34 Managing Defensiveness

When I teach the conflict management skills in my interpersonal communication classes, my students often say to me, "I understand the concepts but it's hard to think that way in the moment."

How well I know. 

I was tested this afternoon and found myself wanting.  A colleague attacked my presenting self and instead of responding calmly I bristled and became defensive in a way that still annoys me.  So I'll write about it!

What happened?  I'll review the event from the best of my memory and use material from the 13th Edition of Looking Out, Looking In (Ronald Adler and Russell Proctor II, 2010) to analyze it.

This colleague asked me if I was going to here Mindy Williams, a new Humanities instructor, lead a
discussion called, "Can We Talk About White Privilege?  Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack."  I said that I was indeed white and privileged and knew quite a bit about the issue.  I didn't say that I've been to a few presentations about this issue in the past and that one of the fundamental aspects of my doctoral dissertation was an interrogation of the construction of white identity in mid-Century America.  In fact, I learned a ton about white privilege when I was 19 years old and got busted for carrying pot onto a plane and did not do any jail time.  I knew then that I owed my freedom to my skin color and social class. I also know that we are not in a post-racial society.  I know this because I can read and think and do so.

Oh....see how much I wrote there?  Can you feel the irritation?  That irritation is part of the emotional miasma that swirls through most liberally raised members of the 15% when confronted with issues of race.  There is a certain amount of shame in knowing that, no matter how clean my own hands are, much of what I have been blessed with is mine through the fluke of being born white and middle class.  Also, there's always the issue of genocide in the family history of almost any white person in America.

Of course, a cursory glance at history tells us that there is no truly innocent society.  We all arise from seas of blood.  I say that not as a denial of my own privilege but to put it in millenia of context.

But I didn't say all those particular things.  I just said that I was familiar with the topic of white privilege. 

Then my colleague said, "Don't you want to give support to a younger colleague?" 

According to Adler and Proctor, this is a "counterfeit question."  'Questions that trap the speaker.  When your friend says, "You didn't like that movie, did you?", you're being backed into a corner.  It's clear that your friend disapproves, so the question leaves you with two choices:  You can disagree and defend your position, or you can devalue your reaction by lying or equivocating -- "I guess it wasn't perfect."  Consider how much easier it would be to respond to the sincere question, "What did you think of the movie?"' (p. 249).  Last week we read the chapter on listening and this week I'm actually calling my students to have them perform active listening skills, so this kind of question was on my mind. 

So the question I was asked was actually telling me, "If you don't come to this event with me, you will be a bad person because you won't be supporting your younger colleague."

So, on top of emotions that were already stirred up by the issue of race and privilege (and my gilt over the latter) I felt like my presenting self was under attack:  "when others confront us with face-threatening acts -- messages that seem to challenge the image we want to project -- we are likely to resist their messages."  (p. 348)  I responded first through my usual method --  avoiding responding to the threat.  So I just said, "Anyway, I need to go to my office hours." 

So my colleague said, "I'm skipping my office hours to go.  Come on."

For some reason I then said, "Well, when I was here during my first five years I put on many events and no one came."  I'm not sure why I said that.  But my colleague was sure, saying that I was the last person in the world to be suspected of being motivated by spite.

I was being called spiteful.  This person had not in the past, at least in my perception, been mean to me so I felt confused and hurt.  And I also wondered if I was being spiteful.  As I think about it I really don't know what motivated me to talk about my unhappy past.  Was it that I meant, "I suffered so new people should suffer"?  Am I spiteful?  Or was I trying a shift response, was I trying to get her to not be mean to me by saying, "Look, I suffered when I was new.  It's part of what happens when you're new.  So be nice to me now."  Or maybe I was intending to say, "Look, I paid my dues."

Instead, my colleague said to someone else, "Kake isn't going to the event because she already knows everything about white privilege."  The tone of voice with which this was said was sarcastic.  This was another face-threatening communication as it implied that I really didn't know what I was claiming that I knew.

At that point I started saying that I was feeling shame and guilt.   Now those are two different emotions.  Guilt is reserved for things we've done which require reparation.  Guilt can be redeemed.  Shame is a feeling about one's wrongness as a person.  Was I feeling guilt?  No.  If I didn't go to my office hours and get promised work accomplished for my students I would feel guilt.  But I did feel shame.  I felt like I was a bad person or that I was being called a bad person and that even if it was the other person's perception that I was a bad person I actually was a bad person because I was failing to respond appropriately to someone calling me one.  (Sounds like one of R.D. Laing's knots, doesn't it?)

I was also angry.  One of the reason I said I was feeling shame was that I wanted to attack back.  I thought that saying I felt shame would evoke some sense in my colleague that what she had said had "made me" feel bad.

