content of Bugs Bunny (disgusting stuff--check out the awesomely comprehensive DVDs) in favor of BB's sexually ambiguous trickster persona.

What's distressing about the new make-overs, though, is the way the companies are imagining/shaping the identities of milennial kids--girls in particular. Strawberry Shortcake is now very skinny and talks on a cellphone instead of playing with her cat. I guess animal shelters don't pay much for product placement. The company also is moving the Strawberry Shortcake gang away from their affinity for candy and toward a love of fresh fruit. Elsewhere, according to the story, the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have "less attitude." Huh? You don't want young boys growing up in wartime to have attitude, I suppose. My favorite, though, is the plan for the new Care Bears: "less belly fat, longer eyelashes." I'm not making this up. What kind of weird zoological rationale does the corporation have for this move? I doubt that bears today are skinnier. And I really, really doubt that they have longer eyelashes.

My objection is not that these characters are changing. And it's not personal, either. I was never into any of these cartoons. (Remember on "Family Ties" when baby Andrew arrives and Alex P. Keaton tells him "Enjoy your childhood; I know I did and it was the best two weeks of my life"? That's kind of like me as a kid, minus the conservatism of course.) My problem is the reprehensible contribution these companies are making to body normalization and consumerism. All for profit. Let's not kid ourselves...Strawberry Shortcake was always about selling dolls. Now she's about selling cell phones and negative body image too, both of which are even more lucrative than action figures.

just saying...

We in this generation must not only repent for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. -MLK Jr.

a definition

I've often returned home after conferences with ideas and energy. This weekend, spending time at the American Democracy Project meeting, I've found not only ideas and energy but also motivation to keep focusing on community service pedagogies at Dearborn. I actually came back to my room last night after the last session and did some brainstorming on directions I hope to take in the piece I'm writing based on last year's service learning dfata. I also spent several hours working on a presentation for our writing program faculty on civic literacy. Letting info from various sessions and various readings sink in, I came to a working definition of 'civic literacy' I'm kind of happy with. Here goes:

Civic Literacy: the skills, values, habits, and knowledge needed for full(er) citizenship. Skills include written and oral/interpersonal communication, collaboration and collective decision-making, critical-analytic thinking, organization, and persuasion. Values include responsibility for the common good, belief in deliberative rhetoric, and engagement with and across difference. Habits include participation in the public sphere, voting, critical consumption of media, and cultivation of the life of the mind. Knowledge includes--but isn't limited to--history, current events, and community issues.

on location

Writing from Snowbird, Utah. What can match swimming on the roof of the lodge, surrounded by snow-capped mountains and the cold, clean air of Utah? Sometimes opportunities for rejuvenation come at the most opportune times. Thanks, UMD, for sending me here. Props also go to the American Democracy Project for putting on an incredible program, complete with film screenings and challenging plenaries and talks that are rigorous and pragmatic all at once.

new endeavors

The summer months speed by...what else is new? Every teacher laments how quickly days turn into weeks during the summer season.

I'm thankful for the travel opportunities. Seattle. Tomorrow, a wedding in Illinois (two former students). Next week, off to Snowbird, Utah, for the American Democracy Project meeting, where I'll spend three days learning about service learning in first-year courses. Good timing, as our campus is launching community-based writing sections of first-year composition and I'm teaching two of them. The ADP meeting is held at a ski resort complete with spa facilities (pool and hot tub on the roof, with views of snow-capped mountains!), so, like with the RSA meeting in Seattle, I'm taking advantage of the geographic locales of professional gatherings. Did I mention that Snowbird has a few inches of the white stuff today?

I'm writing, but not forcing a quick pace. The big project is working through the data gathered during last academic year's service learning courses. That research looks to be evolving into two or three articles, but I'm going slow and steady. The small project is a book review for the WPA journal.

And my Peace&Justice group continues to be an enjoyable time commitment. Working on plans for our fall retreat already as well as our next book club gathering. Through P&J colleagues I got hooked up with July's Homeless Count in Detroit, a project I'm going to make a priority in the next month, and one which I hope will spill into one of our fall projects in the first-year courses.

Not just thankful for the travel opportunities, I'm thankful too for all that Detroit continues to offer, personally, professionally, and all points in between. Juggling endeavors that are rewarding is a reminder that moving was a very, very good decision.

wacky wednesday

Each Wednesday, the Arab-owned produce markets in Dearborn offer their cheapest prices. We're talking about really good sales: cucumbers for forty-nine cents/lb., three heads of romaine for a dollar, and so on. If big crowds and loud kids don't bother you, the experience can't be beat. Feels like being in another country, and not just because most people are speaking Arabic. From what I can tell, giving children food that hasn't been paid for is perfectly acceptable. I've seen kids in shopping carts eat bananas, grapes, bags of chips.

Yesterday the lines were especially long. I had almost gotten to the registers when a little old woman with a very large bag of rice approached me and spoke Arabic for perhaps two minutes. From gestures and my imagination I intuited that her point was something like 'I was at home cooking when I realized I needed rice. Can I jump in front of you, my good man, so I can purchase my rice and be on my way?' Flattered by her imagined use of the phrase "good man," I gestured for her to take a cut in line. Immediately I heard dramatic sighs from behind me and knew trouble was coming.

Another woman approached my rice-loving new friend and absolutely berated her (in English, which she clearly did not understand) for cutting: "you're getting in front of everybody, not just this guy." ('This guy'? I'd much rather be referred to as 'my good man'!). They went back and forth in two different languages. Finally the old woman got the message and began to mope toward the back of the line.

Now, the customer behind me in line was too busy feeding her toddler a meal's worth of unpaid merchandise to notice the argument. When she saw the old woman walking away from my cart, she offered the woman the place in front of her and then with a sneer looked me up and down as if to say 'what kind of a jerk won't give an old woman with one item a cut?' At this point, I had one customer mad at me for giving cuts, one mad at me for thinking I don't give cuts, and one under the impression that I speak Arabic. The anti-cutting advocate got in front of the woman with rice and said that if rice lady was going to get a cut then so was she. Nobody stopped her, so I guess in the end everybody was happy, including me with my cart full of good and cheap stuff.

it won't end

At this point, is there any doubt that Hillary Clinton is damaging the democratic party and weakening Obama's candidacy? How can a presidential candidate project the requisite image of power when his first act as nominee is negotiating and making concessions to Clinton and her "camp"? Clinton values her own ascendancy to executive power more than she values her party or any of the goals and principles on which she built her campaign.

