the value of nothing

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, we live in a world where people know the price of everything and the value of nothing. 

Of course, these kinds of sweeping generalizations are overstatements. But still...

In the last post, I was lamenting about students and their problematic tendencies. This is the time of year, however, where I begin to get a better sense of them. This is in part because they are frantically trying to figure out what to do to improve their grade - even though it's way to late. But also, I am doing the chapters I enjoy the most, that I know the most about, so I soften and they soften. I get to know and like them in the final hour.

This will be no surprise to the 2 people who read this blog, but I think our educational system is completely bogus. I had a student come to me yesterday who cannot pay attention in any of her classes (maybe ADD, maybe internetitis) and has no everloving clue what she wants to do with her life. Her parents are funding her education and are forcing her to pursue nursing even though she has no interest in it and is not passing her first biology class. I asked the basic questions of a struggling student - "What makes you learn best?""How are your note taking skills?" "How do you study?" "What interests you?" - all met with "I don't know." She confessed that she doesn't know what she wants to do, but nursing ain't it and she doesn't know how to figure her life out. I know that these sound like "first world problems." However, *I* wouldn't want her as a nurse. Would you? 

People are funneled into college and university as a presumed next step. Many of them are bad at it and many have no interest in what they're learning. This is in part because of a broken and standardized school system. This is in part because we ask 18 year-olds to choose their life path when they don't know themselves. This is in part because university is a total holding pen for a reserve army of labor that will continue to be stupefied, pacified and saddled with debt up their patooties. Makes for a good and docile workforce, dontchathink?

The whole of the employment system is fucked. Every aspect of it. University is a corollary to it. I wonder if part of my distaste for what I'm doing lay in the fact that I simply do not recognize its validity any longer. 

I'm a teacher

I used to think that teaching was my calling. I used to walk out of the classroom thinking: "This is what I'm supposed to be doing." Getting excited that students' minds were changing, thinking through complex questions, etc. felt important and challenging. I realize I am on a stage to be evaluated just as it is my job to evaluate them. And just as students feel demoralized from a bad evaluation, I too feel frustrated when I am told that my work is sub-par. 

I know that everyone is not going to like what I have to say. I understand that 75% are there out of obligation and see this as a transaction on their future. I hate that I lose my cool with students when they act like children but expect to be treated like adults or like those who tell me, "Well why do black people get to call me a cracker but I don't get to call them a n*gger?" But there are so many aspects to this job that I am just plain sick of that I'm seriously evaluating whether or not I want to continue after I am done my PhD. Every year, grading tests and papers gets harder for me (it's so tedious). Every year, watching students fuck around on gchat, twitter and facebook while in the classroom makes me wretch and die inside a little more. Each time I see masses of people completely unmoved by and unconvinced of ongoing injustice in the world, I want to weep. Each time I hear a student complain that I don't post my lecture notes on the internet I want to strangle. Every time I'm called "opinionated" while a male colleague is called "passionate" or he "tells it like it is" I want to scream. Each year I find all of this more difficult to shake off. 

Get a Job!

I get incredibly frustrated with the common - and frankly weird - reaction to people who protest: "Get a job!" There are several assumptions that underly this reaction that upset/irritate/sadden me.

First, most people who are protesting for better life conditions - either on their own behalf or as conscious constituents - *do* have jobs. In fact, so many are overworked and struggling to engage in movement activity. Many sacrifice a lot in the name of social justice. I just want to clear that up to the random assholes who yell at protesters most of whom surely follow this blog.

Second, the assumption is that there are plenty of jobs available. This shows a profound disconnection from the realities of the job market. There's the "McDonalds is always hiring" or somesuch. I can't be sure but those who say this are likely people that are fully employed and have somewhat satisfying career tracks. They often harken not their own bootstrap experience but their parents or grandparents - "My ___________ worked 80 hours a week in order to put food on the table and care for their 3 kids. They never complained... blah blah blah."* This statement leads me to my third point.

Third, working 80 hours a week and not being around to raise your kids or have leisure time is the best we can do? Is that the only kind of society we can hope for? Underneath a lot of the rhetoric is an implicit support for a failing status quo and a PROFOUND lack of imagination. One of my all time favorite quotes is from Stephen Duncombe in his book about zines. He writes,

...the powers that be do not sustain their legitimacy by convincing people that the current system is The Answer. That fiction would be too difficult to sustain in the face of so much evidence to the contrary. What they must do, and what they have done very effectively, is convince the mass of people that there is no alternative.