And see?  I'm using no-no words to talk about emotions now!  My colleague didn't "make me" have any emotion at all.  Every fluttering bit of electricity whipping neurotransmitters (mostly cortisol) around my brain was based on my own interpretation of what was said and how it was said.  I could have interpreted her words as being an attempt to use humor to persuade an old woman (me) to move out of her comfort zone and go to a presentation she might enjoy.

I keep wondering what I "should" have said and if it would have made a difference?  I could have sought more information, as Adler and Proctor (and I) advise when confronted with criticism (p. 362)  "Why do you think I said that out of spite?"  Or, I could have been open about the actual emotions I was experiencing and owned my confusion and hurt:  "I feel sad when I perceive your word choice as telling me I'm a bad person for making the personal work choices that I do."

Why has this incident annoyed me so much that I felt compelled to blog about it?  Because I also fall victim to the fallacies of approval and perfection.  My textbook says about the latter, "People who accept the fallacy of perfection believe that a worthwhile communicator should be able to handle every situation with complete confidence and skill." (p. 145)  I know that it's not necessary for me to have the approval of others in any but a work-life sense.  And I also know that perfection is not achievable in our human realm.  And yet, I will still sometimes feel ashamed if I'm not the "perfect" communicator who is able to get everyone to like her.

So I guess I'll continue shelling out the $20 co-pay to my therapist. 

35 "I meant to do that"

I forget who the comic was who told the story of the cat who slid across a waxed kitchen floor into a refrigerator, got up, licked a paw to clean his ear, and sent the nonverbal meowsage, "I meant to do that."

Perceived intentionality is often the key to being thought competent and in control.  Sometimes communicators will use prevarications and outright untruths in order to maintain their audience's impression of their capability.  That ear didn't need to be licked right then.

I've often had to make the choice between presenting myself honestly as a goofball and managing my image so that it shines in a different light.  Today, par exemple.

This afternoon I realized that I had quite unintentionally strayed from the syllabus in my small group communication class.  I had changed my schedule last spring from the way that I'd taught the course for several years before.  Instead of having four chapters before the midterm and six chapters after, I scheduled five chapters before and five after.  Then this spring I let last spring's schedule roll over to without rechecking it.  So last week I should have covered two chapters but instead just covered one. 

I was clear with them that the midterm would just cover four chapters so I didn't feel like anyone's grade was hurt by my error.  But what was I going to say about it tonight?  "Oh, I'm sorry, I effed up and didn't read my schedule closely because . . . "  fill in self-justifying remark having to do with tax season or self-deprecating remark about my middle-aged spaciness.

Instead, I misrepresented the facts to put myself in a better light.  I apologized for not clarifying the change in the schedule and told them that I had thought that it would be better to cover two chapters next week rather than last week, now that their first paper, presentation, and midterm are over and they have more time. 

Was this ethical?  No one was hurt by the misrepresentation except maybe those people who maintain a ridiculously high opinion of college professors.  They may continue to hold that high opinion when an honest confession of my forgetfulness might have put them wise -- ripped the fuchsia-tinted lenses from their eyes.

I see my white lie as a communication choice like that of the cat who covers his mistake by acting cool and casual.  I don't always choose the cover-up.  In fact, in these later years, I am more likely to admit my error.  But for some reason I felt more feline today -- more interested in maintaining those few shreds of dignity I have remaining.

36 Trouble

I think the worst diagnosis I ever got from a trained professional was given to my by the shrink at the University of Utah student health center, way back in the mid-80s.  Do I know this because I looked up the descriptors of the diagnosis in the DSM-IV?  Heck no!  I know because I was catching up with This American Life on podcast and heard a story of someone who had a real, honest, true diagnosis of the condition.

In a story that aired on March 14, 2014, John Gravois tells the story of Giulietta Carrelli, a woman whose schizoaffective disorder kept exploding her life until she finally found people who guided her into starting a small business.   It's an amazing story.  You can find the transcript here or listen to it  here.  Carrelli's coffee shop, Trouble Coffee, is in the Sunset District of San Francisco.  It's the place where the foodie toast fad, with its $3 slices, began. 

When I listened to the story, I realized how wrong that Utah shrink had been about me.  I've never heard voices.  I've never gotten lost in space.  His idea that I had a schizoaffective disorder was based on one interview with me during which I continually articulated my self-monitoring observations of my own rhetorical behaviors.  So he was probably hearing word-salad while I was just being a communication graduate student.  I suppose he added in the results of my MMPI -- he told me that the "anger" measurement was very high.  Anyway, that shrink's recommendation was that I drop out of graduate school because it would only make my symptoms worse.

But that wasn't my problem.  I'm not sure what my "problem" is.  I've been diagnosed as depressed but lately I haven't been feeling the old anhedonia like I used to.

