Ag éisteacht go Raidió Bhlag Cainte leis Seán na Cliste

Dúirt mé faoi stair phoblactach agus mná go hairithe dó faoi deireanach. Tá agallamh ag craoladh le Raidió Bhlag Cainte leis craolfar trí roinnt go dtí seo sa Mhárta seo. Tá uair chéad orm go raibh ag rá ar an raidió ann, ar ndóigh.  

Bheul, ní raibh maith liom ag cloisteáil mo ghuth ag béiceach ann. Smaonaigh mé go raibh os ro-h-ardú chomh ag taifeadh mar ráite is ard. Áfach, bhí maith go díreach liom an seans ag caint leis Seán na Cliste, óstach carthanach, agus a h-éisteoirí cliste go leor amach ansin. 

Tú ábalta ag éisteacht go an clár anseo de 14ú Márta faoi bún-stair phoblactach (23:48-31:10). Tá roinnt de réir araon Maud Gonne agus Countess de Markievicz de 15ú Márta ansin (33:20-38:50). Leanaim ag caint fúthu de 21ú Márta ansiúd (28:30-39:50). B’fhéidir, cruinneoidh an clár go fógraí faoi abhar mar gheall ar mná phoblachtachaí eile agus feimineachas ar an saol Angla-Éireannach agus Caitliceach. Cluinfear an chuid eile lá is faide anonn. 

An chuid is fearr den scéal go mbeidh ag cluinfear mo chairde dhil Antoine agus Ciara Mac an tSaoi ag cheile. Is iriseoirí siad ag gcónaí in Eireann. Scríobhann beirt faoi poblachtas go minic. 

Go cinnte, níl fhíos agam chomh ná foghlaim siad! Dá bhrí sin, éist go Raidió Bhlag Cainte anois. Foghlameoidh tú níos mo rudaí Éireannach ag inste le na saoithe-- an dís ag cur tuarisc ar hÉireann acusan féin. 

Listening to Blog Talk Radio with John Smart. 

I spoke about republican history and women especially in it recently. It was an interview broadcast by Blog Talk Radio with three parts so far aired in this past March. It was the first time for me that I was talking on the radio, of course. 

Well, I didn’t like hearing my braying voice there. I thought it was too loud as taped as I spoke far too strongly. However, I was quite happy for a chance to speak with kind host John Smart  and his many smart listeners out there. 

You’re able to listen to the program here from March 14^th about basic republican history (23:48-31:10). The part concerning both Maud Gonne and the Countess de Markievicz from March 15^th there (33:50-38:50). I follow speaking about them on March 21^st over there  (28:30-39:50). Perhaps, the program may announce my material with regard to other republican women and feminism in Anglo-Irish and Catholic life. Somebody may hear the rest at a future date. 

The best part of the story’s that somebody will hear my dear friends Anthony and Carrie McIntyre together. They’re journalists living in Ireland. The pair write often about republicanism. 

Surely I know less than they know! Therefore, listen to Blog Talk Radio now. You will learn more about Ireland told by the experts-- a pair reporting from Ireland themselves.

(Countess de Markievicz:  grianghraf/photo le/by B. Keogh. )

Lashon hara, Gun Club, Fourth Precept

There's a term I learned when studying Judaism twenty years ago, lashon hara. It stuck with me that "unkind words" represented a key concept in ethical foundations for a student of the Torah. It's one of the first concepts that I connected with in Jewish ethics, perhaps as a corrective to a tendency for sarcasm, insult, self-recrimination, backbiting and negativity in my own habits of speech in which I'd been raised and which I'd inculcated unknowingly. The past few days, my nation's been caught up in its own reversion to a habit of unkind words, maybe meant as chastising or corrective, but often sounding to me as vindictive and cruel.

For my Contemporary History class yesterday, studying the aftermath of WWI and the 1920s and 1930s, I defined "socialist, communist, and fascist." I reminded my students of their true meanings. Coming home, I had to fill in the context at the dinner table for "blood libel" as that denotation has been wrenched apart from its connotation last night. I've been on the blogs and about the net and I've seen the papers even if I promptly turned off the inevitable CNN 24-hour blitz that impinged on our home a few days ago.

On a couple of places, as the news unfolded and grew and accusations and blame resounded, I posted this in reference to my own encounter with students not perhaps that different than the one accused of shooting the people in Arizona last weekend. People had been debating about how we can protect ourselves from a deranged killer. People blamed the young man, and those who they reasoned set him off unreasonably.

As a college instructor, I can verify that we do have a culture, influenced by progressives (Foucault? Laing?), that allows students with mental problems freer rein. Even when myself or classmates have reported that we feel threatened, we were told by supervisors that we cannot do anything unless physical violence occurs. A "hostile environment" caused by said student who's imbalanced is outweighed by that student's civil rights; nor can counseling be demanded. I'm not diminishing the tragedy or shifting blame, but explaining context behind such tragedies.

I feel weary, but as one who educates as well as prattles, I figure I'd get my thoughts out. (I append as an aside that we also have a society where conservatives have shut down many mental institutions and continue via their cronies in the "healthcare providers" industry to limit access to psychiatry and treatments as affordable for most Americans, while tax cuts endure as sacred, businesses slash worker's coverage, and insurance companies remain formidable.) I know what it's like to have a student mouthing off and disrupting a course. I know what it's like to have to hear out a student who lacks stability despite his or her book smarts. And, I've come home frustrated with not knowing what to do, or feeling I lack the protection I need for me and the majority of the class to continue comfortably at the expense of the rights of a single student whose presence unsettles even the most patient and tolerant of us.

I teach Public Speaking, I teach literature, I teach modern history, and I teach Technology, Society & Culture this term. Four courses to a total of ninety students, most of whom read little and who are techies and gamers instead. So, these slightly jostled and jumbled reflections are germane, if for my own needs perhaps, to get out of my head the static and noise. Too-familiar with resentment and score-setting, I need wisdom.

My own politics may be now as shifty as my denominational or philosophical views, in that I find myself in teacher mode, seeing all sides, hearing all voices, until I wonder sometimes where my own allegiances remain. After twenty-six and counting years in a classroom, you tend to become either open-minded or closed. I hope I've kept the former quality, even if my few liberal friends berate me for my flexibility in entertaining what I may not advocate deep down, and my fewer conservative friends may despise me for wooly-headedness. Parts of the right remind me of populism, but their elected descendents pretend to spurn the government while seduced by lobbyists; parts of the left recall the Progressives of a century ago, but they are too beholden to the same business interests without which no supposedly reforming candidate can win or keep office today. In class, I can argue for any position, and in the ballot box I may be as hard to pin down.

I keep anonymity for all mentioned among my own varied fellow travelers herein. But a true comrade of mine, veteran of many real and cyber-battles to defend first Irish republican activists and then those who challenged the leaders who took over the movement in the wake of their cynical revisionism, alerted me to an article that aligned with my own reactions. She told me about  "A Dysfunctional Moment in American Politics" by Wendy Kaminer, courtesy of the contrarian site Spiked.

Some commentators there lean considerably closer than I do for Second Amendment rights for those not constituting "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State," who stress instead only the remainder of the statement "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Capitalization aside, and commas inserted or deleted depending on the version, but an insistent faction of our population promotes the latter clause on t-shirt and bumper sticker without convincing us, or me at least, of the validity of the former as a prerequisite. Nobody can argue that the deluded Arizona shooter constituted part of any "well regulated Militia."

So, how do we square conservatives who assert this right via their anti-statist reactions against a liberal defense (at least in terms of the media and the dominant voices in this debate this week, and perhaps of the silent majority of the citizenry) that attacks those from a reactionary right as deadly wrong, responsible for the massacre of innocents goaded on by inflammatory websites and target-practice videos? I sense payback, bitterness at the victories eked out by those now in charge who will have to leap some ideological and political bounds to justify their own anti-government, anti-gun control views against the casualty list caused by a crazed dropout with no discernable sense given a favorite reading list of Hitler and Ayn Rand alongside Marx and Orwell, Huxley and utter babble scoured and mashed and fried from the most marginal and insensible of websites and conspiracy theories and monetarists and fools. All poured into half a brain to aim a gunsight.

Yet, I find myself annoyed with those who rush to judge conservatives as if blaming them all for the actions of a schizophrenic. This tends to be the gut reaction of many whose comments I've read on sites I frequent. Coming from a background, an upbringing, and a lengthening career where I mingle with far more traditional students than my colleagues at more selective colleges, I find myself daily engaged with working-class, immigrant, first-generation students, many vets, who pay my wage. They lack clout; I lack tenure. This is the workaday cadre whom progressives boast about empowering and whom conservatives claim among their recruits. I wonder if those with power or affluence talk with--rather than talk down to--those with whom they differ. Or do they hear or see them as soundbites on radio or television or the net or YouTube? I try to listen.

Many commentators, professional and amateur, appeared to mix glee with bitterness at a chance to excoriate the far-right. While I do not reside there any more than I do the radical left, I found myself taken aback by this opportunism. Amidst righteous indignation, I also found score-setting, caricaturing, and vitriol, as if hatred spewed more hate. Those defending humane values and gentler dissent themselves were outshouted.

