Inconsequentials & Trivialities

Mini mixture of dried, naturally fragrant plant material, used to provide a gentle natural scent in houses

I have been walking the perimeter of the campus during my lunches this week. I’m digging it but, man! I sure wore the wrong shoes today. Tomorrow might be raining and if so, it will curtail my ambulatory activities.

LOTRO was doing some trivia quizzes today on twitter. A tweep of mine won one of the contests, but as she already had the prize (a special mount from PAX East), she gave the code to me! Yay for special in-game items!

I’ve been listening to the CBC at work. I have no idea why the thought of the Pacific NorthWest is so appealing. My chest aches with longing whenever I think about it too much.

Tonight was the Knights Officers’ Meeting.

Among the items discussed were:

• Fish Fry – I have discussed this here already so all I will add is that we decided to not have tilapia, rice, and beans when we do our next one in April.
• Retention – We reaffirmed that the Deputy Grand Knight is the chairman of the Retention Committee and that the Trustees are all members.
• First Degree Team – We’d like to certify a new team to serve from now until June 30, 2012. I will ask Steve if he is willing, and would like, to continue as the Grand Knight of the First Degree team. If he is, I will ask him to put together the team (I have several names of men who’d like to be on the team).
• Elections for 2011/2012 – The current officers will again put forth a slate of candidates for next year. Bill is planning to run for GK, so I will be retiring as scheduled. Dan will run for DGK, and most other officers will run for their current office. This leaves Warden to be filled. I am going to ask Ruben if he would consider running for that position. We also would like to take the roles of Inside and Outside Guard more seriously.

None of this is secret or confidential, but you are getting a preview here. 🙂

RE: Board meeting postmortem

Late last night, one of my colleagues sent out an email to the entire college. This gentleman frequently has points of view and opinions that go against the groupthink at MJC. Sometimes I agree with what he has to say, other times I do not. Sometimes I cringe at the way he says it, other times not so much. But he’s always good for provoking discussions/rants/arguments/conversation. This email was about last Wednesday’s board meeting. His point was that despite how upset at the Board everyone wants to be, none of those who stood up to speak at the meeting offered a viable alternative to the President’s plan. Having no alternatives from which to choose, the Board voted yes on the only option they had before them. He paraphrases the parade of speeches thusly:

“You need to save program X, because it is REALLY important”.
“…(OK, how much will that cost and where is the money coming from?)…”
“Did I mention it’s REALLY IMPORTANT?”
“Thank you, your time is up…”
“NONONONONONO, REEEEEEALLY IMPORTANT”
“Thank you…”
“GRRRRRRR!”
“Thank you…”
“GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!       GRRR!    (YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!!!!!!)”

 Oversimplified, sure. But it does sort of encapsulate most of what was presented. You can read the entire email here.

 So, what I find frustrating are the responses that I’ve heard to his email.

1. From a friend and coworker – “He’s an idiot.” Based on past experience, she thinks anybody with whom she doesn’t agree is an idiot. She does go on to say that if anyone is guilty of what he charges, it is he himself; he should have come to all of this realization several weeks earlier.
   He does use the first person when he assigns blame. Why does my friend think that he is excluding himself?
2. Faculty member #1 – (derisively) Too bad he didn’t come to this realization weeks earlier.
   Hindsight=20/20. Yeah, it would also be nice if there were a new $100 bill under my pillow when I woke up every morning. But is the OP wrong?
3. Faculty member #2 – (skipping past the point entirely) The Academic Senate doesn’t have the resources to do the study that the OP refers to in his email.
4. Faculty member #3 – “Not so. We didn’t argue that way at all. We wanted to address a point that didn’t even need to be voted upon that night.”
5. Faculty member #4 – “We didn’t have enough time to present and nobody wants to listen anyhow.”

That last point might be entirely germane, actually. But I think it’s also true that nobody wants to listen to my emailing colleague. We don’t tolerate a lot of deviation from the hive mind around here.

