This migrant intellectual says Brett Baier of Fox News will be reporting on the adjunct issue, apparently in response to this wake-up call for mainstream media. The master-slave rhetoric ("plantation," "field workers," and "cotton pickers" for example) will be offensive to some, and there may be some sweeping generalizations in his blog, unless things such as invariable last-minute appointments apply specifically to the one community college he mentions, but his comments about the low pay are a common reality for any adjunct who attempts to show genuine dedication to grading the papers and planning the lessons, and the health insurance concern is urgent and also why the majority of us were hopeful enough that Obama's plan will work that we voted to reelect the guy.
So far, there have been news stories about two colleges, Community College of Alleghany County and Youngstown State, adjusting their maximum number of courses downward in order to pay teachers for their classes without paying benefits, and we're just in wait-and-see mode with the whole bit--fiscal cliff, healthcare reform, and so on.
Stay tuned for full Obamacare in 2014?
Stay tuned to Fox News?
Haha.
My hunch is that the mainstream press will always prefer sensational nonfiction, academic corruption and suicide, to living, breathing literature, but in the sad world we live in, I sometimes forget to feel grateful for what I have and instead feel like Fight for Your Long Day is getting lost in the shuffle and deserves more continued recognition.
I guess it will always be easier to steal, blog, or kill oneself than it is to write a book.
Good. It never hurts to add a dash of egomania and self-pity to the holiday season. Now if my literature stays in the public imagination in any way, there'll be a little public disgruntlement readers can turn to for evidence of a decline in spirits in the later years.
The Fox News link above reminds me of how I was told by Frank Reeve at Wesleyan that Mark Twain ignited his career by moving up to NYC and engaging in fistfights. I'm way too overworked, tired, nonviolent, and soft for that kind of thing, so I guess it's just time to grade more papers and take my mind off the rest of it.
I've come to realize that I enjoy teaching contemporary literature and business writing, even if I'm not always feeling so loved back for my efforts. And another quality small press asked to see the second novel, so there's a little room for optimism in the literary realm as well.
Alex Kudera’s award-winning novel, Fight for Your Long Day (Atticus Books), was drafted in a walk-in closet during a summer in Seoul, South Korea. Auggie’s Revenge (Beating Windward Press) is his second novel. His numerous short stories include “Frade Killed Ellen” (Dutch Kills Press), “Bombing from Above” (Heavy Feather Review), and “A Thanksgiving” (Eclectica Magazine).
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Donkey Tired, Donkey Gets Slapped With A Wet Fish
Today in contemporary literature (haha), we had some fun evaluating Steve Almond's "Donkey Greedy, Donkey Gets Punched," the leadoff hitter in the Richard Russo edited 2010 Best of American Stories. Although that one is mainly about fathers and sons, therapy, poker, and among men competition, bonding, animosity, drunkenness, insanity, and generalized angst, we still had time to consider his comic "deconstruction" of Toto's Africa in relation to all of the postcolonial and transnational stories we've been reading.
So it was a veritable Steve Almond Experience in Daniel 405, and apologies to any students present or innocents reading this now who wind up swaying to the beat at an inopportune moment.
Here's some bonus coverage of Almond on bad jobs with some additional thoughts on the bad job that is the writing life.
Man, if this wily veteran rock 'n roller is still knocking on doors, what does that mean for the rest of us?
Yikes.
So it was a veritable Steve Almond Experience in Daniel 405, and apologies to any students present or innocents reading this now who wind up swaying to the beat at an inopportune moment.
Here's some bonus coverage of Almond on bad jobs with some additional thoughts on the bad job that is the writing life.
Man, if this wily veteran rock 'n roller is still knocking on doors, what does that mean for the rest of us?
Yikes.
Monday, December 3, 2012
peace and trade, redux
Here's a follow up to the peace and trade blog below, Philly style with Michael Nutter in Tianjin. I can't prove that this sister-city business lifts all boats in both towns, but I can't prove it doesn't, either (although there are news articles everyday about how young people around the world are struggling).
"Staggering" is Mayor Nutter's first description, and his impressions sound similar to mine during last summer's visit to Suzhou and Shanghai. Here's an excerpt from the article:
"Seeing what goes on here is a reminder of the things we can do and must do to maintain our presence on the world stage," Nutter said.
Make no mistake, Mike, China is very much the kind of place where behind the amazing skyscrapers, ports, bridges, and trains, you can still see the signs of hand-to-mouth living. Then again, every place in the world is like that.
"Staggering" is Mayor Nutter's first description, and his impressions sound similar to mine during last summer's visit to Suzhou and Shanghai. Here's an excerpt from the article:
"Seeing what goes on here is a reminder of the things we can do and must do to maintain our presence on the world stage," Nutter said.
