Samuel Scoville

It's Not Easy Being Epistemological

2012-01-29T05:42:00.000-08:00

It's not easy being epistemological,
a phenomenologiist for heaven's sake:
by virtue of the absurd waiting for Goedel.
News from beyond goodies and weasels,
incoming uncommon sense.

My Aunty Humanist her monumental sighs
(o my my o my yes don’t she wanna wear
her party dress) tch tch disapproval of our
paltry shennigans: the harrowing! the harrowing!
Piffle & balderdash, fiddle- faddle & hokum

such prattle, palaver twiddle & twaddle; but

it get’s better dear just you wait and see.

Origins of Common Sense

2012-01-29T02:59:00.001-08:00

Dear Colleagues,

Piffle, balderdash,
fiddle-faddle, hokum,
bunk– palaver, prate,
prattle, tattle, tittle-tattle,
twaddle, gabble, gibber,
blab, clack, maunder,
chatterblather, blether,
blither, smatter, babble
building tower of
paradigms.

Takes a pillage!
Bricks of straw.
Margarines for
error & rooms
of play.

How else get better
and good?

xxxooo, Presbyter

Holy Terror

2012-01-27T05:52:00.001-08:00

Tongues Wagging
Tons of Angles
Clanging Brass
A Good Thing.

   A colleague years ago declared me Terrorist.

I wish.

   That would be awesome.

It’s possible, though time is running out.

   “Yes, but not moments," another colleague
     advised: “You got infinite moments left.”

                     ***

What [terrorists] quite regularly do is create lively
talk where there has been silence, or where speech
has been prohibited.

[Terrorist ] speaks freshly where language has been
blocked, gone dead, or lost it’s charm. Here again
Plato’s intuition—that deceit and inventive speech
are linked—holds, for usually language goes dead
because cultural practice has hedged it in, and some
shameless double-dealer is needed to get outside the
rules and set tongues wagging again. (Lewis Hyde)

Gary & The Composers know this.
And the Writing Center, too.
How to Sound Good.
Regardless of topic.
Content’s galore)

Raising the dead. Holy Terrors..

It’s the heart of their Creative Righting Program
    Creative Fiction and Creative NonFiction.
      Local Food and Feedback going on.

Do you listen to the language?
The sound of music and not just what it’s about?
That’s what Count counts.

                   ***

Typically, webs of signification are built around
sets of opposites: fat and thin, slave and free, for
example, or—more categorically—true and false,
natural and unnatural, real and illusory, clean and
dirty.

What tricksters do is disturb these pairs and thus
disturb the web itself.—he leaves what Theodore
Roethke called “the weary dance of opposites”
and finds a THIRD THNG. (Hyde)

Finding the THIRD THING
Always In the weary dance
but not OF it, know what
I mean?

That would be Liberal Art.

(This don’t sound as good as I’d like it.
Terrorist Wannabe but can’t afford
the bad it takes to get good.) .

I want to be President of US

2012-01-22T05:04:00.001-08:00

A Vote for ME is a Vote for You 2

A.D.H.D. Affluent
I want.
Lack. Need.
Deficient Desire
Can’t get no
Satisfaction.

(Just describing here.
Not a complaint.
It’s the denial &
cover-up that
generates my
bozone layer.)

Not Even A Sort of A Poem:
Curiosity Kills. I don't care what I
pretend to care for but I care about
pretending to care for practical
correct & political reasons.
This makes good sense.

My Guilt

Not from doing something wrong,
though how could I not: moving
violation & rip-off artist, but in not
caring where and when I ought &
owe where others care I couldn’t
care less & I feel guilty. Fake care
don’t count, but I do care that I
don’t care & that counts if not
COUNT counts. ..

I’m a Douchebag.

‎"All Cretans are liars," says Epimenides, the Cretan.
"All Cretans are hypocrites," says Epimenides, the Cretan.
"All Cretans are douchebags," says Epimenides, the Cretan.
"All Cretans are greedy, thieving, liars, " says Epimenides, the Cretan

‎"Welcome to my Inn, says Procrustes, hosting hospitably.
"I've got just the right bed for you. "

xxxooo, Presbyter

Fundamentalism

2012-01-20T04:04:00.000-08:00

           Fundamental

Dear American Literati, Humanists, Dialog &
Dialecticians and Colleagues Across the Curriculum.

These LOGOS below represent our 2 TEAMS needed
in getting up the MIND-GAME games for this semester.

        Shirts and Skins, as it were, so to speak

Got to choose which team you will serve as player.
Sign on. Commit.

I’m not saying you won’t play and be played by both
denominations.

Of course you will: in real-time and day-to-day action:
your shirt-to-skin ratios will vary according to situation
context, weather and game-demands.

BUT: to be a player, you’ve got to be In The Service of
one

or the other


No myn can serve 2 magisteries

“Either he will hate the one and love the other, or
he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.”

I would urge you right now to make your commitment
and maintain a sustainable relationship with your
decision.

Otherwise:

collapse,
conflation ,
confusion and
no game at all:
merely work program, service project & postponed JOY.

Need we argue?

(P.S. You can tell the difference, yes?
And maybe the relationship, too.
(which of course depends absolutely on the difference)


on the one hand and


on the other hand.

                              The GAME:
            sustaining sound of 2 hands clapping
                            --not just one.

Gary Hawkins likes to call IT the play of the 2 Economies:
dance, really-- essential to a sense of the Whole Game.
(Imagine, a game with only one team.)

I don't have to spell IT out, right?
The more devilish details & nitty-gritty specifics,
the more nit-pickey disagreement we're likely to generate.
Don't you agree?   It's an attitude. Mind-set. Environmental.

xxxooo,
( My muse & idios daemon.)

Apologia Pro Vita Sua

2012-01-19T04:47:00.001-08:00

Apologia Pro Vita Sua

It’s a sign of failure when one has to explain one’s self—like
telling the punch line of a joke that nobody got or saying here’s
what I had in mind when what I had in mind made no never mind
to nobody.

Lest I sound pathetic as if asking for sympathy: I’m not complaining
here, o contrary: I’m grateful for the apparent and at least surface
tolerance (suffrage) I’ve had in my dogged redundant efforts to
supplement the dominant paradigm of rigorous syllabi-driven
aims, goals and measurable outcome institutional educating.

I acknowledge my failure but don’t want failure to eclipse what
I feel to be the legitimacy of a process—independent of results.
I’ll call it the Stalwart Pioneering Process.

SPP guarantees no outcome, measurable or immeasurable.
Outcome: sure—but not necessarily as planned in accord with
aims and goals. Frontiers yet and still unknown, damnit.

My pedagogical intention (because it is pedagogy which engages
me, and not any particular content or subject matter of which there
is always good and plenty): to antagonize, diametrically oppose
and provide antithesis countering our evolving professionalism
with what might be left of our amateur standing.

What ever you assume to be the relationship, there’s a radical and
incommensurate difference between the 2 value-sets:

              amateur                &               professional
       (for the love of it:                      (delayed gratuity
       it’s own reward &                      external motivation:
      Immediate gratification)                  pay )

and, untended, unregulated, ungoverned: the values of
professionalism naturally dominate and obscure if not prevent
the values of amateurism.

Need we argue?   I wish we could, would.

Note how amateurish my apology is. Not even close to primetime
chronicling Higher Education. You can hear the difference.
Among other things, it’s a difference in sound, in voice.

“Liberal Education is an approach to learning that empowers
individuals and prepares them to deal with complexity, diversity,
and change. It provides students with broad knowledge of the
wider world (e.g. science, culture, and society) as well as in-
depth study in a specific area of interest. A liberal education
helps students develop a sense of social responsibility, as well
as strong and transferable intellectual and practical skills such
as communication, analytical and problem-solving skills, and
a demonstrated ability to apply knowledge and skills in
real-world settings.” Professionalism

The sound of sighence. Think critically: the military could make
the same claim. And do IT as well or better. Working the Alaskan
fisheries during the summer, running a waterfront at a family resort
on Lake Champlain…empowering experience with complexity,
diversity, and change and carrying all the professional buzz words:
social responsibility, communication, analytical and problem-solving
skills in real-world settings. Emperor’s clothing.

Ok – say I’m overstating and reducing and generalizing and doing
injustice to professionalism and not sufficient justice to amateurism.

I agree.

Always a reduction. Always a rip-off of the WHOLE, always a
moving violation.   I welcome the accusations, the adversarial-ness.
Bring it on. Nothing is worth much without it being argued-out,
don’t you agree? Rolling our own holy smokes.

Otherwise its just off-the shelf, pre-shrunk cellophane wrapped,
store bought getRdone professionalism.

I could go on. But I can’t put IT in play unilaterally.
Or even with a grade gun. That would be forcing the issue.
The plays the thing. Play and be Played. School and be schooled

             School: from Latin: “leisure time”

xxxooo, Sam

Lucid Schemes

2012-01-16T09:14:00.001-08:00

PunditsRus

Explain to me the differences if you can
between “root cause” on the one hand
and on the other: symptomania.

Between mess in the kitchen-- floating
pots, pans & kettles on the one hand and
on the other: holes in the roof.

Between when it’s raining and the sun
don’t shine on the one hand and on the
other when it’s not.

We’re at war, yes?
War on Poverty, War on Affluence.
War on Stupidity & Ignorance. War
on Human Nature: Greed, Envy. Desire.
Class War & Crimes of Fashion, War against
Handicapped & Learning Disability, against
Drugs, Discrepancies & Inequities

We’re mad as hell & not going to take it
any more. Peace? Peace? There is no
peace.

Rigor on the one hand. No one will deny its
role in the education of all ages. A village of
robust rigor ratcheting up for excellence.

On the other hand "prerequisites of creation:
playfulness, love, concentration, practice,
skill, using the power of limits, using the
power of mistakes, risk, surrender,
patience, courage, trust & a
harmony of opposite
tensions." (S.N. Nachmanovitch)

I don’t have a leg to stand on. My house is built
on sand. Even f I’d invented E = MC squared,
say, I’d still be a bad driver, poor listener: A.D.D.
as far as the political issues of the daze are concerned:
my impoverishment I have with me all ways.
No doubt.

xxxooo, Presbyter

Alls Fair

2012-01-15T06:02:00.001-08:00

All’s Fair

Accentuate the Positive & Negative.

We’re at war, yes? War on Poverty,

War on Affluence. War on Stupidity

& Ignorance. War on Human Nature:

Greed, Envy. Desire. Class War &

Crimes of Fashion, War against

Handicapped & Learning Disability

against Drugs, Discrepancies &

Inequities

We’re mad has hell and not going to

take it any more. Peace? Peace?

There is no peace. Choose your

team. Just Vote..

I don’t have a leg to stand on.

My house is built on sand. Even

if I’d invented E = MC squared, say,

I’d still be a lousy driver, poor listener:

A.D.D. as far as the political issues

of the daze are concerned.

PunditsRus & Concerned Citizens

2012-01-15T03:50:00.001-08:00

punditsRus & concerned citizens

Explain to me the differences

if you can (& relationships)

between a “root cause” on the

one hand and on the other:

symptomania.

Mess in the kitchen floating

pots & pans * kettles on the

one hand and on the other:

holes in the roof.

When it’s raining and the sun

don’t shine on the one hand

and on the other when it’s not.

Just asking.

Paradigm Shi(f)t

2012-01-15T03:24:00.001-08:00

Paradigm Shift

I changed my mind.
I changed my mind-set.
I changed my frame of minding.

As if.

What does it take to change a mind-set.
Not just a mind, minding (do I buy
a Ford or Chevy?)—but a frame
of mind: major in sociology
or ceramics? Stay in school
or move on? Mormon
mission work, or
tattoo?

I'm just asking.

Serop :Ludere (Serious Play)

2012-01-14T03:38:00.000-08:00

Sam: I'm wondering what your sense is of Serio Ludere.

I'm thinking of it in terms of mode or genre, I guess, rather than 
a rhetorical/logical game of crossing  opposites. 

So, the model, I think, is Apuleius and Metamorphoses,  where all
the debased zany violent antics of the transformed  man/donkey 
ultimately lead to the sacred/divine. I take it  that Renaissance
Platonists were interested in this mode. 

Any thoughts or associations?

Dear Carol,

Serio Ludere: serious play, to play seriously
[the wisdom of foolishness & fooling around:
wit, joke, aHA! Gotcha!
I Got IT (eureka),
I get it....]

I've been thinking more about this "sabbatical" (fallowship)
idea you are playing-with as maybe representing an actual
frame- of-mind beyond mere genre, game, Renaissance rhetoric,
wit etc. -- maybe even characterizing a school-environment that
shapes an aspect of our always seriously SACS Sphinxed
institutional higher educational atmosphere

Consider a portion (if not the whole) of Gen Ed where the
relationship between GetRDone and Fooling Around is turned
up and explored as Applied Disciplinary and Cross Disciplinary
Serio Ludere,

Call it our Stalwart Pioneering Process Seriously.

SPP guarantees no outcome, measurable or immeasurable.
Outcome: sure—but not necessarily as planned in accord
with aims and goals. Frontiers yet and still always unknown,

SPP Serio Ludere : an attitude which engages any particular
content or subject matter (of which there is always good and
plenty) so as to antagonize, diametrically oppose and provide
antithesis -- countering our evolving serious professionalism with
what might be left of our amateur standing. Fooling with it.
Seriously.

What ever you assume to be the relationship, there’s a radical
and incommensurate difference between the 2 value-sets:

    amateur (play)           &          professional (seriously!)
      for the love of it:                            delayed gratuity
       it’s own reward &                      external motivation:
      Immediate gratification.                    pay

AND: untended, unregulated, ungoverned, the values of serious
professionalism naturally dominate and obscure if not prevent the
values of playful amateurism. True? Need we argue?

Serio Ludere: a means of salvation: rescuing our curriculum from
it's dominant serious one-hand-clapping professionalism and putting
us all in play--seriously. The Ludic Frame.

Seriously: I don't expect any of you to take me seriously in these
matters but maybe you can at least see & acknowledge how
foolish I am. In play.   A good thing.

xxxooo, Sam

Preamble to a Preamble to a General Education Program

2012-01-13T03:50:00.000-08:00

    “I’m surprised at how open-minded
        I am.”        Epimenides, the Rhino

Preamble to a PREAMBLE

In these troubled and turbulent times… In these
days of rapid technological change…robust anxiety
& fragmented knowledge…thinking globally & acting
locally….Local Food and Feedback...the worst of
times and the best of times….Don’t postpone joy.
.
Can I imagine a Gen Ed program as an
emerging phenomena? Rising-up out of
dynamic inter-active joyful sustained argument,
collegial cantankerousness and collaborative
genius?.

