The Sound of Mucus

 
Dear Colleagues,
 
I guess I'm  the only one around here suffering
from Inner Ear Dysfunction. LiberalArt dys-ease.
Attention Efficiency Disorder obsessed with
trying to inflict it on others--my typhoid merry.  
 
I can’t hear...

(I say "hear" because it’s the SOUND  that's  disturbing,
the sound of  industrial-education-ese, professionalized
academic-ese, institutionalizational processing)
 
…I was saying: I can’t "hear"...

(because I can, by dint of momentarily setting aside
bias, belief, prejudice, conviction, see thru the media
to the golden-pavement intentions)  

...I was saying: I can't "hear" something like this (below)
without hearing it as symptomatic of  the very thing
Liberal Art might could  be continually trying  to
overcome.  Human, all too human.

Well, we shall  never over come, but the end of our coming
over may be to arrive where we  started and  know it for
the first time.

IT, I said—no need to spell IT out. .     
 
I’m just presenting the sample below.  No comment. .
If you've got a tin ear it’ll sound just fine and nothing
I can say will make a  difference that makes a difference.
Might as well throw rice at the rhino.

I’ve probably said too much. (I haven’t said enough)
 
In the name of liberal arts,
required college composition
and writing programs of both
creative & creative non-fictional
kind if not liberal art educating:
listen. Just  listen:  


AAC&U Working Conferences 

General Education and Assessment 3.0: Next-Level Practices Now March 3-5, 2011 Chicago, Illinois Call for Proposals Deadline: June 30, 2010 General Education and Assessment 3.0: Next-Level Practices Now will help campus leaders focus on innovative and purposeful approaches  to designing and financing general education and assessment. Proposals are invited for conference sessions highlighting “next-level” models and practices in general education and assessment that strengthen student  learning of essential outcomes. The audience for the 2011 conference  includes newcomers to, and veterans of, innovative general education reform and assessments that deepen learning. Faculty, student affairs educators, administrators, students, and others are invited to shape a  national dialogue about the value of general education and to demonstrate  its impact on student learning in the college years. Four thematic tracks make up the conference: General Education Models that Make a Difference Faculty Engagement in General Education Assessment to Document Achievement and Deepen Learning at Multiple Levels Institutional Leadership and Capacity for Learning-Centered Reform

 
Hear it?
IT I said.
The Sound of The Profession
...which is  the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
                            Wallace Stevens, who died
                             intestate in the early 50's at
                             the Avery Sanitarium in
                            Hartford, Ct.--lawyer and
                            insurance executive & poet.                                                     

xxxooo, Sam