Moojinorbit

Ironically, as the DNC unfolds, and with Obama giving his historical speech tonight,
I’m stuck in a huge hotel/convention center/mall complex in Boston with, get this, 6,000 political scientists.

Help me, help me. Save me from the cacophony of pontificating voices. I’ve run away and am temporarily hiding in my hotel room, escaping the voices not just of poli sci nerds, but those I consider my good friends.

It’s all going well, but there is no time to blog on the million things I want to muse about. I’ve only had time for the post below, sketched on the airplane out here. But I haven’t disappeared.

Kisses from the land of professors in bad fashion.

This Tuesday afternoon finds me entrapped in a little corner of Hades. I just deplaned in Atlanta from an aircraft graced with no fewer than five children who, free of responsible parental intervention, managed a chorus of screaming in stereo mid-plane, in front and behind me, for a solid ninety minutes. I’m now seated on sticky blue vinyl seats between an imposing woman chowing Popeye’s fried chicken (who for some reason commandeered three straws for her coke), a swarm of kids fighting over the video games, and two sweaty, sleeping guys who look like they just broke out of the county jail. The waiting area is packed with human filler, successfully remote controlled by the nonstop streaming CNN from the flat screens suspended on the ceiling. No different, really, from any other day in American air travel.

“Feelings” acknowledgment:

It disturbs me that we are not given a choice about whether we want to hear CNN’s reporting from speakers blaring above us. It’s discouraging that fast food is the only choice in the C terminal. It makes me sad that two-thirds of the people within eyesight, like two-thirds of Americans, are overweight. I feel angry when I hear CNN report that activists protesting at the convention—not police who surround, intimidate, and pepper spray them–“can make things dangerous.” It gives me knot in my stomach. Oh, but that’s not all.

How about the fact that in the post-primary season Americans are allegedly (say the papers) so desperate for proof that Obama is “average,” and “understands ordinary Americans,” that they’d like him to muffle his oratorical gifts and rein in his intelligence? The right employs, and people buy, the “elitism” charge. They don’t want him to “talk down” by doing things like demonstrating in public that he actually understands intricacies of foreign policy and global economics. I’d like to believe that the pollsters who say small-town, “ordinary” Americans need the candidate to seem “more accessible” and “like them” are wrong; I’d prefer to think they’d want the potential leader of the free world to be wicked smart, stunningly articulate, charismatic, a world-class communicator, and maybe even, oh my god, different from what we’ve had over the last few political cycles. To me it would make sense for even an accomplished person to feel intimidated before the skill set of a really capable U.S. president, or senator. But “ordinary” Americans chose the paragon of mediocrity, W., the little prince, over smarter and better contenders—twice in a row, so who am I to say.

As deep as my loathing for such attitudes run, I know it’s not all our—or “their”—fault. We’ve been track-homed, Wal-Marted, Gapped, TV’d, TEVO’d, and Targeted to the point of idiocy. (I don’t exempt myself; I was sucked in by even the Coke commercials during the Olympics.) The numbing of the masses through consumerism, corporate control, and simple, media packaged framings of “American,” “middle-class,” and “patriotic,” worked better than C. Wright Mills or Aldos Huxley ever imagined. Eric Alterman, in a smart piece in this week’s The Nation, calls this a “constricted establishment consensus,” which reflects

the retrenched power of the established order. It is enforced by aggressive lobbies—the military industrial complex, Wall Street corporate interests—and rationalized by well-upholstered house scholars. The establishment’s strength is its ability to simply exclude alternatives from serious consideration.

What he’s saying is that power brokers tend to be in power because of their ability to convince ordinary people that the way things are is normal, or rational, or right. We drink the Kool-Aid they feed us. So we bite the bait that a new leader on the rise must be “talking down” to lowly average people, while someone like Bush, the ultimate beneficiary of elite privilege, we see as “just like us.” Did early twentieth century human filler want Woodrow Wilson to be “more ordinary”? Did they wish FDR wasn’t so talented? Would they have been relieved if Abraham Lincoln had been a little more of a paunchy shlub?

