New Year's Eve Eve

Still catching up. We left Manaus and sailed downriver -- and it's  BIG FRIGGIN' RIVER -- to the much smaller town of Santarem (named after Portugese Saint Irene, who is revered, naturally, for killing herself after being raped. Duh.)  Manaus feels overwhelming, but Santarem feels very "do-able."  We took an all-day excursion, several busloads of us, to a stop at a native village -- a bit reminiscent of colonial Williamsburg, but not so much -- where we saw more native plants (mango, trees, avocado, lime & cashew trees and manioc roots) and saw how they process the manioc to eat it.  It's a multi-step process of peeling, soaking, draining, grinding, roasting to produce two different kinds of manioc flour, tapioca and farina.  Then we got to taste some manioc pancakes and fresh-off-the-vine fruits.

After the village we continued to Alter de Chao, "the Mediterranean of the Amazon," a small community on an Amazon tributary where many Brazilians holiday.  We boat-shuttled over to an island with beautiful sand beaches, clean river water, many many huts / bars. Swam in lovely water on December 28th, got lightly sunburned, watched birds, drank a Brahma beer, bought some gifts. Very few English speakers, but we managed very well with hand gestures and the Portugese phrases for "please" and "thank you" -- see, Captain Kangaroo was right about those being the magic words!

Boxing Day and after

Playing catch-up (what else is new?) after the last couple of days.  We arrived at Manaus at about noon on the 26th; it's a big city (1 1/2 million people, I think), and the only city, really, in the state of Amazonas. The next largest community is perhaps 200,000, I think, and then villages. (We have heard great lectures from the onboard faculty and our guest lecturer from Manaus, John-Paul D., who is only with us for part of the trip. But, since I'm on holiday and not rigorously taking notes, of course I forget a lot.)

Manaus, like all of Brazil, has a very mixed heritage: Europeans plus indigenous peoples (most of whom died after European contact) plus slaves imported from west Africa plus a large Japanese population (go figure). 

The day we pulled in Bibb came down with the virus epizootic that tends to prevail in closed spaces (like cruise ships); he stayed in the cabin all day while I was out and about, visiting the zoo and shopping. The next day he felt well enough (though still below par) to go along on the outing we had planned, a riverboat "bus" ride to the Ecopark, up the Rio Negro a few miles, including as options  lunch, a jungle trek, visit to island monkey sanctuary, and dip in the lovely set of pools separated by mini-waterfalls. 

What a glorious day that was!  Bibb opted to rest in a hammock after our introductory lecture, but I went on the walk, dip and monkey-visit with about 3o fellow tourists. Our riverbus guide, Paul, had commented extensively en route to the park and was very knowledgable; we had to divide into two groups for the forest walk, and I went with another guide, Marcelo, who speaks English and Portugese (and maybe other things too), and his Indian assistant, Jonelyn, who speaks Portugese, some Spanish and an indigenous language. We walked single-file on well-defined but not manicured trails; every five minutes or so, we'd stop and Marcelo, translating for Jonelyn, would point out a tree, vine or flower and describe its uses for life in the jungle. 

Jonelyn showed us a tree with a high pitch content; the Indians use a chunk of a branch as torches, and it burns for a really long time.  Also, when the pitch drips out of the flames, it becomes sticky when it cools, so you can use it as a glue. We looked a tree which, when tapped, yields a milky substance (tastes okay) and another whose smaller branches can be de-barked and then smoked -- not a high, just a pleasant taste. Palm branches can be worked into thatching for roofs or folded into many toy shapes, including caterpillars, bow & arrow, stars, and crowns.  Another tree's bark can be scraped off, using a broad leaf to catch it, and dumped into water to make a malaria treatment and, so they say, natural Viagra.  Much hilarity ensued. [Picture it:  14 middle-aged white tourists wearing crowns, asking for their own toys, sampling the jungle treats.  It was FABULOUS.]

Christmas Day!

It's December 25th on the Amazon, 82 degrees, humid, breezy (at least on deck).  Saw some cute kids dancing around the disco-lit tree in the lounge last night.  Another of the families on board with small children was gathered in one of the lounges, around an artificial tree, opening gifts this morning as I walked to breakfast. Several passengers are wearing Santa hats (or reindeer antlers), and I am sporting the Christmas-lightbulb earrings Pat gave me years ago. (No, they don't light up.) The intraship television station that charts our progress (latitude, longitude, course, speed, with a little map -- pretty interesting) is playing secular tunes: at the moment, it's John Denver doing "Please, Daddy, Don't Get Drunk This Christmas." 

