Old friends, new soil, and starting over

Lay this unto your breast: Old friends, like old swords, still are trusted best. -- John Webster

There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.  -- Jean-Paul Sartre

Many demolitions are actually renovations. - Rumi

You're not the same as you were before. You were much more... muchier. You've lost your muchness. -- The Mad Hatter

What I'm worth here: one stale donut, probably left by grad
students who don't know how to clean.

Eden is built one shovel full  at a time. 

Yesterday I was out in my front yard, digging up the grass layer in a 4x5* plot of ground for a garden expansion. We've talked about this expansion for about two and a half years but, for one reason or another, hadn't gotten around to it.**

It's really unfair to call what now grows in our front yard grass. It's more like a picker's pack of weeds: three-leaf clover, crab grass, and the remnant of what used to be, I think, a flower bed. In characteristic fashion, the previous owners, The Beamus's*** chose to fill everything in with the cheapest fill they could find. Underneath the picker's pack of green weeds there's a lot of clay (not surprising for the region) with a mixture of plastic bits, pieces of walkway brick, and other debris I'm not sure I want to identify.

I haven't cleared a space of ground like that in more than a couple of years. This time last year, between my foot problems and the stabbing leg muscle cramps woke me up out of a dead sleep or would strike after any kind of physical exertion, I wouldn't have been able to tackle the project and hope to finish it. But this year, I did it -- because of some smart medical advice, some more attention to my own health, and the fact that I'm too damn stubborn to let the machinations of darkness win that easily.

Yes, the previous statement is dramatic. But I'm probably in a dramatic mood because today is my last at the University of Louisville, home to the corrupt as hell but still as of yet untouchable Dr. James Ramsey, in Kentucky, where our tiny tin pot fascist governor is going after higher ed ^ like  Richard "The Iceman" Kulinski.

My end of the semester exodus from this campus will most likely mark an end to my time in higher

The All-Seeing Eye above my cubicle. I'm leaving it for the
next inhabitant. I rarely feel lonely with it watching me.
Always. Always watching me. Like a tender,
patronizing, fascist. 

education. And while I'd like to claim I am marching out by choice and kicking the dirt off my work boots for its repudiation of me, the fact is these Institutional and Harrowed Halls have spit me out.

There's no room here for a guy like me. I make all the wrong kinds of noise and annoy all the wrong kind of people, in spite of the fact that I consistently do my job.  I've worked to improve my lot and the lot of other part-time cogs^^ like me, but all that's happened around here is nothing. A large swell of a wave, lots of potential energy biting to go kinetic, and then...

NOTHING.

Nada.
Nunca.
A pile of old dog shit in a KFC bucket.

After my retaliatory bum's rush from KCTCS, the drive to make any improvements dried up and disappeared because there was no one willing to step up be the next standard bearer.^^^

Part of my mistake has been, I think, my desire to behave like a far more diplomatic person than I actually am. When I try to act in a way incongruous with my basic nature, things always, naturally, go askew.

I am not a diplomat. I am not the person to go in and reach a compromise that satisfies no one and placates everyone. I am a contrarian. I come from a long line of contrarians. I'm a wrecking ball. I'm an embodiment of the whirlwind. Time and experience haven't dulled this about me, nor do I expect them to any time soon.

I was reminded of this recently, when a friend from my graduate school days, Stephanie, came in to River City for a conference. We met for drinks at one of my favorite downtown dives and talked for several hours. I've always had a soft spot for Stephanie. We're cut from a similar contrarian cloth. That's not to say we see the world in precisely the same way. But she reminded me that there's a necessity to calling out injustice, to standing up to bullies, to aiming for a higher moral and ethical standard. Old friends are good precisely because they can

1. keep us honest, and 
2. they have a longer view of our lives than we do sometimes, as we are stuck living day to day.

So, yes. I'm starting over. Again. I've gotten pretty good at it, actually. I'm armed with the same weapons that have gotten me here. Eden is built one shovel full at a time. Sometimes I shovel cheap fill. Sometimes I shovel shit. It all turns to fertile soil eventually. And as I move forward, I know I'm not working towards some Sunday morning Meet the Press commercial retirement fantasy. Poets and contrarians never retire.

I'm not investing in my retirement. I'm training for the next fight.

