Happy Birthday to Me!

Woohoo!! I'm still a thirty-something (um, for a little longer, and that's the story I'm sticking to for as looooooooooooooooooong as I can get away with it).

So, yeah, birthdays. Bleah. I still get called the occasional "young lady," but ... it's all going to catch up with me sooner or later. Hopefully later? Or ... never??

Anyway, Peaches and I have dinner reservations here:

Where you can get food that looks like this:

(not all veg pictured here but you get the idea)

 

 

One of their best vegetarian appetizers is this:

(Palak Chaat: "Fried crispy baby spinach leaves with yogurt and sweet tamarind and date chutney.")

I am sooooooooooooo already hungry!

Have any of you done anything fun or interesting for a birthday recently?

Vegan Thanksgiving

Every year, Peaches and I go to our local vegetarian society's vegan Thanksgiving feast. Here's what I ate this year:

Starting with the salad at the top left:

• organic mixed greens with avocado, toasted pine nuts, and some sort of vinagrette
• tofu fritters (tofu, celery, onions, herbs, some sort of crusty coating)
• cranberry relish
• wild mushroom ravioli (yes, there's no dairy in them) with a light sauce of tomato and spinach
• stuffing
• baked sweet potatoes
• collard greens

We also had vegan pumpkin pie for dessert, but I was too busy eating it to take a picture. Here's a recipe instead.

Every year, there's a speaker who talks about mindful eating for a healthy, peaceful planet. This year's speaker ended his talk by reading this poem by Shel Silverstein:

Point of View

Thanksgiving dinner's sad and thankless
Christmas dinner's dark and blue
When you stop and try to see it
From the turkey's point of view.
Sunday dinner isn't sunny
Easter feasts are just bad luck
When you see it from the viewpoint
Of a chicken or a duck.
Oh how I once loved tuna salad
Pork and lobsters, lamb chops too
'Til I stopped and looked at dinner
From the dinner's point of view.

If you look behind the scenes of your dinner and you're OK with what you see there, if it doesn't make you lose your appetite or feel even just a little sorry for the animals that you see there who will find their way to your plate -- if you can look here and find no trace of guilt -- then, go ahead and eat as you've always eaten.

But ... we have so many other choices today! Instead of featuring dead cows, chickens, turkeys, and pigs at your next big meal, why not try some of these delicious, healthy, and cruelty-free dishes instead? If you need a cookbook, there are even more recipes here (vegan) and here (vegetarian) and here (vegan).

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Food should be a celebration of life, don't you think? 

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Cheers to you an yours for a holiday season full of good food, good drink, and much merry making!

Via where you will find yet another yummy recipe for vegan pumpkin pie

I Suppose I Should Post Something

I don't have much to say today, but since I try to post at least once a week, I figured I owed you something today, since it's been a week since my last post.

It's actually been pretty busy around Think Tank Land lately. We had an event on Crapitol Heap on Monday, which always involves planning and coordinating, but it seems like there's been a lot of other stuff to do, too -- booking travel, finding a new office space to lease, and just ... general officey nonsense that takes up time but doesn't lend itself to snarky blog posts.

My mom is also arriving in town today for a visit, so, outside of work, I've been cleaning my house (which involved also treating teh kittehs for fleas -- we gave them both baths twice!!) and trying to figure out stuff to do with her. My mom and I generally get along better with weekly phone conversations rather than with regular in-person visits, but I haven't seen her in a year and a half and feel kind of guilty -- like, I should concentrate on making sure she has a good time rather than on being the curmudgeonly smarty pants I usually am when I see her.

Maybe I'll have some touristy pics to post ('cuz it's an open secret where I'm located, and there's ... almost too much touristy stuff to do here, which I normally avoid like the plague ...)

Here are a few quotes and links for you to ponder in the meantime:

One of the crucial issues for some of us postacademics, as well for many college students trying to decide on a major, is whether higher education should be primarily training and preparation for a career or an indulgence of The Great Intangible Life of the Mind.  John Adams put it this way: "There are two types of education. One should teach us how to make a living. And the other how to live." Sadly, a Ph.D. in the humanities or social sciences these days moves us very little towards either of those goals.

While we're quoting John Adams (somebody posted a quote over in the comments at 100 Reasons, which is what got me started), here's another one that seems especially profound given our current political climate: "Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.”

Scary, huh? Especially when you read an article like this about how money is infecting the democratic process. If you don't follow politics that closely, you may be surprised to know that the current Republican anti-tax fanaticism is relatively new. From the Rolling Stone article:

Today, Reagan may be lionized as a tax abolitionist, says Alan Simpson, a former Republican senator and friend of the president, but that's not true to his record. "Reagan raised taxes 11 times in eight years!"