At this point, how can she go back to the senate and work effectively with colleagues who can't believe her refusal to concede to Obama? I suppose all she can do is initiate/continue the behind-the-scenes negotiations with Obama's inner circle. A lot of buzz about the possibility of Obama promising Clinton a Supreme Court nomination. But a hypothetical Supreme Court seat for Hillary Clinton would fuel unprecedented GOP fundraising ("help us keep more Hillary Clintons off the bench") and generally fire up the religious right, thereby doing more harm than good.

Clinton as vice president? It's looking likely, isn't it? I would rather not vote for a ticket that includes someone who voted for the Patriot Act--and even voted to renew the Patriot Act once its popularity was already on the decline. I hope the Obama camp doesn't give in to Clinton's "demands" and opts for one of the better vp choices: Kathleen Sebelius, Ed Rendell, Bill Richardson, or my favorite of the alleged short-listers Janet Napolitano.

lost: a quick roundup

Tonight, the Lost finale. A couple quick must-reads. First, EW at its geekiest. Second, NYTimes sounding like the paper that every first-year comp teacher using a pop culture reader hopes to receive.

seattle, part 2

Cool diversity of people in Seattle. Lots of young folks out and about, expressing a range of styles, subcultures, group affiliations. I rarely had the sense that anybody was trying too hard to transgress. Seattle just struck me as a place where a lot of different individuals and collectives do their own things.

We managed to hit a good number of neighborhoods where expression happens. Ravenna and Fremont, for instance, where old family friends Nate, Mike, and Erin--who live in the former and hang out in the latter-- served as awesome tour guides. They took us to an outstanding Greek restaurant in Fremont, Costas Opa and we looked at some of the area's odd sculpture: the huge Lenin statue, "Waiting for the Interurban," and, of course, the humongous, VW-eating troll. The vegetarian mousaka at Costas was unbelievably good.

Another old friend, Jeff, lives in the Capitol Hill area and was equally gracious and informative. Capitol Hill is the center of gay-lesbian life in town, and the vibe is interesting and odd: a juxtaposition of bohemianism and upward mobility co-existing nicely. Jeff took us through Ballard, where we looked at the locks and the salmon shelves, and where we ate at Mike's Chili. Don't let the food network endorsement fool you. Mike's is a cash-only, beer-drinking joint. And the chili was nice. A lot of onion, a lot of jalapeno. Thick stuff, too. Excellent.

seattle, part 1

First time to the Pacific Northwest. The range of sights astounds: mountains, the massive Puget Sound, the colors of the market, young people in public. This definitely won't be my last trip to Seattle. Wallace Falls, an hour or so east of town, offered one of the highlights.


Lew and I at "middle falls," about halfway into the trail. The falls, in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, seem moderate (trail's about 5.5 miles), but the elevation gets tough during the final, switchback-intensive, leg to upper falls. Pics don't do justice to the 265-foot waterfall, the views of the snow-capped Cascades, or certainly to the sound of the falls, particularly now as the snowmelt increases the intensity.

reconstruction part 2: the 80s edition

Tom Tom Club, "Genius of Love" (Tom Tom Club, 1981). Aside from maybe "I Zimbra" and "Burning Down the House," the Talking Heads rarely flew a funk flag, so the band's husband-wife rhythm section formed the Tom Tom Club. Artists ranging from Grandmaster Flash (1982) to Annie (2005) have covered and/or sampled "Genius" and for good reason. Bassist Tina Weymoth handles most of the vocal duties and over the hookiest of synth lines and funkiest of beats narrates a sonnet-of-sorts in which her love is like a great r&b crooner. Then, in the song's breakdown, her husband, drummer Chris Frantz yells the sonnet-closing couplet for her, intoning the name "James Brown" again and again and, well, you can't help but dance. Nicole and I saw the Tom Tom Club co-headline with the B-52s at a casino's mini-outdoor ampitheater in southern Arizona in 2000 or 2001. A warm and dry night. On stage all night, 40-somethings singing what poet Allison Joseph calls "disco liberation." We broke through the half-hearted barriers between seats and stage and stood in front of Tina Weymouth (and, afterward, in front of Fred Schneider during the B-52s set) as she rocked the Sonoran desert, moving Tom Tom Club through a covers-heavy set that included the band's version of "You Sexy Thing." But "Genius of Love" was the evening's high point, besting even their co-headliner's rendition of "Rock Lobster."

Dead Kennedys, "Take this Job and Shove It" (Bedtime for Democracy, 1986). In seventh grade, I had two DK casettes, 'Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death' and 'Bedtime for Democracy', though what I really wanted was one of those black t-shirts with the DK logo in red. Though now I understand that the band's debut record 'Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables' is their masterpiece, at thirteen I dug the fast-paced 'Bedtime for Democracy' best. The songs waste no time. They waste nothing. The "Take this Job and Shove It" cover--the opening track of the record--clocks in at under ninety seconds. The song tries too hard to be subversive, but so do thirteen-year-old Dead Kennedys fans. If the country version of the song gives the finger to a mean boss-man, this version gives the finger to the world that allows mean boss-men to exist in the first place. I still like 'Bedtime,' a thematically tight record, with self-explanatory tracks like "Chickenshit Conformist," "Macho Insecurity," and "Rambozo the Clown" nicely cohering, and never failing to remind me of the things I hated about the Catholic school I attended.

Lou Reed, "Romeo Had Juliette" (New York, 1989). What did I know about New York City at fourteen or fifteen? Certainly part of my impression of the city came from beat poetry and Velvet Underground music and Rolling Stone articles about first generation punk rock. About the time that Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing came out, I got Lou Reed's concept album about NYC, a record that spoke to gentrification and AIDS and police brutality and vigilantes and drug addiction. Without a doubt, the record represents the highpoint of Reed's post-VU career. As strong a time capsule and as potent a piece of art as the Spike Lee movie, 'New York' was, as its liner notes suggested, like a novel. And "Romeo Had Juliette," an ode to teen love gone wrong, was the novel's most vivid moment. Full of striking images, particularly those that imagine the protagonist Romeo Rodriguez ("A diamond crucifix in his ear / is used to help ward off the fear"). Check out the youtube performance, in which Reed mumbles the song with a toothpick in his mouth the whole time.

reconstruction

I admire the story Noel Murray at AV Club tells. Murray meanders alphabetically through his record collection, taking stock of his tastes and life as he revisits "pieces of the puzzle." He situates selected artists in a canon that exists between rock-criticism land (usual suspects like Pavement are well represented) and his own private universe (dude digs southern rock). Those selected artists get their own entries. He uses categories like "personal correspondence" where he narrates his interactions with the music. In another category, "fits between," Murray places artists between two other musical artists--The Go-Go's end up between B-52s and the Bangles, Gomez between Pearl Jam and Free. Murray approaches this task with the care of Paul Shaffer picking out a song to play as a Letterman guest walks onto the stage.