So, I welcomed a fresh approach. "Spiked," as with "Standpoint" whose columns by Nick Cohen (of the "Observer") I enjoy (if not always agreeing with, but then, who do I always agree with anyway?) my colleague introduced me to, offers this view that gets as ticked off by the smarmy left as it does the slimy right. I also think the distance instilled in some British-based sites eases what in the U.S. turns more and more a corporate-directed merging of the pundits and shock jocks into what passed once as "news," as my wife's informed me regarding the easing of FCC rules about "commentary" vs. supposedly objective TV journalism. British reporters for ideologically identifiable papers may certainly parade their own biases, but their critical perspective on American entertainment disguised ineffectively as detached coverage does sharpen my gaze.

I shared my comrade's link, and highlighted in my comment box on FB this from Kaminer: "Any actual, causal connection between the attack and the degeneration of political discourse will probably never be clear." I waited for dissent or support.

First, an author who has published two high-profile, well-received memoirs (reviewed by me) of growing up tough among the down and out asserted his determination on FB to place Kaminer's comments within the true threats he saw tilted far more to the lunatic right rather than the remnants of some countercultural left.

He, after I posted Kaminer's article, responded to her claims: "I can't remember the last time the left held target shooting practice with targets set on the right. I don't like the left use of the word "Fascist" for anyone on the right. It's as wrong as the teabaggers calling Obama a communist or fascist or whatever mix of labels for "un-American" that they want to use. But what goes way beyond that type of vitriol (which is bad and stupid) is the very specific call to arms that we have gotten from the right. Seriously, when is the last time we heard that from the left? The Weather Underground? The Black Panthers? Those movements were completely destroyed. By contrast, the right wing revolutionary movements will not be destroyed by our government. They are encouraged."

As for me, I have earned contempt for pointing out to liberals that "teabagger" itself is an anti-gay slur, but this nitpicking has not won me admirers. I am with him on the abuse of "fascist" by the left, and I'd add "nazi," "socialist," and "communist," as I noted above. His last sentence may be up for argument. Who in "our government" encourages the reactionary, armed and discontented, may depend on who and where. A lot.

A wise friend of mine, on FB in this case but as a true friend in person as well even if we gently bicker a bit, responded to my advocacy of Kaminer's nuanced position: "This kind of violence has been intentionally fomented. The fear that drives it has been obviously used for political gain - and now that the worst has happened there's a desire to split hairs over the exact reasoning of the unreasonable in order to pin it down to something that nobody has to feel guilty about."

Echoing this, I cited the words of this same friend anonymously at True Liberal Nexus . Its blogger, Tamerlane, and I often agree, if sometimes we disagree or diverge. In response to his "Blood on Your Hands" entry, which points the accusing finger at the Gun Club (not the swamp-punk band of the same name whom I love), I typed in: "I may split hairs as a professional hazard, being a teacher, but my friend’s point aligns with yours, TL. But I wonder about causality, even for insanity." I continued in classroom mode:

"My discussion question: how is this shooting different or similar to, say, the attempts on Gerald Ford by Sara Jane Moore & Squeaky Fromme? Did not the climate then also become infected by talk of revolution from the margins to take out our leaders?"


Tamerlane replied: "Moore & Fromme were immersed in fringe radicalism. I can’t speak to the “climate of revolution” in 1975 — there may have been some residual from the Vietnam War protests, but this feels different to me today than what I recall from my childhood.


One major difference is that Moore &  Fromme were bad shots, had malfunctioning pistols with only 4 -6 bullets. That, and nobody had used gunsight imagery urging people to “target” Ford."

He quotes the guilty who goaded on with their fiery slogans the fury that now claims innocent lives. Gunsights, cross-hairs, surveyor's marks, blood libels. I get it. But, I'm tired. Heartland veterans vs. Bay Area progressives, Irish radicals vs. "Don't Tread on Me" resurgents, surfers and hunters, I count them all among FB friends in my small-c catholicity, so I can't please either side. You may understand why I move on now, for recess.

Psychologist Seth Segall, retired from teaching at the Yale School of Medicine, and author of "Encountering Buddhism: Western Psychology and Buddhist Teachings" (SUNY Press , 2003). posted this at his blog "The Existential Buddhist" on January 10th, 2011. I was alerted to this by the poet-critic Ben Howard, whose "One Time, One Meeting: the Practice of Zen" blog I read regularly and link to from my own.

Dr. Segall titled this essay "The Fourth Precept" . A few years ago I might have dismissed this with a skim as too out of touch with reality. Now I think it's more in touch with my own reverberations than the increasingly unreal society I find myself distanced, or alienated, from. (I cite nearly all of his article below for my own recollections and for future reference; I've already pondered it quite a bit.)

The current public discussion over the role vitriolic political rhetoric plays in creating an atmosphere that increases the likelihood of violent actions is as good a time as any to revisit the Fourth Buddhist Precept.



The Fourth Precept reads:


Musāvāda veramaṇī sikkhāpadaṃ samādiyāmi.


I undertake the vow to abstain from false speech.


“False speech” is a faithful translation of “musāvāda,” but most Buddhists interpret this precept more broadly to include all forms of wrongful or harmful speech. The Pali Canon identifies four types of wrongful speech: 1) lies, 2) backbiting and slander, 3) abusive and hurtful speech, and 4) frivolous talk. This would include speech that is harsh, untruthful, poorly timed, motivated by greed or hatred, or otherwise connected with harm. Gossip, misleading arguments, verbal bullying, incitements to violence, rage outbursts, malicious ridicule, and poorly worded or ill-timed truths that cause pain without benefit all fall into the category of wrongful speech.


Thich Nhat Hanh has interpreted the fourth precept to include all forms of unmindful speech and unheedful listening:


“Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful speech and the inability to listen to others, I am committed to cultivating loving speech and compassionate listening in order to relieve suffering and to promote reconciliation and peace in myself and among other people, ethnic and religious groups, and nations. Knowing that words can create happiness or suffering, I am committed to speaking truthfully using words that inspire confidence, joy, and hope. When anger is manifesting in me, I am determined not to speak. I will practice mindful breathing and walking in order to recognize and to look deeply into my anger. I know that the roots of anger can be found in my wrong perceptions and lack of understanding of the suffering in myself and in the other person. I will speak and listen in a way that can help myself and the other person to transform suffering and see the way out of difficult situations. I am determined not to spread news that I do not know to be certain and not to utter words that can cause division or discord. I will practice Right Diligence to nourish my capacity for understanding, love, joy, and inclusiveness, and gradually transform anger, violence, and fear that lie deep in my consciousness.”

and elsewhere:


“Do not say untruthful things for the sake of personal interest or to impress people. Do not utter words that cause division and hatred. Do not spread news that you do not know to be certain. Do not criticize or condemn things of which you are not sure. Always speak truthfully and constructively. Have the courage to speak out about situations of injustice, even when doing so may threaten your own safety.”


It’s hard to improve on either the aspiration or the advice!

Mindfulness of speech allows us to carefully guard what we’re about to say. If we’re aware that we’re about to say something we might regret, it’s helpful to pause just long enough to ask ourselves four questions:

1.Why am I saying this?


2.Is it completely true?


3.Is it the right time to say it?


4.Is it liable to result in benefit or harm?


If the motivation is self-serving or hateful, if it’s not completely true, if it’s poorly worded or ill-timed, or if it is likely to cause more harm than good, then don’t say it. It’s simple.
(Seth Segall then discusses various forms of lies, some less harmful than others)

Inflamed political rhetoric fails a number of important karmic tests. It is 1) not fully truthful, 2) spoken out of aversion, 3) slanderous and/or demeaning in intent, and 4) crafted to ignite passion rather than reason. What good could possibly come from it?

As the Dhammapada notes:

“If you speak… with a corrupted heart, then suffering follows you — as the wheel of the cart, the track of the ox that pulls it.” [1]

Words, like actions, have consequences, and set the stage for our future happiness or misery. This is the implacable law of cause-and-effect. We can refrain from causing harm to ourselves and others only through mindfulness, discerning wisdom, and a compassionate heart.
This week the reckless use of language has not only clouded and impeded a true national dialogue on the important issues of our time, but it also has contributed to tragic deaths and injuries caused by a deluded mind with a semi-automatic weapon.

He ends with a request for peace for all beings, and who can disagree? When I was younger, as I wrote about at record-setting length nearly two years ago as Pax Christi Passover, I wanted to join the Navy, I wanted to shoot, I wanted to fight, I wanted to revolt. My reading, my films, my music all changed, but this mentality stuck with me until I found a gentler appeal from the Franciscan ethos, the Catholic Workers, the principled anarchists I met in college and after. My religious allegiances shifted, ebbed, flowed, halted, twisted, eddied. My blog documents my journey inside and outside. I don't tell all here, nor may I ever, but these sentiments, in the bold rather than spineless manner of their articulation, do inform my present situation.

Starting the new year and my commute to work and back, I've opted for classical music instead of rock. I felt I needed downtime on the freeway. I kept it up this week. Not sure how long, and it's no New Year's promise, but I need a change from the constant barrage of diatribes, accusations, and recriminations. May this article posted here add to the need for peace rather than detract from it. May we all long for calm resolution.

Illustration: Eric Gill, 1915, Tate Gallery. Note again the Dhammapada quoted above: “If you speak… with a corrupted heart, then suffering follows you — as the wheel of the cart, the track of the ox that pulls it.” [1] "Dumb Driven Cattle"

The Political Battlefield: Blogging Roundtable

"The Political Battlefield". Tamerlane at True Liberal Nexus gave Cyn at Double Jointed Fingers, Little Isis at Liberal Rapture, John W. Smart, and me questions about the current campaigns and future of US politics. I copy the discussion below. This roundtable follows #1 on "The Future of Blogging.") (Editorial Note: moderator Tamerlane refuses to capitalize our President's surname as an unearned honorific. TL offers a great analogy of the solar system to political orbits! Image: Filip Spagnoli.)