Keith Sawyer attests to the fact
that an environment that
encourages failure & suspects
clarity is prerequisite to developing
collaborative genius. A good thing.

(as opposed to an environment that
encourages success and salutes clarity:
seemingly prerequisite to individual
genius. A good thing.)

Niels Bohr says the opposite of a profound
truth is another profound truth and if we are
approaching paradox, we must be making progress.
.
And Ray Anderson: our green
hero from industry & commerce:
I’ve quoted over and over as
calling for systematic change in
educating—not just symptomatic
jiggle juggling of the same thing
in different costume.

            syllabus (contract)
     * lecture-to-discussion ratios
     * attendance policy
     * reading and writing assignments
       (texts, term & semester papers)
     * quizzes and examination policy
     * deadline policy (late penalties)
     * presentation/poster policies
     * assessment and evaluation policy
     * diagnosed learning disability policy
.
It takes a pillage to raise a gen ed
program (not to be collapsed, conflated,
or confused with silo disciplines
methodology & subject matter majors,
minors, posters & capstone events )
Don't you agree?

Or do we just have to get-R-done
and move on?
That too?

Just asking.
Sam

My Depravity (Academic and Powweless to Prevent it)

2012-01-11T03:24:00.000-08:00

Dear Colleagues.

Walking away from Glad yesterday afternoon I realized the
depth of my academic depravity:

           I love converse action more than solutions.

The cerebral & affective journey I value more than the measurable
outcome which is the destination.

           I’d rather talk the talk than walk the walk.

The process counts more for me than the finished product.

Imagine me on the same task force or in a classroom with ones
primarily anxious for outcomes, results, solutions in hand.

            We wouldn’t Just Get Along, true?

The 2 sets of values which I characterize thusly:

         walk on water     walk on eggs
            (wow)                 (woe)

          process                  product
            liberal                   instrumental
           “amateur”              “pro”

are “hostile” – vinegar and oil       Need we argue?

From a whole-istic overview they are as complementary
and as essential to our temper and environment as hot & cold.

But for that complementary relationship to be realized,
it has to be acknowledged that our professional concerns with

instrumental,
getRdone,
finished product,
find a solution,
measurable outcomes
coherence, consistency, & clarity bias
our work & service values

are the dominant pair of dimes and can’t easily tolerate the
antithetical antagonistic opposing values of process and the
Liberal Art which I would s pell out as non-instrumental,
non-getRdone, non- finished product, non- find a solution,
non-measurable outcomes, non-coherence, non-consistency,
non-clarity non- work& service values that never the less
might be recognized & cherished as mothering invention,
innovation and the finished products we salute.

General Education might address this relationship and consider
it an environmental and pedagogical issue as primary & fundamental
to content and thematic concerns with triad and application &
global citizenship & critical thinking & communication & inter-
disciplinarity which, by the way, yesterday/s meeting was a perfect
representation of our own mastery of these valuse here at home
where charity begins.

Ways of Talking: I heard chemists and biologists speaking,
sociologists and psychologists, theater people and math, literary
critics, historians, legal expert on harassment…

A field study right under our gnosis. Local Food for crying out
loud: sampling our interdisciplinary critical thinking and it’s
efficacy in problem-solving and generating measurable outcome
attainment..

Takes a pillage

Thankfully, Paula stated she was in no rush and would rather do
IT right than quick, which suggests to me an appreciation for
Process as much as for Product. which is all I’m asking for
over and over: redundant and whiny and inarticulate and always
asking for help: me committed to sustaining my foolish liberal art
crusade because I'm an amateur & I love it. --the process whatever
the product if ever.

xxxooo, Sam

Always begging for those who beg to differ so as to sustain sustainable
converse action on-facultyL 24/7/365 in this media & information
suffused post-literate neo-oral brave new world.

My Open Mind

2012-01-10T03:59:00.000-08:00

My open mind.

I can walk through a field or mall, read
a newspaper or student theme, scan the
car radio, flip thru tv channels, over hear
conversation, engage directly in dialogue.
and I pay my efficient attention to what
provokes, calls out to fit my agenda (aims,
goals, measurable objectives).

The remains of the daze, I ignore.
Attention deficient. Natural selection.
How could it be otherwise? .

Ivory Tower (Liberal Art: not to be confused with majors and minors)

2012-01-10T03:18:00.000-08:00

Retreat

ex-cellence: "from the column": (view)

             For the sake of argument, Jason and
             the Argonauts sailed off to secure the
             Golden Fleece: a shining.

           Building this city with rocks & rolls,
             emergent properties, phenomena, &
             values. Edifying.

            All together now crying out loud for
            the sake of argument. How else get
                      better and good?

A Load of This

2012-01-06T03:09:00.000-08:00

Ludicrous

Wait'll they get a load of this.

The Greater part of what
my neighbors call good, I
believe in my soul to be
bad. (Thoreau )

Always room in Fool’s Rush
Inn, should be no surprise: no
reservation needed. So many
angels fear to tread, need not
apply and always room in the
inn for free.

Welcome, too, the clowns.
There ought to be clowns;
send in clowns galore: so
many shovel-ready tasks
abound and more.

More Lite! More Lite!

2012-01-05T02:53:00.000-08:00

Consciousness:

melting polar cap

Shrink Shrank Shrunk:
the whole iceberg; and
then merely the tip & now
only a snow ball squat on
top the tip is how I’ve
come to see my
consciousness;

Or sitting in a plastic
kiddy-seat beeping a
rubber horn as if driving
the auto-mobile: a
convenient toot.

Watch out: Consciousness
Coming thru. Beep! Beep!

Aiming to save the world
with Buick intentions, I’s
berg aspirations, & a snow
ball’s chance in hell.

Consciousness: a miner’s
lamp; me: assessing the true
nature of dark.

Consciousness: this little lite
of mind: I’m gonna let it shine,
my total eclipse of the sum.

Anarcy & Chaos: Mothers of Invention

2012-01-02T04:41:00.001-08:00

Anarchy & Chaos
Mothers of Invention

Because rigor is not a quality I value and
innovation is . . .

(the 2 are incommensurate & don’t Just
Get Along; complement, sure: but stick
Rachel Rigor on the same committee or
task force with Ike Innovation and you
tell me what it takes to get them to work
together.)

. . .I invite Anarchy (and consequently)
Chaos, into each of my class periods as
environmental habitat for zero-based,
up-from-old-scratch, reinvent-wheels
kind of thinking & contextual harassment.

As Werner Heisenberg reminds me: I
can’t cover-ground, move on down
the road & dig a hole in the cold cold
ground at the same time unless not-
covering-ground & failing to get any
where is considered achievement..

Local Food & Feedback.
Position & Place.
Origins of the Universe of Converse.
In-the-Beginnings Again & Again.
Emerging Values & Phenomena
:my aims, goals & not so measurable
objectives, and Anarchy & Chaos are
consumers devoutly desired: pre-
requisite for mothering invention..

Otherwise: in medias res as usual: all
particle velocity and no position, know
what I mean.?

“Are we there yet, Daddy?”
my daughter would ask ten minutes into
our road trips already habituated to getting-
R-done some place other than the journey
as destination.

(I don’t succeed in my aims, goals and
immeasurable outcomes. O contrary.
Mission Impossible at this point in time.
An Environmental Issue. Like trying to
build an ice cream parlor in hell and do
no injustice to hot & cold. Got to love it..)

xxxooo, Sam

Resolve

2012-01-01T03:26:00.001-08:00

Resolve

Who do I think I am?
Who made me boss of the universe?
Where do I get off?

My arrogance is humiliating.
My humility looks arrogant.
The mass of me lives lies of
quiet desperation.

Goodfellows & Nice follow
me all the daze of my life.&
I will swell in the house of
words forever.

Squeeze the universe
into a ball

Roll it toward some
overwhelming
question..

xxxooo, Presbyter

Perne in a Gyre

2011-12-31T03:50:00.001-08:00

Whatever is begotten, born, and
dies. Caught in that sensual music
all neglect. Monuments of unageing
intellect (Yeats)

Hosanna

“Brother are you saved?”

Portrait of my old man as a young fool
for Christ asking any stranger on the road

(after Yale, Exeter, Edinburgh: born
again to fish for myn, save souls best he
could state of an art beyond Brownings,
Milton, Shakespeare, Chaucer & other
Phi Beta Kappa constraints not with
standing cultural relativities & salutary
sophistication):

are you safe?

He wondered & would ask.

Imagine:
salvation as cool as Kardashians?
Kim’s catastrophic ass? A million
dollar money maker. Need we argue?
Any body with 6-pac abdominals on
the other hand, that too. Takes one’s
breath away. Just Breathe, I advise
my self, caught up in moments.of
my risky business.

Savvy as second hand holy smokes,
pre-shrunk cellophane wrapped: .no
need to roll my own. God, Guns, and
Gotchas! Get back Get back to where
I started from. Sound. Safe. Symptomatic

Safety tantamount to chocolate & straw
berries, sweetness & lights at the end of
my tunneling; peace of mind guaranteeing
some satisfaction yes, Yes, YES?
.
xxxooo, Presbyter

No Country for Old Men

2011-12-30T03:45:00.000-08:00

   Disentanglement Studies
     & Leadership Programs
         (What Counts)

Clumps of Luther
Swatches of Calvin
Some Yeats. I could go on.

Face it: salvation’s the only
subject that engages my
safety-minded old age. .

Transcending the damage
and the damage done.

Walking on 3 legs on eggs or
water: nothing else counts.
Oh, other stuff counts, but
not COUNT counts, know
what I mean?

I am slack.

Indifferent to details &
things that so-called “matter,”
Kardashions et al. Iranian oil,
the new young executive of
North Korea, Bachmann & Perry,
Newt & Willard & even Obama
My Love

Count, sure they count.,
but COUNT count?

Soul clap its hands and sing, and
louder sing for every tatter in it
it’s mortal dress,

Sailing to Byzantium.

xxxooo, Presbyter

Goodiness

2011-12-29T04:03:00.001-08:00

Goodiness

The appearance of GOOD
is the best I can do. Actually
achieving is impossible:
too much to lose.

Show a tennis player how to
improve his serve & it
screws up my whole
game in the mean
time improving. .

Make a monkey of myself?.
A fool for crying out loud?.
Are you kidding? Forget
about it.

No guarantee I’ll get good.
I get by on bumper stickers,
logo t shirts, solar panels &
hybrid car car lookin good,
but that’s just me in the
spot light. .

Waiting for Goedel II

2011-12-29T03:32:00.001-08:00

Waiting for Gödel

Mission Impossible

Can a groan man lift hisself

up by his own bootstraps?

Hoist on his own petar?

Stick in his thumb

pull out a plumb.

O what a good

boy am I.

Misanthropology II

2011-12-29T03:06:00.001-08:00

Fundamentalism: deep grammar
generating infinite sentences &
symptoms.

MISANTHROPOLOGY
in a post-Enlightenmental
post-literate, neo-oral age.

(accentuate the negative
for the sake of argument)

Humanism.
Secular Humanism
Religious Humanism
Humanism-a-um

The Humanities Division
Ah, the humanity! The horror:
the horror on one of the hands.

Only human, all too human.
Waiting for Gödel’s Theorem.

Just describing here. Critical thinking.
Not a judgment (Judgment generates
defense, homeland insecurity.)

Ludic: put it in play. IT, I said
Or what's a college for?

xxxooo, Presbyter

The Ludic Frame

2011-12-27T03:44:00.001-08:00

The Ludic Frame:

Because it is a good game. Got
rules   a substantial part of which
may be learning them as I play—
ooops, oooh, damnit,:superseding
or reformatting, reconfiguring explicit,
obviouscommon-sense we all know
and love, admonishing each other,
shaking a finger to warn, conspire
to uphold. Ludic.    In play.

Liberal Art Converse Action.
“What unlike things must meet
and mate” (Melville) The practice
of dialectic can’t even begin until
some one gets hurt. Not your sticks
& stones hurt, of course not. Bells
& whistles border violations. Home
land Insecurity incursion. Hands
across the I’ll. An enemy as good
as a Buddha and you got to lovem
or forgetaboutit.

Liberal Art II Not for liberals. No
liberals need apply. Conservatives
neither—holding on, holding on to
what they got. Beyond the Goodies
& the Weasels, the rational & the
irrational, logic & illogic, dreams &
waking life, offense & defense, common
sense, nonsense, & no sense at all,
beyond the symbolical & the diabolical,
3 little pigs & BB Wolf …

Liberal Art III. Is there a satan in the
house? Accuser, adversary, joker, jester,
clown, trickster – someone to put IT in
play?   IT, I said. Do I always got to be
spelling IT out for you? Daring to disturb
the universe? Eat a peach? (Wait’ll they
get a load of this!) Thank god for it then ,
how else get a wiggle on?. Raise the
dead?

xxxooo, Presbyter

Scratch and Sniff

2011-12-23T03:17:00.000-08:00

“We all crazy egos,

hungry for love.”

Sherwood Anderson

characterizing human

humanism in a post-

enlightenment stage.:

Ah, the humanity!.

Our deep grammar

of discontent:human

nature saying infinite

sentences about this

and that: because &

affect:--the age of

ReasonsWhy & why

not?

Original spin like any

12-bar 3-chord blues

progression: no limit

to songs it will tell

diverse & differently

covering the same.

old same old scratch

and sniff.

Bartleby

On the one hand, PLACE, on the other VELOCITY

2011-12-17T04:18:00.000-08:00

This helps me
more than it
does you.

       Nature loves Redundancy even if English Teachers
   and Creative Wrtg Fiction & Non-Fiction Teachers
       do not so much.

Triad:

Heart of thinking is drawing distinctions.
Heart of academics arguing them out.
Heart of liberal art: relating them.

“Teachers need to see themselves first of all as intellectual…
even apart from immediately practical applications.”
        (from David Abernathy’s link
          “What is College For?)

A telling distinction right there:
being intellectual on the one hand
tending to practical matters on the other.

Thinking:

Separate, polarize, and characterize Ike
Intellectual from Patty Practical Application.
(might as well personify. what we do
implicitly if not explicitly: anthromorphize,
mythologize: a way-of-thinking.)

Being Academic:

Turn IT up—the difference, the values,
the dynamic between intellectualizing
and instrumentality. (utility). Keep them
in sustained play. Argue them out but
don’t let either win or lose—or end game.
This is Being Academic, yes?