I see this failure of imagination when I teach. When I pour my heart out to students when we learn Marx - that Marx was in awe of capitalist production for its tremendous productive capabilities, that these mechanisms can free us from toil rather than enslave us. For a moment, maybe 5 people get it. But "reality" sets back in, for all of us really, and we go on.

All in all, I think we can demand more. It's possible and it's not wimpy to want more time with our families, our friends, cooking *real* food, relaxing, caring for our neighbors. We don't need to exhaust ourselves making others very rich. To me, it's that simple.

*I fully realize that the idea that a career as a measure of self worth is a "first world" notion and that many people work many hours for little return. I will get to that in a moment.

I'm backish

I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted. Ordinarily, I post when I have some time to ruminate. I have some half finished and largely forgotten posts – about the Occupy Movements, about household decision-making, about animals. By the time I revisited them, the fervor that led me to write about them had diminished and there they sat.

I’m doing pretty well in Baltimore. I feel engaged. There’s no shortage of movement work, PhDing, pets, stray cats, teaching, and socializing. Most times I have to actively say no to the awesome events and leisure activities in order to take a breath.

Problem is, I’m too busy. The weird thing about doing schoolwork in Toronto was that I had time to sit with my ideas. I let the ideas breathe. Paradoxically, having that much space felt isolating and depressing. I actually enjoy the momentum but I know it's detrimental to my progress as a PhD candidate.

I've purposefully downshifted for April (at least a little). Hopefully that will allow me some space for reflection - both academically and politically. I'm currently reading a lot about the environment and I'm really concerned about the lack of political momentum in the U.S. in this regard. This is topped off with these incessant attacks on women's bodies in really fundamental ways around rights that I (sadly? stupidly?) took for granted. It makes me think about how social movements solidify gains. The state as mechanism to do so is such a tenuous entity.

While I'm happy overall, I do feel a little uneasy about the state of things writ-large.

it's the little things

Literally. We have a functional house by all intents and purposes. But we still need to finish the little things. The list is long and my patience and time seem to be running short. Little things that take forever.

Took a nice vacation at Martha's Vineyard. This vacation consisted mostly of sitting on the porch and reading Bossypants and Endgame: The Problem of Civilization: two great tastes that taste great together.

In all seriousness: reading Endgame reminds me so thoroughly of the horror that is to come. I don't hold out much hope that this can all change and we can turn this massive, unsustainable ship around. There are too few viable alternatives, too little will to do what it takes - whatever that is, and too much entrenched power and tacit belief that we are, indeed, at the end of history.

I am trying to read Jensen critically and I'm holding off on reading the book reviews so that I can assess how I feel and what I think about this work. I think that it's informed a number of activists' tactics and thinking. I can't see how it wouldn't. It's moving and it's a call to action steeped in urgency. Why wouldn't it cannonical?

The problem is, it makes me feel like my efforts are not enough* and the efforts around environmental sustainability (or whatever is appropriate to call it) are nothing if not insufficient. Frankly, it's all very scary and makes me want to hide under the covers rather than be more firmly committed to the work that I am doing.

*My friend Bryan would call this liberal bullshit or something. Who am *I* to take the weight of the world on my shoulders?

I probably was inappropriate

But I'm not sure it matters.

I was chatting with an old friend yesterday with whom I waited tables back in the day. We were discussing the fact that the owner wasn't a big fan of either of us. In part, he didn't like me because I brought my politics to work, which my friend conceded *was* inappropriate. And it probably was. I wasn't much fun in those days. I had a hard time seeing past my white-hot anger. If you haven't worked food service before, I can attest that servers bare witness to some petulant, spoiled behavior. In the face of people making a big deal over the fact that they don't get a second basket of chips and salsa for free (which cost a buck fifty and signified to me typical American bloat), I couldn't help but want to jolt some perspective into the assholes. Ordinarily I didn't take my anger out on my customers and most customers were a-ok. But I was in that newly radicalized phase of my politicization and, frankly, I would not want to be friends when then-me. I'm sure I was mildly unbearable.

