Honey has had her driving privileges pulled again. See her blog for more details. She’s going today to have her EEG done again. I gave her a scarf to wear. We had scarf night last night and I draped all the scarves I could find over my head. In ways that scarves aren’t supposed to go. My mother likes to give me scarves. It makes her feel as if I may one day become the daughter she wanted. I don’t wear them. I put them in a drawer with my socks.

I made my mother very happy when I had along talk with her about various ablutions for the skin. I think she showed me every skin product she had ever purchased. And my mother (like her daughter) is a consumer.

Honey, in fact, pointed out that I should tell my therapist about my tendency to buy things. My therapist suggested that I buy two workbooks some time ago. I promptly bought them. I can’t bring myself to “work” them. Last time we talked about it, my therapist said I should just read them, that I didn’t have to have pen or pencil in hand. Follow through can be a weakness for me. But, boy, do I know how to use and abuse Amazon.

Anyway, back to driving… Driving in L.A. isn’t fun generally. It’s a built in excuse for lateness. “Traffic” followed by a head shake will get you out of most lateness problems. Still, I want to stop driving so much. I’d love to commute by bike, but I’m a person who sweats. Southern women aren’t supposed to sweat. They’re supposed to “glow.” I sweat. So riding a bike to work might be unpleasant in the global warmed SoCal summer.

Speaking of global warming, I heard a piece on NPR yesterday about the rising CO2 levels causing poison ivy to grow more and become more toxic. Tomorrow it’s supposed to by in the 90s and I have to wear my academic regalia for commencement.

Treecup wore anti-perspirant on her face when we got our PhDs.

When I had my prom, my mother handed me a bottle of baby powder and told me to “use it.” When I asked her where to put it, she wouldn’t answer. The answer tomorrow may be all over. Nobody look under my robe, ok?

See, here’s the thing…

I understand post-structuralism and can quote Foulcault if you need me to.

But I’d rather talk and think about Lost and theories surrounding it.

Because academics is pretty tedious actually. Though I do like my field. I did get asked to help on an academic telecourse/tv show today, which should be really cool.

I still wonder what I wonder when I went off to college, though. How will people know I’m supposed to be sorta smart?

When I was in elementary and middle school I was in something called “enrichment” because my IQ was high. My high school leveled people by “smart” and I was in all the honors classes. I could get into how racist that system was. Suffice it to say that the school system I attended waited until the last possible day they could (by court order) to integrate. And since integration the school system’s African-American population had remained stable while the white population plummeted. I was in level 1. Guess how many white people were in level 1 in my graduating class? Guess how many African-American students were in level 4? Answer to both questions: all.

When I went off to college–my “safety” school, natch, I worried that my professors wouldn’t know I was smart. I didn’t worry a lot, maybe because it was my safety school, but I did worry. My D in German my first semester didn’t help me feel any better, either.

Still, I loved college and did well. Though some of the “well” was finesse. My debate in Victorian England, for example. I had blown the class off a lot. An acquaintance of mine (Roz), who was very shy, was in the class and had done a ton of research for the debate. She handed me her note cards and I blew the other team away. And the other team was led by the captain of the debate team (Matt). And I had the tougher argument. I was to argue, using only Victorian sources, for women’s suffrage. Roz had found lots of good stuff from John Stuart Mill and I railed at Matt like I was Emmeline Pankhurst herself. The professor, who I liked despite my avoidance of the class, was really impressed with me. I gave full credit to Roz and got an undeserved A- in the class.

I did that kind of thing all the time. Once I discussed Eugene Genovese’s Roll Jordan Roll with authority even though it was on the table in front of me still in shrink wrap.

I got more serious in graduate school, though my dissertation lacks, um, well let’s just say it lacks.

And I won’t even go into the fact that the department I taught in for six years is not in my field. And that aforementioned telecourse is in that field, not mine.
My friend and colleague who asked me to do it admitted that we may be the blind leading the blind. I don’t mind bumping into walls really.

Here’s the good news: if I can move my interim to permanent in my current job…
none of this matters

Because NO ONE on my campus knows more than me about the minutiae I know to do my job and follow all the rules. And I know that I know more than they do about the minutiae. So there.

Plus, here’s the other good news:

Lost is on tonight

Oh, and also, I love commencement. Commencement is next week. I get to wear my regalia and my puffy hat. Last year the platform party agreed that I had the best hat.

Sometimes having a good hat can be almost enough.

I turned my application in for the job I currently have. Interim. Like life isn’t just one interim after another. Anyway, it’s done, gone, turned in. Honey helped with it yesterday. Honey is a copy editor. I gave her my c.v. (curriculum vita–an academic resume) and my cover letter. She found SO many errors in my c.v. that I got upset. I’d been showing the thing around for years. She tried to reassure me that the errors were small enough that only copy editors would notice. Covered with red, the pages, covered.

