Year: 2011

We are honored that Crooks and Liars has linked to POTB. C & L is one of the best progressive blogs going and we, who are addicted to our own version of Rich Little doing Nixon love the cartoon Tricky Dick at the top of their site. Please visit them often! 

Cold rowanberries, a few reindeer nosing the late autumn weeds.
Didn't we say something about harmonics? That was yesterday,
Before we arrived in the northernmost reaches of Lapland.
We were singing a song on the train as daylight disappeared.
Look: an old man is beating on the hood of his snow mobile with a wrench.
I cannot lip read but I think the man is saying he's hundreds of years old
& the stupid machine is only twenty & there's no bus for 80 kilometers.
My friend and I have read many books
but not enough to successfully complete this life.

 

Not long ago I was a senior professor at one of the premier graduate programs in literary writing in the U.S..  I genuinely liked my work with students and colleagues in Iowa City, where, on any given night, one can hear poetry, fiction, and literary nonfiction being read by superb writers. I imagined without undue exertion that I would spend the remainder of my career at the University of Iowa. I certainly had no idea that Syracuse University would become my new professional home. 

In August I was appointed director of SU’s “Renée Crown University Honors Program” and additionally, was offered a distinguished “university professorship”. While these two things are rewarding–or, more precisely, hold the promise of reward–they are not the reasons I chose to come to Syracuse. That decision was based entirely on the institutional vision that SU calls “scholarship in action”–a matter that is more like scholarship “squared” since it calls upon this university to (re)vision many long held and  collective assuptions about higher education. One of those assumptions is that a university education unfolds according to the static demands of research and so whether a student’s field of study is Physics or Anthropology, the only experience she or he will have beyond the ivory tower will be mediated by the history of received scholarship. This means that the local community and the circumstances of its citizens are only admissable as a subject of research if they prove or disprove a theoretical position. Forget the idea that the locals might have ideas of their own or that they might be co-presenters in a grant. Scholarship in action calls for a bold reimagining of the tenet that ideas precede people.  

This leads to challenging a second long held assumption about higher ed–that it possesses utility only by means of meritocracy. Let’s be clear: every student wants an “A” and every university wants to employ the best faculty–those who once upon a time got the most “A’s”. We all know that those who work the hardest gain the laurels at colleges and universities and this is an unassailable truism. As the director of SU’s honors program I wouldn’t have it any other way. Or would I? Can I imagine an alternatives to measuring academic success? How do the old time faculty actually measure “peer to peer mentoring” among today’s students? What is the changing nature of team work? Traditional higher ed rarely has cogent answers for these questions but the time to find those answers is now. 

In his famous book Pedagogy of the Oppressed Paulo Freire wrote: “Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.” 

Traditional higher ed likes participation but in very narrow terms. Syracuse is changing that and I came to the snowiest city in America because of it. 

 

 

SK

“Doctors had told the woman that one of her babies had a congenital heart defect that would require numerous operations, if he survived.”

** Wrong twin aborted in Australia **
An investigation is under way at an Australian hospital after staff treating a woman carrying twin boys accidentally terminated the wrong foetus.
< http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-15870161 >

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United Arab Emirates security court jails blogger

A United Arab Emirates court on Sunday sentenced a blogger and four other democracy activists to prison terms after finding them guilty of charges including insulting the Gulf state’s leaders.The State Security Court handed the blogger, Ahmed Mansoor, a three-year prison sentence and the four others each received two years. They have no recourse to appeal.The court also ordered the shutting down of the Hiwar (Dialogue) internet forum used by the activists.Mansoor had been arrested in April along with Nasser bin Gaith, who lectures at the Abu Dhabi branch of the Sorbonne University, and activists Fahid Salim Dalk, Hassan Ali Khamis and Ahmed Abdul Khaleq.They were accused of using the internet to insult leaders of the United Arab Emirates, calling for a boycott of September’s Federal National Council elections and for anti-government demonstrations.Their trial had been criticised as “grossly unfair” by a coalition of seven rights watchdogs including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch earlier this month.In a joint statement, the rights groups had called for “all five to be released immediately and unconditionally.”But the Federal Supreme Court, acting in its role as the special security court, pressed ahead announcing its verdict.The five defendants had refused to show up in court, saying in a message delivered by a police officer that the court “did not enable them to defend themselves.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/unitedarabemirates/8918868/United-Arab-Emirates-security-court-jails-blogger.html

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Glasnost, then and now:

A Memoir of Glasnost – 
"At the height of glasnost in 1988-89, the writer Ales Adamovich remarked, "Today, it's more interesting to read than to live." Anyone who lived during those years of glasnost as a writer, a journalist, an editor, an intellectual, a political person, understood what he meant."

http://www.thenation.com/blog/164583/memoir-glasnost

Shared from NationNow, an iPhone app.

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I thought you would find this interesting:

‘Dear Jenny: I Fired Your Mom and Put You to Work to Help You “Rise.” Love, Newt’ – http://www.thenation.com/blog/164800/dear-jenny-i-fired-your-mom-and-put-you-work-help-you-rise-love-newt

Shared from NationNow, an iPhone app.

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See my friend Greg Rugolo’s brilliant video reframing UC Davis pepper spraying incident “writ large” with excellent sound track by Mr. Bob Marley:

Sent from my iPad

A phrase I have long enjoyed utilizing when people are in extremis about something like their eggs being too runny or the poodle ate the slipper. As an aging Surrealist I like para tactic reframing–what’s the opposite of a woman’s body? Franco’s tomb.

This is the only human method I know of for contextualizing the abstractions of neo-capitalist narratives. What’s the opposite of Ramallah? An obvious answer would be the Mall of America but I think it’s really the country music channel where sentimental Norte Americanos sing about their piddly disappointments though they have roofs over their heads and plenty of stylish, dumbed down cowboy clothing.

I made the mistake of watching TV over the Thanksgiving holiday. In a particularly terrifying commercial a steak sandwich the size of a Buick steams toward the camera, implying that it’s going down your throat or mine. What’s the opposite? Ramallah. Gitmo. You name it. Franco’s tomb.

So in my case the Tryptophan has worn off.

It’s not the Cuban missile crisis. It’s a horrid steak sandwich being dangled before a nation that now, officially is one third in poverty.

As the old baseball broadcaster used to say: “How ’bout that!”

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

 

'undun': The Story Of A Gifted Black Youth Unravels

In the midst of our "30 Rock" grind, a producer says, "We need something special for this Kristin Wiig sketch — something upbeat!" Before I can respond, I feel the smartphone vibrating in my pocket. I've been informed that my man Lil' Mark is no more.

 

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