Refrain: A is (still) for Adjunct*

As of this writing, I haven't stepped into a college classroom in a teaching capacity for almost four years.  Although I wrote about my exile and failed attempt to get back in great detail at the time, I haven't really written about it much since.  I think maybe I was too close to it all; too angry about it all; too focused on what I lost beyond a job I cared about -- maybe the last job I really cared about. A job for which I believe I had (and still have) a genuine calling.

Four years after National Adjunct Walk-Out Day and the Louisville Teach-In, very little about the plight of adjuncts has changed. Every late summer or early fall, the same stories, or rehashes of the same stories, cycle through the media. Stories of teachers living in their cars, living on the street, skipping necessary medications and meals in order to do the work they love to do.  Four years after and I'm not angry about it anymore; there's no room for anger when all it does is burn. My anger burned everything around me and almost burned me alive; it almost burned me, but it did nothing to burn down the injustice. I'm past the anger.  All that's left is the story. 

And even though I'll be posting bits of it here as it comes, a story has too much weight to just live in the digital world. It's time to bring it forth, like all buried titans.

Officially, I separated from the University of Louisville on April 20th 2015, of my own volition. But by then I'd been isolated from my colleagues and been subjected to increased scrutiny by the department.  Everything was fine at UofL until I tried to write an article for LEO Weekly about the working conditions of Part-Time Lecturers, also known as adjuncts.  By that time I'd already been banished from every Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS) campus after the marketing and legal teams stalked me across social media in order to find the slightest pretext to get rid of me. And why did they even bother with one more disgruntled, underpaid, overworked, and generally exploited adjunct in a statewide community college system?

Because I was the most visible organizer of The Louisville Teach-In: a two-campus educational action in conjunction with National Adjunct Walk Out Day (#NAWD).

Up to this point, the fact that I have all the documentation to back this up hasn't meant much; I did my due diligence. I inundated them with FOIA requests. I gave my story to a local reporter, along with copies of all my findings.  I went to the Kentucky Labor Cabinet. I contacted the National Labor Relations Board. I reached out to at least one fellow colleague, a tenured humanities professor with local status some activist cachet for help. None of it did any good. The reporter wrote a very nice story and did nothing with my FOIA research. The Labor Cabinet was only concerned about whether I was being denied Worker's Compensation, the NLRB informed that because I worked for a public institution, the NLRA didn't cover me, and my esteemed colleague took a pass because he was too worried about fighting for people who already had health insurance (i.e., full-time faculty).  I took it as far as I could without hiring an attorney – which, since I couldn't afford an attorney, meant the end of the road.

Before I even really begin this story, I'm going to tell you how it ends: with me not teaching. Goliath stomped David. The Philistines still run the once golden kingdom.

But it's not that simple, either. It can't be, because this is an American story – one of the few truly American stories, stripped of bootstrap and Manifest Destiny mythos, where the plucky activist  gets steam-rolled by a giant, mindless machine. Maybe not Horatio Alger. But definitely Frank Norris.

And a canary or two.
______________________________
* Title originated from this LEO Weekly article by Laura Snyder

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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Gator People Live In the River, 4: Persona Non Grata Chimichanga

I'm a very good man. I'm just a very bad Wizard. - L. Frank Baum

Back in the saddle again, as it were. The academic year is officially in full swing and I am back at what one of my former professors, Layne Neeper liked to call The Salt Mines. He was not only referring to teaching, of course. You don't work in higher education -- or institutional education in general -- and have the luck to be limited only to teaching. There are the politics of the thing to contend with. And whether you're a GOPper, a Dem, a Libber, a Fibber, a Tea Bagger, a part-time word slinger, or a rodeo clown, you can not escape the politics. Even those who claim to be apolitical are impacted by the systemic dysfunction that often parades as professionalism.

I am still not yet a real person at the University of Louisville. The latest snafu involved some a policy gap between the Great and Powerful Oz (U of L) and the most monolithic of institutions, the Department of Homeland Security. (Or, if you like, the Wicked Witch of the West.)

I'm not entirely new to the misfunctional nature of large universities. Arizona State University is itself an exercise in how to tread water in the middle of the desert. Sometimes my annoyance at how things don't work is misinterpreted as a lack of understanding or a sense of entitlement. The truth is that while I expect the great machinations to not function, I choose to maintain my idealism by holding onto the notion that we can do better inspite of a general attitude of benign neglect.