I. The Political Landscape

1: Is the traditional concept of a left – right political “spectrum” still valid?

Cyn: It appears to be so in concept. Liberals and conservatives could not be farther apart in ideology. However, the actual parties seem to beholden to the same corporate interests, making it harder and harder to distinguish between them.

Fionnchú: Desmond Fennell, an Irish malcontent scholar, opined that we’re still stuck quibbling over the seating arrangements of the French Assembly of 1791. I agree.

John W. Smart: Currently, the Left/Right paradigm is useful to gin up voters and not much else. I continue to use Left/Right because there is no other, better, well known shorthand. It still works to a degree with social issues, where the divide remains clear. But the fact is in the U.S. the spectrum is from Right to Far Right . The Left, such as it is, does not really matter, except when it attends rallies in the service of the not quite so far Right, which makes them feel as if they matter. Real Leftists, like Chomsky, are marginalia in this country and have been for quite some time.

littleisis: It’s becoming less and less valid as time goes on. Independents form a majority of the electorate these days, especially since people are catching on to the fact that there isn’t much difference between the two parties.

tamerlane: It’s more like a political solar system. The extreme leftists — Greens, etc., are Mercury — too intense. The Progs are Venus — good idea, but got too hot and failed. True liberals are Earth — just right. Republicans range from moderates (Mars — cold & inhospitable, just barely able to support life), to right wing (the gas giants.) Christian conservatives are Pluto — small and dim. The Tea Party is a big meteor on an erratic orbit, that may or may not crash into Earth and cause great damage. Libertarians are far out, lost somewhere beyond the Oort Cloud.

2: Can viable third parties exist under our system?

CYN: If they ever could, now would seem to be the time. However, without term limits, campaign finance laws, and prohibiting corporate interests from determining the outcome of elections, they don t have a snowballs chance in hell.

F: No, as they lack funds. The bipartisan system is monolithic.

JWS: No. Not at this moment. It is entirely possible that a third force will emerge soon that resists being subsumed by one party or the other. The GOP is rising again. Should they fail again in the eyes of the public SOMETHING will give. I do not know that it will be a “party” though. The strains of America just past its peak will produce something like a third party. But will it attempt to gain power in a traditional way? The last 3 elections give it little reason to try.

LI: I don’t think so. Third parties are usually co-opted by one of the two major parties, and it’s been the same way in the past. We’re seeing that right now with the GOP and the Tea Partiers, and earlier we saw it with PUMA. Joseph Cannon used to talk at length about this, but he’s gone now. *sad face*

TAM: No. In attempting to avoid political parties entirely, our Founding Fathers ensured that we’re stuck with but two — overbearing — ones. Parties come and go, but there can only be two at a time for any extended period.

3: Giving a percentage, how different are the GOP and Dems?

CYN: Actually, they are rather close. I would say within 15 to 20%.

F: 30%

JWS: They are 30% different now. This difference will rise soon, but not by much and not for long. The GOP is going right, and after a brief interlude for show, the Democrats will go Right with it.

LI: Two percent, maybe.

TAM: platforms, 70%; practice, 40%

4: obama has been called a socialist by some. How would you label him?

CYN: He is certainly NOT a socialist. I would label him too inexperienced and afraid to commit to any political party, which is why he is so afraid to stand up for what he believes in, if anything. He tries to please all of the people all of the time, which is impossible. He is a party of one.

F: Capitalist tool. Any state control Obama and his cronies want differs little in substance if more in rhetoric from their GOP enemies: both parties are indentured and intermarried with those who run Wall Street and every financial, media, and capitalist enterprise where true power lies. Obama’s a very willing errand boy for the masters of us all.

JWS: A statist if he cared deeply about policy. But he doesn’t, so he is merely a narcissist. Though, when all is said and done he may be seen as a Chicago Machinist. His Admin and Chicago Alderman have much in common.

LI: An opportunist. I tend to agree with JS that he was sent by grocery clerks.

TAM: Common Street Thug.

II. The Parties
5: How long will the Tea Party last?

CYN: I live in a very economically depressed upstate area with a majority of Republican voters. I think so long as the Tea Party keeps playing the I am just like you and fed up with big gov't theme, they may last until the next time the Republicans gain power and then stick it to them once again.

F: Before the 2012 election, it will fade.

JWS: The thing called the “tea party” won’t last. The impulse that animates much of it will go on and on. The only reason the current incarnation of this strain of Americanism seem so odd to so many is that it has come so quickly on the heels of Obama’s victory. The Tea Party themes have deep roots in this country.

LI: I think it will eventually be absorbed into the GOP but for now it’s a formidable force and no one should make fun of it. As Bill Clinton says, they’re saying something everyone is thinking, which is that a majority of Americans aren’t doing so well right now.

TAM: Two election cycles, tops.

6: Can the Tea Party survive outside the GOP?

CYN: Gawd, I hope not.

F: No, as it has been cozily co-opted.

JWS: Yes. But so far there is no reason for it to try. What is less likely to survive in the short term is the current GOP establishment. The Tea Party will survive by invading the GOP. The economic ideas of the Tea Party have already taken over the GOP. They have won, regardless of which candidates win.

LI: Nope. See above about third parties getting co-opted. It’s possible that it was Astroturfed from the beginning, but I tend to think it wasn’t. The MSM treated it like a joke, despite its size, when it first appeared. It was only when it got backing from some big sugar daddies from the GOP that we started hearing more about the candidates they were running, and a lot of them were socially conservative despite the Tea Party’s populist roots.

TAM: Question is, can the GOP survive with the TP inside?

7: Who will be the biggest winners & biggest losers in the midterms?

CYN: I would guess the Republicans will be the biggest winners in that they will win more seats but not necessarily do anything constructive with them. I cannot see the Democrats gaining in any area.

F: Losers? Dem mainstream if enough districts survive the gerrymandering we’re stuck in. Tea Partiers who thought they could resist the GOP mainstream and get funding to win. Winners? Dem mainstream again if enough districts favor the gerrymandering we’re trapped in. Dems are turning the tide in many regions by scare tactics: negative campaign blitzes.

JWS: Biggest Winners: Mark Rubio (instant star, think Obama in 2004.), GOP House members itching to issue subpoenas, gleefully frothing Fox News anchors, Pat Toomey, Republican Governors nationwide.
Biggest Losers in order: The 2008 Democratic coalition, Pelosi (no matter who takes the House), Obama (regardless of final numbers), Blanche Lincoln. Charlie Crist. Anyone left who seriously thought Obama would be a transformative President.

LI: I think Obama administration will be the biggest loser, and any Dem who voted lock and step with him. The biggest winners will probably be the Tea Party people, but I have no idea.

TAM: Winners: the power lords; Losers: the common people.

8: Major Party most likely to dissolve or splinter in the next decade:

CYN: Democrats. They have no message and even if they did somehow find their voices, they wouldn t be able to get their message across.

F: GOP, not the Dems. There’s nowhere else for liberals to go. Those on the right bicker more on principle.

JWS: Democrats. The divide was papered over once. It won’t be again. Obama simply cannot hold together the traditional Democratic coalition. Clinton on the ticket in ’12 helps. But the tension between the liberals on either coast and the old line Dems in the mid west is too acute. The fissures are real and no body other than the Clintons have the ability to bridge the divide. There are no animating ideas in the liberal or moderate wings of the Democratic Party. Nor do any seem to be emerging.
The GOP is in tune with the Tea Party on most issues. They will be fine under the same roof. This is the GOP getting its groove back — an ejection of the ghosts of George W Bush and a resurrection of Reagan.

LI: I admit to having no idea. Both of them are unpopular with a majority of Americans.

TAM: GOP. They were on the verge of breaking apart before obama gave them a reprieve. The Dems fight in public, the Gops do it behind closed doors. The TP will not be willing to take a back seat.

III. Wild Cards
9: Odds that Sarah Palin will run as a third-party candidate in ’12?

CYN: It's hard to say. She is very savvy when it comes to hitting the right notes with middle class working people who are disgusted with America. However, If she runs, I think it will be on the GOP ticket and that is what will motivate some Democratic voters to go to the polls.

F: Weak. 15%

JWS: 2,000-1 against. 50-50 that she’ll run as a Republican.

LI: Slim to none. She’ll run for the GOP nomination if at all.

TAM: Very low, unless the TP and trad GOP really squabble, in which case, a lock. She’s aiming for ’16.

10: Odds that obama will seek reelection:

CYN: His ego won’ t let him do otherwise. And, his Mirror, Mirror on the Wall (aka Axelrod) will tell him he can’t lose because he is still ”the one”.

F: Almost certain. 90%

JWS: 60-40 in favor.

LI: Looking pretty slim at the moment. His ego can’t handle a big loss.

TAM: t.b.d. BO’s certainly not inclined — all this rejection is a bummer for a narcissist, all this hard work a bummer for a stoner. But can his handlers force him?

11: What would it take for Hillary to run?

CYN: Obama not running and the Democrats begging her on bended knees, acknowledging how they shafted her in 08. Even then, she may not. I have the utmost respect for Senator Clinton and believe she is the only one who can get us out of the mess that two terms of Bush and one of obama handed us. That said, I really don't believe she will run.

