#69 Happy Thanksgivukkah

Tonight at sundown, a little after 5:00 p.m., the Jewish Community of Bend sponsored the lighting of a giant menorah in the Old Mill Shopping Mall.  There was a small crowd (between 50 - 100 men, women and children) gathered in the Center Plaza near the foot bridge. 

I stood somewhere near the front of the crowd where I could see the stage.   Before the lighting of the giant candles, a couple of girls went through the crowd handing out chocolate Chanukah gelt and thin circular glow sticks that one could wear around one's neck, on one's head (like a halo) or use, like the two small boys next to me, like a sword.  As we waited for the ceremony to start, we listened to Jewish dance tracks.

2012 Old Mill Menorah from Temple Beth Tikvah website

Then the dance music cut off and I heard the Mall's sound system in the background playing a rock song about love in a voice reminiscent of Michael Stipe.  (Last year, the Mall's loud Christmas music created some cognitive dissonance during the menorah lighting.)  A young orthodox rabbi, complete with broad-brimmed hat, untrimmed beard, and payot, got up on a small stage in front of the giant menorah and spoke very briefly about the meaning of Chanukah, mentioning the Macabbees but moving more toward the contemporary vision by saying that Chanukah was like Thanksgiving because it was about gratitude and giving.  His view was similar to that expressed by journalist Joseph Cotto in the Washington Post when he wrote,

Hanukkah need not be a Maccabee-fest. Jews have celebrated the holiday throughout the ages as a vehicle for remembering righteous strength and courage. In a comprehensive historical sense, it has little to do with the Maccabees per se. Rather, it is a living testament to perseverance in the face of adversity and devotion to tikkun olam — repairing our broken world.

  After his brief sermon, the rabbi sang three blessings.  Some folks in the crowd sang along (I think sheet music was handed out to a few folks early on).  Then he lit the first "candle" (which was more like a torch).  After the ceremony was over, the crowd was invited to a small empty suite next to the multiplex where there were trays of jelly donuts and warming pans of latkes along with learning games for the kids and take-away menorahs, candles, and dreidels for which one could leave a donation.

I enjoyed the ritual (as I enjoy many religious rituals) and thought about past threats to the local Jewish community.  I remember when there was only one congregation here and they met in the basement of the Methodist Church.  One year the windows of the church were spray-painted with swastikas. Now the Jewish community is much larger.  Here are some sites of interest:

Chabad (Lubavitch) of Central Oregon

Temple Beth Tikvah:  A Reform Congregation

Congregation Shalom Bayit (Jewish Community of Central Oregon, Ben Tannen Religious School)

LY #68 Watching Doctor Who

I didn't expect a packed theatre, I'll tell you that right off.  That's why I didn't enter the Old Mill movie complex at 6:50 pm when I bought my ticket.  How many Doctor Who fans could there be in Bend?  When I finally returned to find a seat at 7:20 I walked all the way up the stairs to the back and finally heard my colleague Tim Petersen hollering, "Kake, Kake."  So I took the seat next to him in the back row.

I was, of course, at Regal to see The Day of the Doctor in 3D, the 50th Anniversary special TV show + "making of" documentary.  It was a huge hit over the weekend in the UK, the third highest money maker over the weekend.  And according to the BBC, it sold out around the United States and "was watched by an average of 2.4 million, a record for BBC America."  Some argue that the movie's box office even beat out the Hunger Games.

Much of the movie, sadly, was a bit over my head as I haven't been a fan for a long time.  I will need to read Alan Kistler's fan-boy explanations.  I see now that I'll be catching up on this millennia's Doctors over Christmas break.  I've seen three of Chris Eccleston's but none of David Tennant's or Matt Smith's.

Tom Baker, Day of the Doctor

I became a Doctor Who fan when PBS stations were broadcasting the Tom Baker series in the 1980s and I still think of Baker as Who.  When his eyes and then his elderly self turned up in the movie last night, the fan-girl next to me (and several others throughout the theatre) let out a shriek of appreciation.

Tom Baker as The 4th Doctor

I was introduced to the Doctor in 1985 by Michael Swan, a young graduate student at the University of Utah.  In the winter of '85, I moved into a 19th Century mansion on South Temple in Salt Lake City.  It had been broken up into apartments sometime in the 20th Century.  Michael lived in the apartment above mine.  He had told me when the apartment below his was available and I leapt at the chance of getting out of my cockroach haven.

When I moved in, we became like siblings.  Many weekday nights he would make us instant hot chocolate around 10 pm and then we would watch TV together in his apartment, first Monty Python and then the Doctor.  Mike was like the little brother I never had.  I thought about him last night as I watched the movie, thought about how much he might have enjoyed it if he hadn't died so young.

LY #67 Building Morale

As you all (all 4 of you) know, I have a crush on my young colleague, the rawk gawd Sean Rule.

Sean being 80s, wearing my shades and jacket.

On Friday, he and the other member of F'n'A, our COCC band, shot a Christmas video up in the Fireside Room.  I got to be part of it.  I loaned him one of my fur jackets and a pair of sunglasses which he used in part of the video as a tribute to 80s metal band Poison.  Very little of that material turned up in the video.  I visited him today and he showed me what all was left out of the video -- some very funny stuff.  I hope he produced a director's cut.  Neither did he use the material that I shot...I may need to put some of it up on the web just to make it available. 

I also did some dancing in the video -- I'm the short woman with the bad hair wearing the black sweater with the Christmas trees.

All the lights made that old space look quite magical.  Today when I went up to collect my coat, the Fireside room looked completely un-magical once again.

As I talked with Sean about the wonderfulness of COCC I told him that 85% of my time here has been enjoyable.  I think that's pretty ef-ing amazing.  Well over 50% of my job has been enjoyable.  There have been the people I haven't gotten along with and then there's the whole grading thing -- that's the negative part of the job.  But mostly, I've enjoyed my time at the CoC on the Rock.

Sean is such a great asset to the institution with his positive attitude and boundless energy.  

Stay tuned for my own video about FnA.

