I’ll get to the cool pictures of night life on South Congress Avenue in Austin down at the end of this post. But first, as is my wont, I shall set the stage. I’m a member of the local union (Pan American United Faculty, currently a subsidiary of Texas Faculty Association, which is in some way a child organization of the NEA). Me. In a union. My right-wing upbringing instilled in me a loathing for unions (for reasons I’m still not completely clear on); but now I consider my $40 per month a good investment, because I keep learning freaky insane things about faculty being harassed or fired for bizarre or nonexistent reasons.

Odd that the public seems to think tenure is such a sweet deal, like it guarantees us profs a job for life. Certainly not in Texas. It just guarantees that there has to be “due process” before they summarily fire your sorry butt. In other words, it gives you a level of job security (at most American institutions) similar to (or less than) contracted workers in the private sector. You still get reviewed regularly, and if your performance is too low, you’re out. And for those of us who are not tenured, well, my job terms (I don’t have an actual contract) say I can be fired at any time, for any reason (or no reason), and I have no legal recourse. Continue reading →

zo-ombie. zo-ombie. zo-ombie ee ee ee…

a) We re-applied for the pittance that was once our DHS grant, today. I knew a guy back in Montana (at the School for the Deaf and Blind) named Paul. He said he used to play singer-songwriter gigs in Seattle (this was when I was 13; I had never seen Seattle). He told me a story about entertaining himself as a child in the 1950s under some bridge or other in the city. He and his friends would toss pennies and nickels to the bums, and watch them fight for the coins. Well, I can imagine the struggle with one’s pride, then deciding that, yes, I still wanted the coin, after all, enough to fight for it. I mean circa-1955 homeless people no disrespect in comparing my plight to theirs.

b) I just read an irreverent, funny, occasionally offensive essay about gender. The thesis seems to be that if women ran the world, it would look remarkably like it currently does. Not that I agreed 100% with everything, but I had some favorite moments:

I’m not trying to say men are any better, because they’re not. They commit most of the murder and mayhem on this planet but frankly, I think that’s just because they have more time on their hands.

A little more thoughtfully (and thought-provokingly):

The exact same testosterone-fueled drive that makes men fight wars also makes them build bridges and tall buildings and computers.

And the slam-dunk to get me all righteously indignant:

I’d really like to know just what in the hell makes Sally Field think women love their children more than men do.

and finally, the piece of resistors:

Even if the best mother EVER was Queen of the Planet, someone somewhere would still need to have their ass kicked, and she’d have to send somebody’s child to do it.

This is Alex, kissing an 8-foot-tall, chrome-plated, anatomically-correct¹ moose right in front of the very tall and impressive NBC building on Michigan Avenue. I think it’s safe to say that we like Chicago. Even Alex likes it². And I still like my footnotes plugin³.
I’ve been crappy use-up-all-my-hankies sick, but otherwise it’s been a great trip. Oh, except for being stranded for a day in Buffalo after our plane’s steering was broken. Alex has run into lots of fun people at the conference, and I’ve enjoyed wandering around the city⁴.

1. I dared her to grab its, you know, for a picture, but she was shy [↩]
2. She hated Manhattan [↩]
3. As you probably gathered from the considerable empirical evidence [↩]
4. Coming soon: Lots of Pictures of Tall Buildings [↩]