Something to do

Today consisted of

• waking up not according to some predetermined schedule, but when my body was done sleeping (spring forward, who cares?)
• watching some tv (an episode of V to be precise)
• going to Mass (the music continues to be mediocre)
• lunching at Sips Bistro with Steve and Fr. Ramon (I had the Chicken Cesar Wrap.)
• spending a couple of hours at the milonga at Azucar (Silvia and I had made plans to go. It was mostly tango, but also a smattering of many other styles. Mary in particular was very kind and asked me to dance several times. If you know me, you know I like dancing and have no problem with partner dancing, I actually prefer it, but I do need to know the steps.)
• more tv (forthcoming. Perhaps some Being Human or Ordinary Family. I should watch the dvd I have from Netflix, The Island.)
• LOTRO (Aluatis needs to continue with Volume 1.)
• posting here (which I just finished.)

Working for the weekend

Last night, the Knights put on our first of two fish frys for Lent. There was a pretty good crowd and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. I thought that it went as smoothly as it’s ever gone. Having extra fryers for the tilapia worked out great! For the first time I can every remember, there were no delays in getting food out to be served. I’m very pleased by how it all went!

This morning, the pastoral council met to work on the strategic plan for the parish. There were just over a dozen of us there and I feel like we really got some work done! And on a personal note, this is the most engaged I’ve felt at church in almost a year. Yay!! Anyway, today’s purpose was to take the vision statements that had already been articulated, and develop goals from them. A few of us will take what was done today and tighten up the language and refine the goals a bit, then, in a month or two, the entire council will meet for another workday to develop the tasks which the parish will use to acomplish the goals. Very exciting and satisfying to feel like we’re getting stuff done!

I think I’ll be staying in tonight, but there’s a slim chance that I may go out. If I do, I’ll certainly let you know about it.

With freedom and ease, combating ignorance, dust, and disease

Ok, finally getting back to thoughts on Archbishop Tutu’s speech.

After the speech, I went over to a reception in the Student Center. We had been told in a variety of ways that the Archbishop would not be present at the reception. Fine. Sadly, the reception was very dull and boring. There was some food but I did not partake. After being there 30-40 minutes, I took off.

I found out later that night that there was a ‘real’, exclusive reception for the college’s special people that the Archbishop did attend. Classism is alive and well at Modesto Junior College. On the one hand, we have the elites. They get shrimp, and a meet and greet with the Archbishop, and a full helping of the sense of superiority that goes with it. On the other hand, we have the commoners. They get fruit.

Fairness is very important to me. I realize that the idea of fairness really forms my attitudes and opinions of things. It does not seem fair that some people get invited to the First Class party and others are relegated to Steerage. As much as I might like some of the people who attended the exclusive reception, their attendance there causes me to lose respect for them.

In the days following the speech, I’ve heard many people express how great it was. Frankly, I was rather unimpressed. It reminded me A LOT of what I hear in 35-40% of the homilies on Sundays. It may be good stuff, but it’s nothing new. Note to all the gushing admirers of the speech, if you went to church once in a while, you might not be so impressed with what a clergyman has to say.

Anything else I might have wanted to say about all of this has been forgotten.

Going through the motions

Like many (most) people, I find that once I find an avenue for my pontification, the need to get it out on subsequent occasions is much diminished. My intention with this post was to write about my thoughts and impressions from the Board of Trustees meeting last night. But I’ve already had my rant about it, both last night and this morning, on Ustream. Nevertheless, I shall try to put it all down here so as to provide a more complete record of what has transpired to bring about The Sundering of MJC. (I’m trying out some epic sounding titles for what’s happening around here. Let me know what sounds best.)

The district’s Board of Trustees met last night in the MJC Auditorium. They agreed last week to move this meeting from Columbia College to MJC to accommodate the hoards that wanted the opportunity to appear in person to plead their cases about which program (in most cases, their own) should be spared from the cuts. All week, emails have been flying and plans have been forming about how to best defend each group’s area of interest. Security was on hand along with police to make sure that the situation didn’t get too out of hand and news crews from Sacramento were present to capture the drama. By 5:30, the room was full of a mixture of staff, faculty, students, and community members.

