Topic 211: Conceited People

Carol:

Dear Mr. Wordsworth

Right now I can only think of one conceited person in my circle of “friends. I don’t actually  know him personally, but I’ve had a close relationship with his sisters since I was a young girl. The brother of my very dear friends Charlotte, Anne, and Emily Bronte, was indeed a conceited man. Patrick Branwell Bronte, known to everyone as Branwell, was also a drug addict and an alcoholic whose final year of life was plagued by deep melancholia. What’s a little vanity compared to that.
 

Unfortunately, this vain self-image contributed to his lack of success as a writer almost as much as his lack of talent. Friend and biographer Francis H Grundy noted in his book Pictures of the Past that Branwell “took an unusual fancy to himself,” which is a pretty good way of describing conceited people. Perhaps Branwell got that fancy because he was somewhat of a big fish in the little pub pond of Haworth, invited often to the Black Bull Inn where his reading and writing penchants “sufficed to make him a wonder among the rustics and manufacturers of the West Riding” (source: Bayne 248). 

 
Undoubtedly, the pub crowd adulation  only added to an already inflated sense of his own artistic talents fed by an indulgent father, doting Aunt Branwell, and loving sisters. So in 1837, 19-year-old Branwell, out of “the conceit and vanity which at this age are of fatal augary” (Bayne 248) wrote to William Wordsworth seeking his advice and support,   including in the letter a comment  that there was not a writing poet then alive worth sixpence. Wordsworth never wrote back to Branwell, so we don’t really know how he might have reacted or even if he did more than quickly skim the poems included in the letter.  Branwell was probably taken aback that he did not even receive an acknowledgement from Wordsworth, and likely would have complained about it over a pint back at the Black Bull Inn. Not that he hadn’t already tried before and failed to get the public notice he so craved.
 

Two years earlier, Branwell had written several letters to the editors of Blackwood’s Magazine, a popular journal subscribed to by the family and always read with great enthusiasm by all of the Brontes. On December 7th 1835 he wrote to the Editors, admonishing them for failing to respond to several earlier letters. In offering himself as a writer for Blackwood’s he wrote:
 

All, sir, that I desire of you is—that you would in answer to this letter request a specimen or specimens of my writing, and I even wish that you would name the subject on which you would wish me to write. In letters previous to this I have perhaps spoken too openly respecting the extent of my powers ... I know that I am not one of the wretched writers of the day” (Orel 34).

Branwell Bronte was a better artist than a writer, but his efforts to make a living as a portrait painter also led to failure. Whatever combination of temperament, addiction and misplaced adulation contributed to his vain sense of self-importance, he died in pain, despair and dejection at the age of 31 within months of his sisters Anne and Emily. Sister Charlotte, as unassuming and humble as her brother was vain, lived long enough to see her own writing accepted by both the public and  literary critics.

Sources:
Bayne, Peter “Studies of English Authors.” Literary World, Vol, 21. 1880.    
Orel, Harold, ed. The Brontes: Interviews and Recollections. 1997. 33-34.
Reminisnces of Charlotte Bronte  Scriberner’s Monthly May 1871 qtd in Orel

Megan:

Just call me Branwell

I often joke that the only time I ever felt smart in college was when I tested out of the English 1 and placed into upper division writing classes my first semester. This turned out to work against me because despite what I managed to pull off in the placement test, I never really got the hang of close readings and literary analysis – the basics of which were taught in that English 1 class I got to skip.

But aside from that, once I realized I wasn’t a naturally gifted academic, I really only ever felt confident in my creative writing classes, which allowed a bit more freedom in style.  I was suddenly complimented on themes, rhythm, and voice. I’d never been able to detect those things in my literature classes, and was unaware I’d included them in my own writing. 

Then, the summer between my sophomore and junior year, I was invited to join a small writing group composed entirely of MFA students. This was a seriously flattering invitation, and for the first time I was in over my head. I got comments like “The words are pretty but the character is stuck – where is the development?” I remember that comment because it provoked an existential crisis –all my writing was thinly disguised memoir, and being the main character in all my stories, this meant that I too was stuck. That fall, I went to England to study abroad and that set me on a new path – and unstuck me. I returned for my senior year refreshed, confident, with new ideas for my writing.

My senior thesis, which was a portion of a novel, was returned to me with a single comment written on a post-it “Fix the grammatical errors and this is publishable.” In retrospect, I think my advisor may not have read it, but at the time I was elated. That might have been the time to go for an MFA, when my confidence was so high, but I went to library school instead – sure that librarianship would only be a day job while I pursued my actual dream of being an extremely famous and successful writer.

Yeah…

I mention all of this because the Fall semester starts today, and I am taking two creative writing classes (and Zumba!). And I’m finding myself as nervous today as I was when I first started college 11 years ago. Added to the usual fears of “what if nobody likes me?”, I now have “what if I’m the oldest person in the class?” Since I’m attending the community college, I probably won’t be the oldest, but so what if I am. I just want to get back into the swing of things, workshop my stories, develop some writing samples and put together a decent application for grad school.

Watch, now I’m going to be offered a job.

Topic 204: On Arising to the Occasion

Carol:

Let Them Eat Cake

One of Megan’s grade school science projects was a baking experiment. She made a series of  cakes from scratch, leaving a different ingredient out each time, took photos of the various cakes and, showed show the chemistry behind the cakes. Baking powder, of course, was the key ingredient in the rising process, but we also had to factor in the variable of altitude. At our altitude (5000 feet), changes in both the amount of ingredients and the oven temperature are required.
 

I have sometimes felt a certain obligation to make my own cakes for special occasions. After all, isn’t that what mothers do? And, I would often foist upon myself the added pressure of creating a theme to match the event. My first baking effort was a great success. I made a Valentine’s Day cake following a recipe in my Betty Crocker children’s cookbook. It showed how to bake a square cake and a round cake, then cut the round cake in half and attach with icing to two sides of the square, making a perfect heart. Of course, the cake was a big success because I was 10 and my parents gushed over my creativity and hard work. Fifth grade was a good year for me. I was the best artist in my class, and I baked. Unfortunately, I peaked that year. My drawings never got any better, and my cakes still look like they were made by a ten year-old.
 