Update 9 September:

In the process of fighting an unjust parking citation -- unjust because were I an actual persona pro grata in the eyes of the university, I would have had a parking pass and would not have been at risk for being slapped with said citation for Failure to Display Proper Parking Decal -- I managed to get an actual Faculty/Staff Parking Decal in addition to not having to pay the citation. 

While this is progress of sorts, do not mistake that for the university's official recognition of my existence. I am, at the time of this writing, still an undocumented worker. All the work, none of the glory, and I still have to pay the same rate to park as someone who is full time and/or tenured.

Mayhap it will fall to future generations of Part-timers to find justice for this inequity.

In the mean time, I have to cut this short so I can go fight for a parking space. Save peace and love for the future. In a world in which might makes right and in which I drive a pick-up truck with large tires, there is no mercy for tenured folk in fiberglass new-age hippie mobiles.

[Feel free to read some sort of politically attuned message into the previous statement.]

Also, feel free to stop by Iron Belly, a blog of my new poetry, some prose, and whatever else I feel like posting there... though it will be mostly poetry.

Don't worry,though, Dear and Faithful Readers.  I'm not going anywhere.

Thanks and Gawd Bless.

Gators People Live in the River, 3.3: Who Are You?

And you? When will you begin that long journey into yourself? ― Rumi

When we struggle against our energy we reject the source of wisdom. -- Pema Chodron

My mistake was in checking my email.

I ought to know better. No good can come from reading email or looking at the news before my feet even hit the floor. It's bad practice. But I also suspect I'm not the only one who checks email, checks Facebook before doing something incredibly wise like 1) put on pants or 2) drink a cup of coffee. The first is simply a matter of form; I do not engage with my fellow man while my manhood is showing. The second is a matter of self-knowledge and common sense. Everyone who knows me knows that the world will have a much better version of me after a cup coffee. (Black, please. No cream. No Sugar. If you must add something, add bourbon.)

But because I sometimes use my cell phone as my alarm clock, I've gotten into the habit of putting it in Airplane Mode and keeping it bedside. (This is a habit I need to break.) I know there is nothing important enough I can learn from my phone that won't wait long enough for me to stand up. Humdrum habits.

This particular time, like most mornings, I didn't do that. I took it off Airplane Mode immediately, and once the phone found WiFi signal, I had a new message waiting on me. The subject line: Who Are You?

Hello, Mick:
I'm writing because I found out you were hired to teach composition at the University of Louisville, where I was formerly the Director of Composition.  I have connected with you on LinkedIn but that in no way qualifies as an endorsement of your teaching qualifications or skills.  I am not a reference for you, nor will I be used as one, so I hope you didn't list me as a reference.
Do you have a master's degree in English from an accredited university, and do you have graduate coursework in Rhetoric and Composition?  Be honest and forthright because I will find out the truth and you will NOT be teaching at UofL without proper credentials.

My reaction -- as described by Amanda -- was visceral. 

If he had been in front of me, I could have ripped his tongue from his mouth. And I haven't raised a hand to hurt a human being more than a decade.

I'd nagged and prodded and somehow talked my way into a little work that would allow me to set up a home base in Louisville. The Universe had been kind enough to let me have that, and I was (and am) grateful for it. The whole identity theft issue made me laugh because while some may find my lack of traditional ambition and my politics criminal, I am not one. 

Not yet, anyway. Give it time. We will all be criminals eventually.

My response was immediate and relatively articulate for as livid as I felt:

Hello,
I did not list you as a reference. I reached out over LinkedIn when I assumed (because the website indicated as such) that you were still the Writing Program Director at U of L.
I attended Morehead State University and earned my MA in 2003. I have taught developmental, first year, and creative writing. I have been and still am a writing tutor. I have been a working journalist, and I'm a damn fine poet.
I neither wanted nor asked for your recommendation, and I don't care if you were the the Director of Composition or the Wizard of Oz. I am a fine teacher, a good human being, and you are an ass.
Regards,

That response didn't do much to wash away the waves of hatred and wishes for a voodoo doll in his likeness. You want to be a stick up my ass? We'll see, we'll see...

I sent a second response, in which I gave him my phone number. I told him if he had any more questions that he was welcome to call me and I would be more than happy to tell him off via the phone.

After that, I sent an email to the current Director of Composition at U of L and copied the secretary and departmental HR rep, explaining that 1) I am myself and 2) that somehow, I managed to receive the most unprofessional contact from a colleague since having to interact with that pompous ass of an English Department Chair at Arizona State.

