Le soleil

These shoes are the Merrell Evera Shift and they are heels for biking. I do not need them but I have decided I should indulge my shoe obsession at the planning level as much as possible. I am still learning what I can wear, so this is not a fetishism, it is research. One thing knowing what available will do as well is protect me from buying in desperation or without having all possible options in mind.

Meanwhile, there is this interesting post and thread. I learned to be depressed from psychotherapy, and caught anxiety because I knew that what psychotherapy was having me do, the ways it was asking me to think, were destructive. Everyone said: “Change is frightening, and of course you resist by saying it is destructive, but this is only denial; you should suspend what you think is your better judgment, ignore your own reactions and views, and follow instructions.”

Now, of course, I am as clever as clever and I realize how false all of this is. I think depression comes from having incredibly negative views of yourself — as I said to a friend during Reeducation, “I have been taught self-hatred, and now I cannot seem to shake it.” It is interesting to notice how negative so many people are  without being fully aware of it, and it is very interesting to be able to imagine being free.

This, I think, is another reason I am so opposed to advice — you have authorities recommending discipline, and assuming you do not know what you are doing, all the time; if you want to speak as something other than a subject of standard advice, you are not even on the map. I love to discuss strategies, but that is a different activity as it involves actual conversation, which much talking does not do.

In any case I am still learning to be as non-negative as I once was, and there is quite a trick to it although I am advancing.

Axé.

Bert Stern

Jazz on a Summer’s Day (1960) is a documentary film made at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island, and filmed and directed by noted commercial and fashion photographer Bert Stern and the film director Aram Avakian, who also edited the movie. The Columbia Records jazz producer, George Avakian, was the musical director of the Newport Jazz Festival at the time.

The film mixes images of water and the city with the performers and audience at the festival. It also features scenes of the 1958 America’s Cup yacht races. The film is largely without dialog or narration (except for periodic announcements by emcee Willis Conover).It features performances by Jimmy Giuffre, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Stitt, Anita O’Day, Dinah Washington, Gerry Mulligan, Chuck Berry, Louis Armstrong, Jack Teagarden, and others.

Also appearing are Buck Clayton, Jo Jones, Armando Peraza, and Eli’s Chosen Six, the Yale College student ensemble that included trombonist Roswell Rudd, shown playing Dixieland as they drive around Newport in a convertible jalopy. Many performances ran long, so that the last act, Mahalia Jackson, did not appear on stage until after midnight, wowing the audience with The Lord’s Prayer.

The movie was written by Albert D’Annibale and Arnold Perl. It was directed by Aram Avakian and Bert Stern. In 1999, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

Apparently Spike Lee was asked to make a film for the 50th anniversary of this one and said he could not match the quality.

Axé.

Summer …

I wish I still had this bicycle, but I hereby memorialize it, as it was stolen in March. At our institution attendance at graduation is required of students if they wish to receive the degree, and of faculty every term. It is as though the institution insisted on keeping us as captive audience for one more day, and showing us its power one more time. I am not going and it is wonderful.

I started summer today. There are many things to do here and I am going to do more of them than I usually do. Today I read a very interesting article, and submitted the one I have been in a quandary about. It is not going to be accepted there in its present form I want it out of my hair for two months, which is how long it will take the journal to get it back to me with interesting commentary. In this time I will write my piece for the writing group.

I started my summer work schedule Thursday and I am exceeding it, although I am not in rhythm for it yet; I did not write what I was supposed to write Thursday, and I still have not finished writing comments on all the student papers. Still, things I will do today include going swimming and going to the movies. Tomorrow I might shop at the Mexican store and eat caldo de res.

Already today has been surprising; I read a riveting article I had not known about, and submitted my article. And Friday I did thirty minutes of research for the piece I am supposed to be working on. And one of my blog commenters turned out to be a real-life friend of mine in disguise, and the result if this conversation is that I am going to New Orleans and the beach.

Things I want to do this week: work on my new essay, drop off the car, do nails, apply for a job, go to the bank, paint the door and the window, work in the garden, visit the prison, do a little planning for California. It think this is all but there may be more … the first week of June I am going to clean the office, and be in touch with painters for the house.

Axé.

The hidden curriculum

Eric Margolis, one of the people I met by starting an academic Facebook page, has this idea of the ‘hidden curriculum’ which I think applies to my project. I was at one point using this very old idea from Eagleton, cognitive and emotive discourses, but I like the idea of a hidden curriculum better.