Well, nothing's perfect.  :  )

High Seas, Trois

I should actually be doing the numbers in Portugese, as we are en route to Brazil, but I don't know any numbers in Portugese.  And since my counting in French is pretty limited too, I may have to change the way that I title posts!

Spent yesterday (was it just yesterday??) in port at Bridgetown, Barbados.  We found a cabbie, David, (or he found us) who squired us around, first to the Barbados Museum, housed in an old army prison, a well-done set of displays on the history, flora and fauna of the island. The setting itself is pretty impressive:  a hollow square surrounding a lush, shady courtyard, deep overhangs and shuttered windows that make even the non-air-conditioned rooms pretty comfortable. (Displays are climate controlled, though.) After reading about the architecture and rationale for "chattel houses" (chattel meaning simply "movable property or belongings"), we then SAW chattel houses as we drove through town. They have a steeply pitched roof to shed rain, symmetric door and window placement, and, frequently, a rear flat-roofed shed. A second (or third) unit can be added as the family's fortunes (and numbers) expand.

The drive through town was something of an adventure in itself, as David is a driver after my own heart -- frequent mostly-friendly honking, passing on curves, impatience with traffic. You go, David! 

At  our next stop, the Mount Gay rum tour, we walked through the history of the rum industry (and thus a big part of the island's) with about a dozen other tourists and our very personable guide, who admitted up front that an important goal of the tour was to ensure that we all purchased rum before leaving, and then proceeded to charm and educate us all.  (And we did indeed buy our quota of spirits.) You are allowed one six-pack or two bottles per person, per port, and the crew checks you in when you reboard the ship. Before sugar cane cultivation cranked up in Barbados and other Caribbean islands, the average British citizen consumed about as much sugar PER YEAR as is in one can of modern Coke. The islands, and slave labor, allowed that to rise and fortunes to be made in Britain, France, Portugal and Spain.

When we rejoined David after the rum tour, he had news from the hospital: his fiance had delivered their baby girl, Aria.  We look forward to Ms. Aria Williams being Prime Minister of Barbados in about thirty years  :  )

David then took us to a "local" place to eat, which was pretty near downtown and your basic down-home lunch counter kind of place, but with rice & peas and flying fish on the day's menu.  The plate also had an inch-thick triangle of some softish, pale yellow, somewhat fibrous, ahh, stuff. It tasted pretty good, but we have no clue what it was. (The flying fish was mild.) (And not flying at the moment.)

Then we moseyed back toward the port, carrying, unfortunately, our heavy rum, and made a variety of other purchases along the way (but I can't tell you what b/c some of you readers -- assuming there are any -- may be getting them as gifts).    More soon.    Another 24 hours or so to the equator! ! ! 

High Seas, Duex

Spent today (well, most of today) on St. Bart's, a small and somewhat vertical Francophone island populated by quite wealthy folk. We "tendered" to shore, which means that 60 or so people at a time take a small boat, like a ferry only faster. Then our group of 15 walked a few yards down the dock to our catamaran (which I now know is a double-hulled sailboat, the one that has "trampoline" canvas decks slung in the bow between the hulls. You know, those boats that look like they are riding on two parallel cigars.) Our captain was a faux-fierce French type, ably assisted by his 6-year-old son ("his name is Sailor") and wife Anique. (That's how I'm spelling it, and I'm sticking to it.)  All were tanned and friendly and helpful. We sailed around the end of the island to a beach -- I'm blanking on the name -- and anchored; then almost everyone snorkeled for about an hour. Then we lounged in the sun and sailed back to  port. 

This is possibly the most perfect experience I've ever had on a December day. Baby-blue skies, puffy clouds, turquoise water, gleaming white sand.... Violet, green and tiger-striped fishes below us. Silence, except for a few splashes and that Darth Vader breathing sound that you get in from the snorkel. Not to mention that our captain offered me his personal "noodle" when I asked for one 

Lunch in a bistro across from the docks ("la salade de poulet avec exotic fruits"), and tendering back to the ship. My skin is glowing with a faint sunburn, and the salt is washed off. Oh it was lovely.

