LY #15: The last first day of classes

Today has been my last first day of classes.  Well, actually tomorrow is my last first day, if we count actually meeting a class face to face.

Returning each fall is exciting and scary.  I spend so much of my summers working by myself that jumping back into the large group setting of a classroom inside a large institution is always a bit of a shock, like leaping into a lake fed by a glacier.  Bracing!

My husband used to say that the first couple of years he was retired he only missed school in the fall. I imagine I'll share that fate.  So we plan to travel in the fall.

Birdy Fall 2012

In the old days, when I spent some of my summers in school, first as a student and then as a teaching assistant, I wasn't as challenged by my return to the classroom because I hadn't been so long away from it.  But whether or not I've spent my summers free or as a wage slave,  I've always looked forward to getting back to the regular school year. 

Not that I haven't been anxious!  It used to  take me time to get over the culture shock of new people and a new "leader" each year. Even so, once I had the situation sussed each year I enjoyed most of my classroom. I enjoyed learning and "being myself" in a way I couldn't at home.  Now that I'm a teacher, it's topsy turvy and I'm more "myself" at home than I am at school! 

Nw Wall St. Fall 2012

I also enjoy the first day because it's associated both with my birthday and the sad exaltation of autumn, my favorite time of year.  The time of the red trees.

Last Year #14: Ready, set . . .

I'm feeling a bit ackish.  As in Bill the Cat:  "Aaaack pthththt!"

Three of my classrooms become visible on Blackboard at midnight, tonight.  I'm teaching three sections of interpersonal communication, using the textbook Looking Out, Looking In by Ron Adler and Russell Proctor.  (When I started teaching it the authors were Adler and Neil Towne) I'm letting my students use either the 13th or 14th edition and will need to rewrite my bi-weekly tests so that they can be answered with either edition.  I've tried less expensive textbooks over the years but have not been happy with any of them because they don't cover the appropriate material or they are written poorly.

A rundown of the various prices for the 14th Edition (all currency in $ not GBP or EU).

Amazon
Buy new hardcopy .....  113.56
Rent hardcopy .............. 71.25
Buy new for Kindle ....  138.49
Rent new for kindle ...  92.49

Used (other dealer) ...... 100.00

COCC bookstore
Buy new hardcopy ..... 184.75
Buy new ebook .......... 100.49
90 day rental ............... 59.41

Cheapest prices I found on 13th Edition: 
 At Bookbyte, 90 day rental was $20.
At ecampus.com a quarter rental was 9.57

Did there "need" to be a 14th edition?  It looks like there is a bit of new stuff about social media and mediated communication, but not that much added from the 13th addition.  I have concerns about the textbook racket.  But more on that anon.

I've spent much of today making last minute changes to the first week.  I'll be getting rid of all my written lectures this year, replacing them with short videos and prezis that will give students a brief overview of the specific parts of each chapter they should target for successful course completion.

Kake looking tough circa 1995

Sadly, the goofy "welcome" video I made this afternoon convinced me that I hate my current hair style and need to revisit my stylist.  I also saw every single year of my life in my face which is fine when my face is animated but not so good when it's at rest -- I look a bit scary then.  But as I recall, one of the first things I was told by a peer team member in 1989 was that I didn't smile enough and appeared too fierce when I was thinking.  So I guess that my intimidating gaze is not an aspect of age but of the instrument itself.

Which same instrument will be spending LOTS of time turned toward the screen this week.  Students need to introduce themselves by 5 pm Wednesday so that I can figure out who to let in from each of the 18 person wait lists.  I don't plan to let in more than two extra in each section.

On Thursday there will be wailing and moaning and gnashing of teeth.

Last Year #13: What I watched on my summer vacation

I started this blog on the final day of my last ever summer vacation.  During June, July and August I binge-watched a few shows:  Downtown Abbey (all 3 seasons), last summer's Dexter (Season 7), Top of the Lake, and all three parts of the UK version of House of Cards.  I'll say more about the actual shows in another blog-post.  As a committed daily blogger I will, after all,  be starving for content soon enough.  And I do like to write about moving pictures.