The same author has a new piece coming out, “The Changing Hidden Curricula: A Personal Recollection,” in Contemporary Colleges & Universities: A Reader, ed. Joseph L. Devitis, Peter Lang Publishers, 2013. It and John Lombardi’s 2007 article are two essays that will help me expand my own on this matter.

Axé.

De la musique pour le weekend: Derek Walcott sings a St. Lucian song

Recently recorded, this is truly charming. Walcott is 80 years old.

Axé.

In which I am exploited or mistreated by a clueless assistant professor

…and it is the last time, since I am not giving anyone the benefit of the doubt again. One keeps hearing about how assistant professors are mistreated but what about the one I got the job for, and got housing for, and who then, in his first year at the university, left said housing crawling with vermin, saying sorry, he had been too busy to clean because of his important life? and that he would not pay to have the place cleaned since in his view, cleaners were overcharging? He rose to Full and to an endowed chair very quickly.

…what about the one who started calling me at home at night in his first year, calls I did not understand but that moved me to get caller ID, and that one of the instructors I told about it explained to me had been booty calls? to the person who had gotten him the job, ¿qué tal? He got tenure soon, and got away with sending hate mail to other faculty as well.

…the latest one is not in either of my departments, but he is in an allied one, in an interdisciplinary program I want to support. He did not make 4th year review, which I do not think was a good decision on the part of those who made it because he is a good scholar and teacher and he is enthusiastic, hard-working and smart. Still, this is what he did:

+ gave hyperbolized information to me for our grant proposal, such that the evaluators were able to say we were overshooting (and we really were, since this person and his other colleague were both riding for a fall) . . . this did not reflect well upon me;

+ concealed from me information about what was happening with his field study program, such that I recruited for it without realizing it was obviously going to be shut down for safety reasons; I would never have directed students in that direction had I known what was going on, and it was inconvenient for them to have the program canceled at the last minute.

This year, we had a major speaker, that is to say my colleague invited a major speaker, and I assisted him with logistics. I was interested in the event but it was really his. As plans were being made and paperwork was being done I had to resist the child’s attempts to delegate everything to me. He also failed to do things, for instance, he failed to get a good room for the talk. This was because he e-mailed a random staff person who was instructed to say no always since the room is requested by all too many people already, and he took no for an answer. He could not be bothered to walk over and talk to the faculty person in charge of the room, express deep appreciation, promise a return of the favor, and so on, which is what must be done; so, at the last minute I had to drop what I was doing and do it.

Then, the honorarium got stuck in the business office and the child dealt with it by e-mailing a student worker. He could not be bothered to walk over to the business office, or to tell me what was going on. He actually told the speaker that I was not interested in resolving the problem: I, who have brought over twenty speakers to this university, all of whom have received their honoraria; I, who did a lot of work toward the visit of this speaker, I was not interested in resolving the problem of the honorarium.

Then he told the speaker that he was leaving the university and there was nothing more he could do. So the speaker finally e-mailed me and was surprised to discover that I was willing, in the middle of finals week, to spend a day with the business office tracking down paperwork and having the lost parts redone.

And still the child has the gall to tell me he had the impression I was not interested in making sure the man received his honorarium. And I spent a full day getting this done in May when I could have done in December, and the person would not have had to wait so long.

I am writing about this as part of my anti-advice manual. When professors tell graduate students to be incredibly careful and act right, I think what they mean is not to act like this. The rest of us, who never would act like this, tend to think the urgent advice to behave means we have to be truly, truly obedient. But really, it only means one should not act like this.

Coda: if I wrote an esperpento about these characters, I think I might name them, in reverse order: El Niño, El Desgraciado, and Flora. How do you like these names?

Axé.

Research by Facebook

I have become a Facebooker, and tonight I am using Facebook for research. I Friended some people who put up research links hand over fist. I might discover these books by browsing in bookstores, but there are no bookstores so on Facebook I learn about important books I should know but would probably not have found were I searching more systematically.

Here is a 2012 book by some people whose work I have liked before. It is important to read with and against da Silva because it criticizes the idea that modernity and racism must come together. It also criticizes Foucault. I think this book is going to be fundamental.

Here is a web forum on the “reality” of “race,” that has good essays and also bibliography.

There is a book on race by Jacqueline Stevens called Reproducing the State (Princeton 1999). I should look for and at this book.

Axé.