It also underscores "what our federal government can do if we would have, at times, a little less debate and a whole lot more work and understand that investment brings job and activity and furthers American interests," said Nutter, who also is president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
It also underscores "what our federal government can do if we would have, at times, a little less debate and a whole lot more work and understand that investment brings job and activity and furthers American interests," said Nutter, who also is president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.Make no mistake, Mike, China is very much the kind of place where behind the amazing skyscrapers, ports, bridges, and trains, you can still see the signs of hand-to-mouth living. Then again, every place in the world is like that.
Friday, November 30, 2012
Brian Glenn in Wes Government
I like this clip of Wesleyan classmate Brian Glenn, at the 39-minute mark in the video, exhorting current students to fight for need-blind admission. I didn't know Brian well at Wesleyan, but I enjoy his table-banging energy on this issue.
Ecrasez l'infame!
Ecrasez l'infame!
Thursday, November 29, 2012
other campuses' children
If you read Inside Higher Ed or other sources that cover "higher education," you learn that there are scandals low and high surrounding America's colleges and universities--high-level appointments without the degrees their resumes state, scandalously low adjunct pay, college degrees that lead to nothing but unpaid student loans, and much more. So Penn State's Jerry Sandusky problem is certainly news in terms of the extent of the egregiousness, but it is not the first university to invoke a "conspiracy of silence" as part of its long-term strategic plan.
(The newly indited Graham Spanier, like Sandusky now in a Pennsylvania prison with death-row inmates, continues to deny everything and vigorously defend himself as an expert sociologist who was an abused child himself and thus would never allow such crimes to occur under his watch. It very much should be understood that he, like everyone else, is innocent until proven guilty, and yet the facts that can be verified along with the economic inequalities of the whole situation--from the most disadvantaged boys being the victims to the highest paid administrators and coaches as the accused-- reminds us of the inequalities and cruelties of the entire country, and how higher education, from at least one angle, can be seen to support and even exacerbate this economic status quo.)
Somewhat like Penn State, but perhaps so much more typical in that rapes of enrolled adults are known to occur on college campuses, is the news from Amherst College that while a traumatized young woman left school demoralized and without a degree, her rapist went on to graduate with honors.
And then, closer to home for me, at Wesleyan University, like Amherst, part of the "little three," rape wasn't in the news, but President Roth announced that the school was no longer offering need-blind admission. On the one hand, when I read this I had to chuckle because no matter what anyone has ever said, it was always beneficial if your parents could pay for college when it was time for the elite "need blind" schools to pluck kids off the waiting lists, and just by random chance, year after year, almost all of these schools have been enrolling about half a student body that can pay the entire nut outright. It's not until you graduate and see your peers driving off in brand-new SUVs that you see the full impact of economic inequality on American higher education as it's currently practiced.
But still, I should be grateful, and I am, because I certainly would not have attended Wesleyan if they had not generously recomputed my financial aid package after my father lost a "good job" after we had sent in the initial forms. And I had worked a lot in high school, and saved, and so I had a chance to pay for a huge chunk of my fourth choice's costs and go on to poison my brain with Marx, Melville, Nieztsche, and more. (I'm sure there'd be no Fight for Your Long Day or teaching life were it not for Wesleyan University and what I read and saw there.)
$80,000 for four years of a private liberal arts college seemed like an amazing sum back then, and I can only imagine what students and their parents are thinking about the $120,000 that they can pay for total costs for even in-state tuition, room, and board at our "flagship" public universities these days. An adult student I spoke with at Clemson told me his in-state, full-time tuition is $6,000 a semester, which would be under $50,000 for four years and a relatively fair, if not invariably affordable, amount to pay for what's supposed to be a Top-25 state school.
(The newly indited Graham Spanier, like Sandusky now in a Pennsylvania prison with death-row inmates, continues to deny everything and vigorously defend himself as an expert sociologist who was an abused child himself and thus would never allow such crimes to occur under his watch. It very much should be understood that he, like everyone else, is innocent until proven guilty, and yet the facts that can be verified along with the economic inequalities of the whole situation--from the most disadvantaged boys being the victims to the highest paid administrators and coaches as the accused-- reminds us of the inequalities and cruelties of the entire country, and how higher education, from at least one angle, can be seen to support and even exacerbate this economic status quo.)
Somewhat like Penn State, but perhaps so much more typical in that rapes of enrolled adults are known to occur on college campuses, is the news from Amherst College that while a traumatized young woman left school demoralized and without a degree, her rapist went on to graduate with honors.