After a recent i-pod mishap, I had to reload 30 GB worth of tunes onto my machine. This reconstruction process gave me a chance to meander like Murray, pausing over my own pieces of the puzzle:

R.E.M., "What's the Frequency Kenneth?" (Monster, 1994). I can picture myself at 20, sitting in Nicole's car listening to this for the first time. I am picking her up from her co-op job in Troy, Michigan. I am enrolled in a creative writing class with Hugh Culik at the time and, as I sit in that white Dodge, I wish I could write something with the surreal abandon of the lyrics to "Kenneth." "Butterfly decal rearview mirror dogging the scene" sounds an awful lot like a Burroughs cut-up, which Culik talks about constantly. The song famously comes from non-sensical threats yelled by assailants as they beat Dan Rather outside of CBS. Rather, enjoying the surrealism, performs the song a few weeks later with the band on David Letterman, whose show I watched at least two or three nights a week in 1994 at Smith Media Center, in the offices of the school paper, with the rest of the staff. With miscelaneous members of that staff, I saw three R.E.M. shows during the Monster tour, in Ann Arborn, Auburn Hills, and East Lansing. It was making up for lost time, as I had wanted to go see the band since I was about 12 years old. Each show opens up with a different low-key track from Monster, after which--at all three shows--Peter Buck (allegedly playing Kurt Cobain's guitar) launches into the opening riff of "Kenneth."

Dr. Dre, "Let Me Ride" (The Chronic, 1992). Two years earlier I'm still in the seminary, living in Detroit's Six-Mile/Livernois area, in a huge house that used to be a convent for cloistered nuns. The area is rough. Police helicopters, car alarms, liquor stores with single cigarettes for sale and built-in ice cream parlors and Thai take-out counters. I sit in the room of Hung, one of my fellow seminarians and unwrap a care package his family has sent from New Orleans. The care package contains dried squid, cans of lychee fruit, and a couple cartons of Marlboro Lights. Because the dried squid goes best with beer, according to Hung, we walk to Tradewinds on Livernois. Returning to Hung's room, we enjoy some American beer and Vietnamese snacks as Dr. Dre enjoys heavy (err, constant) rotation on Detroit radio. "Let Me Ride" is essentially a cover of Parliament's "Mothership Connection," poppy and infectious and funky, with original verses about gangbangin' in L.A. The paradox is the perfect soundtrack for eighteen-year-olds (who happen to be studying for the priesthood) drinking cheap beer on a Friday night.

Seattle

The most recent 4Cs was wall-to-wall business. Editorial board meetings. Sessions. A workshop. Nominating committee meetings. Too much. Seattle's going to be a different story. I've never been to the Pacific Northwest before, so I want to live a life outside of the Westin. And, as my conference funds are practically used up, I'm paying for much of this trip out-of-pocket. So I'm planning to dig on Seattle as much as possible.

Don't get me wrong, I haven't been to the Rhetoric Society of America conference for a few years and I'm really looking forward to hearing some papers (not to mention giving one: check out session C-11, everybody, where I'll be talking about how the literature on social movement rhetoric contends with class). But I'm planning a little fun too.

My buddy Lew and I already have tickets for next Monday's Mariners game against Boston. And at some point, we're going to make our way to Wallace Falls for a little hiking. The forest looks breathtaking, as does the 265-foot (!) waterfall. And I don't want healthy pursuits like exercise to monopolize, so a visit to Mike's Chili (same recipe since 1922) is in order. Saw a Mike's Chili segment on 'Diners, Dives, and Drive-Ins'--best show on the food network--and damned if my mouth didn't water a little.

Anybody in the know about Seattle? Leave me a comment and tell me where to go while visiting there.

for my next trick...

Oh, that Smokey. She's full of tricks. Today I slept in, took Nicole out to breakfast, and then settled into my home office to work on an article. Early afternoon, I let Hyatt and Smokey in the backyard, the fenced-in backyard that is, and returned to work. When I opened the door to let them back in, only Hyatt came. I could see Smokey standing in the driveway but when I called for her, she stayed put. I figured she wanted to enjoy some more fresh air, so I let her stay outside. Big mistake.

Ten minutes later, I went back outside and she was gone. Nowhere to be found. Instantly, I grew worried. Smokey's the shyest thing you've ever seen. Clearly a survivor of abuse, people freak that girl out. I started walking the neighborhood in a bit of a panic. No sign of her. I called Nicole, who was able to come home from the office to help look. I called my in-laws, who are retired, who also pounded the pavement. Still no sign of her. We looked for three hours. We called the police and the county and the rescue where we got Smokey (their number is still on her tag). I knocked on neighbors' doors, explained the situation, and asked them to check their backyards, as I thought she might be cowering under a bush.

We took a break. My father-in-law grilled some burgers while I took Hyatt around the block a few more times, thinking maybe she'd run to her big brother. Nothing. By the time everybody went home, I was convinced Smokey had been dog-napped. I took Hyatt around the block one final time. When I got home, Smokey was in the backyard, wagging her nub of tail on the same spot of the driveway where I had last seen her.

I don't know how she pulled that disappearing act. Maybe she was hiding all afternoon. Maybe she's got the ability to jump over a four-feet high fence and then jump back after she's done with her adventures. The latter is pretty doubtful, since she's still, unfortunately, too darn scared to be much of an adventurer. Or, maybe one of our neighbors found her, knocked on our door, and then tossed her in the backyard since nobody was home.

But I'm thinking the most likely explanation is that Smokey is an illusionist. Cuz she pulled a straight up disappearing act. Now she's fast asleep on the couch. Life is back to normal, and boy am I glad. I realized how attached we are after only one week.

Hyatt and Smoky in the backyard

Smoky, the rat terrier on the left, is still very shy around people. In fact, she likes to go to the back corner of the yard and hide under the shrubbery. Here's Hyatt trying to coax her out.

lost

Holy smokes, or rather holy smoke monster, Lost is having a season to rival its weird and original first season. For example, has anything in the show's four seasons been as scary as those images of Abbaddon and the ageless Richard Alpert?

Despite all the cool stuff we've learned about the Oceanic 6 and their post-island lives, this has been the season of Ben and Locke. For at least the last season or so, the show has given us much evidence that the two have mirrored fates, twin/rival affinities for the island, dual identities as geeks and macho men, and a mutual and intense rivalry with one another. After their interactions this season, I'm convinced that they are both deeply evil individuals whose wills-to-power have taken over their obedience to "the island" or "Jacob" or whomever the (formerly?) higher power might be. I don't think Ben gives a damn that he killed his daughter. I'm not sure that he was even surprised when the mercenary called his "bluff." Likewise, I don't think Locke would hesitate to sacrifice Hurley or any other beloved individual. Under siege, he was comfortable leaving Claire and Sawyer outside.