But Reagan wound up sowing the seed of our current gridlock when he gave his blessing to what Simpson calls a "nefarious organization" – Americans for Tax Reform. Headed by Grover Norquist, a man Stockman blasts as a "fiscal terrorist," the group originally set out to prevent Congress from backsliding on the 1986 tax reforms. But Norquist's instrument for enforcement – an anti-tax pledge signed by GOP lawmakers – quickly evolved into a powerful weapon designed to shift the tax burden away from the rich. George H.W. Bush won the GOP presidential nomination in 1988 in large part because he signed Norquist's "no taxes" pledge. Once in office, however, Bush moved to bring down the soaring federal deficit by hiking the top tax rate to 31 percent and adding surtaxes for yachts, jets and luxury sedans. "He had courage to take action when we needed it," says Paul O'Neill, who served as Treasury secretary under George W. Bush.

The tax hike helped the economy – and many credit it with setting up the great economic expansion of the 1990s. But it cost Bush his job in the 1992 election – a defeat that only served to strengthen Norquist's standing among GOP insurgents. "The story of Bush losing," Norquist says now, "is a reminder to politicians that this is a pledge you don't break." What was once just another campaign promise, rejected by a fiscal conservative like Bob Dole, was transformed into a political blood oath – a litmus test of true Republicanism that few candidates dare refuse.

True? Not true?

I don't know ... You tell me ...

John Adams had this to say: “All the perplexities, confusion, and distress in America arise, not from want of honor or virtue, but from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.” It's nothing new that there's always been a marriage between money and power, here as elsewhere in the world, now as at other times throughout history. But for those of us who covet neither of these things in any great extreme and ultimately value honor and virtue more than money or power, I think it's hard to imagine -- to even fathom -- how deep and abiding that marriage remains.

"adjuncting i give up"

At least one of you found this blog by searching that phrase today. As JC has said many times over at From Grad School to Happiness:

You are not alone.

Whoever you are, the way you phrased that says a lot. As "adjuncting" displaces and diminishes the subject of the sentence "i," so does the hopelessness and frustration of the job itself overwhelm so many of the people who find themselves doing it semester after semester after semester -- without ever the promise that you will be rehired the next semester, without enough pay to cover your expenses, without any possibility of progress in your chosen profession no matter how good your work nor how long and outstanding your commitment.

To say "adjuncting i give up" is not the same as "I give up adjuncting." The latter suggests certainty and affirmation, the act of "giving up" by cutting your ties, walking away,  and moving on, leaving "adjuncting" behind. The former, the phrase you searched, instead suggests that "I give up" not just adjuncting but hope. The object dominates the subject, removing its agency. The thing you want to give up won't let you let it go. After all, you've given so much to it already -- so much of your time, your effort, your passion, your life. The only thing to give up, it seems, is more of yourself.

OK. Enough close reading. You're not alone is what I wanted to say. Adjuncting does this to people, you see. Lots of people. But you'd never know because no one talks about it inside academe. You have to do a Google search to find out that your colleagues down the hall are feeling the same way. And when they do leave, as a great many of them do one way or another, with or without the Ph.D., you never see or hear from them again. You don't know what they end up doing with their lives or what finally pushed them over the edge and out of academe. You just know they're gone. And now you feel like it's your turn, but you don't know exactly how to make your break or when or who to talk to ... and that's how you found yourself here.

So, no, you are not alone. And, yes, it is OK to give up and walk away. Because once you do, you aren't giving up anymore. You're going somewhere again. You may not know where, but at least you will have freed yourself from the trap that is academe.

Isn't that a pretty path? I took the picture walking to work this morning. Here's another, just a few yards further down the same street:

Once you start considering where you might go, once you take the first few steps, the path itself changes. How do you even know what awaits you until you do give up on expecting adjuncting to ever offer you anything more than what it currently does?

And if these pictures aren't enough to inspire you to walk away, if you're new here and/or maybe missed these a few months back, here are a few older posts on the subject that haven't been getting much traffic lately:

We Are All Waldo

Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here

Just Walk Away?

Academic Hierarchies: Let the Numbers Speak for Themselves (Part 1)

Academic Hierarchies: Let the Numbers Speak for Themselves (Part 2)

And lastly, here's a song:

You Are Expecting Something OTHER Than Aristotle?

In this morning's mail, we got a message from Think Tank Boss's Boss about how "to convince conservatives and libertarians to communicate in a way that connects with [...] the 85% of the population with IQs below about 115." The wording seems to imply this 85% needs to be connected with because they're NOT conservatives and libertarians (i.e. they're liberals or independents), which would also imply that ONLY 15% of the population ARE conservatives and libertarians.

Interesting prospect. (I'm not even going to touch the issue of IQ and political inclinations.)

BUT, what I thought was more interesting about this email, in conjunction with the above, was this quote by Important Person (the gist of the email was that were were supposed to mount and frame it):

People are not reasoned into action, but rather are inspired by tangible, concrete, emotional rhetoric.