But tonight I want to say a few words about binge viewing. The practice has been called "a pandemic" by Jim Pagels, a Slate op-ed dude who thinks binge viewing bad for a variety of aesthetic reasons including episodes having "an integrity of their own."  The Wall Street Journal sees binging as a threat not to the aesthetic traditions of yor but to the industries who relied on a certain pattern of access.

But even though the binge-viewing has become main-stream, it isn't all that new a concept.

I am, for once, an early adopter - of a trend, at least.  Back in the mid-eighties I watched all 15 1/2 hours of a German mini-series called Berlin Alexanderplatz in just two days.  My sweet Babboo, then a senior prof at Idaho State University, talked the Speakers and Artists Committee of said institution into renting a 16mm version of the Rainer Werner Fassbinder masterpiece.  It was shown over the course of the week and then in full again over the weekend.  I was living in and going to school in Salt Lake City at the time, a 3 hour drive away.  When I came up for the weekend, I found out that my spouse had pretty much arranged for his school to give me a gigantic birthday present -- a hard-to-find movie by one of my favorite directors!

So, that's an example of early adoption binge-watching.  I don't consider the ten hour Our Hitler:  A Film from Germany (subject of 1/2 my ISU master's thesis) to be binge watching because it was conceived by Hans-Jürgen Syberberg as a single art piece.   Watching all of it at once is a meal, not a binge. 

And could "movie orgies" be thought of as early adoptee binge watching?  Back in the days of my ISU student government film programing, I planned a couple of science fiction orgies, based on the ones I'd seen in California.  These film orgies started in early afternoon and ran till after midnight.  They generally offered a variety of films of the same subject matter:  science fiction, westerns, Planet of the Apes movies.

How does sitting in a theatre and watching for 5-10 hours at a time differ from sitting in one's living room doing the same thing?

List at least five differences between the home setting and the theatrical setting for a movie/tv binge.  You have ten minutes.

Last Year # 12: To Tweet or Not to Tweet . . .

Clip art Twitter bird added to movie still of Laurence Olivier as u no who.

So my friend Stacey Donohue uses Twitter.  Yesterday she told me that she tweeted links to some recent postings.  That would explain why I had 70 hits rather than my usual two.  (Well, two is bragging.)

I've thought about Twitter.  Signed up twice.  But don't use it.  Why?

Well, first of all why should I?  Because it's enjoyed by people I like and admire (Stacey, Scott Simon,  the writers and performers at BBC 4's News Quiz)? Should I aspire to be like them?  Maybe.  But I'm not sure I have the same motivation. 

So, to better answer the question posed in the heading, I asked Google why people use Twitter.  I limited my search by typing "site:.edu" and avoided side column ads from Zappos (they keep tracking me around the googlesphere, asking me to finish my purchase).  According to Olivier Toubia, the Glaubinger Professor of Business at Columbia Business School, some people seem to have an "intrinsic motivation" to share themselves, while others are motivated by status-seeking.  Toubia also noted that most people on Twitter tend to follow news rather than do their own news making.  He says that Twitter is becoming a "broadcast source".  According to a paper written by Akshay Java, Tim Finin, Xiaodan Song, and Belle Tseng, people tweet to share and receive information, especially high value information from high value sources, such as business leaders or celebrities.  Tweeting is especially important as a way to get hot news quickly.

And of course, back on the dot com pages, tweeting is highly recommended for businesses, especially by people who make a living from introducing businesses to selling on social media.  (The so-called new Don Drapers.)

But not everyone tweets, though people in the media seem to believe the practice of micro-blogging is universal.  According to West Virginia University senior public relations major Brandi Underwood's teen panel, Facebook is uncool and Twitter is free of adult interference.  And lots of folks of my age and gender don't tweet.  According to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center, fewer than a fifth of women who use the internet use Twitter, although over 70% use Facebook (as I do).  