She had fewer corrections to the cover letter, which seemed good. She laughed out loud at the letter where I said something like, “I hope to speak with you soon about this position.” Are cover letters ever funny on purpose?

Anyway, I turned it in. The Dean’s secretary, who is wacky, asked me if she had to send me a letter of acknowledgement. I said yes and she asked if she could scribble all over the acknowledgement. I told her that would be fine.

The Dean wants the search done by the end of June.

Some quick sporky job numbers:

Number of years I’ve worked at this IHE: 8
Number of years service credit (at most) I’ll get toward tenure: 2
Number of years before between when I got my PhD and when my brother will get his: 7 and counting
Number of tenure track jobs between us: 1 (that would be his)
Number of days before I find out: 39 minimum

To paraphrase Michael Stipe:

That’s me in the corner, that’s me in the spotlight, losing my…

I’ll just be over here. Waiting.

Today I had a meeting with the chairperson and a faculty member on my IHE campus from a nameless department. Let’s call the department “bath.”

The upshot of the meeting was that the faculty in bath want to add an additional course in bath to the program I oversee. I allowed as how I didn’t so much like the idea. There’s a crisis in bath skills, they said.

I suggested that maybe we try teaching people to bathe better in the current program. They said that they come in with such remedial bathing skills, that they have to work too hard to cover all the bath basics. And then our students go out and teach kids and they don’t know how to bathe either.

I countered that our students don’t want more classes in bathing. And that if they add more, our students will go major in something else, like rope climbing. Or cooking. They said it wouldn’t bother them if that happened because the students we had left would be the best bathers around and that would be ok.

The major I oversee is the biggest one at our IHE. I said that bathing wasn’t all there was to the issue. That we’d also need to talk to the dancers and the graffiti artists and the bloggers and the student government people not to mention the folks from the bath department’s own college who talk too much about the weather.

I e-mailed the provost because the bath folks said he was on their side. He was non-committal, so I don’t know where he comes down on the issue. I do know that our students could go bathe elsewhere, like at the local community colleges. My dean even suggested that we try teaching bathing ourselves. I’m not sure the bath experts would go for that.

Somebody pass me a loofah.

One of my academic interests is festivals. It’s an odd thing really, as the great festivals are very Catholic and I am not. I’ve been to Carnivale in Venice and behaved badly. I was drunk and young, but it was not my shining moment. I also went to Mardi Gras in New Orleans pre-Katrina and have felt very wistful about New Orleans as I read and watch the coverage of this year’s event. This despite the fact that my Mardi Gras experience was very lonely in the way that festivals can be incredibly isolating for an outsider. It probably didn’t help that I experienced MG without any mind-alteration. But I wasn’t as young or as stupid then.

My experience with “real” festival has been very corporal, really. I remember the dizzy drunk sensation of Venice, the pounding headache of New Orleans, getting my period in the middle of the Palio, surrounded by 100,000 people with no way out.

As I said, it’s an odd thing, I think, that I’m so interested in festival from a scholarly point of view. I’m not one to let go and my indulgences (to some degree) are a thing of the past. Certainly my alcohol indulgences. I like the tropes of festival and the structure of it fascinates me. The experience of it requires more self-release than I’m willing to give over to as I wallow around in the back end of my 30s.

Carnivale and Mardi Gras are two versions of the same festival, of course. The pre-Lenten celebration before the repentance of Lent. Easter is late this year, so Mardi Gras is late. It should come in the coldness of February in my mind, not the bright promise of March. As a kid in a Protestant household, I didn’t spend much time thinking about what I needed to “give up.” I knew that the liturgical season had changed, because my mom wore a different stole over her robe (she’s a minister).

In case you’re wondering; most Sundays Presbyterians wear green stoles–Lent is purple, Easter is white, Advent is purple, Christmas is white, Pentecost is Red. There are other days that are white, and a couple where red is an option (from the worship FAQ on the PCUSA web site). As a kid, I liked it when the colors changed. Now, of course, as an adult (and a folklorist), I recognize the power of color in theological symbolism. Red days are loaded in ways that green days can never be. And purple now makes me think of change while white makes me think of promise.

I don’t go to church much, but I think a lot about the nature of religion in my life and in others’ lives. I often (and this will probably upset some folks, so be ready ok?) find myself in the company of friends who eschew faith and bash it heartily. I understand why, especially given our current political leaders’ screwed up positions on the nature of belief in the public arena and the scary way in which most people in my adopted state manifest their beliefs… Still, I listen to their harsh words and worry about my silence and the way it implies approval of their attitudes. That’s too mild a description really, but I’ll let it go at that.