Liberal Art

The beauty part: what Laura L loves
as Complementarity: how opposites
can Just Get Along if the opposition
is treasured, cherished: a sustainability
crucial to relationship, a consummation
devoutly desired. What Unlike Things
Must Meet and Mate, says Melville in
his (liberal) “Art”

In placid hours well-pleased we dream
Of many a brave unbodied scheme.
But form to lend, pulsed life create,
What unlike things must meet and mate:
A flame to melt--a wind to freeze;
Sad patience--joyous energies;
Humility--yet pride and scorn;
Instinct and study; love and hate;
Audacity--reverence. These must mate,
And fuse with Jacob's mystic heart,
To wrestle with the angel—Art

Imagine: if Ike Intellectualism ran
rampant over our curriculum, having
his way across the bored. Or worse:
Patti Practicality ruling with an ironic
glove—demanding show of ongoing
improvement, clear & consistent goals
& observable application.

But even if we share these distinctions

            Position    /    Velocity
    Intellectualizing / Instrumentalizing
   HAP / Ways of Talking About Hap
                 SACS / Creativity
    Professionalism / Amateur Standing
             Product / Process

and manage to maintain their distinct
values (so as to relate & complement),
we’ll still be naturally in the habit of
promoting our personal side of the I’ll,
maybe reaching across when it seems
to serve personal aims, goals, purposes,
measurable & immeasurable
outcomes…

So that what it comes down to (IT, I said)
is whether we can keep IT and our Selves
in Play. Sustainable Converse-Action
Across the Curriculum. Know what
I mean? Being Academic.
Pre-requisite for

Liberal Art.

Need we argue? I wish we could.
I’m always just asking for it.
Or what’s a college for?

xxxooo, Sam (ongoing season's greeting. I haven't
said enough.)

If you're an INTELLECTUAL and you Love IT, Clap your hands !

2011-12-16T09:50:00.000-08:00

Publish and Perish

Perhaps I’ve said too much.
Oh no, I haven’t said enough.

“Teachers need to see themselves
first of all as intellectual…even apart
from immediately practical applications.”
(from David Abernathy’s link
        “What is College For?)

                     ****
The heart of thinking is drawing distinctions.
The heart of academics arguing them out.
The heart of liberal art: relating them.

Actually, sharing this distinction

HAP /     / Ways of Talking About HAP

is, I’m thinking, necessary but not sufficient.
to an ongoing overall harmony between

             SACS    and   Creativity

(1 . Regulatory Quality-Control Finished Product
    issues on the one hand and on the other
   2. Originating, Generating, Emergent
           phenomena issues on the others )

Making sure the left hand don’t know what the
the right hand is doing and vice versa or at least
blocking interference of either hand’s business
by the other is crucial, know what I mean?

I want to emphasize that whenever we pride
ourselves upon finding a newer, stricter way
of thought or exposition whenever we start
insisting too hard upon “operationalism”
or symbolic logic or any of these very essential
systems of tramlines, we lose something of the
very ability to think new thoughts.

And equally, of course, whenever we rebel
against the sterile rigidity of formal thought
and exposition and let our ideas run wild, we
likewise lose.

As I see it, the advances in scientific thought
come from combination of loose and strict
thinking, and this combination is the most
precious tool of science. (Gregory Bateson)

2 hands clapping.
Not just one.

   But even if we share these distinctions

   HAP / Ways of Talking About Hap
   SACS / Creativity
    Professionalism / Amateur Standing
    Product / Process

and manage to maintain their distinct values
(so as to relate & complement), we’ll still be
arguing for our side of the I’ll, maybe reaching
across when it seems to serve our aims, goals,
purposes and measurable or immeasurable
outcomes…

So that what it comes down to (IT, I said) is
whether we can keep IT and our Selves in Play.
Sustainable Converse-Action Across the Curriculum.
Know what I mean?

Need we argue? I’m always just asking for it.
Or what’s a college for?

xxxooo, Sam

SACS & CREATIVITY: & how they learned to Just Get Along

2011-12-16T04:49:00.001-08:00

SACS and Creativity and how they learned to
              Just Get Along.

Dear dears,

We might could get closer to the same page
if not paragraph and sentence (probably too
close for comfort), if we could share this
distinction:

   HAP: What’s Actually Happening (WAH)
on the one hand

   and

   Ways We Talk About WAH (WWTAH)
on the other hand.

and enjoy a common awareness of these 2 radically
different “economies” ( let’s say, or “cultures”) so that
we wouldn’t necessarily have to confuse ourselves and
the issues by collapsing and conflating them.

Ways of Talking. Imagine: being able to talk about
How we Talk & are Talking and not just be
talking about it..

This way we could talk about Varieties of Teaching &
Learning Experiences as well as structures and
environmental issues, calendars and schedules
and advising and remedial measures,
persistence and retention,
attendance tracking,
counseling &
“support”
protocols
without confusing the issues:

Liberal Arts. Critical Thinking, Life-long
Benefits, Hunger-for Knowledge, Intellective
Desire, Matriculation & Commencement
Kinds of Talk celebrating the Academic
Tradition.

with

   How IT actually is day to day..
   What motivates. Get R Done
   Optimizing and juggling the
    requirements, pre-requisites,
    dead lines, Check IT off,
   take the credit and run crying
    out loud for crying out loud.

And do no disservice to either realm, mode, economy,
culture nor tie ourselves up in Gordian naughts standing
on two sides of the I’ll and yelling across the
incommensurate abysss.. .

(I love this! Should be obvious. THIS, I said. Do I got
to be spelling THIS out? You know what I’m talking
about, I bet you 10 thousand dollars! The grooves
and groves of Academia. GOT to love it. Life time
achievement.)

xxxooo, Presbyter

Parochial

2011-12-16T02:51:00.000-08:00

http://www.warren-wilson.edu/~physics/PhysPhotOfWeek/PPOW/

Parochial

My Limited interests and vision.
My mind-set: singular & Procrustean
Old age hardening cerebral & affective arterial flow. .

Symptoms of our Human-All-Too- Human predicament
don’t interest me at this Walking-On-3- Legs stage.

Lost my team spirit and don’t root against the Bad Guys
any more. Goodness gracious: a pox on both sides good
and evil and more power to them: don’t they .do the best
they can?

xxxooo, Young Goodman Brown.

Parochial

2011-12-16T02:42:00.000-08:00

Critical Thinking Thinker

2011-12-15T03:32:00.001-08:00

        Pre-Occupational
   Critical Thinker Thinking

Unless it’s by coach or mentor &
I’m asking for advice, improvement,.
just begging for it, I’m not going to
take correction—are you kidding?
    .
DNA (directional navigational algorithms):
protects & preserves my homeland:—
sealed-in & safe: boxed, bubbled,
closeted & convenient. .

                *****

    Beyond Like & Dislike
    Beyond Love & Hate
    Beyond Good & Evil

Uncanny & excruciating suspending
preference, aims, goals, target
purpose, my will & my nilling &
my measurable objectives.

How could I live without my Bad Guys?
my not’s and never’s and no no no’s?

No other side of the I’ll? No team spirit ?
or rah! rah! and rah?

Brekekekex, ko-ax! ko-ax!

Ah, the Humanity!

2011-12-14T03:19:00.001-08:00

     Ah, the Humanities
(not to be collapsed with
   the Sciences & the Arts)

     Why Reading Hawthorne
   Makes Me a Better Person.

The Minister put on the Black Veil
to expose the cover-up covering up:
my hate, my fear et al: my craving
for attention efficiency after all I'm
only human no more or less a
humanist.

Crave Attention

Of course.

Look Ma: No Hands!
See Me.
Hear Me.
Touch Me.
Feed Me.
At least Like Me,
if not Love & Hate. .

I can say:
   “It’s the principle of the thing.”.
     or
    “We can’t have a second Obama term”
    or
    “Pass the salt”
    or
"Why can't we improve "the schedule"?
   or
    “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with education,
     with the church, with democracy, with
     the economy, with Wall Street, with
immigration policy, with teenagers today……
    or
“Young Goodman Brown wouldov been a Good
Man if he’d been able to be a Bad Man but he
insisted on being a Good Man so he was a Bad
Man indeed.

etc.

And it’s all Crave Attention I’m clamoring for;
pardon me, my emperor’s big butt: I keep it
covered, best I can.

(If you quote me on this I'll have to deny it.
You understand, I'm sure.)

xxxooo, Presbyter

Old Rugged Cross

2011-12-13T03:53:00.000-08:00

Across the street from my old man’s First
Presbyterian Church in Johnstown PA, there
was a Pentacostal Holiness Church. We
called them Holy Rollers and could hear
their enthusiasm booming as we went to
Sunday School.

On the other corner:a massive Catholic church,
the congregation of which would litter their steps
with cigarette butts after service, which me
and a buddy would collect to smoke in a
vacant lot nearby and once set it on fire lighting
up.

Our manse was next to the nunnery. We’d steal
the grapes off their vines. Sunday afternoons I’d
have to go to the projects with Dad, where he
conducted services–and then again in the evening,
at the down town shelter.

Once a month: a hymn-sing service in the evening.
I’d raise my hand for The Old Rugged Cross but
my old man would overlook me, not wanting to
play favorites,

Potluck suppers were special–and Strawberry
Festivals in the summer.

In 1950 we moved to Connecticut, where Dad was
called to start-up a new church. After he retired, he
served another 17 years at 4 different rural churches
in Minnesota and Wisconsin, ending up in Sauk
Rapids, freezing his butt off but loving the
weather and the people.

We Must Be Making Progress

2011-12-13T02:49:00.001-08:00

Dear Transcendental Romantics
(& colleagues across the curriculum)

    Coursing w/o Borders Series

    Final Transcendenistry

EGO : Latin for the first person
          singular (I)

        E UNUM PLURIBUS

self self self self self self self
self self self self self self self
self self self self self self self
            self self self

         Go ahead: deny.

         Cover it up

Send it to the cellar with Madeline.
Or up to the attic with Roderick
Put it in the cupboard with your
cupcakes.

No man is an island, says John Donne.

“The opposite of a profound truth is
another profound truth,” says Niels Bohr.

NO! Man IS an island—I say.

Every thing has 2 handles, says Emerson.
be careful which you pick.

The word “DOUBT” is diminutive
of the word "double. "

Double, double, toil and trouble
says Shakespeare.

On the one hand and then again
on the other hand.

Are you so single-minded you can’t
just as easily see the other side?

"I see we are approaching paradox"
(Bohr again): "We must be making
              progress."

I Hate Every Body Great & Small

2011-12-12T03:58:00.001-08:00

My Vision.

I hate every body.

Just saying. Describing is what I'm doing. Doesn't matter:

race, sexual preference, state or nationality, north or south,

Canadian or points south, female, make. Trans or

impersonators great & small, the 1% or 99, rich

and poor, family, neighbor, colleague,

No body need take it personally

Hate is my ottom-line and fundamental

what it's like to be a part and not the whole

and why I can't Just Get Along, why I fear on

a regular basis, anxiety to panic variations of my

prodigious & prodigal experience.

Homeland Insecurity. Makes good sense. Got to keep

my borders intact. Un-encroached. Family jewels intact.

Besides that: my attention deficiency and ignorance is

monumentally generated by my natural selection: choosing

“this” and “ that” at the expense of all the rest, continually

ripping-off my terms of desire and significances from the

larger field, and mall, and community, and whole.

This can't be said in public and I put my original spin on it

and keep it covered with new clothes and exercise: I

read a lot—try and keep up with current events.

Have to.

If I want to fit-in.

Love is all we need and all we talk about when not

slapping my forehead in consternation and dismay

critically thinking about all them bastards. No one

loves a bad guy. What…are you kidding?

Charity begins in the home but Helen Hate is not allowed

in the kitchen let alone parlor.- not to mention Sophie's

hoist: stealing away the goodness, steal away,

steal away.

Toward Frontiers Yet Unknown

2011-12-11T11:02:00.001-08:00

Is there really no way that you can think of to evaluate 
how well your students have learned what you have
to teach them?

Lots of ways: and each way is something like a digital
reduction of an analogue process so that I will pretty much
get what I aim, propose, determine to derive in accord with
my agenda and expected outcomes.

The wayfarer, Perceiving the pathway to truth,
Was struck with astonishment. It was thickly grown with weeds.
"Ha," he said, "I see that none has passed here In a long time."
Later he saw that each weed Was a singular knife. "Well," he
mumbled at last, "Doubtless there are other roads."

Dear Laura

The opposite of a profound truth is another profound truth.
Neils Bohr.

Say: a strong framework, set of principles, guidelines
that create a realistic space for the release of creativity
towards a purpose.

is a profound truth re institutional educating ("social science values")

Known Frontiers, Call it. Conscientious Pioneering. .

How would you characterize its opposite truth, so as to provide a
meta-framework that embraces also the antithesis of principles,
guilde lines, deterministic aims goals and measurable outcomes?

Call it: Stalwart Pioneering Toward Frontiers Yet Unknown.

Need a shared 3rd term that represents the complementarity
between Determinate SAC-ism & Helter Skelter Indeterminacy
Known & Unknown and why can't they maybe Just Get Along? .

Something like the ability to walk on eggs (woe) as well as the ability
to walk on water (wow) without sacrificing one agility to the other,
know what I mean? Call it Liberal Art (as opposed to any of the
liberal arts--those majors, minors, capstones and poster events)

A shared "Over-all Boss/Governance" notion that transcends
SACS Regulatory Professional Dominance AND a proper desire
to maintain Amateur Standing (say)-- embracing the ongoing agon (y)
between these two opposing values without letting either economy
or culture have its way with the other.(Hegemony!)

That would be awesome. Until that happens, I'll do my best to represent
& try to express anti-SAX-ism, not that SACS isn't a profound truth
(regulatory principles, guidlines, purposeful projected behavior), but that
its bright gleam and lucid scheming eclipses if not occludes its opposite
profound truth which is what? what the? what the heck? hello!

"Hmm: I see we are heading toward paradox:we must be making progress!"
Bohrs II)

Be careful what we prey for.

xxxooo, Sam.

Strawaberry Fields Forever (Imagine, if you can)

2011-12-11T03:09:00.000-08:00

Sam, SAm, SAM! Let go of competition for once
and consider the complementary nature of "SACS"
and "creativity", as you put it.

Dear Laura,

In the name of Sustainability, I persist in playing one-sided
ping-pong: half-a-loafer bettern none & we both know
scholarship is “leisure-time” activity —not for everyone
but maybe everybody here is not everyone..