I did take a bunch of pictures today, but Bibb uploaded them to his computer and I'll have to get them. (Don't try to "share" anything electronic with this man.)

We've met a few blowhards and spoiled travelers, folks who seem to have a hard time putting up with any inconvenience or discomfort, but have met many more nice folks. Our assigned seating for the four "formal" dinners put us with a sister and brother from Canada; he's still there, and she now lives in Louisville, KY. We also met (over dinner tonight) a woman who's just starting her EDD in elementary special ed.  Bob the piano guy. The Jennifers.  Couple having a long vacation before his knee surgery makes them immobile for a bit.  

High Seas, One

From aboard the MV Explorer, somewhere east and south of Puerto Rico, entering the Caribbean.

How strange is that? I have never thought of myself as the sort of person who goes on a cruise. (But then, who are they, and why am I not?) But here we are, and this is not a typical cruise or even at all a "cruise," as it is marketed by the Semester at Sea folk, who sponsor between-semester trips as well, as a "voyage of discovery." We're going to Brazil and up the Amazon -- excuse me, I meant UP THE AMAZON!!! -- and then back to Florida, stopping at half a dozen islands along the way. 

What have I discovered so far? Well, when I first saw our ship -- not a "boat" -- I said something like "wow, that's really big." It still seems large to me, as it has 7 decks to navigate and carries over 700 passengers and 200+ crew. But I've learned that it's not that large, as cruise vessels go and, more importantly, that the ocean is a whole heckuva lot bigger, as it can toss this baby about pretty easily. So my first discovery was "wow, the ocean is really big."

My second, on our first night out from port (Nassau), was that being seasick is no fun at all. I hurled pretty copiously, took a pill being dispensed right & left by the ship's doctor, and felt better very quickly. More pitching and lurching in the last couple of days, but I feel okay now. Maybe that rough initial period of acclimation really worked. (She said optimistically.)

We get to our first island port tomorrow, St. Bart's. More soon about the colors of the water, wave spray, jellyfish sightings, our fellow travellers, etc  etc.

Finally, Sarah Palin!

I fell off the blogosphere for quite a while and thus have only been consuming, not contributing to, the several million words per day devoted to the Alaska governor. In the primaries I voted for Senator Clinton, a smart, articulate, savvy female. (Yes, she had baggage, which included Bill, but I was excited to vote for her.) Far from being a PUMA, though, I then became an Obama fan. When I first heard of Sarah Palin -- when McCain nominated her -- I was not, however, tempted to support her just because she has the same internal plumbing I do.

Some reasons not to support her were obvious right away:
* First, she's a Republican, which as far as I'm concerned pretty much makes her a man in drag.
* Second, she's anti-choice.
* Third, she put on, for the campaign, an exaggerated folksy accent which is entirely absent in her old broadcast footage. I can code-switch with the best of them, but when a candidate changes in this way to this extent, it says "I don't respect the American public" loud and clear.

And on further acquaintance, other reasons quickly manifested themselves:

* She's a total wingnut.

* She can read a teleprompter (which IS a skill) but cannot create sentences.

* Her campaign deliberately appealed to lowest common denominator fears.

And now -- will she go away? Will she become a broadcaster for Faux News? Will she be -- as hinted at by her product placement at the RepubGovs meeting today -- the new face of the GOP? Or will the Republicans be, rightly, embarrassed by her? 

It's a bit like watching a train wreck; I desperately want never to see or hear her again, and yet I can't immediately dial or surf away from the stories about her.  I cringe when I hear her tortured syntax, but ... schadenfreude lives.  

A more serious discussion of the same topic by Andrew Sullivan, cited on Salon, today. At least I'm not alone.

Veterans' Day

I have somewhat mixed feelings about Veterans' Day. My dad and uncles served in WWII; my brother and husband narrowly escaped serving in Vietnam. Since I'm female and was 'way too old by the time our military became all-volunteer, I never thought seriously about whether I would be drafted or choose to serve.  If I had children, would I want them to volunteer? Probably not, I confess.

I respect those who have served their country in the military -- and those who serve in other ways, though military service is the most all-consuming and often the most dangerous. But I know that many veterans have mixed feelings about their own military memories and about how their service is seen by others. How could you NOT have nightmares about marching into a concentration camp, near the end of WWII? How could you NOT wonder about the men you perhaps killed? I respect the humanity of those mixed feelings, too. But I don't always -- particularly in the last few years -- respect the motives of those who send our military into action.  The common flag-waving rhetoric of "protecting America" does not recognize the complexity of soldiers' bravery, loyalty, and yes doubts, nor the machinations of those who command them.     