There were some exceptions. I made a circus cake one year with a little carousel and decorated animal crackers. The birthday girl and her playmates appreciated it, and it must have tasted pretty good because they dug in with four-year old enthusiasm. My best effort was the spaceship cake for Marshall’s 4th birthday. His friend Francis had a birthday the same week, so we had a little party with just the two families. Francis’ mom and I covered their little bicycle helmets with tin foil, and each wing of the spaceship cake had a boy’s name on it. It was a big success. Now that I think about it, I didn’t bake that cake. Francis’ mother did. Darn.

 

 

Somewhere along the way,I found out about The Cake Lady. She lived up the road and we used to see her almost everyday hiking the hill behind our house.    She had a reputation all over Prescott for her beautiful, delicious recipes, so much better than store-bought, infinitely better than my homemade efforts.  And she had an artist’s talent for decorating. The Cake Lady’s cakes commemorated Megan’s high school graduation, Marc’s sixtieth birthday, and my mother’s 85th birthday, all of them decorating with little personal touches for the occasion. My mother’s cake was the most beautiful I had ever seen,  with little musical notes to mark her many years of singing in the Methodist choir and cascades of delicate flowers and butterflies around the edges. 
 

Eventually, the Cake Lady retired from baking (boo hoo).  A few years ago she slowed down her exercise routine, not because she couldn’t keep up that energetic pace but because her dog couldn’t.  Now, she is part of our early morning “walk and talk” group. Today is her birthday, so she didn’t have much time to stay and chat because all her family is arriving to celebrate #75. Arisin’ to the occasion, her loving husband put her under strict orders. No baking.  Happy birthday, Cake Lady. 

Megan:

During my freshman year in college, I joined the crew team. We practiced five days a week starting at 4 AM.  We had to get up that early because it was a half hour’s drive to the reservoir where we rowed, and then we had to get the boats in the water. The sun would come up over the Oakland hills, and I’m sure from above we looked just like the teams you see in movies about Ivy League schools – our boats gliding over a perfectly smooth surface like a water bug. 

Down in the boat, it was a different story. We were usually cold and wet, our inexpert rowing often splashing each other. Occasionally, someone would “catch a crab” which meant the oar jammed in the water, driving the handle end into a stomach. We were warned that at high speed, catching a crab could launch someone right out of a boat, but at the worst, it just knocked the wind out of us.  Every now and then we would find our rhythm, row in sync and fly across the water, and it was beautiful, just like in the movies.

Not all the practices included rowing on the water. We spent a lot of time in the gym, and outside running. One time we ran a series of staircases by Lake Merritt in downtown Oakland. We ran them for an hour straight, and towards the end I paused and told the coach I needed a break. She yelled at me to keep going, and at the top of the stairs on the final lap, I threw up all over a perfectly landscaped flower bed. The coach applauded my dedication, using me as an example for the team, but I planned her murder on the ride back to campus.

Eventually the early hours got to me.  Four AM is not much earlier than I wake up now, but back then, I wasn’t getting up for practice, I was staying up. I worked the last shift in the library, and then when I got back to the dorm, I wanted to hang out with my friends. In college, I found that most of the fun stuff was happening between midnight and 3 AM, and I didn’t want to miss anything. For the most part, my classes were all in the afternoon and evening, so I went to bed after practice and slept most of the day.  

I wasn’t the only one who lived this way and it drove the coach crazy. She hated that the team was full of drinkers, smokers and up-all-night partiers and criticized our lack of commitment to the team. Rightly so. Eventually this led to a mass exodus and more than half the team quit, including me. I used the excuse that it wasn’t fun anymore, which, in my late teens, was my go-to reason for quitting anything. I didn’t understand back then that there’s a real sense of accomplishment in seeing something through, especially when it’s hard.  I wish I hadn’t quit, but for the most part, I’ve seen everything through since then. Except for Pilates.

Topic 199: Safety Valves in Student Life

Carol:

             Pass the Pitcher

“This place was really cool. At night the bar was actually pretty kickin', and the bartender poured super stiff drinks.  The karaoke was always hilarious.    ..Alas, this place is closed (2009 online review of Frank’s).

A safety valve is a device that allows the automatic release of something (usually steam) from a boiler or pressurized vessel. Without that release, the tank can build up pressure to the point of exploding.  I never really felt enough anger or frustration to reach that point of near-explosion. But, my college friends studied a lot harder than I did, felt more family pressure than I did, and worried more about their grades and scholarships.  So, we had our hang-outs as a way to let go of that built-up steam.
 

In 1970, that hang-out in Riverside was Frank’s on Iowa off of West Blaine. No karaoke back then, no stiff drinks. It was just a “blue collar” bar close to campus with a juke box heavily loaded with country western music and several dark tables where we gathered for hours over cheap pitchers of beer.  We never really mixed with the guys on the barstools who were finishing off the week’s work, probably using Frank’s as their own safety valve. There was always the feeling that we should lower our voices when we got to talking about The War, Reagan, or any of the other touchstone events of that year of protest. Politics was an issue where Town and Gown didn’t always see eye to eye.
 

Maybe Frank’s Bar needed to find more ways to attract the students who didn’t want to hear Willie Nelson or drink cheap pitchers. The bar and grill closed in 2009 although there was talk that it might open under new ownership.
 

Mory's around 1914

The guy I drank with at Frank’s in Riverside headed back East to law school, and I joined him there the year before we got married. The student safety valve of choice at Yale depended a lot on pedigree. The aristos and legacies often congregated at Mory’s, adjacent to campus. It had been founded as a private club in 1849, but the establishment eventually broadened its membership under pressure from a changing Yale community. Still, women weren’t allowed to join until 1972, the year I was working at Yale as a secretary. The guy I shared pitchers with at Frank’s recollects that he went in there to look around once, but not having the money or inclination to pay for a membership, he never ate there. History and pedigree aside, Mory’s closed its doors in 2009 after suffering increasing financial losses. Thanks to aggressive fundraising and a new business model, Mory’s reopened in 2010 and membership fees for students and alums are pretty reasonable.
 

Instead of hanging out at Mory’s, Marc and his friends showed up for  pizza and beer at Hungry Charlie’s on York Street. I don’t recollect anything distinctly unique about the place, another loud and noisy student spot where we were bound to run into someone we knew after a night of study. We said good-bye to New Haven in 1974, the same year   New Haven said good-bye to Hungry Charlie’s. Its new owners turned it into a very successful night club and concert spot called Toad’s Place.
 

