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End of a Friendship

End of a Friendship

I’m rather down today after formally ending a friendship that went all the way back to childhood. Normally, I would feel it was better to simply fade away, but in this case I felt I had to draw a very clear line. After a couple of attempts to try to maintain the friendship despite our deepening differences, there was a online conversation back and forth about a news story that troubled me. The way the comments were framed, the information that had to be ignored to do so, the transparent rhetorical strategy – all of it illustrated a deeply problematic character in her husband. My intuition was screaming alert.

I did some research. In doing so, I came across a truckload of information that made the friendship impossible to continue, and even made me wonder if there had ever really been a friend there at all. Just following the thread of this one person through the maze brought a deeper level of understanding about how certain things are structured right now in this country of ours. I feel like I had a brush with the-opposite-of-greatness. Horrible. It’s not that I didn’t already have some indication that her husband was a bit of a jerk, but I was able to put it off to differences in political opinion and in “I guess you had to be there” allowances – for as long as I didn’t have too many details. As a last gesture of honor toward our shared past, I won’t illustrate with all the links, and funding sources, and results. Over time, I’m sure others will do so, and in ways more effective (I hope) than anything that I could do. History will be the judge.

I have no idea what could have possessed the person I thought I knew to drink the kool-aid on these matters, not only politically but also in terms of some rather basic ethics. I’m bewildered and deeply disappointed. The girl I knew could have chosen any path. What an incredible waste. How could she have sunk so low?

Dear X – This isn’t about the back and forth on the dueling couple, but the responses I saw troubled me in a number of different ways. I’ve had a bad feeling for a while, really ever since I saw your husband disallow you from eating some dish at the reunion. I knew he was a right-wing academic, but I also knew that you guys had supported Y in his music – and figured that he must have another side to him. Yes, we disagree on politics, but our friendship is more important – I let it go.

Until now, I really didn’t understand the level of corruption that was possible to maintain while still claiming an academic position. It would be one thing if the problem were merely a set of political differences, as I thought. Unfortunately what I’m seeing is much, much more than that. It’s amazing what you can find when you have a thread to follow. I wrote about seven pages last night detailing it, but you’re an intelligent woman and I have to conclude that you not only know but also approve.

I actually believe in intellectual integrity, and don’t think that universities should be the location for sham research, paid-for-comment faculty, and political think-tanks – but rather for independent research that is peer-reviewed. I have no idea how you could have married someone who actually specializes in undermining academic integrity and in the distortion of public information, and who is part of the corruption of the political process for private gain (regardless of citizen/consumer rights or protections, regardless of casualties). I’m not just theoretically opposed to the content, but I actually consider this to be unethical – even criminal – behavior, and want nothing to do with it in any way.

I can’t see a way to justify trying to maintain a friendship with someone who obviously participates in – and approves of – all the corrupt practices and money trails I’ve discovered. I hope that at least your chosen path has brought you something that you wanted badly enough to justify it to yourself.

I’ll just remember you as the talented, intelligent and graceful girl I once knew, and grieve for her. Further communications from either of you are not welcome.

Goodbye, X.

So now it’s done, and I feel like it was just the first step in a process of disentanglement for me. Do I have any white sage? I actually feel – somehow – tainted. I know that people change, and that there are always existential choices to be made. I’ve made mistakes myself. Perhaps I’m still making them. I try to have a caring center and to offer compassion to others. But there’s a limit, and this is toxic at a level that I haven’t been this close to before.

I don’t hate my old friend. I don’t even hate her horrible and corrupt husband. But I won’t allow that kind of thing to be part of my life, nor part of my personal set of friends and associates. I can’t live with this knowledge and still call her “friend.”

Corruption and fraud in the cause of greed can succeed for a while, but it will always be discovered and judged, even if it takes a hundred years. Those who participate in it still have to live with the knowledge of the hurt they’ve caused, the casualties of their destructiveness. Deep down, we all know the truth of it. I see the causes, the studies for hire, the interests behind all this. It sickens me.