SACS industrial commitment to quality-control & regulation
is like the black plastic the garden crew throws over the
straw berry patch—holes cut for each plant so that nothing
but well formed fragaria are nurtured and nourished forever.

No aster, bedstraw, bittercress,
bull thistle, burdock , chicory,
curled dock, cut-leaved evening
primrose, daisy fleabane, false
dandelion, greenbriar, giant
ragweed, henbit, honeysuckle,
jimson, Johnson, knotweed, lambs
quarters, moth mullein, mouse-ear
chickweed, mugwort, prickly pear,
nimble will, morning glory, quack
grass, pennycress, prostrate pig
weed, trumpetcreeper, velvetleaf,
wild turnip or yellow rocket
          need apply

Makes good sense for science-training (if not science):
aims, goals, and measurable outcomes so as to be
learning the disciplinary practice: of conventions:
something like producing marketable strawberries
Local food: shrink-wrapped..Clear. Consistent.
Coherent.

Research values diabolically opposed to
Insearch values (say) & (lord have mercy)
the Idiotic values Expression
(L. idios: personal, private, unique, original)

Competitive, yes, and yet cooperative: distinct,
“hostile” values which, if embraced equally are,
as you say: complementary.

Complementarity depends on the mutual
reciprocating relationship of the two “cultures” –
C P.Snow’s version of Gary Hawkins 2 economies)
assuming one doesn't collapse the two into one
Dominant Pair of Dimes, say.

        (SacsSacsSacsSacsSacs:
Sphnix hulking over the city of Thebes)
.
Do we encourage proper Anti-Rubric Rubrics for
Imaginative Inquiry? For Expression?. For Action-
Required-to-Fashion power? (Whitehead). For Mess
& Guess, Slip-Sliding Away, Rooms for Play, Margery
fpr Error? Ike Indeterminacy? Inez Invention? Izzy
Innovation? Carrol Creativity? For Stalwart Pioneering
Beyond Witherspoon? Passing Hard & Soft Social
Science, & the Rational & Logically Positive
Humanitarians?

Toward frontiers north of Gazebo,
through Clouds of Kittredge, &
Holden Wilderness.
Alien Nations, yes.

But, as you say and I agree: complementary.
Fulfilling.

xxxooo, Sam

RIP-OFF

2011-12-09T05:34:00.000-08:00

I'm stealing this image from Don Collins because it's beautiful.
http://www.warren-wilson.edu/~physics/PhysPhotOfWeek/PPOW/

His "physics" always goes over my head, reminding me of my ignorance
("which my growth requires"). A revelation for me came years ago when
I discovered a book called Physics as Metaphor, by a physicist named Jones.
It was on a shelf in Fred Solomon's office. I read it with astonishment--stunned,.
not having before entertained the notion that physics might be metephorical, too
if not metaphysical. .

Here's Robert Frost's version
(somewhat: reduced, of course,
ripped-of from a larger whole.):

The other day we had a visitor here, a noted scientist, whose latest
word to the world has been that the more accurately you know where
a thing is, the less accurately you are able to state how fast it is moving.
You can see why that would be so, without going back to Zeno’s
problem of the arrow’s flight. In carrying numbers into the realm of
space and at the same time into the realm of time you are mixing metaphors,
that is all, and you are in trouble. They won’t mix. The two don’t go together.

...Everything is an event now. Another metaphor. A thing, they say, is all event.
Do you believe it is? Not quite. I believe it is almost all event. But I like
the comparison of a thing with an event.

...What I am pointing out is that unless you are at home in the metaphor,
unless you have had your proper poetical education in the metaphor, you
are not safe anywhere . Because you are not at ease with figurative values:
you don’t know the metaphor in its strength and its weakness.

You don’t know how far you may expect to ride it and when it may
break down with you. You are not safe with science; you are not
safe in history.

http://www.en.utexas.edu/amlit/amlitprivate/scans/edbypo.html

I Hate You All

2011-12-09T03:20:00.001-08:00

Dear Transcendentals, Linguists,
Fictionists and Colleagues Across
the Curriculum (coursing w/o borders).

       I hate you all

Right there: explains everything.
Or rather: the denial and cover-up
     explains everything.

       No wonder.

The failure to communicate.
The problems in relationship.
Hopes & fears of all the years.
My Yearning & Desire.

Can’t be said, however,

If you quote me I’ll deny it.
What ? Are you kidding?

I wanna-be good so bad I
can’t afford the bad-it-takes
to get there

What? Are you kidding?.

I love you all.
Love is all we need..

xxxooo, Presbyter

A Liberal Education: Prepartion for Career Success

2011-12-08T03:56:00.000-08:00

A Liberal Education: Preparation for Career Success
www.huffingtonpost.com             A.J/ Lafley

“Developing one's mind is no different from developing a
strong body: exercise and, specifically, cross training. By
studying art, science, the humanities, social science, and
languages, the mind develops the mental dexterity that
opens a person to new ideas, which is the currency for
success in a constantly changing environment.

And just as an aspiring major league pitcher needs a live
arm and a calculating, cool head to pitch effectively, so too
does a management prospect need to be educated broadly
to respond effectively to ambiguity and uncertainty.

Completing a broad liberal arts curriculum should enable a
student to develop the conceptual, creative and critical
thinking skills that are the essential elements of a
well-exercised mind.”

   ***************

Diogenes,
     Epimenides,
                  Procrustes,
                             Archimedes, and
                                                Narcissus
   walk into a bar . . .

                   Do the mathema.

                      @@@@@@

SO: class itself (the meetings on Mondays & Wednesdays
at 8:00 am: never on Fridays) is probably best described
as some combination of racing, losing it, & I guess skiing
powder where I know I’ve got to let go all control-conventions
& habits of groomed-slope skiing because as my son advises:

    “Groomed slopes are a more predictable surface
    and easier for most people. Skiing powder is hard
    for the inexperienced, but effortless for people
     ‘in the know.’      Different technique is required.
    Can’t fight it;

          Gotta let it flow.
                    You carve each
                               turn on a groomed
                                slope but you
                         float on
                   powder.

                $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Diogenes wandered Athens with a lantern in his hand—
holding it up the face of each passer-by, looking for
“an honest myn!”

     “Well, I’m a hungry, thieving, lying somabitch,”
      I told him—“don’t be shining your ever-loving
                                                                        light on me.”
     “Eureka! praise god, shame the devil & pass the
     ammunition, says my diogenetic stranger:
                “an honest myn at last!”

Be Good for Goodness Sakes!

2011-12-07T04:46:00.000-08:00

It’s the goodiness I should hate,
not the goodies. The goodies
don’t know any better. Wanna-
be good so bad: we can’t afford
the bad-it-takes.

Exposure. Naked Came I.—my
emperor’s bare butt revealed
Moon river. Small apocalypse:
a naked bastard. Can’t show it
off without offense, or worse:
ridicule.

Who can blame a goodie for
goodines? Throw the first stone.

VOICE is ALL: Content's Galore

2011-12-06T03:50:00.001-08:00

VOICE is all. How it sounds.
Content's galore: trivial and profound.
Listen to the sound. Voice is all.

Bright College years, with pleasure rife,

The shortest, gladdest years of life;

How swiftly are ye gliding by!

Oh, why doth time so quickly fly?

The seasons come, the seasons go,

The earth is green or white with snow,

But time and change shall

naught avail ...

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We're poor little lambs who have lost our way
Baa, baa, baa
We're little black sheep who have gone astray
Baa, baa, baa

Gentleman songsters off on a spree
Doomed from here to eternity
Lord have mercy on such as we
Baa, baa, baa

etc.

Content's galore. It's VOICE that counts.
Need we argue? xxxooo, Presbyter

Conviction of Sin

2011-12-05T08:28:00.000-08:00

Conviction of SIN (I.E. es, esse: "essence," "being").
No way could I figure this out on my own or come
to terms. Might as well ask a fish to define wet.
Amniotic. Hysterical. All wet. Clueless as to
damp, let alone dry.
(Ab-solut)

Something like an immaculate conception,
invasion of the Spirit of the Whole.
Goedel’s theorem. BB Wolf huffing
& puffing might could represent
how I am clued in: convicted—
my moving violations, rip-off
reductions & crimes against
the whole.

Damaged & damaging:
the damage done .
No doubt.

xxxooo, Presbyter

Noblesse Oblige

2011-12-04T02:42:00.001-08:00

Noblesse Oblige

Don't just do something: stand there.
                 (Father Daniel Berrigan)

You're Peter Process-Person and happen
too hook-up with Pauline Product Specialist
(Aims & Outcomes Devotee) for some Task
Force or other, say:

prepare to be gracious, deferential, & frame
your Mess, Guess & Indeterminacy
proclivity with something like

    Um, er, ah, the other hand maybe .
    or
    Yes, of course that makes sense, But...
        or
    Don't pay me no never mind: just
    gathering wool here.

so as gently to stroke The Order of Things
with your monkey-wretch assumption-
questioning, controlling-metaforce.
exposure, rubric-denying stuff
like that...

Me and Solomon would sit on Spidel steps
summer mornings bloviating blue sky &
stochasticizing streams of conjecture like
anything while workers passed and
re-passed hefting weed-eaters and
shovel-ready projects.

Embarrassed at our stoic status-quo position
compared to their peripatetic velocity, Fred
would eventually feel obligated to call out:

   Don’t worry about us. Keep moving.
   Nothing to see here. Just bullshitters
              bullshitting is all...

disclaiming immobility & by appropriate self-
denigration, confirming their industrial work
ethic momentarily easing somewhat suspicion
and making no never mind..
.
“Defer to them with the most scruples.”

Noblesse Oblige

xxxooo, Presbyter

Waking Up.

2011-12-03T04:10:00.001-08:00

Waking UP

What wakes people in middle of
the night, cold sweat over injustice,
inequities & discrepancies, steep
slope construction, coal and clean
air issues, pepper spray, tuition
increases, mean-spirited & small-
hearted people, republican candidates
strangely are not what disturbs my
midnight hours.

My wake-up calls are trivial by
comparison, I’m embarrassed to
say The distinction between
Process and Product:

I swear it wakes me out of sound
sleep: an ongoing converse action
between my ears as I go to the john
for the third time.

Ludicrous.
I wouldn’t admit to this
during waking life.

xxxooo, Presbyter

Immeasurable Aims & Goals & Outcomes

2011-12-03T03:44:00.001-08:00

Ludic Frame

What I do with my life is
I fulminate about the
difference and the
relationship
between
process
&
product.

Sometimes also known as
the journey and the destination.

Verbing and Noun.
Predication and Sentencing

Process, while necessary, is
insufficient & Underdog or I
wouldn’t be making such a
stink about it all the time if the
2 just got along—the bad-it-
takes to get better and good. .

Playboy & Puritan
Tom Foolery & Get R Done.
Mess Guess & Margery Error.
Clair Coherence & Consistency:
Composing and Consuming like
anything. . .

A heroic dichotomy with many
faces and phases: my because
& affect & reasons-why.

xxxooo, Presbyter

Waiting for Goedel

2011-12-02T05:19:00.001-08:00

Waiting for Gödel
--his theorem—
(no whine released
before its time).

Incomplete, swimming
in my own consistency.

Hook & haul me up,
flip-flop in the canoe
awhile.

Knowing dry for the
first time like a virgin
& OMG all wet for
crying out loud.

ADVENT

2011-12-01T03:38:00.001-08:00

Advent

Only a brief celebration of
victory is allowed the truth
between the two long periods
during which it is condemned
as paradox and disparaged
as trivial.
(A. Schopenhauer)

God's dead:
prerequisite
to alive, ho!

Present only
in absentia;
absent in
presents.

Makes my
heart grow
fodder.

Don't know
what I've got
till it's gone.

Be NICE

2011-11-30T03:13:00.001-08:00

To my Linguists Growing Weary and Colleagues
Across the Curriculum: always for the Sake of
Argument, coursing with out borders yet
unknonw.

   Language Lust

LUST initially meant mere pleasure,
and carried no sexy stigma. Holiday
was originally a holy day, not any day
officially free from work. Silly meant
happy during Shakespeare’s time;
and my favorite:

                    NICE

initially and originally meant
IGNORANT (ne + scire: = “not knowing,”
"no science”), very nicely indeed and maybe
the nicest thing we take away from our studies
and scholar ship: how “nice” we are, how un-
knowing, how aware of our ignorance. Right
there: stunned stupid, the etymological root
image for STUDY & STUDENT: our collective
nice-ness—pre-requisite for Liberal Art, yes?

I would rather be NICE than nasty and
alwaysschool makes me realize how NICE
I am---a fool with words, sentences,
etymologies: loving the play of language
especially among players: language users
& abusers, addicts: criminal discriminators
& rip-off artists, sampling & specimen-izing,
always diminishing the WHOLE with our
natural selections: reductionists, injustice-
doers—overstating & understating, carrying
ongoing & appropriate guilt for our nice
distinctions and discrete indiscretions.

Confession of NICE is redemptive— let it be
known how ignorant I am as my hero Socrates
said (after advising his buddies to KNOW THY
SELF)

I know that I do not know

but it doesn’t eliminate the NICE-ness.
The Guilt is ongoing and makes sense
how could I not be NICE?

My linguistic TEXTBOOK illustrates what
there is to be known about language & it’s
like trying to suck the ocean dry with a straw.
It doesn’t come close to what goes on when we
sit in silence or break into converse-action. It
merely describes (systematically, I admit)
parts of the parts of the parts of TALK.

Nor does it do justice to Helen Keller.

xxxooo, Sam

no man is an island: NO! man IS an Island

2011-11-29T02:55:00.000-08:00

Non-Lunchroom On-Line Faculty L
    Learning & Teaching Styles Forum

My approach to teaching all these years comes out of
weakness, cowardice, inadequacy, a sense of over
whelming limitation surrounded by competency, clarity,
the goals and purposes of my colleagues and of students
themselves who individually and collectively have always
impressed me with the variety of their intelligence, interests.
academic and extra-curricular abilities: a resource blocked
by the necessary but insufficient black-plastic sheets we toss
over every class to suppress the weedy greenness. .

Not being humble here. O contrary. Merely describing.
Arrogance possibly—because this sense has always made
me feel the limits of institutionalized educating and an ongoing
haughty & naughty desire to make edicating make my sense.

“How can he remember well his ignorance which his growth
requires, who has always to be using his knowledge.”

