US students fight for education rights -17 Feb 09

well done, al-jazeera.

belated guestpost 2: frederick douglass

in the wake of the obama election, and in some ways intertwining with my transposing rhetoric post, my dear heart douglas ray sent two textual moments my way. here's the second:

"Frederick Douglass"

When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,
when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,
this man, superb in love and logic, this man
shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues' rhetoric,
not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,
but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives
fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.

--Robert Hayden

belated guestpost 1: jim bond

in the wake of the obama election, and in some ways intertwining with my transposing rhetoric post, my dear heart douglas ray sent two textual moments my way. here's the first, with d ray's voice sputtering about:

I. Apéritif

I love the excitement of a proposal – it’s simulated entrepreneurship for poet / academic. So here’s one for Harper Collins. Or FSG (Oh to be published by Lorca’s publisher! Aye! Wounded Lilies! Sweet dahlias! Flourish the zithers! My orange heart!):

Dear Smartly-Clad Sirs,

For three months, I will practice, religiously, the sortes Vergilianae. But not with Vergil’s works – funeral pyres are not for me. A Mississippian, instead – Faulkner, Welty, Morris, or Percy perhaps. The Moviegoer as guide-to-life is workable. I’d probably go for Williams, though. John Waters could write the forward. Mark Doty could blurb me. Oprah could review me. Gail could edit Oprah.

Regards,
Undersexed Underpaid
Oxford, MS

P.S. SASE enclosed for your timely reply.

II. Meat of the fruit

Faulkner isn’t my usual election day reading choice, but this year I was reading a brilliant article about the “erotics of the gap” (!!!), “an ethically, not ontologically constructed homosexuality,” and “a coming-out historiography” in Absalom, Absalom!. We’re queering the canon, making queer canons, and queering the history of canon-making. But, I felt the need to review the novel a bit before delving into the article. The final chapter (9), I remember being super-charged with the erotics of narration (erotics of confesston, I suppose). I ran across this gem and exploded in the margins:

“Then I’ll tell you. I think that in time the Jim Bonds are going to conquer the western hemisphere. Of course it wont quite be in our time and of course as they spread toward the poles they will bleach out again like the rabbits and the birds do, so they wont show up so sharp against the snow. But it will still be Jim Bond; and so in a few thousand years, I who regard you will also have sprung from the loins of African kings.”

A. Context in the novel

Shreve (Shrevlin McCannon) is talking to Quentin Compson (of The Sound and the Fury fame) in their dorm room at Harvard. It’s 1910, and they’re trying to piece together the mysteries of Sutpen’s Hundred and an experience that Quentin had in Jeffererson with Rosa Coldfield (Faulkner’s representation of a providential view of history).

This passage is the final one of the book – (leading to Shreve’s famous question – “Why do you hate the South?”), and it seems all too prophetic…Old Testament-ish, like the titular reference to King David’s cry for his son. Jim Bond – slackjawed and oafish – is the son of Charles Bon (who fought with the University Grays and died in 1865) and his black wife.

B. Resonance

What Shreve imagines is akin to the picture of SimEve – Time magazine’s rendering of generations of interracial breeding in their Fall 1993 issue on immigration, which casts the United States as the “World’s First Multicultural Society.” Of course, one need look no further than Time magazine covers again – for the face of Shreve’s prophecy made manifest – President-elect Barack Obama (he, like Jim Bond, performs a mixed-race identity). What’s fascinating is that, in Absalom! Absalom! in which he grapples with history more than in any other in his oeuvre, he ends with this flourish of foresight.

III. Gratias Tibi Ago

Well done, Bill. Kudos to you, Shreve. You were right: this didn’t happen quite “in your time” – just 99 years later. Pop the prosecco!

transposing rhetoric

last night,

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

became

"And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright-- tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope."

and

"And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land."

became

"The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America - I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you - we as a people will get there."

in rare moments of rage

few things piss me off more than abstinence only sex education. this of course means that as a public high school teacher in mississippi i would occasionally leap into a fit of rage when faced with stuff like the following:

(1) explaining to a student where her uterus was and how ovulation works
(2) explaining to a student that HIV/AIDS is not created by the mere fact of two men engaging in intercourse
(3) explaining to a student that it is not true that condoms break most of the time
(4) explaining to a student that HIV/AIDS is not passed through tears, sweat, and/or saliva

at the very least, conversations like this push the boundaries of propriety. and yet, when three students carry to term during my two years in the classroom, and with knowledge that many more have children at home and no services or support to speak of for these women-- i quickly stop caring about what is or is not appropriate in the face of absurd and dangerous faith-cum-policy.

pun intended.

also, it always kills me to realize that i went to an all-boys catholic high school and had very comprehensive sex education. of course, sometime afterwards we would walk wide-eyed over to theology class for our daily allowance of guilt, but still...

jesuits: 1
bush administration: 0

oh, we also learned about evolution.

jesuits: 2
bush administration: 0

from "Of condoms, Clinton, Obama and McCain," by Rahul K. Parikh, M.D., in Salon.com, March 24, 2008

As a pediatrician, doing my job well means I talk with teens about their sex lives... That means I'm testing them for sexually transmitted diseases, performing pelvic exams to make sure they don't have signs that can lead to cervical cancer later, and discussing and prescribing contraception -- abstinence, condoms, Plan B and birth control pills.

This kind of comprehensive approach to teen sex has been successful. Teens have been waiting longer to have sex, and teen pregnancy rates dropped by almost 30 percent between 1990 and 2000. If they are sexually active, teenage girls have reported having fewer partners and are more likely to use some form of contraception than in the past.