From the always-obsessive Entertainment Weekly recap, which offers a mind-blowing reading of last night's episode and is always must reading for any fan:

Locke is born early. At age 5, he takes a test that most likely would have taken him to the Island if he had passed. He didn't. That same year, Benjamin Linus is born. At age 16, Locke is invited to go to a science camp that again would have taken him to the Island. He refused. About that same time, Benjamin Linus and his father joined the Dharma Initiative. The implication, it seems, is that Ben has been walking the path that was originally meant for Locke. Ben was the contingency plan — the course correction — for Locke's altered destiny. But Ben is his own person, of course, and he has done things differently from what Locke would have done, and this, in turn, has created further changes in the original order of things — changes that I think a certain ticked-off, Island-deprived billionaire named Charles Widmore is trying to reverse. The scene at the rehab center between paralyzed adult Locke and his wheelchair pusher, the creepy Matthew Abbaddon — who accepted the description of ''orderly'' with knowing irony — was meant to suggest one way Widmore is scheming to restore the original order: by getting Locke on that Island and taking back the birthright that was supposed to be his.

(Unless I’m getting this reversed: What if Ben was the man of destiny, but for decades, various forces — including Alpert and Widmore-Abbaddon — have been vainly trying to change destiny by getting Locke to the Island to supplant the über Other?)

Regardless, here's the twist — the twist that could turn Locke into a mass murderer of sorts. As we saw at the end of the episode, Locke's plan for saving the Island is moving the Island. Now, I have no idea how he intends to do that. But if I'm tracking correctly the weird science Lost has been laying down this season, I wonder if where we're headed is a catastrophic gambit in which Locke will move the Island not only in space but also in time, which I'm guessing will cause some kind of massive retroactive course correction — or, rather, already has enacted a course correction. In fact, I wonder if the secret to many of the metaphysical mysteries of Lost is that all of the show's drama is playing out against the backdrop of a timeline that's in flux — where old history is giving way to new history as the consequences of Locke's future Island-saving actions trickle down through time. And so that wreckage of Oceanic 815 at the bottom of the ocean? That isn't a hoax — at least, not in the new timeline taking hold. That's real. And it will be John the Quantum Ripper's fault.

netflix, recently

I am attempting to catch up on last year's second-tier Oscar bait and my response is often ho-hum. Take for instance Charlie Wilson's War. I had high hopes, mainly because of Aaron Sorkin's involvement. Sorkin has some unimpeachable writing credits to his name including the early seasons of The West Wing. Alas CWW is a real bore, unaware of whether it wants to be a political intrigue yarn, a screwball comedy, or a morality tale.

Usually Sorkin's work displays his knack for combining those three genres. Know what? The combination works better when there's an easily definable hero. In The West Wing, that hero was Martin Sheen's left-leaning President Bartlet, whose flaws (sneaking a cigarette once in a while, having a big old academic ego, orchestrating the illegal assassination of a foriegn leader...no big whoop) were few. CWW has too much moral ambiguity and not enough Sorkin-style pomp.

The title character--based on a real guy--is an aw shucks womanizer, drunk, slacker, and congressman. That's fine. In fact, despite the cliche factor (every film that takes place in the 70s or early 80s has the obligatory coke and hedonism), those traits present the potential for some pretty interesting character development. But even work that revels in ambiguity needs to establish some kind of STANCE toward the character, and CWW does not. Should we look at Charlie as a paranoid anti-communista? As someone resonsible for writing the artists-not-yet-known-as-the-Taliban a blank check? As a hero who took care of business? I still don't know.

On the other hand, one of Philip Seymor Hoffman's other films from last year, The Savages is wickedly funny and wickedly sad. Hoffman and Laura Linney play siblings whose mean father, from they are estranged, develops dementia and needs their care. Their Peter Pan-esque names are John and Wendy. The siblings both aspire to get prestigious fellowships in drama and theatre. John is an academic married to the book project he's been working on for too many years ("Well, Brecht was a complex guy") but unable to connect with human beings. Wendy aspires to write a masterpiece and can't figure out why she's having an affair with a shlub ("I have an MFA!!").

The film's central "joke" works well. These two know much about theater but have no ability to handle the drama of their own lives. Heavy handed? Maybe, but the film knows enough to provide uncomfortable humor not so much as relief but rather as the logical conclusion of having nothing else to hang onto. What can two people this dysfunctional do but speak one-liners that would make brilliant dialogue in the kinds of absurdist theater they worship? Extra points for the great sequence where Wendy blows off an assignment at her temp job so she can finish writing a fellowship grant and then steals boatloads of office supplies.

shame shame shame

From an e-mail this a.m. from Human Resources:

Colleagues,

As you may have discovered in recent news coverage, the Michigan Supreme Court has upheld the Court of Appeals ruling that the Marriage Amendment prohibits public employers in Michigan from providing health insurance benefits to the same-sex domestic partners of their employees. We are hearing concerns from faculty and staff so I want to take this opportunity to reiterate that the University of Michigan does not offer benefits on the basis of same-sex domestic partner relationships. That category of eligibility was eliminated more than a year ago after the Court of Appeals made its ruling.

The University cares deeply about the recruitment and retention of its outstanding faculty and staff, and we design our benefits with these principles in mind. We believe all of our current benefit offerings are in full compliance with the law in the state of
Michigan.

In partnership for health,

new addition

Our happy home has an additional member. Smoky, a three-year-old (we think) rat terrier, now resides with his big brother Hyatt. Smoky comes from the Last Chance Animal Rescue and has clearly had a rough go of it thus far. She's shaky around people, including Nicole and I. As in she literally shakes, although now that she's been with us a for a few days, she calms down after sitting on one of our laps for a few minutes. A good sign. Hyatt doesn't scare her at all. Right from the time she came home, Smoky took a shine to the mellowest, laziest pug in Michigan. While we wait for Smoky to get used to being around us, it's good to know that Hyatt's a calming presence. Pictures will follow soon.

Hyatt today

Today I'm working in my home office down in the basement. It's a room full of books, papers, records and CDs, an old library table I use as a desk, and a futon. Rarely do I use the futon for anything other than setting stuff on. However, Hyatt uses it constantly. I'm peer-reviewing an article for TETYC and putting some final touches on a 4Cs proposal. Hyatt, he's not doing a whole lot of anything.

milestone

As the academic year comes to a close, I realize I have now been at UM-Dearborn for as long as I was at Miami of Ohio, i.e, three years. Ohmygarsh, I've been out of graduate school for six years.

mistakes, overreactions, abuses of power

This story is all over the papers in Detroit and has even gotten a bit of coverage from the national news. Maybe a movie-of-the-week will follow.