But proof that the Utah shrink was an idiot wasn't the only thing I loved about this story.   What I most appreciated was the importance the story gave to "weak ties."  Weak ties are superficial social relationships, relationships with people with whom we are not deeply intimate.  Both Carelli's survival and success are based on "weak ties."  In the Pacific Standard article on which the radio story is based, Gravois writes,

"Most of us dedicate the bulk of our attention to a handful of relationships: with a significant other, children, parents, a few close friends. Social scientists call these “strong ties.” But Carrelli can’t rely on such a small set of intimates. Strong ties have a history of failing her, of buckling under the weight of her illness. So she has adapted by forming as many relationships—as many weak ties—as she possibly can. And webs of weak ties are what allow ideas to spread."

She makes those weak ties by talking with the people in her coffee shop, taking the same route to work every day, wearing the same outfit so that people will recognize her, and talking briefly with folks on the street.  She needs to know that if she gets lost she can ask someone the way and people will know and recognize her.

This is a simple yet wonderful survival strategy.  Hearing about it helps me to think through my future.  I also have a history of not doing very well with strong ties.  For whatever reasons (nature or nurture -- my folks' messy DNA or their training method of intermittent reinforcement) I have tended to sail through realms of the imaginary when I get into deeply intimate relationships.  So, though I've spent much of my life seeking strong ties, they have generally not been the type that held me up and kept me safe.  Instead, it's been the weak ties I've experienced, my workplace relationships, my students,  that have been of great importance, keeping me steady and located in a real place in a real time.

The greatest challenge of retirement will be creating a new system of "weak ties" so I don't go floating, balloon like, into the spaces of my mind.

Here is great advice from Carrelli's Trouble Coffee and Coconut Club website:

STAY TRUE TO YOUR HOUSE. FABRICATE  CONSCIOUSNESS. THE TRUTH IS YOU. THIS IS A SIMPLE INVITATION TO PARTICIPATE. GET IN TROUBLE. MOVEMENT iS A COLLECTIVE ART THAT RELIES ON PARTICIPAPANTS. BUILD YOUR OWN DAMN HOUSE. WE WILL HELP. LEAD WITH WHAT YOU KNOW. MAINTAIN GUTS AND HONOR. BE GRACEFUL. LIVE NOW. COMPOSE. SHED THE LIGHT ON HOW THE MIND  WORKS. CONSTRUCT YOUR PERCEPTIONS. JOIN US IN OUR DANCE. SONGS WORK."

37 Last Public Speaking Lectures

Photo by Ian Smyth of North Campus Construction

I taught my first public speaking class in fall, 1983, at Idaho State University.  Yesterday I gave my last lectures on using reasoning and appealing to emotions in a persuasive speech to four students who needed to miss class last Sunday because it was Easter.   I watched and assessed their evocative speeches and gave my lectures on a volunteer basis, hoping to make up for the idiocy of the machinery that scheduled me.  As one student said, "they should have real people doing the scheduling instead of robots."  Yes, indeed.  Banner isn't a robot but I completely agreed with her.

I wanted to go across the street, get on a plane, and fly somewhere rather than come back home and face the piles of grading that are part of the midterm experience.  But then ever since I started teaching out at Redmond, that's been one of my fantasies.  Back when I began it was easy to walk across the school's scrub-filled back lot and airport parking area to get to the terminal.  It's probably still simple but the walls around the parking and the current college construction make the escape seem more challenging.

The longing to escape has always been part of my self-management toolkit.  I've never felt at home in the dry and dusty high desert.  But then, as I learned a long time ago from my semester long individual study of Being and Time, the experience of being "not-at-home" in the world - umheimlichkeit - is just a part of our human experience.

38 Working Days Left: Truth and Power

I entered the doctoral program at Utah already studied in Foucauldian analysis and an undergirding of scepticism about the nature of the academy.  While at Utah I'd sometimes scribble bits of Elvis Costello pop on the blackboard in the "mail room:"  "I wanta bite the hand that feeds me, I wanta bite that hand so badly, I wanta make them wish they'd never seen me!"

My attitude was enhanced by my conversations with Professor Fox who, even though he was a star in the world of research and teaching had many caustic things to say about the institution for which he labored so constantly.  He encouraged me in my critical analysis of the naturalized practices we both inhabited.

Because of Foucault and Fox and others I came to the understanding that if I didn't owe truth to power, neither did anyone else.  That includes my students.  To the extent that I have full economic power in the classroom, they have no duty to be honest with that power.  It is only when classroom power is shared through clear, fair grading policies and transparent guidelines on redress of grievances that it is appropriate to expect honesty from students. 

Because I know that various surveys have shown that between 50 - 80 percent of American college students have admitted to cheating, I have various rules and systems in place to discourage that behavior.  I sometimes even say that I felt "sad" when I was betrayed by some students I liked a few years ago.  But I'm not, really.  My expression of personal concern is a rhetoric to encourage commitment to standards of academic honesty by making any betrayal seem like a personal affront to a teacher who is trying so hard to help everyone get a good grade in the class.  But really, my ego isn't that involved. 

I believe that teachers, like Arjuna, should be passionately committed to the practice but not to the identity they construct while engaged in the practice.