Bars close, students graduate, new pressures build up with jobs, family and mortgages. Frank’s and Hungry Charlie’s morphed into the Daley Double in Encinitas where our friends would gather for a pitcher and listen to Willie Nelson. The real safety valve—then and now—was not the beer but the people that came with it.

Sources:
Image of beer.  Silk Tort 14 Feb 2006.
Mory’s. Wikipedia.
Toad’s Place. Wikipedia. 

Megan:

Public Safety at Mills College

Mills Hall

I've mentioned several times that I went to  Mills College, in Oakland CA. I had no intention of attending a women’s school, but I fell in love with the campus. I remember the brochure for prospective students claimed there were 11 trees for every student. The campus, as I have described elsewhere, is 135 acres of rolling hills, oak and eucalyptus trees, with a creek and a small lake.  What makes this setting even more unique is the fact that it sits right in the middle of one of the poorest, rundown areas of Oakland – although since I graduated, that area has undergone a transformation. Mills was founded in 1852, and has sat at its present location for more than 100 years – so the college predates the neighborhood.

As the city grew up around the college, the campus became more isolated. Walls and fences were erected and the multiple entrances were reduced to one. A major freeway cut the campus in half, and would have eliminated it completely had the founders not been buried there. Still, when I visited with my father in the Spring of 1999, it was the most beautiful place I had ever seen. My father loved it too, but I could tell he had concerns about the neighborhood.  And he was reassured by the single entrance, with a gatehouse manned 24 hours a day by campus security. I don’t want to give the impression that the Mills had a closed campus – the school put a lot of effort into integrating with the community, opening the pool for local children, allowing dog walkers and other pedestrians. But all visitors had to check in with campus security as they came onto the campus.

The undergraduate students had a love/hate relationship with the security team, which is called “Public Safety.” Depending on our moods, we were sometimes reassured and sometimes annoyed at having to present our IDs at the gate. Other times, if we were waved through without having to stop, we would say to each other – “That’s not right! I could be here to kill everyone. “ As if presenting an ID would have identified us as killers. 

Public Safety also annoyed us if we were trying to break rules.  As with all colleges, there was significant part of the student population drinking underage and taking recreational drugs.  For the most part, I believe, Public Safety didn’t consider it their jobs to interfere – as long as we weren’t too obvious about it. Once we had a BBQ on the president’s lawn, hid a keg in her shrubbery, and just got a wave from the security guards as they drove by in a golf cart.

The President's House

There was only one time when I thought we might get in actual trouble. Freshman year, one of my friends had a Jeep Wrangler that she liked to take off-roading around the campus. There were clear signs on the hiking trails forbidding motorized traffic, but this was a new car and she wanted to play with it. On more than one occasion we engaged in a low-speed chase with Public Safety, lights flashing as they pursued us in a little SUV. My friend never stopped, and she always beat them. Eventually, they erected barriers of hay stacks and fallen trees, which the Jeep still could have cleared, but we didn’t want to push our luck.

The Library

For the most part though, Public Safety was our friend. And after dark, we used them as a taxi service. I always worked the late shifts in the library – finishing around midnight. It was quieter then, and I could wear my pajamas. Every night, about 5 minutes before closing, a Public Safety officer would patrol the library, and then give the student workers a ride up the hill to the dorms. In my opinion, this was their greatest service, not because of the “dangerous” neighborhood, but because the campus was riddled with skunks.





*PS: Mom just asked me where the valves part of the essay is as if she's never strayed from a topic before.

Topic 113: American Aggressiveness

Carol:

Thank you, Dr. Nisbet

 My first thought when I saw today’s topic was that there must be an answer in deTocqueville.  But, when I started reading snippits of his book Democracy in America online, I realized that it would take me a week to figure out what is relevant to the topic of “American aggressiveness.” What I did skim from my google search was so interesting—and so prescient from a Frenchman who toured American in the early 1830’s—that I wanted to stop writing this essay and rush down to where I know we have a copy getting dusty on a bookshelf in our basement.  In fact, I had a thought—a fleeting thought—that Alexis Tocqueville should be required reading in all  American schools.
 

I haven’t read Democracy in America since 1971, when I enrolled in an upper-division sociology class.  I had made it through the introductory sociology class during the previous Fall, one of those gigantic classes held in an auditorium so that the professor could lecture to 400 people at once. I liked it well enough, but mainly because I sat next to an interesting young man named Morgan who took me to the art building at night to throw clay.  Morgan and I became “friends for life,” and I got an A in the class only because I knew how to write a good essay . The TA lobbied for me when I almost flunked the multiple choice exam. I was never aggressive about studying or grades.
 

That next Spring I ended up taking the advanced sociology class for two reasons:  (1)Marc  talked me into it; and (2) the professor, Robert Nisbet, was supposed to be famous.  That was the Spring Ronald Reagan closed  the California university campuses, of  Kent State, lots of protests, and my own  escalating romantic silliness regarding my boyfriend/future husband.  Marc and I were on completely different academic tracks, so this would be my only chance to actually take a course  together since he assured me he just didn’t have time in his schedule of economics, political science and sociology classes to fit in literature.   Marc was already thinking about law school and was really aggressive about studying and grades.
 

So, I took the course, but I didn’t do justice to the class,  to DeToqueville, or to Robert Nisbet.  Our primary textbook was his own 1953 book The Quest for Community: A Study of Ethics of Order and Freedom, which is also getting dusty on a bookshelf in our basement. We also read Marc Bloch’s Feudal Society and Democracy in America.   I kind of read the books, I kind of took notes in class, and I only stayed up all night to cram once, i.e. to keep Marc company when he stayed up to write a paper.  I think he was disappointed that I didn’t share his enthusiasm, and he got kind of mad at me when I was satisfied with a B after not trying very hard and he must have been disappointed at my lukewarm attitude. Marc was a Nisbet  groupie.
 

Turns out Robert Nisbet was famous, a brilliant sociologist who was an engaging lecturer in class. He had a particular gift for making history come alive through his descriptions and connections. He was also a Conservative of such political stature that he eventually spent eight years at the American Enterprise Institute, which despite calling itself nonpartisan is often described as one of America’s most influential neoconservative “think tanks.” 
 