By which I mean to say: What the hell is wrong with us? Michelle Obama was great last night at the convention. She was poised, strong, clear, and focused. But she was also meticulously packaged as a nonthreatening and, god forbid, not angry black woman. Why should she have to be asserted (as Hillary also was in 1992) as “loving mother,” “caring wife,” “sweet daughter,” and “sister,” over Ivy league-educated badass community advocate and mooj in her own right? Why should she have to get on her knees and admit she loves this country, even though she’s been known to critique it harshly for failing its own ideals? Isn’t that what loving this country used to mean? Why do we have to make her a little smaller to be able to relate? Do we need our heroes shrink-wrapped so we can eat them on the run? Should King have been a little more bumbling at the March on Washington? Come on, people.

Two tracks from here (but no time to follow through):

1. How am I duplicitous in same-same thinking
2. God is reflected in all things, even human filler.

I can waste hours avoiding writing, and then when I finally buckle down I’m so absorbed in it that I sit at my desk for four straight hours without so much as getting up to pee. That begs the question: why avoid something I’m obviously into?

That’s my way of telling you that I’ve been working a bit too hard on other projects lately to justify blogging. I’m trying to meet some deadlines and have been accountable to co-writers–an unnerving, but productive, experience. I do, however, have a running list of things I want to blog about, so if you can check back in a few days, I’ll be grateful not to lose you wonderful readers.

How about those Olympics, by the way?

As for the technical issues with this blog:

Mac users continue to have no problems. We love Apple.
Two independent readers confirm that Internet
Explorer on Windows machines
is the problem. Use Firefox if you can to read this.
I may also try reformatting the blog, but don’t
have time to figure that out right now. And no,
Aurelio, I don’t want to spend the rest of my blogging life
without the “wrap” function that allows me to
write like on a word processor, not a typewriter. This
left-aligning thing means I enter every return by hand,
which makes it a real pain in the butt for editing. But
I do love you! And I trust things are going to straighten
out. It looks like the blog.com folks may have fixed
their formatting function anyway.

Other random updates:

The new independent coffee shop, KJ’s, just opened up practically caddy corner from my house. Hip hip hooray! Although that means caffeine in my system. Eeeeeeee! Watch out.

Clé Symons, Katie’s mom, may be guest blogging about her experiences volunteering at the convention. I’m excited about that. Meanwhile, you may want to check out my colleague Seth’s DNC convention blog over the next several days. He’s juggling being a scholar with his role as an Obama delegate. I, for my part, will be bartending for conventioners on Saturday and Sunday nights, hoping I don’t run into any political scientists I know.

Grandpa’s about to get new sod, finally, in the backyard that she rebuilt. This means she can look at green things while drinking her customary Sea Breezes.

Linda tells me that Olympic synchronized swimming is a truly bizarre sport. I have to catch up online, but will get back to you.

How about that LoLo Jones for a mooj?

I made really good chewy sugar cookies last night.

I haven’t had a massage in about six months and I’m dyin’.

Freshman orientation week starts in 12 days. Jen’s already back to school. How did that happen?

Update: Whatever the blog formatting problem is, it is PC related, and I’m working on it. Mac users aren’t having problems (another reason to get thee to the Apple store). I don’t know where the Blog.com tech support is, but I may work on some reformatting when i have time. Until then, if you can’t read the full post, email me and I’ll send it to you directly.

***

I notice myself vacillating lately between being perfectly, sometimes surprisingly content with where I am in the present, and then tightening into tension for no clear reason. Do you do that or is it my idiosyncratic pathology?