The events look something like this. Guy takes his seven-year-old to see the Tigers and buys the thirsty tyke what he thinks is an expensive lemonade. Actually, it's a bottle of Mike's Hard Lemonade, an alcoholic beverage. A security guard spots the kid imbibing, takes the bottle away, and calls the cops. The kid is rushed in an ambulance to Children's Hospital and then placed in foster care for several days while Child Protective Services and the Department of Human Services investigate. The father, who insist he had no clue the drink had alcohol, is ordered to vacate his home for a week even after the boy is allowed to return.

Now here are two additional pieces of context. 1. The parents of the boy are both academics who don't watch television. 2. Michigan DHS and particularly the foster care system is, by most accounts, in utter shambles, dealing with a severe lack of foster care parents, a high-profile lawsuit for gross mismanagement of the children who are wards of the state, and the fall-out of the murder of young Ricky Holland who was murdered by his foster parents after the overworked DHS workers failed to intervene.

Response to this unfortunate series of events at the Tigers game has been informed by those two pieces of context. Driving home from my teaching gig yesterday, I heard a.m. talk radio take calls from folks from two camps. One camps suggested that DHS, in the midst of a p.r. nightmare, grew overzealous and is probably trying to reverse its do-nothing reputation. The other camp (the "blame the dad" camp) fell into two sub-camps, one who couldn't believe anybody would be unfamiliar with Mike's Hard Lemonade, and one who saw this as an example of the "no common sense," out-of-touch, too-good-for-tv academic.

The show's host rejected the "blame dad" logic, put the parents on a pedestal for being "too smart for television," and praised academics as icons of the smarter, more bookish lifestyle that all Americans should strive for.

I'm not sure any of these responses are all that useful. Blame the "no common sense" guy. Turn the academic into a cliched icon. Even the blame DHS camp--members of whom made valid points, don't get me wrong--seemed like a bunch of Monday morning quarterbacks. What if the story could become an impetus for action? What if the story could change the minds of those who advocate for the gutting of public support for social services? What if the story could encourage folks to organize against the abuses of power that are all too common among law enforcement agencies? What if the story prompted more people to take a role (parental and otherwise) in reforming the foster system?

book review

I was thrilled to see a Richard Marback-penned review of Who Says: Working-Class Rhetoric, Class Consciousness, and Community in the new issue of Rhetoric Review. Marback offers a careful and thorough reading of the book and has some good things to say. Thanks for reading!

multi-tasking

It's finals week and of course grading portfolios is a priority right now. One class done and one to go. In the midst of all the reading Deborah Minter from UNL came to UM-Dearborn yesterday to give a very good talk on uses of portfolios for teaching and learning (how timely was that?). Several comrades and I are bouncing emails with 4Cs proposal drafts back-and-forth. Oh yeah, and next Monday I start teaching a two-week 'study skills and culture of higher ed' class for high school juniors who'll take UM-Dearborn classes next fall in our dual-enrollment program. So as always, a pleasant and busy mix of tasks.

netflix recently

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte make for a tasty, early-60s double-feature. The two horror films have virtually identical plots and motiffs too (major plot spoilage ahead): Extended flashback scene reveals a bratty young girl, extremely close to her father, get away with a violent crime. Next, delayed-but-grandiose opening credits. Next, 120 minutes of Bette Davis in outrageous make-up, camping up a series of gory, grand guignol scenes. Finally, a contrived O Henry moment, facilitated by sharper-than-you-thought-she-was maid, reverses our fear of disassociative Davis character.

That describes either film. "Baby Jane" centers on Davis as a former child star torturing her disabled big sister. "Charlotte" pits southern belle Davis against her innocent (or is she?) cousin, played by Olivia de Havilland. The latter might be the better film, if only for its campy take on southern dysfunction. The Sound and the Fury meets Stephen King's Misery. And you've got Agnes Moorehead as Charlotte's perpetually loyal servant, lurching around the plantation like an Igor character. But you have to give "Baby Jane" the nod as the better of the two, if only for 1) Joan Crawford's steely performance as the big sister and 2) Bette Davis's costumes. She looks like Courtney Love.

How did these two bizarre spectacles become huge hits at the dawn of the 60s? What made the masses flock to theatres to see sixty-year-old women kick each other, push each other down staircases, etc.? Surely the violence and aesthetics of Psycho influenced some of the key "Charlotte" and "Baby Jane" flourishes. The ax murder that opens "Charlotte," for example, borrows from Psycho's shower scene, although we see a lot more gore in "Charlotte." But I think the kitchen sink casting has a lot more to do with the success of these horror classics. Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, Joseph Cotton, Agnes Moorehead, Olivia de Havilland, George Kennedy, Bruce Dern, Victor Buono. Even relatively small roles get the Hollywood treatment, making these into event movies. In that respect, maybe star-studded, invite-JFK-to-the-opening movies like It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and the original Ocean's 11--moreso than anything from Hitchcock--are the real cinematic antecedents of "Charlotte" and "Baby Jane."

How long until these two films get remade? I'd like to see Pedro Almodovar direct.

endorsement

Michael Moore offers compelling words of support for Obama's campaign.

warm weekend

At long last, a sunny and springlike couple of days in the D. On Saturday Nicole and I enjoyed pizza at Pi. Might be the best pizza in Metro Detroit thanks to the brick oven and the great selection of toppings (I recommend the artichokes). Pies are only $3.14 (get it?) on Mondays; I'm going to get one on the way home tonight.

Anyway, we soaked in some rays afterward while doing door-to-door work for Mark Richardson's campaign. See link on the right to the 'Richardson for State Representative' website. Knocking on doors isn't my favorite kind of involvement in the democratic process, but when you find a good candidate, the effort is worthwhile. And when temps approach the high 70s, can't compain too much.

Normal stuff--yard work, church, and such--took up much of the remainder of the weekend, but on Sunday, we enjoyed my nephew Yousef's soccer game and a launch party for Liz's book, which really is high on my stack of things to read after finals week.

Listening to: REM: Accelerate

get yourself a copy of this

"Illuminating the creative, joyful, and serendipitous nature of the research process."