Well, yes ... Okay ...

But not very original.

In fact, Aristotle said something similar in the 4th century B.C. What he says, in Book I of the Rhetoric, before devoting almost the entirety of Book II to pathos -- the skillful manipulation of emotion for the purpose of persuasion -- is

Before some audiences not even possession of the exactest knowledge will make it easy for what we say to produce conviction. For argument based on knowledge implies instruction, and there are people whom one cannot instruct.

We taught watered-down Aristotle in the freshman comp courses at Grad U., but students at least came out, if they were instructable enough to have passed the course, with a minimal conceptual understanding of the rhetorical appeals ethos, pathos, and logos, along with the basic skills to apply them in their writing and recognize them in the speech and writing of others.

And that's not a bad take-away from a course. A successful democracy needs rhetoric to function. It needs leaders who can speak effectively. But, perhaps more importantly, it needs citizens who can know how rhetoric shapes the messages. how it influences what they read, see, hear, think, and feel.

While Aristotle devotes such a large portion of his text to persuasion through emotion, he also affirms what Important Person quoted by Think Tank Boss's Boss implies -- that is, that getting through to people by reasoning is better than moving them by emotion, BUT, because the former is so rarely truly possible, virtuous leaders will have to rely on emotion to persuade the people of what is Right and Just.

However, Aristotle also asserts,

It is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs, but not of being unable to defend himself with speech and reason, when the use of rational speech is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs.

And that's where the difference lies. Yes, Aristotle acknowledges, "there are people whom one cannot instruct," but these are only "some audiences," not 85% of the population. The rest of us, according Aristotle, should learn how rhetoric works, not only so that we may manipulate (for their own good!) those who are incapable of listening to reason but so that we can "defend" ourselves against those who would use it against us to achieve ends that may be neither good nor just. Indeed,

If it be objected that one who uses such power of speech unjustly might do great harm, that is a charge which may be made in common against all good things [...] and above all against the things that are most useful, as strength, health, wealth, generalship. A man can confer the greatest of benefits by a right use of these, and inflict the greatest of injuries by using them wrongly.

Ah, but who decides what is the "right" use of these? Maybe that's where we're stuck today with the conservative/liberal divide. We can't agree on fundamental issues of right and wrong: Are education and health care rights or privileges?  How do you define a "person" for purposes of the right to life or the right to give money to politicians? Economic growth is good, but are there some corporations, financial institutions, that are "too big to fail"? What should the relationship between business and government be and who should decide?

Important questions deserve sustained and serious and open public debate, not soundbites. In my comp classes, I always used advertisements to introduce the appeals. It was always so easy and yet such a revelation when students saw how ads worked to persuade them to want things.

Politics has become, overwhelmingly it seems, about the advertising.

I do not think Aristotle would approve.

Re-Reading an Academic Job Ad

Regular readers remember me posting a month or so ago about how I would do a very limited, very selective academic job search this year.

The gist of that post was that there were 5-6 jobs that might be worth applying for, given my idiosyncratic concerns. One of these -- the one that was of the MOST interest to me -- has a deadline coming up soon, but re-reading the ad, I found myself noticing a few red flags, as well as reconsidering some of the basics:

• Despite being advertised as a "tenure track appointment," the job is only for "an initial three-year period." I find this opaque and troubling. Nobody gets tenure in three years. Is there some kind of initial review process going on here? Or, is this simply a more clever and deceptive way of designing a contingent position? Sure, we'll hire you onto the "tenure track (hehe)" for a few years. We'll pay you a bit better than a full-time adjunct. But ... we'll expect more, too, in terms of service and other obligations, and when your first three years are up, we'll give you the choice of continuing on for another three years at the same rate of pay -- or leaving, so that we can hire some other desperado willing to do even more for even less than you, as long as it comes with the title "assistant professor."
• "This position is contingent on the availability of funds at the time of hire." So, what, you're going to interview people, bring a few to campus, and then put them on hold for a month or two or three while you work out your budget before making a decision? Or better yet, lead your favorite candidate to believe he or she would be getting an offer ... only to get a letter reading, "We are sorry. Due to lack of funds, this position has been canceled." Hey, it's not like any of these candidates will have other offers waiting! Why not offer them a glimmer of hope?
• Not listed in the job ad, but after visiting the institution's website, it appears that A LOT of this department's courses are taught by adjuncts, even though they do not have a Ph.D. program. That would make me seriously uncomfortable. Because, you know, I would know that my privileges -- such as they would be -- would be had at the expense of my adjunct colleagues. 
• Yes, it's true that I wouldn't have to move, but the commute, by public transit, would be two to two and a half hours each way (about an hour each way by car). Even if I could get a TTH schedule, I'd probably still end up renting a small apartment or room to stay in 1-2 nights a week to minimize trips. And given the cost of living around here, over the course of a year, that, along with the cost of transportation itself, would eat up what would be the difference between my current crappy secretary salary and what would likely be the starting salary of this "tenure track" position.