I was in a meeting last week and a colleague of mine (a guy I don’t like a lot but have some respect for) said to me “if we are judged in the hereafter I want to have done the right thing here.” I was startled. Liberal academic don’t say things like that in public meetings. And yet I found myself (in a meeting about strategic planning of all things) wondering about what it means to be a good person. My honey believes (and she is as moral a person as I know) that what we do in the here and now is all there is. I’m not sure that’s true. She’s very forgiving of my doubts. This weekend we talked some about my criticism of people who have trouble reconciling faith and their sexual identity. She was more right than I was, as is so often the case.

So, here on Ash Wednesday, what do I have to say?

One, that I am glad to have not overindulged yesterday, though I liked looking at the festival pictures (as usual).

Two, that I’m glad I didn’t have to have a filet-o-fish with my Catholic co-workers.

Three, that I forgive myself for excesses in Carnivale in 1988.

Four, that I may no longer NOT say anything when faith gets bashed. Fair warning #2

Five, that I still don’t KNOW what will happen in the hereafter, but I’m hoping that there will be one.

Six, that I hope the hereafter feels and looks like it should (which is nothing like what festival has felt like in my life, at least).

Seven, that promise of better things (whether they take the form of Easter or not) be with all those I love and with those who need it–which is pretty much everybody, I guess.

Ok, big time confession…

Are you ready? You sure?

I’m white. Caucasian. A WASP. You may have guessed that from the whole “turning pink” thing yesterday. But, just to confirm, I am very white. There’s no olive undertone to me. I do have brown eyes, so it’s not like I’m Nordic looking. Actually I look like what I am–a white girl from Anglo-semi-Celtic (but nowhere out of the British Isles) stock who grew up in the South. My family is from South Georgia and England.

As I was growing up in Atlanta, white people of certain ideologies worked hard to prove they weren’t racists. I went to a mostly African-American high school. Before you get too excited about my diverse upbringing, I should also note that the school used what was called “leveling.” I was in Level 1, which was all white kids and one black guy. Level two was about half white and half black. Levels three and four, all black. Coincidence? You decide.

I went to a middling private college in the Northeast. Mostly white people.

I did graduate work at UCLA. Mostly white people.

I don’t pretend that my sexuality actually makes me understand the experience of ethnic minorities in the United States. It’s not the same thing. I work in academia, my honey works for a GLBT publishing company. Being lesbians in either context=not a big deal.

I am both humble and proud of growing up in the New South, proud of the changes that were made in the Civil Rights movement by Southerners, both black and white. Like any good folklorist, I approach any person, regardless of their cultural background as someone from whom I can learn things.

So, I had to have a meeting earlier this week with two of the ethnic studies departments on campus. I had put it off and put it off. Then I called the very sensible Associate Dean and told him the problem. He said we needed to meet with them. I said I’d rather bury my head in the sand. He said to call them.

Here’s how the meeting went:

Me: The state standards are x for y course. Does your course include x?

Ethnic Studies Department 1: Yes, though from a ethnic studies perspective.

Me: Great! Can you take the x list and share them with your faculty?

Them: Sure, we’ll make it part of the common syllabus.

Me: Great!

One down, one to go.

Me: (to Ethnic Studies Department 2): How about you?

ESD2: Maybe

Me: Ok, well here are three options… (you don’t want to know them: boring). Can you present to your faculty and discuss?

ESD2: Sure.

Me: Oh and we could do this really nice thing for you, if we can’t fix the y course problem.

ESD2: Ok

So, last night I get cc’ed on an e-mail from one of ESD2’s faculty. (He called me Ms. Sporksforall in the e-mail… Honey said I should just e-mail back and say, that’s Dr. Sporksforall, thank you very much! Which I totally should have done, using sporksforall instead of my name.)

Anyway, here’s to let everyone know that Dr. Sporksforall is a racist. I don’t care at all about the history of oppression of ethnic minorities. I am totally responsible for the white bias in government standards.

Aren’t you all glad to know how powerful I am?

I was good and calm and sent a message to ESD2’s chair in a calm a judicious tone. But there the e-mail sits, in my inbox. There may be little flames coming out of it.

I had a dream the other night that there were wrapped Chipotle burritos in bed with me to ward off heartburn. Last night, Honey and I had Chipotle. She asked if I’d like her to put my burrito on my pillow for protection.

Chipotle burritos can’t protect me from heartburn (and may, indeed, cause it). What can protect the white girl from charges of racism? I dunno, but I’m guessing burritos won’t help there either.

Despite my relatively grandiose status in the world of academe–I am the Interim Director of something or another–I do not have a permanent job. My honey thinks this is funny, because I have worked at the same IHE since 1998, and no one seems inclined to fire me. But, I do not have the blessed “tenure-track” job and essentially serve in my current position “at the will of the Dean.”