He -- the former Director who emailed me at 7:30 in the morning on a Saturday -- apologized. We have each made our conciliatory gestures. At this point I am more annoyed by someone's breach of professional ethics in disclosing my identity theft debacle to someone outside the university than I am by his reaction. 

Annoyed, but not surprised. Just because I'm back in the classroom doesn't mean I've swallowed the Kool-Aid, Dear Readers. I am there to teach. That some other people are there to maintain tenuous little fiefdoms is part of the minefield we have wrapped higher education in.

Gator People Live in the River, 3.2: Blue Horse

There's nothing worse than being put in a position where you have to explain yourself to someone who may not be worth the time, the effort, or the energy expenditure. I make it a habit to NOT explain myself. I think of self-explanations as the same as having to tell someone why a joke is funny. If you have tell someone why the horse being blue in August is funny, then you've wasted your time.

When I left JCTC after concluding the first half of my HR Paperwork Blitzkrieg, I drove back down Third Street to the University of Louisville. After finding some creative parking, I made my way onto campus and into the Bingham Humanities Building.

The building is built in the shape a rectangle. This would lead one to believe that the building is easy to navigate.  Once inside, however, the combination of knock off Frank Lloyd Wright minimalism, asynchronous office numbers, and Dantesque signage is clearly designed to confuse the first time sucker rather than inculcate him with a sense of warmth similar to the last stage of hypothermia.

After stepping off the elevator and walking far longer than I thought thought I should have needed to down off season academic hallways, I found the right office. But Linda, the person I was supposed to talk to, wasn't there. Instead, I was greeted with a Post-It note informing me that she was in some room in the basement.

Fuck me, there's a basement to this place? Is that where they imprison failing graduate students and abandoned developmental writing programs?

My intention was to try and find Linda in the basement. Except that I couldn't find the elevator again. It was as if the wall had simply swallowed it up, along with any hint of a stairwell.

Salvation came eventually in the person of Linda, who said she was glad she hadn't missed me.

Is there really an exit, I asked, or is it just an existential concept?

Linda blinked the way a dog blinks after being told to stop chewing on a slipper. I have been told before that I should not tell jokes because my delivery stinks. I reject this criticism, however, based on the fact that humor is as much about context as tone. And within the context of being new to the university, being new to Louisville, as a matter of fact -- something that was very much known to my new soon-to-be bosses at U of L -- and being a last minute hire to teach a class, I figured that I'd have a shot at a chuckle. Sartre references almost always work, and secretaries are not immune to the malaise of academic idea entendre.

And she blinked.

I have the utmost respect for secretaries and janitors because they run the world. The people who file your W-2 and the people who clean public bathrooms are more important to the overall running of the world than any administrator, politician, or cop. And I had no intention of confusing or upsetting Linda. I was merely trying to relax, be friendly.

We rolled past the awkward beginning and into the paperwork. When we got to the I-9 I produced both my Ohio Driver's License and my passport card -- the latter of which should have been enough (as per Column A.)

She blinked.

I think I need your social security card.

I don't carry it. The passport usually works.

She blinked.

I'm pretty sure I need your social security card.

I don't carry it. It's ragged. It's my original social security card. You're not allowed to laminate it. It's as thin as toilet paper.

She xeorxed a copy of both my driver's license and my passport, but would not let go of the social security card.

Fine, I said. I'll bring it with me to orientation.

On my way to U of L, I had decided to tell them about the criminal background check snafu at JCTC.  I considered it a form of professional courtesy. Though my initial face to face contact with Linda had given me some reservations about following through, I ignored that instinct and went on ahead with my well-intended disclosure. After all, it was funny. Right?

She blinked.

I explained it again.

She blinked.

I asked if I needed to write a note to HR or something, just to keep on file.

She blinked. Then she sat down at her computer as if she intended to write an email to HR herself. She offered to let me write an email myself. But, she pointed out, the HR person was gone for the day (after 2pm on a Friday) and would not see it until Monday anyway.

I told her I'd send it over the weekend or some other time. I had her lead me out to the elevator --which, magically appeared not 20 steps from her office door.

Once I escaped, I made for a nice well lit place with cold beer.

Gator People Live in the River, 3.1: The Question

Americans may have no identity, but they do have wonderful teeth. -- Jean Baudrillard

The moving finger writes, and having written moves on. Nor all thy piety nor all thy wit, can cancel half a line of it. -- Omar Khayyam

Apparently 1996 was a good year to be me.