... Since 2000, teens have faced a rise in abstinence-only education, hurdles to obtaining Plan B emergency contraception and a hike in the price of birth control pills.

... Shortly after President Bush took office, he began pushing abstinence-only sex education, where teens learn that the only way to prevent STDs and pregnancy is to wait to have sex until they're married. If or when abstinence proponents do mention contraceptives, they greatly exaggerate their failure rates to scare teens into believing they are useless. Funding for abstinence programs has grown to around $180 million annually.

... According to the Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, the nation's largest study of teen behavior, kids who took abstinence vows kept them for just a little over one year. Worse, pledgers who failed at abstinence were less likely to use contraception when they had sex. Further, the study shows that in the past six years, the prevalence of STDs has been similar between pledgers and nonpledgers.

...there was last summer's revelation that the price of oral contraceptives was going up for college students. Traditionally, Big Pharma has given campuses a break on the price of birth control pills. But the 2005 Deficit Reduction Act put an end to that, as the government cut drug reimbursements to pharmacies. Suddenly, an $8 to $12 charge for a month's worth of birth control spiked to between $30 and $50. That priced out a whole lot of young women from protecting themselves.

While a dreamy religious conservative might argue that the spike will also price teenage girls out of having sex, think again. Most first-person reports tell us that women's sex lives haven't changed. Now, however, they're having riskier sex, relying only on condoms or depending on Plan B as birth control, taking it after each episode of intercourse, something it's not approved for.

...There has been nearly a decade of disconnect between Washington and young women. If you have any doubts about the consequences, consider that the teen pregnancy rate recently rose for the first time in 15 years. That prompts the question: Who's going to stand up for teens over the next 10 years?

noticed: mississippi goddamn

the name of this tune is mississippi goddamn
and i mean every word of it

~ nina simone

from "Communism is not Biblical," by David Thigpen, in The Daily Mississippian, March 19, 2008

The problem of meeting with communist leaders for most political candidates is that they themselves are not communist, but if you are a communist, then what is the controversy in meeting with a communist leader?

The answer is that there isn't any for Obama, because he is a communist.

yes. this was actually printed in an opinion piece in the actual ole miss newspaper. with writing like this, who needs satire?

no cure for the libidinous like a rationale

a day too long in the sun has reminded
me there's some coffee in this cream.

it's warming up quite a bit down here in pastoral oxford, mississippi.

flowers are there that once weren't there;
everywhere cars are yellow-green with the landscape's hopeful ejaculate.

i ran yesterday for 45 minutes at an unnecessary pace.


from "In Most Species, Faithfulness Is a Fantasy," by natalie angier, in the NYTimes, march 18, 2009:

It’s been done by many other creatures, tens of thousands of other species, by male and female representatives of every taxonomic twig on the great tree of life. Sexual promiscuity is rampant throughout nature, and true faithfulness a fond fantasy. Oh, there are plenty of animals in which males and females team up to raise young, as we do, that form “pair bonds” of impressive endurance and apparent mutual affection, spending hours reaffirming their partnership by snuggling together like prairie voles or singing hooty, doo-wop love songs like gibbons, or dancing goofily like blue-footed boobies.

[...]

Even the “oldest profession”...is old news. Nonhuman beings have been shown to pay for sex, too. Reporting in the journal Animal Behaviour, researchers from Adam Mickiewicz University and the University of South Bohemia described transactions among great grey shrikes, elegant raptorlike birds with silver capes, white bellies and black tails that, like 90 percent of bird species, form pair bonds to breed. A male shrike provisions his mate with so-called nuptial gifts: rodents, lizards, small birds or large insects that he impales on sticks. But when the male shrike hankers after extracurricular sex, he will offer a would-be mistress an even bigger kebab than the ones he gives to his wife — for the richer the offering, the researchers found, the greater the chance that the female will agree to a fly-by-night fling.

[...]

Commonplace though adultery may be, and as avidly as animals engage in it when given the opportunity, nobody seems to approve of it in others, and humans are hardly the only species that will rise up in outrage against wantonness real or perceived. Most female baboons have lost half an ear here, a swatch of pelt there, to the jealous fury of their much larger and toothier mates. Among scarab beetles, males and females generally pair up to start a family, jointly gathering dung and rolling and patting it into the rich brood balls in which the female deposits her fertilized eggs. The male may on occasion try to attract an extra female or two — but he does so at his peril. In one experiment with postmatrimonial scarabs, the female beetle was kept tethered in the vicinity of her mate, who quickly seized the opportunity to pheromonally broadcast for fresh faces. Upon being released from bondage, the female dashed over and knocked the male flat on his back. “She’d roll him right into the ball of dung,” Dr. Barash said, “which seemed altogether appropriate.”

public tallying 2

less misanthropic today. also, i've reminded myself-- while re-reading my "i have a problem with ritual" mess-- that over the past few weeks i've herded various co-workers through a rather fixed loop from the office, to the starbucks in the student union, back to the office-- with specifics paths taken to approach and to leave the starbucks, and a with the same order made each time: a grande iced americano, no room for cream (but in which i allow a splash of milk, if only to watch the inky cloud resulting). this procession is-- at this point-- intentional, and comfortable. and a ritual, no doubt. as with my morning routine: press snooze three times, turn on the espresso machine, shower, dress, drink espresso, leave. this brings up the question: when does a routine become a ritual? what problems do i have with the ritual of walking down the aisle that i do not have with walking by the lyceum?