F: The eulogy for Obama. The funeral Mass for Biden.

JWS: Obama quitting the race.

LI: What most people think it would take. Obama would have to step aside and not seek reelection. She has believed in working within the system since she was in college and would never primary a sitting President.

TAM: obama not running.

12: Impact of a Chrissie O’Donnell victory:

CYN: She is just another wacko politician and we’ve survived plenty of them already. If she wins, she will be a one term wonder with little impact.

F: More Comedy Central fodder. She would not survive a term and would be recalled; but I doubt if she’ll win in bank-coddled Delaware.

JWS: Nada. Not gonna happen unless Coon is caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy. But, if by some miracle she did win it would add have no impact, except to humiliate Delaware and the Bidens.

LI: We would have our first puritan congresswoman, but other than that, I don't think it would matter much. She wouldn’t be able to legislate her extremism, luckily we have political and constitutional barriers to prevent that kind of thing.

TAM: 1) The GOP Whip would box her in pretty quick and limit embarrassments; 2) other mentally ill persons would be inspired to run for office, too.

IV. Druthers
13: The one (legal) change to our political system you’d make:

CYN: No more electoral college, as it is ripe with corruption. The popular vote would determine the winner. And, how about paper ballots?

F: “None of the above” on ballots.

JWS: Mandatory public financing of all elections.

LI: Campaign finance reform.

TAM: Proportional allotment of senate seats by population.

14: Unconstitutional voting requirement you wish you could impose:

CYN: No caucusing. Primary voting only.

F: Mandated voting for all on penalty of whatever we smug voters decide. Sterilization might be nice, or at least a non-discriminatory literacy poll test. (I assume this is read as satire, you muckrakers.)

JWS: I’d ban all American Idol fans from voting.

LI: None, I have too much respect for the constitution, but I sometimes think it should be illegal for certain people to reproduce.

TAM: Pass a freshman college course in Logic.

15: Foreign political party you wish were in the US:

CYN: Democratic Socialist, maybe?

F: Are there any Icelandic ones advocating secular curricula and rampant paganism? One with symbols on the ballot for the illiterate as in the Third World countries. I’d want a cool logo with a fab cartoon owl.

JWS: Not sure. I’d like to see a real socialist party in the mix here, even if I might not support them. Or a labor party worthy of the name. Also a Green Party that had some real power.

LI: Labor.

TAM: Liberal Democrats, UK. (But Sinn Fein if things get worser faster.)

16: If you could form your own Party, what would you call it, and who would you run for President?

CYN: Women Rock and I would run Hillary, who recognizes that there is more to governing than wishing it were so.

F: The Loyal Opposition. Ralph Nader & Pat Buchanan. (I took a political quiz about 15 years ago: it pegged me as a cross between Ralph Nader & Pat Buchanan.)

JWS: The American Party. Elizabeth Warren.

LI: I like Lynne from Lakeland’s idea for a masturbation party, and I would have to run Tila Tequila as the standard bearer.

TAM: The “People, Stop the Insanity!” Party; Susan Powter.

Roundtable: the Future of Blogging

My blog comrade Tamerlane at True Liberal Nexus, hosted John W. Smart, Little Isis at (the new) "Liberal Rapture" and Cyn of Double Jointed Fingers. He asked us to weigh in on the future of blogging.

Here are the responses. Links above quadruplicate them, but from those you can leap to URLs or their own fabulous blogs. I know they all beat me to posting them, but 1) I did not realize I was supposed to also, 2) I was off at an Irish Studies conference with only my lil' phone and my tired, tendon-challenged thumbs, 3) at two airports for considerable time with the same weary digits, so pardon the delay.

BLOGGERS' ROUNDTABLE: the Future of Blogging.

with Cyn, Fionnchú, John W. Smart, littleisis, and tamerlane

** The Bios **

Cyn
Blog: Double Jointed Fingers

Blogging since: 2000 and Bush v. Gore. I totally didn’t see that coming and I was so outraged that I started looking around the internet to see if anyone else was as enraged as I. I ended up at Kicking Ass, the DNC blog and stayed there until 2008. A lot of those wonderful Dem friends I had made were not only backing Obama, but vilifying Hillary. I also blogged at Night Bird’s Fountain, but left in 2004 and started my own blog.

Real life profession: legal assistant to sole practitioner attorney

Reason I got into blogging: politics

Hours per week spent on my blog: Not that many. I don’t feel the need to post every day or even every week, although I did feel the need during the 2008 primary. For me, blogging helps me let off steam, share information and gives me a creative outlet.

Hours per week on other blogs: Hard to say, as it varies. I would guess approx. 10 hours per week.

Fionnchú

Blog: Blogtrotter

Blogging since: 2007

Other published or posted works: academic journals; scholarly references; Lunch.com, Amazon US (Top 500 reviewer), New York Journal of Books, and PopMatters websites.

Real-life profession: Medievalist turned Humanities college instructor.

Reason I got into blogging: To share my passion for ideas and get my thoughts out of my mind and beyond the limits of a low-level teaching gig with few chances to find colleagues or students of a like-minded, inquiring, ornery, eclectic, and debatable bent.

Hours per week spent working on my blog: 6 (on average)

Hours per week spent reading other people’s blogs: 2 (I read fast)

John Smart

Blog: JohnWSmart

Blogging since: 2005

Real-life profession: Film Clearance Administration

Reason I got into blogging: Anger at Bush administration lies.

Hours per week spent working on my blog: 20

Hours per week spent reading other people’s blogs: 5

littleisis

Blogs: You can find me at Liberal Rapture or the Confluence

Blogging since: I was seventeen.

Other published or posted works: I can’t disclose those, this is a family blog.

Real-life profession: Student

Reason I got into blogging: I started paying more attention to politics and entertainment towards the end of High School, after a string of suicides occurred in my graduating class. (Two of them were good friends of mine.) Blogging is the easiest way to shout my opinions at people.

Hours per week spent working on my blog: Depends on the week.

Hours per week spent reading other people’s blogs: Also depends on the week.

tamerlane

Blogs:

True Liberal Nexus

JohnWSmart (guest contributor)

Liberal Rapture (cross-posted hitchhiker)

Blogging since: 2009

Other published or posted works: Myriad client profiles, press releases, newsletter articles, print ads, & promotional brochures; Training Agreements, Helmet Release & Hold Harmless forms; a thesis on medieval knights; a published board game; a privately disseminated cookbook.

Real-life profession: Horse trainer; former jack of all trades

Reason I got into blogging: To protest the Sting of Hillary Clinton and to combat the destruction of Liberalism by the Obamalonian Horde.

Hours per week spent working on my blog: 3? 5? 0?

Hours per week spent at other people’s blogs: I have no fucking clue.

** Roundtable Questions **

I The Future of Blogging

1. Can Blogging Save the World?

Cyn: I don’t think anything can save the world. I’ve become somewhat jaded after the 2008 election. I believe there is only so much that bloggers can do to make a difference. However, I do see that the Tea Party (however much I disagree with them), are making a huge difference in the Republican party, but I don’t know that it is due to blogging. I do believe that so long as we don’t lose our hope of being able to make the world a better place, blogging will continue to grow.

Fionnchu: No, given that our voices will be drowned out.

John W. Smart: No. Nor should it try.

littleisis: Anything that speaks truth to power can end up saving the world. Mainstream press seems more concerned with speaking power to truth these days.

tamerlane: No, but it can rescue a scrap of veracity and free, meaningful discourse — our samizdat in the face of Pravda Light censorship and Dancing with the Stars distraction.


2. Will Blogs replace Newspapers?

CYN: So long as newspapers need to turn a profit and remain beholden to corporate interests, yes.

F: No, as we lack the funds to afford to investigate issues on our own without the backing that media gain. We also lack credibility unless perhaps attached to a larger blog site sponsored by a corporation. We don’t get the press respect or the PR clout that enables us to garner review copies, either!

JWS: No.

LI: Eventually they will. I use the NYT to line my cat’s kitty litter.

TAM: They’ll meet somewhere in the middle. Unlike 99% of bloggers, most newspapers still know how to write & edit, and do proper investigative reporting. Most bloggers are hacks suffering from the mind-scours.


3. Should a successful blog: a) charge to read it? b) Accept Ads? c) Ask for donations? d) Stay free, free as the wind blows?

CYN: In a perfect world, stay free, free as the wind. However, if the blogger needs to ask for donations or put ads on their blog to generate income, it doesn’t bother me. Especially if it is a blog I follow on a regular basis. I would rather donate than see it shut down.

F: Stay free. I don’t accept ads, I wish blogs were free of ads. I prefer a Net more resistant to consumerism and capitalism. I wish I’d started on WordPress, not Google’s E-Blogger. But, tech- challenged, as I began a few years ago, it’s too late now given the search engine tilts. And, I have a corporation giving me access gratis to make my blog. So, there’s a hidden charge, no free lunch.

JWS: a. no. b. yes. c. yes. d. no.

LI: I don’t know about charging readers, but I don’t see any problem with accepting ads or asking for donations. Regular blogging can take time.

TAM: Computers and the internet place us at the potential dawn of a new social order, with a truly “free” market where people give things away for self-actualization. Kinda like Star Trek.


II The Blogosphere


4. Person you’d like to see blogging who doesn’t?

CYN: Madeleine Albright. She fascinates me.

F: Some of my egghead but populist friends in Ireland and here, who prefer anonymity due to their fears of surveillance.

JWS: Edie Falco.