THAT SAID - I'm not quite sure that it's a good idea not to be as white-hot angry as I was. In some ways, I was responding to the vast and overwhelming injustice that prevails to this day - that manifests itself in over-consumption and petty self-centeredness that makes "Americans" the butt of many jokes and the site of much global disdain.

Take this debt ceiling nonsense. I'm not a big fan of the state as an entity. However, the state is currently the place where resources are collectivized and distributed. The batshit crazy tea party conservatives have completely gutted any and all wealth redistribution allowing the uber rich to get richer, continue to buy the government and shape public opinion, and leave the ordinary person - most of us - adrift. This is a populist movement funded by very wealthy people (which makes the resource mobilization perspective in social movements compelling).

Is this country that conservative? Or apathetic? What is it?

I can't help but believe that the norm of not talking about your politics, the norm of "politeness," lends to overwhelming dearth of response to this madness. Of course, it's also a function of the corporate media and the distracted, busy nature of our lives. I just can't decide whether the anger is worth it. Do I let myself feel this injustice or do I just keep on doing what I do - teaching, organizing, reading, writing things that no one reads, complaining a little in the blogosphere and facebook? Probably.

like pieces of garbage

A few weeks ago, I was biking down Falls Road. I'm using the "bike lanes" these days which brings me right next to Baltimore Bicycle Works. As I was passing the shop, I noticed a small orange tabby (OT) cat hanging out near the not-yet-opened shop. As I often do, I stopped to say hi to the kitty. He immediately flopped over for belly and chest rubs. He was filthy, un-neutered and ridiculously sweet - all signs of an abandoned cat. When I got home, I emailed someone I knew from the shop and she said that though she'd been away, her co-workers had mentioned that the kitten had wandered into the shop a couple of days ago and she'd keep me posted about whether he returns. I was prepared to shoulder the expense of having him neutered (which is relatively inexpensive at Hampden Pet Health). A few days later, I stopped by the shop and asked the dude working about the cat. He said he'd brought food for the cat hoping to figure out what to do with the little guy but thus far, the cat hadn't returned. As far as I know, the cat's gone. I bike that path often and I have been keeping an eye out for the little guy. Not doing anything for him in the moment has been haunting me. I'm hoping that someone took him in and that he wasn't hit by a car or eaten by some of the predators that lurk around those parts.

Falls Road is home to a variety of suspicious activity. My last visit, I was biking down it and noticed a trash bag in the middle of the road. This isn't completely unusual as many people think that the thick bush is a perfect dumping ground for their garbage. When I was biking back, it was clear that several people had run into/over the garbage bag. It was then that I noticed that the bag had a dirty litter box in it. Okay. The next time I biked by it, probably the next day, not only did I see the litter box but big tufts of grey fur. Yes, someone wrapped a cat in a big garbage bag with its filthy litter box and threw it into the middle of the road. I prayed that the cat was already dead before someone did that. It's unlikely. This breaks my heart.

In looking for OT yesterday, I spied with my little eye a black fuzzy cat (ala Gordon) lounging on the streetcar tracks outside the Baltimore Streetcar Museum. The cat noticed me right away and kept its eyes locked on me. I've seen a feral or two in that area and figured that I could count this kitty among them. Nope. Black kitty cat (BKC) got right up, came over, flopped on its back and let me pet its chin and belly while it purred and cooed and rubbed. BKC was mostly skin and bones and its longish fur was matted, as often happens with stray long hair cats. Recalling OT, I just couldn't ignore this cat. I made some frantic calls to no avail. I pet the kitty for a while and then noticed a long-haired calico, then a white and orange male tabby, then a tiger striped tabby, then a grey and white kitty who is clearly on death's door - drippy eyes, ears that go this way and that. All of them seemed to be waiting for food.

I biked home, grabbed a big tupperware container of food that my spoiled cats have rejected, and trekked back to the museum. When I got there, there was an older fella sitting on the bench outside the museum shop feeding the cats. He said he feeds them a few times a week, less so in the winter. They were clearly happy to see him and very hungry. He said he was unable to come to feed them on Fridays and Tuesdays. So, I guess that's my job now.

More on the commitment of maintaining a feral colony in another post.

Moral of the story: I just cannot fathom the way people treat animals. I am aware that I'm probably a bit overly sentimental about it. But it simply breaks my heart to see that kind of suffering.