Back then, I never really thought about any of my professors outside the context of their classrooms.  Professor Nisbet never talked politics per se in class and I wasn’t sophisticated enough to recognize conservative theories in his approach to the subject matter. But, the name of the course was Community, and I doubt he felt like he was part of a community that Spring of campus protest, student radicalization and aggressive intolerance across  the political spectrum.  
 

Thanks, Marc, for talking me into that class.

Megan:

Well, hello there. How have you been? Me? Not so great, although I am better today. I figured out Tuesday night that I might be allergic to the Vicodin, but kept taking it through yesterday because it made my back feel better even while kicking me repeatedly in the stomach and head. Today I am finally accepting that I should not take the painkillers, but still taking the other little pills. Did anyone see Modern Family last week when Gloria washed down a Valium with a shot of tequila and then turned all lovey-dovey? That has not been my experience, but maybe it’s because I left out the tequila. Instead, I just feel pretty relaxed. And I can move my head.

Anywho, even though I haven’t felt up to writing any essays, I have been retagging all the old entries and now we have a word cloud. I was wrong when I said Milo would be the biggest word. "Prison" beats "Milo", but "Family" and "Cartoons" beat everything else. Mom says I misspelled "Genealogy".  "Day off" is quite large as well, and that’s totally my fault because I’ve had about 5 times as many days off as Mom.  As a qualified librarian, I would like to think that my classification of the entries is accurate, but please keep in mind that I was heavily medicated and simultaneously watching Lifetime: Television for Women. So, it’s a work in progress, just like the rest of the site.

---

On any other day, I might have a lot to say about this topic. I could cite a number of examples in movies, literature and my own experience of the rude and aggressive ways Americans act while abroad. Or I could talk about guns, and how Americans keep killing each other with guns.  Or road rage. Or rudeness to people in the service industry.

But I can think of just as many examples of the English doing the same. There are movies and television shows about how the British act abroad (they have a reputation of tight-fisted-ness) – see the hilarious show Benidorm. And while gun crime is much lower in Britain, it’s still a problem (they blame us though) as is  road rage (we had the Road Rage Killer in our prison) and rudeness. I imagine these problems exist in every culture to some extent.

I also think the idea of American Aggressiveness is an external (foreign) one,  and that most of us don’t think of ourselves that way. Some of us do have a sense of individualized entitlement though, that other cultures seem to envy and resent at the same time. Concepts like "The American Dream", and "The American Way", and "This Is Still a Free Country, Isn’t It?!" … that in general, don’t really exist. Our government (no matter who is in power) seems so sure that the rest of the world is just one nuclear bomb away from invading us, that it pours our resources into defense and ignore domestic needs like education and health care. What’s to envy about that? Sometimes it seems to me that all this “aggression” is just a front we put out for the rest of the world, to hide our fears, just like a schoolyard bully is really just an insecure kid.

That being said, most people I know are just trying to get along in the world, dealing with their own family issues and economic stresses. Really, I don’t think we’re all that bad.

Topic 109: College Ethics

Carol:

Do The Right Thing

One of the best college classes I took was Environmental Ethics. The course helped me think about how I use resources and interact with the environment on a daily basis. More importantly, it helped me change habits I had developed over a lifetime. Ethics is not just about conforming to a set of rules to avoid cheating in school or the workplace. Ethics is about developing a set of principles that guide the decisions we make. Ethics training is much more than memorizing rules or explaining punishments. And, it seems to work best when it is endorsed (and modeled) by those at the top, institutional leaders and high-level administrators who want to “grow” an ethical environment.
 

Take, for instance, a unique collaboration between Denver attorney Michael Sabbeth and the fire department of Littleton, Colorado. Shortly after the Columbine High School tragedy in 1999, Mr. Sabbeth attended a middle-school meeting in Littleton of concerned parents and local officials.  One of the speakers was then Littleton Fire Chief Bill Pessemier, who urged schools to take a more active role in teaching ethics. Sabbeth had been writing and teaching about ethics to corporate, civic and legal organizations, so he saw an opportunity to combine ethics/critical reasoning education with a public safety course the Littleton Fire Department was already using in local schools. In  Fire Chief magazine, Sabbeth describes how he adapted a program focused on “the foundational ethical principles of autonomy, beneficence, justice and sanctity of life” with training firefighters to use their own stories as motivators and to illustrate principles with real-life firefighting situations rather than abstractions. Sabbeth continues to volunteer at schools using a variety of real-life scenarios to build ethical reasoning skills.

Or take New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. When he took office in January, his first executive order was to take down the post 9/11 barriers set up in front of the state capitol, to “symbolize a new era of openness in state government “(Karlin 2). His second executive order was to mandate ethics training for his staff and other government officials, to be followed up with refresher courses every two years. This comes after a decade marked by scandal as over 14 New York lawmakers had left office facing criminal prosecution or ethics scandals. His plan has received the endorsement of several public interest groups such as the New York State League of Women Voters, whose executive director commented “With the ethical morass that has engulfed state government in recent years this is a welcomed development…” (Source:  Governor’s Press Office).
 

What about the ethics education in colleges? Again, ethics training is embedded in a larger environment. At our local community college,  employees participate in required ethics training “following basic College values of honesty and integrity,”  followed by periodic “refresher” updates.(source YC website). Library personnel are critical players in educating students about academic integrity as a more global concept than plagiarism or cheating on tests, and faculty connect ethical responsibilities to professional guidelines and principles in the professional workplace (eg. Nursing, psychology, fire science, etc). Their approach is typical of colleges and universities across the country.
 

Does ethics education work? Not always, but some programs   show better results than others. Emphasis on legality, i.e. complying with the rules, is less effective than emphasis on ethical decision-making. Role-playing and case studies also increase effectiveness, such as the firefighter scenarios used in Littleton. Yes, there is controversy about teaching “character education” to elementary school children. Yes, there is skepticism about teaching “ethics education” to lawmakers, police, lawyers, doctors, corporations, etc. Yes, there is a concern about moral relativism.
 

 Ultimately, environmental ethics is about relationships-- with people, professions, organizations or the natural world. Ethics education should be as important, and common, as A B C.