LI: Seriously. She’s brilliant, funny and a great writer. I just have to nab her before TC does.

TAM: John Mellencamp.



5. Does Perez Hilton hurt or help blogs being taken seriously?

CYN: I have no idea as I never knew she had a blog. However, sight unseen, I don’t think it would make a difference.

F: I could care less. TMZ and C-Span both serve as entertainment in the media we’re dished out. Any arena will attract the strutters and ballhogs as well as us waterboys and peanut vendors. Bloggers are caricatured as kooks by the mainstream, but the MSM funds and uses them too. I think FB or whatever future medium rises will erode blogs more, as people read less. Scanning and Twitter and instant updates also substitute for what a few years ago blogs provided as a method to share tidbits and finds on and off the Net. E-mail dwindles as people don’t use that to share information as links or photos or articles among a list of friends, and as with discussion lists in the late 90s, blogs may fade more in this respect.

JWS: He has no affect.

LI: Not for me to say. Not all blogs should be taken seriously to begin with. Similarly, not all newspapers should be taken seriously. The National Enquirer or the NYT, for example.

TAM: Who’s Perez Hilton?


6. Is the Huffington Post a blog, a newspaper, or something else?

CYN: A blog, and all blogs are not alike.

F: It replaces Time Magazine as a compendium of a safe political slant– combined with pop culture and stupid photos & videos that I admit being surprised to find. I don’t read it but I get links to it via FB posts by friends now and then. This is what the MSM is evolving towards.

JWS: Something else.

LI: A newspaper, because it repeats talking points.

TAM: It’s the air-sickness bag of the proglydite Weltanschauung.


7. Are Kos and Drudge journalists, politicos, or something else?

CYN: In my opinion, politicos.

F: They began as pioneer investigators, but as celebrity bloggers, they’ve capitulated to MSM corporate approval.

JWS: Something else.

LI: Tough question. I’m not even sure if they’re human.

TAM: They’re two little hitlers who’ll fight it out until one little hitler does the other one’s will.



III The Art of Blogging


8. Worst sin(s) a blogger can make?

CYN: Knowingly posting lies or advancing an opinion on behalf of someone who pays you to do so.

F: Not revealing sponsorship or perks.

JWS: Thinking they matter more than they do.

LI: Banning people for financial or business reasons.

TAM: Writing when they have nothing to say; Cut & paste; Blogging Under the Influence.



9. The perfect blog post would …

CYN: Inform me, charm me and make me laugh.

F: Distinguish between cut & paste blather and original insights that the author labored over rather than plagiarized or paraphrased.

JWS: Link to my blog.

LI: Make people think, and laugh.

TAM: Put something in a new light for me.


10. Ideal length of a blog post?

CYN: Personally, so long as it keeps my attention, it doesn’t matter.

F: Less than most of mine. 750-1000 words max?

JWS: Depends on the topic.

LI: It would depend on the subject of the post and whether it’s an open thread.

TAM: I’ve retained the self-editing habits from writing for print materials with physical size constraints:

* Daily comment on news: <= 500 words
* Weekly observation/rant: 750 – 1,000 words
* Monthly philosophizing: 1,500 – 2,000 words.
* If you have anything longer, send it to the New Yorker.


11. Ideal format: Minimalist or Glitzy?

CYN: What ever floats your boat or reflects the personality of the blog.

F: Minimal. I hate distractions. But I do like decorating the margins with artworks and piddling with colors. Google is not as generous as I’d have anticipated with how you can customize your templates.

JWS: Minimal.

LI: I prefer glitzy, but I’m a girl.

TAM: Minimalist.


12. Real-life human activity blogging most emulates?

CYN: Dear diary.

F: Chatting with friends about ideas, issues, and trends. Or talking to yourself. Some may say masturbation in public, but haven’t writers, actors, and creative types been long accused by puritans and prudes?

JWS: Walking.

LI: Telling your children you’d like to do what you can to make the world a better place for them.

TAM: Singing in the shower.


IV Your Blogging Goals


13. Head-in-the-clouds goal for your blog:

CYN: I really don’t take my blog that seriously.

F: To gain a patron & recognition for my brilliant acumen so I never have to work again. I keep expecting a MacArthur Grant in my inbox. Acclaim from the academy so I land instant tenure and I can get time to write books rather than entries every other day. I stopped daily blogging when I realized how few people cared about it. But that led to a backlog of dozens of entries, ironically enough!

JWS: Huge profits.

LI: Loyal regulars.

TAM: To have both Rush Limbaugh and Keith Olbermann on the same day mention with disgust the same TLN post.


14. Feet-on-the-ground goal:

CYN: Possibly transfer my blog from Blogger to Wordpad.

F: To keep it up until I die or until some other medium evolves that I can afford to replace it. I feel it’s like a term paper that’s always near due, and it keeps me locked into a self-imposed schedule. It keeps my mind fresher and my thoughts more ordered, as I pretend I have an audience that gets me out of my own self-glorification and makes me aware of the fact someone may take me to account. I have made friends whom I’ve gone on to meet in the “real world,” and that pleases me no end, as such contacts in my daily life are non-existent regarding such comradeship.

JWS: Keep going.

LI: Loyal regulars

TAM: I get lots of hits, but want more comments.



15. Any changes, improvements. additions you’d like to make to your blog?

CYN: I pretty much change my blog design when I get bored with how it looks.

F: I’d like the Google E-Blogger templates to allow more alterations for a tech-challenged type. But now that they have started charging $10 for template changes of some sorts, I wonder. WordPress seems the only competition, but it’s as I mentioned a bit too late to migrate. The Google formats constrict you even as they make it dumbbell-accessible, an inevitable compromise to put such html intricacies in the hands of the huddled masses.

JWS: Yes. There are.

LI: I wish it looked more glamorous, but there’s only so many things you can do with wordpress.

TAM: Tags and shit.


16. If you were paid full-time to blog, would you do it?

CYN: No. I would feel stifled.

F: Yes, but I’d prefer a MacArthur grant renewed in perpetuity. I might hate blogging if it was my job. As a hobby, it’s fine.

JWS: Yes.

LI: Absolutely.

TAM: Twist my arm.

"Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog: Medieval Studies & New Media": Book Review

If you wondered where the sniggers in Chaucer lurk, read on. It started on Friendster as a fakester, a grad student's "pop culture parody written in cod-Middle English by a Chaucerian persona." It morphed into a blog followed by thousands of medievalists, "nice smart people," witty pranksters, and professorial jesters. Brantley L. Bryant unmasks himself as "LeVostreGC," or "your GC", and my having to explain that reference exemplifies the fun, and the erudition, of his creation.

The blog and book's title itself combines "hath" in the archaic usage with "blog" as our current use. This chronologically unbound "central conceit" revives Chaucer as participant in this variation on "fan fiction." This project draws in villainous rival poet John Gower, whiningly pious Margery Kempe, and proto-stoner Thomas Usk. Political intrigues from the late thirteenth century begin to parallel, in this distorted universe, real 1386 with what Bryant conjured up online in 2006. He started this GC character as a diversion from his dissertation. Certainly the mash-up results-- clever, learned, and engagingly arcane-- merit their own surprising study in this installment of The New Middle Ages series from a scholarly press. This anthology recounts the impact of this and related websites by medievalists over the past fifteen years in popular culture, academic circles, and via social networking.

Senior scholars Bonnie Wheeler and Jeffery Jerome Cohen add their own chapters on such educated, insipid, and inspired entertainment. Cohen, however, adds a cautionary note. Given that most of us click on Friendster as often as we consult microfiche, the expectation that such archived resources will always be ready and waiting for us may be foolish. The "inherently gregarious" blog community, where comments can be appended and threads taken up years after they first extend, may be as short lived as Friendster's fame.

Moving more materials onto the Web where you and I read this review could justify more reductions in a faculty often-, unlike Bryant who landed a tenure-track job after finishing his dissertation-- relegated to the wandering scholar status of their medieval predecessors. Online shifts, Cohen suggests, might hasten humanities downsizing at corporatizing universities. Limited access by databased research only a large university can afford to subscribe shuts off less-privileged inquirers in ways library books do not. Transferring to a friends-only, short-lived access Facebook or Twitter the conversations once preserved on blogs may mean that even a blog may find a short shelf life. Ironically, this book allows us all affordable and permanent consultation of this Chaucer blog, even if Bryant (or Google's Blogger) shuts it down.

The contrasts between Wheeler's cheer, Bryant's enthusiasm, and Cohen's caution typify reactions to the cultural contexts for this technology. The other eighty percent of these pages share actual contents. Robert W. Hanning (Bryant's professor) teases and torments us with fifteen pages crammed with outrageously recondite puns, limericks, parodies, songs, smut, and bumper sticker slogans. This "comic diary," he tells us, is fifty years in the making. Hanning's section's titled "Chaucerians Do It with Pronounced E's." If that sparks a smile, read on. It's that kind of book. If you lack intimacy with Middle English, Chaucer, and medieval Europe, perhaps these delights may seduce you into fluency.

This humor, overly clever if often challenging (I confess a Ph.D. in the period, yet there's one allusion that baffles me), immortalizes what Chaucer had in common with his followers today. A bawdy, intellectual, humbling, holy, and clerically-tinged relish for the absurd, the lofty, and the ensuing, frequent collisions between our aspirations and our asses. Bryant and his conspirators remind us of the joy of scholarship, too often crushed by publish-or-perish pressures. The success of this blog beyond ivory towers, or flourescent-lit classrooms and dim cubicles, conveys the passion devoted by fans to a time they love.