the public tallying of desire

i have a problem with ritual. well, i'm not sure that's so much accurate as it is a nice out-of-the-blocks sentence. i have a difficult time coming to terms with ritual; i have a bothersome relationship with ritual. something.

in any case, i often plant myself in a constructivist corner when the importance of a birthday, a holiday, or an anniversary is brought to issue. embrace the arbitrary; do not mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself; grumble grumble grumble.

from this admittedly overly skeptical vantage point, rituals of common social gravity seem to receive the most flak. marriages, for instance: generally possessing neither rigidity nor sanctity, they are nevertheless serve a reasonable role in attempting to package public acknowledgment for something that already exists. a ring does not a marriage make; a "she's my girlfriend" does not a boyfriend (or girlfriend) make. a marriage exists, and a ring acknowledges it-- but does not create it.

in this regard, i have much appreciation for the catholic church's understanding of the sacrament of marriage-- which is not a sacrament conferred or consecrated by a mass or a priest performing a mass or a father trying not to cry at a mass; it is a sacrament consecrated by the actors themselves (in part by getting it on, yes), in the esoteric and inscrutable intertwinings of their being alive, and the "getting married" part-- i.e. the white dress, the ring barer, and the creepy uncle-- is merely an attempt to say "this thing exists," to give a visible, rigid instantiation to something that requires neither, and at the end of the day seems neither necessary nor sufficient for the existence of the thing it is acknowledging to exist (and particularly not sufficient). in this light, the catholic understanding of annulment is also impressive, for it is not an act of canceling a marriage (i.e. a divorce), but rather the acknowledgment that a marriage never happened-- that there was only the finger pointing, and never the moon-- and the blushing bride, the squirming groom, the dancing flower girl, and grandma's china were all-- in a sense-- duped by a massive parade of social signifier that had form, but not substance. this is a ritualistic orientation i like, one that has no pretension of it's causal or necessary/sufficient powers-- an honest attempt at signifying, without being convinced that signifying is necessarily creating.

on the other hand, it is kind of nice to see an otherwise fancy couple sitting together at a coffee shop-- accompanied by an absurd and pink/purple embellished teddy bear, who gets the occasional kiss on the nose.

all this "being limply defiant" burst forth while reading, "of valentines jinxes and packaged gnocci," by rebecca traister in Salon.com, february 14, 2008:

As Valentine's Day approached with all its humiliations and hormones-- the in-class carnations and kissing and public tallying of desire!

[...]

Don't misunderstand. I have never given a good goddamn about Valentine's Day. Only intermittently has it had any emotional impact. Once, in the midst of a particularly agonizing winter breakup cycle, my jaw went slack during a sushi dinner with a girlfriend who was devastated that her swain would be out of town on business for the big day. "I'll know I have a boyfriend, but I'll feel so pathetic when all the women in my office are getting ready to go out for dinner and it'll look like I have nothing to do!" she said, as I quietly wondered if I could drown myself in a shallow pool of low-sodium soy sauce.

I recall a few limply defiant all-girls gatherings, designed to take the sting out of being single on the biggest Hallmark holiday of the year. But most of those ended at a dive bar, gossiping about jobs and boys. Putting energy into hating Valentine's Day is as hackneyed and old hat as hating New Year's Eve. There's no traction or originality there.

[...]

And then I rolled a perfect gnocchi.

taken at the MS state fair, 2007

noticed: misc

just set up internet in my new apartment, so hopefully that will allow for better writing patterns. oddly enough, i always seem to be either wrapped up in work at the office or on the road, clinging to my ipod (with which i recently discovered npr podcasts).

that being said, there are piles of random "noticed" blurbs that were neither typed up nor was time found to comment upon them. so, a bit of a purge (also, in the next couple of days i hope to do some commentary on community meetings i've been attending):

from "Maternity Fashions, Junior Size," by Katha Pollitt, in The Nation, January 21, 2008:

Teens getting pregnant: bad. Teens having babies: good. If this makes no sense to you, wake up and smell the Enfamil. It's 2008!

[...]

In Juno, the pregnant girl is the central figure, a witty oddball who drives the action, beginning with the sex; neither the boy nor her father and stepmother, a well-meaning but rather oblivious pair, much affect her decisions. Thus, Juno goes for abortion alone, without even telling her parents she's pregnant. In real life, this would most likely have been impossible, because nearly all states in the Midwest (where the movie is set) have parental notification or consent laws.

[...]

Juno is sensible enough to realize she's just a kid and makes the choice that not long ago was forced on middle-class white girls [i.e. carrying to term]. These days, 29 percent of pregnant teens have abortions; 14 percent miscarry; of the 57 percent who carry to term, less than 1 percent give up the baby. Paradoxically, the women's movement destigmatized single motherhood and thus helped make a world in which some of the old justifications for abortion no longer seem so forceful. Now it's abortion that is a badge of shame and "irresponsibility."

[...]

Just to bring the whole reproductive carnival full circle, Florida's "Choose Life" license plates, of which more than 40,000 have been sold, have raised more than $4 million for low-income single moms. But there's a catch: only women who choose adoption qualify. A woman who wants to keep her baby can just go starve in hell. Since only a handful of woman want to give away their babies-- even among pregnant woman who plan on adoption, 35 percent chance their mind once the baby is born-- the money is just sitting there. Maybe someone, someday will make a movie about that.

from "Totally Spent," by Robert Reich, in The New York Times, February 13, 2008:

The underlying problem has been building for decades. America’s median hourly wage is barely higher than it was 35 years ago, adjusted for inflation. The income of a man in his 30s is now 12 percent below that of a man his age three decades ago. Most of what’s been earned in America since then has gone to the richest 5 percent.