LY #66 The Fashion System

As a theorist speaking with absolutely no data, I'm going to make this hypothesis that someone else can research. 

I think that the current horrible style of women my age and younger and older showing the roles of fat above and below their bras because they are wearing material that clings to their bodies is a result of the fashion trend of manufacturers saving money by making sizing small, medium, large, and extra large.  Clinging material will make an attempt to fit a body it doesn't want to whereas stiff material needs to be cut more closely to the actual form in order to fit correctly.  

I find a sleeker silhouette, one that is produced by stiffer fabric than jersey knit, is more comely to my eye than ripples and bumps in awkward places.

One more proof that it's time for me to get out of the classroom!  As a geezer, there are just so many contemporary styles I don't enjoy staring at.

LY #65 November 22, 1963

Where was I?  In Mrs. Whaley's fifth grade class at Daves Avenue School.

Mrs. Whaley told us that right before lunch she had something important to announce.  I had watched the news the night before with my Dad so I thought I knew what it was.  In the previous night's CBS News there had been a report on a White Supremacist group in the South.  Although the word "terrorism" wasn't used at the time, they were credited with bombings and were considered very dangerous.  So I went to the teacher, trying to guess what she was going to tell us.  "Is it something about the Water Mocassins."  I thought that was the name of the group.  She said no.  Then sometime either right before lunch or in the lunch line I heard that the president had been shot.

I ran across the street to our house and for the next few days we watched television.  I don't remember Jack Ruby shooting Oswald but I do remember watching the funeral on Sunday, especially the riderless horse with the empty stirrups.

Years later, in high school, I learned that I could make myself cry on command if I just remembered that day.

LY #64 Unexpected Reluctance to Be Assertive

For the past 20 years I've had a policy in all my syllabi that "Any grade is negotiable."  From the very first day of every class, I let students know that I prefer that they let me know when they think I have judged them unfairly.  In the public speaking classes I actually give 5 points extra credit to students who act as lawyers for their colleagues.  I explain that arguments for higher points must be based on the criteria of the assignment and not on claims of having a difficult life or claims of hard work.  I tell them that almost every student at a community college has a hard life (and sometimes tell them stories of past students).  And I also explain that hard work is not necessarily connected to successful performance.

But even though I discourage self-disclosure of struggle, I encourage them to make sure that they are receiving appropriate grades.

Well, this week I met resistance in an unexpected site.  A young man in the military, someone whom I assumed would have no problem arguing for a higher grade, did not rise to my suggestion that he challenge me in a particular area of the assignment.  I don't want to give the particulars at this time.  Let's just say that I made a judgement call about a performance and that there was one particular area in which the student could have challenged me.  I actually encouraged him to do so and even suggested that he get another student to act as his lawyer. 

Sadly, he said, "But you're the teacher."

I replied, "That doesn't make me infallible."

And he said, "But you're very good."

Now, you may ask, "Why didn't you just go ahead and change his grade if you thought it was debatable?"   Well, just because I can see both sides of an issue doesn't mean that I don't believe my point of view is correct.  I thought I was right but wanted to see if he believed in his own performance  enough to challenge and then change my perception.  (Perception is in part a matter of negotiation.)

He did not.

I wondered after talking with him if he was confusing the structure of the classroom with the structure of the military.  Perhaps I was not being culturally sensitive.  Maybe I should check in with him.

LY #63 Transgender Awareness

CommProf in drag

Today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance at COCC, a part of the national Transgender Awareness Week.

 I thought this might be a good time to mention that I once considered gender reassignment surgery.

Picture me in the stacks at old library at Idaho State University, circa 1978, looking through books detailing how the surgery was performed and the statistics on success.  The data showed that at the time, female to male surgery was incredibly expensive and rarely completely effective.  Combine that with the (possibly inherent) prejudice for masculine height and I decided that it was better to live life as an androgynous female than as a short man.

1960s Barbie for sale on Etsy

Why did I want to be a man?  Well, it was less a matter of wanting to be a man than of not wanting to be female.  I'd never been particularly comfortable being a "girl."  From grade school on I had not dislike being put in that category.  In kindergarten, when the teachers tried to tell me that I had to play in the "girls" area where kids played house, I put up a fuss because I wanted to play in the boys area with the cars and big blocks.  (I don't know if my parents interfered in this particular fight, but I got my way and never set foot in the "girls" area again.)  In sixth grade I had enough of a vocabulary to self-identify as a "misogynist."   In seventh or eighth grade, there were various "tests" that kids gave each other to "prove" gender.  One of them was "How do you look at your fingernails?"  Girls were supposed to put their hands out, fingers spread, palms down, whereas boys supposedly  curled their fingers over an upward-facing palm.  I don't know how I originally performed the act but I started purposefully doing it like the boys.

Now, I did love my Barbie, but that was because she looked like Annette Funicello and I could imagine taking her to a dance in the amazing black and crystal ball gown my Mom sewed for her.   And, really, I cried way too often for a boy.  Even so, I thought it would be better to be a boy and be able to punch people when they were mean to one.

And, of course, it was clear to anybody with a brain that males had it "better," except for that whole draft thing.  They weren't judged as much on their appearance (so I thought) and they had more freedom of movement.

 Becoming a "member" of the queer community when I got to college eased some of the discomfort I felt being female.  Then, after about a year in my first job, I quit, went away and looked for work in the Bay Area, then returned home and fell into what I've called a "nervous breakdown" or a "major depressive event."  During the next two years when I had trouble being in the world I looked around for all the possible reasons.  It was during this time that I thought about gender reassignment surgery.

I haven't thought of it since.  I've grown used to this body and things have greatly improved since the sixties for people with without penes. 

I guess I share this because making the decision that one is not the gender one was born isn't as purely biological and unaffected by culture and history as some folks make it seem. Contrary to what the scientist Lady Gaga says, being born a particular way isn't the only thing that impacts one's gender identity or preferences.

LY #62 News Rituals of Alzheimer's

I could write about how chaotic my public speaking class felt tonight and wonder what I would have done with it when I was younger, but instead I want to mention the rituals of news.