Thoreau said this. It’s a mantra for me. Ignorance and stunned
stupidity, confusion, doubt, ambiguity, inarticulateness, mess &
guess, margins and rooms for error: what it takes to get better
and good.

A Goodie is a Wannabe-Good so bad he can’t afford the
bad it takes to get good. I’m surrounded by goodies on
both sides of the desk. Just sayin'. Just describing here.
Not a judgment or condemnation which merely genereate
defense and defensiveness, know what I mean.

Does this sound humble?

The agenda of institutionalized education is essentially vocational:
teaching a discipline, the information and the methods appropriate
to established bodies of knowledge. How to be a chemist, not how
to invent, innovate, generate chemistry. And the same with all the
disciplines. A consuming agenda.

A composing agenda: making, inventing, generating, and all the
fooling around it takes (I omit the word “creating” because it’s
almost as useless as ‘love.”) does not enjoy favored nation status
with clarity, consistency, coherence, predictability, regularity and
control.

Blah blah blah : I get tired of my own life-long whine.

        Here’s really what I want to try to say.

                 The Two Economies

It is something like a Mission Impossible and yet a necessity
I believe to build an institutional environment where the values
of both RIGOR and INNOVATION are cherished equally.

The value-sets are radically opposed, hostile, threatening and
incommensurate to each other. Imagine me and Dr. Bradshaw
(bless his heart) in the same room on a committee together. We
happen to love each other after all these years so we while we
can hate each other's priorities, it’s merely business and
excruciating but not crucial.

And that’s my point.

How is an environment for study and learning built that can
embrace the radically hostile opposing values of composing
and consuming, innovation and rigor, mess & guess and
clarity & coherence without doing disservice or injustice to each?

I sometimes describe it as building an Ice Cream Parlor in HELL,
with nothing but appreciation for HOT and COLD.

This is not easy to bring about—or even frame conceptually: the
bias for clarity, consistency, and coherence is so strong.

We’re all GOODIES: wannabe-good so bad we can’t afford the
bad-it-takes to get there. (Just sayin'. Not a judgement, heavens
no.)

I have had to learn to speak out of 3 sides of my mouth more and
less at once (so to speak) in order to try to do justice to the opposition
of values without falling into the good-guy / bad-guy habit on either side
of the coin.

It makes for tom-foolery and idiocy,   contra diction and paradoxologic
and that-in-itself demands building up some frame of tolerance in order
to get away with it with the listeners and potential players..

An environmental issue.

xxxooo, Sam   (Push Reply to All if there is any non-lunchroom-constrained
desire in improving my terms and point of view and maybe sustaining
some converse action along these lines in these days preoccupied
by turmoil and turbulence.) turbulence and preoccupation.)

Educational Game Changer?

2011-11-27T04:27:00.000-08:00

You might think it’d be a game-changer:
the collective info and wisdom of the known
universe laptop dancing and playing pocket
pool for even the least of these spinners and
converse action, argument, conflict generation
& resolution on hand 24/7/365 under the
covers during the mid- night hours, waiting
for the bus & Goedel oh see can I say any time
of day & not just at airport Holiday Inn bullet
point presentational conferences flying on faculty
development funds or inside pages of refereed
professional journals: look I’m talking here!
I’m talking here! You’d think it’d be a
game-changer.’

Critical Thinking Strategies

2011-11-24T06:02:00.000-08:00

CRITICAL THINKING STRATEGIES

Criticize the BAD GUYS
No problem. Good & Plenty.
Bad Guys might object but
plenty of like-minded goodies
stand by you in support:
cheer you on.

Criticize the GOOD GUYS
Course of another collar.
Who do you think you are?
Ggot to be nuts.
Forget about it.

Criticize your OWN SELF:
Big display mea pulpa: what a
fool this mortal be. Myn in the
mirror, my biases & beliefs,
prejudices & convictions, my
ignorances, reductions, over-
statementalism, rip-off sampling
& specimen-izing, moving
violations & crimes against the
whole, damaged & damaging if
do or don’t do: go ahead, nail me
for it —wish you would. Make an
example of me : I’m bad.

"Every Thing We Need Is Here" (Wendell Berry)t

2011-11-19T04:53:00.001-08:00

Homeland Security Prayer of
             Thanksgiving

O, please let us make our Common
Sense so that we continue as before
so ahead: our aims and goals and
measurable outcomes saying what
we’re going to do, doing it. and saying
that we did it & how. Thank you.
        Thank you very much.

        Our Original Spin

    In linguistics class we discovered
that we hate each other. Just describing
of course. Revelation. Small apocalypse.
Eureka. No wonder so many failures to
communicate, problems in communication.

O the inadequacy of language. Words:
can’t live withem. Resistance uber alles;
   Yes-Buts galore.

Homeland Insecurity but of course. I beg
to differ is why I can’t Just Get Along.

I hate each other. Let it be an operating
assumption.

Now that THAT's no longer in-denial
covered over like some evil I under the
floorboards or walden the basement or
locked in the cupboard with the cupcakes,
I can wonder what it is we talk about
when we talk about what we talk about
when we talk about about love and make
that make some common sense. too.

xxxooo Ray Carver

The Power of NEG

2011-11-18T10:21:00.001-08:00

The Power of NEG

Does a dog have NEG?
No. That’s why he’s got
to act IT out in play to
say what I’m acting out
is NOT what’s intended—
I’d say NOT if I could,
but I can’t.

We got NEG but no
meta-neg so to speak.

Look: pedophiliac horse
play in the showers,
occupying urban centers,
economic downs & downs,
Kardashian affairs, Syrian
disruption, early snows &
plagiarism, Republican
debates & commentators
commentating, Regis
retiring & reckless driving.

NOT.

None of it is what it appears:
IT’s never what it’s about but
mere acted out to say as if it
tould this is never not what it
is. If I could tell it like it is I
wouldn’t have to dance it. If I
could dance it: I wouldn’t
have to say it.

NOT.

Got NEG?

2011-11-18T05:22:00.001-08:00

GOT NEG?

Dogs don’t got NEG .
Can’t say: Look be
not afraid I’m not
going to hurt you

Have to put it in play,
nips, bites, tussles &
grab you by the throat
with their mouth and
hold you down to the
ground a few moments.

“See? Seriously:
that’s what I’m not
going to do, what I
just did.”

Have to act-it-out to
deny it. It was just
play speaking louder
than words as it were
in manners of not
speaking.

I can deny it.

I’ve got NEG.

Got NEG?

2011-11-18T04:54:00.001-08:00

"You Should Be Badly Frightened of Me" (Wendell Barry)

2011-11-18T02:58:00.001-08:00

Knock Knock

Who's there?
Speak up!
Talk louder!

"Everything we need is here."

A student turned to me in class and
said I finally figured out what this
class is about.

"It's about us."

Another kid in another class announced
THIS BOOK SUCKS.

It was about him.

Class talk in 19th C. American Writers
yesterday was mostly about food.
Should have been about Ethan
Brand and theUnpardonable
Sin.

It was about us.

Another student was telling me well
we're probably learning something Sam
and I said don't care if we are or not.

May I quote you on that?

(It was about me. )

We also share a dedication to the
education of our students, who will
form the educated public of tomorrow.
It's up to us to ensure that they receive
a liberal-arts education that provides
them with the skills to critically evaluate
information content, its sources, and its
relevance.

And while the discussion, reading,
and thought that are the hallmarks of
the humanities are necessary preludes
to effective action, students of the liberal
arts will be ill-equipped to deal with our
complex world without a firm grounding
in statistics, computer science, knowledge
of the scientific method, and technological
literacy.

What's this about?
Knock Knock
Hello?

"You should be badly frightened of me if I answered that
question as forthrightly as it was asked," Berry said,
chuckling at a long-winded and ambitious question
about societal transformation. "I don't know, and you
don't know either," he announced.

Teaching & Learning Styles: Rigor-us-a--um

2011-11-16T07:41:00.001-08:00

My Mission Impossible

My course/classes are academic heresy.
I don’t correct or give grades—which
process and protocol is in fact what regulates
and controls institutional “learning.”

Students, then, can come and go as they
please, take responsibility or avoid it,
gain by the freedom or rip-it-off in
order to comply with surrounding demands.

An offense or at least problematic to both
conformists and rebels when the Conventional
Standard is removed or ignored. Game-Changer.

Environmental. We swim in convention so that
it feels normal and natural. Might as well ask
Joe Fish to define WET (let alone dry –ab-solut) .
Impossible for him till hauled out of the pond to
flop in the canoe.

Somewhat the same in my courses when the
natural constraints and goads are dropped.
(Anarchy: literally—no arches)

And so for me presumptuously to drop the
externals—regulation and reinforcement,
is something like hauling fish out of the
pond: traumatic? Ridiculous? Offensive?

What? What the? What the hell? ….

a CRIME against the Convention.
Ridiculous to the Savvy; Offensive to the
Conscientious.

All in all: mission impossible
No way I can get away with what I do.
It’s beyond me and my control.

Walk on Eggs (W.O.E.)
Walk on Water (W.O.W)

Choose woe or wow. Mission Impossible

Epistemologic

2011-11-13T03:55:00.000-08:00

Rigor.

My flash lite of conscious purpose,
aims, goals, & measurable outcomes
eclipses if not occludes all the rest of
the field, mall, walk in the woods,
interstate high way, letter, lecture,
lecturer, conversation and
remains of the days

Lucid Schemes:

Here's what I'mgoing to do.
Here's me--doing it.
Here: looky what I did

Stick in my thumb.
Pull out a plumb.
O what a good boy
am I

Ongoing Moving Violation

2011-11-06T05:03:00.001-08:00

Ridiculous to the Savvy

Offensive to the Conscientious

I feel my crime against the

Culture Club, sitting and

waiting –against the roll,

arms crossed in the lifeboat

while colleagues paddle and

paddle round and round.

Who Do I Think I Am?

I ask myself, waiting for Gödel’s

theorem to prove integrity

if not consistency & haul me

out of my bubble so I can say

at last: “I told me so; told me so

Coming Out (closets, conventions, customs, cultures...) by Covering Up,

2011-11-05T04:57:00.000-07:00

   Coming Out by Covering Up



I wore a dunce cap into class years ago when the reading
assignment was Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil.”
and no one mentioned it, brought it up: Huh? What’s with
the dunce cap Sam? You trying to prove something?.”

Not a peep. Me sitting in front of them the whole period
with a cone on my head trying to get discussion about the
Minister’s Black Veil.

   Covering Up in order to Come Out.
               Apologetic: Apocalyptic
                 When the veil comes
               off
             Or when you see it go on
                     Revelation
                 C
Let “c” stand for cave, closet, culture, custom, convention,
convenience, context (box, bubble, behind bars)

     .

If I sat here behind bars would you Get IT? Put a veil over
my face or wore monumental dark sunglasses & .dunce cap
on my head…would you Get IT? The Joke?

HA! a ha. Ahhh.    I get it.
                A small apocalypse
             unveiling
uncovering of what was covered.
          by covering IT up…. get it?

Apology: words for opening (apo) An apology: literally the words
that accompany an exposure, disclosure, revelation just like Mythos
say the Words that accompany Ritual, an action of accommodation.

My classes are a JOKE.
I apologize.
Get it or Not: who loves a
punch line if it’s got to be
explained?

nevermind.

xxxooo, Parson Hooper

I hate every body and every one.

2011-11-04T09:55:00.000-07:00

The soul selects her own society,
Then shuts the door; On her divine

majority Obtrude no more. Unmoved,

she notes the chariot's pausing At her

low gate; Unmoved, an emperor is

kneeling Upon her mat. I've known

her from an ample nation Choose one;

Then close the valves of her attention
Like stone.

(Emily Dickinson: reformatted)

I hate everybody & everyone

A given, I claim: comes with the

territory of Being. My original

spin.

That’s the explanation (apologetic)
for all my discrepancies & resistances
inconsistencies and language “problems’
I generate amongst my selves. Bumper

cars & Beep Beep traffic.

But IT can’t be said.

I can’t stand up in caucus and forum

and church service & declare:

Look: I l hate everybody & everyone
and that explains my confusion &

cover-up & hypocrisy & exclusiveness

& mis-communication & necessary

deceptions & games-man-ship & why

I am always having such a hard time

getting on the same page so to speak

let alone Just Getting Along.

Because I hate each other.

Naturally.

Go ahead: improve my terms, soften,

euphemize – make it sound more

acceptable to the post-modern mind,

Oprah and Dr. Phil I’m just describing

here. Not judging. The judgment rises

out of the denial and cover-up.

WHAT, hate YOU?

Of course not.

I love you.
Well—like you a lot.

A little. Somewhat

(Got to: it's politically correct.)

Etc.

I fool around with this notion, put it in

play and see how clarifies a lot about

communication & the play and

of language. My anguish.

My whine. My aims and

goals and measurable

outcomes.

It’s a profound truth:

I hate each other; I could say it in

other words if hate’s too strong.

Go for weaker tea then: try "resist,"

"antagonize" "block," “separate” and

also protect, cherish my individuality,

uniqueness, all one-ness.

Fundamental.

My Homeland Security: no aliens please,

immigrants, all others, anti-else's &

foreigners, no Not-I's need apply.

Neils Bohr (Nobel Physicist ) claims

”The opposite of a profound truth is

another profound truth. “

I love everybody and everyone and so

I presume we love everyone and everybody.

Right there: I like the sound of that profound

truth much better. See—that’s the problem

Accentuating the positive. Bias toward

community and Just Get Along at the

expense of ME, MySELF & I.

One truth I love.

The other truth I hate.
Can you see how this generates

problems in communication?

xxxooo, Sam

Compose & Be Composed

2011-10-29T03:11:00.001-07:00

Dear Colleaguess,

                AUTOPOESIS
From Greek αὐτo- (auto-), meaning "self", and
ποίησις (poiesis), meaning "creation, production")
literally means "self-creation" & expresses a fundamental
dialectic between structure, mechanism and function. The
term was introduced in 1972 by Chilean biologists
Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela:

Inspired by Sebastian's chapbook collection of poets
responding to Wendell Barry's comments on the value
of poetry (to make, compose):

It is amateur's work,
                                    lovers work.

(What we now call "professionalism"
is anathema to it.)

   Wendell Berry

Amateur on the one hand.
Professional on the other hand.
Can you tell the difference? The relationship?

   (also known as Hawkings 2 Economies)

I remember suggesting to Ann Turkle, her continual
aggravation over the professional administrative tangle
of Required Composition (as opposed to the joys of
composing we as "amateurs" love and encourage).