39 Changing Perception of Betrayal

For years I've been telling people that two members of my graduate committee betrayed me in their letters of recommendation.  But last week I pulled those letters out of a manilla file folder titled "Absolutely Illegal Information" and discovered that my perception of them has changed. My work as a faculstrator and a member of several hiring committees helps me to see these letters in a new way.

But first I should say something about the title of the file where I've kept these letters.  It has to do with the fact that when I asked the University of Utah placement service to create a packet for me, I signed a form agreeing that the letters would be confidential.  So why do I have copies?  Well, during my 1988 job search I kept getting these form letter rejections.   My running buddy, Professor Fox, asked me one day how the search was going and I told him about the regular rebuffs.  He suggested that I should violate my agreement with the placement service and have my letters sent to a friend.  He said that he'd known someone who had found out that he'd been screwed over by the letter writers.  When I questioned him about the ethics of violating my agreement, he made his usual argument that the system was rigged and that when one is a graduate student in a powerless situation it's not a violation of ethics to find out what stumbling blocks have been put in one's way by those who have far more power in the situation.  I, of course, accepted his way of seeing the situation.  We shared the vision that "one doesn't owe truth to power."

So I had the packet sent to a friend and I read the letters.  At the time I read them, I perceived certain comments as left handed compliments that were shaded to present me as someone who would not actually be a good scholar/researcher.  But now I see them as accurate assessments of my goals, interests, and skills.

For example:  "First of all, Karen Huck is a committed and highly-motivated teacher and citizen.  I say this not to slight her intellectual capabilities and accomplishments -- which are fine -- but because I have rarely seen a graduate student (or colleague) so devoted to the possibilities and responsibilities of public education.  I had prior to her written and oral qualifying exams thought of her as a critic/rhetorician whose interest in advanced theory and in what is often described as nontraditional subject matter made her a challenging 'young turk.'  What is now apparent to me, however, is that her interest in such work, while not superficial, is actually in the service of traditional ideas toward the profession."  

I've highlighted the sections that led my younger self to feel as though my qualifications were being undercut.

This same writer went on to mention my "improved writing style" he said that I seem to be growing out of "what I consider her only area in need of improvement, which is a tendency to think in dualistic terms and thus neglect to consider the qualifications and refinements present in any body of material."

Well, this was honest.  Yet it still bugged me when I read it.

The other male letter writer said, "However, research is not her strongest attribute or interest."  And really, for 25 years that's all I remembered about his letter.  As I reread the letters last week I noticed that the paragraph above that sentence ended with this sentence:  "Karen is a bright and creative thinker who will be successful and a publishing scholar."   And in the paragraph that followed his denigration of my research abilities he wrote, "Most of all she is a dedicated teacher.  She has been successful in our most demanding courses, those with the greatest student anxiety because they are screening courses for admission to the major.  She receives strong student ratings even though she sets high standards."  He also mentions that I have provided lots of service to the department and "She is always one of the first to volunteer. . . . She deserves serious consideration, particularly in an institution with a strong commitment to teaching."

Of course, I also have a new view of the two letters I considered highly positive, both by female faculty.  I now see that one of them ends with a sentence that at this point in time seems to be the sort of thing that could be said about any communication teacher -- but with fancy words.  She recommends me "not as the paradigm of the academic ideal, but as an indicator of a new kind of communication professional:  one who substantiates her restless interest in social influence and change with an unbending commitment to understanding the power of discourse."  This means that I care about persuasion because I'm committed to caring about persuasion.  Sigh.

It was fitting that I reread these letters last week when my online interpersonal communication class was covering the concept of perception.  Perception is variable and subject to influence from our past and present experiences.  When I first read those letters I was looking for betrayal and I found it.  Now I'm looking through the eyes of two ad a half decades of being a teacher, community members, and occasional researcher and seeing that the writers weren't trying to hurt me but help me.

(The illustration at the top of the page is the world famous "duck-rabbit.")

40 Rumors

Nothing like rumors to get the old blood flowing.  Yesterday I heard a rumor about administrators not trusting faculty and seeking to have hours tracked so I tried to track down the reality.  Herewith is a series of emails.  Please note that my inquiry email contains the words, "I am planning to blog about this rumor.

I sent this email to three members of the Technology Advisory Committee.

Hi – I just heard a crazy rumor and wanted to check it out with you.

I heard that the COCC IT Advisory Committee is recommending purchasing or has purchased some worker monitoring tools to be placed on computers to determine how much work people are actually doing at COCC. 

This sounds like one of those wacky “Big Brother is watching” paranoid fantasies that seem to erupt in institutions with low morale so I’m thinking that it’s just a goofy rumor BUT I wanted to check it out. 

Is there any truth to the rumor that faculty and staff will soon have their work stations monitored by the keystroke and/or that classrooms will have CCTV to make sure that teachers are teaching?  And what about the ankle bracelets and time-clocks?