Sources:
Karlin, Rick. “Off to Ethics School for Cuomo Staff.” Timesunion.com. 3 Jan 2011
 https://secure.timesunion.com/ASPStories/Story.asp?storyID=1006470&newsdate=2/8/2011&BCCode=MBTA
Andrew Cuomo: the Governor’s Press Office. http://www.governor.ny.gov/press/010211ethics 

Sabbeth, Michael G. “Elementary Ethics.” Firechief.com. 1 July 2000.
http://firechief.com/mag/firefighting_elementary_ethics/
Michael G. Sabbeth biography.
http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/MichaelGSabbeth
The Insider. Can You Teach Ethics? http://www.insidermediagroup.com/working-world/can-you-teach-ethics 

Yavapai College Human Resources page. http://www.yc.edu/v4content/human-resources/training/ethics.htm

Megan:

College Ethics 

I’ve been thinking about this topic off and on all weekend. More off than on, because there was snow. Snow only seems to sweep through this town when I have plans to fly on a plane or go to roller derby. Anyway, back to the topic at hand.

It seems to me that there are two ways to approach this subject: in a serious way, or …  not serious. You’ve probably figured out by now that I’m only serious when I can’t think of something funny to say.

If I was going to be serious about this, I would probably talk about the number one ethical issue in colleges and universities – plagiarism. There’s nothing that will ruin your academic reputation and get you expelled faster than passing someone else’s ideas off as your own. Well, that and not sticking to the assigned word count.

Coming up with a not serious (or “funny”) approach is harder. But I have drawn up a list of other things you shouldn’t do in college-- ethical commandments, if you will.

1. Thou shat not Facebook (or play games) during class. It’s rude, but even if the instructor doesn’t notice because she can’t see your screen, it’s really distracting for other people in the class. You’ll always find someone who will take your lack of attention personally, as though you are wasting their time as well as yours. I feel like this also applies to texting in the movie theater – very distracting for everyone else.

2. Thou shalt not cut the same class more than once in a week. (This rule was passed down by my mother. Hi Mom! You must be so proud.) In my experience, I have added: If the class meets only once a week, thou shalt not cut that class more than twice in a month. 
I think I may have mentioned somewhere that I almost didn’t graduate from college due to cutting one too many yoga classes. For some reason, my college had a PE requirement, and the last week of classes senior year, I was sitting with my housemates discussing our post-graduation Vegas plans when I realized I had just missed my final class. I don’t remember the excuse I made, claimed a car accident or a family death or something… but it worked and I graduated.

3. In the same vein, thou shalt not purposely or accidentally snitch on a friend for ditching a class. If the teacher says, “Has anyone seen So And So today?” it is better to keep quiet than to say something like, “Well, she was in yoga this morning.” Another thing I learned in college – professors only care if you show up for their class. And that attending yoga but not “Race, Gender and the Environment” is unwise if your RG&E professor is also taking your yoga class. 

Well, there are probably many other things that could be added to this list but this project limits us to roughly 500 words. Current count: 500.

Topic 106: Outgrown Opinions

Carol:

Teaching Old Dogs

Last week I went to my first OLLI class, part of a series on Mythology and the Human Experience.  The Osher Life-long Learning Institute is a peer- facilitated program for “seniors” around the idea of learning groups.  Some of the classes (and facilitators) are so popular that lotteries determine who will get into the class.  Although the Institute is housed at the College, it is overseen by an independent Governing Council.  Sounds dry and dull when described this way, but OLLI is anything but.
 
When I was teaching, I would sometimes head to the Food Court on Friday mornings when a lot of OLLI students would meet for lunch. A few traditional aged students might be studying over coffee or grabbing a quick meal before soccer practice, but the room would be dominated by much larger groups of older folks involved in loud, animated conversations. They were clearly having fun.
 
The notion of “lifelong learning” recognizes that a person’s life journey is not linear or lock-step, that continuous education can meet a variety of needs whatever a person’s age. Click on “Lifelong Learning” at our College and you will find not just OLLI but community education classes for all ages, including “College for Kids”, the Center for Successful Aging, and EDventures, which offers “Journeys of the Mind and Body” through organized educational field trips (source: YC  Lifelong Learning Division).
 
The OLLI group at Yavapai College is one of a network of 117 Lifelong Learning Institutes around the United States supported by the Bernard Osher Foundation, whose mission is to support higher education and the arts, including “meeting the needs of older learners who want to learn simply for the joy of learning and personal fulfillment” (source: OLLI National Resource Center).  The various Institutes are meant to reflect the culture of their own communities, so the “flavor” of the different OLLI groups may differ significantly although the common thread is self-directed, collaborative learning communities.  We might almost think of them as learning co-ops where members pay a fee to not only participate as students but contribute to decisions what classes and special interest groups are offered, fees, newsletter, etc. I notice from the newsletter that OLLI refers to itself as a Knowledge Exchange.
 
I have taken plenty of courses at the College and appreciate the classes in religion, technology and ecology for reshaping some of my most important attitudes and habits in the past 5 years. So, I wasn’t sure I was ready to make the shift from the structure and multi-generational atmosphere of a conventional college classroom to a program geared for SENIORS. Let’s face it, America is not kind, respectful, or enthusiastic about the notion of aging. We compliment people by saying, “You don’t look your age.” We label people by the work they do and joke about “being put out to pasture” at retirement.
 
If that first OLLI session is typical, I would almost say that I have entered an educational Utopia. Fifteen minutes before the 1 p.m. start-up, the room was almost full, and it was noisy. People clearly were anxious for the two-hour session to get started, and when it was over, they lingered to converse and ask questions. The model of an “idea exchange” was reinforced by the two facilitators, both retired, seasoned teachers, neither of whom presented themselves as subject-matter experts but rather as fellow learners. The class is advertised as “no homework, no tests,” but most people had purchased the optional text, most were taking notes, and most had lots of questions and comments. I didn’t hear a single groan when we were asked to turn to a neighbor and share ideas for 5 minutes.  Imagine, a roomful of students who were there by choice, loved to learn, and had the life experiences to wrap new ideas and opinions around.
 
I wanted to end this essay with a catchy quote about aging… but most of the quotes just reinforce all the old opinions about wrinkles, memory loss, and pill consumption. I have a busy day planned, and I’m looking forward to an afternoon of fun escapism at the movies. So, I’ll let my daughter finish the essay instead…. Cartoon, please.

