GOOD GUYS and BAD

Dear Graham,

I woke up this morning thinking about
you playing Good Cop/Bad Cop with
our friend Professor Dr. David Bradshaw
up in the ARTS territory--you and him
doing Page & Stage for First Yr.
Seminarians, and him being a rigorous
high-standard kind of guy we all revere
in the study of PAGES because a hard
man is good to find.

And you being the GOODIE taking the
pressure off them artists and potential
thespians because you can't treatem
the same as you do sit-down scholars,
consumers and critics--right? Howard
Cosel: he's gonna be hard on Mohammed
Ali!

And then down here in the Humanities
Region it's been me & him Bad Guy/GOOD guy
--me the bad guy: bad bad bad--slacker and
fooling around. If kids come in to my office
and tell me "I got to drop out, Sam," they're
talking to the wrong guy--the bad guy,
because I'll help them.

"Look, I say--if you got any doubts about this
matter, I'm sending you up to talk to Professor
Bradshaw--he'll give you tea and lecture on
why you should say IN.

But if you're serious about leaving and want
support, I'm your man."An easy guy is good
to find

My goodwife Ann was telling me this morning
about Barbara Walters at Sarah Lawrence
(I gave her AUDITION for Mother's Day):
"no quizzes, no exams, no letter grades, no molly
coddling, Sam. They spend a lot of their time around
tables talking and talking." Converse Action.
Liberal Art there is basically a creative deal.

There's a difference: between a CREATIVE
environment (Making Mode) and a CONSUMER
environment (Give & Taking Mode) and the
2 don't mix. Oil and bottled water. The two value
sets are hostile and incommensurate. It hurts to
be in the same room with them... Like trying to
eat ice cream in hell.

Congratulations on agreeing to serve as Chm
of the Fine Arts & Humanities Division: a house
divided can actually stand if it acknowledges the
nature of the split. Otherwise: schizo-frantic &
wondering why? why? why?.

Them other guys (Sciences: Social & Hard) have
their own challenges in just getting along I guess.

Turn up the differences, I say.
Put them out there. In play.
We'll get better and good at it
I bet 5 dollars.

xxxooo, Sam


Sam:

Yes. You are saying it over and over, and it's right that you do so. Beg, implore, demand a response, someone to improve your terms, someone to practice the Liberal Art with, someone play with. Or rather: Everyone to play with. So what I'm wondering now is:
How do we do IT? You've been saying it--and this last post is one of the best, for my money--for a long time now, but faculty-l only intermittently becomes the conversation that you're talking about. How do we sustain it and make it grow, until it's not just another thing to do that I have no time for, but the main thing, the best thing. (And I'm speaking as one who rarely enters the conversation.)

I mean, on a practical level. I'm thinking that faculty-l isn't the place where it's going to happen. I know, it needs to happen all over the place, not just on one place, but I'm thinking that there's got to be a better technological means at hand than this particular listserve. So: a blog that is featured prominently on the Inside page? I don't know enough to know what it would look like, but I'd like to find out. What would it take to ignite the conversation(s), make IT too much fun and to hot to ignore, close the GAP? A virtual coffee pot? An endless beer tap? More shrimp???

It's a practical question, not a theoretical one (and I know you're talking about far more than this particular conversation) but it's about the medium--and McLuhan is right.

Maybe David, Sloan, or J.T. in Computing Services will have ideas, but maybe folks on faculty-l can chime in.

Keep it up!

Graham