Losantiville Lines: The Keys To The Kingdom

As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly. - Arthur Carlson, WKRP IN CINCINNATI

Probably the most succinct explanation I've ever heard or read of what's wrong with this place. Me, in relation to the quote above.

Being caught here as I was, over the weekend -- between illness, the weather, and the spinelessness of the Tennessee Division of Greyhound Buslines, I was left to cough up a lung and ponder the universe in the shadow of Porkopolis. This gave me a chance to try and get through a smallish pile of student writing that must be returned tomorrow when I exchange it for a fresh pile -- the unending cycle that is the educational machine.

Thank Crikey I'm not interested in being hired full time. This sentiment is not a reflection of how I feel about the students in my classes, as much as a recognition that other than a few new bells and whistles, the institution of higher education is no different than it was when I left (translate: ran screaming) from ASU in December 2009.

Perfect example: I received a circulating email in response to concerns raised by part-time Lit and Language faculty to the current chair in meetings scheduled for the purpose of airing such concerns and offering suggestions to improve the plight/make more comfortable those who do most of the work for little pay and no real recognition... since other than teaching classes that tenured faculty refuse to teach, part-timers do nothing to make the institution look good.

We are not a marketable bunch. Though a few of us are, I dare say, reasonably attractive.

I should note that I did not attend either Open Door session, which were scheduled on a Tuesday and Thursday... days I am not on campus. (They are, coincidentally, days that most part-timers are not on campus either. Draw your own conclusions, Dear Readers.)

The primary issue raised, according the email, was office space. Part-timers share the same corral on the 5th floor we shared when I taught at NKU in '04-'05. And apparently, those who went to the open door talks mentioned space as a priority.

It was not mentioned in the email, but I do wonder if anyone brought up access to health insurance. NKU DOES allow part-timers access to the institution's health insurance plan -- after 3 years of consecutive employment. Which means, if you're actually interested in having a full-time job, that you're pretty enough to screw but not to take to a family reunion. (Keep in mind that it is damn difficult to stay consecutively employed as a part-time instructor. That means you have at least a class every term... including summer, when enrollments are low, and spring, when a large number of First Year students run screaming from college campuses.)

Of course, the Chair has no say over what the Bean Counters in the administration bunker do. And a potential for access is better than no access at all, right? Carrot by any other name....

The solution to the aforementioned space issue? Give every part-timer his or her own key. This way, I suppose, it will feel like we really have an office and are taken seriously as professionals. Which, of course, is utter bullshit.

I should mention again, however, that I am less interested in being afforded the label of "professional" than I am in being treated like a human being and not a cog.

I got a set of keys instead.

I should also mention that every part-timer was going to be issued a set of keys anyway.

The solution, as I see it, is to have armed guards on campus.

Because lately that's the solution to all educational problems, and a blog is no place to think outside the box.

On a tangentially related note, Mount Carroll crank and all around lousy person Nina Cooper is running for City Clerk. She has built a very patriotic looking website to assert her candidacy, which ten people in town will see. (Five of them might actually vote for her; but she is one of them, and the other two are her co-hort cranks, Alderpersons Bob "The Amoral Pontificator" Sisler and Doris "I'm Not Dead I'm Just Plotting" Bork. The other two I'm giving her for kindness and statistical accuracy.)

Location:Cincinnati, OH

Losantiville Lines: Professionalism and the Baboon

You are what you are and you ain't what you ain't.- John Prine

Today being the celebration of Martin Luther King Day, it behooves us to take pause and consider the fact that right now, somewhere in America, some disgruntled old white guy, afeared and worried about the decline of America in the world, is right this minute talking about the days when President's Day was a holiday and there was no day set aside to publicly remember a dissenter and rabble rouser who had the temerity to suggest that all people are equal and that social change does not have to occur with the barrel of a gun pointed in someone's face.

And being as yesterday was a Federal Holiday -- and it was, even before Barack Obama was elected President, in spite of what your skinhead uncle might tell you -- I was not required to be on the penitentiary style campus of Northern Kentucky University... which means I have spent the long weekend across and down the dirty sacred river in Louisville.

If there are any ENG 291 students reading this blog... though I am reasonably sure there aren't ... you have no need to fear. I will be back in town in plenty of time for class tomorrow (Wednesday) morning.

Last week was my first week back on the other side of the Big Desk in some time, and of course, it went off with all the help that Murphy's Law could give. The bus didn't stop to pick me up on the first day, the copies of my syllabus weren't ready, the book I picked to use was not available in the bookstore, and I had no access to the campus intraweb because my presence had not quite been made official.