We are now losing the WWII generation, men and women, daily. My dad is gone. My mother who waited for him and wrote V-mail is gone. My in-laws are gone. Men of that generation were not expected to talk about their feelings, so they came home (the ones who did) and got on with things in their own ways. They didn't tell war stories with any relish.  My dad only talked about the war very late in his life, and then usually fairly "safe" stories.

I learned today that there is ONE surviving Lumbee WWII veteran; I'm hoping that one of my classes can do an oral history project, interviewing Robeson County vets. We maintain ourselves through our stories; we need to listen to what these men and women have to say to us, if they are ready to say it.

Post-Election Wahoo

Man oh man -- it's been an intense few months, during which I have (obviously) not been blogging. A quick catch-up:  I did NOT have my students write blogs, in part b/c we've had some technology meltdowns on my campus -- long rant barely restrained here.  I HAVE been, as usual, insanely busy this fall, perhaps even more insanely busy than usual.  I had been told that the pace is stepped up, rather than down, post-tenure, and that seems to be correct, but, all things considered, things are going well. Spouse & I traveled to two weddings this fall, one in Wisconsin and one in Maryland, so that added some catching-up time as well.  I DID follow the '08 elections fairly obsessively and worked the polls on election day.

And WOW. In the month before November 4th I was reading Salon and CNN online all the friggin' time, afraid to be too optimistic; the Rethuglicans could always pull a fast one. Even the night of the 4th, it just didn't seem real.  (It almost still doesn't.) But I am so so SO excited and happy about Obama's election.  Nah, he's not "the one" (or "that one") or a miracle worker or even King Arthur. But I'm so proud of us.  And so glad that we once again have a President who is SMART. Graceful. Articulate. Worthy of our respect. 

*sigh*  Life is good.

Oh, Mama, can this really be the end....

Had a flat the other day, my first in my "new" car. (My "new" car is seven years old, bought three years ago, as distinct from my pickup truck, who could buy legally buy his own beer if he were a person.) I was tooling along a back road on the way to work, and by the time I felt that something was wrong (it was a rear tire) and found a place to get off the road, the tire was pretty chewed up. As I told my car guys when I called to order a new one, it was "plumb rurnt."

I had found the requisite tools, gotten the little weenie spare out of its covering, and was consulting the owner's manual to doublecheck where to put the jack     when -- ta daa -- a car stopped and the driver offered to help. Ah, the south. Turns out he is a community college student; his girlfriend, riding shotgun, attends my university; and he works on cars for a living. It would have been cruel not to accept his offer. He saved me time and aggravation, and I gave him ten bucks. Well worth it to shorten the time I spent sweating in a church parking lot.

In parting, he said "If I end up in your class, I hope you'll pass me."  Who knows?

Umm, Bacon

So if May snuck by, I guess June did so even more. Uh, 'nuff said. So I wasn't writing much, but I made up for it by lounging by the pool. 

The point of education is  .... Well, here's a more fun way to say most of the stuff I wanted to say about that idea:  There was a great article on Salon today about the lurid but undeniable appeal of bacon. (Cue Homer Simpson: "Bacon, ahgglle, ahggle, ahggle.") The article is tons o' fun and includes links to other bacon-related sites (also lurid but fascinating in a train-wreck sort of way), but what makes it useful is its internal allusions that you just wouldn't GET if you were not a reasonably well-educated person. Phrases like "vast flyover" and "gateway protein," vocabulary like "aphrodisiac," "hedonism" and "herbivore," plus cultural referents from Betty v Veronica to Paula Deen -- yes, anyone could read this piece if reading is simply decoding, but if "read" means something more, if it means making connections and constructing meaning, then you need a lot of background info to read this relatively fluffy piece on pork. 

Imagine how much more cultural / historical / literary savvy you need to read hard news or deconstruct campaign promises. It's not about getting a job; it's about understanding the world and being able to act in the world.

End o' May ! ? ! ?

Friday May 30

Holy crap, how did it get to be the end of May already? Graduation was the first weekend in May, and now a whole twelfth of the calendar has just...evaporated. The world has grown greener; temperatures have warmed; and what have I gotten done?