Or, it wasn't, depending on your point of view. To be honest, I remember very little of 1996. There was a lot worth forgetting. I had somehow managed to talk myself back into school, with the intention of finishing my Bachelor's degree. My only intention was to get out of the Blue Ash, Ohio pillow factory I was working in. The job itself wasn't bad, but I was tired of leaving at the end of my shift looking like I'd been tarred and feathered. Moreover, I was tired of FEELING like I'd been tarred and feathered.

The late 90's for me were mostly a matter of trying to untangle myself from the decisions of the early 90's. An early marriage that had turned into a bloody fucking divorce. Attempts to drown unanswered grief, self-loathing, and anger in cheap beer and even cheaper whiskey.  Failed attempts at college in spite of having every tool and reason to succeed. I was socially awkward, a secondary character in my own life, and I felt overshadowed by the large personalities around me.

My life was turning into Bret Easton Ellis novel -- which, if you've read him, is bad on every narrative and aesthetic level.

But, apparently, I still had one thing going for me.

My credit rating was still good. 

At the time this didn't seem like anything worth celebrating. Someone else felt differently, however, because he (or she?) promptly stole my identity only to be arrested and convicted in New Jersey for felony conspiracy. (Case #96000890)

Sometimes life shifts whether you see it or not. And even though I wasn't aware, my life had gone from Less Than Zero to The Sopranos. Better writing, to be sure. There's always that.

I was blissfully unaware of this shift, however, until last week. I discovered my felonious status thanks to the Department Chair at one of my new The-Universe-Is-Kind gigs at Jefferson Community and Technical College. Thanks to some last minute shuffling, a class needed teaching and I nagged enough to merit consideration. Stacy, the Chair, hired me on the merit of my CV, which, I admit, makes me look pretty good.  I have a lot of experience in spite of appearing to do very little. A criminal background check is part of the screening process. This is nothing new -- I've signed off on plenty of these forms over the years. Most of the time, they look for felonies, which I have personally never been arrested, tried, or convicted of. On the tediously repetitive HR form I always indicate that I have never been convicted of a felony. Sometimes I get the job. Sometimes I don't. When people don't hire you, they aren't really obligated to tell you WHY. Generally, this is a good thing. If you screwed up the interview or if you smell or if they just aren't that into you, it's not always something you want to know about.

When I came back from visiting The Kid in Virginia, I packed a few things and drove down river to Louisville for an HR Paperwork Blitzkrieg. Two institutions. Two sets of paperwork. I also wanted a sit down with the chair at JCTC, and she wanted one with me.

The English Department at JCTC is housed in the old Louisville Presbyterian Seminary... an interestingly gothic structure that I would not have thought a Presbyterian would want to house anything in. There are no water fountains or snack machines in the building because that would make the hallways too narrow to conform to city fire codes. But it is an architecturally interesting building.

from hellolouisville.com

I knew I'd get along with Stacy because she was wearing jeans and because she has a nose ring. I realize those things, in and of themselves, seem superficial. But sometimes superficial details can offer a wellspring of information about a person.

We chatted for a bit. James, the Writing Center Coordinator (where I am also getting some work hours) sat in for a while. Then he left.

Then Stacy brought up the criminal background check. She was a bit uncomfortable. She referenced a conviction in New Jersey. A felony conviction.

Now, Dear Readers, you probably remember when my travel journal and ID were lifted in a Minnesota casino. Identity and being able to prove who you are is increasingly important in these, the early days of the Nationalist States of America. Even Facebook (the free market arm of the techno-fascist empire) requires that you use your "real name" on your profile. And I won't go into detail about the various ways in which the NSA has the ability to invade our privacy and track everything from the color of our socks to the consistency of our bowel movements.

So when I heard that I was apparently convicted in New Jersey -- a state I have never been to, unless the train rolled through it at night once -- in 1996 of felony conspiracy, I laughed.

Stacy told me she looked at my CV when the check came back and saw that there was no way it could have been me -- I was in Morehead, finishing my BA. Which, of course, I was. We had a chuckle about it and moved on. James wandered back around.

Oh, so I guess you asked him the question?

We all had a chuckle. And I took some solace in knowing that when I was the least interested in being me, apparently someone else felt differently.

Not bad for my first day of living in Louisville.