I hadn’t planned to attend this meeting. I had no particular cause to advance and didn’t imagine that my presence would count for anything. Also, I suspected that the meeting would be long and frustrating. But my friend Yolanda contacted me the day before and suggested that I attend and that we could go for coffee or a drink afterwards. Ok, I had nothing much else to do so I agreed to meet up with her. Well, spoiler alert! I wasn’t able to find her before the proceedings commenced. I did see her a bit later, but she was seated and I was more than ready to go. Anyway, back to the meeting.

 

At 5:30, things were called to order and after some preliminary business, people with a comment for the Board were invited to line up on either side of the room to take turns addressing the Trustees. A three-minute time limit per person was established and the speakers began. The second person to speak was my buddy Rob, an Art instructor.

The fourth person to speak was a woman who brought her two children to the microphone with her. She introduced herself and had her son do the same. Of course, being a little boy of 3 meant that he took about 30 seconds (of the 3 minutes allowed) to say who he was. The mother spoke passionately about the Wawona Child Development Center. When she was told by Board chairperson that her time was up, the woman shot back that she was entitled to twice as much time because both she and her son were students. Never mind that everyone had been told that transferring of time was not allowed. Never mind that there was a process by which speakers alternated microphones. No, this woman was entitled! Well, the chairperson cut her off apologizing that more time couldn’t be given, but that there were many, many people who were waiting their turn to speak. The woman needed to get in one final dig. She asked her son if he had anything further to say as this mean, mean woman was taking away his right to speak. Lord, help us. This was all that I needed to see how the night was going to go.

I stuck around through two more speakers before heading home.

Fast forward, 3 hours later. I saw a posting on facebook from my buddy, James; something to the effect that he was witnessing the dismantling of MJC. This sounded very intriguing and I was surprised that the meeting was still going! I quickly moved to tune into the web broadcast. I connected and saw a man in a military (Army?) uniform yelling and screaming, shouting profanities at the Board. My first reaction was that I was about to witness a riot. The chairperson told him his time was up and he shouted back that HE would decide when his time was up! Other young men, apparently looking for trouble, had joined him up front and when security came up to escort the soldier off, these other guys interposed themselves. Police soon joined them and the man and his guards were escorted away. Personally, I feel that, by his behavior, this guy dishonored the uniform he wore. He was obnoxious and rude. All of my coworkers (that I’ve spoken to) agree that he made it very hard, if not impossible, to take him seriously. However, some of the people I know through facebook consider this guy a hero! Incroyable! People are celebrating bad behavior. Very sad. Anyway, watching this for two minutes was all I could take; I switched off.

Ultimately, after everyone said all that they wanted to say (4½ hours!), the Board voted. They were unanimous in support of the proposal put forth by President. They took turns reading prepared statements defending their votes. Prepared statements?? If they knew which way they’d vote, why go through the pretense of listening to all the people who’d come to speak? I wish that they could have conveyed the impression that all this testimony counted for something! As it is, it appears not. 🙁

The students are revolting!

Yesterday, students at the college (as well as an unknown number of quasi-professional agitators) gathered on the quad on the east campus to loudly and visibly make known their displeasure at the proposed budget reductions.

I took some photos.

After spending some time speechifying on the quad, the students laid siege to the Morris Building.
Security had to stand guard to prevent the protestors from swarming into the building.

Finally, they took to the streets of downtown Modesto.

Good times at Modesto Junior College!

He’s not strange. He just wants to live his life this way.

It’s been a few days, so I wanted to give you some of my thoughts/reactions/reflections about the Archbishop Tutu event.

Today, I will talk about the structure and flow of the event itself.

The event began a few minutes late and I suppose they must have been having some problems backstage because there were awfully long pauses between the different parts of the program.

First on the bill was President Loewenstein to welcome and introduce the evening. He made a couple of humorous remarks about the tension and issues that we’ve been experiencing over the past week or two. I thought he handled it well.

Next was a dance performed by members of the MJC Off-Balance Dancers. Ok. I am the first to admit that I don’t get dance. I certainly didn’t get this one. I don’t think I’m the most cultured guy in the world, but neither am I a Visigoth. Rather than go on and on about the dance, I’ll just say that it came across at pretty pointless. Was it supposed to be telling a story? Conveying an emotion? Making me squirm and look at my watch? Well, it only did one of those things.