The Dean is a good woman, whom I like, trust, and respect. (A rare combo, indeed). She’s trying to get me my current job permanently. Yesterday we were talking about some of the details and she said, “just don’t screw up.” I resisted the temptation go drop my head into my hands and list all of the things I thought I had screwed up in the last week or so.

The “something or another” program is an interdisciplinary one. Our students take classes across campus from many different departments and programs. For the past two days, one of those programs, run by a new coordinator who trembles more than I’d like her to, has become a royal pain in my interim director butt. The imminently sensible Assistant Director of something or another suggested I talk to the Associate Dean. When she suggested that course of action, the Dean’s face and words came flying back into my head.

University faculty are an odd bunch. They’re smart, to be sure. But often that intelligence gets them in a corner of their own thinking from which they cannot emerge. I like smart, I appreciate it when it’s used right. I also like the people who like being at our IHE and don’t long to be at UCLA or Berkeley or Stanford or Harvard. Damn, did I just give away that I don’t work at any of those places?

I’m going to have to spend the next few months waiting for the search for my job to be over. I’m going to try not to screw up, but if I focus on it too much, I probably will. Now, I have a phone call to make. Trembly coordinator is going to have to take care of her own business.

Today is the first day of the spring semester at the IHE at which I administrate. (IHE for those of you not in the know is an acronym for institution of higher education). For many years I looked forward to the beginning of the semester (or quarter while I was at UCLA) with great enthusiasm. When I was a student I was always anticipating that maybe, just maybe, The South Since Reconstruction would be the best course ever. Once I became a T.A. in graduate school, I was excited about the sort of faux authority I “wielded” by sitting or standing in the front of the lecture hall making oh-so-erudite comments that the UCLA football players in the big G.E. for which I was a T.A. would be impressed.

Once I was a faculty member, the excitement was on the new students and new ideas and completely lame-ass hope that my version of the anthropology of religion would actually be a good course this semester.

Now, I administer things. I’ve been sending out e-mails about adding students to classes. I watch the world pass by my window. I ordered a new mechanical pencil from our supplier to celebrate spring semester. It’s a nice one. And I got extra leads and erasers. I read the OfficeMax guide to leads before I chose the “2b” type. Supposedly it’s bold, easy to read, and surprisingly smooth. Who is it supposed to surprise? Maybe I’ll forget how smooth it’s supposed to be between now and when it arrives on Wednesday.

Happy first days to all who have them. Today I just have another today. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with today, it just doesn’t hold the kind of false promise I used to crave.

I know, I know it’s not like I’m the only one who’s ever had to do this. Professional development is the bomb, no? Today I had an all day workshop on academic leadership. Now the idea that I’m an academic leader is specious (spurious?!) at best. I don’t even have a tenure-track job for goodness sake. And there I am one seat over from the provost and at a table with two deans, both of whom have coordinated their outfits–one had a purse/shoe thing going on and the other had a glasses chain/necklace thing going on. When I sit down the chair of the Secondary Education department gets up to move tables. I shame her into staying and then feel as if I have to entertain her. I was actually thinking about whether I could make a swan out the mapkin in front of me (no) when, fortunately, the charming and handsome chair of Elementary Education sits next to me and I can sink back into a fog between them as they have a heated discussion about whether or not they really have to come up with acronyms for all the schools they work with for some data collection thing the College of Education is doing.

For a leadership workshop, it isn’t bad. We do some role-playing games and listen to a guy from the University of San Francisco talk. He’s engaging and has lots of overheads. He reads the overheads more than he should.

Everyone decides I’m brilliant during the afternoon session while we’re role playing a conflict management scenario when I notice that our group needs the juice of some theoretical oranges and the other group needs the rinds of the same theoretical oranges. People actually pat me on the shoulder. Bring that spork girl around, she can solve all your theoretical orange problems. Now get me to figure out how to manage the English department and their bright white hatred of me for suggesting that future teachers don’t need a course on the history of English grammar and you’ll have something. Oranges, sure. 50 irate English professors, nope.

My Dean told me that she’s posting my currently interim type job in May, with interviews in June. I tried not to hyperventilate. She wants me to get the job, so does the provost. But I get to spend the next few months in a fog of not knowing and not talking.

Someone actually referred to me as a risk-taker in one of the simulations today. We were supposed to pull stickers off a board. Green dots underneath were good. Brown were bad. We need a net total of 25 green dots to win. We managed to get 26 green and 1 brown. I was a risk taker because I was more willing than most to follow my instinct and memory.

Rosa Parks, she took risks. I solved the oranges and the blue stickers. Watch out folks, the next great academic leader has arrived!

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