It was at the U of U of course that I learned of the ritual function of television news, how it served to express the horror of the day only to end with a human interest story that told us that no matter how wack things seemed, the people in power had control and we shouldn't worry because somewhere something good was happening to or being done by someone.  (For more on television as myth and ritual take a look at this 1987 Communication Research Trends review article.) 

I remembered this interpretation of the function of news this weekend while listening to an NPR story about Alzheimer's.  Pansy and Winston Green, a couple NPR has been following, are dealing with Pansy's Alzheimer's diagnosis.  The story is rather dark, as the disease has been progressing and even though she keeps her spirits up and fierce, her husband looks ahead into the darkness that he will be dealing with far more consciously than she will.  The story featured recordings from a planning committee of their local Alzheimer's association.  We hear one member of the committee struggling to find words for what he wants to say.  NPRs transcript quotes Winston:

"There is still fear," he says. "Not so much denial, but fear. ... You're with people that are that much advanced, and you're thinking, oh my gosh, this could be our journey."

He sees the future in the present of the other people there.  He has an honest fear.  His wife, however, is more optimistic.  She may imagine that she will be able to keep the control that she thinks she has.  The challenge for the writer is to allow both the reality and the optimism into the wrap up of the story. The award-winning journalist Ina Jaffe (one of my favorite NPR personalities) can do that.  She ends the story with these two sentences:

"The Greenes have spent 57 years accepting each other for who they are. They have no plans to stop now."

A happy ending for a dark story.  This vision, of the couple still whole, of that wholeness having a possible future, is a repetition of the "human interest" ritual ending.  Love offers a salvation.  For the moment.  The turn toward hope is a customary ritualized performance for American human interest writers.  Still. 

LY #61 Meals with My Hiring Committee

Since I was ripping on the dudes who interviewed for Bouknight's position, I suppose I should tell a couple of stories about the day I interviewed.

Lunch was held in the meeting room upstairs just off the cafeteria in Grandview.  Anyone on campus who wanted to meet the interviewee was invited.  I didn't know who all of the folks I met was important so I pretty much smiled at everyone.  I remember that Mike Smith asked me if I could play softball.  I'd been playing softball in Utah so of course I said "yes," assuming that anything I said could be a point for or against me.  And then I dropped some lettuce on my lap. 

Hal Gillespie 1991

Later that day I went to dinner at McGraths with my hiring committee which included Hal Gillespie and Mary Monaghan, both felled by cancer in the early 90s.  The other member of the dinner party was John Purdy, a specialist in Native American Literature who went on to teach at Western Washington U.  As I look back on it, I realize that the black and white dress I wore at dinner, purchased at the Happy Dragon Thrift Shop in Los Gatos, was far too short to wear in that professional setting.  But at the time it was the only dark dress I owned.  I was very careful at dinner to drink one glass of wine rather than none or two -- the same amount of alcohol as the other folks at the table. 

As I noted in an earlier blog post, I looked lesbian in those days which might have been the reason that one member of the committee, the late Ms. Monaghan, asked me sotto voce an illegal question about whether or not I was married.  I was a bit flummoxed, but said "yes." 

The other moments I remember from that day don't include either my teaching sample or the actual formal interview.  I do remember that the first person I met officially was Gene Zinkgraf, "personnel director" at the time.  And my last interview of the afternoon, before dinner, was a meeting with dean Bart Queary. I asked if there was anything he could tell me about why I shouldn't take the job.  He told me that many people in Bend were too obsessed with exercise.  (I don't remember whether it was he or Hal Gillespie who used the term "body nazis" to describe the exercise obsessed folks of Central Oregon.)

Between my interview with Bart and dinner with the English department folks, I went back to the Riverside Inn where the college had put me up and called a friend to let him know that I'd given an awesome interview.*

But perhaps not.  It took over a week for COCC to get back to me, during which time I flew off to interview at Augustana in Rock Island.   When I got back I took the call from Ward Tonsfeldt who intimated that COCC was close to both going to semesters and becoming a four-year school. 



* This friend was probably the most important person in my life to me to me at that time, as my spouse and I were separated.  For the purposes of this blog, I will call this friend, about whom I'll be writing more Zephod, a moderately legal spelling of Zaphod, as in Zaphod Beeblebrox - "He's just a guy, y'know?"

LY #60 Hiring Dr. Bouknight

 Bouknight and Borowsky (photo by Lilli Ann Linford-Foreman, 11/15/13)

I've been engaging with this "Thirty Days of Gratitude" project on Facebook and this morning I wrote about my speech communication colleagues, Doctor Professors Jon Bouknight and Justin Borowsky.  As I thought about Jon I remembered when we were interviewing for his position.

It was back in the '90s and it was a "shared" position:  he was hired to be 1/3 writing and 2/3 speech.  Now, fortunately for us, he's all speech all the time!

Like all hiring events, this one had messy fallout, including lots of rude things said about me (as speech-com program director) by one of the part-timers who didn't make it into the interview step of the hiring process.  (I had the scuttlebutt reported to me by students who heard me being badmouthed.)  In spite of the annoyance of being thought a demonic bitch by people I work beside, I think it's important to hire new tenure track people based on background, knowledge, and performance during the interview process and not on years spent already at the institution.  (Longevity, in other words, is no proof of excellent performance, as everyone would know if I continued teaching after this coming spring.)

The year we hired Jon it wasn't a big pool.  (Unlike the year we hired Justin -- I believe that I weeded through about eighty files before sending on something like sixty to the rest of the committee.)  Two of the guys who came to interview (and they were all guys that year) were pretty lame.  Because they will not be recognizable and no one remembers that far back, I'll tell you a bit about them.

Although all three candidates looked good on paper, the other two turned out to be so very wrong for COCC.  Both of them had a "sage on the stage" teaching methodology and gave lectures during their teaching performance.  Thus, they weren't a good fit for our programs.  Even then, COCC cultivated interactive, discussion-oriented classrooms - the "guide by the side" method.  Not only did they not fit in with the institutional pedagogical values, both of them also "sank" themselves when they were "offstage" at lunch and dinner.