    "why don't you drop the REQUIREMENT?
Let courses in Composition Across the Curriculum
                            be voluntary."

"It's not going to happen, Sam." Her reply. Conviction.
Might as well deny the virgin birth. It undercuts the
whole profession of faith. Professionally Anathematic..

Never the less:

Imagine all the Varieties of Composing Experience
that might be offered across the curriculum: From
Witherspoon to Spidel, to Jensen, past the gazebo &
points north to Kittredge and Holden, each a mecca
of composing-of-a-certain kind.   Composing galore.

Compose and Be Composed. The heart of our liberal
art: lovers work. Priceless.

           *************
     MORE AMATEURISM
           (un-professionalism)

           The "Conviction of 'Sin'"
         (I.E. esse: "essence," "being")
            an immaculate concept
       flying in on the wings of a dove,
   say: certainly nothing
         one would conjure up without
       the help of Goedel's Theorem,
       might as well ask Joe Fish to
         define wet let alone conceive
           of dry: it makes no sense.
             Amniotic. Hysterical.

Even while we maintain the status quotidian
of classroom contact hours, quizzes to reinforce
readings & lectures, guided discussions & term
papers, attendance protocol& required advising
to guide & structure students toward frontiers
yet unknown...

            Preserving the Algorithm
                   syllabus (contract)
         * lecture-to-discussion ratios
        * attendance policy
        * reading and writing assignments
             (texts, term & semester papers)
      * quizzes and examination policy
          * deadline policy (late penalties)
        * presentation/poster policies
          * assessment and evaluation policy
        * diagnosed learning disability policy

I wonder if the whole teacher-to-student
learning & expressing experience might at
the same time be re-composed: tossed up
for grabs, put in play so as to reinvent wheels
up from old scratch: zero-based thinking: call
it pre-critical thinking or meta critical
thinking:

what? what the? what the hell? What if?
kind of thinking (not-so-critical) we used
to call B.S.:

Brain Storming. Blue Sky-ing.
Bully Stochasticizing and of course
Bullshitting of the kind that enables
the questioning of authority, assumptions,
under lying controlling and mixed meta force,
questioning everything which of course is
disruptive and demoralizing unless
disruption for re-moralization is
embraced as aim, goal, and
not so easily measured
outcomes.

And keeping-it-in-play (sustained & sustainable
BS-ing) for as long as it takes before agenda-&-
thesis-driven measurable goals, outcomes,
finished product and professional dead
lines take over as they must and
have their professional way with
us because after all is said and
done we are professional
and must comply.

Complicit.

xxxooo, Sam

Free Thebes

2011-10-27T03:54:00.001-07:00

Dear Colleagues,

I've been thinking about The Liabilities of Positive Thinking.

Like taking a cruise-control mechanism and privileging FAST
as my Goal (Measurable Objective). Or Pleasure.

(Put Pain in the cupboard with the cupcakes.)

Eliminating SLOW & so:losing the self-corrective
efficacy of the positive-negative rational / irrational /
clarity / confusion / coherent / incoherent / consistent /
erratic / digital / analogue / determinate / indeterminate /
orderly / running randomly sequential / simultaneous /
leftbrain / rightbrain yinganger relationship.

Showing Nothing but Improvement

Or: imagine me banning my depression--anesthetizing
(no aesthetics allowed: caesarean short-cut) so I run
on manic-only. Same kind of deal. Accentuating the
"positive."

Or let's say: eliminating error, no mistakes need apply;
forget mess & guess--not welcome here--nothing but
tidy: this is school schooling for crying out loud.
Nothing but improvement.

And Prove it.
No pain.
Gain. .

Imagine.

xxxooo, Sam

It's Hard Being Epistemological

2011-10-26T03:11:00.000-07:00

Dear Linguists and Colleagues Across the
Curriculum.

It's a convention and a convenience
to say "this rock is hard"--practically
speaking.

But that reduces a ternary dynamic
to a binary relationship and adjectivally
slaps one part with the burden of
the whole.

The rock isn’t hard.
The ratio & relationship between
my butt and rock generates a hardness.
(An ongoing emergent phenomenon)

And that’s the truth of being in between
a rock and a hard place. Same with sticks
and stones. They don’t hurt, but my
relationship with them smarts. A lot.

Main point: the “truth” of convention
and the ways we talk is NOT the TRUTH
of phenomena, not the TRUTH of HAP
hap-ening happily.

What’s possible and “impossible” inside a
convention eclipses if not occludes larger
systemic possibilities and potential.

When I go in a closet to study darkness,
my flashlight (ego-conscious-purpose)
is also a liablity. Will I turn it off?

For all “practical” purposes: inside-convention
truths are what “matters” or what “counts.”

But to know how arbitrary and merely
convenient are the “truths” we swim in
(alma matrix & amniotic) conventionally
can be a consolation and a motivation
and an explanation as to HOW and WHY
it is challenging and problematic to try
to change inside conventions and even more
dramatically: to change conventions.

Paradigm Shifts, we call them,
clueless maybe as to the nature
of the transmission.

A convention reinforces it’s convenience:
acts as a “conspiracy” (a breathing together)
to sustain a practice, protocol. habit, habitat.

This is How We Do It—all of us together.
We admire the emperors new clothing
even knowing he’s bare assed. It's practical
to comply and demoralizing not to.

Makes GOOD sense all around.
Preserving the Appearances.
Don't mock it.

xxxooo, Sam

Without Contraries Is No Progress

2011-10-25T02:29:00.001-07:00

Preach, Teach, Practice Creatively

        III.

     “In life we make progress by
     conflict and in mental life
     by argument and disputation....
     There must be confrontation C
     and opposition, in order that
     sparks must be kindled.

     Only an open conflict of ideas
     and principles can produce
     any clarity....

     Argument is essential for
     its own sake.” (Karl Popper)

     Even if all were agreed on
     an essential proposition, it
     would be essential to give
     an ear to the one person who
     does not.   J.S.Mill

                                    IV.
Ordinary Language Academics
                  School Work

Our grammar continues: and of course
Empowermental Studies because power
is what it's about, deep- rooted motive
generating my surface relationships—
empowering or dis-empowering my
Will to Power, willy-nilly tending /ignoring,
choosing / rejecting some

                   “this” or “that”

after untangling, say, Gordian Knots & Double
Binds generated between Alice Affect and Ike
Intellect, if you'll allow me personification and
some mythologic in order to put these noggin
notions in play so as to wonder why they can’t
Just Get Along--my domestic emotional
moving violations:

            yes Yes YES, says Alice;
                    Hell No, says Ike,

               Well, ok then, says, Ike
                    Nope, says Alice.

& Willy Nilly, the decider (assuming he’s got
purpose, aim, measurable goal) may come to
some decision —side with Alice, his sometimes
main squeeze; or hang with Ike, that gnostic
agnosticator.

Or maybe consider emergent values &
phenomena rising up from his ongoing
fight-club struggle.

Always a power struggle.
Power to Will. Will to Power.
Empower-mental Studies& Leadership
Programs going on & on and my willy/nilly
be done, damnit: an ongoing domestic violation
where charity is said to begin and begin again.

Preach, Teach, Practice Creatively

2011-10-24T02:19:00.001-07:00

    Preach, Teach, Practice
             Creatively

If not creativity (a difference that makes
a difference: between adverb and noun.)

Catholics don't like the word “creativity,”
I understand from a colleague who told
me this during the last quarter of the last
century: gives me the gee-willies, he said,
with a shiver & I took him at his word..

          Only the Creator creates.

         Critical thinking sample;:

              “Carrie was cold
                and smart and
                meticulous. She
                crawled inside
                your story with
                a flashlight and
                blew out all your
                     candles.”

“The Good” for Carrie is that which is
“executed as vigorously as it's conceived.
It isn't false or pretentious. It doesn't jerk
the reader around to no effect. It lives by
it's own logic. It's poignant without trying
too hard,”*
.
   Creative description of Assessment &
       Evaluation. Rubric possibilities?

Don't be false or pretentious.
Don't jerk the reader around to no effect.
Let your writing live by its own logic.
Be poignant but don't try to hard.
Go and do like wise.

A student recently explained to me how
she reads Faulkner. Open in the middle
and read both ways, she said. In medias
res over and over again. Faulkner hisself
eschews sequence if not consequence.
so there.

An English Major, too. Remarkable.
Usually it's an environmentalist
who surprises me creatively.

(*Writes Kevin Moffett; me sampling one of his
creations: “Further Interpretations of True Life
Events”..)

              FREE STORE.

        School's a Free Store now.

All the content you want, subject-matter
galore & free for all, descriptions, theories
& explanations because & affects, commentary
& interpretation, videos, college lectures,
curricula, courses noetic inventory of the
world: at hand.

Like stacks of old National Geographic magazines
piled up in the closet in 6^th grade & anyone can
go in during recess or study hall to cut up pictures
and articles for your posters and presentations.

Like that, but now the whole wide world :
use-able, abuse-able, reusable for free.

Maybe we could talk about shifting emphasis
from product to process & performance? Not
how much we know--that's a free store now—
but whether we can put it in play?

Maybe we could argue. Sustainably.

Anticipate the Law of Disruption occurring to
institutions & industries when new & innovative
technologies converge with the rigor of established
procedures & their seemingly sustainable habits
and habitats of the humanities.

KODAK.

It's necessarily demoralizing
but not necessarily Demoralizing, true?

First Church of the Crippled

2011-10-23T05:59:00.001-07:00

Prayer from First Church of the Crippled
full of love-hate & animosity mixed with
envy & jealousy, mean-spiritedness, spite
& of course my terms of desire—joy to the
whirl all the boys and girls: would cause
a clamor & consternation if I only could
get some converse action going: how else
generate emergent values & phenomena
across a community, across a curriculum?

Takes a pillage to raze a chilblain, pop a
carbuncle, stir stone soup, reoccupy
habit & habitats & leave no child behind.
The lame shall enter first with the poor
we have with us all ways

Occupy This !

2011-10-21T05:07:00.001-07:00

Dear Colleagues Across the Curriculum
on Both Sides of the Desk.

OCCUPY THIS

Steven Pinker, Harvard Neuro-Cognitive
Linguist, claims that every utterance carries
two agenda (what Gary Hawkins might rightly
link to our “2 Economies Consideration”) :

1. Taking Care of Business (TCB) : pass the salt,
do you know the way to San Jose? what are you
doing to create more jobs? E = MC squared…
whatever

and

2. Negotiating Relationship (NR) – stroke & status
what amounts to See Me, Hear Me, Touch Me (or don’t).
Feed Me, love me or at least like—or hate then.

You can improve my representation, and maybe help
turn up the distinction—between, say, external affairs
and internal affairs (kingdom without; kingdom within:
idios-ness on the one hand; socios-ness on the other)

Can you imagine presenting a paper to professional
colleagues at some conference in the mid-west,
flying coach and carrying in to O’Hare’s
Holiday Inn laptop and appropriate
software so as to make my
power point performance
and NOT thinking,
really: more than
any thing, I hope
they like this?

I’m hoping you do right now every day: see me hear me—did
you think this was all a matter of the principle of the thing?
Reforming Higher Education? Justice? I’m sitting here.
Occupying. Read my posters!

It’s convenient & conventional & practical to pay my efficient
attention to the Taking Care of Business agenda. When the
student in class claims our text sucks, we consider the text
in this light, debate its accuracy of description & not so much
attend to the context—the sayer, or even more in the background:
the group of sayers saying about the said.

Imagine: shifting collective attention from the texts studied to
the context of studiers, from the token business-at-hand to
the Relationship Negotiating going on & on: see me, hear me,
touch me, feed me, love, like or hate.

Here I am: signing, sealing, and delivering.

Did you think this class was about fiction? Linguistics? Selected
19^th century American Writers? Of course it is. That too.
Always: emperor’s new clothes. Bottom line.

Just Say No to Truth if It Hurts

2011-10-19T05:01:00.001-07:00

Just Say No to Truth if It Hurts

I like arguing.

Troll & bully bully
dangling over a pit of hello:
Facebook threading best I can.

Fencing with face masks and
protection: parry foibles & touche.

Nothing’s going to change my mind.

It’d take blunt force trauma to
reconfigure attitude & outlook,
recalibrate my mind set in its ways
& mean: bolt from the blue or
hooked & hauled into the canoe
to flip & flop in absolut dryness,

(Title of Warren Wilson’s
Brandon Lacy Campos’s recent
book of poetry: It Ain’t Truth
if It Doesn’t Hurt)

ME & XTIANITY

2011-10-17T03:01:00.001-07:00

          ME & XTIANITY

I told my old man, “You've got an awful
big Ego for a Presbyterian minister” and
he said, “Yes I do. And mine's crucified.”

That made some sense of the whole other
wise morbid deal. Of course: crucified.
Consummation devoutly desired. Dead &
buried & born again to tell the tale.“Not
honestly though: a simple honesty is
nothing but a lie,”

             Crede ut Intelligas

A black box is a device that systems &
information theorists use to keep their flow
chart process going, mapping out relationships.
Here's a spot which makes no sense yet: : a
transform from X to Z and Y remains mystery:
Egypt is clear enough and also Promised Land;
but in between: Wilderness. Put a black box
over it & keep on representing. It'll come clear
by & by.

Stochastic process: literally, archer shooting
arrows toward targets yet unknown. Into the
noise in search of news. Navigational. Jody Foster
sends guided missives into space anticipating
contact and extra terrestrial intelligence. Out of
the box. Out of sight. A Closed System calling
for outside help. Waiting for Goedel. Hosanna.

Minimal Pairing. Take any complex & reduce it
to a single difference: bet/bit, say, better/bitter
where in this case only a mid-to-high frontal sound
distinguishes the otherwise identical information at
hand. Linguists use this device to map phonemes
& their location: vowels & consonants, sounds &
anti- sounds reduced to a difference that makes a
difference. Sames & differences: our fundamental
base for significance and meaning. How we cherish
diversity; how we cherish unity. Minimal pairs..

Principle of Least Effort. “My yoga is easy, says
Jesus. “Easy as falling of a logic,” said my old man.
“You got to serve some body,” says Bob Dylan. No
system willingly works harder than necessary and no
man does wrong knowingly according to Socrates.
Path of Least Resistance

Phatic Communion. “Empty.” Meaningless words
on a surface level but profoundly necessary in
relationship & social adhesiveness. “Hey, how you
doon, what's up, nice day, you ok, how's the family?”
.. ..Non-discursive: to be taken lightly, not literally.
Strokes & Status recognition. All communion is phatic
if I don’t get stuck in the devilish details. Have I told
you all about Hawthorne lately? Loaves and fishes?
Stone soup? Arab Spring?