 

Megan:

The Only Democrat in the Village

The first presidential election I can remember was the 1988 Bush/Dukakis race. At 7 years old, I proudly declared myself the only Democrat in my class and drew cartoons of a donkey giving an elephant a black eye. My most vocal opponents were twin boys, the sons of a local political aspirant who lived near my neighborhood. These boys regularly rolled the window down to yell at passing Prescott College students to “take a shower you stupid hippie.” My cousin (the one with the chickens) eventually attended that college, as did her future husband. Despite the fact that we had such different world views, they were my classmates who lived the nearest, and I spent a lot of time with them (our political differences didn’t seem to get in the way of our friendship).

By the time I reached 8th grade, Bill Clinton was in office, but I was still the only Democrat in the class. The twins had changed schools, but my liberal leanings earned me constant bullying by my classmates. I admit I could be obnoxious, threatening sexual harassment lawsuits at boys who peeked under girls’ skirts, but didn’t think to follow through when the harassment became legitimate – when my classmates called me a lesbian, when my best friend put distance between us out of fear of the same accusation levied at her.

In high school, I was in a class of 400 instead of 11, and was comfortably invisible most of the time. Political leanings on both sides shifted into apathy, and despite the fact that I became much more involved in the Catholic Church, even going as far as picketing Planned Parenthood, I think I still (guiltily) considered myself a pro-choice liberal.

In college, in Oakland CA, I felt I’d finally found “my people.” I met actual lesbians, and discovered communists and anarchists, people so far to my left they were practically on the right. Now a part of the majority, I discovered I had no taste for political rallies or protests. I could hold a sign, but I could not shout, I could not even chant. I felt stupid and sheep-like, even though I believed in the cause and admired my politically active friends. I registered Green but voted Democrat at the last second, and along with everyone else I knew, believed Bush stole that first election. 

I spent most of Bush’s terms in England, where I was the token “good American, “ the exception noted whenever anyone wanted to trash America and its bullying foreign policy. “Not you,” they would say, “you’re okay.” When I decided to return to the States, I joked with friends that Obama was the reason I was returning to the States, “now that it was safe.” As I get older I realize more that being president is just a really hard job, that promises about change are made to win elections, but that there’s not a lot of difference between the main parties.

I’ve gotten to know my childhood friends again. Some have outgrown their parents’ political leanings, and some have not (including me). One of my very best friends is a self-avowed “gun-toting conservative” who complains regularly about the unwashed. Part of me thinks she does it to embarrass me, part of me knows she believes it. But I love her anyway. And the twins? We met again after 10 years, their Republican father still heavily involved in Arizona politics, and the boys are more liberal than I ever was as a kid. 

Re-creation of 1988 drawing

Topic 91: Traveling and Arriving

Carol:

So Long, Farewell

We have just said good-bye to our Canadian friends Bonnie and Michael after a wonderful four-day visit. When we weren’t sightseeing through Northern  Arizona, we were reminiscing  at length about one of our favorite topics, travel. Right now departures are more on my mind than arrivals.
 

Bonnie and I spent the summer of 1969 together in Europe, a trip planned while I was studying in Aix-en-Provence, France and she at the University of Manitoba. Our travels took us through France, Spain and Italy before we ended the summer in Switzerland.  Bonnie would travel alone for several more weeks before returning to Canada.  I would return to the States and classes at the University of California, Riverside.
 

But, first I detoured to Aix to pick up my ticket for a cheap charter I had arranged through a student travel agency. When I got to the travel office, the building was locked, the travel office closed for the summer. I couldn’t remember what Belgian city I was departing from, what airline or time, just the date. In a panic, I telephoned my parents who were not happy that I could be so immature as to pay for a ticket without getting any paperwork. I had almost no money and no credit card, so they had to make all the arrangements through telegrams and wire transfers. And they would had to pay for an exorbitant last-minute, one-way ticket from Paris to Los Angeles.
 

Marc and I spent the summer of 1971 together in Europe. I had met him at UCR in fall 1969 and convinced him that he too should apply for a study abroad program. In fall 1970, he left for Bordeaux , so I spent the year planning the trip with my roommate Clarice and her friend Meg.  You might think that I had matured in those two years since the debacle of the airplane ticket. Well, I had…sorta. 
 

Our June charter flight from LA took us to London, where we would stay for several days before meeting Marc in Amsterdam. About an hour outside of London, a thought popped into my head. I hadn’t really looked at my passport in a while, what if my paperwork was incomplete? When I opened the passport, sure enough,  my passport had expired. In another panic, my imagination went into overdrive, I would be hauled off to a London jail for illegal entry, I would miss our flight to Amsterdam, I would never see my boyfriend Marc, and worst, I would have to telephone my parents to help me out of another travel fiasco. Luckily, the flight attendant told me that I could get my passport renewed in London with little more inconvenience than the loss of a day spent filling out paperwork at the American Embassy.
 

 I arrived at the Amsterdam airport three days later with a brand new passport and thoughts of seeing Marc for the first time in 9 months. By the time we debarked from the plane, I was so overtaken by nerves that I hid in the bathroom for 20 minutes. Finally, Marc sent Clarice in to find out what was wrong, and she pushed me out the door for what I thought would be a public but nevertheless sentimental reunion.    

There he was, outside in the hallway.  He grabbed my hand, gave me a quick peck on the cheek, and greeted me with the kind of romantic words I have been hearing now for 40 years. “Hurry, we have to run. If we don’t get to the Heinecken Brewery in 10 minutes, we’ll miss the free beer.”

Megan:

In Bruges

December 22, 2002
Sunday
Bruges, Belgium

“Before Snuffel’s Sleep-In was a youth hostel, it was an information booth, where backpackers and other travelers congregated to rustle up some guidance about Bruges. To snuffle means to sniff out information, like hunting dogs, or drug dogs. Thus, when converted into a hostel, the information booth became Snuffel’s, with a dog as the mascot”–Kelly

Kelly wrote that before she started back to L.A. today. I went with her to the train station and then spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the city and doing laundry. Tried to see a movie but I got lost. When the barman at Snuffel’s gave me directions, he mentioned there used to be many cinemas but now only two. I didn’t come across either of them, and wandered for a couple hours along the canals trying to find my way back to the hostel. Unlike Amsterdam, this city does not seem to focus around something huge you can see from far away (like a train station). I walked through the town center three times, walked past the Church where they keep bits of Jesus blood. Kelly and I tried to see it, but it was encased in a tabernacle type thing, so who knows if it was even in there.    