Examples from the blog may confound those accustomed only to Modern English. So, I will nudge you towards a couple of passages that you may chuckle at readily. One of the early successes for Bryant's blog came when GC marveled at the spam he received, "wondrous messages from the Internet." "Heere are a fewe ensaumples," drawn from their subject lines. The texts themselves reward your own discovery.

"A fayre ladye of a far londe offreth me hir loue!" (Sexy female from an exotic realm seeks release.) "An churlish proposicioun of anatomical alchemie," for whatever aphrodisiac augmentation a canon might concoct. "A mightie prince of power asketh myn succour yn matirs financiale!" (Armenia fills in via "hottemail.com" for Nigeria.) "An appeale to the lustes of the bodi!" (Via "Brokers of Onlyne Erotica.") "And last but nat least, fortune doth smile vpon me!" (A chain letter.) Satire proves how our foibles endure.

More episodes ensue. I am taking one nearly at random to illustrate how far this conceit carried Bryant. A Paris Hilton ancestress, Reims Launcechrona, sashays in for an interview. Playing word-association with our abashed interlocutor, to "Confessioun," she replies: "Hotness. My friare-confessour is sooo hotte. Lyk, he beth so hotte that thou nedest to put fowere of the letter t in 'hotttte.' Thank God spellinge is nat standardised yet, for we may neede moore than four of the letter t."

That sort of sly charm permeates this tribute to Chaucer's appeal and the spell his century casts on those who pursue it today, amidst the same distractions and discussions you and I engage in at our keyboards. It, as with many inspired colloquies in this medium, does cut off suddenly. Perhaps due to the need to rush this into print, or the weariness of the author, or the inherent nature of a blog that whirls as rapidly as its URL taking its title from Chaucer's own dream vision, The House of Fame, its entries halt, as GC muses over the werewolf craze: Thys is a bandwagon upon which Ich wolde lyke to leap.

The most ambitious entry in an already advanced anthology of allusion? For me, it's King Richard and GC escaping the Appellants to Las Vegas. They meet figures incorporated from literary and historical late medieval Europe. For example, the pair are beset by Bertilak Marx, the wily host of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, who assumes an Allen Ginsberg guise. Bertilak insists they listen to his poem "Vowel," on the Great Vowel Shift-- which in turn relies on your comprehension of the Professor Hanning's "Pronounced E's" slogan. Margery Kempe intervenes-- now a cardiganed professor at an American university after a harrowing interview at the MLA where her own autobiography puts words in her decidedly pre-postmodern mouth-- to save the king from his burning at the stake for minutiae including a deadpan inquistorial recital of the four evils of airplane peanuts and their packaging.

Well, if this all raises a grin, or cocks an eyebrow, check out this one volume from a scholarly press on Chaucer and his era which will spark more risibility than the usual monograph. Combining the commentary on this electronic medium for medievalists to spread both learning and wit with generous excerpts (updated and revised by Bryant for print) from the blog, this volume reminded me how much I enjoyed reading about these lost centuries. This study, in its learned laughter, should be snapped up by anybody who wondered, back in class, where all the devout or dirty jokes in Chaucer were buried. After this excavation, you'll wind up not only reviving them, but inventing your own, perhaps in orthographically-challenged cod-Myddle Englyshe, parchaunce. (Shorter and revised version of this on Amazon US 6-16-10; submitted to PopMatters.)

Visit: Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog

Cyber-friends, Online Fences, Factory Schools

I hate talking on a phone. I'm getting tendonitis from using this keyboard. My work requires I log on 24/7 to teach my "blended learning" classes and my classrooms now mean I diminish my own inventiveness to teach to a top-down mandated lesson plan in the cause of "course consistency."

I accessed my course evaluations for the first stint under this new regime. Many of my students noted their unhappiness with what a Marxian might have reminded us, in the age of chalk unless you had a hip prof sitting on the edge of a desk flipping a coin, of the "school as factory" or "banking" models. Those tenured radicals of my college years might now wax nostalgic (as some Russians long for Stalin) for blue book exams, lined-up chairs bolted to tiny desks (none for you left-handers), seating charts. Bells, yells, drills.

Compared to what now? "Student-centered" approaches of peer groups (blind leading blind, contra Fanon & Friere; my last class in "advanced composition" featured one student (who happened to be my age) out of thirty as sufficiently literate. Many enrolled entered-- and a few I fear left nearly as-- worse than the remedial ("developmental") students I'd taught two terms earlier; two were my students in both classes. Their progress proved to have been minimal in the intervening class and term not taken with me for "basic composition."

So, as I look at my charges, with smartphones and laptops, arrayed more and more out of my line of sight, hiding in front of computer stations instead of those tiny wraparound desks, if sitting in equally uncomfortable chairs, I wonder. About their literacy, their ability to concentrate, their own carpal tunnel syndromes, their tiny fonts on tiny screens they thumb. I imagine them hunched and squinting, after thirty or forty years of peering into backlit pools of images, staring at glowing flat monitors. Or whatever holographs they conjure up circa my estimated funeral.

Where I teach, they can choose only technical and business majors. We don't teach for the joy of learning, but for the skills corporations demand. We churn degrees out in our mass production line, accelerated eight-week courses marketed towards turnaround in three-odd years, a relentless pace that takes its toll. Grim jokes about the only way out of where we clock in (and are monitored on-line now more than ever thanks to such electronic "platforms" to "deliver" material to "customers") appear to be by heart attacks abound. We faculty, untenured, underpaid, recall the jobs we hoped (alongside thousands who compete for the adjunct "freeway flyer" jobs I too started with Ph.D. in hand), had aimed for, and in this market never got. We're told implicitly every day now for the past few years we're lucky not to have been fired. At-will employees, half of our full-time colleagues were laid off in '07.

It's a labor-intensive Fordist workplace. I may romanticize a truer campus as
"field" compared to my office park oxymoron, freeway adjacent, airport bordered. I envy despite their own publish-or-perish entrapment our colleagues with their thirty weeks of classes, research grants (I hope given their straitened budgets; we who must teach rather than write books need some of our former grad school classmates and mentors to produce scholarship for the rest of us highly trained but overdriven drones to at least glance at enviously), and support (I hope!) for the life of the mind and not only the use of the classroom as career generator. Ok, I romanticize.

I've taught there going on fifteen years this autumn. I've taught a total of twenty-six years this fall. So, in my 3/5 curriculum vitae "running my life" at my walled-in, windowed-absent or at least sealed, glass lined, campus-as-parking lot institution, what the future holds-- for me who never thought I'd wind up in such an edifice for my treadmill teaching-- lies in the hands of those who direct my classes, who design my curricula, who select my textbooks (or e-Books as paper ones begin to vanish), and who assign my course load of about fifteen courses a year.

I started on campus with Microsoft 3.1, those red-blue-green overlaid templates with F-commands (which still as my older students note come in very handy in a pinch). Amber and green-lit monitors were only beginning to fade before Mosaic's browser brought us the GUI and a Web we could see. Kennys bookstore in Ireland was one of the first on-line sites I visited; the Medieval consortium at NYU reminded me the year I finished my arcane dissertation that I was the last year, almost precisely, to not use the Internet, 500 index cards of bibliographical sources. No "works cited" or "reference list" filled with http:// -- or at least ftp://.

Now, self-taught except for programs my workplace told me to learn, I nudge my way intuitively, with a bit of asking around now and then, around the keyboard, the Net, the virtual sites I must report into and figure out or at least wander around. I spent yesterday afternoon logging in for my annual "performance review" dozens of numbers to be crunched for my supervisor, for that alone determines my being kept on this job. What I manage to publish, how I connect with students, the letters of recommendation I prepare, the chats I have with them and colleagues about what to read or what to watch-- that may be filtered through such data. Or obscured; we humanists can't quantify our skills. I don't know.

My supervisor skimmed my list of what qualified me as a "Subject Matter Expert." Our school sells itself, literally, on hands-on experience from its faculty. When you're a humanist with a Ph.D. in English Lit, the chances for such daily immersion outside of the assumption "all we do is mark up papers for grammar" (which I do; if doubtful of the effect, it justifies my "SME" existence even if the eggheads in Composition Studies wonder at its practicality) seem scarce. My supervisors increasingly gain doctorates granted from solely or largely on-line institutions. Those of us with "traditional" educations from research universities, where we had to battle in seminars with world-class minds, feel antiquated already. We're the last heirs of medieval and sheepskinned customs. I watched as my boss flicked past the "SME" page of my drafted "performance review." He hurried on to where more numbers needed entry.

What he brushed aside were my essays, my book reviews, my conference papers, my daily effort to keep involved in giving back via the Net. I try to sustain the life of my mind, to enrich academia despite my teaching load. His reaction crushed me.

I know I will keep on investigating what I'm trained to do and what I want to. Yet, I've had to list-- returned to me to redo in bullet points-- for the boss of his boss the "advantages" to my employer of me begging for funds to attend a conference. I suppose one advantage of no tenure is nobody can fathom what I write anyway at my school. As an habitual outlier in the realm of scholarship, my marginal place makes me feel more grateful than ever for you who read and follow me here.

While some of my hi-tech students take toll roads to exurban McMansions, most of them follow me into the trafficked freeways and buses and gridlock. Virginia Heffernan with typical astuteness in "The Death of the Open Web" compares the "teeming commercial city" of the Web to our congested, unplanned, noisy, dirty burgs, full of bullies, trolls, and rabble.