Please let me know as I’m planning to blog about this rumor. 

Thanks

I got back the following responses:

From Bob Reynolds:  'Nope.'

From Tina Hovenkamp:  'Kake, I missed the TAC meeting this past Monday, but this rumor sounds too strange to be true...  Will the college pay by the keystoke, too?   Boy, that could get the college bankrupt quickly considering the amount of work we all  seem to be putting in even when away from "work."'

 The response I got from Dan Cecchini was a bit more forthcoming:

Hi Karen,

Don’t know of any purchases or planned purchases of worker monitoring tools coming through or out of TAC.

During the TAC meeting the CFO’s office did raise an item about HR/ Payroll’s need for a way to get a detailed accounting of hours worked by employees at the college for compliance with the ACA. The point was raised about how faculty work hours are to be determined and recorded. This may be driven by the feds requiring colleges to keep a record of actual hours worked, but I’m not an expert on the ACA.

We have not had anything about CCTV come through TAC and ITS is certainly not driving any such initiative. If there are questions about CCTV system, I would think the logical place would be to ask the security office if they have any plans for such systems.

Can’t even guess about ankle bracelets and time clocks, but if you think they have value, please bring it forward to the college. Just kidding. J

At first I couldn't figure out what ACA meant and then he told me it was the Affordable Care Act.  So I asked  him for further information:  'Dan -- I was thinking about this and comparing it to the rumor I heard and it sounds like the concern is not so much that faculty aren't working hard enough (that was part of the paranoid craziness in the rumor) but that part timers who aren't being covered by health insurance aren't being overworked.  So the "tracking" however it's done would actually be to the benefit of both the college (to be sure it's in line with the law) and the part time people.  Is my understanding correct?'

He replied, 'I think that staying in line with the law is a big concern from COCC's perspective. My current understanding is that if we are out of compliance with the ACA by not addressing coverage for eligible employees adequately (even one), the fines that have to be covered are substantial for the institution. Eligibility determination is not simple for non-FT employees. Again, I'm not to guru on this topic, but that is my understanding.' 

So, the rumor that I first hear that seemed to be focused on a fear of administrators monitoring faculty hours is actually related to the school's fear of running afoul of the federal government.  If a part time employee is actually working full time and not getting health care coverage, the school faces stiff penalties.  So the question is, how to articulate and measure the differences between full time and part time employees.  According to the IRS website covering Questions and Answers on Employer Shared Responsibility Provisions Under the Affordable Care Act:

"An employer identifies its full-time employees based on each employee’s hours of service. For purposes of the Employer Shared Responsibility provisions, an employee is a full-time employee for a calendar month if he or she averages at least 30 hours of service per week. Under the final regulations, for purposes of determining full-time employee status, 130 hours of service in a calendar month is treated as the monthly equivalent of at least 30 hours of service per week." 

So it really is the feds requiring the school to measure the hours of service.  Unless, of course, the college could provide health care for all.  But it's important to remember that the pie isn't infinite.  

And yet the Board let OSU out of their contract for that darn building! 

41 COCC Teaching Support

Andria

Over the past few years support for new teachers has grown at COCC.  Today Stacey Donohue posted a link in our "Commlines" bulletin board to a blog post by Dr. Andria Woodell.  Andria writes about her work with Philip Zimbardo's Heroic Imagination Project.  She explains the project thusly:  "The main premise is if social psychologists can educate people about topicssuch as apathetic bystanders, obedience and conformity or situationalblindness, then individuals will be more aware of these circumstances and stand against them when necessary.  "

So the students in the HIP enter into teaching teams.  Over the past couple of years I've been among the observers that these students practice in front of before going off into the world to do their presentations to other audiences.  One peculiar aspect of these practice sessions is that Andria wants us practice audience members to be kinda wicked -- rude, looking at cell phones, arguing with the speakers, etc.  It's very hard for me, after years of teaching public speaking, to not give positive nonverbal feedback (smiles and head nods) to student speakers.

In her post Andria says "The last two years, working with the HIP projects and the COPE club has ranked among some of the most rewarding moments in my career."  I enjoy hearing about teaching and mentoring experiences that bring such pleasure to a friend.  It reminded me of the great experiences I used to have with the Phi Theta Kappa students back in the early 90s when I advised the honor society.

This blog post was part of a new site called The Teaching Commons.  I think this is an absolutely wonderful addition to college teaching support.   When I started out at COCC, learning new methods for teaching was a matter of visiting other people's classes or having special departmental meetings where people discussed what was working for them in the classroom.  Often I was too scared to ask for help because I didn't want to look incompetent or weak.  Thus it's great to see all that the college offers now in the way of support for teaching.