Yet the rich devote a smaller percentage of their earnings to buying things than the rest of us because, after all, they’re rich. They already have most of what they want. Instead of buying, and thus stimulating the American economy, the rich are more likely to invest their earnings wherever around the world they can get the highest return.

The problem has been masked for years as middle- and lower-income Americans found ways to live beyond their paychecks. But now they have run out of ways.

The first way was to send more women into paid work. Most women streamed into the work force in the 1970s less because new professional opportunities opened up to them than because they had to prop up family incomes. The percentage of American working mothers with school-age children has almost doubled since 1970 — to more than 70 percent. But there’s a limit to how many mothers can maintain paying jobs.

So Americans turned to a second way of spending beyond their hourly wages. They worked more hours. The typical American now works more each year than he or she did three decades ago. Americans became veritable workaholics, putting in 350 more hours a year than the average European, more even than the notoriously industrious Japanese.

But there’s also a limit to how many hours Americans can put into work, so Americans turned to a third way of spending beyond their wages. They began to borrow. With housing prices rising briskly through the 1990s and even faster from 2002 to 2006, they turned their homes into piggy banks by refinancing home mortgages and taking out home-equity loans. But this third strategy also had a built-in limit. With the bursting of the housing bubble, the piggy banks are closing.

noticed: problems back home

part of my why-i-like-living-in-mississippi-and/or-jackson narrative, or my don't-forget-that-these-problems-are-also-part-of-a-national-dilemma lecture usually involves some reference to the fact that-- in terms of race/class geographies, urban/suburban relations, and unyielding/ungrounded faith in the next great urban renewal-- my erstwhile mississippi home, jackson, very much reminds me of the place i grew up in: cleveland, ohio. of course, when curious listeners ask me to elaborate i usually stumble on the specifics of this structural analysis-- but it's remained all too obvious as i've come to know both places more over the past three years. the broad stroke is this: the white-flight patterns of abandoning the city and building the suburbs (and all the issues that derive from this economic/demographic/cultural shift) was a national phenomenon that took place in major cities across america, galvanized by the post-wwii real estate boom in the 50s and 60s. this shift was postponed in mississippi until the early 70s, in part because the state outright ignored/avoided the "all deliberate speed" part of brown v. board, which was only re-explained as "right now, asshole" in the 1969 alexander v. holmes case. there's a famous-- though perhaps apocryphal-- anecdote about jackson prep forming in the basement of first baptist church on the night of the court decision; the point is, the rest of the country had a two-decade headstart on the re-segregation maneuvers that jackson went through (with all deliberate speed, i might add) during the 70s and 80s, resulting in the predominantly poor & black urban core, shell of a forgotten manufacturing/light industry economy, financial/higher-ed/medical/legal/governmental sectors depending on professionals commuting from predominantly white upper middle class suburbs-- where a cocktail of low population density (minimum lots + building code requirements) and low taxes (leveraged on segregation-inflated property value) provide the excellent civic services that are now the race-free reason for people justifying their move (e.g. we moved to ______ because we want our kids to receive a quality public education...). that being said, there's a fine line between madison, mississippi and westlake, ohio.

some qualifiers on that: one of the reason that i plan on using my free ole miss classes (hooray for university employment) to study economics is so that i can fill in these broad strokes. however, it will nevertheless remain true that one of my go-to answers to the story circle question, "when was first time it became clear that race was the elephant in the room" will be: when i came back from my first year at amherst college-- a profoundly diverse place in many respects (race, class, region, nationality)-- and attended the graduation of my great, childhood friend, sean wilbur, at fairview park high school (fairview park was the suburb that i grew up in), i was struck with the sense that something was missing as i looked at the sea of white faces on the auditorium stage. it was, very simply, other people-- perhaps some in the sea of black/brown faces undoubtedly on an auditorium stage in the cleveland public school district around the same time. i guess it became at that point very viscerally odd that both seas laid claim to the cultural signifier "cleveland"-- but that same term meant such different, and at times contrasting things. now, this would all be fine and well if these terms were in a healthy sociolinguistic engagement (which is probably part of the democratizing possibility of a city-- and all the different, contrasting things it requires to be in the same place at the same time), but they weren't. the same, of course, with "jackson."

here's to being a progressive, snooty, pseudo-intellectual limousine liberal:

from, "A Suburb Looks Nervously At Its Urban Neighbor," in The New York Times, January 17, 2008:

Mr. McDermott was taking a walk early New Year’s Eve when a group of young African-Americans attacked him from behind. They slashed his face, kicked him, and mashed his leg with a lead pipe, the police said. A neighbor banging on a window scared the teenagers away.

[...]

Scott Lee, the acting police chief of Shaker Heights, said the beating was a random crime of opportunity and was not gang-related.

Ludlow is a neighborhood of tidy Tudor and colonial homes with small yards shaded by mature sycamore trees. Part of the neighborhood lies in the affluent suburb of Shaker Heights and the other part lies in Cleveland, the fourth-poorest city in the country, according to the Census Bureau. Children on both sides of the neighborhood attend Shaker Heights public schools. The only way to know which city you are in is to look for the street signs, which in Cleveland are blue and in Shaker Heights are white.

Mr. McDermott was attacked on a quiet street one block south of Ludlow Elementary School, which in the 1950s and ’60s became the center of Shaker Heights’s successful integration effort.