So now that I've done my research I feel more comfortable with owning my lack of hipness.  Which is great because the bottom line for me on tweeting at this particular stage of life is that it's JUST ONE MORE THING!

JUST ONE MORE THING somebody, somewhere wants me to do -- like buying a smart phone or a car with electronic windows.   And I don't want to do it.

But I can't stop you . . .

Last Year #11: Advising, continued continued

Today, advising was . . . weird and very, very easy.  On my way down to Pioneer Hall, still the computer building, I saw my colleague Matt Novak who said that the morning advising had "Five students and thirty teachers."  He suggested the students might have been a bit frightened by all those folks focusing on them.

And so it was during my shift.  There were about 12 profs and in the first round (12:55) 5 students and in the second round (2:10) about 7 students.  The only person I spoke with was a middle aged man who's wife was the one who wanted to be a student.   Unfortunately she wasn't there because their child had a health emergency.  I didn't know if FERPA even allowed me to talk with him as a representative for her.  And I had no proof he was who he said he was.   It was a complex situation and I didn't know how to handle it so I towed him to another room and another person. 

So, having all those profs without students felt like a waste of resources.  There was a time when students came to our offices.  My friend Lilli Ann asked if I could remember when it was they took us out of our offices and put us into bulk advising.  She liked it better when we saw students in our offices because we could get actual work done between advising appointments.  I actually enjoy the bulk advising because I usually only see a couple of students rather than five or six.  Today I saw only the guy with questions for his wife.

Then I went home home where my dumb phone got a text from the school that OSU Corvallis and Cascades had received an unspecified threat.


Back in 1988 (from Bendnotes September 22), after surviving the day when I had to take over for my sick colleague, I wanted to see the rest of the registration process.

"On Thursday morning I wandered over to Pioneer Hall (the math/computer building) to see what registration looked like.  As I walked past the tables, I overheard a student complaining about me.  "I went to see Miss Monaghan, but this other lady talked to me instead and . . .' the whine signified some fatal error on my part.  Well, and it was only fair because I had spent some time complaining about her to [the other new teachers] the night before.  She had taken almost an hour of my time.  She had wanted a photography class which had a 2 hour lab the middle of Tuesday afternoon.  Well, she could only take classes Tuesday and Thursday.  She would not take classes before 9 (10 if she could help it) in the morning, nor would she take classes in the evening.  And then she complained about the way the college scheduled the classes.  My favorite of her questions was, 'What can I take for one credit on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons at 1 pm'  [at this point the writer shared thoughts of being very mean to the student].  Her tone told me that it was the school's fault or my fault that she couldn't make a pleasing choice.  I finally started using phrases like, 'Well, you've limited your choices,' and 'you've certainly given yourself some tough rules.'  If she hadn't whined, and sat in my office and stared at the schedule for minutes at a time, I wouldn't have been so aggrieved.  Another individual, a young fellow, had come to my office with similar problems in scheduling, but he owned his choices, so it didn't bother me."

Last Year #10: Advising, 1988, continued

Today's scheduled advising was cancelled due to a downturn in enrollment.  I spent most of today restructuring my online sections of interpersonal communication (of which more anon).   I have some anecdotes to share from my first year, September 22, 1988 Bendnotes letter.

"A boy sits slumped in the comfy chair in Mary's office.  He seems to have no focus, no interest in what he is about to do.  In the office, standing, are his parents.  It is they who look through the schedule, they who ask about sequences.  His mother suggests a course of student.  They look like blue collar people. . . . I do my speel [sic].  We come to some decisions.  I call in the choices.  They go across the hall to formalize the roughdraft by writing it onto the registration form with the green X.  Then the Mom notices that I have made a mistake.  She calls it to my attention.  I apologize as I redial (getting a busy signal, so continuing to redial) and tell them that I am new.  As they wait, the dad looks at a square of words, printed in crayon and felt tip pen on a paper the size of an album jacket on Mary's wall.  He tells wife and son that it is an interpretation of Sargent Pepper's album cover.  After I get through and fix my mistake, they leave, and the Mom says that she sympathizes with me -- her first week at her job at the hospital she didn't seem to be able to get anything right.