One interviewee was a tall fellow who looked a bit like the poet Mark Strand.  When the Department Dhair and I took him to dinner, he talked incessantly about water skiing and himself and how wonderful he was at all outdoor sports.  Even though the Chair and I tried to introduce other topics of conversation, he went on and on about his great athletic abilities, not noticing the eye rolls the people accompanying him were throwing at each other.  He clearly wasn't interested enough in the job to figure out that the interview process didn't end when he left the campus.

The other gentleman, in appearance a bit more like Peter Lorre, was far too honest when I took him to lunch.  I remember that as we drove from the school to downtown, he said, "I hope you choose me.  You're my last chance.  Every other place I've interviewed has rejected me." I was so stunned that someone who taught writing and speech knew so little about interviewing that he actually spoke those words.  Out.  Loud.  

I wanted to say to him, "Do you realize that you just spoke your fear and self-loathing audibly?"

And then, at lunch, he went on and on about theoreticians it became clear he didn't really understand but who he wanted to name drop:  Foucault, Derrida, etc.  Now, like anyone who had been through a left-leaning graduate program in the 80s, I understood those names and the ideological position he was trying to establish. And I also knew they and it had VERY little to do with community college communication instruction.

Thank the Powers-That-Be that Jon was on our interview list!  I didn't know until VERY recently (over a decade and a half after his hire) that he almost didn't apply to COCC.  It was spur of the moment!  His friend Doug Nelson, also ex-Clatsop, told him to apply.  He gave a great interview but it was his teaching demonstration that really sold us -- an activity involving students writing descriptions of a burglar and the rest of the class deciding which description (the one with lots of detail or the one with almost none) seemed more believable.  It was a wonderful performance.

And, of course, it didn't hurt that when I was taking him to lunch he said, "Was that piece you published in Critical Studies in Mass Communication a part of your doctoral dissertation?"  Yes, I recognized it as flattery but it was appropriate flattery -- at a job interview one is supposed to show knowledge of the folks one meets and of the institution.  So I chatted with him while giving him a mental point for knowing how to work it. 

My assumption about all job interviewees is that they will do their homework and figure out the rules for doing job interviews.  For folks who teach communication or want to, that expectation is multiplied to infinity.

LY #59 Buddies

Laurence Olivier Henry 5

I tipped a glass of wine this evening with an old friend and his daughter.  He was the man who made sure all the paperwork was done and the appropriate letters written for my promotion to full professor.   I hadn't spent so much time with him for years.  It was lovely.  Before he retired we'd often tippled together, as we were two of the "usual suspects" when it came to party attendance in the Humanities Department.

When he was hired at COCC, a couple of years after I was, he scared me a bit with his intense and purposefully provocative conservatism.  He came to English Literature from a profession known for its toughness, traditions and orthodoxy.   On the surface, I would have seemed completely different.  I performed myself as a left leaning, post-Marxist liberal.  But as it turned out, we shared some core values:  honesty, collegial support and a love for performance, our own and that of others.

My experience with him taught me about the always-surprising way life continually contests and capsizes all of my pre-programmed points of view.

 It was nice to spend time with him tonight.  I've missed him since he semi-retired.

Techademia again

Today I received this email from someone at Pearson Higher Ed.  They are the folks who sent me the survey that led to a post a couple of days ago.

I don't want to share her name because I don't have her explicit permission to post this.  Nevertheless, I believe that because it is an uninvited email, that I have the right to share it. 

Dear Professor Huck,

My name is ********* and I am a ****** for Pearson’s Communication digital products. We are forming a Communication Data and Reporting Advisory Board and you have been recommended as a participant. The goal of this program is to get instructor feedback on data and reporting needs across Communication courses within a department, institution and/or nationally. We plan to use your feedback to help shape future enhancements to MediaShare, Pearson’s Communication learning application.

If you are interested in joining our Advisory Board, over the next few months you will be asked to participate in a series of virtual focus groups and/or reviews. Each activity will have an honorarium attached and we will do our best to give you as much notice as possible so that you may determine if it will fit in with your schedule.  The first virtual focus groups will be held sometime within the next six weeks.

Your input is tremendously valuable and we rely heavily on professor feedback to inform updates and enhancements to our digital offerings.  Please let me know if you are interested in joining our Communication Data and Reporting Advisory Board by replying to this email.

Thank you for your consideration and I look forward to hearing from you!

Best Regards,

***********************

 This is how I responded:

Wow, Name-of-Original-Email-buddy.

What a counter-intuitive offer!  I answered your recent survey in my role as “cranky geezer” and then blogged about the survey (http://dochuck.blogspot.com/2013/11/ly-56-another-reason-im-retiring.html ), implying that teaching methods haven’t improved much since Aristotle walked through the agora.  Hmmm.  While I’m always happy to make money, I’m not sure that I’m the person you want on your advisory board.

So I’ll let you think about it.  If you really want a cranky geezer on your panel, then I’ll be happy to contribute.  If not, no offense taken.

kh

*******************************

Anyway, that was around mid-day and now that it's after working hours I assume I won't be invited back.

LY #57 The Retirement Meeting and the Tech Wall

Today I visited with Sally Sorenson, our new H.R. director, who went over some of the key issues related to my upcoming retirement.  It was a pleasant meeting because Sally is a very pleasant person.  She was also wearing a very attractive jacket stitched with a pattern of autumn leaves.

The question most important to the school is, "Are you planning to continue working part time."

"No.  Nope,  nyet,  keine Möglichkeit,  pas de temps partiel, ho finito con l'insegnamento!"  Well, I didn't really add all that emphasis.  But you get the idea.