So long, farewell, Auf wiedersehen… good-bye.

Happy Birthday Gary Snyder!

Happy Birthday Gary Snyder!

My friend Grateful Bear is celebrating the birthday of Pulizer-prize-winning Zen eco-poet Gary Snyder, and I’m joining the birthday party!

Happy Birthday Gary Snyder!

The Modern Poetry site (Dept. of English, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) has an interesting subsite on him that includes the following:

“Conservatism has some very valid meanings,” he says. “Of course, most of the people who call themselves conservative aren’t that, because they’re out to extract and use, to turn a profit. Curiously, eco and artist people and those who work with dharma practice are conservatives in the best sense of the word-we’re trying to save a few things!

“Care for the environment is like noblesse oblige,” he maintains. “You don’t do it because it has to be done. You do it because it’s beautiful. That’s the bodhisattva spirit. The bodhisattva is not anxious to do good, or feels obligation or anything like that. In Jodo-shin Buddhism, which my wife was raised in, the bodhisattva just says, ‘I picked up the tab for everybody. Goodnight folks…’ “

I can’t resist reposting one of the poems, considering my tagline!

For All

Ah to be alive
on a mid-September morn
fording a stream
barefoot, pants rolled up,
holding boots, pack on,
sunshine, ice in the shallows,
northern rockies.

Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters
stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes
cold nose dripping
singing inside
creek music, heart music,
smell of sun on gravel.

I pledge allegiance

I pledge allegiance to the soil
of Turtle Island,
and to the beings who thereon dwell
one ecosystem
in diversity
under the sun
With joyful interpenetration for all.

Nechvatal Contaminations

Nechvatal Contaminations

Joseph Nechvatal, my friend and intellectual compadre in viral realms, has his latest exhibition in Ohio. “Contaminations” has been extended to run through June 25th at the Butler Institute of American Art’s Beecher Center. The show includes a selection of computer-robotic assisted paintings starting in the mid-1980’s and concludes with a recent electronic viral installation.

Go see!
Joseph Nechvatal: Contaminations

Or if you happen to be in Youngstown, Ohio:
The Beecher Center for Technology in the Arts
Butler Institute of American Arts
524 Wick Ave. Youngstown, Ohio 44502
tel# 330-743-1711

While you’re visiting his website, be sure to see the new nOOlOgy : guilt of a nation. Here is his introduction:

In art, pleasure is a most legitimate aspiration. Still one may not ignore that people all over the world today bend-over painfully and act in accordance with seemingly normal systems of control: noological systems (*) that may seem at the time logically inevitable.

My current chain of history paintings called “the new nOOlOlogy” are based on a fraction of the infamous digital photos from the Abu Graib abuse scandal. As such, they present embedded images of American torture. Here American detainees are punished and humiliated and then adorned through an a-life process of viral attack laden with the latent content of ambiguous bioterror. These digital (computer-robotic) acrylic paintings link together systems of exposed nerves with the torture at Abu Graib – now festooned with miniature hermaphrodites infected by viral attacks that undermine them.

For me they are an attempt at expressing America’s deep demoralization. They are moral acts then, free with the truth of our penchant for desire. As such, these paintings contribute slightly to the downfall of the present reality in that they bury visual memory at the outset.

To those that persist in the amorality of Abu Graib, I shit on you. You have discredited me by creating a rotting nation. Although I have opposed you at every turn, never-the-less, you have made me feel guilty and dirty too, as only a single officer has been reprimanded for this disgraceful display thus far.

This artistic activity, in tribute to Leon Golub, is a conscious response to the world of irrational conventions in which I can find even myself.

Joseph Nechvatal

(*) Noology is the science of intellectual phenomena. n. study of intuition and reason. nooscopic, a. pertaining to examination of mind.

And as if all that weren’t enough, he has a brilliant article (“Jean Baudrillard and a Counter-Mannerist Art of Latent Excess“) in the latest issue of the International Journal of Baudrillard Studies (Volume 3, Number 2 – July 2006).