Hermeneutics. How-to- read across the curriculum
walking through a field or mall, in a classroom, round
the dinning room table. Immaculate and macular
conceptions, figures & backgrounds,  texts and contexts:
interpreting, explaining, blaming, reasoning-whys, scape-
goating: ripping-off parts of the whole to make some sense
of my own. The violent bear it away. . .

Turn the Other Cheek. Sounds pious but it's meta-
practical big time—in relationship, at least, if not before
a court of law or on the streets where one does what
one can to cover one's ass.. “Neither logic nor sermons
convince,” says Whitman. In relationship: I'm always
accuse-able. If I'm not doing this it's because I'm doing
that or vice versa: always more to accuse than commend.
That's what a “satan” is always good for: adversarial,
worthy opponent pointing out all I'm not. No defense
is sufficient.Turn the other cheek. Both.

Noblesse Oblige. The frame of mind that enables one
to turn the other cheek. Knowing better. Go ahead,
nail me--no sense arguing with you of little fate.
Excruciating, but what kills me
makes me strong.

To Students Dying Young

2011-10-16T03:02:00.000-07:00

To Students Dying Young

(Not what you know or don't but
whether you can put it in play.
Need we argue?)

Existence (being) Precedes Essence (meaning)

           GUILTY (owing a debt)

Can't speak for the rest of you but I feel it all the
time: the guilt: debt, what I owe--taking it for
granted of course but never the less, guilty and
it makes good sense in general.

Guilt, of course.

I mow lawn, skin heads off snakes crawling out
from under our hemlock, pretend to listen to others,
skim student essays, looking for errors & grist for
instructional comments, delete e-mail from colleagues,
look out the window long times during work hours,
waste paper, drive a low mileage car, watch sit coms,
read novels at night, don't vote or attend faculty
meetings and if I did I'd feel worse. Damned if I do.
Damned if I don't..

Fear and hate and ignore-ance follow me all the days
of my life spinning from my small attention-efficient
focused purpose, goals, & assessable outcomes:
damaged & damaging if I do and if I don't.

Guilty as charged.
Charging beyond my ways and means
and it don't pay to slap direct objects
on it (the feeling), assign reasons-why,
declaring because & affect, applying
hermeneutics and determining explanations.

It (the feeling) comes with the territory called being
here now: fundamental (es, esse) – my essence &
original spin...

                       GAME

Ted Transcendental loves football so much; the
game itself win or lose not with standing: how
it's played is what counts.

Never cherishes or applauds a team, despite the
clamor of Cheese Heads and fanatics; taking sides
skews his appreciation & gratitude: thank you,
thank you very much. .

If there's anything Ted detests about the whole deal
it's the partisans. Fanatics: their team spirit.

Rooting: Half-asssed. Partial.

Occluding the whole
& holy.

Preoccupation

2011-10-15T05:07:00.001-07:00

Preoccupation.

I've been occupying Faculty L for over ten years.
Started around the time of the Columbine Shootings.
Before 9/11. Motivated initially by rereading Marshall
McLuhan's Understanding Media ("the media is the
message"), convinced suddenly we were in a position
to sustain converse action across the curriculum 24/7
and might actually build up a Faculty ongoing Forum
something like St John's in-house publishing-to-each
other, something like FB and threads which emerged
much later--an emergent value and phenomenon.

Argo-Argument. Edification going on.

There are good reasons why I've had no success, and
I haven't figured them out yet and maybe never will,
but I know they make systemic & group dynamic
common sense plus maybe timing is a factor as always
as it was for Buckminster Fuller: all his geodesic solutions
which nevertheless didn't cog, and these things are always
beyond unilateral control and manipulation, improvised
explosive devises not with standing.

General Education formally knowns as The Core

It's not what we know so much anymore that counts, but
whether we can put it in play. Imagine a slice of curriculum
designed and executed on that assumption. I like to imagine
that: what it would look like. Environmental Play.   (Ludicrous)

Not that it matters no more than a fart in church, but I wish
I could get on board with either oink or moo and their
modifications. I'm afraid, whatever the content,
topic, subjec-matter, message, it'll still look like
this (what ultimately counts)

       syllabus (contract)
* lecture-to-discussion ratios
* attendance policy
* reading and writing assignments
(texts, term & semester papers)
* quizzes and examination policy
* deadline policy (late penalties)
* presentation/poster policies
* assessment and evaluation policy
* diagnosed learning disability policy
.
       syllabus (contract)
* lecture-to-discussion ratios
* attendance policy
* reading and writing assignments
(texts, term & semester papers)
* quizzes and examination policy
* deadline policy (late penalties)
* presentation/poster policies
* assessment and evaluation policy
* diagnosed learning disability policy
.
       syllabus (contract)
* lecture-to-discussion ratios
* attendance policy
* reading and writing assignments
(texts, term & semester papers)
* quizzes and examination policy
* deadline policy (late penalties)
* presentation/poster policies
* assessment and evaluation policy
* diagnosed learning disability policy

       syllabus (contract)
* lecture-to-discussion ratios
* attendance policy
* reading and writing assignments
(texts, term & semester papers)
* quizzes and examination policy
* deadline policy (late penalties)
* presentation/poster policies
* assessment and evaluation policy
* diagnosed learning disability policy

       syllabus (contract)
* lecture-to-discussion ratios
* attendance policy
* reading and writing assignments
(texts, term & semester papers)
* quizzes and examination policy
* deadline policy (late penalties)
* presentation/poster policies
* assessment and evaluation policy
* diagnosed learning disability policy

Takes a village: drums & smoke signals &
preoccupation. "Don't give up, says Donald
Trump: Don't ever give up." And as Grantland
Rice once said: It's not whether you win or lose,
it's how you play the game.

LUDICROUS.
Ridiculous to the savvy.
Offensive to the Conscientious.

The Liabilities in Accentuating the POSITIVE

2011-10-14T03:03:00.000-07:00

               The Liabilities in Accentuating the
                       POSITIVE

(My version of the fundamental dynamic & thematic genius of
both Poe & Hawthorne and diagnosis, too, of the half-assed
success of Enlighten-Mental Humanism & the Age of Reason,
not to mention the agony & the ecstasy of modern & post-
modern-ism ).

                   SIAMESE TWINS

       positive                       negative
           pleasure                       pain
               symbolic                     dia-bolic
            (throw together)         (throw apart)
             attraction                     revulsion
               “love”                          “hate”
               “good”                         “evil”

Consider these binary pairs as functioning like twins in a
cybernetic guidance system, like cruise-control parameters,
or the self-correcting dynamic of a smart bomb— keeping
it on target (the mark).

Or, like my friendly uncle after Thanksgiving dinner hides a
penny and then urges me to discover it, saying no yr cold,
colder oh now yr getting hot hot hotter…until EUREKA:
                         I Get IT.!

System self-correcting & cybernetic navigational binary
& opposing signals .that serve to get me to my destination,
harbor, goal… zig zag ouch oooo yes, no… etc.
Subordinate, and functioning to help me hit my mark.

Now: suppose instead of these +/- binaries working in subordinate
concert to correct me toward my goal, I split them and make the
positive ones ordinate (positive pleasure et al my destination, aim,
goal,) and the negative ones (negative pain etc) what I avoid, deny,
cover up:
                            privileging
                     positive, pleasure
                   symbolic, attraction
                        love, good

and sending their twin opposites to the basement, wall them up,
bury them in floorboards and sit on a stool whistling Dixie…

                          hush hush
                 ( negative, pain
                        diabolic, revulsion
                             hate, evil )

An abomination, yes? Depravity! Twisting and breaking-off a
cybernetic corrective system and making ½ of it my focus and
measurable end. and assessable outcome. .

Accentuating the Positive.
Denying and covering up the Negative.
Running around in circles chasing my tales.
Me: a Goodie. I wanna be Good so Bad I can’t
afford the Bad It Takes



                    xxxooo, Young Goodman Brown

It's Not Easy Being a Phenomenologist

2011-10-13T03:24:00.001-07:00

PHENOMENOLOGIC

Every class day I pick up a packet of MOP:
Mind on a Page phenomena. Phenomenal!
Points of view of a diverse nature.
(I sometimes celebrate diversity)

Freeze-dried lifeless potential: all of it waiting
resurrection, say (in manners of speaking) dry
bones, as it were, ready to walk around between
my ears: me, a miracle worker raising dead in
accord with my wont and natural selection.

I can’t raise it all.

It’s LIKE walking thru (“per”) a field or mall.
Some of IT provokes—crow flying off a stalk,
skin tight jeans, groundhog shuffling to the river,
corn dogs. All the REST I ignore—ignore-ant.,
dead to me for all practical purposes, the rest of
the whole.

The MOP packet is rich with possibilities for .
Argumental Studies & Leadership Pogroms:
common sense and banter, whimsy and wrangling,
rolling of the I’s and smiling disputation working
up maybe a shared shine: an argos, golden fleece
as it were for the moment or what’s a college for?

A great yawning gap, gape, abysmal chaos between
thought & talk, talk & walk, life-of-the-mind & the
body politic. Consider the richness of thought and
idea and image and expostulation each MOP packet
contains. Compare it to the Talk-In-Air of the later
half of each whole class.

What’s the difference? What’s the relationship?

The Kingdom Within? The Kingdom Without?
(2 economies)

The Phenomenologist aims to tell IT like IT is
but recognizes his natural selection is conditioned
by cave, bubble, culture, custom, convention,
convenience & personal growth & agenda—so that
it’s hard, maybe impossible to tell IT like IT is—
other than reduce it to bias, belief prejudice,
conviction: a crime, really, a violation of the
hole.

Let’s say IT’s impossible. Safer that way.
The violent, nevertheless, bear it away.

It can’t be helped. Admitted—yes (confessed), but that’s
not that easy either. It’s not easy being a Phenomenologist.
A liberal art really. Life long sport. Trying to tell IT like IT is.
Mission Impossible.

Good to know, keep in mind.

Need We Argue?

2011-10-12T02:44:00.000-07:00

              Argonautical

We don't teach our students how to argue.

A former dean sent me this thought, from a
presentation given at one of those professional
faculty development funded conferences we
might attend for faculty development.

"The opposite of a profound truth is another
profound truth," says Neils Bohr and I like
to quote him a lot. "I see we are approaching
paradox: we must be making progress."

Clarity, Consistency, Coherence on the one hand

Argue: to build up a shared shining: argent.
            to go round and round in circles,
            neither logic nor sermons convincing.

If Johnny Cash could of sung in tune he probably
wouldn't been such a cowboy success, but there
was never no risk there. Even an autotune would
have been hard pushed to rectify his take on
just below and off key.

What? What the?

In life we make progress by conflict and in
mental life by argument and disputation....
There must be confrontation and opposition,
in order that sparks must be kindled.

Make a rubric for this

I took the trash out last,
No you didn't
Did.
Didn't
Yep.
Nope.

Only an open conflict of ideas and principles
can produce any clarity. Argument is essential
for its own sake. (Karl Popper)

All this above may not apply to teaching
the liberal arts, vocational and instrumental
and pedagogically driven to cover ground
(say what they are going to do, do it, show
that they did) but possibly in teaching the
liberal art (general education: courses of a
nother color), these notions might pertain.

In Europe, what we call "college" they
call "gymnasium," which literally means
"naked training."

My Fundamentalism

2011-10-11T03:59:00.001-07:00

My Fundamentalism

Homo-phobic, sure. Xenophobic.
Misanthropic. Misogynist. Racist.
Solipsist. Narcissist: some redundancy
in all these ics and ists & it amounts to
fundamental Fear & Hate & welcome to
the First Church of the Crippled & any
one can join once outed & the cover-
up's no longer adequate: leaking limp
and lame shall enter first; no talk of golf
or coming out parties of the debutante
kind; potluck suppers and holy smoking
prayer meetings possibly, with plenty of
coffee

Hello, I'm Sam: hate-ist addicted to fear,
sealed into my bubble-self for sure—box,
cave, culture, custom, convention, closet —
bad listener enthralled by my pond-image
man in the mirror convinced it's all you &
you & you & not me I see. .

We can talk.
I'm out, damnit.
I'd pretend if I could get
away with it some more time
after time longer covering up
my cripple creek & make nice if
it weren't obvious how much I fear
and so, of course: hate.

My bad as they used to say.
Undeniable.

You got a problem with that too?
Ya'll come back, you hear? crippled,
cracked & crazed, stunned & stunning,
pre-requisite for Stupid Club: My
Church of the Hobble-de-Hoy.

Not for every body and you may not be for
every body either I don't blame you See:
right there—Homo- Phobic.

xxxooo, Young Goodman Brown

Fundamentalism

2011-10-10T04:38:00.001-07:00

Fundamentalism: In academia, on the farm,
and elsewhere, there is always a niche and
need and place for Dirty Workers; but it's
dirty work and only illegal immigrants are
willing to do it

Advising Raymond Carver

2011-10-10T02:34:00.000-07:00

Advising Creatively for Creativity
“Neither Logic nor Sermons Convince”

“The next year, he decided to take his degree
in General Studies rather that English so he
could avoid foreign language requirements.

“Although Ray wrote some “superb” papers
for his literature classes, he asked [Richard
Cortez] Day at the end of one course, “How
would you feel if I didn't turn the paper in?”

“In reply, Day asked his student
how he'd feel about a C.”

“Ray replied, “Fine.”

“Because he was working on a story.

“So, like anybody with any sense, Ray chose
the story.

And took the C.”

From Carol Sklenick's Raymond Carver:
A Writer's Life and reformatted to fit my screed. .

The dark if not the wild side of advising and
retention and liberal art as a life-long practice:

Tell them how-it-is on the one hand and then
tell them how-it-is on the other hand
& urge them to pick a hand
& play .it.

Damaged & damaging if I do..
Damaged & damaging if I don't.
Sisyphean relief & no longer
postponed joy..

“Gentleman's 'C'”

If you are get higher or lower than “C's”
you aren't using your time well used to be
the operating assumption at all-male colleges
prior to the 60's and free love.

Gas cost 18 cents a gallon that summer and
Pall Malls sold for 20 cents a pack. On any
date you'd do what you could to get some
which wasn't that likely either.

Candy was dandy, it was said, but liquor quicker
and neither guaranteed luck in this. sporting life.

We've come aways since then long ago..