"Sometimes the computers go down.  On Wednesday, somebody went to lunch and turned her's off.  The other machines went nuts trying to talk to it -- creating a 'spurious echo' which resulted in the system going down for two hours with no back-up hard copy system.  There was also trouble, Wednesday and Thursday, with the phones.  By 3 pm Wed. it sometimes took a half hour of dialing and hanging up to get through to the operators.  We would dial in shifts.  When one of us in Deschutes got through, they would enter their student and then holler down the hall for other folks.  Through it all, the operators remained remarkably calm."

Last Year #9: Advising

Of all the duties-as-assigned that full-time faculty are required to perform, the one I've always been worst at is advising.  Fortunately, one of the finest minds on the COCC campus, Vickery Viles, tries to make the process as fool-proof as possible.  She gives us a wonderful workbook with all the info we need about placement tests and managing our new online tool, Gradtracks.  She and her folks have also created an easy-to-read booklet for students to help get them through their first year.

It wasn't always so.  Here, from my Bendnotes letter of September 22, 1988, is my attempt to describe to my colleagues back in Utah the way student advising worked. 

"Advising took three days and was supposedly the stripped down, new, improved version.  Certainly all the old folks said that it was no longer the madhouse it used to be. . . . "

Three other new humanities folks and I were supposed to just observe but because one of the senior English teachers was sick, I needed to take over for her.  

"We had all had a good lecture about the process from Bart [dean of instruction] during our week of orientation.  Nevertheless, I did not enjoy being thrown into it. . . . The process was to go something like this.  My work was first to ascertain that the student who walked into my office (or Mary's office, that first day) had a green X at the top of their registration form.  then I was to ask if they had filled out the form.  Sometimes they had, sometimes they hadn't (the form is three sheets, with name, ethnics, and class time, number spaces).  If they had, I was to call 525, the number of the registration switchboard, and read off the subject numbers . . .  to the operator on line.  She (always of that gender) would punch the numbers into a computer which would report with a beep if the class was closed (in our Tuesday meeting, however, Bart insisted that we say to students, 'the  section is filled' -- thus does discourse analysis enter the organization.)  If not flustered or pressed . . . the operator read back the subject numbers and their classes.  If all went perfectly, there would be no beeps and the student would go away happy as a clam.  At the sound of the beep, however, the student would have to sort through the 'full year schedule' and find another course.  

"(After Wednesday morning, it was also possible to check the list of closed sections before calling in.  A runner would bring them around three times a day -- color coded sheets with the most recently closed classes marked with starts.)

"The student could decide to drop or add classes any time during the day just through the phone registration technique (by having the advisor call in the schedule change).  After being put into the computer, the student needed to register by the end of the day of s/he would be 'invalidated.'

"Now, if the student had no idea in hell what he or she wanted to do, real advising had to take place.  The advisor [sic] had to explain the need for the four sequences required for an AA degree, and why (if the student didn't know)the student would need an AA degree.   . . .

"Advising tools:  the class schedule, the college bulletin, a big blue three ring binder with every teacher's expectations for students for every course clearly articulated and quantified, the student's placement test scores, pre-interpreted for our convenience, and (for us in humanities) a list of the acceptable cross over requirements from the four year institutions."

Last Year #8: "But you ARE the man"

A few years ago Sprint ran a great commercial, satirizing certain generation's attachment to images of rebillion.  An executive in a tall building in a super modern, clean office with high windows talks about his Sprint plan that doesn't tell him what to do:  "I can talk when and how I want.  It's my little way of 'sticking it to the man.'" 

The younger man in his office (a helper?  junior exec?) says "But you ARE the man."
Older man in navy blue suit says, "I know."
Younger man in brown suit says, "So you're stickin' it to yourself."
"Maybe."