(That would later be temporarily complicated by the fact that I was still In The System from my last stint at NKU back in 2004-2005. The Machine never forgets, Dear Readers. It all really does go down in your permanent record.)

My two classes meet at 8:00 and 9:00 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. That's 8:00 and 9:00 IN THE GAWD AWFUL MORNING. I gravitate towards morning classes for two very important reasons:

1. a job, like medicine, is best when it is gotten over with early; and
2. no one wants them, which tends to put me in better position to pick up work... when I need to.

The students in these classes -- at least the 8AM class -- are probably there because every other section that fit in their schedules was full. And also because required general ed classes, like medicine, are best when they are gotten over with early.

Being back at NKU is interesting, not only in the sense of seeing what hasn't changed, but in noticing what has.

For example: me.

when I taught at NKU in '04, I was hungry for a full time teaching gig. A year into my second marriage, we had moved from Knoxville, where I could only find work as a mall janitor under a despotic and small-minded supervisor, Fat Mike. (Fat was not the Christian name given him by his parents; but I suspect they rethought that after he ate them and as they digest slowly over a thousand years.) I wanted to be a team player, but I was confident that I knew what I knew, that I was given the best education that looming lifelong debt could buy, and that my mission was clear.

I was young, alright, Young in the ways of the machine, even though I'd had plenty of experience that should have made me otherwise. But while it may be the mark of a fool to not learn from your mistakes, it's the mark of true insight to recognize that you have, in the past, been a dumbass.

I've also been recalling, in bits and pieces, my first departure from NKU. The then Writing Program Director, now Interim Chair, had put up with me as long as he could. Not only was I canceling class early when everyone was actually finished with what they had to do (stretching a class to an appropriate length is what passes for consumer care in higher education... making sure that students/consumers feel that the exorbitant amount of tuition they pay is justified by the amount of time they sit not paying attention in class... but I reeked of a lack of professionalism that rubbed the then Writing Program Director the wrong way. I never dressed office casual. I was never clean-shaven, and rarely keep up on my hair cut regimen.

[NOTE: CLEARLY THESE THINGS HAVEN'T CHANGED.]

I was, of course, operating on a basic mis-assumption... that I would be judged as an educator by the improvements made by my students over the course of the class. Yes, yes. Silly, I know. But I was young. And a fool.

When I left I turned in my key... to the Part-timer corral, and the copy room, I believe... and left. Upon my return, I discovered that my keys were never returned to the key keeping authority.

Add that to the fact that I was still in the computer system as being a sometimes employee, and you get a notion as to how things are dealt with in higher education.

Being back, and being free of the urge for full-time employment does have perks. And so does being able to learn from my own experience. While I am, I hope, free of the hubris that drove me in my early 30's, I am not -- as I near my 40th turn around the sun -- particularly worried about coming off as a professional. I don't want to be thought of a professional. I don't want to act like a professional.

Professionalism kills art, murders intellect, and scars the soul. I hope I still have it in me to be a good teacher, and that I can convey the importance of writing and critical thinking, even at the undignified hours of 8 and 9 in the morning.