But a kind of virtual redlining is now under way. The Webtropolis is being stratified. Even if, like most people, you still surf the Web on a desktop or laptop, you will have noticed pay walls, invitation-only clubs, subscription programs, privacy settings and other ways of creating tiers of access. All these things make spaces feel “safe” — not only from viruses, instability, unwanted light and sound, unrequested porn, sponsored links and pop-up ads, but also from crude design, wayward and unregistered commenters and the eccentric ­voices and images that make the Web constantly surprising, challenging and enlightening.

That reminds me of my own casual or intense interactions, some with people I have known in person from first meeting on-line, some vice-versa. Among them what one calls "egotistical academics"! What began as "wayward and unregistered commenters" turned first mutually "eccentric voices" and a few became my pals. In Irish I saw a coinage, "cibearchara," cyber-friend. I like that.

Last week I sent a link to my "Shake Your Earthquake Maker" by e-mail to one of the bloggers I had credited in my entry. I thought this person-- same age as many of my students but far smarter and spirited, now headed off to start a non-virtual doctorate-- would respond if with a quick nod to my polite note of solidarity.

A week's passed. No reply will fill my inbox. I felt hurt, for when readers of my blog or Amazon reviews peek in to say hi, I always drop them a word of appreciation. I wondered if I was too sensitive, too unreasonable in expecting every electronically transmitted gesture to generate its own response. After all, we hold doors open in real life for people to pass through and often they walk by us without a glance. Maybe as in at the non-virtual threshold, a web passerby brushes past me-- a graying owlish pale bookworm, nothing to take notice of. (Cue: tiny violins.)

On the other hand, the bat mitzvah friend about whom I wrote (and my wife) sent us a thank-you card for her gift yesterday. In the mail. Handwritten. Neatly. I was impressed. She is my age, I admit; I'm already at the age I look back as much as ahead. Doors held open. Greetings however "phatically" exchanged even by aloof me. Etiquette. We used to call these "bread-and-butter notes." I mused again on a custom perhaps flung the way for most younger folks tapping away to Evite the arc of a floppy disk.

Still, I did feel boosted within this finger-pecking medium a few days later. Dan Schlitz, whom I'd met when we studied in Donegal, posted my latest Irish-language entry, "An Aistear sa lá" on Facebook to promote my fumblingly bilingual efforts. Visit his own "Irish Milwaukee"circle of learners such as far-flung ourselves. As with Gaeilge, so this blog, so walks= my workouts.

Meanwhile, the enigmatic Éabha Rose at "Words Undone ™" sent her own cheer after my recent excursus into "Celtic Buddhism". Her own blog's where you can view Bataille & Foucault, Graves & Nin vividly transmuted into a fin-de-siècle aesthetic decidedly refined. If for the discreet.

I thought again of other favorite blogs you can find at my links listed if you scroll down my blog's right margin. Ben Howard's calm reflections on the practice of Zen in upstate New York; "Vilges Suola" at "Lathophobic Aphasia" with his unerring ear for how English is mangled by his own students, who have the excuse some of mine lack of not being natives; "Bo" at Cambridge with his paired blogs, one open and one closed, teaching me so much about wit, erudition, and wisdom.

Tony Bailie's "Ecopunks" full of the latest Russian metafiction, Spanish verse, haiku, or inevitably the same obscure Irish novel or CD I just finished; John W. Smart and "Tamerlane" who fight the good fight politically; and the too-rarely updated "Harper Berry Hollow" from my dear friends Chris & Bob up north, full of their insights.

Thanks to all of you for your tacit or vocal support. I send you mine, dear readers and friendly followers. I live in a real city, where as Heffernan puts it: "Its public spaces are mobbed, and signs of urban decay abound in broken links and abandoned projects." Unlike my loved-hated native First-turned-Third World megapolis, I hope we can huddle against "the online equivalent of white flight."

I have no idea how my students, overburdened with families, work, commutes, afford such technological gentrification. I guess my priorities make me their professor, not their IT go-to guy. Still, in this tougher economy I and they face, not all of us can afford Heffernan's penchant for the latest gadget, the shiniest app. Nor, I hazard, do all of us wish to profit from and lock up every open, free space online.

Can books (or blogs) loosen our electronic leash?

Pico Iyer, a writer I envy for his charmed life, reflects on how this decade's bombarded us with increasingly noisy levels of unprecedented access to information, in "Tyranny of the Moment,". It's a solid essay, advocating again the need for us to immerse ourselves in more lasting pursuits between pages and with each other than tapping away as I am now at the keys to churn out what you at your computer then peruse. He reminds the few of us who may still buy books, beyond the diet/inspiration/self-help treatise, the ghostwritten bio, the scandal and/or politician du jour, of the need, well, to read books. Globetrotting, funded, touted, I do agree with him despite the privileged perch from which he addresses us few literate peons. He addresses our remnant who turn to book reviews in a remnant of our Sunday "Arts & Culture" section, for we in L.A. no longer deserve a separate Book Review pull-out. Most of you elsewhere may never have expected us out here to have had one any time.

Iyer's also unsurprising in his mandarin mien at how we wallow in entertainment. Without the book tours and promotional pictures on book jackets and Facebook tie-ins that he decries yet thrives by himself, I doubt I'd've heard of and then read and posted my review of his relationship with the Dalai Lama, "The Open Road." So, the fealty he and I and you by scanning this on your chosen monitor pay to the idols of the marketplace may be both our punishment and our pleasure if we wish to sustain the promise of a semi-intellectual, somewhat-informed slice of the demographic.

The other day I wrote a friend of my wife's who reviews for the L.A. Times regularly, and who's published three novels. I opined that many current reviewers seemed to spout off too much on the subject and not the book, or, worse, about themselves. The results often appeared to me anodyne. (I sell my own self cheaply-- to Amazon and here on this blog for nothing, and the occasional academic publication that may or may not afford me a review copy gratis.) The flabbiness of much of book reviewing in mainstream media-- I direct you reluctantly, as she does not merit more P.R., for a worse-case scenario to the train wreck that is Sandra Tsing Loh in her last two entries in "The Atlantic"-- may attest, as Iyer laments, to a decline in how far we can stretch our networked multitasked addled attention spans. We already munch too much low-fiber bread and as we watch the circus cult of celebrity. Inflated by puffery than bloats authors, and those who roll the (b)logs and crack the whips on talk shows and book signings, as prostitutes for promotion.

Beneath it all, the "reality TV" mythos that takes over so much of this past decade's energy, we discern a shabby rush for not only instant recognition but lasting fame. I learned how one of the Jackson brothers in their own pandering "A Family Dynasty" hesitated on camera (was this scripted?) to cash in on a "reunion tour" so soon after Michael's demise, but was persuaded by his siblings. By the end of the episode, high-fives all around as they congratulated themselves on their business acumen. They also bemoaned their inability to walk down a street unmolested by fans, a dubious claim, but one that the show itself appeared to promise to change into the very notoriety that they claimed to wish to avoid. A telling metaphor, or tangled one. Certainly they lack an underlying philosophy, recollection off stage, of how they should conduct themselves in the wake of the funeral procession, among the baked meats (or caviar trays) after their need to generate cash after the cow died. The profits must accrue; I pass a billboard over an industrial barrio for "The Jacksons" on my way from work. Four middle-aged, portly, beaming brothers dressed like gangsta pimps. Role models for us, stuck in post-Christmas traffic. Ho ho ho.

So much for holiday jeremiads, a specialty of mine. Alongside egghead (should they be egg-nogged?) tirades. Back to the personal touch.

In "The Tyranny of the Moment," Iyer concludes: "

Define happiness, someone asked me recently. Absorption, I said instantly (it was an e-mail interview), and anything that gives me an inner life and a sense of spaciousness, intimacy and silence. The world is much better for many of us now than it was 10 years ago, and I never could have dreamed so many of us would have so many kinds of diversion, excitement and information at our fingertips.

But information cannot teach the use of information. And diversion doesn't teach us concentration. Imagine a seven-hour-long heart-to-heart with someone who's been saving up all her life for what she's about to whisper in your ear. The medium that has been dying the whole century may be one way we can rebel against the hidden dictatorship of Right Now."

Dictatorship does exert control, and technologically this medium exacts compliance. I weary of bosses who track that I check in wherever I am daily online, of electronic teaching that never ends when I leave the classroom, of an employee inbox that fills with Priority To All red-flagged demands for responses as of yesterday.

On the other hand, at the same contraption but by my own volition, I find that a handful of blogs reward me. More benefits to recollect in tranquility, compared to the instant pecking out "going to sleep now" @374 people? For me, blogs may be the infant heir to the Tatler exactly three centuries ago-- coffeehouse chatter that elevates (or even may expand) itself as essays, articles, tirades, and reviews. Sir Richard Steele's thrice-weekly magazine lasted from late 1709 to January 1711, however. Less than two years: the shelf life of many a dot.com startup or e-zine.

That generation gap and the stylistic registers granted, I do encounter fine prose out on the Net. Often erudition and humor join, and commentary on politics and culture appears that I'd have no idea about otherwise. As with any medium, thus for me its defense. For example, a new Follower here to whom I was introduced to by a blogger in the list below told me on Facebook about her sister's film project from a decade ago that intersects, perhaps, with my current Celtic-oriented research.