We agreed that instead of bolting right after turning my grades in on June 19, I would take until June 30 to get my stuff moved out of my office.   I asked about getting emeritus status which, according to H. R. 11-3.2 means that I may

Receive bulletins, announcements, and other publications of the College; participate in commencement; be listed in the College catalog; receive free admissions to all regular College events; full use of the College library; full use of Computer Center services; attend the annual professional retreat of the College; use of an office set aside for emeritus; receive occasional and limited secretarial assistance for pre-approved projects related to the College of the individual's discipline; be listed in the Speakers Bureau.

We also chatted about the big issue -  health insurance - and my three decision making choices:  OEBB, PERS, or the Marketplace.  How I look forward to doing that research.  Much as I look forward to my next trip to the dentist.

While visiting the H. R. offices I also chatted about what PERS does with my left over sick leave days.  The person who reports them is Shelley Huckins, a delightful blonde person who is a head honcho in payroll.  Now she has a truly important and necessary job.  She talked about how the recently retired payroll poobah, Lori O.,  is trying to get used to going shopping or to the movies in the afternoon.  Payroll work is what I think of as a "real job" (as opposed to teaching college).  People who have "real jobs" usually don't get more than a week or three of vacation every year.  And as Shelley noted, it was only a couple of years ago that anyone in the college payroll office was able to take more than one week off at a time.  I thought about what a luxury it's been to have summers and winter holidays off for most of the past 25 years.  Time is as good as wealth.

I wound up telling them both about my current tech-wall.  I shared that when I first came to COCC I was shocked by this one senior faculty member who never touched a keyboard and expected the "secretaries" to type up his classroom assignments (he didn't have syllabi so he didn't require those to be typed).   Now I have become that guy.  As you know from last night's screed,  I have hit the tech wall.  The thought of having to text my students or letting them text me just seems so, so.... misguided.  A violation of the fourth wall, if you will.

Not that I hate all things softwareish.  I will indeed be introducing new techniques to my tired old brain but they will be in service of its right side.  I look forward to doing more with movie making, sound editing, and photo manipulating softward -- just no more techademia.   

That part of my brain is full.

LY #56 Another Reason I'm retiring

Plato and Aristotle from Scuola di Atene by Raphael

I received a request to take a survey today.  The focus of the survey was on what new technology I used to teach public speaking.

I wanted to scream, "None! None! None!  We walk through the Agora and I show them all the techniques required to display ethos, pathos, and logos."  Sadly, this is neither true nor a good analogy, as I would either have been a housewife or hetaira in ancient Greece  "where burning Sappho loved and sang and stroked the wine-dark sea, in the temple by the moonlight, wa da doo dah..."

And I am not averse to new technologies.  I use Blackboard for grading, Turnitin for assessing originality in outlines and Youtube for examples of student speeches.  But I personally don't think that a lot of digital materials are necessary to people learning how to construct and deliver public presentations.  Sincerity, clarity, commitment, and grit are what's necessary, none of which require an Ipod.  This Pearson Higher Education fact-finding survey, of course, contains a persuasive component -- it's supposed to convince the taker that he or she should be thinking about getting an "online homework, tutorial, and assessment system." 

Which brings me to something I heard at a faculty meeting a short time back.  A senior faculty member (not senior to me but certainly old) said that we need to "innovate all the time."

I beg to differ.  If coursework is functioning well in helping a reasonable number of students to meet the course outcomes, there is no need to "innovate."  New for the sake of new isn't a value I support.  But it seems to be the zeitgeist.

And, of course, our students' brains may actually be changing as young people adapt more and more to screens.  Perhaps the virtues of public speaking will disappear as screens develop more ethos than the human face.  The Singularity approaches.  Thank goodness I'll be retired and perhaps even gone gone gone.

LY #55 A Veteran's Day Story

As a young teacher of interpersonal communication I used many of the activities I'd seen performed in classrooms I'd attended myself.  One such activity is the "explosion" during the perception or emotion lecture.  At some point during a quarter, the experimental late 70s, early 80s interpersonal communication teachers liked to have something disrupt the classroom.  Someone would walk in out of the classroom and start yelling at them, slap them, or do something else disruptive.  After the stranger left, the teacher would deconstruct what had gone on. 

Then, if the disruption occurred during the "perception" lecture, the teacher would ask about what went on or what the visitor was wearing.  Sometimes a teacher would "cluster" students into small groups and have them answer a series of questions.  Perhaps there would be a plant in each group who argued for a part of the scene that hadn't actually existed, the key in this situation being that a point can be made that memory can be constructed through negotiation.  In my textbook, Looking Out, Looking In, the current text presents "negotiation" as the fourth step in the perception process -- our need to "check out" our reality with that experienced by others. 

In the "emotion" lecture, the disruption can be check for whether or not it creates anxiety or laughter among the students -- have their heart rates gone up?  Do they laugh at the scene?  I used to run this activity as an "emotion" lecture by throwing a desk or chair in the middle of a very low key part of the lecture.  Then I would check in with the students by going around the room and asking what they were feeling, to find out if they were feeling angry, anxious, or amused.  This proves that interpretation, our understanding of a situation, can influence our physiological response.

One year three days after my chair throwing and discussion activity, a student came to my office.  He spoke in respectful terms as he told me that my activity had put him in the hospital for three days.  He was a Vietnam Vet with PTSD and my pedagogical activity had kicked off an incident.  I felt terrible.  That had so not been my intention.  I apologized profusely and asked if there was anything I could do to make it right.  He accepted my apology and said that I should always warn people before performing that activity.   

I felt quite ashamed of not thinking that I had a damaged Veteran as my student.  It wasn't like I didn't know about shell shock, which is what I called it before I learned the term PTSD.  When I worked at McDonalds in 1979-80, I worked with a Vietnam Vet who started having hallucinations one day after the breakfast rush.  I remember that he screamed "hit the deck" and dropped to the floor, covering his head and crying.  He was seeing helicopters.  I tried telling him they weren't there. 

He lived in a basement apartment two blocks from the University and a few blocks from the restaurant.  I don't remember whether or not I walked him home and then went back to work of if he made it home himself.  Nor do I remember whether or not I helped him contact the VA.  I do know that somehow I arranged to drive him down to the Veteran's hospital near Salt Lake City a few days later.  It's about the same distance from Pocatello as Portland is from Bend.