Losantiville Lines: Of Staying and Roaming, Of Coming and Going

Untitled Poem, Draft 2
The world is full of wanderers
cursed and blessed
among the minions of the Earth.
Scattered since pre-history
breaking like waves
breaking down walls
immune to edicts
from disembodied self-proclaimed usurpers
of health, of wealth, of good taste,
of morality, and of obligation.
The first obligation –
to one's fellow wandering souls
and to the road we create
with each and every step we take.
All our souls are wandering ones
whether it has a mortgage nailed to it's back
or whether home is just a silly blue ruck sack.
The soul is a sacred bindle
and we must all be ready to pick it up
and we must all be ready to pick it up
and we must be ready to follow the wind
on short notice.
Go and stay at the whim of the universe--
grand design that contains us –
sacred design that includes us
whether we understand or not
whether we are understood or not
whether state and local officials
worry about our vote or not.
We vote with step we take
and with each step we walk further away
from a faulty system of locks and doors
and barred and shuttered windows
that do not protect
but lock out the sun
and the scent of morning air.
With each step
my foot creates the road
I was made to walk
and the path will sometimes cross paths
of old friends –
and that is a blessing,
entering back into the lives of those loved
and rarely seen,
recognizing the imprints we make
on one another's journeys
in this creation our individual paths
that lead back to the common root,
that leads back to whatever comes after
we shed this mortal coil
and the soul is released
to wander ethereal lands
that these plump and juicy eyes
are not designed to see.
The world is full of wanderers
and I am one.
Do not cry mother.
Do not cry father.
Do not worry brother.
The road that takes me hence
will bring me back again
and I will be ripe
with stories and songs and poems
and we will sit around ancient familial fires
and fill in the gaps of our collective memories
telling the things that have transpired
in the time between.
Do not cry daughter.
I carry you with me.
I have always carried you with me.
Our roads have not always been parallel
but the light in your eyes that shows the way
is the same as the light in mine
and our paths will cross again and after
even after I have shuffled off
this mortal coil
in favor of some better suited to the road ahead,
remember:
you are a daughter of ancient line
like I am a son of ancient line
and the universe has plans for us both
written like constellations across the night sky
of landscapes among deep internal geographies.
There is a plan if you have the ancient heart to follow
and the feet that will carry you there
though to do sometimes
means enduring great pain.
The world is full of wanderers
and I am one.
Do not cry beloved.
The light in your eyes shines the way
that leads me back to the sweet solace
I find when I am wrapped in your arms.
Your bright smile is a rapture
for my road weary soul
and I know you are with me
watchful like the moon on early autumn nights
sleeping under the stars.
The road is sometimes winding
and mile markers have rusted
and returned to the dust –
but I do not need them
when I have your heartbeat as a compass to guide me,
the sound of your voice echoing on the wind,
calling me back and I follow
and I find the dirty sacred river
and I know you will be there
letting loose your hair
and pouring the blackberry wine
in anticipation of my arrival.
The world is full of wanderers
and we are all one –
born with a sacred blemish
that marks our spirits for wide journeys:
wild poets, prophets, seers, and song makers,
painters of new geographies reflecting something better
than Plato's notion of perfection.
Finding luxury in a soft bed of grass
or in a memorable companion
I wander with the broken
and the confused
and the botched
in search of unknowing saints
and the great burdened intellects
who have pieces of that ancient secret
that they will share
if I only ask
and if I only reach out my hand
and call them brother
if I extend my arms, hug them
and call them sister
and if I am aware of my sins
and I learn to forgive myself
and if I take unto myself
the great all-fire breath of God
that warms and cools Earth's common root
like coals under these feet
that cannot stop
but that would accept any honest companion
who accepts me
and who understands
that there is dignity in being a nomad
and that some souls
can find no house large enough to hold them all.

Location:Cincinnati, OH

Losantiville Lines: Year of the Sea Turtle/Second to Last Sub Rosa/Holiday Plus 1

From now on I shall speak in onomatopoeia,
or better, in metaonomatopoeia. -- Lidia Dimkovska


If Christ had been a woman, the world would already be redeemed. - line from Cincinnati Day Book.

Year Of The Sea Turtle

In these post-apocalyptic days, there is time enough to sit and wonder at the inner and outer workings of the world. And for the time being, I am writing my poems, picking out songs older than I am on the blue guitar, and pondering even more closely a work of some length based on some of my travels in the recently dead and buried year of 2012.

If you have been even a casual reader of this blog, it won't surprise you to hear that the weather will play a prominent role.

As I mentioned previously, I am wintering in familiar territory, here in Cincinnati. Although my initial plan was to go south -- very very south, down to the Florida Keys, far, far away from the arctic chill -- the universe saw fit to deposit me here, nearly broke, not terribly road weary, but aware that in order to travel more in the cheap and lowly way to which I am accustomed, I need to pick up some work and put some cash back into the Travel Fund.

I was not unaware of the particular challenge that could potentially be. In spite of what the corporate owned, government complicit media machine has suggested, the economic recovery is not so much a recovery as much as politicians taking credit/laying blame for the pendulum swing that inevitably occurs when Capitalism is allowed to run amok like a lousy houseguest. Any savvy student of economics will tell you that the markets ebb and flow like the oceans and that most people are subject to the typhoons and droughts that occur over the course of time. And any savvy student of politics will tell you that the recently contested Presidential election which set friend against friend, family against family, and peon against peon was largely a contest over who would get to take credit for said pendulum swing and who would get to sit on the sideline moping like a sad chipmunk. (Look at John Boehner and tell me he doesn't have some semblance of a gin soaked chipmunk.)