When I started teaching at Idaho State, I was just thrown into a classroom with the assumption, I suppose, that I would swim or sink.  It was pretty much the same at the University of Utah.  Most research institutions don't offer a lot of training in teaching for their graduate students and of course it's the undergraduates who suffer.  The Chronicle of Higher Ed. reported on a recent study by Wabash College’s Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts which claimed that many first year students report that they rarely experienced clear and organized teaching.  Fortunately, however, my favorite professional organization, WSCA, always had superb yearly panels on Great Ideas for Teaching Speech.

I also spent quite a lot of my early years professional improvement plan money on teacher training, including a chunk on a week-long course from Sivasailam "Thiagi" Thiagarajan on using games in the classroom.

I've heard that there have been some wonderful campus wide teaching academies but since I'm short timer saying goodbye to the profession, I have not attended.

42 More Working Days Left - Old Papers

Last week I was in the basement looking for financial paperwork more than six years old -- shreddable paperwork.  Among the boxes of old checks I also found two boxes of notecards covered with references to books and articles.  I used these boxes for my dissertation.  I don't know how they survived the first burn through I made 10 years ago when I through out all the photocopies of useful articles.

There were around 500 cards. Maybe a few more, maybe a few less.  I tossed them into the recycling. 

23 year old notecard.

43 Easter

I'm wasn't happy to be working on Easter today.

So I'll write about a nice note I got from my colleague Ken Mays on Thursday.  I'd loaned him my copy of Rob Bell's Love Wins.   Over many years at COCC, Ken and I have enjoyed the occasional conversation about Christian theology and the nature of having a relationship with Jesus.

The typed note he sent with the book said, "Thank you for letting me read the book, "Love Wins"  It is a wonderful conversation.  You highlighted much of the book -- but it was the starburst on page  153 -- pointing towrd Colossians 1.  The writings that follow "Jesus leaves the door way, way open " is something I get to enjoy.  I become a "witness" to what He is doing -- every day.

Our journey is just beginning as we look for who is precious, transformed, and loved."

Blessing arrives through these ordinary connections made of paper and ink.

44 Last Organization Tree

Graphic Communication

Today I taught basic speech organization for the last time.  This is always one of the toughest aspects of public speaking for me to teach because I literally cannot remember a time when I wasn't able to put smaller ideas inside of larger ideas.  I don't understand minds which are not able to organize ideas in hierarchical and outlined fashion.  Nevertheless, I do my best to get across the concept of how this basic form of organization works and turn to an old metaphor, the Organization Tree.

Tree of Science (1663)

I'm sure this idea arises from the teaching of rhetoric in the Middle Ages.  I seem to remember seeing an organizational tree form on the door of a colleague some years ago.  Today I asked Professor Google to find that illustration for me but, sadly, I couldn't track it down.  I did, however, discover that Manuel Lima, author of  Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns of Information,  has a new book out called The Book of Trees: Visualizing Branches of Knowledge, in which he provides a history of the use of the tree as a visual metaphor for various kinds of information.  Allison Meier provides a review of Lima's book at HyperAllegic complete with several illustrations (see one below).


So, I feel like my little tree is part of a vast and branching history of visual rhetoric.

Nevertheless, I'm not sorry to say good-bye to it.

45 Goodbye Andrew the Chaplain

Ten years ago the Bend Bulletin called me the "Anti-Cupid" after interviewing me about my love education courses.  A photographer visited my class on a day I had students competing with Valentines.  The photos show me acting like a game-show host.  One of the games I used to have students play was based on the work of Andreas Capellanus, Andrew the Chaplain, a medieval priest who wrote a book of "advice" called De Amore.  This is a core text in the study of "Courtly Love" as Andrew gave facetious advice (that he denies in Book Three) about how to love another adulterously.

I stopped doing the full-on competitions in class when I realized that in order to have the course labeled a "Western Culture and History" course, it needed to have more on the background of the philosophers.  Competitions take a lot of time to be run well.  So over the past ten years I've added more lecture material.  Nevertheless, I still enjoy student activities that allow some "fun."  Yesterday, after my introductory lecture about feudalism and the chivalric code, I had them play with their understanding of Andrew's advice by earning participation points doing the following activity.

 






"Ask Andrew"

•Pair up

•Imagine that Andrew is a contemporary advice columnist.  (Look especially at list, p. 67-8)

•Write a short letter asking for relationship advice.  Be prepared to read letter aloud with Andrew’s response

Once the letters were written, they needed to be performed.

•First, read the letter aloud so the class can hear it.

 •Before you give Andrew’s response, ask if anyone in class thinks they know the answer. 

•Call on anyone who raises their hand.  Let them answer. 

•Then, say either “yes” or “no” and give your planned response. 

I think my students did an  awesome job with the activity -- they had fun and saw the relationship with contemporary thinking.  AND, it was fun for me. 