Then we had a set of songs performed by the MJC Chamber Singers. They sounded good, but I couldn’t understand the words they were singing. And they knew that the words were unintelligible because they made a point of reading the texts of the songs after they sang them. So, pretty harmonies but boring performance. Hey, I was a music major. I sang in Chamber Choir. It was BORING. It’s much more fun to sing in 4 or 8 parts than it is to listen to it. Yeah, there are people who love listening to choral music. I’m not one of them. For me, this was more pointless filler before we got to the good stuff.

Finally, we arrive at something that was interesting. MJC professor of English and slam poet, Sam Pierstorff, had composed a poem for the occasion. I always enjoy Sam’s poems and especially his delivery when he performs them. He prefaced his poem by making a simile. Ubuntu, a person is a person through other persons, was like the Kevin Bacon connection. It was analogous to the way that an actor is an actor due to his relationship to Kevin Bacon. His specific example: Elvis Presley was in Change of Habit with Ed Asner, who was in JFK with Kevin Bacon. Therefore, Elvis has a Bacon number of 2. Sam went on to say that in 2009, Kevin Bacon emceed an event at which Desmond Tutu was the keynote speaker. Therefore, the Archbishop has a Bacon number of 1 and because we were all in the room with him tonight, we could claim a Bacon number of 2! Haha! Very amusing! (Although I would quibble with the conclusion. I would say that those who appeared on stage can make the claim, not those of us in the audience. But it was all in jest anyway.) Then Sam performed his poem. I would reprint the text, but it’s so much better to see/hear him perform it. So I won’t.

The next thing that was supposed to happen was a video tribute to the MJC Television/Film department Archbishop Tutu. But instead, the man himself came out on stage. He spoke for 45 minutes or so; I really wasn’t paying attention to the time. He had a nice delivery, somewhat slow paced, and was frequently amusing. He used a lot of biblical references and talked a lot about God. The last 10% 5% of his speech was about the evils of defense spending, about how global warming is a fact (a FACT, mind you), and fossil fuels are bad. Well, I feel that with these points, he strayed off message a bit. But I’m certain many others will disagree.

After the Archbishop was done speaking, President Loewenstein came back to thank everyone for attending. But before he got to the podium, the video started! Oops!

Part II tomorrow.

From the Yiddish

I am a total schmuck. I realize this will come as no big surprise to most of you, but I feel that I should acknowledge the fact from time to time, if only to keep it real. An elderly gentleman from church, a member of the Knights, passed away last week. I learned of his passing on Tuesday and sent out an email to the other Knights informing them. I also told them that I would let them know as I became aware of more details. The funeral was today at 1:00.

• Schmuck exhibit 1 – Despite learning of the date and time of the funeral on Thursday, I neglected to pass that information along until I was asked about it this morning. Ugh. Only slightly mitigating this neglect was the fact that we did announce the arrangements at the Council meeting on Thursday night. I still should have sent a follow-up email.
• Schmuck exhibit 2 – I received a phone call on Saturday from a number I didn’t recognize. I didn’t answer it and it usually takes me a long time to listen to messages. So today, at about 1:30 I listened to 4 or 5 messages that had accumulated on my phone. The one from Saturday was from the widow of the man who’d passed away. She was calling to ask if I’d participate in the funeral service.

Man I suck.

A new name, let’s play the game

This has been a longish weekend of doing nothing. In other words, perfect!

I played some LOTRO, but I spent most of my time watching TV. I still have a lot of catching up to do from when I was busy watching Oscar nominees. But the thing is, it’s been rather tough to rekindle interest in a lot of these shows. Maybe it’s time to cut some of them loose. And actually, I’ve already started doing that. A week or two ago, I set my TiVo to stop recording CSI and CSI:NY. Other programs that may soon go the way of the dodo include: Chuck, Castle, No Ordinary Family, and The Cape. And Survivor this season, well, I haven’t even started watching it. I’ve had no interest.

*Ping*

I think I’ve been having some real blood sugar issues this weekend. It might be time to start taking my health a little more seriously. 🙁

Also, I could really go for a deep-tissue massage right now.