[...]

What has surprised Ludlow residents most since the attack is the reaction of people around the region.

[...]

“So move,” Dick Feagler, a columnist for The Cleveland Plain Dealer, wrote after the attack. “But do it like we all have — like the whole three-county area has — don’t call it racism. Call it reality.”

[...]

“I wonder how much ‘tolerance’ the ‘progressive,’ snooty, pseudo-intellectual limousine liberal, socialists of Shaker Heights will show now that the thugs are in their neighborhood too,” a reader wrote on a Cleveland Plain Dealer blog.

[...]

“People in the Cleveland area resent us because we’re a repudiation of everything they believe,” said Brian Walker, 56, who was among the first African-Americans to attend Ludlow school. “We’re proof that white people and black people can live together.”

[...]

“You can’t run forever,” said Tom Chelimsky, co-president of the Ludlow Community Association. The beating occurred on Mr. Chelimsky’s front lawn. “We’re not naïve. We’re tough, and we’re going to stand together.”

to understand the full extent of the constraints of the abyss

about to relocate to oxford, ms: recalibrate/re-evaluate/re-imagine the work. it's all by inches at this point. lots of learning by mistakes; lots of mistakes

***

in any case, i want to find a way to write more regularly in general, and in this space in particular. i have no idea who currently reads this space, or who would. regardless, the bottom line of the narrative seems to be: i went from the horrors of an environment so structured as to be dehumanizing to the madness of an environment so unstructured as to be paralyzing, and now i'm trying to locate center.

***

in other news, one thing that i have been doing a lot of recently is reading - and if you're around me long enough it's hard not to notice that i can't read without highlighter in hand. i have an obsession with marking up texts that i read (magazines and newspapers included), especially with the basic act of noting passages that i would like to remember. this habit seems neither uncommon nor unreasonable, but my persistence in doing it borders on the obsessive. that being said, i've been trying to find a way to do something with all these phrases and paragraphs that stand out across my diverse readings - and i think this space is a reasonable one to experiment with. blogs seem to be a genre centered on commentary and reference - a leviathan concordance to culture & politics, supremely dynamic and inconsistent. here's to the bizarre sandbox that we've built for ourselves:

from "where wonders await us," by tim flannery. in the new york review of books, volume liv, no. 20:

To understand the full extent of the constraints that the abyss places on life, consider the black seadevil. It's a somber, grapefruit-sized globe of a fish - seemingly all fangs and gape - with a "fishing rod" affixed between its eyes whose luminescent bait jerks above the trap-like mouth. Clearly, food is a priority for this creature, for it can swallow a victim nearly as large as itself. But that is only half the story, for this discription pertains solely to the female: the male is a minnow-like being content to feed on specks in the sea - until, that is, he encounters his sexual partner.

The first time that a male black seadevil meets his much larger mate, he bites her and never lets go. Over time, his veins and arteries grow together with hers, until he becomes a fetus-like dependent who receives from his mate's blood all the food, oxygen, and hormones he requires to exist. The cost of this utter dependence is a loss of function in all of his organs except his testicles, but even these, it seems, are stimulated to action solely at the pleasure of the engulfing female. When she has had her way with him, the male seadevil simply vanishes, having been completely absorbed and dissipated into the flesh of his paramour, leaving her free to seek another mate. Not even Dante imagined such a fate.

are you kidding?

from the proposal language of the USDA Farm Bill 2007:

a section entitled "problem":

"Schools use their cash assistance to purchase the large majority (approximately 80 percent) of the food for school meals, but no current data are available to know what foods are being purchased. "

a section entitled "recommended solution" (emphasis mine):

"Conduct a survey of foods purchased by school food authorities with Federal cash assistance once every 5 years. The most recent data on school food purchases are a decade old. These data would help USDA efforts to 1) provide guidance and technical assistance to school food professionals in the implementation of new rules intended to conform school meal patterns to the most recent Dietary Guidelines for Americans; 2) better manage the types and varieties of commodities procured by the Department on behalf of schools; and 3) assess the economic impact of school food purchases on various commodity sectors."

***

i've just started researching this topic in order to give the CRCL kids some leads. this is crazy...

a short catching up

things have been many and stressful lately. transitioning to a new type of being productive, with no imposed ritual, and little guidance. be careful what you wish for when you've got big ideas; at some point someone may say, "ok - here's a salary. get it done." life as a series of short adventures.

***

1. at the grove.

from "at ole miss, the tailgaters never lose," nytimes:

The glory of the Grove is legend at all of Ole Miss’s rival schools in the Southeastern Conference and beyond. It is the mother and mistress of outdoor ritual mayhem.

As Charles R. Frederick Jr., a folklorist at the University of Indiana, characterized it in his dissertation on the Ole Miss tailgating event, the call to “come on out Saturday and look us up” in the Grove is as basic, and born to a spot, as a human bond can get. And it is as deep as the root of a tree.

It is also as fresh and green as a leaf.

“I love it,” Molly Aiken, 19, a sophomore at Ole Miss, said on Saturday under a tent, under the trees, a party roar rising and dissipating into the whisper of a warm, humid wind above. “There’s no place like it.”

Ms. Aiken, who is from Chattanooga, Tenn., said of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, “I went to U.T. this past weekend, for the U.T.-Florida game, and I was, like, this just doesn’t compare.”