Now I am back at Snuffel’s, drinking Snuffel Beer and waiting to check my emails. Tomorrow I’m going to get up early to go to Brussels and from there, Paris. Then I’ll see how to get to San Sebastian, but I don’t want to arrive anywhere after dark and have to find a hostel. I’m excited to travel alone because I can just wander and take it in. You can’t do that in a large group.
    

Right now, in the bar, there is a drunk American. He exclaims about the beer: “Its more like champagne! It’s way too carbonated and sweet! This will give you a hangover!” He laughs like he’s had plenty of hangovers. He’s the type to constantly compare America to Europe– usually in the U.S.’s disfavor, so loudly and dramatically that the barman and probably every other European look at him and see what they hate about the U.S.
    

Another man we’ve met is Vittorio di Lorenzo, whom Kelly nicknamed Father Time on account of his advanced age, which is probably only late 50’s. We made dinner together in the Snuffel Kitchen, I had pasta and he had veggies. He’s a Londoner who is traveling because the housing rates in the U.K.  are too high. Essentially, he explained, it’s cheaper for him to travel frugally all around Europe than to rent a room in London.
    

Back to the Drunk American. He is making conversation with the poor attractive barman (all the barmen here are attractive). Barman pays close enough attention, makes decent conversation, occasionally has input. But the Drunk American still only wants to talk about the beer. “All American beer is shit,” he says. “But this, this is not beer.” Barman responds that its 9% alcohol, therefore stronger than the American shit anyway. Barman admits that he is hung-over.

 Apparently the Drunk American buys all his clothes with Camel Cash– he has a Camel Jacket and a Camel Fishing Vest. He says that “Amendments” have been passed to raise taxes on cigarettes and beer. “In 100 years, the whole world will be a civilized country– except America.” His theory is apparently that civilized countries ought to provide cigarettes and beer as free services. A large group has gathered around the Drunk American. I hope they gather because he is a freak and not because they agree with him.
    

My main problem with the Drunk American is that I share many of his theories and now I am ashamed. For example, between the coasts of the U.S., there are only farms and nothing else of value– that too once crossed my mind. I also observed that the beer had a champagnesque flavor, but I did not actually speak these thoughts aloud.  I wonder how he came to be here, but I don’t wonder enough to ask.

Topic 85: Wasting Time

Carol:

I can't waste time thinking of a title 

Sunday afternoon I dropped Marc at the San Diego Airport for his return to Arizona. Megan was at the final session before her conference ended, so I had about 3 hours to kill. Freedom. Adventure Opportunity. The opposite of killing time.  

 I am not an adventurer and not the kind of person that likes to poke around strange cities by myself, especially when I have a car to deal with. So,
I intended to return to the now familiar Gaslamp District. Safe, secure, I knew how to get there, and an interesting Greek movie would just fit that pocket of time nicely. But, sitting in the parking lot of the Cabrillo Monument memorizing the maps while Marc was actually out on the edge of the monument trail looking at the fantastic view and bird-watching, I came across another possibility for afternoon fun and adventure. The library.

Now, I love libraries, and whenever I have a few hours in a new city, I will look for the library. When our Alaska cruise ship docked in Juneau, about 80% of our fellow travelers ducked into the nearest gift shop to the pier. I followed the signs to the public library.  Two years later when we had a Sunday afternoon in San Francisco, Marshall headed off to the Asia Museum for a Samurai exhibit, Marc headed off in search of coffee, and Megan and I went to the library. 

I knew where the San Diego library because Marc had pointed it out to me earlier in the day.  I marked its location on my map with a big black circle, traced my route, and headed out of the airport full of confidence and excitement. Freedom. Opportunity. Cheap opportunity—the library was showing a free Sunday afternoon movie.

I would zip right down to Market Street, turn left on 7th, right on E and find free parking near the library. Who would have thought that on a beautiful, sunny Sunday afternoon in one of the most popular tourist cities in America, a person would not be able to find an empty parking space. I made at least 4 passes by the front of the library as I circled around the one-way streets hunting for a parking spot. Time’s a ‘wasting, Carol. You’ll be late.

I finally found an opening, but who would think that I could be so out of practice at parallel parking. There was plenty of room to back in between two cars, but somehow I ended up on the sidewalk and several attempts to pull out and renegotiate the space failed. Time’s a’wasting, Carol. Finally, as I got out of the car a 3rd time to check my rear wheels,  a young woman with a lollipop in her mouth strolled out of a beauty salon and asked if I needed help. Nice San Diego people. She got into my car, pulled out onto the street and started all over again. Never took the lollipop out of her mouth, didn’t even get phased when the woman on the motor scooter she almost wiped out started screaming. Lollipop Lady handed me the keys, I thanked her and ran off down the street, hoping to slip into the movie late and find a seat in the back without disturbing too many people. Into the library, up three flights, open the door, fumble into an empty seat, just as the opening credits were ending, my earlier humiliation at the parallel parking debacle dissipated. Freedom. Adventure. Opportunity.

Then, the huge rock head came floating through the sky, and the camera panned in on Sean Connery, red silk loin cloth, pony tail and hairy chest. My favorite 007 had been kidnapped and forced into playing a futuristic exterminator in one of the worst movies ever made, Zardoz.
Talk about a waste of time.

 Megan:
As I type this, I am acting as a squeeze machine for my friend Kelly’s neurotic little dog Bo. I don’t mind because he is acting as a miniature space heater for me. Kelly’s house was sprayed by a skunk the other day, and for reasons I don’t understand she thinks this means she needs to keep the doors and windows open all the time. And I’m like, Dude. Have you not considered that this might be how the smell entered the house to begin with?

Anyway, I’m coming up to the end of this little post-holiday vacation, spending these next two days with Kelly and her husband (and their neurotic dogs). When we were in college together, Kelly and I were masters of wasting time. We sat in the back row in the classes we had together and did crossword puzzles, we went to Wal-Mart at 3 a.m. to hang out, and we spent hours planning her weddings and coming up with names for future children.