So reads the tagline of the new book Beyond the Archives: Research as a Lived Process, edited by Gesa Kirsch and my colleague Liz Rohan. Contributors all tell stories about research--the connections, the discoveries, the new possibilities.

recently downloaded, and recommended

I spent part of yesterday reading for an article I'm writing, a lit-review-ish essay (or part of an essay) about the emotional dimension of civic engagement. Of interest, the disconnect regarding modes of engagement: the affective connection students in service learning courses sometimes have with volunteerism and the similar connect faculty have with advocacy/activism. Then I baked cookies for my students while listening to some recent i-tunes purchases:

The New Pornographers, "Don't Bring Me Down"
A note-for-note cover of the E.L.O. disco-pop, early-days-of-MTV gem. A perfect distillation of what the NPs do, that is, make pop music without apology or irony.

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, "100 Days, 100 Nights"
More soul than anybody from the Mariah Carey, every-song-has-to-hit-three-different-octaves school of R&B. I'm crazy about this song. It's Amy Winehouse meets the Detroit Cobras.

Sonic's Rendezvous Band, "City Slang"
I had read about this 70s gaggle of Detroit rockers (members of the MC5 and the Rationals and the Stooges, oh my!) but never heard their stuff before. This punk ditty doesn't match the quality of the best work of the band members' original groups, but I really like piece's swagger. No sad sack shit here--just a loud, guitar-driven motor city anthem.

2Pac, "Hit 'Em Up"
Six minutes of 2Pac saying unkind things about the Notorious B.I.G. A remarkable piece of work, completely immersed in inflammatory nihilism.

Ciccone Youth, "Addicted to Love"
Weird. Kim Gordon doing karaoke. Yes, it's that "Addicted to Love." A long time ago, I had a bad cassette copy of this whole record, a Sonic Youth side project and homage to 80s excess (the record also had covers of several songs made famous by "Madonna Ciccone"). Gordon's robotic monotone calls to mind the mannequin-like women in the "Addicted to Love" video. The track is a kind of feminist manifesto, a SY forays into politics. So you might look at this as a companion to "Kool Thing," the Kim Gordon-Chuck D duet that slammed mysogyny in the hip hop world, or "Youth Against Fascism," with the famous "I believe Anita Hill" and "the president sucks/he's a warpig f***" lines. Or, you might just rock out to a Robert Palmer cover. Either way, weird.

six word memoir:

"i wonder what will be next"

The 6-word memoir, brought to you by Bonnie. If you're reading this post and you'd like to write your own memoir, consider thyself tagged.

1. write your own six word memoir
2. post it on your blog and include a visual illustration i you’d like
3. link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original post so we can track it
4. tag five more blogs with links
5. leave a comment on the tagged blogs w/ an invitation to play

heard 'round the world?

I love this picture.

Hillary Clinton has a beer and a shot and reminisces about when her grandpa taught her how to shoot a gun. Barack Obama bowls a couple frames. Must be time to court the working-class vote. Remember when John Kerry went duck hunting and circulated pictures of the garage band he was in as a teenager (at prep school, but still)?

After she recounted the gun story, one reporter asked Hillary Clinton when the last time she shot a gun was and she got quite angry. Who likes to be called out? Especially so close on the heels of her revelation that she and her husband made $109 million in the last eight years.

Much has been made of Barack Obama's recent words about how residents of small towns (because you can't say "working class") sometimes "get bitter" during hard financial times. "They cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations," he said.

I believe Obama when he calls this a poor choice of words. During tough times people do sometimes turn to various things good, bad, and all points in between for comfort: too much food, booze, religion, hatred of others, and lots of other things too. But I don't blame those who are offended by the diction either. "Cling" suggests desperation, I suppose. And there's something honest about acknowledging that members of our society do feel desperation right now, but there's also something dismissive about the term.

And the end of the quotation often gets left out. Anti-trade sentiment is just a result of desperation? A lot of folks (many of them who feel disenfranchised by the democratic party) oppose free-trade not because they're "clinging" to some final vestige of an antiquated ideology by because they (we!) think it results in unethical conditions for workers in the U.S. and elsewhere. I'm less offended as a person of faith (who, I guess, "clings" to religion) than I am as a critic of free trade (who also "clings" to a particular ideology about trade practices).

guts or gall

On his way to the U.S., Pope Benedict answered pre-screened questions including one about clergy pedophilia. I didn't think his staff would allow discussion of the topic, given how tightly they control the Pope's conversations and also given how the discussion opens the Pope up to criticism. The headlines emphasize the Pope's words aboard his plane, where he said he's "deeply ashamed" of the scandal.

I suppose it's gutsy on the part of the Pope and his inner circle to engage questions about the scandal. Or maybe he has no choice. Maybe omission of the scandal from his agenda would be the bigger, more glaring sin.

Before becoming Pope, "Joseph Ratzinger" (his given name) headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the office that oversaw the Vatican's response to the scandal (despite the scandal being outside the CDF's jurisdiction, but how Ratzinger's office took control of vatican response is another story). Noone has ever held Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, accountable for the mishandling of the situation, for his "leadership" that emphasized a "public relations" tone, a tone that U.S. bishops clearly picked up on.

An example of this leadership? The British press uncovered evidence that Cardinal Ratzinger ordered bishops to handle allegations of sexual abuse internally and keep the allegations from law enforcement. Ratzinger situated the church's jursidiction within the context of a "pontifical secret" and threatened to excommunicate diocesan officials who tattle to the cops. Nice.

So forgive me if I suggest it takes some gall for the Pope to speak with moral authority about the scandal. Though, I can see why he says he's "deeply ashamed." It will be interesting to see if the U.S. media downplays the Pope's history with the scandal as much as they've downplayed, say, the church's condemnation of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. On yesterday's Diane Rehm show, Rehm mentioned the pedophilia memo but the panelists quickly changed the subject. Will others bring up what seems to me to be a relevant piece of context? We'll see.

my hometown

Today CNN.com has made a story about Youngstown, Ohio, the lead story on its homepage. Long a symbol of blight, massive decreases in population, and de-industrialization, a new plan in the city embraces smallness, focusing on improvement of infrastructure, quality of life, and services, without wasting resources and time dreaming of growth. The story reviews some of Youngstown's failed attempts to attract a new industry or initiative (supermax prisons! blimp factory!), each of which was painted as an opportunity to return Youngstown to the baby boom years of population growth. Interestingly, the story avoids discussing what the national media usually talks about when it talks about Youngstown: organized crime and government corruption. The story also avoids explaning how the city can thrive with a rapidly shrinking tax base.

heard on the streetcar

The rhetoric and composition community discusses New Orleans: Should the conference return to N.O. sooner than later to "support" the city financially? Does academic analysis of the city have the potential to prompt social change? How can the field turn its attention to how language ("post-Katrina" and so on) constructs realities?