Ole Miss’s stadium accommodates 60,580 people, and devotees of the Grove argue that the Grove accommodates more. It is every kind of party you can describe, at once: cocktail party, dinner party, tailgate picnic party, fraternity and sorority rush, family reunion, political handgrab, gala and networking party-hearty — what might have inspired Willie Morris, one of Mississippi’s favorite sons, to declare Mississippi not a state, but a club."

so after two years with the teacher corps, and now a couple of months employed by the university of mississippi through the william winter institute, i figure it's due time that i check out this grove thing. ole miss was playing florida, and as the couz is a floridian, he came over to oxford from marks and at a bar on the square we watched the surprisingly close game. since it was an early afternoon kickoff - 11:30 - the grove was active both pre- and post-, and we wandered to campus afterwards; a family from marks had a tent somewhere in the mess - we were determined to find it and say hello.

the grove is, of course, an impressive sort of bedlam.

this sets the scene: a tailgating melee unlike any other in population density, southern flair, and who-are-you-kin-to socializing. the couz and i are following around an older woman from marks as she - dressed up elegantly and with pounds of makeup - makes the rounds. i am wearing t-shirt that says "the jackson branch naacp supports the school bond referendum," with a big naacp seal in the middle (and my membership card in my wallet, to boot). i am - in case you're wondering - white (or more appropriately, half-colombian but not latino-looking at all and claim my upbringing from the caucasian paradise of the suburban midwest). this all becomes very apparent when two ole miss grads (who look the part - khaki shorts, swoosh-over-the-eyebrow bangs, and cheesy sunglasses with that odd "sporty" necklace attachment) are cleary discussing my shirt as the couz and i wait patiently for our escort to catch up with whomever she's run into. of course, i'm not totally surprised that a white guy in the grove wearing an naacp shirt would furrow some brows, but so does dixie (give me all the "heritage, not hate" you want; some heritage is absurd). in any case, a discussion starts, here adapted as best i can remember:

guy 1: hey.
me: hey.
guy 1: are you wearing that t-shirt as a joke?
me: nope; it's not a joke.
guy 2: well, i think you're sorry sack of shit.
me: i'm sorry you feel that way.
guy 1: man, you've got to get your priorities straight.
me: my priorities are straight; i taught public high school in jackson for two years - i care about my kids and i care about their education.

(it continues in this vein for a second)

guy 2: well, i'm going to have to ask you to leave this tent.
me: are you kidding?
guy 2: no; just get the hell out of here.
me: this is public land, and a public forum. i am an employee of the university, and i certainly have the right to stand here and to wear this shirt.
guy 2: just fucking leave.
guy 1: hey man, just walk away.

(it continues in this vein for a bit. the guys never get out of their seats or raise their voices enough to cause a scene - southern gentlemen that they are.)

from "at ole miss, the tailgaters never lose," nytimes:

A boy in white shorts and a polo shirt stepped out onto the Walk of Champions, the brick path where the Rebels would make their ceremonial march through the Grove on their way to the stadium the next day.

“Are you READY?!” he called to the trees, prompting the Ole Miss cheer.

“HELLLLL YES! DAAAAMN RIGHT!” the trees yelled back. “Hotty Toddy gosh almighty who in the hell are we? Flim flam bim bam, OLE MISS by damn! WUUUUUUUUUUUUU!”

who in the hell are we, indeed.

2. in sumner, ms - the evening before the emmitt till commission's press conference:

do not forget these strange things
you take for granted. sleeping in
the mayor's guest room; a town
of 400 - he took the job because
no one wanted to. nearby: a man
with multiple (not tanks, but) APVs
goes riding at night in fatigues -
a pet racoon on his shoulder;
all the 200 guns in his house
are loaded - that is very clear
to his children; an old black woman,
convinced the white sheriff is out
to get her because she marched
in the 60s, had breakfast with
the kennedys; a brain tumor helps
know he's near - looking through
the trailer wall with x-ray vision.
lights over there are tutweiler
jail; over there parchman.
when a family dies - the house
is empty, the business gone.
someday these weekend cottages
will have wonderful histories.

3. in sumner, ms - the day of the emmitt till commission press conference.

the injustice of neglect - an explicit violence: in 1955, emmitt till was brutally abused and murdered for allegedly whistling at a white woman. he was 14 years old, from chicago and visiting with family in tallahatchie county. two white men were acquitted of murder by an all-white jury after an hour of discussion. after the till commission (composed of black and white community leaders) read it's formal statement of regret on the steps of the sumner courthouse (where the trial had occurred) - acknowledging that a miscarriage of justice had occurred and calling for truth and reconciliation in the case - one of till's family members remarked, "imagine having to hold your breath for 52 years."

the injustice of neglect - an implicit violence: in 2007, buses of middle and high school students are unloaded at sumner courthouse. it is a hot day, and the emmitt till commission press conference drags on. there aren't enough chairs for everyone, and the students huddle against empty storefronts. uninterested in what's going on, they begin to talk amongst themselves. teachers are no where in sight. most of the most audible students are black males, huddling around each other in brambles of machismo. many are emmitt's age; i doubt they've been provided adequate context for the historical resonance of the what's going on at the podium, and references to "young people" over the loudspeakers become more and more ironic above the swelling din. i walk over to a group and explain that i can't hear the conference, and get a bundle of sneers, who-the-fuck-does-he-think-he-is looks, and few taunting drugs & violence references. i stand there for a while, and - as i hold my breath - the group disperses: off to find some bottled water, an ice cream cone, some girls.