So I'd seen person have a terrible experience of battle fatigue, shell-shock, or PTSD.  But I didn't connect what happened in my previous workplace to my life at COCC until I was forced to do so.

I hope that over the years I have become somewhat more sensitive as a communicator.  I know that I'm more aware now of the damaged quality of many of my students so I moderate my volume level if not my standards for work.

LY #54 Tech whines, Spelling whines

So I took off and didn't visit my online classes for over 24 hours!

This is because I don't like the tablet interface.  I took my Google Nexus with me to Portland but the Blackboard interface is cumbersome and tiring.  I bought a year's worth for $1.99 but don't think I'll use it again for schoolwork.  I was not able to post an announcement to my classes because I couldn't figure out how to do it.  When I hit the "announcements" button it showed me the announcements from the BB administrator herself rather than showing me the announcements for a particular class.

Anyway, the class did not fall apart in my "absence."  When I got home this afternoon I responded to the most recent "primary" posts.  Each week, students are required to post one thoughtful text-responsive observation of communication behaviors.  They also need to respond to one other student's primary post as well as having a five turn conversation with that student or anyone else.  It makes for a lot of reading for me but I find that the conversational requirement actually gets the students interacting with each other more.

I wish, however, that they would spell-check.  Blackboard doesn't seem to do that automatically anymore -- one needs to hit the spell button to get the appropriate red underlining.  Sadly, this leads students to allow many uncorrected spelling errors.   I don't grade on either spelling or grammar but that doesn't mean I don't see it.  When people mix up there, their, and they're or two, to, and too, their action annoys me.  Then there are the folks who just type crazy!  Ack!

Now, the poor spelling and grammar doesn't indicate poor thinking.  Sometimes the posts with the terrible spelling are thoughtful and contain detailed observations of the world.  And sometimes good writers can make the dumbest statements.  Here is one of the ideas that bugged me last week. They read the chapter on nonverbal communications.  In their postings, some of my students wrote about certain situations having "a lot of nonverbal communication."  As though there are situations in which people are gathered together that do not have "a lot of nonverbal communication."  Nonverbal communication is everywhere all the time if people can see, taste, touch, smell, or hear each other.  What do these folks not get about the idea that all behavior communicates?  It's not just select behaviors that have messages.  ALL BEHAVIORS!!!  ALL!!!

Whew.  I'm glad I got that off my chest.

(See the nonverbal within the verbal there?) 

LY #53 Busman's Holiday

I came up to Portland yesterday to look at art and the "art crowd."

An excess of good spirits kept me from my keyboard last night.

I call this a busman's holiday because I attended a "business" meeting of the members of the Portland Art Museum, 50 minutes of speech-making.  And, you know, I can't turn off my speech professor critical faculties just because I'm out of town and about to go to a party.

According to the agenda handed out at the door, it was the 121st annual meeting of the museum's membership.  I put "business" in quotes because the one piece of actual business completed by us folks in the Whitsell Auditorium was to vote "aye" on the names proposed for the incoming board of trustees.  There were no candidates running in opposition and it was an oral vote.  The outgoing chair of the board, Jim Winkler, put the names on the screen and then asked for both the yeas and naes to be spoken at the same time.  He then said, after many voices in the large room sang out an "ay" sound' that there were more "yaes".

So it wasn't a real vote.  I assume that all the real decision-making was done off stage.

The true purpose of the meeting was to congratulate the board and the members for the great year the museum experienced.   Winkler started the evening with a smoothly delivered, albeit completely "read" speech about all the different exhibits and community members served by the museum, with an emphasis on children.  The kids on the Powerpoint were a nice balance to an audience of grayheads like myself.

The incoming board chair, who had the same name as the auditorium, was not a fluent speaker.  He got caught in a loop around the thought that we should communicate with him and that he was in favor of communication.  He looked down at his paper three times, saying "oh no" then looked back at the audience.  He reminded me of some of my more nervous student speakers.

The third speaker, a younger man whose name escapes me, gave a solid financial overview with simple pie charts showing where the museum's operating expenses came from and how member had grown the last year with 15,118 members renewing and 2532 new members.

The best part of the meeting was an Oregon Public Broadcasting produced short about a truly creative fundraising event in which invited member paid $500 each to attend an event where seven of the curators pitched particular works of art as the possible next purchase by the museum.  It was a fascinating exhibition of public speaking prowess at work, edited, of course, for television so we only heard bits and pieces of the persuasive speeches given for the different works.

Portland Art Museum

After the meeting there was a member's party with Japanese food, Oregon wine and beer, and demonstrations of martial arts.  The galleries were open until nine and members followed docents around to hear about the samurai armor and other current and permanent exhibits.

And, as I learned to finish up such stories when I worked at the El Gato newspaper in high school, "A delicious meal was served and a delightful time was had by all."

LY #52 Back to the Beginning - My First Big Office!

In my Bendnotes 2, September 22, 1988, I described Deschutes Hall and my first office as well as the Pinckney Center and the man for whom it was named.  Note my early delight in heavy oak furnishings -- a decorative style I no longer love.

      "Bend sits in a curve of the Deschutes River, from the French, Des Chutes, the shoots, I guess, the rapids.  I work in a building called Deschutes.  It is less rippled than the river.

      "Deschutes is a single story building with five classrooms on one side and eight offices, two bathrooms and a sitting space on the other. . . At each end of the hall are double doors, sort of like an air lock.  (In fact, I heard it called the airlock at one point and laughed, though the speaker was being serious, because my head was filled with images from 2001.)  Between the two doors at either end of the hall there is an office. . . . My office has many wall shelves, a large oak desk, a big oaken wild west lawyer type of chair, a chair with a green vinyl seat and wooden arms for visitors to sit in and a wooden coat rack.  It's real nice and I plan to enjoy it, no matter who I kicked out to get it.  From my window I look down (remember, the college is built on the side of a hill) on a picnic table, through several trees, and across the valley to the volcanic tag ends of the Cascades.