________________________________________________________

* Not precise. Yes, I eye-balled it. And it's a little crooked. That's what second growing seasons are for.
** Last year was a busy year. The year before that, we were broke, or damn near. Some plans have to wait for the situation to present themselves.
***May their names be struck from the book of careful homeowners.
^Yes, I'm aware of the lawsuit being organized by Andy "Don't call me Baby" Beshear. Keep in mind that under his Daddy, former governor Steven "At least I'm not Ernie Fletcher"  Beshear, the state budget cut higher education 10 times in a dozen years. Truth: Democrats like an uneducated population, too.
^^Because from an institutional view, that's all any of us are. Cogs that can be replaced. Usually with a less expensive one that's made out of plastic and manufactured in a sweatshop.
^^^ In classic military strategies, standard bearers marched ahead with the drummers to embolden the foot soldiers. NOTE: Standard bearers usually died first. It's a strategy of demoralization that still mostly works.


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Not So Gone

From Gustav Dore's drawings of Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner

I haven't had much in the way of time or energy to commit here lately, so I wanted to stop in during a lull and say "Howdy" and "I'm still here."

My energies these past few weeks have been spent on teaching my three classes at UofL and on writing for LEO. My own work, writing and otherwise, has fallen by the wayside of late as I try to adjust to a teaching regimen again. The teaching goes as well as can be expected in huge machine of a university. I find myself reaching back to methods taught to me by my friend and mentor, George Eklund. In my mind, I don't teach at the heartless, soulless meat grinder that is a large and parasitic university. I teach at the community college in my mind, the Parsons School of High Creative Humanism. I value my classroom time and hold faith in the potential of actual discussion, intellectual inquiry, and a genuine creative social critique.

I'm still, as you probably expected, banished from the harrowed halls and campuses of the Kentucky Community Technical College System -- a system, which, from what I can tell, is still on an increasingly speedy downward spiral into University of Phoenix infamy. The fat cats are still fat. The lackeys are still latched onto the corporate tit, and adjunct instructors are still ritualistically exploited for the enjoyment of Jay Box, the Board of Regents, The Office of General Counsel, Lisa Brodsky, Shawna L. Anderson, and Emily Belswood*.

Some progress is being made, of course. That the entire institution hasn't ground to a stop because adjuncts are tired of their ritualized dehumanization is proof there isn't enough progress -- but there's always next week, I suppose.

As for the long war back, I suspect, like Odysseus, I suspect my journey towards vindication, if any exists, will take longer than I'd like. My next step, if there is one, is legal action; but my financial situation, and my desire to do more than simply make them pay for a moral affront and attack on my livelihood makes me wonder of there's even a point. Sure, they might pay me off -- but until then I'd be unable to write about them, tell the tale, and sing the songs of their misdeeds, which are many.

And if I happened to win -- that is, if they offered to pay me off -- there would certainly be some attempt to script my telling of the events. And, truth be told, I'd rather be able to continue to call them out for the scam artists they are than get a large payday.

So, keep reading, Dear Friends and Readers. I'll be stopping by here more on the regular. And when I am not here in person, rest assured I always near the dirty sacred river in my heart of hearts.


________________________________________________________________________
*Lisa Brodsky, a sham of an incompetent administrator, Shawna L. Anderson, a lackluster and bitter lackey hiding in Institutional Research, and Emily Belswood, a lowly public relations peon are three of the four people who I have, in the past, written about as #respondent53. I know who the 4th is but can find no proof. Open records requests show the three miscreants listed above did maliciously track and trace my social media life -- which, if the NLRA was any damn use at all and included "public servants", would have caused for them and the college to be sanctioned -- from The Cone Man Saga until I handed them a loaded firearm to shoot me with. Way to stalk. I'd call you ladies, but I've known too many real ones to insult the term.

A Baboon In An Ivory Tower (Or, The Gig Life, Part 2)

The beginning of August means one thing -- the academic year is about to start. And while I am still persona non grata at KCTCS -- Kentucky Cutthroats, Thieves, Cabbage-heads and Stinkbugs -- I do have some scheduled classes at the larger university down the street.  I'm going to be teaching and maintaining my newspaper gig... I'm happy doing both, like them both.

It's like dating two people except that neither one likes me enough to claim me exclusively.

Getting back in the classroom requires some prep. Each class has a blackboard module I am 

The game is: How the Hell Do I Turn in a Paper?

bound by expectation to use. It does cut down on the number of papers I carry around, since students turn things in online most of the time. It does simplify communications and makes handouts more accessible.  If the interface wasn't so non-intuitive and the overall design wasn't such a hold over from the 1980's movie Wargames,  I probably wouldn't hate it so much.