This is the plight of my generation of managers and leaders.  We want to keep our self images as rebels but really, if we hold any position of power, we are "the man."  In spite of my tattoos and love of whisky, (and no, Google, that isn't misspelled, not if one drinks single malt scotch) I'm still a rule setter and follower in my workplace.

I recognized my own position in the power system as soon as I arrived.  Here is another paragraph from my Bendnotes letter to friends at the U of U, 9/13/1988:

"At our department meeting on 9/12, Monday, I learned that last year the meeting had been attended by 7 people.  This year it was attended by 21.  (There's been a 20% increase in students since last year, which itself had showed {sic} a rather dramatic increase over two years previous.)  I also learned that I had kicked several people out of the office I am now imperialistically inhabiting.  People come by my office, look in, and say how nice it is.  They admire the many shelves and the oak desk.  Needless to say, this makes me more uncomfortable that happy, and I have apologized to people, a sort of 'forgive me for being an imperialist' soft of thing.  Most folks don't understand this attitude.  They look ahead, of course, to the day when I get booted."

I wrote this way because many of those teaching the in the UofU department of communication at that time (mid '80s) was left wing theoretically and committed to post-Marxism, post-structuralism, and the analysis of race, class, and gender.  I tried my best to put the principles of those beliefs to work in my classrooms, making sure that everyone knew the rules, enforcing the rules with fairness, and not requiring students to read my mind to figure out how to earn a good grade.  Nevertheless, I was and am still the one in charge of the economics of the classroom, and therefor "the man" in that circumstance.  I was also a mid-level bureaucrat for four years while I was the FA&C department chair.  I was charged with maintaining a system that is, in some ways -- the payment of part-timers and adjuncts, for example -- incredibly unfair.

Yet all the time there remains a part of me that believes in myself as anti-authoritarian.  This is probably the same part of me that wouldn't be surprised to see a unicorn in my garden.

Last Year #7: Contracts and Collective Bargaining

 At last week's Faculty Retreat one of our faculty leaders went over the benefits of our Collective Bargaining Agreement, a text which many people confuse with the "contract."

The news article above from the 9/22/1988 Bend Bulletin was attached to a September 22, 1988, letter.

In the previous "Bendnote" letter of September 13, I found a paragraph with information about a contract as part of my description of the trip around the district.

"At three of our stops we met board members.  Bruce [senior faculty member and tour guide] commented at one stop that the board member would have the opportunity to approve the new people's contract at the next meeting -- which put the new people ahead of the old people.  No one has a contract right now -- it seems as though problems have arisen relating to the current 20 year presidency of F. ending in two years.  Stuff that has been done with handshakes for years has come under observation by the faculty.  They worry that a future president might abuse faculty-administration relations.  So they are hung up on policy decisions, not money.  Or so Bart [Instructional Dean at the time] and Bruce told us today."

Last Year #6 (late)

Missed yesterday because of my sister's visit and the Octoberfest.  So I'll just post this as a gentle reminder to myself that I am required to have an excuse if I don't blog one day and so to encourage embarrassment in failing my self-given task.

Last Year #5: In praise of the surface

After a few thousand years of teaching interpersonal communication I finally learned that "depth" is no more important than "breadth" and "likability."  I have been part of a "crew" that I consider my "peeps."  I don't know their deepest, darkest moments nor do they know mine but there is a way in which that's not important.  Here is a poem I wrote (part of the collection Sentenced to Venice) in praise of the beauty and viability of superficial, "collegial" relationships.

IN PRAISE OF THE SURFACE

for the Winestyles group

Those who know me only here

like this, wine glass or whiskey in

one hand, cicchetti in the other,

may think another self somewhere

abides, heavy hulled and riding deep

in ancient waters, soul of a poet or

philosopher, but I know better that

such depth can run aground, get

stuck, get cracked beyond repair

among these islands, these lives

thrown down together not by

design but fortune, while

craft that glide across experience --

flat bottomed gondolas, curved prow,

enamel shiny, a single oar both power

and direction -- can skim and turn

and slide above life’s muck unhampered

by uncertain measure of the water

waiting black beneath our feet.