46 For Skyhooks

The Arsenal

I thought I wasn't going to be able to write a poem for the Skyhooks meeting tonight, what with all the tax problems and school stress and I don't know what all.  But I sat down a half hour before the meeting and the muse whispered another poem about Venice into my waiting ear.  The metaphorical shipbuilding refers to an event in Venetian history in which a visiting ambassador was shown how the assembly-line work in the Arsenal could produce a grand, fierce, Venetian war galley in a single day, from boards to boat.

 LIKE YOU, VENICE

I once ruled my corner of the earth

showing ambassadors of larger powers

that I could build and furnish fighting ships

in less time than they took to write a letter home

and now I seek no greater later years than yours --

filled with tourists weak with admiration

at my ancient spirit, picturesque in ruin,

but still working, still living, still enjoying

every morsel even as I slip into the sea.

(c) Kake Huck 2014

47 All dead

Los Gatos High School

 

 Of course they are all dead now, the teachers I had crushes on in high school.

After writing yesterday's post I searched for my old Latin prof and found that he had accepted cancer's final invitation in 2012 at the age of 81.  The two other teachers I loved with my crazed high school passion, Mr. Ridgely and Mr. Glasner, are also gone.

Mr. Ridgely was an English teacher of no great good looks.  About fifty, balding and pot bellied, he was fierce, funny and demanding.  In a senior year English class he had us read and think about Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus.  One of our paper writing options was to compare it to the "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech from Macbeth.  I think about that now.  Why invite students into existentialist angst when they are seniors in high school?  Or did he think we were there already and that he was simply giving us tools for expressing our languors with greater creativity?  My crush on him developed in part because one day after class he showed me some of his own poetry.  I felt like he was interested in me personally.

I feel mildly embarrassed even now at how transparently needy I was then.  Perhaps that's why I've not been able to have close relationships with students.  It always seems so fraught.

That neediness also drove my crush on Mr. Glasner.  He directed the senior play and oversaw the drama department at Los Gatos High.  He was also well known as an actor in local theatrical circles.  I took an acting class from him and under his direction played Helena in the senior play, Midsummer Night's Dream.  He had a flamboyant personality at a time when such a vibrancy made what we now call "affectional preference" questionable.  He was married, of course, but with those he trusted his conversation carried hints to sparkle a Bay Area kid's suburban gaydar.  Heck, our senior year variety show contained numbers from Cabaret and Gypsy (including "You Gotta Get a Gimmick!")  And I certainly owe him for introducing me to grand opera.  One day as some of us theater kids were hanging out in the auditorium at lunch time, he played the drinking song and "Sempra Libera" from La Traviata.  I have loved opera ever since.

I met with all three men occasionally in the years after high school.  While I was happy to be gone from my parent's house, I missed my town and teachers for a long time after I left.  But I have seen none of them for over 30 years.  Mr. Ridgely died in 2011.  His obituary is still up at the Mercury News obit site.  As for Mr. Glasner -- I found only a "death record" for a Joseph Glasner in Sunnyvale in 2005 that was roughly the correct age.  But I was also told of rumors of his death back in 2011 at our 40th Reunion.

While googling these men, I made the sort of startling discovery once reserved for folks mucking about in library stacks.  I found out that I actually saw Mr. Glasner for the first time in 1963 when I was in fifth grade.  My folks took me to a performance of Comedy of Errors at the Lifeboat Theatre in Santa Clara.  A quick search for Joseph Glasner in Newspapers.com showed me story from the Santa Cruz Sentinel noting that he was the Antipholous in that production!  So I first saw him when I saw my first full Shakespeare play!

And it was Mr. Glasner who cursed me with the words, spoken one day outside of our auditorium, "I promise you, you were born to be a teacher!"

And now he is gone, and Ridgely is gone, and most lately Mr. Barrans is gone.  All, all are gone, these men who were so important to my younger self. 

Professor Google allowed me to find a copy of one of the saddest short films ever made which suits my mood just fine.  This is  "Valse Triste" from Allegro Non Troppo.

48 "Love is a kind of war . . .

. . . and no assignment for cowards." 

Thus is Ovid's opening of the Ars Amatoria translated in Solomon and Higgins The Philosophy of (Erotic) Love.

Today in philosophy I talked about Publius Ovidius Naso and the context of love and marriage in early imperial Rome.  We also covered St. Paul's writings on marriage in First Corinthians, both the harsh and the beautiful. By harsh I mean his idea that people should be like him, celibate, and avoid any kind of sex (1 Corinthians 7).  By beautiful I mean first, his insistence that husbands and wives are equal in the giving and taking of sex (1 Corinthians 7).  And second, of course, I mean 1 Corinthians 13 which I can't read aloud without crying.  I said as much and a young man volunteered to finish the reading after I started to tear up.

Reading Ovid again made me think about my high school second and third year Latin teacher, Mr. Barrans.  I had such a huge crush on him, though as a youngster I did not perceive him as being a particularly good teacher.  He let people chatter in class and didn't keep us focused and task oriented.  I much preferred the tougher profs in those days.  But for some reason I became wild about him.  I can remember sitting next to him at an all school event in the gym and allowing the edge of my sandal to just barely touch the "waist" of his heavy black Oxford.  I became so turned on that I thought my head would explode.