And then, closer to home for me, at Wesleyan University, like Amherst, part of the "little three," rape wasn't in the news, but President Roth announced that the school was no longer offering need-blind admission. On the one hand, when I read this I had to chuckle because no matter what anyone has ever said, it was always beneficial if your parents could pay for college when it was time for the elite "need blind" schools to pluck kids off the waiting lists, and just by random chance, year after year, almost all of these schools have been enrolling about half a student body that can pay the entire nut outright. It's not until you graduate and see your peers driving off in brand-new SUVs that you see the full impact of economic inequality on American higher education as it's currently practiced.
But still, I should be grateful, and I am, because I certainly would not have attended Wesleyan if they had not generously recomputed my financial aid package after my father lost a "good job" after we had sent in the initial forms. And I had worked a lot in high school, and saved, and so I had a chance to pay for a huge chunk of my fourth choice's costs and go on to poison my brain with Marx, Melville, Nieztsche, and more. (I'm sure there'd be no Fight for Your Long Day or teaching life were it not for Wesleyan University and what I read and saw there.)
$80,000 for four years of a private liberal arts college seemed like an amazing sum back then, and I can only imagine what students and their parents are thinking about the $120,000 that they can pay for total costs for even in-state tuition, room, and board at our "flagship" public universities these days. An adult student I spoke with at Clemson told me his in-state, full-time tuition is $6,000 a semester, which would be under $50,000 for four years and a relatively fair, if not invariably affordable, amount to pay for what's supposed to be a Top-25 state school.
A lot of people seem so happy to have Sandusky in jail, but the scary thing is that those alleged criminals at Penn State likely kept silent not because of loyalty to Sandusky but because they felt the university would lose revenue, and they understood that it's revenue that can pay salaries for quality faculty, technology, group health insurance, and more while it also gives some nonwealthy Americans a better chance to earn an affordable college degree.
But tossing the pedophile in the pokey and throwing away the key doesn't resolve higher education's inaccessibity issues, and we're left in a world where Wesleyan could be setting a trend toward a "new normal," which of course is a return to the old model, of elite colleges not acting as democratic institutions but as exclusive clubs for the young and rich. As a country, we seem to be continuing an antidemocratic trend away from equal access and affordability.
To me, this is not America, at least not the country we were taught to believe in. Which quite possibly means this is America.
But tossing the pedophile in the pokey and throwing away the key doesn't resolve higher education's inaccessibity issues, and we're left in a world where Wesleyan could be setting a trend toward a "new normal," which of course is a return to the old model, of elite colleges not acting as democratic institutions but as exclusive clubs for the young and rich. As a country, we seem to be continuing an antidemocratic trend away from equal access and affordability.
To me, this is not America, at least not the country we were taught to believe in. Which quite possibly means this is America.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Joseph A. Domino
I just stumbled upon this Joseph A. Domino piece, and was reminded that he was one of the early supporters of Fight for Your Long Day. Thanks, Joe. (I was searching for a recent reprint of his amazon review but couldn't find it.)
In a week where I've learned that another good friend lost a job, in this case, a so-called "good job," and that Governor Corbett has his steak knife out and is taking another look at Pennsylvania public-employee pensions, I'm still stumbling upon this kind of thing all over the web, and then I get caught up in how relatively good I have it and wonder when some more awful version of life will find me.
Okay, I'm going to crouch under the desk and hope they pass by.
And then in the middle of the night, when no one is looking, maybe I'll sneak back up here and watch Bill Black "Grand Bargain or Great Betrayal" videos at realnews.com. Black has it all--paranoia, tenure, facts, even a fair amount of his hair, and an office that is messy but not impossibly messy in that way in which even a Philip Roth character couldn't clear a clean well-lit place to seduce his paramour (the cleaning lady).
Good luck to everyone striving for a safer and more secure future.
In a week where I've learned that another good friend lost a job, in this case, a so-called "good job," and that Governor Corbett has his steak knife out and is taking another look at Pennsylvania public-employee pensions, I'm still stumbling upon this kind of thing all over the web, and then I get caught up in how relatively good I have it and wonder when some more awful version of life will find me.
Okay, I'm going to crouch under the desk and hope they pass by.
And then in the middle of the night, when no one is looking, maybe I'll sneak back up here and watch Bill Black "Grand Bargain or Great Betrayal" videos at realnews.com. Black has it all--paranoia, tenure, facts, even a fair amount of his hair, and an office that is messy but not impossibly messy in that way in which even a Philip Roth character couldn't clear a clean well-lit place to seduce his paramour (the cleaning lady).
Good luck to everyone striving for a safer and more secure future.
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