Last Year #4: The Bus Ride Remembered

I was wondering today whether or not this year's crop of new hires got the bus ride around the outlying campi.  I forgot to ask the new Art History hire about that. 

In the "Bendnotes" I wrote back in 1988 (letters to my friends back in graduate school) I mention the trip our group of eleven took around the district.  We went south through Sunriver to La Pine, then north to Madras and Prineville and back through Redmond to the Bend campus.

"We rode through the high desert on a bus that used to belong to the Rajneeshies (it was purchased by COCC at the auction which followed the abandonment of Rajneesh Puram).  It was very comfortable.  It had a microphone set up, heat, and pretty comfortable seats."

"As we rolled past the various volcanic formations, Bruce [this was geologist Bruce Nolf] talked to us about the geology of the region . . . He speaks of time with a geologist's sense, speaking of anything within the past 10 thousand years as 'recent.' . . . At three of our stops we met board members.. . .  Except for the building in La Pine, each of the COCC ports were converted store fronts.  The off campus activities emphasize the teaching of basic math, computer and literacy skills, and traditional community education activities like oil painting and pine needle basket weaving.  They each also have a lunch time lecture series which emphasizes visual aids, slides.  I volunteered to do some work next quarter on visual persuasion (yes, I do plan to drag along some John Berger into these conservative communities.)"

So, back now in 2013, I didn't ask my newest colleagues whether they'd made the tour.  But I did find out something I wouldn't have known if I hadn't attended the retreat.  I found out from new guy Steve in science that the "cadaver cart" in the new science building  has a squeaky wheel so he knows when it's passing his classroom while he's lecturing.  "Cadaver cart" you ask?  Well, the new building (which blocks my office view of the Three Sisters) has a corpse room where they keep dismemberable bodies so that future nurses and doctors can get some hands-on experience.

I'm thinking about leaving my own corpus delectable to my confreres here . . . . should retirony be in force.

Last Year #3: Last All College Retreat

F'n'A

Will I ever get over being a fan girl?  Today I had one of my wishes come true when a rawk 'n' roll hero, our math teacher and Plow United's  drummer, Sean Rule, dedicated a set of tunes to me.   At lunch time, on the back deck of the Student Center, our own rock group F 'n' A (Faculty and Administrators -- not what you were thinking) performed a bunch of tunes and ended with their hit single, "Bobcat Radio." (Please support the COCC Foundation by purchasing a copy here.  Like several others, I got to sing a chorus with Sean:  "Are you ready for Bobcat Radio!"  After the set, Sean said it was dedicated to me.  I looked calm, I'm sure, but in my heart I was jumping up and down and squealing like a little fan girl (something I actually did when I saw the Rolling Stones at the San Jose Civic Auditorium in 1968.)


Why?  Why did this rawk gawd dedicate the noon-time song set to me? Because earlier in the day I'd told him that this was my last all college retreat.

I've always enjoyed the all-college retreats, even the "State of the School" speech by the president du jour.  This year the "theme" was "Lassoing Student Success" and the College Community Development Committee members wore cowboy hats, chaps and various other country-western accoutrements.  I've always enjoyed the retreat -- even those ones with terrible keynoters, like the woman who gave a classroom lecture on teamwork and leadership.  Fortunately, this year our speaker was quite enjoyable if a little long-winded -- Dr.  Rod Ray of Bend Research.  He was funny and had good advice for going through hard times, which our college may be facing as our enrollments drop.  He also had strong connections to the college since both his mother and step-dad had been important college community members in the mid-sixties.