     "Life could be worse.  Overall, the campus does look like a community college, not a college.  No ivy wrapped pillars here, or pseudo Greek columns.  The college got its money for buildings from the school district in the mid-sixties and it shows.

Pinckney Center floor plans

      "One of the more interesting buildings is the Pinckney Center for the Arts.  This houses the ceramic and painting studios and the little theatre (where L- the woman who put me up this summer, is the drama department).   The Pinckney is interesting, I think, for two reasons.  First, for its theatre, which is really a big room, not unlike a ballroom with a high ceiling, in which a rolling stand of seats has been placed.  Second, because it was named after Orde Pinckney, the gentleman I am sort of replacing, though I think that it's probably not possible to even imagine replacing this monument.

      "Orde . . . wears string ties with bars of gemstone at the top.  He is an Orator.  He speaks in bell-like pear shaped (okay, okay, mixing of oral and aural metaphors -- so sue me) tones and lectures exquisitely -- I have heard him twice now, because I hold office hours at the same time as his speech class.  He has also taught American government and history.  But his style and mine are, well, think of comparing Helen Hayes and Laurie Anderson, or Lillian Gish and Sandra Bernhard.  (I know, I know.  Those analogies need not be scanned too closely.)He has a beautiful voice, smiles at them, has great stories -- but he is not interactive, not improvisational.  I only hope that I become as fine at my style as he has at his."

LY #51 Teaching in a small town

When I moved to Bend, it's population was around 20,000 people.  According to the Bend Area General Plan, written in 2005, the 1990 Census for Bend counted 20,469 people within the city limits.  In my Bendnotes 3 written in October, 1988, I wrote about what it meant to be a college teacher in this small town.

I was writing about a colleague who was having trouble doing research on campus because she couldn't hide the identities of the people about whom she was writing.

       "Why can't [she] disguise her subjects?  Cause this place is so f***ing small, that's why.  You figure it out.  I'm the speech department, for Burke's sake!  At least, the only full time faculty.
       "At least three students have mentioned that they have seen me 'running' around town.  I have to assure them that I 'jog' not run.  A woman faculty member told me a story about having an affair with a married man (and, I mean, is it my face which tells people they should tell me their life stories as soon as we sit down for a cup of coffee?  Or is it the cowl and rosary?).  She and he met only at her place until they finally decided to risk meeting each other during the day at a coffee shop out in the big-ugly mall (the Mountain View Mall -- home of GI Joe's and K-Mart).  Faculty doesn't go there.  So, he is there and she walks in.  As soon as she walks in the owner of the joint comes out from behind the cash register and says, 'Hello Professor ______'  *  and shakes her hand.  When she sits down, she is waited on by one of her students.
       "On Saturday, when Will was in town, he and I went down to Penney's (BIG SALE) where I saw one of my older students and her son, a young fellow who, she reported to me yesterday, was amazed that she had a teacher younger than her and that her teacher had a TAIL.**
       "Well, you can imagine!"


* Yes, the original letter has that blank space.
** My first four years at COCC I wore my hair short with a rat tail.

As everyone knows, Bend grew rapidly during the 1990s.  By 2000, the city was up 31,560 in population, which, according to the Bend General Plan was more than three times the statewide average.  According to the United States Census Bureau, in 2010 the population of Bend was 79,109.

LY #50 Type Four

Creating characters with the Enneagram.  Necessary Writers.

 

 

So this morning I went to an Enneagram discussion group held at Dudley's Bookshop Cafe and led by Kathleen Paterno of Enneagram Discovery.  Once again, Enneagram isn't science, though Paterno said something about "research is being done."  So I take all the Enneagram material cum grano salis.  When I mentioned, during the discussion, that it was philosophy and not science one of the fours brought in as examples poo-pooed my concern with science saying that what one learned about oneself was real and true.

There were three Type Four women there as examples for the other attendees.  They talked a lot about their experiences and seemed proud of their big emotions and intensity.  As I listened I thought, "Really, is that me?"  It was not a completely pleasant thought.

As a teacher, I also thought about how I might have run the session a bit more tightly than Paterno did, redirecting conversations that went off case, but then it wasn't my class.

Paterno handed out a one-page overview of Type Four and there is so of this personality type that rings true for me.  It was interesting this morning to hear about many qualities of thinking and behaving that I've sometimes assumed were signs of mental illness simply listed as aspects of personality.  I'll share with you some of what I found most telling on the handout from Enneagram Discovery, LLC (with much borrowed from Don Riso and Russ Hudson of the Enneagram Institute).

"Common Childhood Scenario -- They were not particularly cose to their parents, often feeling misunderstood or even rejected.  Having a solitary childhood, they enjoyed escaping into a world of make believe.  They somehow got the message that 'It's not okay to be too functional or too happy.'"

Certainly true for me.  I pretty much divorced myself emotionally from my parents around 6th grade.

"Relationships - At their best they are empathetic, supportive, gentle, playful, passionate and witty.  They are self-revealing and bond easily.  At their worst they are self-absorbed, jealous, emotionally needy, moody and overly critical.  Feeling misunderstood causes them to isolate. "

While I like to think that I am as described when at my "best," I know that I am as described at my worst.

The dominant emotion of Type Fours is shame:  "they experience an unconscious envy that others feel okay or happy with their lives.  Is there something wrong with me?"

Although 27 years of instructing interpersonal communication has taught me that almost no one has an ordinary life, I still can get electrical jolts of this envy at unexpected times.  (Like sometimes when I'm on Facebook.)  And no matter how much work I do on myself I have yet to shake the "Is there something wrong with me" question. 

Is there anything more to the Ennegram than to Astrology?  There are some scientific types who are seeking and writing about the links between the Enneagram and Neuroscience.  Dr. David Daniels has an essay linking the Enneagram to the Triune Brain and Attachment Theory.

I still don't have enough of what I would consider evidence to say that the Enneagram is more than a high class example of the Barnum Effect.  And yet....I've sometimes been asked why I perform behaviors that make me stand out and at least now I have an excuse....I mean a reason.  I can say, "Well, I'm a Type Four.  We're just like that."