comment on a nytimes article

in the midst of my daily dose of nytimes.com and salon.com, i got stuck with a mad craving to comment on a opinion article entitled "engaged," by will okun. the article is by a guy who "teaches English and photography in a Chicago school with many students from low-income and minority homes," and goes like this (i'm paraphasing it because it's only available through times select, which is a nytimes.com service that costs money - though i recommend it): (1) okun recounts a boring moment teaching grammar in his english class, (2) okun sings the praises of mr. price next door, who (thank god) integrates "conscious" hip hop into his lessons to spark interest, (3) okun talks about the kanye west foundation, which "seeks to integrate music and music production into the school curriculum in an effort to combat the alarming drop-out rate of black males in American schools," and does a little back and forth about how it's a bit disconcerting at times as a teacher to be expected to constantly find novel ways to engage students. he ends the post with three questions, which sparked my interest in posting - as much in response to the typical responses to questions like this as in response to the questions themselves:

- What are the most fundamental differences between the American educational system and high-achieving foreign educational systems and what are the positive or negative outcomes of these differences?

- How has the approach to education and learning changed during your tenure as a teacher and do you believe these changes are beneficial or harmful to the American student?

- What has changed in our society and in our educational system to bring us to the point where high schools must now create incentives to “inspire” and “motivate” low-income students to attend classes on a regular basis?

my response:

(1) when casting a desirous glance to the test-score performances of china, germany, etc. - one should always be take into account the aggressive tracking systems in place in their national school systems. as i’m not familiar with the particulars, i’m reluctant to mention this (and since this is the nytimes, i would love it if someone stood up a yelled “but germany doesn’t track its students!”), but it seems that where the US cringes at the idea of a strict/stratified funneling system - student A goes to college prep, student B goes to vocational, student C goes to standard diploma, etc. - other nations seem to have no problem with it, and this inflates their “test scores” because only certain tracking sectors actually get to take these tests (again, someone please correct me if i’m mistaken - or at least provide real perspective). this is of course in the face of the US’s more subtle tracking consequences - the suburban sprawl/minimum lot requirement/property tax collusion that allows predominantly white suburban schools to do so well; the odd relative racial imbalance of AP enrollment, school-within-a-school magnet programs, and such within “integrated” public systems; etc. but the bottom line is that we hold fast to the egalitarian pretensions of a horatio alger tinged education for all (while putting forth minimal effort to ensure that this is the case), while other countries seem to take a more no nonsense (though yes, philisophically compromising) approach to providing educational services explicitly tailored to social and individual needs (which is - oddly enough - exactly mr. price’s well-grounded attitude towards engaging his children).

(2) in regards to “what has changed in our society” - i’m incredibly wary as to the amount of “kids these days” tirades that will haunt the anecdotal cesspool. the myth of nostalgia is a horrible barrier to clear thinking about educational reform. this is not to say that schools have not changed, or culture has not changed between generations - but there is a difference between pretending there was a more simple time when “teachers taught and students learned,” and taking a clear look at post-war demographics shifts, the slowly enforced consequences of brown v. board, title V and title IX, the vogue of skinnerian reward/punish discipline (this - i might add - is why students crave reward/inspiration/motivation - because they spend the school day in a state of oppression), etc. more often than not, veteran teachers going on about the golden age (or even the modest successes) of their own education fall into a few traps: (1) as they are relatively successful products of their own educational system, they can rarely leverage enough distance to imagine the relative failures of that system to serve people who are not like them - and who are structurally marginalized by definition (the “it worked for me [and i’m ok, so if it doesn’t work for them it’s their fault and they’re not ok]” position is particularly thin when it’s a white male talking), (2) many of the schools they currently teach in/experience are actually impossible comparisons to their golden age (even if it was the golden age of hard knocks, as i’ve heard quite a few black nationalists reference while lamenting about the crisis in black communities). even urban districts (please correct me if i’m wrong) are facing issues with transient populations, non-english speaking populations, and shifting job markets that create a school environment that are drastically different than that same area even in the 70s. furthermore (and on a topic i can actually talk about), in a place like mississippi - where i taught math in jackson for the past two years - schools were not even desegregated until 1968 (of course, they were re-segregated almost overnight with the state-assisted creation of a system of private “segregation academies”), and the population shifts that had occurred in other places of the country - like my hometown of cleveland, oh - since the 1950s were played out with much more velocity. all this aside, a high school in jackson, ms today is so incomparable to that same school in the 1970s that it is uncomfortable - and any jacksonian talking (as they are want to do) about how things worked fine when he/she was a kid (so what’s wrong with kids these days) seems laughably out of context. i’m sure the contrast is similar - though less pronounced - with other veteran teachers unloading their war stories.

every once i get the sense that it would be a good thing to sit down and catalog what i've collected as typical barriers to dialogue about education, and establish general positions to counter them. this article seemed to rekindle that - specters of people launching into "it starts at the home," "kids these days," "remember when teachers taught and students learned," "it worked for me, so why can't it work for them," etc.

kidnapping, racial brawl, mississippi

this seems to be the bottom line. in a brief converation with an area NAACP chapter, which made it very clear that - due to impending trial dates - they could not discuss specifics of the situation, it seems nevertheless clear that what follows is far from made up. while it is moot at this point to mention, it must be noted that while MS has made much progress in the realm of social justice and racial reconciliation, the threat of violence and bigotry is hardly gone:


april 2, walthall county, MS

~ a white public school busdriver allows her white 19-year-old daughter - not a student in the walthall county school district - on the bus for a ride home

~ at some point in the bus ride, the 19-year-old daughter gets in an altercation with a black 12-year-old student - apparantly for getting in an argument with the 19-year-old's 12-year-old stepson. the 19-year-old white non-student eventually strikes the 12-year-old black student.