I myself actually gave the keynote at this event in 2003 when the college welcomed its new president, Jim Middleton.  I was terrified all summer thinking about giving the speech.  I wanted to incorporate science fiction, because he'd said at his interview that he enjoyed sci-fi when he had time to read.  I also wanted to get across one of my core personal beliefs -- humans are born but to die so we need to cut each other some slack, grant each other some grace.  I also decided to fall back on one of my favorite schtick -- changing clothes on stage.

I used to perform this schtick as part of a speech about how I became a woman through community college teaching.  In that presentation I reviewed Deborah Tannen's ideas about the differences in masculine and feminine communication styles and then talked about how being masculine (interrupting, challenging, linear, independent) had helped me through graduate school but wasn't helpful with a student population that needed the more feminine style of support, relationship, equality and interdependent.   As I described my change, I took off the square-shouldered gray suit I'd started in and got down to shape-showing silk top and pants.

For my college retreat speech, I got rid of the suit (jacket, shirt, skirt) to reveal pair of hiking shorts and t-shirt, my strip-change symbolizing my transformation from an uptight urban character to a Central Oregonian. 

Sean Rule of Plow United

But of course, there was something deeper going on -- as there always is.  But more about that anon -- for right now, I think I'll go back to jumping up and down and screaming.

Last Year #2: My Last Faculty Retreat

Today the faculty met at Aspen Hall from 8:30 to 1:30 to eat and talk about such concerns as assessment, promotions and tenure, and negotiations.  No one planned team-building games for this year, which was probably just as well, considering the chill and sprinkles.  (Last year's retreat had some awesome games run by Tim Peterson, our fearless director of the Outdoor Leadership program.)  We are starting very late this year!  (Gruntlement has been dissed among some parties who feel they had no part in the  decision to piggy-back on the September 30 class start of our "partner," OSU.  [It's interesting how we use the word "partner" to describe a soon-to-be competitor.]) 

We also welcomed newcomers, including Charles Abasa-Nyarko, our new Vice-president of Instruction. He in from Ghana and said that in Europe and Africa there are no part-time university teachers and that he thought everyone should be full time.  A very interesting idea.

I talked with two colleagues, Art Benefiel and Margaret Petersen, who arrived at COCC the same year I did.  We chatted a bit about "the old days" of the first retreat we attended.  I also spoke with 32 year veteran Peter Casey about those retreats.  He said that they were special and I agreed.  They were overnight, in the woods, and involved beer and wine.  Some folks played poker and got somewhat cockeyed by the early morning. We roasted corn over fire and sang camp songs.  We rowed on the small Dark Lake or jumped into it at night, with or without the proper attire.  Administrators and faculty got close.  It was a very different time, for both good and ill.

The positive outcomes of this kind of ritual was that it produced a quality of almost filial connection.  The openness of that connection was, of course, problematic in a contemporary professional organization.  It was also very difficult for single parents to be part of this kind of bonding.  Even the gender mix was a bit challenging as there was at least one and perhaps more senior faculty who didn't quite get the customary social rules about not propositioning newcomers even if everyone is a bit squiffy.

When the college presidency shifted in 1990, the new president, Robert Barber, with advice from a variety of folks and facing the impact of successful anti-tax measures, decided that the retreats should no longer be off campus and limited to faculty and administration.  So the retreat became an "all college" event and wound up on campus.  Shortly thereafter, the faculty forum decided that faculty still needed their own event so we went to a half-day get together somewhere off campus.

A few days ago I ran across some ethnographic letters I wrote to friends in my graduate program about my first quarter in my new job.  Here are some notes from the letter sent September 13, 1988, a few days after the retreat.

I went on a hike featuring the "Geology of the Region" and then went running back to camp with Art and his new boss R. (a character long gone from the college).  I quote:  "When we hit the brush at the bottom of the hill, R. warned Art and I not to get too wild at the retreat, even though everyone seemed to be so comfortable because someone had gotten too drunk and it had not gone well for them at promotion time. . . . Later that evening, I met a fellow, X., who admitted to being the character who had had trouble at promotion time because of his staff retreat behavior. . . . "  He made a suggestion about "going into the lake together" in a somewhat suggestive way.  "The next mornng I learned that the behavior he had gotten into trouble for was propositioning 'every female staff member in the place' (that's another female staff member -- and by staff I mean workers who would be at the retreat -- administrative and teaching personnel.)"
 