Like, before I got paid last week there were a couple of days when, due to an accounting error on my part, I had -$34.00 in my checking account and my gas tank was below “E”. Nothing but condiments and a few abandoned Newcastles in the fridge. All external signs pointed to “you is flat broke, fool!” But riding my bike to the library with all my work stuffed in the panniers, I wasn’t worried. I had bright sunshine, green grass, dogs and people to look at, blue skies, sprinklers, fellow travelers, a chance of rain. I felt gratitude in my bones for the friends willing to spot me a cheeseburger, my girlfriend who showers me with love and affection (and meals), my funny colleagues, my odd jobs, my sweet kitties, my good life. Broke is a certain kind of freedom; what can you do until something shifts?

Then I get a paycheck and have a lucrative weekend bartending. Pay some bills, feel a little back in black. And cain’t sleep for frettin’. Everything’s fine, money situation’s under control, but sun goes down and I tense up. Brain kicks up problem-solving, song lyrics start looping (“tell me have you ever, really, really loved a woman”; damn that Brian Adams), stomach rumbles, sleep evades. I pretzel the sheets for flip-flopping.

Grrr.

Eventually, Ambien surrender, bright sunny morning, and I’m new again. Calm and collected. Ready to get to the monster do list. A little green tea lemonade and the sunbeams shine down upon my head like a Rafael painting. I cook up a veggie scramble and realize: Wow, life is so good. My home office is clean, it’s not too hot yet, I’m actually making progress on this book, I’m back in groceries and gas and I’ve got two more bartending shifts at the end of the week. Who cares about September, my historic month of financial panic? It’s only August! Every moment is a treat from the Universe. I’m in the present.

And then, four hours later, nothing having externally changed, my shoulders are turning to cement. The cat’s in the way, there’s nothing good to eat, and I’m irritated about having to show up for my 3 o’clock clock-in. Recognizing that this is a total shift from less than a half-day ago, I scan my body and realize I’m worrying. About what? Uh, nothing. Everything. Things, okay? What’s it TO you?

Is this caffeine (from innocent green tea lemonade???) or is this a bad habit? Tensing up, worrying about stuff I can’t control in the moment. Does it have anything to do with spending a large part of my childhood in cars, eyeing the gas gauge and making sure the driver stayed awake, living a hyper-vigilant youth? Is it genetic? Can I quiet the beast? What was I supposed to do again, take a few breaths?

So: back to breathing, a glass of water, a little stretching. Pace around a little outside, shake it off. Hmm, look at that yellow rose blooming, and, wow, is that little iceplant actually shooting up a flower? What a sweet little baby bird. I’m almost done with that essay. Another contract gig shows up in my email. Isn’t life amazing!

Present. Then Tense. Then Present…

Okay, I thought the whole right-side-of-the-text problem
was over, but apparently not, based on an irritated phone call
from Tanya. So I’ve submitted another tech support “ticket”
and am here creating a very left-aligned post in order for you, dear readers,
to read this. I have also tracked down a tech support number which
you can bet I’ll be calling. Can’t afford to lose my wee horde of readers.

Meanwhile, in order to assess the situation, please answer the
following via a comment or email:

Is my blog text cut off on the right hand side on your computer?
Do you use Mac or a silly PC?
What browser are you using? What version of the browser?

Are you hot right now? What’s the tastiest thing you ate lately?
When was your last really satisfying bowel movement?

Sorry for your troubles. I’ll see what I can do.

I’ve a basket of thoughts about bartending I’d like to share. It’s Sunday morning, I just finished up consecutive Friday and Saturday night shifts, and every cell in my body is still ringing. So, while I wait for an angel food cake to (hopefully) rise, I’m going to try to get ‘em down. In no particular order…

I’m starting to think of bartending as my second career, not just my second job, but more on that in a minute. The first question is, why do I have a second job anyway? I’m smart, educated, blessed to be in a career that I wanted and chose, not at any risk (yet) of losing my position as a professor. I do receive a salary and I even have some grant money this year to write in the summer (not that those dollars turned to be near as much as I thought). But I’m hustling my butt bartending on weekends at the hotel, with colleagues who are still finishing college, most of them working their way through one class at a time. What gives?