~ the 12-year-old's black 16-year-old sister moves to defend her brother, and a larger fight ensues.

~ the bus-driver pulls the bus over, and herself enters the struggle. thereafter, she is allegedly heard yelling into her cellpone, "i'm on my way," and takes the bus well off of its intended route, to a house in a rural area.

~ at the house - a huge deviation from the bus route - the white students are ushered off the bus and are joined with other white children and adults who, brandishing bats, shovels, etc. proceed to chant threats and racial epithets to the black children still on the bus.

~ the walthall county deputy arives and takes the 19-year-old daughter into custody, as well a one of the black students.

~ the bus driver resumes her duties, returing students home over an hour later than usual.

april 3, walthall county, MS

~ parents of the black students show up at the school the next morning. the principal refuses to meet with them to discuss the events of the previous afternoon - saying they must issue a complaint with the director of transportation.

~ the black parents notice that their children's bus route has been split into two - one for the black students, driven by a black male busdriver, and one for the white students, driven by the husband of the woman who had driven the bus route the previous afternoon.

~ an altercation ensues - beginning between students, then between parents and students, and then a large-scale struggle develops involving students, parents, and school faculty.

~ in the aftermath: three black students face expulsion, and four black parents were arrested. no white students or community members have faced charges - other than the 19-year-old daughter of the white bus driver - who was taken into custody on april 2.

april 4, walthall county, MS

~ bullets riddle the home of the white bus driver.

notes on walthall county

~ known as the "cream pitcher of MS" - due to dairy production
~ on southern MS boarder with LA
~ racial demographics of county: 54% white, 44% black
~ the 2,600 student school district is about 65% black

sources/links:

http://www.wlbt.com/Global/story.asp?S=6352908&nav=menu119_3
http://www.africanpath.com/p_blogEntry.cfm?blogEntryID=583
http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070411/NEWS/704110374/1001/NEWS
http://www.wapt.com/news/11640345/detail.html

lying on a couch in my living room and watching the sound of music

cleveland is the place where pretentions go to die.

the blues

model t ford is 85 years old. he has 27 living children. when i found out quite suddenly at 7pm that he was playing at longshot barn this evening in oxford, i walked in to check on when he was going to start his set. model t was sitting with his guitar, ready to go. his drummer had a cleveland indians hat on, and we chatted for a bit (model t announced his age and the amount of children he had, and the drummer said he had no particular affinity for the indians - it was just a hat).

when we came back at 9:30ish, model t was playing what seemed to be a warm-up endless blues progression. he'd start and stop, start and stop, mess with the amp, play for 5 min or so, and either he or his drummer would get up and walk around or have a cigarette. model t walked with a cane and moved rather slowly. eventually - while the indians hat drummer was outside talking to some people - some guy walked up to the drum set and played (rather horribly) a bit of the endless warm up. then, his buddy pushed him off the kit, and played (less horribly) for a bit.

the drummer came back inside, and he and model t went through what was thankfully a different song than the endless warm-up. after this, model t asked if there were any other guitar players in the bar, and handed his guitar to some useless country singing fool while ostensibly going to the bathroom. the country singing fool played one song with the indians hat drummer, and then stopped. the drummer sat there for a while, chatting with a few people. i saw model t at the bar. eventually, the drummer went to the bar, too. an hour or so passed, and it was clear they weren't going to play anymore; they were watching the boxing match on tv.

romance of the kudzu

a weekend in amherst for a wedding (michael page 'o5 to hilary plum '03). all the things i had just moved into the passive came riding high on little sleep and mislead eros. at the moment where the self had thought to settle in mississippi - where the green had started to grip at my shins - i flooded it with a fantasy of still-warm memories.

strangely enough, i feel a bit deadened. not too motivated to prepare for another big lesson tomorrow (detailed in editor's note #2), not too motivated to negotiate these very early, very tenuous, very touch-and-go, very political relationships (hell, i just spent two days arm in arm with a score of people whom i'm passionately in love with), not too motivated to get some dinner.

anyway, kudzu is perfect on the highway.

p.s. i feel kind of bad that i'm slipping into the oft-familiar angsty blogger voice - which is, not unsurprisingly, an easy companion to the exhausted teacher voice [note: it's true, it's been about two weeks now; what do i know about being an exhausted teacher?] i'll work on bringing out the smiling dave voice.

**

editor's notes -

(1) basic structure of last blog entry came from an e-mail to my advisor at amherst - writer-in-residence daniel hall.

he adds,

"Corporal punishment in public schools: imagine. I did check your blog, but I didn't see the most persuasive argument against it, namely that the lesson children learn from being hit is that the way to keep people--or nations, for that matter--in line is through physical force. (It may be in there somewhere; I don't have much patience with blogs, because the wheat to chaff ratio is so low. Take a look at Margaret Cho's blog: there's hardly a laugh to be found.)"

(2) i read "letter from a birmingham jail" for the first time last week (i'm going to try and do a lesson on it tomorrow - semicolons, rhetoric, and the conflict of dr. king). lit me on fire. the writing keeps pace easily with the stronger moments of emerson and montaigne - though with a calm sense of the law pulling truth brilliantly at all angles. anyway,

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds. "

" I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "An Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely rational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this 'hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. "

etc.

"there are five pavement songs that are kinda long"

there are many ford mustangs in mississippi.