Getting back up

Like so many of you, I am fighting despair after the Senate acquitted Trump. We knew that was going to happen. Still, it sure has hit me hard. How about you?

Despair seems like a normal and reasonable reaction to injustice. We all feel it from time to time. Unfortunately, it is an emotion that will not sustain us. Despair won't make us stronger or happier. Left to it's own devices, despair will consume us. Then we lose. By all that is righteous and good, I want to win.

(I'm trying to give myself a good talking to.)

I've used the boxer analogy before because it is beautiful to me. It is the only sport I might be tempted to watch on TV. The fighters with the most "heart" are the ones who never give up. Sometimes they get knocked out, but there is always the next fight. Who knows what might happen next?

The odds are that 50% of future events will be good ones over a sufficient period of time. Nothing stays the same. History is cyclical. Blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean, those platitudes are actually shorthand for the truth. 

Now I'm going to go read a sword and sorcery fantasy and veg out for today. Maybe I'll make some cookies, or putter around in the garden. I think we all need a little R&R. We should be back to normal soon.

My uncle and my father about 1937

This New Freakin' Year

I know I should be filled with Happy New Year cheer, invoking goodness and light. I know this, but I simply do not feel it. Please do not read this if you are already feeling overwhelming despair or you are sick to death of politics. It won't hurt my feelings. I understand the need to protect oneself. Stop reading...now.

The mean-spirited, nationalistic, and violent trends around the world are troubling to me. I could give my opinions about the insanely small minded decisions made by other countries this past year, but I try not to criticize things that are none of my business. 

I could rant on about evil dictators and macho strong-men in other countries, but I am beginning to think, like Voldemort, one should not speak their names out loud. Especially when I find that I get ridiculously large amounts of hits from those countries on my blog stats every week. 

However, this is still a free country, at least for now. I will say that I believe the electoral college of the U.S. elected a man of limited intelligence who is motivated by ego and greed. He is a man who lost the popular vote by nearly 2.9 million votes (the largest margin in history), so obviously does not have a mandate. He is disliked and distrusted by people in his own party, and he seems frighteningly unprepared for the job ahead of him. That, combined with the aggressive actions of troubled nations and the subsequent revival of nationalistic backlash all over the world, fills me with dread for the coming year. 

I have always been happy at the prospect of a new year, a new start. For the very first time I dread the coming year. It seems we are moving backward instead of forward. I am waiting for the next shoe to drop.   

I know reality goes in circles, politics are cyclical. I survived Nixon, Reagan, and the younger Mr. Bush; however, the world has changed since then. Climate change is actually real, and we are in danger of making this world unlivable. We need reasonable gun control reforms that stop criminals from buying guns and killing innocent people. Black lives DO matter, and we run the risk of civil war by not taking our racist inclinations seriously. Social justice is actually righteous and moral, not a "politically correct" idea to be sneered at. Poverty encourages crime and limits our achievements as a nation, and as a world filled with nations. Women's rights are human rights. I cannot even get started on that one. Not yet. Too soon.

Perhaps the foolishness we are unleashing will change people's minds and we will see a progressive and compassionate awakening like we have never seen before? Maybe good people from all sides can come together and build a better world on top of the ruins of failed ideas? That is my hope for 2017. Stranger things have happened.

Photos from Orlando, 4 July 2016

I went with my daughter to Orlando the other day. We saw the makeshift mementos left after a memorial honoring the people who died in the Pulse Nightclub shooting.   

I was deeply moved by the love and the loss. I was painfully aware of the mementos left behind. They were especially meaningful because many were left by the grieving families and friends of the fallen.

I was struck by all the American flags and patriotic messages at the memorial site. I have not seen that many flags in one place since I was a kid watching a 4th of July parade in the 1950's. I'm not gonna lie, all those flags surprised me.

Most Pulse victims were either immigrants or the children/grandchildren of immigrants. Like most of our ancestors they came here because they wanted to be "free;" they actively chose to become Americans. And apparently, even after great tragedy, the families would still rather be in this large, violent, imperfect country than in their heritage countries.

The pride in Orlando is for being LGBT, Hispanic, a person of color. But it is also about remaining strong in the face of adversity, about refusing to be diminished or dehumanized by hatred, about being free to live one's life without fear or shame. It is still and always about freedom, isn't it? It is still a worthy cause to want freedom to be who you are as long as you don't hurt anyone else.

I understand how political disappointments can sour one's patriotism. Hey, I'm still mad Eugene McCarthy didn't get the Democratic nomination in 1968, and George McGovern in 1972. I can't understand why the NRA fights the ridiculously minimal form of gun control Obama is pushing. I wonder at the support Trump gets whenever he says something that lowers our moral standards. These are just some of the things that have driven me to despair about being an American. But you know, despair is a loser's game. 