Well, one big secret of university life is that a lot of junior profs these days don’t get paid quite enough to cover their bases. At our particular university we’re paid about $15K under market, typically less than the starting salary of public high school teachers. This is partly because the university is cheap–but not for students or their parents–and Denver is so nice a place to live that good people will take it rather than end up at the University of Backwoods, Nowhere. Also, the market is glutted with PhDs who, at least for the first few years, hope to actually apply all that training to a job, so even the U of BN can pretty much take it’s pick. This leads to a rather curious statistic: the cost of attending my university for one year as a student, about $45,000, equals the starting salary of a professor in my division Arts, Humanitiess, and Social Sciences,  What universities “forget” as they undercut our salaries is that unlike two generations, even one generation ago, about half of us were not entirely funded in grad school, so we come out up to our necks in debt. Debt that for some of us like yours truly can easily equal a small home mortgage. Not to mention trying to raise a young family, compared with which my situation is probably a cakewalk.

Bottom line, my salary doesn’t always cover all my bills, especially in the summer. This is why I know so many other young professors with side jobs. Some do contract work, some have small businesses, many teach extra on the side–all while hoping to research and write enough to earn tenure. Most of us bite every little carrot the university dangles in the form of stipends for certain kinds of teaching (writing-intensive, service learning, etc.). One father of two I know does all that plus two of his neighbors’ yard work. The guy pretty much never sleeps.

For me it’s occasional teaching or editing gigs with my writing/editing business and bartending. As most of you know, I chose bartending last summer because I wanted a channel of quick cash flow and because from the time my dad ran a bar up in the High Sierras when I was a kid, I always wanted to learn the trade.

I just rounded my one-year anniversary with bartending. I am, for sure, a better person for it. I also like it even more than I expected, even when it’s hard, even at the end of a totally slammed night when I can’t sleep for being so deeply exhausted. And I realized Saturday night, in the middle of a very busy wedding, that I might be getting pretty good at it. Granted, I’m still a lowly wedding/special event bartender, not a club bartender or a superpro at a high-end restaurant, so take the following with a rim of salt. I also recognize that having the privilege of a career that meets my intellectual needs, not having to do this to survive is a comparative luxury.

What I like about bartending after my first anniversary:

• The pleasure of skill-based manual work. It’s an ideal venue for practicing focus, grace, and intentionality. I work on continuing to breathe through a rush; on eyeballing each martini to fill the glass just right; on achieving the perfect tap pour of Fat Tire; on pulling down little wineglasses from a too-tall shelf without breaking them. (I broke only one glass all year until last night when I shattered three in one night. Those of you who know my clutziness realize that such stats are nothing short of miraculous.)
• It gives me the security (if this is security) that I could bail university life or get denied tenure and have something to fall back on. In fact, at the right gig, a bartender can make twice what I make as a professor. I know a club bartender who routinely pulls in $1,200 a week, cold cash–working only three nights a week. Do the math: that’s over $62,000, not counting the hourly. At that rate, I could write my great American novel and still pay off my loans.
• My fellow employees. Sure, there are some jerky middle-managenent types at hotels, but the waiters, dishwashers, shift managers, cooks, and fellow bartenders I work with are mainly warm, interesting, and seriously hardworking people. I love the immigrants especially. I’ve gotten to know two guys from Lithuania, one Zimbabwein, one Ivory Coast guy, a couple from Kenya, an Ethiopian, a handful of Mexicans, and some Central Americans. The dishwashers are probably my favorite, every one I’ve met interesting, kind, funny. You can’t get this kind of experience or perspective in college.
• Banter across the bar, when it’s good. It’s fun to talk to people in the middle of a big event. Befriend them for the night, laugh with ‘em, watch ‘em get drunk, be their go-to gal. It’s fun getting so many compliments about my short, salt and pepper hair from straight guys who tell me it’s sexy. It’s fun being on the other side of the line. And when it’s ugly and people are lame, it’s fun laughing about it later.

Alright, I’ve gone on long enough and have probably bored you to death. Next week may be another story, but for now I’m loving my second career.