I make my rounds to click on (inter alii) my Northern English colleagues "Bo" at "The Expvlsion of the Blatant Beast" (by invitation) & "The Cantos of Mvtabilitie" (open) and "Vilges Suola" at "Lathophobic Amnesia"; Irish journalist Anthony McIntyre at "The Pensive Quill"; Irish author Tony Bailie at "Ecopunks". Add to these upstate NY-based poet-critic Ben Howard's calm "One Time, One Moment: the Practice of Zen"; fellow Angeleno (if a USC and not UCLA grad) John W. Smart's feisty "Liberal Rapture"; and San Franciscan (adjacent) Lee Templeton-- who migrated with her beloved iPhone to FB but I gently remind her that she should keep up the blog equivalent for her own globetrotting eloquence at "The Templeton Chronicles"-- these correspondents who've become my friends (some in person after meeting them on the Net) epitomize for me intelligent voices that I check in with regularly, if not daily. (I also miss another blogger's presence who's a year on now "Gone Fishin'"-- you know who you are.)

After I typed that list of URLs, on Facebook I found two relevant articles uploaded. I shared them with some of the above. John Burns on 20 Dec. asks in the (Irish) Times Online: "Where have all the Irish bloggers gone?". Political coverage there apparently stagnates as journalists drift off to Tweet. Meanwhile, the huddled masses over here keep breathing free, if through their mouths, according to Chris Hedges over on 13 Nov. at Alternet.org. "Forget Red & Blue-- It's the Educated vs. the People Easily Fooled by Propaganda".

Is the democratic surge predicted by Netizens a decade ago coming to pass, or has it passed? Do we lack even the patience to keep up with a blog, or to keep one up? For me, the past year has brought me into a spirited debate often on "Liberal Rapture," and kept me from ranting so much over here. (John Smart, who presides over it, mentioned to me in following up on the "Forget" article above, that he thinks come mid-term elections, U.S. bloggers will rally.) I often agree with my fellow LR commenters but often I do not, and for that, I gain perspective and challenge my own preconceptions. The comments on such blogs form their own vibrant community that adds to the learning and arguing that enriches us. These observers of the Right Now provide me with rich opportunities for cultural, academic, and political insight.

Finally, my wife's weekly entries, all 2000 or so words each Friday afternoon, at "CasaMurphy" do cap off every turn of the moon's shadow in fine fashion. Seeing myself reflected eerily in her own descriptions as "Himself" does make me both humbled and happy. Chastened and chosen. It's a bracing exercise each weeks for this mortal to see myself-- harried father, (im)patient husband, erstwhile recluse, hapless housekeeper, wearied worker-- as at least one Other sees me.

They may not be quite the "seven-hour heart-to-heart" that Pico Iyer imagines should supplant our status updates. Yet I find that some of those listed above, when I've met them in person, have engaged with me in nearly that long a conversation, our previously amassed dialogues online a prelude for the face-to-face connection. Also, better than even a tete-á-tete, blogs provide a permanence that I'd argue needs to remain against the tyranny of the moment. On Facebook or the Twitter, the latter not used by phone-phobic me, these moments pass as live feeds then fade. I'll stick with this blog for a more ruminative, less hurried, archived and reasoned forum to talk and listen with you all. I'm glad you keep me company as followers and commentators.

P.S. I found this letter in today's L.A. Times, but from its print edition only, tellingly. Littlerock CA's D. W. Kreger in "Tweet-Spaced to distraction" muses how Iyer got the tyranny backwards. Modern media rather than keeping us locked in Iyer's "windowless cell of the present," shackles us "perpetually addicted to distraction, which actually keeps us from being fully present in the moment. From an Eastern meditation perspective, blogs, tweets and the 24-hour news cycle are like a reverse meditation, which uses distraction to keep us locked out of the here and now."

(Illustration: Edel Rodríguez for the Iyer article, Dec. 20, 2009, L.A. Times. Its caption-- "Can Books Loosen the Electronic Leash?"-- I amended for my own title.)

"Commit to Sit": meditating a month at home

Perhaps you share my unease lurking within. You want to get away from it all. But bills must be paid, commitments fulfilled, and timeclocks punched. How can those of us not blessed with an inheritance or a calendar free of obligations find time to listen to ourselves, in peace and quiet? Our spirits keep knocking at our minds, reminding us of the need to recharge and remotivate, but the opportunity in daily life appears to recede, and even a few minutes for one's self seems often impossible.

"Bo" over at "The Expvlsion of the Blatant Beast" on my blog short-list (invitation-only so I encourage you to join; see samples at "The Cantos of Mvtabilitie") mused lately he needed a break from the Cambridge infighting, timewasting trivialities, and endemic malaise that in an academic hothouse may afflict many sensitive plants. He posted this link to Tricycle magazine, the Buddhist site, for their 28-day guided retreat-at-home "Commit to Sit".

I find it may be helpful to adapt or reflect upon. I've not been the only one down in the dumps. It's been a difficult year-- or two in my case--financially and personally. Perhaps it's Seasonal Afflictive Disorder? Even far from Cambridge's shadows, or torrential rain inudating my Irish friends, it's been a gloomy duration. While the sun shines intensely on me today in seasonless Southern California, I've been -- along with my wife as she notes under "Put Upon"-- staring down domestic "acedia"-- a spirit's weariness, a "noonday demon"-- lately.

A former co-worker of my wife's-- with no kids, no spouse, no time-clock-- manages as a freelance writer to get away for (to us) bewilderingly long silent retreats. We are not sure where he goes or what he does; he tends towards taciturnity also in public. I've never pried. But I am curious. (I think of Leonard Cohen up at Mt. Baldy Zen Center, thousands of feet above the very town I grew up in, away for years until legal battles and lissome lasses drew him back into the spotlight in El Lay.) As a writer, I also wonder how my less-famous acquaintance can afford it, although I suspect his costs are minimal and its comforts spartan. I've heard of those who do this regimen for three years. I wonder where they get the cash, time, or freedom.

Buddhism from its start, as James William Coleman's sociological study emphasizes, appealed to idealists and intellectuals. The need to sit and stay apart from distractions day after day does mean it's hard for a "normal" person to attain insights that may come only after utter, hushed attention. Monastics, as later in Catholicism, got to benefit most from separating themselves from society while being supported by the necessary labor of lowlier castes in humdrum trades. Mary gets to sit at the feet of Jesus and pour expensive ointment on them, and for this largess Christ praises her, but I've always felt sorry for put-upon Martha, scurrying in the kitchen, fixing up a homemade hummus for the rabbi's visit to Bethany.

Often, Western Buddhism as with other "alternative spiritualities" gets rightly castigated as a pursuit for the affluent, the self-employed, spousally supported, or trust-funded "creative classes." Maybe it's like golf, if for those more anxious about the fate of themselves? I confess I am flummoxed about how the rest of us tethered to computers, commutes, people we must serve face-to-face, with two weeks of vacation manage to pursue the higher joys afforded those soulful adventures alighting in ashrams, monasteries, or whatever you call a sylvan or alpine retreat house in another denomination or manifestation. "Commit to Sit" for a no-cost, at-home, assisted meditation structure following a four-week self-analysis of Breath, The Body, Emotions & Hindrances, and Thoughts, may appear suited for many harried, constrained, impecunious seekers.

Of course, being in Tricycle, it expects that its audience accept the concepts of dharma. This may be a stumbling block for many outside Buddhism, hostile to it or "religion," or devoted to another form of spiritual discipline. Yet, I'd counter that most people today, at least in the West, can mix its teachings with their own religious or secular backgrounds without compromising their core tenets. Buddhism famously expects one to test its affirmations against one's own reason before acknowledging them as useful for one's own orientation and incorporation. (This did lead, as I witnessed on a Facebook thread started by an Irish practitioner, into a spirited discussion of what "avoidance of intoxicants" meant in such a lived context...)

The program on line begins with one taking up "the five precepts" of morality taught for 2,500 years as "skillful means." It follows the Vipissana model that many people who gravitate towards therapy and psychoanalysis in the West have found most compatible, compared to the more visually rich Tibetan or more austerely stripped Zen traditions. As with psychiatry, the point's not to chide one's self for failures, but to inspire a more disciplined, charitable, and good-hearted approach to improving one's own life and that of those around you. The CTS immersion gradually intensifies, mirroring what a retreatant would find who has-- or has not or has not been able to do successfully-- been trying to meditate before the month.

I'm curious if any of you have ever gone on such intensive retreats, or found in a daily regimen at home some true progress towards inner peace. That's the most elusive of goals for me, and the one that I've expressed as most desirable for me. I hope nobody whatever their creed could find this humble ambition, approached by meditation in whatever form may fit best your own perceptions, unenlightening.

Illustration: From a Facebook quiz: "The Intelligence Type Test". I got the result ► Intrapersonal Intelligence! (One friend told me he'd imagined "interstellar," another mis-read it initially as did I as "interpersonal"-- which panicked reticent me. I figured a cross-legged adept in silhouette fit today's topic well.)

You possess the gift of self. Intrapersonally intelligent people like yourself best understand the world from your own unique point of view, using introspection and self-reflection. Those who are strongest in this intelligence are typically introverts and prefer to work alone. You are most likely highly self-aware and ...capable of understanding your own emotions, goals and motivations. Often times you learn best when allowed to concentrate on the subject by yourself. There is often a high level of perfectionism associated with this intelligence. Careers which suit those with this intelligence include philosophers, psychologists, theologians, writers and scientists.