Am I being overly paranoid? Am I looking for reasons to lose interest in the few academic jobs that seem like potentially, possibly a good "fit"? Maybe. Will I change my mind and not apply? Maybe. Because, after all, there still is that nagging old problem: Right here in my own backyard, there are A TON of jobs, conveniently located, but THEY ARE ALL BEING DONE BY ADJUNCTS.

It just seems more and more like a Catch-22 scenario, no matter how you look at it, unless you get a job at a college that A) does not have a PhD program and B) does not rely on adjuncts.

Whatever else you might say about nonacademic jobs, at least there are ... more possibilities ... more options and fewer limitations ...

Stay tuned for further updates.

This Morning's Bagel Brought to You by the Koch Brothers

This morning. I am here, my table sandwiched in between CPAC and Concerned Women for America (if you're not already familiar, beware before Googling -- you might lose your breakfast). I'm handing out Think Tank propaganda to Tea Party zealots and collecting email addresses.

They tell me things, these people:

"I like your pamphlets. They're nice and short. I'm too lazy to read books." (Seriosly, fer realz, somebody said that.)

"What great, nicely organized little booklets. There's just 10 points to remember on every issue. Now that's something I can handle! Nice and simple."

"Those Occupy Wall Street wackos. Somebody should just send in a bunch of red necks to beat the snot out of them." (This morning, after some traffic disrupting protests last night that ended rather badly.)

"Higher education reform. Huh. I should read that one. It's like, education is all liberal and all and then the cost has gone up three times the rate of inflation. Damned liberals. Such hypocrites. They talk about equality, but they just want to take our money and spend it to indoctrinate our children." (No, not kidding, and I do hope that individual actually reads that particular pamphlet. Because, while. I disagree with a lot of Think Tank's ideas on education reform -- actually, not what my office even works on, anyway -- they're not as completely idiotic as this person. I mean, you could have an argument about policy differences. You wouldn't just be trying to refute uninformed nonsense. And there's even a bit of common ground, like the idea that there should be greater transparency concerning tuition and costs so that students would know that a great deal of their increasingly borrowed tuition is, increasingly, NOT funding instruction. Or that we should increase emphasis on instruction and reduce barriers to entry ... but I digress.)

"Oh, right, we've heard of Think Tank. The black person in our church gave us some of your materials." (Note use of the article "the," along with the fact that it was significant, apparently, to point this out to a perfect stranger. Did this person remember Think Tank because she read the materials or because they were handed to her by a black person? This event, like others I've blogged about, is overwhelmingly white. Despite the presence of Herman Cain, I can count on one hand the number of people of color who have passed by my table. Why? That is a rhetorical question. Perhaps Herman Cain would like to explain why his party has such low appeal among minorities. Does anyone know if he already has?)

"Global warming, what a hoax! Those scientists are ripping us off, taking all that grant money to study something that's so obviously false. And destroying business and jobs while they're at it! We need to shut that racket down now." (This after recent research further CONFIRMING climate change despite its Koch brothers funding.)

I could go on and on ...

So, yeah, there are days when I find myself questioning the integrity of working where I do, attending events such as these, even as the proverbial fly on the wall, when my complimentary morning bagel and coffee are provided courtesy of the Koch brothers' funding of an event that does much more to further their agenda than that, for them, ill-fated climate study.

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But then, I go read a blog post over at Roxie's World, perhaps the best yet in their ongoing series Excellence Without Money, that describes the plight of adjuncts at their institution.

And I am reassured. At least here in Think Tank Land you know what people stand for. You may not agree with them. But at least you know what's what. At least when you're dealing with the Koch brothers and their ilk, you don't falsely believe you are dealing with Greenpeace.

And that's sort of how I feel about academe these days, that a culture (and people with power in it) valued me, I thought, for one set of things -- originality, passion, insight, creativity, contributions to the field -- and instead, as it turns out, my true value was as another -- as a warm body willing to show up and teach for cheap. See comment by Anonymous 1:27 here. (That was me, FYI. I've stopped commenting under my Blogger name there because a troll tracked me here and was harassing me by email.)

At least if you're going to be negotiating your position in the world against market forces, you ought to know how they operate. And I didn't. And a lot of graduate students still don't. And that the truth is willfully hidden from them through job market and professionalization rhetoric, even by well-meaning professors, is an egregious wrong.

I remain bitter, and the irony is not lost on me that I am now working for the very groups that, if they have their way, will further push universities down the path of adjunctification and for-profit-ization.

At least I know who I'm dealing with and where I stand.