Because there is also still, and always, the "Good Fight" we hear so much about. It has everything to do with  "freedom and justice for all." I have been cynical. I took my eyes off the prize.

The Rules of the Game

At the university there were very different standards of behavior for the two distinct groups of employees: faculty and staff. For instance, I couldn't wander those hallowed halls barefoot, with hair uncombed, sporting crooked glasses, muttering to myself, thinking beautiful thoughts, or making bizarre jokes like the professor we affectionately called "Professor Joe." He was a sweet old man and the staff loved him.

He was also a little odd. Within academia he was protected; safe, really. I honestly do not think he could have survived outside. In the "real world" many would have thought him more than a little odd. 

What I found most charming about him was his sense of the absurd. He was often irreverent. He was also brilliant, a scholar of international reputation who had won some of the most prestigious awards in his field of study. Students adored him. He was good at what he did. According to the rules of HIS game, he had earned the right to say or do pretty much whatever came into his head. I always thought "Good for him." Except that time I had finished interviewing for a staff vacancy and he stood by my door as I reviewed my notes yelling, "Hire the pretty one!" I can assure you he never even saw any of the candidates. He walked away laughing to himself without waiting for me to reply. Sigh.

The rules of my game were a little different. No matter how good I was at my job, I couldn't say everything that popped into my head. Sure, I wanted to! There were plenty of irreverent thoughts up there that wanted to come out, especially at inappropriate times. I pushed the limits as best I could, but something always stopped me. Something controlled my behavior. I am fairly certain it was the fear of being fired.  FYI, tenured faculty do not have that fear. Instead, they have "tenure." I am still trying to figure out if that is a good thing or a bad thing. 

In the U.S., after 6 years an assistant professor in a tenure-track position must endure a mind numbing, spectacularly brutal peer evaluation of their work called a tenure review.

The stakes are high both for the tenure candidate (who pretty much cannot be fired after they get tenure) and the department (who could conceivably be stuck with a horrible colleague forever if they give him/her tenure). If an assistant professor doesn't get tenure, they are given a terminal year of employment and then they are out the door. 

Let me say this again in case I wasn't clear, once tenured you cannot be fired unless you do something criminal or litigious. You have a job for life even if you never publish again, don't mentor graduate students, advise undergraduates poorly, treat your colleagues like dirt, or fail to attract large numbers of students to your classes because you are so incredibly boring. Of course the overwhelming majority of professors maintain collegiality and high professorial standards, but there are always a few notable exceptions. 

A professor would tell you tenure is the basis of academic freedom. Tenure allows them to pursue truth and do their best and purest work without fear of reprisal, censure, or compromise. That is probably true.

Still...it is an imperfect system. The collective damage caused by an unfettered ego or a mean-spirited, malicious malcontent can be a special kind of trauma for everyone else in an academic department. And if the ego or malcontent is a tenured professor, there is not much you can do to stop it except to find another job and hope the new department doesn't harbor a malicious malcontent, too.

Tenure is an established rite of passage for academics. Faculty count on it. They will never give it up. As a direct result of tenure, academia sometimes feels like an alternate reality, one in which actions don't always have consequences, and rules don't always apply...for some.

A gargoyle holding up a table on the Arts & Sciences quadrangle

When smoke gets in your eyes

It is always interesting when the same topic pops up all over the place and becomes a pattern or a theme. Anger has been discussed and/or displayed on a number of different, unrelated blogs lately, and people are going nuts with angry rants on social media.

Perhaps it's happening because it is February and cabin fever is getting to people? Or maybe because politics are so disrespectfully infuriating and in-our-face right now? Who knows? I don't. I only know anger is out there in full force and it gives me pause.

This post is going to be about anger but I want to be clear. I am not writing about your anger, that's your business. I am writing about my own. 

I'm a bit of a hot head. I have a short fuse.  However, I try to tread lightly around anger because I like it too much. I am not referring to bad temper, annoyance, or crankiness. Those things are interesting as well, but are not really "anger" in my book. I am thinking specifically about the kind of anger that is a reaction against an injustice. You know, the kind of anger that turns red hot and makes smoke come out of your ears?

Anger is complex. It can also be comforting and seductively familiar. I could easily get stuck in an angry loop. I totally get that. However, being rip-snorting mad always makes me feel like crap once I come back down to earth. I wish I could learn to manage my emotions better so my anger could work for me instead of against me.

Please note I said "manage" and not "eliminate." Anger definitely has its place. I think of it like the good china, or the good scotch. You only bring it out when the situation warrants and absolutely nothing else will do.

Anger seems like the opposite of good, but it isn’t. Anger is an appropriate reaction to injustice. I mean, how is the universe going to hear us unless we yell really, really loud? Still, I don't want strong emotions to own me.

Quilt: Unresolved Emotional Themes