Some of my more experienced (READ: older) colleagues also hate Blackboard. Like me, they remember when teaching meant walking in with a syllabus and a piece of chalk -- yes, real chalk. We sometimes pine and talk about the days when teaching was as much a community building activity as it was an educational one. We talk about being able to circle up, talk about writing (in my case) and break down the conventional modules of institutional education that we matriculated through.

Then this funny thing happened. The conventional module of institutional education broke down.

From the time I accepted that technology would play some role in my role as teacher, I have looked tried to look at digital space as ... well... space. Students define it as a kind of space. After all a significant portion of their lives are spent in and out of digital space. The executive admins at colleges and universities see it as space, because they try to jam pack it as much as they can.  As a teacher, I have to see this ethereal space as a  kind of space where community occurs and where education can happen. My other option is to close myself off to the educational possibilities, not to mention closing myself out of potential work.

But this acceptance of digital space as educational space comes at a cost. A friend of mine recently told me an online class she is set to teach is capped at 35.*  That cap is brought to by greedy cutthroats, thieves, cabbage-heads and stinkbugs. Not only will that strain my friend, who is an excellent instructor, but it will negatively impact the educational experience of students.

Academic Deans, Provosts, and College/University Presidents who insist upon and create this kind of  institution do not care about the excessive and exploitative work loads they create or about the educational lives of students. They care about dollars. They care about the prestige of their own position. They care about how close they are to retirement so they get out of the education game and wax nostalgic about the days when paddling was an acceptable form of student crowd control.


I'm pretty excited about getting back into the classroom. There's work to be done.



 _________________________________________________________________________________________
*Just to give you some background: the optimum class size for a writing class is 18. One teacher for 18 students provides the best teacher-student interaction in and outside of class.

Solidarity Update

 "There's clearly something wrong with him." - Shawna L. Anderson*, JCTC Office of Institutional Research

Honestly there hasn't been much to report. I'm waiting on the rest of a response from my third Open Records Request before I hit them with another one.

There was one interesting tidbit of information in the last go round, though. As part of my last ORR to the Office of Legal services, I requested " a detailed record, minus any personal identifying information.. except for the campus where the alleged violation occurred... of any and all alleged and actual FERPA violations in the whole KCTCS system over the past 7 years, including the official resolution."

You might recall, Dear Friends and Faithful Readers, that I was terminated from JCTCS and banned from all KCTCS campuses in the state of Kentucky. The flimsy excuse they used was a supposed FERPA violation on social media. You might also recall that as the result of my first Open Records Request, I learned that certain administrative lap dogs took to stalking my online life in January 2015 after  The Cone Man Saga. One of them is named in the above quote, taken from some of the pages off the ORR's that I'm collecting in an attempt to get the true events unearthed and the roaches killing the clockworks of higher education exposed to the light.

Since I was terminated (and banned) on the pretext of a FERPA violation, I thought there was some record kept of such occurrences, particularly since an institution of higher yearning ought to be interested in knowing whether they need to change their orientation policy in reaction to some egregious trend of underpaid instructors bandying about the names and grades of students and bad-mouthing administrators all over social media.

However, this is the response I received:

"A response to this request cannot be provided in that there are no records in existence containing the requested information. Therefore, this portion of your requests is denied pursuant to KRS 61.870(2)."**

So, they don't keep records?   

It's possible that I asked the question the wrong way, so I may take another tact.  But if they indeed do not keep records like this it does bear asking the question why. The only thing colleges and universities have mastered at all is record keeping. So if they are not keeping records of this kind of information, then there is a reason why.

Solidarity!

I want to thank everyone again who signed the petition to have me reinstated without prejudice. If you'd still like to, or if you want to pass it around, here it is.

Some have expressed an interest in writing letters of support of my reinstatement. Here are some addresses:

• Insider Louisville: Sarah Kelley, VP of Content and Editorial Director: sarah@insiderlouisville.com.
• Louisville Courier Journal: http://archive.courier-journal.com/interactive/article/99999999/CUST/80212021/Letters-Editor
  JCTC Human Resources: Toni Whalen, Head of Human Resources at JCTC: toni.whalen@kctcs.edu
• KCTCS Head of Human Resources: Jackie Cecil: jackie.cecil@kctcs.edu

___________________________________________________________________________

 * This is most like one or all of the people previously referred to as #respondent53

** The red font type is theirs.

Currents Along the Dirty, Sacred River: Solidarity Updates, Of Flags and Phalluses, and Papa's Brand New (Old) Bag

 "We gave him a platform." -Toni Whalen, JCTC Head of Human Resources (via email from ORR)

My daughter, who also maintains a blog, gave me a hard time recently because I haven't been updating enough... which is a fair critique. It's not for the lack of things happening. You'd think I'd have more time to sit here, safe in the bunker, and spout off. Mostly I've been waiting for some of the smoke to clear. I've also been trying to drum up some work and have been moderately successful. Also, with all the internet either covered in stars and bars or rainbows and the passage of the the TPP  -- which will do to the globe what NAFTA did to North America -- and the fact that I am awaiting for yet another laughter filled response to my second Open Records Request.