The WPA list had a brief conversation--that seems to have died out quickly--about urging NCTE to interrupt the scheduled rotation of conference locations and hold Cs in New Orleans again. I respect the urge to make such a gesture. It's an urge to spend money in the city, an urge to offer some solidarity, and an urge to feel relevant in the face of a complicated and unjust situation. Jeff and Jenny have both rightly pointed out that these urges also create an opportunity for outsiders to pat themselves on the back despite how ineffectual (yay...we've helped expensive hotels pay low wages to members of the working class and working poor) and unethical (the awful "Katrina tours" that Jenny mentions) some of the manifestations of the gesture are.

Obviously New Orleans is a place that has relied for a very long time on tourism and business travel. Going to New Orleans *does* provide the city with revenue. But who benefits from the types of revenue we brought? Most of the hotels where Cs attendees stayed are certainly operated by godless corporations, but many attendees also took part in the city's arts scene, including the scene beyond the French Quarter. Such participation certainly doesn't warrant back-patting, but may play a small role in supporting the good work of a musician or artist. Some attendees may have been moved by the underpasses' "tent cities" to take part in advocacy work. Visibility (i.e., the visibility of difference and inequality) can lead to change.

But I was struck by the words spoken by a woman on the streetcar I was riding. We struck up a conversation about the streetcar's closure through the stretch of Canal Street where a movie was filming. The woman, who lives off Canal, was talking about how the interruption of service screwed up her ability to get home. I wondered aloud whether movie production brings in as much money as folks often insist it does (Mitch Albom's leading a movement to bring more Hollywood productions to Detroit) and the woman responded: "Yeah, it brings in lots of money. But I'm tired of people from the north spending money here and then thinking they can do whatever they want."

back from 4Cs

I hope to find some time to blog about specific panels in the next few days, but, in the meantime, the '08 4Cs struck me as the best in years. I didn't go to a single weak session. In fact, many of the presentations (I went to seven panels including my own) provoked and engaged. And they were all pretty well-attended, too...not always the case in past years.

As always, catching up with grad school friends was a highlight. A crew from U-Arizona hit Bacco and enjoyed the odd marriage of Italian and Creole cuisines. I had the crawfish ravioli...tasty. Nominating Committee meetings took up a lot of time but I appreciated the chance to learn more about how the Cs takes care of such business and have a say in future leadership. Look for your ballots in mid-June, folks.

All work and no play? Course not. I made time to hit the Louisiana Music Factory, a great two-floor record store that devotes the whole ground level to New Orleans artists--iconic, obscure, and all points in between. Caught part of John Mooney's in-store set. He pretty much took off the roof during an Electric (notice the capital "E") version of Son House's "Louise McGhee." Nice. The upper level boasts an impressive selection of non-Louisiana artists on both vinyl and CD. I got a copy of Black Merda's first album on CD. It's a Russian import. I didn't even think the band's catalogue was available on disc, so this was a geeky discovery that kept me smiling all the way back to the hotel. Black Merda was a great 60s Detroit band--part Funkadelic, part MC5, part Jimi Hendrix Experience. Also got one of the Dengue Fever CDs that I didn't yet have...DF is a contemporary surf-rock band from California that's a whole lotta Farfisa organ, a whole lotta bilingualism, and a whole lotta VOICE, thanks to the song stylings of Chhom Nimol, the Cambodian legend who sings lead on most tracks.

Finally, I have to mention taking the streetcar to the New Orleans Museum of Art in order to check out the world-class modern sculpture garden. Located in City Park, the place is gorgeous, thanks in part to the low-hanging live oak trees that fill the park. What a great place to stroll. The most striking feature of the sculpture garden is the breadth and diversity of the collection, from the Warhol-esque, humongous safety pin to the haunting image of a lynching.

But the pleasant surprise was the NOMA's huge George Rodrigue exhibit. Rodrigue based his blue dog series at first on the werewolf legend, loup garou, but soon the blue dog took on a life of its own. Rodrigue uses the dog itself as a kind of canvas on which he can compose a wide range of emotions. He's used the image for purely aesthetic creations, but also for commercial campaigns too. And, of course, for fund-raisers. I enjoyed the exhibit quite a bit and would like to learn more about Rodrigue, by all accounts a fascinating figure.

God bless New Orleans.

nola

Preparations for New Orleans are in full swing. Yesterday and last night (past midnight, actually) I did some Nominating Committee work, coming up with a few different draft-versions of a ballot that (I think) balances experience with new perspective, represents diversity in terms of type of institution, region, race, gender, and so on. Thank goodness for the rest of the committee. I'm sure I've neglected some important consideration. The NC has an open meeting, where we entertain still more nominations, and then a closed meeting, where we set the ballot. The committee experience has been interesting, though paperwork intensive, and I'd gladly do it again.

Today I'm doing some final revisions to the paper. If you're looking for a panel during the "D" slot (Thursday, 3:15-4:30), come check out "Writing Realities, Writing Cities: From the Motor City the the Big Easy." I'll be talking about some research I've done on how Detroit's garage rock movement represents urban life. My UMD colleague, and Louisiana native son, Randy Woodland will talk about the jazz funeral trope. And Tom Uskali from Pine Crest High School in Florida will talk about ethics of representation issues in writing on place. I hate sparsely attended panels; hope to see a crowd. The more people in attendance, the less nervous I am. Apologies for blatant panel promotion.

post hoc ergo propter hoc

Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times:

Meanwhile, the big winner of the Democratic fist-fighting is Senator McCain. A Gallup poll released Wednesday found that 19 percent of Mr. Obama’s supporters said they would vote for Mr. McCain in the general election if Mrs. Clinton were the nominee. More startling, 28 percent of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters said they would defect to Mr. McCain if Mr. Obama were the nominee.

Kristof makes an interesting leap here. I haven't seen any evidence that the high rate of potential "defectors" has much to do with the battle for the democratic nomination being protracted and contentious. I know that conventional wisdom says that the nominee must "unite the party" after primary season and there's something to be said for the argument that a protracted battle leaves less time for that mythic unification. But I'm not convinced that the "fist fighting," to borrow Kristof's phrase, is actually going to make democrats vote for McCain.

Democrats are getting more press. McCain took part in the ultimate photo op in Iraq and couldn't get anywhere near the ink that the democrats have been getting. Many pundits are suggesting that this increased attention is bad for Clinton and Obama. The argument goes something like this: you have more opportunities to screw up when eyes are on you.