Intellectual acumen, creative artistry, ethics and tech – this guy stuns me, always. Keep it going Joseph! You are an oasis in the desert.

No Parent Left Behind?

No Parent Left Behind?

I sincerely hope that this e-mail collection of "real" excuse notes written by parents in Tennessee is a humorous urban legend. Unfortunately, I find it all too believable. Thanks to Bev for sending.

  1. My son is under a doctor’s care and should not take PE today. Please execute him.
  2. Please exkuce lisa for being absent she was sick and i had her shot.
  3. Dear school: please ecsc’s john being absent on jan. 28, 29, 30, 31, 32 and also 33.
  4. Please excuse gloria from jim today. She is administrating.
  5. Please excuse roland from p.e. for a few days. Yesterday he fell out of a tree and misplaced his hip.
  6. Carlos was absent yesterday because he was playing football. He was hurt in the growing part.
  7. Megan could not come to school today because she has been bothered by very close veins.
  8. Chris will not be in school cus he has an acre in his side.
  9. Please excuse ray friday from school. He has very loose vowels.
  10. Please excuse pedro from being absent yesterday. He had diahre dyrea direathe the sh**s.
  11. Irving was absent yesterday because he missed his bust.
  12. Please excuse jimmy for being. It was his father’s fault.
  13. I kept billie home because she had to go christmas shopping because i don’t know what size she wear.
  14. Please excuse jennifer for missing school yesterday. We forgot to get the sunday paper off the porch, and when we found it monday. We thought it was sunday.
  15. Sally won’t be in school a week from friday. We have to attend her funeral.
  16. My daughter was absent yesterday because she was tired. She spent a weekend with the marines.
  17. Please excuse mary for being absent yesterday. She was in bed with gramps.
  18. Gloria was absent yesterday as she was having a gangover.
  19. Please excuse brenda. She has been sick and under the doctor.
  20. Maryann was absent december 11-16, because she had a fever, sorethroat, headache and upset stomach. Her sister was also sick, fever an sore throat, her brother had a low grade fever and ached all over. I wasn’t the best either, sore throat and fever. There must be something going around, her father even got hot last night.
Done

Done

Well, it’s done. I got “hooded” for my PhD today. It was a long day and it started early – but it was worth every minute. I had some wonderful conversations with other graduating PhDs and a few of the faculty as well. John was there clapping madly for me, and I didn’t even trip when I stepped up to pick up my large empty folder (the diploma has been on my wall since last September). I was even able to say brief hellos to a few of my colleagues – Steve, Julie, Jay, James – and to give a big hug to VA (a kind of faery godmother who told me that the dissertation was done – when it wasn’t – and made me believe that I would finish – and I did). Even the weather cooperated. The only thing I regret was that I didn’t actually see my director, who was busy handing out undergraduate diplomas. My other local committee member was very nice, and didn’t even topple the cap as he put the hood over my head (I am always amazed when things like that don’t happen at public events).

I highly recommend the experience.

Everywhere I looked, people were smiling at me. I haven’t felt like that in a long long time – it was a liberating sensation. On the way home, we stopped at the post office so that I could mail off my mom’s birthday package. Still in full regalia, I made a bit of a picture. The three postal workers all stopped for a moment and spontaneously grinned at me and started clapping. I have rarely felt such warmth in this city. Then we stopped at a gourmet-food-to-go place that I favor – partly because I have become friends with Mary, who seems always to be working there during the times I drop by. She grinned too.

I hadn’t slept much last night. For some reason I was really keyed up. My relationship with the university has had a few ups and downs, and I suppose I was a little bit ambivalent. But this is one thing that universities do well, and I wanted the ceremony and the closure and the sense of acceptance. We had to get up astoundingly early for someone of my somewhat nocturnal habits – especially since I had only slept for an hour or two and that intermittently. By the time we returned home at about 3:30 – I was dropping from exhaustion. I could have hunted up some friends and gone out to celebrate I suppose, but all I really wanted to do was drop.

So now it’s done. At last. All in all, a lovely day.