The nature of my second request is such that I will hopefully be able to name the cabal otherwise known as #respondent53, after which I will be able to unleash the whole sorry and torrid tale of how corporate lackeys in higher education work to undermine activists and destroy the heart of what higher education used to mean... before the bean counters* and the lackeys* and the weasels* got in.

This has story Oscar movie material stamped all over, Dear Friends and Readers. As a matter of fact, I'm thinking they can get Joaquin Phoenix to play me:

Damn. Even I'm not sure that isn't me.

I kid, I kid. My nose looks nothing like that.

I'm working on an article for another blog, placing my unjust and illegal termination/banishment in the context of the national trend. And while there is plenty of good news out there, the fact is that adjunct labor activists -- particularly in the south are being targeted and removed from institutions that have no interest in higher education, in students, or in teachers.

Of Flags and Phalluses

Unless you live under a rock, you've probably heard that #SCOTUS finally agreed that the 14th Amendment applies to everyone. There is no marriage and "gay marriage." It's all just marriage, and I'm damn happy to see it. Of course, never let it be said that one idjit* or a flock of them can't ruin a good thing. County Clerks in the Kentucky counties of Boone (near Cincinnati) and Rowan (that's out in Morehead, a place near and dear to my heart.) have decided to stop giving out marriage licenses entirely because of what they believe is a divinely inspired moral objection.

The truth is, though, Dear Friends and Readers, that they are terrified at that thought of two men being intimate. I'd say they were upset about two women being intimate, but let's be honest -- that's had the wink wink naughty main stream porn nod of approval for years. Tightly crushed tits in an embrace  -- well, that and a bottle of moisturizer and you have a normal Friday night every lonely trailer park, highrise, and tenement across this country.  This obsessive objection to marriage equality is about people's personal inferiority complexes about their judas root.

I made it my business a long time ago to only worry about mine. This cut out a lot of puerile entertainment for me... most straight porn is about the penis (so that the "viewer" can imagine himself there as he "views".). But I am a happier guy for it. If you are one who spends too much time worrying about someone else's junk, try focusing on your own. Granted, you'll probably stay home more... but you'll be happier.

In the category of Red Herrings, you'll find the perpetually disturbing rukus over the confederate flag.  This should not be an argument, as far as I'm concerned. The stars and bars, like the Nazi Swastika, belongs in history books, not flying over government buildings. The fact that both Google and Amazon saw fit to block the southern cross was just one more piece of corporate opportunism.  And while the nation's Facebook users argued over flags and rainbows, Obama signed into law the most damaging and damning economic policy since NAFTA.

Racism and bigotry are not things to be tolerated or accepted, and must be fought where ever they rear their ugly, misshapen heads. But never forget that the powermongers have long used existing racism to slow solidarity and union movements and to ensure that their profit coffers are fat. Know who your enemy is.

Papa's Brand New (Old) Bag

That's right. I have managed to find work at Louisville's alternative weekly paper, The LEO. I'm back in the muckraking freelance journalist saddle again. Good Lord, I've missed it. 

Solidarity!

I want to thank everyone again who signed the petition to have me reinstated without prejudice. If you'd still like to, or if you want to pass it around, here it is.

A friend and Fellow Worker, J.P. Wright, has started a small support fund. If you'd like to contribute, go here.

Some have expressed an interest in writing letters of support of my reinstatement. Here are some addresses:

• Insider Louisville: Sarah Kelley, VP of Content and Editorial Director: sarah@insiderlouisville.com.
• Louisville Courier Journal: http://archive.courier-journal.com/interactive/article/99999999/CUST/80212021/Letters-Editor
  JCTC Human Resources: Toni Whalen, Head of Human Resources at JCTC: toni.whalen@kctcs.edu
• KCTCS Head of Human Resources: Jackie Cecil: jackie.cecil@kctcs.edu

___________________________________________________

*Please see The Parsons Dictionary of Often Used Words and Phrases, Desk Ed. for proper definitions if their meaning is unclear.