Or I can blame it on the bossa nova, the dance of love.

LY #49 Late and Dark

How autumn feels.

It's Tuesday morning.  I took most of yesterday, Monday, off.   This is the post I would have written.

Dark, dark, dark.


For the past, hmmm (mumble mumble) years I've been on antidepressants by this time of the fall .  This year I'm making an experiment and trying to go without.  Today was a challenging day as it was overcast all day and then night dropped like a rock before 5:30.

Is the depression biological or a response to self-caused stresses in the day to day?  That's the question I've been asking about my experience this year.  I don't really know because the dark times also coincide with my work schedule as a teacher and the first major depression I experienced in 1978 had a lot to do with my life and lifestyle of the time.  I also know that some of the depression has to do with logical fallacies (what folks in the substance abuse recovery programs call "stinkin' thinkin'").  Just last week in the online interpersonal class we were looking at these illogical thoughts: the fallacies of helplessness, shoulds, perfectionism, and others that focus on the idea that the world and the humans in it should be held to impossible standards and that if life doesn't live up to the standards one sets for it than one should be upset.

Albert Ellis from Institute Website

These ideas, of course, are from the work of Albert Ellis and his Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy.  There's a pretty good depression workbook on the Albert Ellis Institue Website. 

Will I be able to get through the winter without sertraline?  

LY #48 Last Day Last Bend Bootcamp

Another working Sunday.  I've just finished writing a new quiz for my online sections of interpersonal communication.  Did you know that even though my quizzes are open book and objective, people students will still flunk them?

Today was also the last day of my last Bend Public Speaking Bootcamp.  The class listened to 15 persuasive speeches.  Well, 16 if you count Dr. Bouknight's 10 a.m. promotion of Spring Quarter in London.  We got out early because the class decided to take a short lunch break and push through.  That's one of the benefits of the Bootcamp.  Our focus in on learning and performing the skills.

This morning one student said, "We love you Huck, but we really hate the class."  I turned her words on her at the end of class when I said, "Well, I love you guys but we're finished I'm ready to go home so get outa here!"

I remember that long ago I had a student complain about me to the dean of instruction (or was he Vice President of instruction at that time?)  She said that I had been biased against her in an interpersonal communication class because she had made a similar remark in a previous quarter's public speaking class as the one I heard today.  In other words, she'd said that even though she passed the class she still hated public speaking.  I'd taken that a bit personally.  I hadn't thought that I'd shown her any rudeness in the class the following quarter but perhaps I did.  The course was around the time that I defended my dissertation and I know that I got the lowest teacher evaluations of my career that quarter.  I imagine that in my stress my immediacy behaviors and unconscious nonverbal displays of anxiety were bristling.  I wound up in a long telephone conversation in which at first I defended my presenting self and then, finally, apologized and cried.  Yes, tears, snuffling, sad voice and all.  I was really sorry.  I hadn't meant to hurt anyone's feelings but I had.

Nowadays, I apologize much more quickly.  It saves time.  And it was one of the most important skills I had as a department chair.  I made so many mistakes in that job that I probably expressed a good apology every couple of weeks.

LY #47: Grit

Is it my job to teach resilience now?

For the first time ever I had a student walk out of the weekend class on a second Saturday morning after turning in the outline for his informative speech.  He didn't give the speech.  He refused on Friday night to perform an impromptu.  In the first hour, as other students were practicing their speeches as they have the opportunity to do in the Public Speaking Bootcamp (I capture every classroom of the building in which I teach and people get into groups to do run throughs), he came to my office, asked if he would get an "F" if he dropped now.  I told him he would receive a "W" and that I could drop him through the school's Bobcat Web.   A moment later, realizing I'd forgotten to tell him that he had to take the final step, I stepped outside and yelled to him as he walked down the hill.

He then said that he just had too much anxiety.  This from a sturdy young man.  So I advised him to take interpersonal or small groups for his required oral communication course.

But he wasn't the first to drop in this final week before the second weekend.  I had three other people drop during the week.  People who had actually turned in their sources AND their draft outlines.

Are people no longer learning how to power through their fears?  We spent quite a bit of time talking about anxiety in our first weekend three weeks ago and they all did so well on their evocative speeches the first Sunday that I'm just surprised at these drops. 

LY #46 What I'll be doing next year at this time...

National Novel Writing Month

Would that I could begin this post with the words, "It was a dark and stormy night the day that NaNoWriMo began!"  Sadly, it's a bright, crisp fall evening of no particular merit or demerit.  But it's still the first day of National Novel Writing Month. 

What, you've never heard of NaNoWriMo?  Then you're obviously not one of the 242,373 people who have signed up this year on the NaNoWriMo website.

I've started twice.  I have the t-shirts to prove it!  But, slacker that I am, I haven't completed even once.  Last year, however, I did hit 50 out of the required 80 thousand words, all without an outline.  I began with a single image.  That image led to characters who started interacting with each other in ways unplanned by their "creator."  Those interactions led to situations and plot twists.  Sadly, however, life kept making it's demands, forcing me out of the world of the story.  It's challenging to be in a world where characters are behaving badly and acting out emotionally and then having to get back to the calm and courteous practice of assessing student outcomes.

Next year, however, I'll be able to plant my butt in a chair and pound away at these non-clacking keys until I crank out a the complete book.

In the meantime, I want to get a draft of last year's book completed by the time winter quarter starts so that I can share it with some perspicacious readers  while it still has some saliency.  It's a bit time-bound because it has references to some very local ongoing events.  This is not to say that it couldn't be enjoyed by anyone with an interest in academic politics and flesh-eating demons.  It's an academic satire + horror + fantasy + super-hero novella with an ending that cries out for serious CGI.  (It would even make a groovy graphic novel but I am not an artist of that sort.)  It's probably unsalable trash but, as Touchstone says in As You Like It, "It's an ill-favoured thing, sir, but mine own"