My sense, though, is that the democrats have much more name and face recognition. McCain's coming off like a Bob Dole or Mike Dukakis, i.e., a "that other guy." And in an election where affect is clearly playing a gigantic role (Clinton and Obama share so many stances, yet people feel so differently about them), that kind of recognition matters.

Yes, a lot of Obama supporters say they'll go McCain if Clinton gets the nomination, and vice versa. First of all, I don't believe a lot of them. I'm an Obama supporter and there's a part of me that will have trouble voting for Clinton, knowing what I know about her voting record in the senate (supporting the patriot act, supporting the patriot act's renewal, supporting Bush's expanded war powers, etc.), but I couldn't bring myself to vote for McCain. I suspect I'm not alone.

And, again, I'm not even sure democrats saying they'll defect necessarily stems from the fact that the primary season has been long and heated. In fact, there's something to be said for the length and the nature of the "battle." They're honing their messages, which is good practice for the campaign vs. McCain. They're fostering public discourse.

Of course those two advantages rely on the candidates staying on message, avoiding ad hominem mud-slinging, and operating above the non-issues on which the press fixates. And, admittedly, their campaigns have not always done those things.

i am not afraid of you

...and I will listen to this whilst grading papers and prepping for 4Cs.

Follow link to hear NPR's stream of the Yo La Tengo gig at SXSW earlier this month. The band doesn't know how to put on a bad show so, you know, this is great to listen to while working. You'd expect YLT, famous for both dipping deeply into its huge catalogue and playing covers that show off their knowledge of arcane rock history, to play a show geared toward the music geeks of SXSW. But this show is the closest they get to a 'greatest hits' set. Early on, they play "Autumn Sweater," "Mr. Tough," and my favorite, "Little Eyes."

anger

In a recent College English article, Amy Robillard* wrote:

...anger is a legitimate and justifiable response to what one has been persuaded is an insult that violates one's sense of moral justice and the sacred values of one's community. Anger by definition includes the assignment of responsibility and the possibility of revenge, which is pleasurable because it is sanctioned by the community whose values have been violated.

Robillard suggests plagiarism is a site where we might challenge the cultural conceptions that emotions and authorship are private and individual things. She asks whether we often avoid anger at plagiarism as part of a larger desire to look liberatory ("I don't get mad at students")? And she also asks whether our anger at plagiarism (when we allow anger...on blogs, for instance) is framed by our desire to look smart ("Usually I'm smart enough to design assignments that prevent plagiarism and when I don't, I'm smart enough to realize I'm reading something that's been plagiarised").

So I'm trying to reconcile the insights of this article with my own anger at a student of mine who has just plagiarised. I fall into all the traps. I get defensive about my assignments, my syllabus, my teaching. I feel insulted as an individual and as a member of a particular profession/community. I worry that my response somehow will weaken my credentials as a liberatory teacher. I take some perverse sense of satisfaction that I wasn't "fooled." And I'm aware that virtually every response fits into the schema of responses that Robillard outlines. The irony is that my response to plagiarism (which insults us in part because the practice is an affront to originality) is utterly unoriginal.

All of that is a round-about way of saying: I'm angry.

(*"We Won't Get Fooled Again: On the Absense of Angry Resonses to Plagiarism in Composition Studies." College English 70 (2007): 10-31.)

weekend

Easter presented a nice get-away opportunity with family in Youngstown, OH. Nothing too exciting, just low-key holiday weekend. Played 500, went to church, took in an auction, and watched basketball. My oldest nephew was pretty bummed when Georgetown lost (he's a freshmen poli-sci major at G'town). Once Arizona bowed out--in the first round, natch--I didn't much care who won. Still I was hoping Butler would make the Sweet 16, as they were robbed with that low seed.

Anyway, good food over the weekend, too. Of course Easter Bread, the sweet, frosted bread my parents make at their church (a $15,000 fundraiser this year!). Ricotta bread and spinach bread, also delicious. And of course the ultimate Easter food: meat pie, stuffed with sausage, egg, provolone, and other good stuff. Per tradition, we cut into all the baked stuff after the long Saturday night mass. Nothing like carbing it up late at night. Sunday dinner was at my brother's house: baked artichokes, lasagna, goat chops grilled with lemon juice and garlic. I don't need to eat for another week.

Sadly for Detroit, most everybody back home in Youngstown's been following the Kwame Kilpatrick mess on the national news. "So, what's up with the mayor up there?" I heard, all weekend long. Well, for any Youngstown readers out there: as I wrote the last two paragraphs, the prosecutor just handed down twelve criminal charges against the mayor and his ex-chief of staff. Full story here, but the short version is this...the mayor has twenty hours to turn himself in for booking and arraignment. He's facing perjury, obstruction of justice, criminal conspiracy, and misconduct charges. The million dollar question becomes, will he step down?

UPDATE (2:25 p.m.)
Answer to the million dollar question: Hell No. Kwame and one of his attorneys held a press conference less than two hours after the prosecutor's and said just that. Incidentally, Kwame's legal team is headed by Chicago's top trial lawyer Dan Webb. His new public relations team is headed by out-of-towner Judy Smith, who has represented Monica Lewinsky, Clarence Thomas, and Larry Craig. Does Kilpatrick have any moral authority to rail against hiring from outside city limits?

outside reviewers

Here's another odd component of the tenure application process. The university sends my tenure file out to five senior members of my field. My department's promotion and tenure committee chooses these reviewers, but I get to suggest 10-15 possible candidate. I hear that the committee generally uses folks from the submitted list.

They have to be tenured professors from other universities, ranked either associate or (preferably) full. Makes sense. They are also supposed to be from schools equivalent to or better than UM-Dearborn in terms of prestige. This is a bit more dicey, given that prestige is a pretty contested concept (are we talking Carnegie classifications, U.S. News and World Report rankings, or what?). Also dicey because "prestige" in composition studies (prestige of particular presses, institutions, etc.) is not always the same as prestige in other fields in the humanities.

Finally, the "prestige" thing is dicey for me because much of my research is in the area of open-admissions education and working-class culture. In many cases, senior members of the field working in these areas don't necessarily work at high prestige (by many definitions of the contested term) places.

A further thing that makes it tough to assemble this list: I'm not supposed to include anyone with whom I have a "close professional relationship." Kind of vague, eh? Some of the guidelines are specific: nobody from my dissertation committee, for instance. Nobody who I would call a "mentor." Fair enough. But what about someone who I invited to my campus to give a guest lecture? What about someone whose book I reviewed in a major journal? What about someone with whom I've gone out for coffee at 4Cs?

Is it better to pick people who you don't know at all? Because doing so makes it less likely that the person's expertise lies in my own areas of research. And don't you want people working on similar issues and questions?