Did he know I had a crush on him?  I don't remember whether or not I ever actually told him before I left school.  I do remember he gave me special assignments in translation.  He had me translating Catullus my junior year.  Did he say, "These might interest you?"  And that year he also occasionally let me have brief access to his classroom immediately after school so I could make-out with my senior class boyfriend for a few minutes in a "private" space.  During my own senior year, there was no actual fourth year Latin but I do remember taking a stab at both Ovid sexy poems and Virgil's Georgics and then finally giving up Latin.

Was it "right" for my Latin teacher to have me translating poems such as the one below?  As an old teacher now, I would say, "no."  But then I'm the kind of person who doesn't have personal relationships with students. Perhaps he thought he was reaching out to a trouble youth in the only "language" she knew.

Catullus 5

Vivamus mea Lesbia, atque amemus,
rumoresque senum severiorum
omnes unius aestimemus assis!
soles occidere et redire possunt:
nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux,
nox est perpetua una dormienda.
da mi basia mille, deinde centum,
dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,
deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.
dein, cum milia multa fecerimus,
conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus,
aut ne quis malus inuidere possit,
cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.

49 The Acting President . . .

. . . will not be my candidate.  But I'm happy.   I think the Board chose well.  First, Middleton is staying on an extra month.  Then, according to a press release from Ron Paradis, "Second, Dr. Shirley Metcalf, COCC’s Dean of Extended Learning, will assume the position of Interim President on Sept. 15."  The KTVZ website published this story at 5:40 this afternoon.

Shirley (R), Jerry Shulz, Julia King Tamang (LERN)

I don't know Shirley well though I saw her occasionally last year when I taught a couple of times a week at the Redmond campus.   She always had a big smile for me and friendly greeting.  I enjoy her personableness and bright fashion style.  (I wonder if she'll choose to modify the colors once she's Acting-Prez?)

Bruce Abernethy is quoted in the KTVZ "article" as saying, “Dr. Metcalf has proven herself as a quality leader.  Both in terms of her experience prior to coming to COCC, in Hawaii and Washington, and in her roles here, we have seen her provide strong vision, leadership and caring for the comprehensive community college mission. She has experience in nearly all aspects of college leadership and that will be of great benefit as we continue to move forward.”

And I think having her at the helm will get people familiar with thinking of COCC with a woman as captain.   (Sorry the boat metaphor.)  I did a little googling before writing this column (because that's what I did with the original presidential candidates) and found only stories about meetings she's attended and other academic concerns.  Oh, sure, I got excited thinking for a moment that our Shirley had some other passion besides academic administration when I discovered  Shirley Metcalf, the fiber artist --  but it turns out she lives in the East.  (Where she is an Educational Assistant in the Fine Art Department of Northwestern Connecticut Community College, Winsted, Connecticut.)

The one discovery that seemed special was a "thank-you" in a doctoral dissertation completed in June, 2013 by one of COCC's  deans, Jennifer Newby.

50 The Cultural Insensitivity of Banner

Banner rules us, Banner runs us.   Banner doesn't care about human customs or concerns.  Hence, a stress point in my last quarter.

Banner (as managed by administrative assistants) does the scheduling.  The schedule made one year  rolls over into the next unless someone intervenes.  Combine that with the fact that my Public Speaking Bootcamp meets Friday, Saturday and Sunday and the fact that Easter is a moveable feast and you can guess the result.

I had some drops because we are meeting on Easter weekend.  But I also have some folks who wanted to keep the class but will miss all day Easter Sunday.  I've decided that I will gift the school three hours of my time and go in an extra day on Saturday, April 26, to give those students the Sunday April 20 lectures. 

As for myself,  I'm not all that comfortable working on Easter, not that I haven't done it before at home.  But even though I'm sanginolently cleansed, I'm also a Postmodern spiritual collagist.   So I'll be uncomfortable as I keep my contemporary commitment.

It's been an irritating week.

The schedule flapdoodle was combined with a miscommunication over the room.  I'd asked a Redmond admin back in January if I could have a room change for the class and she lost my email.  Then I reminded her again in February and she said our Admin could take care of it but our admin got the message a bit wrong so basically, I didn't have the room I wanted for the course until this afternoon.  Ack.  But, I got it. 

Add to this my non-school related irritation with St. Charles Health System double billing me (as they did my spouse AND a friend last year) so that I had to fax a copy of my cleared check to the Nebraska offices of their customer billing center and then make a follow up call. 

And add to this the fact of tax season, which reminds me of all the things I'm not happy paying for and also of all the people who don't pay their fair share (could I be talking about Caterpillar?)

But, at least I got my health, thanks to Loratadine and Fluticasone propionate

LY #144 Just this . . .