Empowermental Studies & Leadership Programs

Dear Fiction-ers and Colleagues Across
the Curriculum.

“In the Garden of North American Martyrs”:
Tobias Wolff’s account of Affirmative Action
& how you get around it.

Empowermental Studies & Leadership programs.

This woman woke up to her “power” by being
dis-empowered: if she’d not been disempowered
she couldn’t have been empowered.
Disempowerment: perquisite to
empowerment. True?
Need we argue?

EMPOWER MENTALISM.

Can any one EMPOWER another?
Like the Wizard of Oz, say: give
me courage? smartitude? feelings?
Can I empower you? Will I? Nill I?
Can you empower me? Can we
empower each other so we’re
powerful?

HOW DO YOU DEFINE POWER, anyway?
Any way? And if POWER CORRUPTS how
come so many want it?

Consider the POSSIBILITIES (potential, power)
for argument (best sense). Is this a notion worth
unpacking? Putting into play? Potent?

POWER not to be confused with States of
Energy

I. posse: possibility, potential, potentate. Like a
dam—millions of tons of water. backed up.

II. kinetic – impact, bumppty bump, flooding the
valley, carrying off chicken coops, old Ford trucks,
cows and cottages & the dam is now impotent.
Spent.

III. rest e = mc squared. Neither potential energy
nor kinetic energy. Something else.

What kind of empowerment are we interested in?
Needing? Potential? And what kind of
disempowerment provides its
prerequisite?

What kind of POWER would you say resides
in this classroom, college, Right Be Here Now?

Characterize.

Does it depend on what I call you? You can
call me 'dent and I'll call you doctor if that'll
help. Stunning. Both of us stunned stupid,
satisfying the prerequisite for study and
student-dom. Empowermentalism.

xxxooo, Sam