I don't usually have that sense of tempus fugit; I've realized that my not-so-puritan work ethic allows me to spend afternoons with a book (fun reading, not work reading) and not feel guilty about it. Finishing a book is, in a way, "getting something done," but it's not planting flowers or dusting furniture or training the cat to sit. Okay, just joking about the last undone task.

I do religiously read the NYT, via email. Since we currently live in an area with faint, competing NPR stations, I read the Times more regularly than I hear NPR, which I miss. There's something about Susan Stamberg's voice that feels like home to me. This habitual consumption of news & opinion is one I'd like to nurture in students -- how can you think about the world if you don't know what's going on?

I'm solidly with the Times editorial writer this morning who protests the corrupted usage of the word "elite," which has been transformed to a slur. Anti-intellectualism is alive and well in this country, and the deprecatory use of "elite" is often tied to that. Are democracy and the existence of elites opposed? Only if you confuse "elite" with "elitist." 

Whole discussion in NYT, if you're interested, but I'm particularly interested in the implications of "anti-elite-ism" for education. If becoming more educated is a way of "bettering" oneself, then going to college can bring about serious personal conflicts for first-generation and minority students.  Are you "acting white" if you get good grades? Are you "getting above your raising" if you talk about your econ class with your dad, or try to change the way you speak, or become interested in topics that your family never discusses? These conflicts are difficult for students to articulate, but I think the effort to avoid these conflicts is one reason that students can be so career-focused:  "I'm not really changing as a person, I'm just here to become more employable." And that's a tragedy.

part two -- what education ought to be -- follows

wretched excess?

Wed May 28th

I'm back, after a travel-ful Memorial Day weekend, and after some thinking about how to prompt/prod/encourage students to blog themselves. We usually like to write about ourselves, so one thing I'd suggest would be that students choose words to describe themselves in their profiles -- just lists of single words -- and then expand those words into blog entries.

For example, why did I choose the title "wretched excess," and what does that have to do with who I am? It connects, for one thing, with my listing "politics" as an interest. More and more, I recognize that Americans tend to over-everything: we overeat, we overspend, we drive cars that are too big. We use too much of the planet's resources, and most of us think too little. (Okay, so there's an "under" activity.)  In many ways I include myself in the "we"; I like to drive fast. I like loud music. I have a hard time throwing things away, so I have lots of boxes of stuff that I don't really need.  

Ummm, excuses?  I like my stuff, my books and clothes and shoes and memorabilia. I feel connected to my past by the old concert tickets, by photographs, by my that's-the-dress-I-wore-to-my-best-friend's-wedding dress (even though it way doesn't fit any more). And some of the "stuff" is sentimentally valuable in more significant ways, like the china hutch my mom refinished when I was about fourteen. It's filled, now, with my mother's china and other glassware, a collection of breakable, beautiful things. [I'm still calling it my mother's china even though she has been dead now for several years, and the china is living in my house. How long will it take for these things to become mine, in my own mind?  Perhaps it will be called "Anita's china" after I am dead and have passed it on to someone else, someone younger, with her own collection of "stuff."]

No excuses: I have too much stuff and use too much gas and too much water. Every gallon of diet Coke uses a couple gallons of fresh water in production, and I drink a LOT of diet Coke. But then....so do the rest of us. It's hard to swim against the stream. 

You can lead a horse to water....

I teach a college course required for graduation -- one of those often groan-evoking first-year courses that students talk about. And talk about. As about 70% of my course load, I teach what's variously called "freshman comp" or "first-year writing" or "first-year composition." Sometimes in the bad old days it was called "bonehead English."  The common wisdom holds (and some students agree) that students don't like to write, or are afraid to write.

Yet.... Thousands, hundreds of thousands of students (and working folk who are student-aged) maintain blogs and FaceBook pages and all kinds of non-required written artifacts, voluntarily, without the threat of a grade, cat o' nine tails, or any of the other weapons traditionally brandished by English teachers with their hair in buns.

In the fall term, I'm going to make "keep a blog" an assignment for my FYC students. They'll be published, albeit self-published, and able to play with graphics and colors. In the spirit of not asking students to do what I won't do :  )  I'll be keeping a blog myself, and here it is. 

More soon, gentle readers.