Best & Worst of TIME

We are in a notably historic moment

and I wonder if it might be worth

creating some sort of forum

for us to share, from our

different disciplines &

personal experiences,

what this moment

might mean for

our future. (A.C.)

Dear Ali,

The best of times.

The worst of times.

Bi Polar—our designer diagnosis-

of-preference, along with Attention

Deficient Disease if you ask our

WELLNESS personnel:

I bet.

Rehab.

Rehabilitate,

Rehabilitation for Humanity

What we’re going through these

days: a meta-sustainability sequence.

(You know:

Ms SUSTAINABILITY, as it

were: sustaining herself in her

own terms of sustainability

as opposed to mine.)

What remains of our orange & blue

one-piece tear-drop chairs in Jensen

were borrowed by Sandra Bullock for

her movie 28 Days, shot on location

at Ridgecrest Baptist Retreat in Black

Mountain: part of the movie’s early

70’s periodicity & rehabilitation

notions..

I’m responding to your “call for papers”

so to speak: local foodback on this moment

in history& what do we have to say? How

do our disciplines and our personal experiences

inform our outlook?

Talking about IT is good, I think

Therapeutic. Improving our terms,

images, outlook. Turning IT up.

Putting IT in play. Edifying: building

a shared sense of the elephant-in-the-

room in manners of speaking or what’s

a college for? Metis, Homer called it.

Local Knowing.

Gaia’s undergoing ethic cleansing:

economical house keeping, ecological

self-corrective auto-poetics: bottoming

out her system-sustainability measures

prerequisite to the practice of liberal

art in the worst of times & best.

CHANGE: Yes, we can.

Shuffle the deck, rearrange chairs,

rob Peter to pay Paul, shift to bio-

diesel & electric, let overhead

projection become power point;

ditto & mimeograph grow into

monumental copier machines,

16- week semester lengths to 15,

60 hours of service to 100, bag

lunches to reduce serving lines,

plus-sizing PAC; let Forum

operate with 2 staff co-conveners,

put Security on our wood land trails,

reduce sexual assault by heightening

community awareness; provide an

elevator for Jensen, detailed

you-are-here maps for exiting

buildings safely, paint 3^rd floor

Jensen a stress-reducing blue; add

more majors, improve lives of

adjuncts & additional courses on

sustainability in all its variations,

eliminate cows and expand the

garden for local food; team teach,

reassess general ed requirements,

encourage inter-disciplinarity,

integrate the triad & drop 8:00

classes… change, change changes

of degree sustaining the overall

homeostatic quotidian Plus ca

change, plus c'est la meme chose

In the mean times: students come and

go talking to Mommy DeAngelo, ear-

buds mediating I-pod cell-phone-I-

phonic google-ability: e-mailing naked

pics inside class rooms sent far & wee:

me celebrating ee cummings (take this

down it’ll be on your pop quizzes, your

tests, your final examinations): images

& imagination scooting electronically

across a continent of divide to provide

an eyeful for peer pressures in Santa Cruz

Yeah? well, we’re talking

magical realism here:

get a load of this old guy!

3-hour time lag not with standing: the media

is the message & what I’m talking ‘bout,

like “water” to Joe Fish: inconceivable.

I’m swimming in IT: all wet. How can

I say just what I mean? Takes a

village. all over the world

dancing in the streets.

historic moment: best of times