IF YOU'RE WONDERING WHETHER YOU'RE A PEON, YOU ARE. AND IN CASE YOU DIDN'T KNOW, 99% OF US ARE. IF YOU'RE READING THIS RIGHT NOW AND SAYING TO YOURSELF He doesn't know what's talking about. I'm the last of the Middle Class and doing fine! THEN YOU'RE A PEON, TOO. THE ONLY ONES WHO AREN'T ARE THE ONES WHO PROFIT WHETHER THE MARKET TANKS OR NOT.

But I also wasn't particularly worried, because I knew I'd have a place to sleep and because I have learned to place some faith in the universe. And the universe was indeed kind, because I managed, against any probability in Cincinnati and in this job market, to pick up a little teaching work.

That's right. Someone actually let me back in the classroom.

Not full time. And I'm thankful for that. There is nothing more odious and dysfunctional than trying to teach while carrying the weight of being a full time/fixed term instructor with no hope of tenure and all the expectation of departmental busywork-- committees, non-classroom related paperwork designed to cover someone else's ass and present yours for unwelcome sodomy.

Not me. Not again. I managed two sophomore level writing classes at one of the area universities. In addition, I'm doing some online tutoring and picking up a trickle of freelance writing/editing gigs. This, in addition to poetry, music, and some various other projects, will keep me busy until the thaw.

Second To Last Sub Rosa

But don't think that I plan to sit still for the next four months. I will be making regular sojourns down river to Louisville to visit my Most Amazing Girlfriend/Traveler's Angel.

During my most recent visit, I had the pleasure of being the Featured Reader at the monthly Sub Rosa Creative Courtyard, put on by the River City's very own Divinity Rose. The weather pushed the courtyard indoors at Bearno's on Highland, and the venue, perhaps not wanting to offend potential customers with something as perilous as poetry, pushed the scribbled to a small upper room, while leaving the Featured Music/ Music Open Mic downstairs.

This, as I know from experience, is almost always a disaster. Art grows best when writers, musicians, performers, painters, and burlesque dancers all drink from the same trough. It just does.

I was pleased to be asked, though, and went through the first set in the upper room. An increase in snowfall scared off the few folks who were there, and so Amanda and I went downstairs to the bar to join the folks who were there to listen to the Featured Music, Big Poppa Stampley, and maybe play some music themselves. Divinity was kind enough to make some space for me to do my second set, and as I was stepping up on stage to take over the mic, Big Poppa asked if I wanted him to play behind me.

After the shock wore off, I found my words. When someone of his talent and caliber offers to back you up, YOU SAY "YES" AND THANK THE UNIVERSE.

The second set went better than the first, and I even managed to sell a few chapbooks -- which, by the way, are still for sale. Both The Crossing of St. Frank AND Whitman Under Moonlight are in their second printing and can still be gotten for a measly $2 donation to the Travel Fund.

Holiday Plus 1

My planned trip down river for Sub Rosa coincided with a week long visit by The Kid, who will be a high school graduate/culinary school bound Mostly Grown Kid come June, and her boyfriend, Plus 1. My Dear Sweet Ma was excited about Christmas, and I was too. This past year was the first in many a year that the entire family had been in the same geographic location. Amanda spent Christmas with her family, and had to work for la machina duex hell the day after, but she was going to go back with me after the weekend and spend New Years with me and the Parsons Clan.

I was excited to see The Kid. Those of you who are non-custodial parents will understand that you take the time you can get. Those of you who are parents custodial or not will understand that as your kids grow up, the amount of time available decreases at a near exponential rate. She was initially amused at the notion that we were both showing off new Sig O's. I'm not sure if she thought that prospect would soften my reaction to Plus 1; but I do suspect that maybe Plus 1 assumed that if he made enough ingratiating comments about my beard that I would overlook his clear lack of guest etiquette.

He managed to work down to My Dear Sweet Ma's final nerve, rarely stirring from the couch except for food, to piss with the bathroom door open, or on the rare occasion that he was asked to actively participate in the goings on. He wore through my limited amount of goodwill by offending my mother, and embarrassing my daughter during a game of Extreme Balderdash with a sexually explicit definition that made me want to forget my promise to myself to try and do no harm and erase a 15 year record of NOT laying my hands on anyone with the intent to do violence by reaching over and snapping his neck.

I did no such thing. But he did reconfirm for me the simple truth that other than Harvey Pekar, nothing good ever comes out of Cleveland.

Those of you with near adult children will understand -- just because you can't tell the kid anything and that she will do what she wants to do regardless of your apprehensions, doesn't mean you don't wish you could spare them the grief. It also doesn't mean you love them any less.

Location:Cincinnati, OH