And, critically conscious as I was in those days, I ended my long analysis of events at that first retreat with this paragraph.

"Sure I see the power relations.  I also interpret, through my own frame, the deep hunger that drives them.  I can look at X. through the socially conscious awareness of his maleness, whiteness, Americanness -- and see him as corrupt in his innocence of his own corruption.  Or I can see in him myself.  Or I can do both.  Which I do."

Last Year #1: Retirony

Today is auspicious.  It marks the first day of my last contracted teaching "year."  Not that I've signed my last contract yet.  I called H.R. on Friday and found out that contracts won't be ready until tomorrow.  So, I have no contract though I'm back on contract.

I have a bit of paranoia about this final year as I count down the days till July 1, 2014.  I am a life long movie and television watcher with a strong attachment to detective plots and police procedurals.  There is a tradition in these genres that subsidiary characters who are looking forward to leaving their difficult jobs will face death shortly before they get their reward.  Richard Roeper's written review of "After Earth" mentions this plot device:  "It's the last mission before the general retires to a desk life.  Cop movies, heist films, and futuristic sci-fi thrillers all have that in common:  You say you're going to retire after one last job, and that job is going to go BOOM."

This is a  media "trope" called "retirony."  According to the occasionally excellent and occasionally awful but always interesting website, TVTRopes,  Retirony  "is a way to make the audience feel sorry for a character's death without having to actually give him more than ten minutes of screen time. Anybody in a dangerous job who's only a few days away from retirement . . . is absolutely doomed to death by Retirony."   I first became conscious of this plot device as a "trope" when I saw the movie Last Action Hero.  I've captured a scene from it that you can view here:  http://www.screencast.com/t/RuyTvOvm.

Of course, a community college professor imagining that her life is as exciting as that of a screen cop is redonkulous.   Nevertheless, it's true that "no one knows the day or the hour" of her own death.  (Yes, I know that quote is originally about an event not quite so personal, but I figure that one's own death is the end of some world, if not the world.)  It might be an interesting experiment to live this year as though it's my last.

Walter Benjamin was wrong about the "Work of Art . . ."

This week Laurie Taylor talked about Walter Benjamin on his BBC program Thinking Allowed.

A few years ago I read a complaint from a recent graduate in the U. of Chicago in the alumni magazine that he was assigned "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" in three different classes.  I too had to read that work for at least two classes, once in my PhD program at the University of Utah and the other while attempting to get an MFA in creative writing.

Even at the time of my first reading back in 1986, I questioned some of Benjamin's claims, especially this one:  "that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art." By "aura" Benjamin meant a work's authenticity, the traditions and energy of its creation (which may have a religious or in some way worshipful source).  "By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence."    Thus, a work's aura, its authenticity, becomes less important once the work itself can be reproduced.

I questioned this claim the first time I read it and then came to believe that Benjamin was clearly wrong when the when the Portland Art Museum brought Titian's La Bella to Stumptown in November, 2011.  A short commercial produced for the museum uses language that treats the painting like a touring celebrity:  "straight from Florence, Italy for her only West Coast appearance."  Titian himself is called "the most celebrated artist of Renaissance Venice."  Going to visit this painting is considered a far more exciting experience than just looking at the perfect online reproduction.   As The Art Newspaper reports, art museums around the world still experience significant attendance each year of people wanting to see the originals.

I believe that reproductions have actually increased the aura (and appeal) of original works of art.   A further example of the celebrity of the Old Masters is this wonderful "flashmob" video from the Rijksmuseum of Amsterdam.  The painting "The Company of captain Frans Banning Cocq and lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch preparing to march out"  by Rembrandt may be seen at the Rijksmuseum's website.