Resume size matters, grades are getting better
every day, increased respect about gender issues
and body image, ubiquitous content & media
accessible subject-object matter no longer need
determine the primary measurable aim and assessable
outcomes in classroom contact-hour educating where
every kid with laptop, smart-phone, I-pad etc thanks
to Steve Jobs our Edison and Henry Ford of lower and
higher education is as smart as the smartest kid in class
and they can google my facts, comments, observations
& opinions as fast as I assert them plus instantly video
my professorial ah um, cough cough cautious &
judicious academic morning on-track professionalism
and relay to Santa Cruz, some friend attending a class
of comparable & contrastive critical thinkers. .

“Get a load of this!”
“No, YOU Get a load of THIS!”

(Transcontinental citizen ship.)

"Neither Logic nor Sermons Convince"

2011-10-09T03:14:00.001-07:00

"Remember Thy tender mercies,
and fill my heart with thy grace,
Thou who willest not that thy
works shall be void."

"Do you think I should use a period
   or semi-colon here? " I asked Donald
   Trump.

   "Semi-colon. Bold. Flows."

As he left the room, he turned and
said:

"Write a story about dinner."

"I don't do fiction." I replied.
"Creative non-fiction, maybe,
   about place."

"Don't give up;
don't ever give up,"
he said.

Empowermental Studies and Leadership Programs

2011-10-08T03:21:00.001-07:00

The Two Economies

"In two several ways am I
wont to visit my Elect:

Namely with Temptation
and with Consolation.

And I daily read two lessons
to them:

One in reproving their vices.
Another in exhorting them
to the increase of their virtues."

(Ludicrous to the savvy &
offensive to the conscientious.)

xxxooo, Oprah, Dr. Phil & Drew:
the rehabilitators).

This Door's For You

2011-10-07T02:44:00.000-07:00

This DOOR is for you exclusively but you can't open
it without my permission and then there are many
other doorkeepers to face much more powerful then
I am & you'll have to get their permission, too
   (Kafka's The Trial, reconfigured somewhat to fit
   my screed.)
   Ways of Talking

LANGUAGE IN Our Ardent SOCIETY

Socio-Environmental-Sustainability:

I could go ahead & tell you how to save the whirl
like some Buckminster Fuller brush salesman but
it’d be as effective as the Surgeon General Warnings
on the side of flip-top filter-tip Camel cigarette boxes
some still walk a mile for.

Has to be worked up from old scratch, zero-based—
emerging as shared edification generated by ardent
and sustained converse- action.

@@@

My daily school work-program & service project depends
on the grinding of strangers —the antagonism of others:
resistance & opposition of friends & neighbors so as to be
trying to put IT in play so as to see what there is to see
re the progress of contraries & emerging values & phenomena
rising like mergansers from the truly engaged tangle & tango
of diverse points of viewing.

                              %%%

Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse
un-acted desires, says Wm. Blake.

    Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked
roads with out Improvement, are roads of Genius.

    Where man is not, nature is barren.

    Truth can never be told so as to be understood,
and not be believ'd.

                 Enough! or Too much.

     If a fool persist in his ways he becomes wise and
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.



    Favorite proverbs bound to be mistaken
   knocking on the doors of homeland securities,
   threatening peace & stability in the popular
             mind-set & body politic.

HOW is the wisdom of these our humanities-division
nostrums to be recognized seeing as they must go
against the reign?   Dia-bolical: throwing common
sense across the rooms for play so to speak.

EITHER such verbal pyrotechnical terrorist tactics
provoke & compel (turn them up, put them in game),
OR they threaten whirl peace and measurable account-
ability.

    Gut winces signal my visceral turbulence at the
    potential de-& re-construction of belief & bias,
my systemic prejudicial convictions. Demoralizing
    no doubt and who’s to say whether it’s ruin or
     renewal or beyond my goodies & weasels?

   Risky business knocking out the floors of my
   conceptions, abusing me to scan me: I’ll have
   grounds more relative than these: —the PLAY's
the thing wherein to catch the conscience of the kin.

What I have here is always my failure to Communicate

Not a unilateral deal, damnit. Any Goodman Brown
sees emperors with no clothing concealing the nothing
that 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.

There must be good reasons for our conspiracy. My
operating assumption with regard to the study, research,
& scholarship of Language, Literature, & Communication
is that always Rightchere At Hand—

      US be here now, any 2 or 3 or
           more gathered together

constitute a life-laboratory, source & resource for learning
so obviously close at hand & transparent that I ignore it all
together. I try to rub my GNOSIS in it. Look in the mirror:
what do I see?

        The madness of my method.

   Might we practice arguing sustainable converse-action
naturally strained thru opaquely transparent vulnerabilities
& of course dark glasses so as to consider what it’s all about:
razing our own ardent Arizonas & private Idahos?



xxxooo, Presbyter

Ways of Not Knowing

2011-10-06T04:41:00.001-07:00

Epistemologic

Knowing knowing knowingly
I know that I don’t know and
all the knowing I do know
occludes that I don’t know
that-I-don’t-know even as I think
I do and shine my lucid scheming
light in cave and closet to study
darkness--knowing for better
and for worse.

How to Take a Course: Our Meta-Education Program

2011-10-06T02:54:00.001-07:00

Dear Colleagues, always for the sake of
on--line argument across the curriculum:

"It's one thing to discuss the relative
value of the course for our students

It's quite another to operate as if the
teaching interests of the faculty trump
the learning needs of the students."

Maybe this could be re-framed as dialectic.

On the one hand: the learning needs of the students.
On the other hand: the teaching interests (learning
needs) of the teachers.

Turn up the difference in values. Polarize and characterize.
Put the 2 in play. Don't let either 'trump or lose. Anticipate
synthesis: an emerging value that does no injustice to either.

And the same might be said (and framed) for

We WILL end up with a general education
plan that can demonstrate that we know
what we are doing, that we are doing it, 
and then that we are demonstrating that
we do it.          on the one hand

and then on the other: a plan that encourages that we
also do not know what we are doing, that we go about
seeing where we are going (frontiers yet unknown) , and
that at the end we look back, like any Monday Morning
Quarterback and with perfect stalwart pioneering clarity
can say where we've been.

[We shall never cease from exploration.
And the end of all our exploring.
Will be to arrive where we started.
And know the place for the first time. (tse)]

These values (both sets: 2 economies) are appropriately
hostile and if rigorously kept separate & in relationship:
complementary and generative (innovative). Otherwise,
always the sound of one hand clappping and nobody loves that.

On another point: The Media is the Message,
The Context is the Text, The Sturucture is
the Substance

Pattern Language: Here's what our program will probably
look like structurally, regardless of our gen-ed content
subject-object matter and method. Or not?

Scroll down: here’s what four years of education looks
like structurally. (the ingrained walk-away
knowing)

year 1

       syllabus (contract)
* lecture-to-discussion ratios
* attendance policy
* reading and writing assignments
(texts, term & semester papers)
* quizzes and examination policy
* deadline policy (late penalties)
* presentation/poster policies
* assessment and evaluation policy
* diagnosed learning disability policy
.
       syllabus (contract)
* lecture-to-discussion ratios
* attendance policy
* reading and writing assignments
(texts, term & semester papers)
* quizzes and examination policy
* deadline policy (late penalties)
* presentation/poster policies
* assessment and evaluation policy
* diagnosed learning disability policy
.
       syllabus (contract)
* lecture-to-discussion ratios
* attendance policy
* reading and writing assignments
(texts, term & semester papers)
* quizzes and examination policy
* deadline policy (late penalties)
* presentation/poster policies
* assessment and evaluation policy
* diagnosed learning disability policy

       syllabus (contract)
* lecture-to-discussion ratios
* attendance policy
* reading and writing assignments
(texts, term & semester papers)
* quizzes and examination policy
* deadline policy (late penalties)
* presentation/poster policies
* assessment and evaluation policy
* diagnosed learning disability policy

       syllabus (contract)
* lecture-to-discussion ratios
* attendance policy
* reading and writing assignments
(texts, term & semester papers)
* quizzes and examination policy
* deadline policy (late penalties)
* presentation/poster policies
* assessment and evaluation policy
* diagnosed learning disability policy

       syllabus (contract)
* lecture-to-discussion ratios
* attendance policy
* reading and writing assignments
(texts, term & semester papers)
* quizzes and examination policy
* deadline policy (late penalties)
* presentation/poster policies
* assessment and evaluation policy
* diagnosed learning disability policy

       syllabus (contract)
* lecture-to-discussion ratios
* attendance policy
* reading and writing assignments
(texts, term & semester papers)
* quizzes and examination policy
* deadline policy (late penalties)
* presentation/poster policies
* assessment and evaluation policy
* diagnosed learning disability policy
.
       syllabus (contract)
* lecture-to-discussion ratios
* attendance policy
* reading and writing assignments
(texts, term & semester papers)
* quizzes and examination policy
* deadline policy (late penalties)
* presentation/poster policies
* assessment and evaluation policy
* diagnosed learning disability policy

Year two:.

       syllabus (contract)
* lecture-to-discussion ratios
* attendance policy
* reading and writing assignments
(texts, term & semester papers)
* quizzes and examination policy
* deadline policy (late penalties)
* presentation/poster policies
* assessment and evaluation policy
* diagnosed learning disability policy

       syllabus (contract)
* lecture-to-discussion ratios
* attendance policy
* reading and writing assignments
(texts, term & semester papers)
* quizzes and examination policy
* deadline policy (late penalties)
* presentation/poster policies
* assessment and evaluation policy
* diagnosed learning disability policy

       syllabus (contract)

* lecture-to-discussion ratios
* attendance policy
* reading and writing assignments
(texts, term & semester papers)
* quizzes and examination policy
* deadline policy (late penalties)
* presentation/poster policies
* assessment and evaluation policy
* diagnosed learning disability policy
.
       syllabus (contract)

* lecture-to-discussion ratios
* attendance policy
* reading and writing assignments
(texts, term & semester papers)
* quizzes and examination policy
* deadline policy (late penalties)
* presentation/poster policies
* assessment and evaluation policy
* diagnosed learning disability policy
.
       syllabus (contract)

* lecture-to-discussion ratios
* attendance policy
* reading and writing assignments
(texts, term & semester papers)
* quizzes and examination policy
* deadline policy (late penalties)
* presentation/poster policies
* assessment and evaluation policy
* diagnosed learning disability policy
.
       syllabus (contract)

* lecture-to-discussion ratios
* attendance policy
* reading and writing assignments
(texts, term & semester papers)
* quizzes and examination policy
* deadline policy (late penalties)
* presentation/poster policies
* assessment and evaluation policy
* diagnosed learning disability policy
.
       syllabus (contract)

* lecture-to-discussion ratios
* attendance policy
* reading and writing assignments
(texts, term & semester papers)
* quizzes and examination policy
* deadline policy (late penalties)
* presentation/poster policies
* assessment and evaluation policy
* diagnosed learning disability policy

       syllabus (contract)

* lecture-to-discussion ratios
* attendance policy
* reading and writing assignments
(texts, term & semester papers)
* quizzes and examination policy
* deadline policy (late penalties)
* presentation/poster policies
* assessment and evaluation policy
* diagnosed learning disability policy
.

etc.
"We teach students How To Take a Course"
a biology teacher said a few years back. .

Trust the Process

2011-10-05T04:51:00.000-07:00

Trust the Process

aka: thy willy/nilly be done; be
hap-y, don’t worry: crucify the
ego beyond goodies & weasels..

His ex-girlfriend’s mom told him
trust the process and she left him
anyway, damnit: the process should
go my way if I trust it, otherwise
why trust.?

Governance I Scream:

Scissors cuts Paper.
Paper cover Rock
Rock crushes Scissors

My Will (decider) governs
My Intellect (knower)
and My Affect (feeler)

My Intellect (knower) governs
my Affect (feeler)
and my Will (decider)

My Affect (feeler) governs
my Intellect (knower)
and my Will (decider)

Liberal Art moving in a cloud
of unknowing knowingly: pillar
of fire from time to time; manna
good for moments only, no
generalizations, no replicating, no
squirreling for later, no passing it
on, giving it away, no common sense

Liberal Art (as opposed to the majors, minors, posters & capstone events)

2011-10-04T06:57:00.003-07:00

Liberal Art
moving in a cloud of
unknowing knowingly:
pillar of fire from time
to time; manna good for
a moment only, no
generalizations, no
replicating, no squirreling
for later, no passing it on,
giving it away, no
common sense.

Eureka ! (Heuristics)

2011-10-04T03:00:00.000-07:00

Daddy, if God made us, who made god?
Daddy, where do new ideas come from?

When we sit in class in silence ideas about
teaching and learning flood my mind, the
chaos vacuum sucks in flocks of starlings,
pigeons, crows, hawks, humming birds,
robins, and stealth-bomber vultures
riding currents circling for road kill
and afterbirth.

Like church for me.

Winged & feathered.
Storks carrying in news.
Bundles of un-postponed joy.

And I wonder what kinds of environment
are necessary for EUREKA learning,
you know:

I GET IT ! I GOT IT !

Archimedes shouts as he lowers himself
into the tub—realizing weight displacement
in water will let him determine the gold
in the king’s crown. Get him a noble prize
and reward.

Eureka!

I GET IT—the shout of anyone for whom
a connection has happened, relationship,
hook-up. Surprise, surprise I just got lucky
except there had to be some messing around
on my part, play of mind, some receptivity,
desire built up—wonder what the hell, hmm
could it be? O no that’ll never do. . .

so it goes and goes trying to Figure
some thing OUT.

Then
like some epiphany,
brief bright bridge,
religious binding back experience:

Eureka!

IT comes flying across a vasty sea bolt from
the blue: little birdie telling me so.

A good joke: ah, aha, ha ha & no one need be
told the punch line without damage. Let any
child be left behind.

I can do it
I can do it
my daughter would insist
if I tried to show her anything,

how to tie her shoes,
put on skates,
ride a bike.
write a college application
integrate a triad, assess a goal
& measurable outcome, attend class
faithfully exploring frontiers yet unknown.

Post Literacy and the Age of Neo Oral Converse Action

2011-10-03T08:44:00.001-07:00

Post Literacy

Neo Oral-cy

We are addicted to think

that it’s the trash that’s at

issue and not the relationship

That it’s the content and not

the teaching-learning environment

that matters

Imagine a class and course where

the text is mere token for the

context.

Inconceivable, yes? It would take

something like an immaculate

concept to Get IT.

Eureka.

Or else hooked and hauled up into

the canoe to flip and flob for

a gasping minute.

Can you hear me now?