 At some point she must have learned to stop wasting time because she is a lawyer now. I’m hoping though, that I have managed to get her to abandon responsibility for today to hang out with me. But even though she is now pretending to be sick in order to play hooky from work, she is not wasting time. She is cleaning her house and putting away Christmas decorations.  But there is evidence that not all of the old habits have died away… she’s been married for over a year now, but current bridal magazines can still be found piled in the corner. And pick up any scrap of paper, you’ll find a list of names under the heading of either For a Girl, or For a Boy. There are no current plans for divorce or remarriage or a baby, this is just the way she relaxes.

My own way of wasting time involves compulsively writing the alphabet over and over in my journal (which explains my excellent handwriting), playing with dogs and making up songs about dogs. The biggest timewaster I can think of is Facebook. I spend more time trying to get information about people who are not my friends than the ones who are – Facebook stalking is what that’s called. Because of my MA in Information studies, and my experiences in the prison, I am super good at this – finding information about people. I could probably make a living as a private eye ala Veronica Mars. In fact,  I have discussed at length setting up this business with another friend and then contracting our services with Kelly. I am so enamoured of this idea that instead of working on my resume or applying for a job, I am going to waste the rest of the day designing a logo and letterhead for this business.  That is, if Bo is comfortable continuing to act as my little heating cushion. 

                                  

Topic 76: Telephone Manners

Carol:

Call Waiting   

    
 I don’t like talking on the phone, not since my mother gave me an egg-timer to minimize talk time. I usually spent hours on the phone with friends who I had already spent hours with at school.  Until we got the egg-timer.   My mother’s rules were mostly about good manners when answering the call or taking and leaving messages. The egg- timer was to remind me that it was rude to keep the line tied up when someone might be calling other members of the family.  Since 99% of the calls were for me anyway, I didn’t really see the point. I was just being rude to myself, then, right?
 

When I went away to College, long distance was expensive and inconvenient.  Sunday evenings at the dorm, I would stand in line behind all the other girls, keeping a courteous distance from the wall phone that was not in a booth.  I didn’t need an egg-timer to make it brief. The body language of the next person in line did the job. The year I lived in France, no phone calls. Too expensive and too complicated,  not to mention the weird telephones and operators who couldn’t understand your accent.  My final year of college, we actually had our own phones in the dorm rooms.  Who would think that someone who hated to talk on the phone could rack up a $150 phone bill the first month? Let’s just say, I learned quickly to adopt the egg-timer approach to telephone conversations and to pay my part of the bill on time.
 

I really got to hate talking on the phone when I started work.  It began with the temp job Marc got me at a Palm Springs law office where he was working for the summer. I was instructed to lie to callers when a lawyer wanted to avoid a client. So, I was saying “I’m sorry, Mr. Law is in court on a big case, but I’ll see that he gets your message, “but I was thinking “I’m sorry, Mr. Law wants to avoid talking to you as long as possible, at least until he finishes another few cups of coffee.”   My next job required more advanced skills related to hitting the correct buttons in the correct sequence so as not to disconnect, interrupt or forget people at the four different phone numbers. My general ineptitude was offset by really polite phone manners.  “I’m sorry, Professor Yale, that I cut you off again.  Please hold while I try to get Dr. Harvard back on the line.” 
 

 Changing telephone technology calls for new rules of etiquette.  We don’t need egg timers around here because we all have our own cell phones and personal numbers. Our land line has caller ID and voice mail, so I don’t even have to answer the phone if I don’t feel like talking. No Call Waiting—bad manners.
 

 Regarding cell phones, my rules are simple: never talk loudly in public, don’t drive and talk, return voice messages promptly. Yesterday, my cell phone died on me…from under-use. After I recharged it, a message popped up on the screen. The message was from my husband (I do know how to retrieve voice mail)  from September.  He should know by now that I don’t like to talk on the phone.

Megan:

Telephone Manners

I really enjoy the topics on manners because they allow me to recycle older essays and adapt my three Golden Rules of Etiquette to almost any situation where politeness is required. Quick review of the Rules as they were applied to company and ancestors:

Be Clean
Accept Food or Drink
Do not overstay your welcome.

How can these be applied to the phone, you ask? Well, some of it is common sense, and some of it is quite a stretch, but I didn’t sleep well last night and I’m too tired to come up with new rules. Plus there are tons of normal guides online, especially concerning when and where it is appropriate to use mobile phones. Let’s not rehash that here.  

Be Clean:
The other day, the phone rang. Person A (names have been changed to protect the guilty) answered the phone and then shouted for Person B. “Person B, it’s for you.” 

To which Person B shouted back, “I’m on the toilet.”
Person A: “So what should I do?”
Person B: “Pass it around the door.”  

This all went on without covering the mouth part, or muting the phone so the caller must have been horrified to hear what he was getting in for. But just in case he hadn’t heard, Person B flushed while still on the phone.
People, as convenient as it may seem, don’t talk on the phone while you are on the toilet. Not every call has to be taken immediately. That is why God invented Caller ID, Voicemail, and little pads of paper upon which can be inscribed the details of a message.

Except Food or Drink (haha, see what I did there? It’s a pun.):
Most phone etiquette guides will tell you that talking on your cell phone in a restaurant is a no-no (same goes for toilet talk). I propose we go a step further and don’t talk on the phone while eating at all. There’s a reason it's rude to talk with your mouth full, and it’s not just because everyone can see your chewed up food. It’s also much harder to understand you, doubly so over the phone because reading lips and facial expressions is impossible.
Also, it’s not nice for the caller to hear the crunching and chewing sounds amplified and projected directly into the ear. 

Do not overstay your welcome:
Some people don’t like to talk on the phone, and others are content to do it for hours. This can make getting off the phone tricky.  In this house, Person A really hates using the phone. She hates it so much that when she has finished what she has to say, she sometimes overrides the caller with “Ok, nice talking to you, I’ll let you go” and then hangs up without hearing the other person.  She did this to me while I was in England a lot, but I just called back again and was like, ”Dude. There’s a reason I was calling.” It’s less important to be polite to your parents.

When I run out of things to say, and so has the person I am talking to, there can often be an awkward silence. I’ve learned it is easier not to pussyfoot around with “Umms” and “Uhhs” and “How is your family?” for the 5th time. Instead, I just get to the blunted point: “I don’t have anything left to say.”
Other person: “I guess… neither do I.”
Me: “Good phone call.”
Other person: “Um… what?”
Me: “Bye.”